About

Built by people who know the work.

Yardful started at a stoneyard in Fort Worth. We watched the same three-minute conversation play out every day — "how much do I need for a 12×14 patio, four inches deep?" — and we built the answer into the website.

The story

Big Tex Stone has been selling stone, gravel, mulch, and landscape supply to North Texas builders, landscapers, and DIY homeowners since 2005 — today one of the DFW area's largest stoneyards. Like every yard, they spent half their counter time helping customers do math the customers didn't want to do themselves: cubic yards of base, tons of decomposed granite, square feet of flagstone with a 10% waste factor.

We built them a calculator. Customers self-served at 11 PM the night before a delivery; staff stopped doing pencil math at the counter; orders got more accurate; trips back to the yard for "I needed more" went down. After watching it run for a few weeks, we realized the same pattern applies to every project-supply business in America.

So we turned the BigTex calculator into a platform. Yardful builds self-serve project-quantity calculators for material and supply businesses — stoneyards, lumber yards, pool stores, mulch suppliers, paint shops, fence and tile dealers, anything where customers walk in asking "how much do I need?". Branded to your shop. Embedded on your site. Powered by your own products and prices.

The team

Mike Hillman

CEO & Owner, Big Tex Stone · Fort Worth, TX

Mike founded Big Tex Stone in 2005 alongside Hillman Outdoor Living — both still running, both still his. Today Big Tex Stone is one of the DFW area's largest stoneyards, supplying flagstone, river rock, decomposed granite, mulch, and topsoil to homeowners, landscapers, and contractors across Fort Worth, Keller, Southlake, Aledo, Arlington, and Mansfield. He holds a BBA from The University of Texas at Arlington.

I started this company to meet the needs of homeowners and landscape professionals. This is not just a job for my team and I but a passion. We truly love to make house beautiful.

His role at Yardful: the operator perspective. What customers actually ask. Where the conversation gets stuck. Which numbers have to be right. One Yelp reviewer puts it concisely — "Mike is a genius when talking stone." He's the reason the product is grounded in how a real yard runs, not what a developer thinks a yard runs like.

bigtexstone.com

Brandon Lind

Builder, AI Consultant · Fort Worth, TX

Brandon has been operating businesses since 2010 across e-commerce, hospitality, and technology — 15+ years, 5 active ventures, 100+ automations built. Among them: AI Sparkles (consulting + automation), Sparkles Home (luxury home decor), Sparkles Coworking and Studio, Elite Fulfillment.

His role at Yardful: the build side. He turns Mike's "this should be a thing" into shipping software — designing, building, deploying, and keeping the lights on.

Every system I recommend has been battle-tested in my own companies first. If it doesn't work for us on a Tuesday, I don't sell it to you on a Wednesday.

brandon-lind.com

How we work

Start small, scale smart

Every customer engagement starts with a pilot calculator that proves measurable value — faster quotes, fewer phone calls, more closed orders — before we scale.

Operator first, technology second

The calculator should answer the customer's real question, not show off the tech. We start with how a yard already runs and remove friction; we don't replace a process that works.

ROI or nothing

If a feature doesn't drive measurable value — closed orders, fewer returns, recovered staff time — it doesn't ship. We'd rather build less and have it land.

Run a yard, store, or supply business?

Tell us what your customers ask "how much do I need?" about. We'll build a calculator for it and reply within one business day.

Get a calculator built →