I recently sat down with Steve Delaney, the founder of Yard Boss out of Lincoln, Nebraska, and his story is one of the best examples I’ve seen of what happens when you stop trying to do everything and start doing a few things really well. Steve started mowing lawns in high school, officially launched his business in 2008 while still in college, and has spent the last 17 years building it into one of the top lawn care and pest control companies in the region. They’re doing $1.4 million a year right now and growing fast, up 27% this year alone. His journey from a guy who did absolutely everything to a focused, scaling operation is a masterclass in how to actually build a real business.
Starting in College with a Mower
Steve was originally in school for architectural engineering before he transferred to a program in landscaping and turf management. He’d been mowing lawns since high school and kept it going through college, coming home every weekend to run his route. By 2008, the side hustle was pulling in about $40,000 a year, and Steve decided it was time to make it official.
“I feel like the government needs to know about this before I get in trouble,” he told me, laughing. That was the real start date for Yard Boss, even though the name didn’t come until later. After finishing his internship, Steve went full time and never looked back. He worked every night and every weekend to keep the momentum going, and the business just kept growing from there.
The Painful Years of Doing Everything
For the first chunk of Steve’s career, Yard Boss, or as it was called back then, Steve’s Lawn and Landscaping, did absolutely everything. Mowing, landscaping, patios, retaining walls, sprinkler installs, sprinkler service, snow removal, fencing, decks. If it was outside the home, they were the guys.
“We just were the guy for everything and that was miserable,” Steve told me. “Like absolutely miserable.” The problem wasn’t that the work wasn’t there. It was that doing everything meant doing nothing exceptionally well. Every service had different skills, different equipment, different seasonality, and different customer expectations. Steve was spreading himself so thin that the business couldn’t really grow in any one direction.
The snow removal side was especially brutal. They were doing about 40 acres of parking lots and 10 miles of sidewalks. Steve’s guys were out for 16 to 18 hours at a time on snow days. It was unsustainable.
The Rebrand That Changed Everything
In 2020, Steve made a bold move. He rebranded from Steve’s Lawn and Landscaping to Yard Boss and started dumping services. He cut landscaping, pulled back on snow removal, and began pouring everything into fertilizer and weed control. At the time, the fertilizer division was under $100,000. Today it’s the core of a $1.4 million company.
The name Yard Boss actually had a fun origin. It was Steve’s nickname as a kid because he was apparently a bossy little three year old. His uncle started calling him that and it stuck. When he started the business, someone suggested using it. Steve pushed back at first. He didn’t want his childhood nickname on a company. But looking back, it was one of the best decisions he ever made.
The rebrand did hurt in the short term. People thought he was a new company. Some customers assumed he’d bought a franchise or changed businesses entirely. Steve estimates it took about six to twelve months before things evened out. But once they did, everything clicked. A focused brand, a focused service offering, and a much cleaner operation.
His advice for anyone thinking about rebranding? Do it at the very start if you can. Pick a good name that isn’t tied to your personal name, because your name makes it harder to sell the company down the road. And make sure the name actually means something. “Steve’s Lawn and Landscaping really didn’t resonate well,” he told me. Yard Boss sticks in people’s minds.
Adding Pest Control as a Natural Extension
Steve added pest control a few years ago, and it was one of the smoothest transitions he’s made. The reason was simple. Mosquito, flea, tick, and chigger treatments are basically exterior sprays, and the way Yard Boss applies them is almost identical to how they treat for weeds. They spray the entire lawn and landscaping with a chem gun on a hose, the same equipment and technique they already use every day.
“We don’t have to train somebody one direction or another,” Steve said. The licensing was easy too. His guys already had their lawn care licenses, so getting the additional pest control category was straightforward. And the best part? He already had a huge customer base to upsell.
Steve fired off an email to his existing clients announcing the new service and overnight had half a route filled. That’s the power of adding a complementary service to an established brand. The customers already trust you, already have your number saved, and already see your trucks in their neighborhood. It’s almost a no brainer for them.
The Upsell Machine
One of the coolest things about Steve’s business right now is how aggressively he’s upselling existing customers, and how well it’s working. He’s using Go High Level to send targeted text and email campaigns to his client base, and the results have been insane.
The fungus campaign is a great example. Steve’s team noticed a lot of fungus popping up in yards around their area. They sent out a text message to their customers that said something along the lines of, we’ve noticed a lot of fungus, and left untreated this will kill your yard. Within two or three hours, they had to shut the campaign down because they had 200 responses and not enough sales reps to handle them all. They sold $10,000 to $12,000 in fungus treatments in a single afternoon.
The armyworm campaign was the same story. Armyworms can destroy a lawn in 24 to 48 hours, so Steve sent out a text explaining the situation and telling customers they could self diagnose by looking for certain signs. The response was massive.
Aeration and seeding went from $115,000 last year to $145,000 this year, driven largely by these kinds of targeted upsell campaigns. The key insight Steve learned from the program was that people buy when they want or need something. Asking them to commit to aeration back in January for something they might want in September doesn’t work. But when the time comes and you send them a text explaining exactly what’s happening and why they need it right now, they jump on it.
