We purchased his first piece of landscape equipment (a commercial backpack blower), developed fliers for a leaf blowing service, and started our marketing campaign in the community where we lived.  One of our customers asked if we could begin maintaining her lawn on a regular basis. To my husband’s surprise, I responded “yes, we can” without hesitation, and that was the start of our business.  Our next stop was our local commercial landscape shop to purchase a mower and other equipment necessary to maintain lawns. Initially, we both were working in full-time jobs, yet slowly started increasing our customer base on a shoe-string budget in a “mom and pop” manner. I was responsible for the office management and my husband ran the field operations. Five years, and two of our now five children later, we had resigned from our full-time jobs and were investing 100% of our efforts into our successful company.  We continued to operate out of our home, yet provided comprehensive residential and commercial landscape services that were equal to many of the larger landscape maintenance companies in our area. Please view our gallery of photos of our services by selecting the "Gallery" tab above.

Those were wonderful years, yet six months after the birth of our fifth child, the unimaginable happened, my husband's health suddenly declined.  He was in and out of the emergency intensive care unit nine times in the first year, fighting several health challenges.  It took eight years for him to completely recover, and during that time our business declined due to his inability to work, the recession, and housing market crash. Many of our residential customers were either laid off from their jobs or furloughed, and could not continue to support our business.  Our main commercial landscape home builder changed how they hired landscape maintenance companies in an effort to protect their bottom line profits.  I continued to manage the business, but without my husband being on site, the quality of our work decreased.  We learned a valuable lesson from that experience: once his health improved to the point where we can start over, we will employ a Landscape Supervisor whose responsibilities shall include quality assurance and overseeing the maintenance of our trucks and equipment, while my husband perform more executive duties for our business.

We are now in the planning stages of restarting our business, and need your assistance to help make it happen.  Our financial reserves were wiped out years ago from my husband’s extensive medical bills, business overhead, and personal expenses.  Our goal is to raise $55,000 in donations from this campaign. Your contribution will pay for any necessary repair and/or replacement cost of our trucks and equipment due to years of misuse by our crewmen in the absence of my husband.  We also need funds for the start up operating and marketing costs.

Whether or not we reach our goal, the funds will still go towards our business start up costs, beginning with the purchase and repair of our trucks and equipment.  We can always start over and know what needs to happen, who will perform each task, where to go to get the necessary supplies and equipment, and how to begin marketing our business, starting with our massive list of past customers and referrals.

Follow the link below to view an interactive chart for the detailed breakdown by percentages of where your contributions will be utilized (see below for the breakdown by dollar amounts).  We believe it is important that you fully understand what we are attempting to accomplish from the success of this business fundraising campaign.

https://infogr.am/Breakdown-of-Your-Contributions

Thank you, so very much, for any amount you can contribute to “help us help ourselves” by providing the services we truly enjoy for our community, and rebuild our business which will enable us to care for ourselves, our employees, and our families.  Since we are starting our campaign in October's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the theme for our perks will be healthy eating.  For your generous donations, we will provide the following rewards:

We understand if you are unable to monetarily contribute.  It would be absolutely appreciated if you could help us by getting the word out through your networks.  If you have a Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, or any social media profiles, sharing or sending a personal message to any potential supporters would be wonderful.  You can use the Indiegogo share tools for simplicity. 

Thank you for your support!