First Venture · 2012 — 2021
Kyle's Lawn Service — Founder & Operator
A neighborhood lawn care business started at age nine to fund a brokerage account — nine years of sales, pricing, bookkeeping, and reinvestment that became a first education in capital.
What This Was#
At age nine I started a lawn care business in the neighborhoods of Golden, Colorado — not for spending money, but deliberately, to fund a minor brokerage account. It ran for nine years: finding customers, setting prices, keeping books, maintaining equipment, and protecting a reputation in a market where every client talks to every other client.
What It Taught#
- Sales and pricing — knocking on doors teaches you what a service is worth faster than any textbook, and repricing a loyal customer teaches you what a relationship is worth.
- Bookkeeping — revenue, costs, and margin, tracked by hand, season after season.
- Reputation as an asset — in a neighborhood market, quality compounds and so do mistakes.
- Capital allocation — the earnings went into the market. Early positions in Netflix and Nvidia, held young, made compounding a lived experience rather than a concept — the single most durable lesson of my life.
Why It Belongs Here#
Everything since is this business at larger scale: find the work, price it honestly, keep the books, protect the name, and invest the surplus. The lawn service is where the pattern started — which is why it opens the timeline and closes the record.