
Contractor Profile: Justin Stultz, owner, Wildflower Lawn Care, A LawnStarter Pro, Hutto, Texas
Green Industry Pros: Can you tell me more about your company?
Justin Stultz: I service mostly Williamson County (in Texas). I have only two commercial clients right now, and I have about 45 residential customers in peak season. I do lawn maintenance, light landscaping like small rock beds and light tree trimming, pest services and herbicide services. I founded in June 2020.
GIP: Why did you decide to get into the industry?
Stultz:: In one of my first business classes in college, one of my professors tried to encourage students to get out there and go through the process of starting a business by registering a business name, establishing your tax ID number, etc. The main goal was that it had to benefit society at large.
I took the lawn care business I had already started and decided my benefit to society was that I could go around and make people’s yards look nice, but my professor wasn’t having it. She said it had to be on a larger scale. So, I tweaked it over the course of the semester and started offering other items like xeriscaping. I was really surprised at how open people were to leaning on my expertise because I was relatively young and new in the industry. I liked that it let me be creative.
After I graduated college, I gave up my part-time lawn business and moved to a different city to start my career. About four years ago, I was working at a pretty large insurance company. During the pandemic, it was getting rough, and we had to start letting people go. I didn't really agree with that. That was the last straw for me in the middle of a pandemic, when we're breaking sales records, that people were getting let go. It was just those awful things you hear about in corporate America all the time. It didn't make me feel great about what I was doing. I started my lawn care business again, this time in a new city.
Now, I split my time pretty significantly. Monday through Thursday, I work as a financial professional selling insurance and helping set up insurance retirement accounts for folks. As I have needed to dedicate more time to lawns and stuff, I have waned away from that.
GIP: What have been some of the highlights so far?
Stultz: I got a lot of encouragement early on from folks that would give me their business. When I got my first route set after a couple of weeks, I was really happy about that. I got my marketing materials together. My daughter—I call her my wildflower so I named the company after her—got to pick colors for the logo, and my wife helped me do the Wildflower Lawn Care website and create the marketing materials. The highlight for me has been being able to do really cool things that I had done in the professional world but doing it for my own business and having control over that.
Another thing is coming out of the pandemic, I was close to 250 pounds and in the worst shape of my life. I was concerned that getting back into lawn care at 39, I wouldn't be able to do it, but by the end of the first summer, I had lost 50 pounds. I just felt better, and I was more physically active.
GIP: And what were some of the challenges you encountered?
Stultz: During the pandemic, it was impossible to get someone to come work in a small truck with me. Even right now, that's one of my biggest challenges, finding somebody who can handle the Texas summer when it's triple digits. I try to make the pay incentive as much as possible. I have to contract folks occasionally when it gets really busy. 2025 will be my first season where I'm hoping to hire somebody on full time and still have a couple of contractors.
GIP: Do you have a favorite tool to get the job done?
Stultz:: I like LawnStarter.com because it lets me set up routes in specific places. I could book a job on that and then try to get route density going in that area. Other than that, my favorite tool by far is my Stihl weed trimmer. I love it. Stihl just came out with a head that’s basically like a speed feed, where you load the line once every two to three days, and it stays full of line. Then I have a first-generation Scag push mower that came out that's 30 inches. It looks so cool. I like driving around with it on the truck when it's nice and clean. It saves me so much cutting time.
GIP: What could the industry use more of?
Stultz: I wish there was more pride in what we do. It’s easy for folks to try to get in by low balling prices, which is tough, but I'm an advocate for the industry in the sense that we do a really tough job, and there's a reason that (clients) hire professionals to make their yard look nice. Every lawn truck I come by, I just try to encourage them to make sure they know their worth, they know their value.
GIP: Outside of work, what types of things do you like to do?
Stultz: My wife and my kids are the biggest part of my life. I coach my kids' soccer teams in soccer season. I'm a member of the Hutto Education Foundation, which is an organization that does scholarships for kids in the area, so they have events regularly. I really love doing my own yard and gardening, and I'm constantly experimenting with new stuff that I think could make my yard look nicer and therefore be able to provide something better for customers. I think my kids seeing how much I love doing it, the bug bit them also because I look in my backyard, and they have their own garden. They pick their own plants. They love being outside. They love all the critters and bugs and stuff that come along with working outdoors.