Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake Young.
Jake, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started in middle school shoveling driveways for my elderly neighbors. As the warm weather came, they needed help around their yards and I figured it was easy enough. From there, I started to do different kinds of yard work for neighbors and slowly decided I wanted to start my own business. This lead to me acquiring all of my own equipment, and labor help from my high school friends, and my brothers. I went from having small little mowers from Lowes to having my own commercial grade equipment within years, this helped us grow and get bigger and better clients. We now offer commercial and residential property maintenance, natural tick and mosquito control, as well as commercial snow+ice control.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it has not been a smooth road, a big challenge was getting my mind past the mental blocks life had set for me, and I felt as though I couldn’t own a business just because I had never done it before and because I had little to no start-up capital. My thoughts on that changed once I found a YouTube channel that had just started up, by this man Keith Kalfas. His YouTube channel, believe it or not, gave me the courage and knowledge to start my own little thing, and hey, it worked! Of course there are also the everyday type of struggles, which 90% of the time is equipment that needs to get repaired, but we work past it, get everything fixed, and get the job done.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about RedZone Landscaping – what should we know?
We do mainly landscaping maintenance and snow clearing. We offer natural tick and mosquito control, as well as vegetable and herb garden design & maintenance. I’m most proud of the fact that most of my friends and family were able to stick around and support me on my journey, it has been very stressful, but without their guidance, who knows where I’d be! As a company, we always try to be supportive. Whether that be to the customer by supporting their ideas and letting them know that we can make their property beautiful again, or whether that be to the community. Something as small as unclogging a storm drain in front of a property we’re working on can make a difference in the end! We don’t want to sell just our landscaping work, we want to sell the whole experience!
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I feel it’s been most important to have the courage to take risks. Without taking risk, there is almost no possible way you could get a business off the ground. I take risk all the time, sometimes it works out great, other times it’s a lesson learned!
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.RedZoneLandscaping.net
- Phone: 781-858-1877
- Email: Services@RedZoneLandscaping.net
- Facebook: Www.facebook.com/redzonelandscaping
- Twitter: Www.twitter.com/rzlandscaping
Image Credit:
Jake Young
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