Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Owens.
Hi Jordan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Well, I’m actually a recovering alcoholic. I spent years not really being open about that, which led to many relapses, but it’s part of who I am. I should preface everything with that. So I stumbled around work here in Knoxville when I moved down here in 2017. I worked for a bank for two years and spent some time in logistics in late 2019-early 2020. I’ve never known what I wanted to do, outside of hitting a tennis ball, which did put me through college, but since then it’s made life a little more difficult not having a particular working passion.
Anyway, on January 14th of 2020, I went to visit Dr. William High, an oral surgeon located in west Knoxville. I had gotten a private referral there, and I had this spot on my tongue that wouldn’t go away, and if anything had gotten worse over the previous two months. I had already put off the appointment once, but it was starting to get painful to talk, so I knew it wasn’t good.
They ended up performing a biopsy that evening, which I don’t know how to explain it, but there is no amount of numbing in the world that can reduce the pain of having part of your tongue cut out. It was a brutal experience. Results came back on the 17th, and I did indeed have skin cancer on my tongue.
I was referred to Dr. Carlson at UT, and was prepped to go into surgery with the understanding that the possibility of me speaking again without an impediment was virtually zero, but this was the only option available. Evidently the hospital at UT only sees two cases like mine a year, as typically that type of cancer only comes up in people aged over 65 who are heavy smokers or drinkers.
I had surgery on March, 9th, 2020, right before the shutdown for covid. I spent two days in the hospital, and went home to my apartment at the time and spent the next two weeks just trying to recover. My diet basically consisted of melted halo top ice cream and nutritional shakes. The surgery had removed around 35-40% of my tongue to remove the cancer, and I had all the lymphnodes on the left side of my neck removed as a precaution.
All that went well, and I began to be able to slowly talk again as well, although I sounded like a 3 or 4yr old child just learning how to talk again, but that was still positive. Eventually, I learned I had to do chemotherapy and radiation as the cancer had been worse than initially expected on removal.
So while most folks were stuck at home during the shutdown, I was spending my days going to the hospital every day for a 5min hit of radiation and doing double rounds of chemotherapy every other Monday for 6 weeks.
I lost the ability to eat again, taste, and eventually lost what regained speech I had as the radiation did it’s thing. I spent two months in that state, living off text to speech on my phone, a whiteboard, and using the melted ice cream and nutritional shakes as food as I was too stubborn to ever succumb to using the feeding tube I had surgically added to me as well before the treatments started.
I would walk 6 to 7 miles a day, as I had asked if I had a limit to the activity I was allowed to do, and I would still go play tennis against a hitting wall every Friday in West Knoxville as my sense of normacly. I like to stay active and workout regularly every day, so this was the best I could do at the time. By the 5th and 6th week of wrapping up treatments, I was down to barely being able to play tennis for 20 minutes, but it was something. At 6ft tall I had been reduced to 136lbs so I was barely surviving at the time but I made it through treatment. The thing is, I don’t ever really feel like I did something outstanding, I was just backed into a corner where my only option was to listen to the doctors and do what they say. For me, it made my life simple.
By August I was starting to be able to eat whole foods again, albeit with no taste, and talk again. I spent a month doing speech therapy and it went really well. I was already bored at home, so I started working almost one month to the day after finishing chemo, and was a home installer for Geek squad with Best Buy. I spent the next four years there being one of the lead installers in the area.
In that time, my wife Chandler and I started dating. She brings out the best in me, and I like to think I do the same for her, but she had noticed I always tended to be frustrated with work quite often. She’d often asked me to just leave and that I could find something else. I was too afraid of the idea of not having a paycheck, but the work was also serving as an excuse for me to have an occasional relapse from drinking whenever I felt the excuse was warranted. It was unfair to her, and obviously not good for me either.
