Behind the scenes of building Simply Lawn — a human + automation project that wants to make lawn care suck less, even if it’s off to a rough start.
🧵 Introduction
In the Age of Robots, we like to talk about how AI can fix everything — optimize workflows, eliminate friction, automate all the things.
But sometimes, building a helpful tool means stepping right into a messy, broken human problem.
That’s what we’re doing with Simply Lawn — a project that tries to match homeowners with reliable lawn care companies… in a world where most companies won’t even return a phone call.
The truth?
Right now, Simply Lawn is kind of terrible.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
This is the story of how we’re trying to fix a deeply fragmented industry using a weird blend of:
- web scraping
- CRM automations
- community sourcing
- AI filtering
- and pure stubbornness
🌱 The Problem: Nobody Calls You Back
We started Simply Lawn with a simple premise:
“What if we could make it easier to hire someone to mow your lawn?”
But the reality quickly got complicated:
- Most lawn care businesses don’t have working websites
- Many don’t return emails or phone calls
- Lead requests go unanswered
- Even Google results are inconsistent or outdated
- There’s no unified system to check insurance, licenses, or availability
In short: the lawn care world is chaos.
So we decided to map it.
Then fix it.
Even if it’s one awkward step at a time.
🧭 Step 1: Scraping the Lawn Universe
We started by indexing as many U.S.-based lawn companies as possible:
- Pulled from public sources (Yelp, YellowPages, Google Maps)
- Cleaned the data into categories: name, location, phone, email, website
That gave us a directory of 20,000+ companies, which sounds great…
…except almost none of them respond to contact requests.
Which brings us to the next phase.
🕵️♂️ Step 2: Testing the Lawn Ghost Town
We built an automated testing framework:
- Sends leads to 100+ companies in a region
- Waits for a reply (email, call, webhook)
- Records if/when they respond
- Ranks companies on Responsiveness Score
We use UChat + Pabbly Connect to log lead flow and status in real time.
If a company doesn’t respond after 3 leads?
We flag them.
If they do?
We push them to the top of the results — and start the verification process.
🧠 Step 3: Human-Powered AI + Automation
Our goal isn’t to replace people — it’s to augment trust with systems.
Here’s how we’re doing it:
For Homeowners:
- Embedded lead request forms that send info to multiple pros at once
- Smart prompts for: lawn size, recurring schedule, photos, etc.
- Future: AI assistant that follows up when humans don’t
For Lawn Pros:
- Free plan to start — instant leads, no spam
- CRM-style pipeline via GoHighLevel + UChat to track leads
- Upgrade paths for “Verified” status (insurance, reviews, license, etc.)
We’re experimenting with AI responders that “ping” a business when a lead goes unanswered — giving them a second shot before we hide them in search.
Because ghosting customers shouldn’t be a growth strategy.
📬 Step 4: The Honest Pitch (AKA: It’s Still Terrible)
We recorded a video recently where we just… said it:
“Simply Lawn is terrible.”
And that’s 100% true.
Right now:
- The directory is full of ghost listings
- The leads are only sometimes answered
- The pros don’t always update their info
But this is where the human system kicks in.
We’re asking the community to help us:
- Tell us which companies are great
- Report dead numbers or no-shows
- Share who actually answers their phone
Every good recommendation makes the system smarter.
🤖 Why This Still Counts as Building in the Age of Robots
This isn’t just a business directory.
It’s a reputation engine for an industry stuck in the ‘90s.
We’re using:
- APIs to scrape and sync business info
- AI to fill in missing data (coming soon: estimated pricing)
- Webhooks to automate lead handling
- Scoring systems to rank reliability
- Email parsing to log replies + latency
- Automation tools like UChat, Pabbly, GoHighLevel, Paperform and Packagesss.
In the end, we’re not building a lawn directory.
We’re building a trust layer for a messy market.
And it’s not even close to done.
🧪 What’s Next
Coming soon to Simply Lawn:
- Verified Badges for licensed and insured companies
- AI-generated lawn profiles for homeowners (with photos, sizing, and service history)
- Lead testing dashboards by region (“Lawn Care in Boise is 9% alive”)
- Public review tools that highlight communication, reliability, and vibe — not just stars
We’ll keep updating the build log as this thing evolves.
🎉 Final Thoughts
If you’re a builder, take this to heart:
Sometimes you don’t need to build something revolutionary.
You just need to build something slightly less terrible — and invite people to help make it better.
That’s what Simply Lawn is.
It’s a mess.
It’s honest.
It’s improving — with your help.
Want to help?
Send us a lawn company you trust. Or if you are one, claim your free profile.
Either way, welcome to the awkward revolution.
We’re growing this thing one weed at a time.
