To say that Mandeville native Chad Williams has built his titular company, Chad’s Pressure Washing and Lawn Care, piece by piece is an understatement.
He started at age 16 with a $500 loan from his dad that was repaid long ago. Of that, $250 went to a Toro push mower on sale at Home Depot, $150 on a quality weed whacker and $100 on an advertisement in the St. Tammany Parish edition of The Times-Picayune.
A year later, he maxed out a credit card that had a minimal limit, purchasing a Dixon riding mower with zero turning radius to replace the Toro, an eight-foot trailer to replace grandpa’s old pickup truck that had been used to haul equipment from one job to the next and a pressure washer.
“I have a business plan now, but I didn’t when I was 16,” Williams says. “But you can be 12 and realize with better equipment and more yards, you make more money.
“Early on, my problem was having too many yards to do in a day. I’d have days when I’d have seven or eight yards. I realized that if I bought a riding mower, a weed-eater and an edger, I could do more.”
The desire to do more led Williams to sell old tractor equipment, dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles, tires, rim and trailers, which netted an additional $7,000. When combined with revenue from the business, he purchased a 20-foot landscape trailer, commercial pressure washer with a 365-gallon tank and a 500-foot hose spool.
With the final pieces in place, Williams considers this the birth of his business as it is today. “I’ve always known what I wanted to do,” he says, “and I’ve done whatever I’ve needed to do to get it. The only thing that crosses my mind is to step up my game and be the best that I can be. There’s a lot of competition in Baton Rouge.”
Now 22 and a summer internship shy of graduating from LSU with a degree in kinesiology, Williams—a fitness trainer and former competitive bodybuilder—sees his home and lawn business as a piece of a much bigger puzzle.
“I have certain goals,” he says. “I want to take risks now. I’ll always have my degree. I’ll always have something to fall back on. I’ve seen too many people have to start over at 40 or 50 years old and with kids. I don’t want to be that guy.”
POSITION: Owner
COMPANY: Chad’s Pressure Washing and Lawn Care
WHAT HE DOES: Home and lawn maintenance
REVENUE: $20,000-plus per season
NEXT GOAL: Become a household name for commercial and residential lawn care and pressure washing in the Capital Region.
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