ST. LOUIS (KMOV/Gray News) – A Missouri teen’s lawn care business is expanding with employees and turning into a year-round service.
Four years after Lawrence Hoye went door-to-door during a winter storm offering to shovel his neighbors’ driveways, his company, Hoye Creek Lawn and Landscaping, is now offering services throughout the year while employing six people.
Hoye, 17, will be a senior at the STEAM Academy at McCleur South-Berkeley High School in the fall, with plans to graduate early in December.
But at just 13 years old, he decided to start a lawn care company with the support of his mom.
“Without her, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Hoye said. “When I didn’t have a driver’s license, she would take me to all of my customers and get me where I needed to go.”
Hoye has gradually grown his business over the last several years, offering lawn and landscape care during the spring and summer, along with leaf and debris removal in the fall and winter.
This winter, he said, will be the first in which he will no longer offer snow removal, due to increased insurance costs and liability.
“There’s a lot of risk involved, with the guys and the trucks,” he said. “But we are beginning to offer other services.”
By that, he means things like window washing and gutter clean-outs, as he looks to continue to expand his business with the help of his six employees.
“It makes me feel accomplished in the sense that how I started at 13 years old and just saw it could be so much more than a kid pushing around a lawnmower making a few bucks,” he said.
Hoye said that after he graduates from high school in December, he has plans to purchase a home in St. Louis, before venturing south to Atlanta, in hopes of making connections with customers to further expand the business.
“My vision is to hire a general manager to oversee operations here locally, so I’m able to go out and try to start franchising the business in other parts of the country, he said.
Several of his employees are former classmates and friends from school, a couple of whom work full time for Hoye.
“He’s put a lot of hustle into this, a lot of heart and I definitely believe he can go far,” Joe Holliman, who has worked for Hoye for the last year, said.
During the school year, Holliman helps Hoye with jobs during the week, along with Dominic Mason, who joined the company earlier this spring.
“At first, I was like, does he really have a business?” Mason laughed. “When you hear that from somebody younger than you and it’s like … nah. But coming and seeing how he does stuff, I can see his hustle.”
Hoye said he has dozens of clients, largely in the Maryland Heights and Creve Coeur area, where he expanded the business a few years ago.
“I’ll go to the Starbucks, walk random neighborhoods, get dropped in a neighborhood by an Uber or something, and literally knock and pound doors,” he said. “A lot of the ‘no’s’ can be turned into a ‘yes,’ in the sense that while they may not need a certain service we provide, they may be interested in another.”
On weekends, employees like Holliman and Mason will ride hoverboards around different neighborhoods, going door-to-door to offer services and let people know about the company and its back story.
“That’s what a lot of people say, they’re like, ‘We love to see young men doing something productive in this world,’” Mason said. “We’re doing something with our lives.”
Hoye Creek Lawn and Landscaping can be contacted via email: hoyecreekcutzlawnservice@gmail.com.
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