“I decided that I wanted to own my own business by myself and no partners,” says Chris McCraw.
He reached that point after working for other people. His first job, at 18, was with a lawn care company, and he later helped open another one. Then he started 2Bro’s Mow in Cabot, Arkansas, now registered as an LLC. Asked whether anyone shares the ownership, he keeps it short. “No, it’s just me.”
Owning it alone has not meant working it alone, and the name explains why. The company’s home page says McCraw founded it out of love for his two sons and that they are actively involved. He calls it a family owned and operated business. “A lot of my kids work for the company,” he says.
The rule against partners carries through to how he thinks about the company’s future. “If my kids won’t take it over, I want to sell it,” he says. The business goes to his family first and to a buyer second. There is no co-owner in that plan.
Day to day, the work is weekly maintenance for homes and commercial properties. Asked what the company does best, McCraw names the scope of it: “being able to do everything on the property.” The company’s service pages fill that in with mowing, shrub trimming, bed work and mulch, leaf cleanup, gutter cleaning and pressure washing. Commercial clients can add parking lot sweeping. The residential list also includes snow and ice removal.
The company’s Google listing names Cabot, Ward, Austin, Conway, Beebe, Little Rock and North Little Rock among the places it serves. McCraw says the crews will travel up to a 50-mile radius for a job.
On reliability, he is brief. “When we say we’re going to be there, we’re going to be there,” he says. When asked how he gets the crew to work that way, he skips any talk about values and goes straight to the incentive. “They want to make more money, they gotta have more customers.”
Customers notice small things. A homeowner with an in-ground pool noted in a review that the crew takes care to keep grass out of the water when they mow.
McCraw also has a view on how a company like his should grow, and it fits a man who wanted the whole thing to himself from the start.
“I believe in if you’re small enough long enough, you’ll be big enough when you’re supposed to be,” he says.