Why Yard Signs Still Matter
Steve spends six or seven thousand dollars a year on yard signs, and he thinks it’s one of the best marketing investments he makes. Yard Boss doesn’t use the standard small signs. They use big ones, about the size of a sheet of paper, with their mascot Blade on them. They put them everywhere. In client yards after completing a job, at intersections, at neighborhood entrances, even in the center of roundabouts, which got them threatened with fines from the city.
The Christmas light signs are especially effective because they tend to stay in yards all the way until spring. People just don’t think about pulling them down when they’re not doing much yard work in the fall and winter. So Yard Boss gets months of free advertising from a single sign.
Steve’s philosophy on visibility is simple. He wants everybody in Lincoln to know that Yard Boss exists, whether they need the service right now or not. “One day you’re gonna be having coffee or drinks with your friend and they’re gonna be talking about getting lawn care, pest control, Christmas lights, whatever. You’re like, well, I don’t know, but I know this Yard Boss, I see them around,” he said. And then when that person goes to Google or Facebook, the ads are already there waiting for them.
The Truck Wrap Illusion
Steve’s fleet is all bright green and blue F-250s and 350s, and they all look identical. Same trucks, same color, same wrap, same everything. People in Lincoln have started saying they see Yard Boss trucks everywhere, which Steve finds hilarious because he only has six trucks rolling on any given day.
“You don’t see them everywhere. We’ve only got six rolling a day. We’re not even in every part of town every day,” he told me. But because they all look the same, people think the company is twice as big as it actually is. Steve also never reuses truck numbers. Their current trucks are numbered up to 25, even though they’ve never had 25 trucks at once. People see truck number 22 and assume there must be a massive fleet. It’s a simple psychological trick that costs nothing extra and makes the company feel way bigger than it is.
The Mindset Shift That Changed Everything
Steve’s biggest turning point came at the end of 2019 when he went to a conference in Dallas and ended up in a mastermind group. He grew up in a town of 8,000 people. Running a million dollar business there made him feel like the richest guy in town. But sitting in a room with guys doing 10,000 clients and multiple locations completely rewired how he thought about what was possible.
“It was a mindset shift really is what it came down to,” Steve told me. He also realized he’d been stuck in his small town too long. Word of mouth had built the business, but the market was maxed out. He had to push into Lincoln in a big way to hit his growth goals, and that decision alone changed the trajectory of the company.
Steve also learned the hard way that marketing agencies aren’t always the answer. He discovered that his own agency had been using Go High Level the whole time, a powerful CRM and marketing automation tool, and he had no idea. Once he understood how it actually worked, he was able to have real conversations with his agency about what to do, how to target, when to pull ads down, and when to go all in on something that was working.
What's Next
Steve’s got his sights set on Omaha. Lincoln can probably support about 3,500 to 4,000 clients, and Yard Boss is at about 2,400 right now. He thinks they’ll get there fairly quickly at the pace they’re growing. But Omaha is four times the size of Lincoln, and that’s where the real runway is.
He’s planning to move into Omaha in pieces, starting on the west side and working his way into the metro over time. The goal is to be there within two years. Steve set a personal goal to be in Omaha by the time he’s 37, and he’s not backing down from it.
Christmas lights will keep playing a role too, even though Steve calls it a love hate relationship. It solves the winter revenue problem that plagues most lawn care companies, and when it’s executed well, it’s incredibly profitable. The key is having the operations dialed in tight enough to handle the compressed timeline. Missing even a week of marketing or falling behind on installs can cost you the entire season.
Key Takeaways
Steve’s story spans 17 years of building a home services business from the ground up, and there’s a ton to learn from it. First, stop doing everything. Steve’s biggest growth came after he cut services and focused on what he was actually good at. Fertilizer, weed control, pest control, and Christmas lights. Similar services, similar skills, similar customers. Focus beats breadth every single time.
Second, upsell your existing customers aggressively. Steve’s biggest revenue jumps this year came not from new customers, but from targeted text and email campaigns to people who already trusted him. When the timing is right and the message is relevant, the conversion rate is incredible.
Third, make yourself impossible to ignore locally. Yard signs, truck wraps, home shows, rain gauges, mascots. Steve spends money on visibility everywhere he can. The goal isn’t to close a sale today. It’s to make sure that when someone in Lincoln thinks about lawn care or pest control, Yard Boss is the first name that comes to mind.
Fourth, invest in learning from people who have actually done it. Steve spent the equivalent of a college degree over four years on masterminds, conferences, consultants, and coaching. Every dollar paid for itself many times over. The $20 internet guru isn’t going to get you where you need to go. Find the people who have been in the trenches and pay them for their time.
And finally, expand before you think you need to. Steve stayed in his small town too long because word of mouth was working. But once that market was maxed out, he was stuck. Moving into a bigger city earlier would have saved him years of slow growth. If your market feels like it’s getting tight, it probably already is.
From mowing lawns on weekends in college to running a $1.4 million operation with a clear plan to expand into Omaha, Steve’s story is proof that the right mindset, the right focus, and the willingness to invest in yourself can build something incredible. He’s only 35 and he’s just getting started.
Want to connect with Steve? You can find him on Facebook or reach him at steve@yardbosslawns.com. And if you’re looking for the kind of hands on education that helped Steve finally understand his own tools and start scaling the right way, that’s exactly what Pest Control Millionaires is built to do.