Last May, my father passed away of a heart attack. After a couple of weeks of bouncing back and forth in Virginia dealing with his affairs, I ended up using that as an excuse to go on a five day binge with drinking. Credit to my wife for not giving up on me, her, along with a couple of close friends brought me home and I spent five days getting back to normal. The day they got me was June 13th. I’ve been sober since that date. It started with some hard decisions that probably wouldn’t make much sense to most. Quitting my job was the first step, my wife was right about that. My marriage to her, along with my health is more important. so I accepted that was the right thing to do for me. I also enrolled into an IOP clinic with JourneyPure in West Knoxville.
Later that week, I had an opportunity to start landscaping for the wedding venues that my wife is the director of in Strawberry Plains, (Strawberry Creek.) The owner gave me the opportunity, and I was just looking for something to do so I took it and ran with it.
I spent last summer taking care of the property up there and completing the IOP clinic sessions. I still frequently visit JourneyPure and have nothing but good things to say. It’s led me to some amazing things, like getting certified as a Recovery Coach and becoming a Facilitator for Smart Recovery, of which, we have started a weekly Monday evening meeting at the Metro Drug Coalition.
Acres Lawn Services, my company, started from this mess. I basically stumbled backwards into doing something I enjoy, and having a more enjoyable life overall in the process. I decided to form a LLC, and started getting my own equipment. I’ve since started working for a third wedding venue, and also service a few smaller properties across the Knoxville area. I’ve added maintenance services to the lawn care side, and do work with blade sharpening (lawn mowers and chainsaws), small engine maintence and repair, and things of those nature. It’s been theraputic for me, and I like to think I help make a difference for people, especially with the grounds keeping at the wedding venues I work at. I’ve also met countless generous people willing to give me an opportunity that wouldn’t have ever happened if I hadn’t taken a chance to not only leave my past job, but also accept that addiction isn’t the answer. I don’t speak about it much publicly, but I do acknowledge it and speak about it when asked now. There’s a time and place for everything I suppose.
I feel like this is a jumbled mess. I can clarify things later on if need be. Sorry, I can write for days when given the opportunity.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not at all. I’ve done everything myself with the LLC, gathering my own lawn equipment, repairing equipment I purchased at a discount, getting my website built, a bank account, trying to make enough revenue to slightly offset my starting expense. It’s been tough, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel now.
We’ve been impressed with Acres Lawn Services, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Acres Lawn Services was founded in the fall of 2024. We’re a small company, with only one person performing the services currently. We have extensive experience in working with commerical properties where the property itself is it’s business, such as wedding venues. So we value the importance of completing work in a timely manner and meeting deadlines for events. Not to mention, the attention to detail that is required.
We service the greater Knoxville area, and serve as an alternative solution to your landscaping needs. We have the equipment to do your landscaping for you, but we also want to support you in your own work, and that’s why we offer maintenance services as well. We’re constantly learning as new methods, products, and technologies emerge to provide the highest quality service for you.
Mowing&Trimming, yard maintenance and cleanup, tree and shrub pruning, mulching, weeding, and equipment maintence.
I think the fact that I offer maintenance services for other folks that do like to do the work themselves is a difference spin on a lawn care provider. I also do other things like tilling for gardens and even pressure washing.
I’m most proud of the image I’ve cultivated based on communication and flexibility of schedule. Doing work that is adjacent to the wedding industry really is all about appearance and being available to work at almost any time. I’m also particularly proud of the logos and website I’ve created. The logos, I paid a freelance designer that I sim race with to make, and he hit a home run.
I also do site surveys for potential clients to come up with a game plan and specific pricing for them based on their particular needs.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Generally obsessive over anything and everything. I was always curious about random things, and would then go out of my way to know anything and everything about it. The Titanic? I can recite any fact you want to know about that in history. Nascar (as a kid). F1, Indycar? I’m an encyclopedia of racing knowledge. My grandfather drove me around the country to see different states and race tracks and helped me become pretty well cultured at a young age. After he passed away unexpectedly, I picked up a tennis racket a few months before my 12th birthday and that was the only thing I really did until I graduated college. In the interim, I did learn how to play instruments and played in a few bands too. I just never set any limits or boundaries. To this day I still practice that. I’m always trying to learn new things every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://acreslawnservices.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acreslawnservices
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566151941916
