J & H Lawn Service

J & H Lawn Service, Inc., provides service to the Hampton Roads area year round, including landscape and lawn maintenance, turf fertilization, weed, insect, and disease control. Other specialties include landscape lighting, hydro-seeding, sod installation or lawn/landscape renovation.

J & H Lawn services residential, government and commercial properties, including townhome and apartment associations, single family sub-divisions, professional businesses and banks. This family business, owned and operated by Wayne, Carolyn and Daniel Blanks, has been in operation for 20 years in the local area and is SWAM certified, licensed, and insured.

“Through a friend, we were referred to the Hampton Roads Small Business Development Center (HRSBDC) in 2010. Our company had been in business for a long time, and we had reached a point where we wanted to really grow but didn’t know exactly what to do to achieve this growth.” Carolyn Blanks recalls

Daniel and Carolyn signed up for Debra Farley’s NxLevel for Entrepreneurs class and through this process learned a lot of valuable information on how to take th company to the next level. They put together a business plan and learned a lot about organization. They were instructed to get a SWAM certification and sign up with eVA (which were things we did not know about). Through eVA we have had the opportunity to bid on numerous jobs and contracted for a great number of them.

In the nearly 4 years since we completed this class, we have had a  66% growth in revenue, even in this economy. We feel this is the result of Mrs. Farley’s unending concern and help and using our networking and contacts through the cohort meetings and seminars. We were also able to obtain an SBA loan in 2012 which enabled us to purchase equipment which gave us the capability to provide additional services to our customers and provide us the extra money and work to hire two additional employees.