By Rod Dickens, Editor

Just as smartphones changed the way you do business, they altered the landscape for editors as well. Not only do they take professional-quality images, but smartphones also make busy folks like yourself available for a quick interview. Spend a few moments on your phone, have someone snap a photo of you, and the story is nearly ready to publish without the editor ever leaving his or her desk.

Carl Polite started mowing lawns to help his sons, just as the title of the story in Walker Talk, Volume 28, read, “Hey Dad, Could You Give Us a Hand?” That was 14 years before the Walker Talk visit in 2006. By then, however, his sons moved on and Polite Lawn Care Service in Aiken, South Carolina, with a crew of four Hispanic brothers, was mowing 35 accounts three days a week. In between, the owner was also working a full-time job.

Lawn Masters owner, Jim Dubberly, was on the cover of Walker Talk, Volume 6.  He was in business in Sebring, Florida, for eight years and maintained 250 properties with five Walker Mowers.  Now, 61 years old, this lawn maintenance veteran is celebrating 30 years in business, and the same formula that worked for him 20-plus years ago is still his ticket to success.

A year before All-Terrain Grounds Maintenance was featured in Walker Talk, Volume 17, owner Ryan Such had just purchased the company from the previous owner. A year later, in 2000, he was maintaining 150 properties with two full-time and four part-time employees, and four Walker Mowers with 48-inch GHS decks.

Mel Taylor and his wife Nancy appeared in Walker Talk, Volume 31. At the time, they operated three Walker Mowers, had three crews, and maintained 150 commercial and residential accounts in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

“There are worse ways to spend retirement.” That’s what Harry Stokes, owner of Yard Perfect in Hampton Cove, Alabama, told the Walker Talk editor in 2010. Seven years later, at the spry age of 73, he’s still mowing lawns. In his words, “I’m still kicking despite taking a licking.” The licking he took was losing all his retirement savings in the 2008 recession.