T. Boone Pickens

Founder, Chairman and CEO at BP Capital and TBP Investments Management

My Best Mistake: 10 Cents a Lawn

My first job was mowing lawns. Then I got a paper route. Then I jumped on a bad deal, and the person who got the better of me was my grandmother, Nellie Molonson.

She had six small rental houses. Grandmother said that if I would mow the lawns at her rental houses, she would furnish the mower. Then she asked me to bid on the job for the summer. But I didn’t know what she meant. She explained that if I came up with a price for mowing the six lawns that was acceptable to her, she would pay me that price and we would have a verbal contract.

I offered to mow the lawns for 10 cents a lawn, thinking that would be a lot of money. At that time, my paper route was only 28 papers, and I was paid a penny a paper for a total of 28 cents. A dime a lawn represented quite a bonus over throwing papers, or it seemed to. My grandmother agreed to the price, so I started mowing.
Then it started raining. It would rain two days, then we would have sun for five days. I could see the grass growing – and growing. I hadn’t looked at the job very closely. I didn’t realize the lawns were as big as they were, or what a rainy summer would do to me.

“This was a very bad summer, and you made a bad deal,” my grandmother told me. I couldn’t help but agree.

“I’m going to help you out, Sonny,” she said.

“Grandmother, what are you going to do for me?” I asked

“I’ll sharpen the lawnmower,” she said.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Sonny, these are the kinds of things that you will never forget,” she said. “I can assure you, the next time you bid on a job, you’ll give a lot more thought to it.”

Grandmother was right. Misjudging that bid was a small mistake, one that only cost me a few dollars. Yet the sting of that minor miscalculation created such a long-lasting impression that it has stayed seared in my mind throughout my entire career.

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