5 years ago My 14 year old brother decided to create a lawn business with his friend Casey Christensen.
He started charging his clients about $40 dollars a month ($10 a mowing job) Soon realizing that he had several younger brothers he could hire for Extremely little pay. I was then 9 and my younger brother Andrew was 7. Casey did not Like the idea of a 7 year old mowing the lawns for him and talked to David about it. David assured him that if he did anything wrong he would fix it. Pretty soon within the first year or two something happened to the partner ship between David and Casey and the split their business.(whether David was cheating him or something I do not know)
Paying us $1 a lawn that we mowed we soon realized that it wasn't worth it. I started begging for a raise he then told me that he got more money because he started the business, he was the only one who could trim, and because the mowers were his. he told me he would give me a raise when I learned to trim so I started to trim in our backyard, when ever I would show him my (then not so good) trimming skills he would tell me to try again later. soon enough we were tired of David bossing us around so we decided to quit unless we got a raise, David knowing that he couldn't afford to lose us (whether I could trim or not) then offered us $2 per time. We continued working, slowly and gradually getting raises $2 turned into $2.50 then for the past two years he started paying us 5 dollars a lawn! it was soo much better than 1 dollar only a few years before.
I knew that soon he would have to go on his mission and that this business would soon be mine I was secretly waiting for the time. I soon noticed that a lot of the neighborhood boys were talking about starting their own law business. I was getting worried, and on top of that David was telling me that I was not going to do his lawns because I didn't do it good enough and that his clients might not higher him after his mission.
Now that David is on his mission the business fell into My hands. I now work with my brother Andrew and My trimming has improved A LOT! We work more as a partnership than a slavery. We often look at our 9 and 7 year old brothers and laugh that David hired us when we were that age and that he paid us so little for so long. we also get paid allot more than we ever did with David. We haven't had to worry about neighborhood kids stealing our clients. It has been very successful and we enjoy it
