Customer:  CV Landscaping

Featured:  Carter Vedrode, Owner/Operator

Location: Hemlock, Michigan, USA

Business:  Residential maintenance, expanding into installs, landscape lighting, and snow

Employees: ~3; varies seasonally

On LMN since: 2023

A young entrepreneur with two crew members and a software platform built for the trade. Revenue doubled in year two. Roughly seven hours a week reclaimed. This is how Carter Vedrode runs CV Landscaping. He is 17 years old, a full-time high school student, a full-time business owner, and a two-and-a-half-year LMN customer who’s leading the way as an example for young entrepreneurs.

CV Landscaping is a residential and commercial maintenance landscaping company founded and run by Carter Vedrode. He started the business in high school, signed his first commercial maintenance contracts at 15, and built it into a busy commercial and residential maintenance operation while attending school full-time.

Today the business is mostly maintenance, with some snow and ice in the winter and a clear path into installs and landscape lighting. Carter is the kind of operator who runs LMN at the kitchen table after a full day at school and a full evening on the truck. He is not a hobbyist. He is building a real company, and he is doing it on a platform that was built to help him grow his business. And he subscribes to a credo any business owner would aspire to: “I’m focused on becoming someone who builds things that last—strong systems, strong relationships, and strong results.”

Like many small business owners, Carter used to run his business operations on pen and paper, then on Yardbook for about a year. His pricing came from what he could find on YouTube: a flat rate per acre, set as a baseline, applied to every job. That worked for a season but he had the foresight to know that method would not hold up forever. He also knew that it definitely would not survive the move into project and install work, where prices vary wildly and one bad estimate eats the whole margin. 

As a Michigan-based operator, Carter attended a landscaping conference in Detroit, where he met LMN’s founder, Mark Bradley and learned how LMN could help his business. He onboarded and started building a real estimating discipline on the platform at age 15. Two and a half years later, he is still on LMN, still learning new corners of it, sharpening his numbers, and finding even more time to put back into his business, his customers, and himself.

As a disciplined operator, Carter sent every maintenance renewal in mid-February this past year, weeks ahead of the season. He leans on LMN’s CRM Customer Portal to handle the back-and-forth. His clients login at his website, view their contracts and proposals, request changes, and sign, all in one place. No more chasing a Google spreadsheet on a Sunday night, no more cold calls to ask if Mrs. Jones wants the same package as last year. Renewals are mass-sent, tracked, and signed before the snow melts so Carter can focus on growth for next year, versus playing admin catch up when springtime hits.

Carter has moved past the “what YouTube said price per acre” guidance and is now operating a system that works. His production rates, material costs, and time tracking from real jobs feed back into the next estimate through repeatable templates that are dialed into his overhead budget. His maintenance prices hold up and he wins renewals every year. Even more impactful is that Carter’s project pricing model has a solid foundation to build on as CV Landscaping moves into install projects and lighting. What was once guesswork is now a proven system, delivering real, sustainable margins.

Carter’s crew picked up the LMN Crew app on day one. He uses the schedule drag and drop functionality on the virtual whiteboard and jobs start with a tap on the iPhone. Before the truck leaves the driveway, notes and photos are attached to the job to ensure nothing is missed, reflecting the integrity and discipline he builds into his business. When Carter went to work at a snow event with a friend across the state, the LMN app traveled with him: same workflow, same time logging, same photo-documented site process. 

For the first year and a half, CV Landscaping ran payments the way most small operators do: checks, cash, and a lot of follow-up. This year Carter turned on LMN Pay and stopped waiting on checks in the mail. His billing, invoicing, and payments now live in the same system as his estimates, jobs, and schedules.With everything in one system and a single source of truth, Carter no longer has to spend money on postage, printer paper, and ink, or spend his time as an accounts receivable clerk on the weekends. 

Carter gets about seven hours back each week, adding up to 364 hours a year, which gives him valuable time to focus on his studies and prepare his business for its next phase of growth.. He got this time back because he is a skilled operator who could see the bigger picture, take the first step, and put his business on a system that works.

Everything that used to live across phone calls, spreadsheets, text threads, and keyword searches for last year’s invoice now lives in one system and runs as part of the business. Carter has elevated his operation so renewals happen automatically and payments collect themselves. His crew checks in and out without him monitoring every move or texting for updates. His clients get photos, a single source of truth for documents, and the peace of mind that the job is done right.

This is what makes a young entrepreneur able to manage maintenance accounts, two crew members, and a snow operation while attending high school full-time. The LMN platform handles the operational and administrative rigor while Carter handles the relationships, the growth, and doing what he loves. As CV Landscaping moves into installs, lighting, and hardscaping down the road, the system grows with the business instead of breaking under it.

The partnership between LMN and CV Landscaping is a scalable foundation for a lifelong career. By adopting LMN at just 15 years old, Carter Vedrode didn’t just buy a tool, he invested in an infrastructure that treats his business with the same level of professional rigor as a 50-person company.

LMN provides the administrative engine that allows Carter to balance the demands of high school with the complexities of growing a company. By automating the heavy lifting, from bulk renewals and estimating to payments, the platform ensures that Carter’s growth is never limited by outdated, manual paperwork or guesswork pricing.

As CV Landscaping prepares to graduate from maintenance into high-end installs, lighting, and hardscaping, the partnership remains the constant. For Carter, LMN is the operating system that allows him to fulfill his mission of building things that last—strong systems, strong relationships, and a business built for the long haul.