Start A Lawn Care Business

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Running a Lawn Care Business – It’s Not Always Fun.

Nov 19

Posted by Lawn Care Business in advertising lawn care, customers, estimating, lawn care business | Comments off

Live Strong - Start A Lawn Care Business

Live Strong and Fight Like H*LL

On this lawn care blog, I often write about the benefits of owning a lawn care business. Truthfully, there are many benefits such as calling your own shots, setting your own hours, making the amount of money that you are truly worth, and having pride in owning your own business.

Although there are many positive aspects to running your own business, I do have to be honest with you…some days really do suck. I have had a couple of those days this week. Most of this hassle is accountable to a single customer that is causing one huge headache. Ugh.

I remember the early days of owning my lawn care business. Many days seemed like a never ending headache and a never ending fight. Fighting to cut my costs. Fighting my lawn care competition with good advertising and marketing tactics. Fighting low cost lawn care equipment. Fighting cheap lawn care customers who didn’t want to pay the going rate for lawn care.

Fight. Fight. Fight.

Gradually, as I developed my lawn care business strategies, I found that the number of fights diminished. As I learned the proper lawn care equipment to buy…fight diminished. As I learned how to properly negotiate with customers…fight diminished. As I developed GREAT marketing strategies…fight diminished. As I implemented customer scheduling strategies…fight diminished.

Those “fights” are some of the reasons I developed the Start A Lawn Care Business guidebook and estimating software. My major frustrations were manily due to lack of knowledge and as I learned the business I vowed to help other entrepreneurs (like you) beat the fights and frustrations.

Sure, there will still be a few minor fights and a few minor frustrations along the way but if you start your business right, purchase the correct lawn care equipment, and negotiate the best prices with your lawn care customers, your lawn care business will be a much easier endevour.

If you are interested in having an easier time starting and operating your lawn care business, consider purchasing our lawn care business guidebook and estimating software. It will make your business (almost) fight free.

Live Strong and Fight!!!





http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com
Start A Successful Lawn Care Business

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Lawn Care Estimates – Get Your Pricing Right

Sep 30

Posted by Lawn Care Business in estimating, how much to charge, lawn care business | No Comments

Mowing Grass for Minimum Wage - Make More Money

Mowing Grass for Minimum Wage? Make More Money.

Do you own a lawn care business? Are you undercharging for your lawn care services?

I am continually surprised at the number of new business owners who start doing lawn care and have absolutely no idea how much money to charge for the services they provide. Pricing is a tricky subject and if you are operating a lawn care business without a proper understanding of the estimating process, you are likely going to lose thousands of dollars. We received a comment recently in response to one of our free videos that we have on YouTube.

The commentor wrote:

I get paid $25 for a house with a huge hill that takes me 2 hours to mow. It takes me 30 minutes to get there and I have to mow around a bunch of stuff and trim alot and use my own gas.

I must point out that I do not know anything about this person’s business or why he is charging this price. However, on the surface, it seems to me that he is VASTLY undercharging for his lawn care services. According to his comment he is working for 2 hours and driving for 1 hour round trip. Additionally, he is providing his own gasoline and, I assume, using his own lawn mowing equipment. For his time, he is only getting paid $8.33 per hour. Subtract his gasoline and equipment expense and he is probably making less than minimum wage for this lawn care job.

YIKES!!!!

If you own a lawn care business you MUST get your pricing right. There is very little point in setting prices so low that you are working for close to minimum wage when, with a quick lesson in proper price estimation, you can learn how to make great money in your lawn care business.

Our lawn care business program is dedicated to teaching you proper strategies in lawn care estimation. If you are tired of mowing grass for less money than you should, visit our main website and consider purchasing our lawn care business strategy guidebook and estimating sofware.





Visit the link below:

Lawn Care Estimating Software
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Awesome News…I lost my job.

Jun 28

Posted by Lawn Care Business in estimating, lawn business strategies, start a lawn care business | No Comments

I got fired from my job and started a lawn care business.Many of the people who purchase our lawn care business program are just trying to make extra money to supplement their weekly paychecks. Then again, many other people are looking to immediately start doing lawn care as a full time business.

A couple weeks ago, we received a telephone call from a guy who had recently been fired from his job. He had not been laid off. He had been flat out FIRED with no possibility of collecting unemployment benefits!!! This guy sounded really distraught. He was panicing and calling us for help starting his lawn care business before he had to tell his wife the horrible news about losing his job.

“How quickly can I start my business?” “How much money will it cost for lawn care equipment?” “How much money can I make in my first month doing lawn care?”

