One Mow Co. / MCD Landscaping

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The History of One Mow Co.

We started MCD landscaping in 2003 of April, and, it we started with a big dream and then learned business wasn’t the easiest thing. And then we started getting a good flow and a great client base. We went to A to Z Projects because when you new in business, you kind of want to do everything. You’re like, I can do this, I can do that, I can do this. And then as years went on – so for specifically 6 or 8 years ago – we realized that we didn’t want to do everything. We realized we were stretched too thin. And now we’re trying to figure out a gray paver over here and trying to maintain a lawn over here. And it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t happy with it. So we decided to refocus on lawn mowing. We started the business on lawn mowing. That was always my passion. So we went back to our roots, simply put. And we just started mowing lawns and maintaining landscapes. And that’s when we realized that was something we could manage very well. We could promise things to people and we knew we could fulfill because we wouldn’t have, you know, some six figure installation that we’re trying to, you know, find the right plant for, like lawn mowing is once a week. And we know the local weather, we know what’s going on in this part of town and stuff like that. So it allows us to really be predictable in our scheduling and reliable, and we love lawn mowing, to be honest. So we started getting the wheels going that way. That really got us going, and got us back focused with a lot of clients. And then a few years ago, I guess four years ago, we really decided we wanted to grow the business. Kind of did a test year. And then three years ago, we started growing the business. We’ve always been word of mouth. Always. We’ve never advertised. I think I’ve had business cards. I’ve never had a website. So we decided we wanted to advertise. And so we’ve been growing rapidly but very sustainably. And it’s always been a secret. We never want to lose the small touch of the small business. That is incredibly important to me, to know all the to know all the little things in my clients properties, even though I don’t know lawns anymore. Our crew does that. But we found a business model that works that allows us to make every lawn look beautiful every single week with as much growth as we want, and still keeping that small feel, which is, incredibly important to me. It really, really is.

What Makes Us Unique?

OneMowCo. is different because we’re one of the few companies that really just focuses on lawn mowing and landscaping maintenance. We really, truly do. The whole package starts with lawn mowing. We don’t do work for people that we don’t mow their lawn. We will not be jaded by large installations. They’re great. They’re sexy. We’ve done them. They’re cool. They’re cool to look back at. We won’t do them. We’ve turned down just this year, I don’t know, 4 or 5, six-figure installations. It’s just not a though. Because there’s no way that I could look you in the eye if you’re a lawn mowing client, you’ve been a lawn mowing client for 15 years and tell you that sorry, I can’t mow your lawn this week because we’ve got a really big job and we got to go finish over there. It doesn’t fly with me at all.

Our Lawn Services

Really OneMowCo., like I said, it kind of starts with the lawn mowing. But basically we take care of landscape maintenance. Anything that has to do with maintaining your property, that’s done once a year, multiple times a year. The only things we really don’t do is we don’t do irrigation and we don’t do lawn fertilizing. We work with a couple local companies that we can work through us or we can recommend you to them by all means. We love them. We do basically everything else, like pruning is a huge thing for us. We have some very good people at pruning on our crews, weeding. We do planting. I’m kind of a plant geek just because I’ve been doing this so long. Bark mulching, anything that the landscape needs to maintain, you know, and we have everything from where it can just be like, you call us once, and you’re like, hey, our shrubs need pruning for this year, or we have people that were set up on weekly routines

Industry Changes in Mowing & Landscaping

You know, we’ve been in business 21 years. We’ve started from where there’s a lot of small – there’s only one or two larger companies – a lot of small 1- and 2- and 3-man businesses for sure, which there still is. And that’s how we started. I started with a push mower and a dream. So I mean, I’m all I’m all for the small businesses for sure. Now it’s been much more focused midsize companies. There’s one or two really large companies based around here, but it’s more, you know, 3- to 5, 6-person crews. And we kind of stand out where there’s a handful of us where we’re larger than that. A lot of companies are really focusing, going after landscape installations. A lot of companies for I know the reasons or whatever reasons are getting out of lawn mowing. They’re really focusing on the larger jobs, which I get. And I do understand that, you know, managing, you know, we’ll be at anywhere from 50 to 100 properties on any, like today, we’re at probably 70 properties. So it’s a lot to manage. But we figured it out. And with good scheduling software, having good client, good, good clients, of course. Good employees. So I get it. It’s easier if you have one job or two jobs that you’re going to, you know? But we, like I said, we found a way to manage, you know, the 75 properties that we’re at today.

