When Danny Mainville was out mowing his property, looking around for what to do after his retirement as a high school geometry teacher, he did what he’s good at: he did the math.
“We have about three acres of land that has to be mowed on a regular basis,” Danny said. “My riding lawn mower was taking me about four-and-a-half hours to mow the lawn, and that’s back when I was working and coaching and teaching night school. There were only so many hours in the weekend to get it done. So, I bought a zero-turn mower. That cut my time in half.”
“Once I did that, toward the end of my teaching career, I’ve got this huge lawn mower. Why don’t I start mowing lawns for people?”
And that is how Danny, along with his wife Martha, started D&M Property Care in the northern New York community of Brasher Falls.
He placed an ad in a local paper and got his first customers. The next year he put up temporary road signs and got a few more. It was when people started noticing his work that customers steadily added up.
“This year has mostly been word-of-mouth,” Danny said. “I had one lady next door to a place that I mow who said, ‘You do a really good job on her lawn and my friend is in the hospital. Can you mow my friend’s lawn?’”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Danny would run a successful lawn care business. In one sense, he’s been doing it most of his life.
“When I was in high school, I worked for the church and my job was basically to mow the cemetery,” Danny remembers. “You gotta mow around all those headstones and people were like, ‘How can you stand doing that?’ But I’ve always loved mowing lawns and working outside.”
Along with the Husqvarna zero-turn with a 61” cutting deck, Danny has two walk-behind mowers, a Husqvarna blower and trimmer, as well as a Stihl trimmer. His business plan is simple.
“Being a geometry teacher, I like straight lines and orderly shapes,” Danny said, “so when my lines are nice and straight on a lawn when I’m finished, it’s pleasing to me.”
“When somebody takes pride, when it’s mowed and it’s taken care of and it looks good, it’s pleasing, it’s comforting.”
The secret to his lawn care business success, Danny says, is that he shows up when he says he will and does a good job. If it rains one day, he’ll catch up the next.“I mean, what other job can you go outside — your job is outside all day long — and when you’re finished, you can turn around and look at it and say I did that and that’s a really good job and it looks neat. It looks clean. It looks organized.”
“From the time I was a little kid on my own on our house at home growing up, and working for the church while in the cemetery, it’s just something I’ve always enjoyed.”
And remember that friend in the hospital?
“She got out last week,” Danny said. “I mowed her lawn all spring and when I met her the first words out of her mouth were, ‘You do such a good job on the lawn!’ and I’m like, ‘Well, thank you. I really appreciate that.’”
Nothing beats word of mouth.
“Absolutely,” he agrees. “Nothing at all.”
Just over one year into retirement from his teaching career, Danny’s lawn care business is going strong. He has just the right number of customers — “what we’re doing now is perfect,” he says. D&M Property Care is as big as he wants it to be.
Of course, he’ll always find time for just one more customer.
“He picked up a new lawn last week when a lady saw him out on his mower and stopped him,” wife Martha said. “Danny promised me he wasn’t going to take any new lawns, but he took hers because she complimented him.”
“It was just up the road,” Danny shrugs. “That’s happened a couple of times this year. I’m mowing a lawn and the neighbor comes out and says, ‘Hey can you do mine?’”
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