Sam Purtill describes starting a lawn-mowing business at age 10 with six paying customers and a handshake deal, then getting assigned janitor duty in 6th grade and turning it into a competition. He learned early that immediate rewards and doing things that don't scale taught him more than anything else.
Chapters
So let's start with elementary school. So my first job was different than my first startup. So my first job actually, I got in trouble when I was in 6th grade in school. I was a misbehaved kid. And I was going to a private school, and so apparently they could do this at private school where they put me on janitor duty. And so every single week I was like, me and the other bad kids would have to clean the whole school. on Fridays. So there was a crew of all of us. There was 8 of us. And we would actually turn this janitor work into huge contests. So we would have to— you first have to sweep the whole gym for the basketball gym, and then you have to mop it. But there's ways that you learn how to do this stuff so you can get super efficient. So then we'd have these contests of who could clean the women's bathrooms the fastest, and who could clean the gym the fastest. And so we turned this thing that most people would probably think is a super boring mundane task, and we turned it into a contest and had a ton of fun. And I think from there I learned the value of just working really hard and just getting really into something and totally focusing on it. And I realized, I don't know, personally, I just like that feeling of just getting in the zone and just really getting into something. And I feel like that's one of the things that I feel all the time today now when I'm working on companies and stuff, is you're kind of so focused on this one thing. And even if you're working on mundane tasks, the fact is that you're so into it that everything else just kind of goes away. So that was awesome. And then the other thing was my mom would take us to Taco Bell every Friday after we did it. So we got this immediate reward afterwards where we could get some tacos. And so I think I also liked the fact that you can work hard and get an immediate reward. That was my first lesson. OK. Now my first company. I started this when I was 10. It wasn't a very scalable business, but I had a lawn, my parents had a lawnmower. And my neighbors had grass. So I decided to put the two together. And so I basically like, I printed up like a bunch of flyers and I just went around the neighborhood and passed them out to everybody. And just basically trying to like build a sales funnel. And I was able to convert 6 users to paying customers. The only problem was that all my friends on Saturdays, they would be out swimming in the pool and eating popsicles. And I would be just dying. And I lived in Davis, California at the time. And it was like 120 degrees in the summer. So it would just be super, super hot. But I mean, I loved doing it. Again, I would get in the zone. I would just go out and mow a ton of lawns every Saturday. I think I made like $50 every Saturday, which is like, I was 10 years old, and that, like, you can buy so much candy. You can buy like baseball cards. Like, there was so much stuff I could buy with it, which was awesome. So, the, like, one of the huge lessons that I, I don't know why, but I just like never forgot this. I went to, there was like a super old lady that lived down the street, and she had like a front yard that was like pretty small. It was like, I don't know, from like, here to there, to this wall. So it was a pretty small front yard. And I knocked on her door and she answered and I was like, hey, could I mow your lawn? And she was like, yeah, that would be awesome. I hate mowing my lawn. So she asked me how much I would charge and I had only seen the front yard. And so I was just like, oh, I'll charge $8 for sure. That's fine. And she looked at me like, are you sure? And I was like, yeah, no, it's totally okay. And then she's like, okay. Like, she said we shook on it. And then she like took me to her backyard. And it was like the biggest backyard in our neighborhood. This backyard was just like so big. It wasn't this big, but like that's what I thought it was like every time I had to mow it. So— You renegotiated that contract. Yeah, but then I don't know. I felt really bad because I hand shook on the $8. And so then I had to go like every single week. I dreaded mowing her lawn, but I did it every week until the summer was over. So I think I learned, like, I learned a few things from my first startup. If someone says yes way too quickly, then, like, you've probably left a lot of value on the table. So, like, it's probably better to, like, get them to argue with you a little bit versus them just being like, oh, awesome, let's do this. I think I also learned just, like, working hard and finishing a project is just an amazing feeling. And I feel like I chase that today. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs I know just chase that feeling. I also think doing things that don't scale helped teach me the value of doing things that do scale. So I feel like I have a much greater appreciation for software and all the things that we can do today that's much more scalable. I mean, I love doing manual. I still like mowing lawns and cleaning the bathrooms, but I much prefer sitting in front of a computer. An air-conditioned room in, in front of a computer.
