The rest of the industry kept buying bigger machines. Melvin went the other direction. Small trucks, the right size equipment for the job, and routes tight enough that a crew spent the day working instead of driving between jobs. It was never about being the largest operation in DeSoto County. It was about doing the work properly and charging a price that made sense.

A cut lawn is a tidy lawn. It isn't a thick, green, weed free one. That takes treatment. Feeding the turf on a schedule, staying ahead of weeds before they seed, and dealing with the disease and insect pressure a Mid-South summer brings. It's a different skill from mowing, and it's a licensed one.

Around 2013 we started doing it, and it has since become the heart of the business. More than 1,000 households across DeSoto County and the greater Memphis area are on our lawn treatment program, and we add more every week. We're licensed and insured in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas, which for treatment work isn't paperwork. It's the difference between a professional applying product to your lawn and somebody guessing.

Lawn Jox has never been a franchise or a call center. It's Melvin's business, and Kim's before that, run out of Olive Branch, looking after lawns in the towns we live in. When something goes wrong with your lawn, you're calling the people whose name is on the truck.