How Dunham’s Lawn Care Grew from Side Hustle to Full-Service Business

I am Sabrina Dunham and I co-own Dunham’s Lawn Care with my husband, Ryan Dunham. We are a professional landscaping company servicing commercial and residential customers in Dayton, Ohio and surrounding areas. We are a full-service organization that provides complete property maintenance including snow, mowing, firewood processing, lawn treatments, and everything else in between. Our mission is "Enhancing Life Outdoors."

My husband Ryan always had a passion for working outside. He is a very active person and many of his jobs involved physical work or working with his hands. Even when he was much younger, he had many customers he would mow grass for and continued to provide handyman work on the side of his professional 9–5 job. In 2015, Ryan and I were married and a year later, Dunham’s Lawn Care was born. In 2016, we obtained our LLC and it’s been history ever since. Ryan’s role has historically been managing our crews and overseeing the actual landscaping work while my role has been more operational and financial focused.

Google, uniforms, truck decals, social media, website, business cards, BBB, and door hangers.

Google and referrals.

Ensuring high quality work. We are lucky that our industry offers recurring revenue as there will always be an ongoing need for property maintenance. If we can do a good job the first time, we often have customers that come back for more.

Yes. Making property improvements and recommendations while onsite and in person with the customer goes a long way in upselling. We are lucky that our industry offers recurring revenue as there will always be an ongoing need for property maintenance.

As a small business, we have a very small marketing budget. Most of our marketing is completed in-house. Myself and Ryan are both marketing majors and we take pride in managing the marketing ourselves. We also enjoy it.

Addressing equipment repairs and maintenance is a large financial burden in our industry. Growing also requires large equipment investments. We became certified with the state to be able to access 0% interest loans as well as securing grant money from another government agency.

We just recently implemented a CRM and we are looking forward to the efficiencies and time savings it will provide this year. Equipment investments and service offering adjustments have also led to company growth.

My advice for those just starting out is to understand that being a business owner is equally rewarding as it is challenging. People often believe success is due to luck and that when you are a business owner, employees do all the work for you. This is often far from the truth. In my experience as a business owner, I have never worked harder in my life.

Our company’s success has not been due to sheer luck but nonstop grinding and the support of those around us. Be prepared to put in the time. Prepare your business for growth, unexpected events (equipment breaking, employees calling off, taxes, etc.) and other changes by creating policies, developing a saving fund, and having procedures in writing. Having these in place in advance can be a lifesaver for handling and addressing difficult situations in the future.

We can be contacted through all of the traditional methods:
✉️ Email: [email protected]
🌐 Website: www.dunhamslawncarellc.com
📱 Social media: TikTok, Google, Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn
📞 Phone: 937-238-7744

Leaving business cards in public places like restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, etc.

We just recently implemented a CRM and we are looking forward to the efficiencies and time savings it will provide this year.