Services Offered
Lawn Mowing
Gardening
Service Areas
Hillcrest
Birkenhead
Chatswood
East Coast Bays
Meet our North Shore operator, Michael. Based in Hillcrest, he serves suburbs such as Birkenhead and Chatswood, and then some in the East Coast Bays (Long Bay, Torbay, Waiake Bay, Browns Bay, Rothesay Bay, Murrays Bay, Mairangi Bay, Campbells Bay, and Castor Bay) doing mainly lawn mowing and simple gardening work.
He says he likes working with his Shindaiwa and Testarossa tools and going to his local mower shop Browns Bay Mowers. He says they’re quick and they have a lot of the parts and they make things happen so it’s very convenient for Crewcut operators.
Michael joined Crewcut at the beginning of 2020. He says he’s quickly getting into the groove especially with the gardening side of things. “It’s also quite nice just to get into a garden where you don’t have to be rushing it. You’re not relaxed, but you’re slowing things down a bit,” he quips.
When asked about his background before he made the jump into lawn mowing, Michael provides an interesting response. “I’m a teacher. I was a teacher at Northcote Intermediate. I started this and then I’m going to still help up the school. Maybe once or twice a week as a relief teacher, so I’m a bit of both,” he shares. “I taught for the first time last year at the intermediate school for the whole year. It was quite hectic, so I started this, and then I’ll just cut down on the teaching just a little bit. The kids are pretty full-on.”
While he hasn’t done any sort of lawn mowing and property maintenance before, he did all of his own lawn and garden stuff at home so owning a similar business was an obvious choice. He also liked to be outdoors a lot, so that was also instrumental in his decision.
His business goal for the year is to make sure that he masters all the skills he needs to make his lawn and garden franchise successful. “Obviously, I want to try and increase my client base, but at the moment, I’m happy with how it goes,” Michael says.
His strength as an operator lies in his people and organisation skills. “You’ve got to have good communication skills, which is obviously from being a teacher. It helps quite a bit, communication-wise. My client management – I’m pretty good at it, too, I try to make sure everything’s on schedule,” he adds.
Michael’s two small kids mostly keep him busy when he’s not mowing lawns, but he’s also really into sports and exercise. He has participated in quite a few events such as half marathons. Running, cycling, and swimming is his thing. “It’s quite physical but it keeps your fitness levels up, that’s for sure,” he says when asked about his hobbies.
The biggest lesson he’s learned so far since joining Crewcut is all about being organised. “I had good time management skills and that’s the thing, but just being organised and locked in with your schedule and your tools will keep you on top of everything,” he shares.
Finally, Michael had a good piece of advice to share with newcomers in the biz. “Take advice from the guys that are going to be training with you and try to spend as much time as you can with them. That's really important. That’s good training,” he says.