This month's Walker User of the Month is David Bartlett. He owns and operates Bartlett Lawnworks in Bottineau North Dakota, which he started in 2013 at the age of 13 years. David says, "We weren’t looking to start a business, but we realized there was a need for quality lawn services in the Lake Metigoshe area. We wanted to create a service so when people come up to their cabins, or have work off for the weekends, they don't have to think about mowing their lawns."

Back in 2008, Walker Talk volume 33 ran a story on Ralph Anderson, the owner of Anderson Lawn Care in Wyanet, Illinois. The title of the story was “Age is No Barrier for This Mowing Contractor”, and it still isn’t. Anderson is 83 years old and going strong.

Happy customers are what makes a successful business. Michel Dovelde of Waterloo Belguim shares how his background as a diary farmer has informed his success as a one-man landscape business.

Pull into Country Gardens RV Park in Petersburg, Ontario, Canada, and something dramatic happens. You cross over into a tension-free zone; at least that’s what many guests tell Peter Bingeman who, with his family, owns and operates this “home away from home.” In fact, they own two campgrounds, a long stone’s throw from one another, Landings and Country Gardens.

When Anderson Goldmon started mowing lawns full-time in 2000, he had one goal in mind. The prison job he left was paying $35,000 annually and he was bringing home $28,000 mowing lawns part-time. Within the next year, he wanted to make as much money mowing lawns as he had been making in his job. His goal, then, was a modest $7,000 increase in sales.

Tom and Lori Couture started mowing lawns in a rather unusual way. After selling their 27-year-old commercial printing company, they purchased 40 mowing accounts on Craigslist. That was five years ago. Now, Pine Ridge Property Services in Naples, Florida maintains only a handful of those original properties. Yet its sales have grown, as has the owners’ knowledge of what it takes to be successful in the industry.