SB Mowing spreads hope
One lawn at a time: A Candle profile
There is a brisk chill in the air this late January morning as Spencer B. attacks the grass-covered jungle hiding what used to be a driveway in Corpus Christi, Texas. The sun is shining, but he’s still wearing his SB Mowing sweatshirt, hood pulled up over his hat against the cold.
With grass as high as three feet tall in some areas of the driveway and front lawn, Spencer B. (last name withheld) has quite a job ahead of him. But it’s a task he relishes. Spencer’s business is all about tackling the biggest yard jungles and restoring them to neatly-edged lawns with tidy sidewalks and driveways.
“My heart beats a little faster when I see those overgrown lawns,” Spencer says. “Makes me want to fix it up and make it look good.”
In fact, this house is not the yard he’d planned to mow. He’s taken a wrong turn this morning which led him to this tangle of a yard—and he just had to mow it.
Using his professional-grade edging tools, Spencer begins to expose the bare concrete of the driveway. After carting off load after load of the long grass he’s shoveled loose from edges and cracks, he blows the driveway clean. Next, he begins edging the right side of the driveway.
Tucked down in the tall grass, Spencer’s eye catches a glimpse of something. He’s used to finding garbage of all kinds amidst tall grass like this—but this isn’t garbage. In fact, it’s a little grey cat, curled up in a ball. Something is desperately wrong with it, because all of the edging, weed-whacking and power-blowing he’s been doing has not scared this little tabby away.
Turning off his edge trimmer, Spencer bends down to pet the cat, who seems friendly, yet unwilling to move. He turns it enough to notice a gash behind one of its front legs. Scooping the little one up, Spencer takes it to the phone camera he set up on his tripod to capture the lawn overhaul he’s in the process of creating.
“Alright guys,” he says to the camera. “So I found this cat lying in the yard, just in the grass. I was blowing stuff all over it and it didn’t move. I didn’t even see it…. I think she’s got a wound underneath her leg; I’m not really sure what happened. Seems like she’s kind of hurting. I’m not really sure what to do, whether to take her to the vet, or take her to….”
Here he trails off, gently petting the cat’s back—overwhelmed. What he doesn’t want to add is, “to have her put down.” For a good ten seconds, he’s silent. “I’m not really sure what to do, guys.”
Chances are pretty high that you’ve heard of Spencer B., or at least seen his SB Mowing videos. His lawn transformation content has made him a viral success, with a total of 30 million followers across his ten social media channels, and at least three billion views. The satisfaction of watching wildly overgrown yards transform at high speed into tidy, enjoyable spaces keeps viewers coming back for more.
Starting his own lawn-mowing business at age 11, Spencer grew his client base to include a number of neighborhood lawns in his home town of Wichita, Kansas. By the time high school rolled around, he’d saved up enough money to buy his first riding mower and trailer. As his business grew, he hired his younger brother and together they cut 25 lawns weekly. It was this kind of hard work—along with his determination to improve his college entrance exam scores—that impressed the scholarship board at his university of choice, Kansas State. Even though he had missed their scholarship deadline while improving his entrance exam scores, the board awarded him a full-tuition, four-year scholarship.
While at K-State, Spencer continued to travel home on weekends to cut client lawns. He graduated with a degree in computer science, then moved back to Wichita to work as a mobile app developer. He carried on mowing his clients’ yards on weekends, while his crew of now three employees—his brother, Jack, in the lead role—mowed on weekdays.
Spencer had always wanted to start his own social media channel, earlier attempting to launch one on personal finance. However, it wasn’t until he started noticing social media content from landscaping companies doing free lawn care that he knew what he wanted to do.
In August 2021, he began creating his own lawn transformation videos. He’d find derelict yards with knee-high grass, seeded-in saplings, garbage and jungly sidewalks. Once he had a location, he would film the process of himself cleaning them up. He always did this free of charge for each resident. Using his professional equipment, he would transform the landscaping and post the overhaul process online, complete with before and after images. When his second lawn transformation video (and first to be posted on TikTok) went viral, he realized he was onto something. So, he began posting weekly lawn overhauls—amassing views, followers and even sponsorships.
“It was a roller coaster,” Spencer says. “I couldn’t stop [watching] the number of views, likes and comments soar.” After that, he was hooked. “I absolutely loved the work and loved being able to help people in the way that I knew best—mowing grass.”
Knowing it was possible to make a living on social media from ad revenues and sponsorships, Spencer decided to make the leap. Later that year, he turned his lawn mowing business over to his brother, Jack, and began mowing yards for free, full time.
