mowing is an art. sometimes people talk about it,oh, it's just cutting grass, or whatever. i say it's not. you're not cutting grass,you're mowing lawns. there's a big differencebetween the two. my name is david bartlett. i run bartlett yardworks inthe bottineau, lake metigoshe, north dakota area, and i'vebeen running bartlett yardworks
for about three years now. we started bartlettyardworks as three brothers, and did it for acouple of years. and then i realized i likeddoing it, so i took it over. and ever since theni've been learning how to run a business,how to grow business, how to deal withpeople, and how to take care of customers the way theywould like to be taken care of. some people sayyou've got to wait
till the timing is perfect. the timing will never beperfect, no matter what you're going to do. you just need to start. when i started fouryears ago, all i had was a push mower thatwas 15 years old, a trimmer thatwas a similar age, and a blower ibought from walmart. so i didn't start outwith anything good.
it was just good work ethic,treating the customers like they want to be treated,how you'd like to be treated, and just doing yourbest, no matter if it takes more time, evenif you lose money on a job. just do what you say,and eventually you work yourself intoa better place than when you started out. then i changed using from amid-mount to walker mid-season, so i could really seea huge improvement.
going from just trying tosqueeze into tight spaces with a mower that has abagger sticking off the side and doesn't do a verygood job of bagging, to come in directlyto one of these, there was really no comparison. it cut a lot of time offmy mowing of properties. being as we work on a lake,we have a lot of hills, so you're going to havefairly sharp turns. with mid-mount zero turns you'regoing to have a lot of dips,
and you're going tohave more scalping, so if the deckthat [? flipped ?] rotates and does all sortsof stuff, you can get around and twist yourdeck into locations that you wouldeither be scalping, or you'd be leavingreally tall grass. you're going toneed to go over it with a push mower, or atrimmer, or just something, that it's just not goingto look as good as you can
get with a true floating deck. well, having themowers built the they are, with being lighter, morespread out on their weight, they aren't going tobe rutting as bad. so then, if i haveto go over an area the same directionbecause of too narrow, or it's on the hillside orsomething, like this property, i'm not going tobe leaving ruts, unlike the othermowers, where you're
going to be leaving ruts aftermowing it the same direction for years on end. with these, you're goingto be more spread out. you're not going to be ruttingnearly as bad, if at all. since i've startedusing walker last year, my business hasprobably grown 50%. the referral amountshave gone up. i'm getting a lot moreof the desirable clients, the higher-end clients whowant their properties looking
really good. they just talk to theirfriends, and they just get to talking about hownice their lawn looks, and they wanttheirs the same way. being 17 hasn't been a problem. people don't askme how old i am, and i don't really broadcast it. some people treat me as ifi would be anybody else. and i just try to dothe best job i can.