037 Living Big with Raising Men Lawn Care and Rodney Smith Jr.

Today I’m talking with Rodney Smith Jr. of Raising Men Lawn Care.   I hope this story inspires you to do what you can in your community and, maybe find your calling in the process.  Find Raising Men Lawn Care (and donate if you are so moved!) here: https://www.raisingmenlawncareservice.com/ Transcript: Hey, everybody, I wanted to bring you a guest today just to inspire you to think differently about what you could do that would make a difference in your community. Now, I heard this story, I think I saw it on USA Today or something online. And it’s so inspired me because he was doing just a little thing that ended up becoming a much, much larger thing and really a movement. And so I wanted to bring this to you just to inspire you so that you could start thinking a little bit outside the box of how you could start to help people and maybe turn it into a larger calling. Thanks for listening. Here we go. Welcome to the art of living big. My name is Betsy Pake, entrepreneur, author and personal success coach. This is the show that brings you stories and small ideas to help you live a big life. I hope this once a week podcast will inspire you, motivate you and encourage you to think differently about what could be possible for your life. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let’s go live big. All right, I have with me today a really special guest. I have Rodney Smith with me on the show. Hey, Rodney, how you doing? Hey, I’m awesome. I’m really excited. You’re here because you have such a cool story. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself. All right, my name is Rodney Smith, Jr. I’m from the island of Bermuda and currently I am at Alabama and now I’m in 2015 and Lake Park. Um, I saw an elderly man outside cutting his grass. And as I was driving by I stopped and helped him out. And then from that day on, I decided to cut grass free for the elderly, the disabled, single parent moms and veterans. At first, my goal was to reach 40 Lawns by winter because I was cutting in between classes. But I reached 49. so quick that, uh, I got my go to 100 loans, then like a month and a half later, I reached my hundred loans. And that’s when the idea of raising men Lawn Care Service came about. And what we do is we mentor young boys and even young girls ages seven to 17. And we show them the importance of giving back to the community. And that’s basically how everything got started. And we’re about a year a year in right now with raising my lawn care service. So I’m we’re expanding the goal is to get a champion in all 50 states right now we’re in seven states at one country. And then one country is my home in Bermuda. But in the very near future, we hope to get in all 50 states. Okay, so this is really such a cool story. So there’s a lot to unpack that you’ve just said. But first of all, I have to say that that mindset of like seeing somebody that needed something, and yes, and wanting to help, because a lot of people would just drive by, right. Yeah, I mean, I’ve done that, you know, there was somebody on the road the other day, and I said to my daughter, other broken down, we should stop. But like we had somewhere else to be. So what made you what, what made you stop and go, Wait a minute, this is important. Well, to tell you the truth. Like when I was driving that day, I wasn’t driving alone, I had a passenger with me. And that passenger happened to be God and to be honest. And he was like running, I want you to stop. So I stopped. And I helped this man Oh, and then as I would drive in whom I can hear him, just tell me Look, this is what I want you to do, I want you to start cutting grass for free. And that night I went home on Facebook.