Our Cutting-Edge Equipment

When we started, we had all we could purchase. You probably like a – I don’t know, we had a riding mower. And then I think we purchased our first Walker mowers, like, $2,300. That was huge. Huge. We’ve learned over the years to update to all new equipment. it’s just the equipment these days is so much better. So we use Walker mowers, hands down. We use ECHO for all of our small equipment. And then we try and keep our trucks all new. Just taking one part out of the equation that broken equipment slows us down and might slow us getting to your lawn. So we do have a pretty rigorous maintenance program. And lawn mowers are ridiculously expensive these days, but it’s amazing what we can do with the lawn mowers these days compared to 26 years ago when I started mowing. They’re quite amazing, I will say.

A Typical Friday at One Mow Co.

So we have seven crews right now. It’s Friday. We just got like two inches of rain yesterday, so we had to bump all our Thursday lawns. Most of them got bumped up to Wednesday afternoon, so we mowed most of our Thursday list on Wednesday afternoon. We had probably ten lawns left over that we did – today’s Friday – this morning from the Thursday’s crews. So we have three crews mowing right now, four crews landscaping. At the moment I think we have four crews on Ocean Ave in Kennebunkport, and then we have three crews over kind of by Kennebunk Beach, doing all kinds of things. Actually, we’re randomly doing a quick fence install for a good client just because they really want it. We don’t do fence installs too often. We’re clearing out some brush for another client or making doing our bed maintenance, making things really fancy at a couple properties. And then, you know, we’re mowing 60ish lawns today. And then the maintenance crews are probably doing – they’re doing seven properties today. A couple of them are behind us. So, that’s a typical Friday.

The People We Serve

We are really fortunate, when it comes to the clientele. We we have really good clients. And yes, high end clients, for sure. We work for . . . we work for anybody. You know, it doesn’t matter where you live. We don’t judge. We’ve been very fortunate. About 15 years ago, made a little gamble, got in with one client, and it just slowly started snowballing from there to where now, I mean, I’m – we’re privileged to work on the properties that we work on. I mean, some of these properties are absolutely amazing. But I think the interesting aspect of it is it’s so interesting to get to know these people because over the years, like the property we’re sitting on, I work with for 12 years and getting to know them, get to know their backstory and just the people we work for. Their stories are so interesting because it can be anywhere from people that are high up in magazines to, you know, builders and developers and other things that I can’t say, but it’s really . . . Friendships have grown and it’s nice to sit down with people, you know, and we’ll get bottles of wine from clients we’ve had for a long time, you know, and, it’s really unique, what comes to Kennebunkport. Yes. Obviously there’s a lot of money that comes to the southern Maine coast. We realize that. And, you know, Lake Winnipesaukee and all these others, there’s a ton of money. But when you really get to know the people and really what we work on is trust. That’s our whole business is trust. Once they trust you, then you can actually sit down and talk with them. And I’ve learned so many things in my own personal life from these, from these people, because they’re obviously successful. They’ve done something in their life. And even though they might not even remotely be in the same industry as we are, it’s really interesting to learn what they have. And it’s also interesting. I can think of one client that is incredibly successful, and the guy’s fascinated with my business, which is fascinating to me because this was back six, seven years ago. And, you know, we were doing, I don’t know, $400,000 a year or something, which, you know, it’s big to us, but not really in the scheme of things. But he’s so fascinated with our business. He was fascinating. How can we be at 30 properties a day and have his property still look, you know, “magnificent” quote unquote, what he would say. And it was really interesting because I learned so much from him and he was, you know, big time, still a great client and stuff like that. But he really took the time to lean into my business. And it was really interesting because he gave me some good points, and he’s definitely still a good client. I like talking to him when I get a chance to see him. So.

Why Hire One Mow Co.

Trust, simply put. You know we found a way where our lead guys have been with us – two separate guys have been with us – for 12 years. We have six other employees. They’ve been with us for six plus years. We keep it a small business. So we’re not a corporation and we like to have fun. We enjoy ourselves. The guys hang out after work and stuff, but we take our job very seriously. You know, I laugh because I tell clients it’s just mowing the lawn, like everything should look fine, but we make a science out of it, you know? That’s our problem. Let us figure that out. But we’re incredibly reliable. This is my hometown, and if we didn’t do a good job. My name is Mason Dixon. I’m the only Mason Dixon anywhere around here. And if I don’t do a good job, it’s a small town. All you got to do is say Mason Dixon didn’t do a good job. So I think my name had that weight on my shoulders for the last 20 years that, like, I just couldn’t let anybody down. Simply put, we treat everybody’s property like it was our own property. Yeah. That’s the – that’s how we operate.