Today, he cuts overrun lawns in and around Wichita, Kansas, travelling each winter down to Florida and Texas—“wherever the grass is green and growing”—to develop additional content for his media channels.
So that’s how Spencer (now 25) found himself in Corpus Christi, TX just three weeks ago, mowing one huge jungle of a lawn and discovering an injured cat buried deep within the grass.
Spencer settles the cat onto the grass, grabs his phone and begins calling animal shelters. The first four shelters can’t take the cat for one reason or another. The last refers him to Edgar & Ivy’s Cat Sanctuary. Bring the cat over, they tell him.
Promising to be there in half an hour, Spencer locates an empty diaper box, puts kitty inside, places her on the front seat of his truck, and heads for the sanctuary. The lawn transformation can wait—someone is in need.
On reaching Edgar & Ivy’s sanctuary, Director Anissa Beal greets Spencer at the door. “Every rescue is a life saved,” reads the slogan on the side of the Edgar & Ivy’s work truck.
A quick examination reveals that kitty is actually an unneutered male who has been on the streets for a while. The abscessed injury is likely from a cat fight, and Beal doesn’t think kitty would have made it if Spencer hadn’t brought him in. He’s pretty weak.
After treating the cat (whom Spencer names Esbee), Beal gives Spencer a tour of their facility. He learns that, in addition to accepting injured or homeless cats, the sanctuary rescues those on the kill lists of other shelters—relying completely on donations to support their work. They adopt out the cats they save, but a few with more serious issues remain at the shelter full time.
“Those people really have their hearts into their work,” Spencer tells me later, noting how much the center’s values align with his own. During the tour, Beal reveals that for the last five years she has been pouring her own money into the sanctuary to keep the non-profit running. “They’ve never broken even from donations,” Spencer tells me. “She’s always used her own money to make it work, to make payroll.”
Back at Edgar & Ivy’s, Spencer begins to realize that this morning’s “wrong turn” might have been no accident. Perhaps, there is more than one rescue’s life to save.
Emphasizing that the sanctuary had no idea who he was or “the kind of social media following I had,” Spencer explains what happened next. “I just thought, ‘This is a really cool story, people are going to relate with it. I think my community can help stand behind me. If everyone put a little money [toward] it, we could get a lot.’”
Back home in Wichita, Spencer and his wife, Andrea—who helps with the video editing and social media side of the business—decide to set up a GoFundMe to help out Edgar & Ivy’s sanctuary. In fact, this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this.
For the last several years, a regular week for Spencer entails a full day’s driving around Wichita or surrounding towns, looking for the yards in the biggest need of help. While he drives, Andrea makes a list of addresses and the state of the lawns. Together they choose the worst cases and start knocking on doors.
Spencer is usually able to fix up two or three of those yards per week. He spends anywhere from ten to thirty hours on each—the work often extending over as much as three days. He does all the work himself, filming each lawn renewal with his phone and tripod that he moves around to catch all the angles of the transformation. He brings the footage home, where Andrea completes an initial edit, which Spencer then fine tunes and schedules to post on his social media channels.
The work often takes him to some “tougher” neighborhoods, he admits, where the effects of poverty, addiction and mental health issues are seen. At the beginning, it was challenging to convince residents to let him mow their lawns for free. “The concept just seemed like a scam to people—like somehow I was going to get them,” he says. But it’s become easier recently, both because he’s learned how to better present what he does, and also because more people are now aware of who he is, due to his online videos.
For a lot of these individuals, poor health or lack of resources keeps them from being able to maintain their yard. For some, if circumstances prevent them from being able to maintain the grass for even a short period of time, it can grow beyond the ability of their equipment to handle. The city often begins to give the resident fines and warnings, indicating that if the lawn isn’t cut, the city will charge the resident to have it maintained. That amount, which might be as much as $500, could put people into a precarious financial situation.
Take the example of one of Spencer’s favorite reactions to his offer to cut someone’s lawn. He’d knocked at the door of a house whose plot was desperately in need of care. Upon hearing that Spencer would do the work for free, the resident was shocked. “You’re going to make me cry!” she told him. She explained that her push mower had twice been stolen twice out of her backyard, because the landlord wouldn’t allow them to use the garage for storage.
“I’m also disabled,” she said. Surprised, Spencer glanced down and realized that she was indeed missing one of her feet. Spencer could not believe she’d been trying to mow her own lawn. Two years later, Spencer’s brother still maintains this yard, for an amount this resident can afford. “This work is so rewarding,” Spencer says. “I’m blessed to be able to do it.”
