Up to $2 million | 2025 Revenue: $205,000
In March 2025, Steven Bennett was working as chief operating officer for an environmental consulting firm.
One year later, he said, he was bound for the British Virgin Islands to build pickleball courts for billionaire Richard Branson.
Bennett, a third-year owner of a Field Ops franchise in Northeast Florida, turned his part-time side gig into a five-employee operation that reports an increase in its annual revenue from $900 in 2023 to $205,000 in 2025.
Field Ops offers athletic field and game court marking services for schools, teams, recreation centers and athletic facilities.
“I left a six-figure corporate gig, fully-cush office, with floor-to-ceiling windows, on a Friday,” Bennett said. “On a Monday I was on a mower, mowing grass, and we’ve not looked back.”
Bennett’s journey with Field Ops came from an online search for extra work. He found Veteran Service Brands, which identifies itself as the nation’s larger veteran-owned service network. It is the franchisor for Field Ops and for brands that work in parking lot striping, epoxy floors and residential and commercial painting.
Bennett began his Field Ops franchise as a way to increase his retirement savings outside of his day job with The NDN Cos., a Jacksonville environmental construction and consulting firm. He worked nights and weekends, making around $16,000 during the first two years, according to his spouse, Susan Bennett, who manages the business’ finances.
“I was just like, ‘Well, maybe I can do a little more.’ I just didn’t know it was going to explode,” Steven Bennett said. “Now, we’re holding on with both hands.”
Bennett is an Army veteran who lists Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti among the places where he served from 1991 to 2001. That military experience, he said, gave him the skills he needs to run his business and helped him attract clients.
“On the customer-facing side, they know what they’re going to get. They know that they’re going to get someone with integrity,” Bennett said. “They know they’re going to get someone that understands how to problem solve and move through adversity and how to partner with them. And there’s just a different set of values we pick up from being in the military.”
After leaving the Army, Bennett worked in Bunnell with the Florida Forest Service, then moved to Colorado, taking positions with security services firm Allied Universal before working in wildland fire education at Colorado State University.
A St. Augustine native, Bennett moved to Jacksonville in 2022 to take a job as chief operating officer for The NDN Cos.
Bennett said didn’t intend to leave his job with The NDN Cos. when he started Field Ops. In 2025, he realized newer accounts required him to make his franchise a full-time job.
Bennett has found that scaling his model to include more phases of field maintenance is the key to generating revenue.
While his franchise began only with lining fields, Bennett and his staff now mow, lay surfacing and more.
“Stepping outside of what we thought the business was going to be and finding those other services, that’s what we’ve done,” Bennett said. “We offered a broader service scope. And so what we found out is that the more we striped, the more we realized that there were also solutions for entities that wanted all new services.”
Most of Bennett’s work takes place in Northeast Florida, he said. Bennett said about a third of his revenue comes from larger projects that require travel, including the pickleball courts for Branson and similar work for former NFL quarterback Drew Brees.
Bennett relies on contract laborers rather than his typical team for those projects.
Custom jobs are the future of Fields Ops, Bennett said.
“The goal is to just pick and choose the fun jobs, the fun destination stuff that we like, if we want to,” Bennett said. “I would like in three years for the business to be on cruise control.”
While Bennett was never his own boss in prior roles, he now manages himself, three part-time employees and one full-time project manager. Bennett hopes that project manager one day will be his replacement, enabling him to pick and choose projects and turn Field Ops into “mailbox money.”
For now, Bennett is focused on being the face of his business. He started keeping business cards in his truck and tries to wear branded merchandise, even when he’s not on the job.
Bennett also is considering adding pressure washing to his menu of services since Veteran Service Brands includes a pressure washing franchise line.
Bennett isn’t exactly sure what the future holds for his business, but he says he has faith in the process and anticipates further growth.
“There’s a trust there that we have with the big guy, and then there’s also the trust that we have to have in ourselves,” Bennett said. “While I’m apprehensive, I’m not scared.”