Business & Tech

Made In Vienna: Michael's Lawn Service

Brothers team up to grow business they started as pre-teens

By LeighAnne Manwarren and Erica R. Hendry

Michael Medwedeff wanted the riding lawn mower he found at a garage sale nearly a decade ago as soon as he saw it.

The only problem? Michael, then 12, didn't quite have the $200 to pay for it.

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He and his brother Cameron, then 10, borrowed the money from their parents and started brainstorming ways to pay it back.

That's how the then-12-year-old started his first business, Michael’s Lawn Service, roping Cameron in to serve as its manager.

“We eventually got our neighbors (to let us mow their lawn) and business just spread by word of mouth and we just did more and more along our street here,” Michael said.

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Into their ninth season, Michael, now 20, and Cameron, 18, have grown out of their first $200 riding lawn mower and into a truck-load of equipment, allowing their business to expand from basic lawn mowing services to include leaf clean up, mulching, aerating and snow clearing.

“With Michael’s Lawn Service, you know who is coming to mow your lawn, I don’t think you can say that about the big lawn mowing companies around the area,” thier mother, Judi Medwedeff, said.

There are a few other reasons the business has grown so quickly, Cameron says. They operate on a flexible schedule, hiring local students as needed to take on extra work at $10/hour, a rate which offers employees an incentive to stay on the job and do it well.

"I realize how important it is to hire the right kids to do the best job," he said.

They don't sign formal contracts with their customers, instead doing business on a job by job basis, which allows those using their service to hire based on need. They also communicate quickly by email and offer online billing. 

A historically wet late summer was the biggest recent hurdle for the small team.

"The constant rain has been a challenge, especially when the hurricane came through," Medwedeff said. "We had weeks of rain and customers' grass was a foot high. And then the sun finally comes out on the Sunday before labor day and Labor Day, the days you cant mow because of the Vienna noise ordinance, and then it started raining again. Not having the noise ordinance would have let us catch up quicker."

Entering the second half of October, Cameron says, the company will continue to offer mowing, mulching, edging, leave removal and fall/spring cleanup, aeration and seeding, weeding, hedge or shrub trimming and gutter cleaning.

As winter moves in, they'll offer snow removal services as well.

Recently, Michael, a volunteer firefighter for the Town of Vienna and an aspiring paramedic, sold his business to Cameron.

"I worked hard to be able to buy Michael's Lawn Service and now I'm excited to expand my company," Cameron said.

The younger Medwedeff, who is studying landscape design at Northern Virginia Community College, hopes to expand the business’ services to include landscape design.

“I am trying to be an architect, maybe a landscape architect,” he said. “I like art and (landscape design) really interests me and I could learn how to design people’s backyards."

But despite the change of hands and changing set of services, the name of Michael's Lawn Service, the company the brothers took on together in 2003, will stay the same.


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