About Our Rebrand

So recently, after 20, 20 years in business, we decided we wanted to change the name from MCD landscaping to OneMowCo. There’s a few different reasons. Basically, what we never marketed. I named MCD landscaping, MCD landscaping because when I went to get a bank account back in the day, they needed a name of business so I could open a bank account. I was like, oh, my initials sounds great. I always liked the name, but not really. you know, and most people would actually call and ask for Mason Dixon Landscaping, which is kind of comical and would be a great business name, but, you know, 15 years, if I sell this, it’s probably, Mason Dixon Landscaping probably isn’t going to sell well. That was the main reason. And we went to OneMowCo. because we did a bunch of AI research. My daughter did some research and stuff, and, my daughter came up with the name. And really, the reason we wanted to do it is that if we’re going to go into all this advertising, I wanted to make sure I love the business name. As challenging as it’s been to make this rebrand, and basically prove to our clients that we just after 20 years in business, we just rebranded our business and went through the pain of doing this like, we’re in this for the long run. If anything, we’re just going to keep getting better.

Property Tour #1

So this property is interesting. We’ve worked here for a long time. I used to mow this lawn for the parents for a previous company back in the 90s. And since, the daughter has become – has the property. This property is unique, where the lady is very hands-on. They’ll actually get out and actually clean the pond themselves. They’re way into their landscaping. We just redid the back of it last year. She wanted, like, a shade garden. We’re having a – we had a lot of problems because there was such a tree canopy. We couldn’t grow anything. So we had a company come in and selectively just prune tree limbs to get more sun. So we’re able to get that bed back there with Japanese maples, astilbes, grasses, hostas, and some other things. It’s just a really private property. It’s, not what you see as much where the ocean is only 300 yards away, which is hard to believe. It’s one of those properties that, it’s very private and rare around here. And, we’re just doing acorn cleanup at the moment and making it look beautiful. But it is a year of acorn. So the guys are trying to get the acorns at bay. And, the guys just mowed it. And, yeah, I’d like this property to get away sometimes.

Property Tour #2

So this property was – I took it over, I believe it was three years ago. Came in, and it had a lot of issues. Specifically the lawn; the gentleman really wanted a nice lawn. And as you can see, we’ve gotten it there between the help of, the fertilizing company we use and proper mowing, aeration, just doing the right practice for –practices for mowing. We did just mow this this morning. The lines look good. But the lawn looks great. The pond has been challenging, but, for reference, that pond during the floods we had over the winter, that pond was four and a half, five feet under water. We actually just pumped out the pond last fall, cleaned it out and put in new pea stone legally. And then the ocean came and filled it with seaweed and all kinds of fun stuff and driftwood. And, we had to do it again this spring. But . . . Cool property though. But yeah, the lawn is, like, lawn’s amazing from where it came from. I mean, amazing. Which is important because everybody drives by this property and sees a nice lawn. So it’s kind of like make your lawn look good and everything else looks good. But guys did a nice job. The stripes look good today.

Neighborhood Mowing

This is one of the neighborhoods we do. The unique thing we do with neighborhoods is we do all the mowing for the entire neighborhood on the same day. And it was kind of one of our selling things back in the day. Like, you know, if you got 12 or 15 houses in a neighborhood, why would you want to have the lawns mowed on five different days? Instead, we go into a neighborhood – like this one takes us, I don’t know, four hours. There’s quite a few lawns in here. I think it’s about 12 houses that we do. Larger lawns. So we just come in and we’re scheduled for this neighborhood – it’s Friday afternoon. We’re in here from, you know, 11:00 until 2:30, 3:00, and we’re out. And nobody has to worry about everything. All the fertilizing, tick, mosquitos, spray, all of that can be scheduled for Monday through Thursday. Nobody has to have any questions. And then all the homeowners know that on Fridays we come here and we mow. But this – this neighborhood’s unique because our first client ever is actually at the start of the neighborhood. Twenty-one years ago, I used to push-mow his lawn. I push-mowed his lawn for a year and then got a riding mower, did that for a year, and then finally had enough money to buy my first, like, super-used Walker. But we’ve been mowing the lawn for 21 years. The house just sold this spring, and the new owner called me. And he’s like, if you’ve had this lawn for 20 years, you are my man. And he’s great. So that one lawn got us into the neighborhood eventually, where we do basically everything in here and do the association. It’s a great neighborhood, super nice people. The ocean’s only – I don’t know what’s the ocean – 6, 700 yards from here. It’s off a side road. And, really nice clients in here. It’s fairly private in here. Some really good old growth trees and stuff. Yeah. So the guys are just – it’s kind of an early season, where we’re fighting early leaves, fighting acorns. But, it looks like they’ve made their way through mowing. Most of them definitely still got some trimming to do. Things are looking green though. Finally got some rain and lawns are looking good here.

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