Today, Spencer says he has the best job ever—he gets to take his income from his social media business and turn it into dignity, safety and help for those who don’t have access to lawn-mowing services.
About half of the time, a homeowner or resident will be able to maintain their own lawn again after Spencer’s work is done. Most of the yards that are not further maintained are houses left vacant or owned by the bank. Spencer fixes them up nonetheless, both to help out the neighborhood and to create safer sidewalks. While he’d like to be able to return to redo the lawns that have become overgrown again, he says it’s hard to justify. “I’m trying to get people to a point where it’s easier for them to continue to maintain the lawn themselves,” he says. He’d rather give other homeowners a hand up, rather than repeatedly mow lawns that no one is attempting to care for.
“The first thing people see when they come home is their lawn,” Spencer says. “Even if their house is nice, if they see a crazy, overgrown lawn, it looks like their whole life is out of order. It uplifts their life just a little to see their house and yard looking nice. Whatever is going on for them, it gives dignity back to people who can’t take care of it on their own.”
He’s also using the currency of his influencer profile to help others even further.
Spencer once mowed a lawn for a resident who was a veteran. When he found out that this man was three months behind on all his bills, Spencer set up a GoFundMe, raising $10,000— which Spencer handed over to the man in cash.
That story became the inspiration to set up a similar GoFundMe for Edgar & Ivy’s Cat Sanctuary. “Honestly, I thought we’d get $10,000 to $20,000,” Spencer tells me. “But we got way more than that!”
As of February 15, 2024—less than two weeks since the fundraiser began—the GoFundMe for Edgar & Ivy’s Cat Sanctuary has blown past its $150,000 goal by nearly $8,000, with at least four Amazon truckloads of donated food and other supplies shipped to the sanctuary by SB Mowing’s video-watching community. Another $5,000 in donations has come in through the sanctuary’s website and Patreon page, making the total raised so far well over $200,000 USD. Nearly 6,000 people have donated to the GoFundMe thus far, with the vast majority donating just five to fifty dollars. It’s an astounding feat that has literally saved the life of the sanctuary.
In fact, it’s generosity like this that caught the attention of the Kansas City Chief’s kicker Harrison Butker this past December. Butker—whose kicking helped his team win the Superbowl this past Sunday—honored Spencer in December by inviting him to a game and presenting him with a team jersey. Butker offered a $10,000 donation to SB Mowing in recognition of his good work, but Spencer turned it down. Because he has successful income streams from his ad revenues, equipment sponsorships and SB Mowing merchandise, Spencer felt Butker’s donation could be better used elsewhere. He asked that it instead be donated to Smorgaschorus, a men’s barbershop group (of which Spencer is a part) that mentors people in the community through music.
Butker did one better. He and Foster’s Outriders each donated: $10,000 to Smorgaschorus and $10,000 to “Learn to Earn”—a program that teaches kids lawn care skills. Spencer and his videos are an inspiration to many of the program’s participants.
But Spencer insists he’s just a “very, very normal guy” who likes to have a burger every now and again and go mow some lawns. “There’s just so many people watching me,” he says. “It’s important to my wife and I to keep my private life separate,” which is why he requests to use his first name only in the press.
Yet he loves his work. “If you’d asked me three to four years ago, I would never have thought I’d be doing this for a living,” Spencer says. “It’s definitely a blessing to be able to support my family this way.”
Spencer believes that part of the appeal of his videos is that “no one gives their services away for free.” Of course, watching a yard go from chaos to order in a short period of time is nothing if not satisfying. But there’s another aspect that he believes viewers find appealing. “Eighty per cent of the internet is bad news,” he says, “so it’s refreshing to see some good going out into the world.” It may have helped that he started his channel in 2021, when a world reeling from the pandemic, plus economic and social crisis, was looking for examples of people rebuilding amidst the chaos.
SB Mowing may have multiple income streams, but what he really offers is hope. And he’s not selling it, he’s sharing it.
While Spencer’s story is the ultimate feel-good story, one reason I’ve chosen to profile him is because, in addition to his generosity and heart for others, Spencer’s work is an example of using one aspect of the ‘Machine’ (i.e. social media) for good. As theologian Richard Rohr says, “The best critique of the bad is the practice of the better.”
In a world where more and more people are struggling to maintain not only their yard, but their very dignity, Spencer B. is quietly spreading hope—one lawn at a time.
Your voice is needed, and we’d love to hear it in the comments below. However, if you choose to abandon the voice of love in your comments, remember that you are abandoning all of your beneficial power.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe, alone having the ability to create change for the better. Indeed, it is the only force that ever has.