About Me
I’m Allyn and I’m the craft beer drinking, lawn loving, gray-haired guy who makes these videos for ya’ll. I’m a nut for sure – a bit off-centered and turning more and more eccentric as I age. I am aware of this fact – and don’t care 🙂
I started my first “lawn business” in 1987 at the age of 14 because I wanted to make some money to take my girlfriend to the movies. My first lawn mower was a bright orange Sears push mower… that I trekked up and down 23rd Ave N in St Pete, FL. It was hot under the summer sun – I had 4 customers – $8 each per week – and that paid for a lot of movies at $3.25 a person!
Fast forward to 1998, and fresh from a 4 year stint in the US Air Force (I was a photojournalist) I started working for the world’s largest lawn service, TruGreen. At first I did outside sales while going to college. I soon moved into the production department where I mostly worked on the “tree and shrub” end of the business shaping and pruning for customers on the South Side of Chicago and suburbs. I worked for TruGreen for 15 years, holding many different positions moving up the ladder. I served as a sales manager, residential marketing manger, senior operations manager, general manager and finally region commercial sales manager. My entire career there was spent serving customers from NW Indiana, Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. I learned a lot during these years. TruGreen is filled with some of the best lawn care operators in the United States. Great people doing great work.
They taught me a lot and I took that knowledge and translated it into the videos and articles you see on this site – adding my own opinions and spin. When you work in our industry, the “green industry,” and you walk on, work with and transform thousands of lawns each year, it’s only a matter of time before you develop your own “special way” of handling things. Hence my very own lawn treatment program that has been brewing in my head for many years, and being executed in the real world on my own lawn in Crown Point, Indiana.
Today I make a full time living working on the internet as a digital marketer. I am Vice President of a large firm based in Naperville, IL. It’s something completely different from the lawn care industry – and something I ended up learning all on my own. This blog and my YouTube channel are carried on both as hobbies, but also secondary sources of income.
My Philosophy
At the 
end of the day I will tell you this – no matter what my history, background or training – I am a truly passionate lawn care nut. I am that guy in the neighborhood who loves his lawn way more than he should. I spend a lot of time in my little patch of green love. It pays off though – people who drive by my house slow down to look at the grass. It’s that thick and beautiful. When they walk on it – they many times think it’s fake and immediately take their shoes off to feel the luscious goodness between their toes. The work I put in pays off – just look around the site here to see. It’s clean, green and organic too!
My philosophy when it comes to organics and the environment is quite balanced. I’m not a burlap and Birkenstock kinda guy. I wear deodorant and eat lots of meat. On the other hand, I’m not really all that excited when I see bags and bags of weed-n-feed products being dumped on lawns either. I’m not a huge fan of spraying a ton of weed killers either. Bottom line: organic lawns look better and resist problems better – for the long haul. It’s just a smarter choice.
Getting that thick, beautiful organic lawn takes time – lots of time. But if you use synthetics and chemical weed killers smartly, in conjunction with organics, you can get there much quicker! Hence my philosophy of “hybrid organic lawn care” — it’s the best use of organics, boosted when needed by synthetics. It works, just take a look at my project lawn that I completed in 2013 just for you!
I am pretty heavy in social media too – it’s one of the ways I make a living. You can find me and contact me through my contact page here, or find me on these networks:
YouTubeSnapChat (User: allynhane)
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