A 14-year-old entrepreneur with a lawn business is giving back to his community

In April, Matthew Sullivan watched his neighbors in Morris Township gaze out their windows. Many were newly unemployed or working from home in the beginning days of New Jersey’s coronavirus crisis, placing heightened focus on the state of their lawns.

Sullivan, an enterprising 14-year-old who started a lawn care business last year, has capitalized on the boost in demand, employing a cadre of able-bodied 13 and 14-year-olds for mulching, weeding, leaf-blowing, weeding, planting and fence-painting. The business, cheekily named Leaf-It To-Us, donates 10% of its proceeds to a local Morris food drive.

Last Saturday, Sullivan and his partners Christian Vander Groef, Eric Ottaiano and CJ Piccola, presented local charity Help MorrisNOW with a $500 check. They also stuck around to volunteer at the drive, clad in their branded olive-green Leaf-It To-Us shirts.

“The Leaf-it to-Us kids – they brought tears to my eyes, I can tell you that,” Nestor Bedoya, the founder of Help MorrisNOW, told NJ Advance Media. “When they came up to me and said we’re presenting you with this check and this is the hard work we’ve been doing, I couldn’t have imagined those kids at their age, doing what they’re doing, with the purpose of helping others.”

Leaf it to Us Help MorrisNow

The Leaf-It To-Us boys present a check for $500 to the local charity, Help MorrisNOW.

Though the company had originally been donating proceeds to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, this season it switched causes.

“Now we’ve gone local,” Sullivan told NJ Advance Media, “So now we’re helping out people in our community.”

Sullivan predicts that the company has made more than $8,000 total since its inception last summer and $5,000 since this April. Last year, they completed around two to three jobs a week. This year, they’ve scaled up to two jobs a day.

Having learned landscaping skills from shadowing older kids or helping with tasks around the house, the boys used to just do jobs within their neighborhood. As the business grew, most of their jobs were further away.

Their parents typically drop them off at jobs, or, if the house is close enough, they’ll ride their electric dirt-bikes.

Leaf it to us bikes

The Leaf-It To-Us boys' vehicle of choice for getting to jobs: electric dirtbikes.

The boys earn a lot of business through word-of-mouth. Sullivan fields calls, texts and emails as the small business’s founding entrepreneur, with help from his partners, all friends from the neighborhood.

They plan to keep the landscaping business running as long as they can while maintaining their charitable giving.

“Those kids are going to go far, man,” Bedoya said. “It’s a quality that you don’t acquire, it’s a quality that you’re born with, and those kids all have it. It’s a gift, the gift of giving, my friend.”

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Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.

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