MY NAME IS SPENCER AND THIS IS MY STORY!

MY NAME IS SPENCER AND THIS IS MY STORY!
 

I started mowing lawns in my hometown Wichita, KS when I was 11 years old. I used my dad’s push mower, trimmer, and blower to cut my first yards which were close neighbors that I could walk to with the equipment. I started with just one yard and slowly grew my customer base for a couple more years through middle school.

By the time high school rolled around, I saved up enough money to buy my first riding mower and trailer. The mower was a VERY used zero turn and the trailer was a cheap fold-up type from Harbor Freight so that I could store it in the garage. At this point, my dad drove me around on weekends as I didn’t have my license yet, which was the biggest thing holding me back from growing my business even further.

Finally, when I turned 16, I learned to drive my dad’s manual truck and could finally go out on my own to cut my client’s yards. I started promoting heavily in local Facebook pages and posting flyers on doors and mailboxes. It got to the point where I was working lots of evenings and weekends and needed some more

My little brother was in middle school at the time and was my very first employee. We worked together the last couple of years I was in high school, slowly growing the business to about 25 yards/week.

College was always a dream of mine but very financially out of reach. I took the ACT test many times hoping to get a score that could get me a good scholarship. After studying a TON and taking the test about 10 times, I increased my score from an average of 20 to 32, which was the number I needed to get considered for a full ride at most universities in surrounding states. The problem though, was that I got the score 4 months past the scholarship deadline.

With a lot of help from my mom, we contacted the scholarship board at my #1 choice, K-State. They said they would bring it up at the next board meeting and let us know. A couple weeks later, we got a call informing us that I was awarded the Putnam scholarship which would cover full tuition for 4 years.