Courtesy of TJ Breil
TJ Breil, known as @the.lawn.dad, worked in mortgage sales until he started posting content of his lawn in April 2023. By November, the Michigan-based creator had secured enough brand partners to quit his day job and pursue content full-time. This interview has been edited and condensed.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Dylan Wells: When did you start posting?
TJ Breil: We just had our first kid. I was working 80 hours a week. Being out in the lawn was my safe space, nobody could call me, and the baby inside was crying with my wife. I could just mow the lawn and be out there and do my thing. So I didn't plan on posting content, but that's what I was interested in, so I just stuck a camera in front of what I was doing, edited it, and posted it to TikTok.
The second video that I posted ended up going viral. It was me just using my edger, just edging lines in my property — it’s super satisfying. Where I landed was sort of like that satisfying, documenting [video of] me taking care of my grass, instead of like this is how you edge a property, or this is how you plant a plant. It's more so just watch me do it, and that's what people like.
DW: What have you found is the thing that connects the most with your audience?
TB: I think it's just the fascination that somebody would spend this much time, energy, effort, all that stuff, taking care of the world's largest wasted crop, ever. I do realize that taking care of a lawn isn't for everybody, and I don't care if people hate taking care of lawns. I simply just record and document my process rather than having a stance on what I feel about it.
The way that I edit it is creating edits that have a different camera angle or different scenery … rather than just watching me in one certain angle. People get really bored with that really quickly, so just kind of like keeping people engaged by showing them different angles and different areas around the property.
DW: You said this all started as a stress reliever and way to escape. Is it still that, now that you’re operating at this scale?
TB: Sometimes I just want to mow without people watching. It has gotten to a point, especially since I do work with brands now, I do work with partners, so there is a certain aspect of work to it. I have to get the shot, I have to hit these talking points, I have to hit these shot lists, I have to show their product perfectly, and if I don't I have to reshoot it, so there's a little bit of pressure there. My wife always jokes, “Well, you could go back to talking to people for 80 hours a week,” and I'm just like, “No, I'm good, I'll go back to cutting the grass.”
DW: When did you get your first partnership or brand deal after you started the account?
TB: It started with free items, with people saying, “We'll send you fertilizer. We'll send you this weed eater.” That was really cool at first, but I quickly realized that lawn mowers and fertilizers and weed eaters don't pay your bills, they just take up space in your garage.
I got to a point where these people [offering to send items, I would tell them] “I don't have room for it, I'm sorry.” And then they would switch to, “We'll pay you.” So then the question was how much do I charge? You can't necessarily Google and just be like, “How much should a lawn influencer charge per post?” 100 bucks, 300 bucks? I don't know. So I just kind of threw out a number.
There were a couple key partners that I kind of connected with early on that I'm still with today. Ryobi was my biggest name. They essentially agreed to 12 videos for the year 2024 and that was the absolute bare minimum that my wife and I needed in order to pay our bills. So, essentially signing on with Ryobi was my ticket to say, all right, let's do this.
[It coincided with] a toxic time to be in the mortgage business, so I really, really wanted an excuse to leave my corporate job. So $1,500 bucks a month, or whatever it was, was very much like, I can work with this. … Brands were reaching out, my inbox was fairly flooded, so I was like, all right, I think I can make this work.
My main income is through partnerships. [Signing with management last year] was the most massive catalyst to my family's income from this. I was doing fine before, but as soon as I had somebody negotiating contracts on my behalf, that catapulted my career and what my yearly take home was.
DW: What are your biggest challenges now as a creator?
TB: There's an expectation that every single video that you put out has to at least do well. You have to have great engagement, but you also have to post consistently good content. There's never a time where you can try something, because of fear that it might flop. It's just like you always have to one up yourself at all times, and that's extremely stressful.
It's not just your followers who get sick of it, you also get sick of it. There's times where it's just like nobody wants to see me mowing again … Sometimes you just want to plant a garden without the internet watching and making fun of you. … I could literally care less, but the overall feeling of posting something and people just making comments about the plant that you chose is sort of exhausting.
Also, what's the exit strategy? Am I just going to keep on posting videos for 30 more years or 40 more years until I retire? That's not sustainable … What's the end game?
I don't think anybody knows really yet, because who knows where social media is going to be in the next 10 years. Who knows what the next new platform is going to be. … That's a genuine concern, what are we all doing here?
DW: What content do you consume? Any favorite accounts or creators you want to spotlight?
TB: There are these small engine repair guys, usually they're in the mountains of North Carolina or Tennessee or something like that, and they wear Meta glasses, and they fix either lawn mowers or generators or weed eaters. These videos could be like eight minutes long or 30 minutes long, and I'll watch the entire thing.
In the lawn space I like Hutton Edwards, he just has a quirky little personality. He's always doing something fun. He reminds me of when I first started.
This Q+A is part of Verified, a newsletter that is published by Washington Post Creator, a new business outside The Washington Post’s newsroom that is focused on the creator economy and content partnerships with independent creators. Learn more about Washington Post Creator.