I tried to answer his questions as succinctly as I could but many questions, such as those dealing with monthly income, are difficult to answer because that answer depends on many individual variables. I let him know that the Estimating Calculators that are included with the lawn care software are a GREAT help in determining the amount of money to charge customers and they will help him determine his monthly income. Our program goes into great detail about how to start a lawn care business, what types of lawn care equipment to purchase, how to build a customer list very quickly, how much money to charge your customers, how to perform the work and make it look professional, how to bid on large lawn care contracts, etc. etc.

After almost 10 minutes on the telephone answering his questions about the value of our lawn care business program, he decided to order the package over the telephone with his credit card. As soon as I took his information and received an approval from his Credit Card company, I could hear a sigh of relief on his end of the phone. “WHEWWW!!!”

I asked if he was okay. He just said that he was still worried about telling his wife about getting fired but he felt he was taking steps in the right direction. He was very excited about getting his business started. I told him that getting fired might be the best thing that ever happened to him and that he should tell his wife about the AWESOME (not bad) news that he has to tell her.

In a quick 10 minute phone call, he went from being an unemployed loser with no job and no income to being a self-motivated entrepreneur starting his own lawn care business.

If you are in a bad financial situation and want to start your own lawn care business, take a serious look at our Lawn Care Business program. We have packed it full of almost 20 years of business experience. It will take you from your first days of starting your business to growing to the point where you need to hire employees.

For more information, please visit our main webpage:

Start A Lawn Care Business
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Bid Next Year's Lawn Mowing Contracts Right Now

Sep 3

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bidding lawn care, estimating, lawn care contracts, lawn care proposals | No Comments

http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com
Bidding Lawn Mowing Contracts

As the Summer lawn mowing season rolls to an end and Autumn creeps along it is time to think about next year’s grass cutting contracts.

Here is something for you to keep in mind: October 1 is the first day of the U.S. Government’s fiscal New Year. Many government lawn care contracts will be bid during the next several weeks for lawn care work to be completed during 2011. Get those bids in NOW guys. You can’t afford to miss this important time of year if you are one of our many readers who operate large lawn care companies who make their money going after Government scale grass cutting contracts.

Not all Government contracts are bid right now but many RFPs (request for proposals) are open right now and will close on, or before, September 30. Other mowing contracts will be bid in the months ahead. Much of the money you plan to make in 2011 will be determined by the contracts you successfully bid during the next few months.

If you are at all interested in bidding larger scale lawn mowing contracts (local and federal government mowing contracts, private industry grass cutting contracts, and local business lawn care work) we have included an excellent “Bidding Tutorial” guidebook in our Lawn Care Business package. It describes how to find these contracts, who to speak with in order to uncover hidden contracts, and how to price and properly bid the contracts.

Also, the estimating software is included with the lawn care business package. Many lawn care business professionals tell us that our estimating software is worth much more than the cost of the entire package.

To learn more about (and order) the lawn care business course, visit our main website at:
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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June 15, 2010 Quarterly Tax Payments

Jun 15

Posted by Lawn Care Business in estimating, lawn care business, Lawn Care Business Taxes, lawn care estimating, taxes | No Comments

by: www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

This is a quick heads up.

If you are running your own lawn care business, you need to remember that today (June 15, 2010) is quarterly tax payment day. If you have generated income this year with your landscaping business, you are likely required to make estimated tax payments throughout the year. Todayt is one of those tax payment days and your estimated quarterly payment must be postmarked before midnight tonight to comply with federal tax regulations.

Running your own grass cutting service is fun but as a small business owner you have to keep up with the paperwork that keeps your business legal.

This blog does not provide any professional tax advice. So, if you have questions about your particular business needs, please consult with a qualified tax professional.

For great information and business tools to help you start and operate your own successful lawn care business, look at the professionally produced business package on our main website at: www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Lawn Care Estimating – How To Estimate (Bid) Lawn Care Work

Jun 11

Posted by Lawn Care Business in estimating, how much to charge, lawn business strategies, lawn care estimating, start a lawn care business | No Comments

by: StartALawnCareBusiness.com

Lawn Care Estimating

Our Lawn Care Business program is jam-packed with information about starting and operating a lawn care business. There is tons of information on business startup, how to advertise and acquire customers, how to bid larger jobs, how to purchase lawn mowers, weedeaters, hedge trimmers, & leaf blowers, and there is also information on how to strip lawns and give professional looking cuts.

As informative as all these sections are, one of the most important sections of the lawn care business course deals with knowing how much money to charge your customers. New lawn care entrepreneurs have difficult times telling their customers how much they are going to charge to cut their grass. We dealt with the estimation problem ourselves our first year in business. I still remember some of the first customers I estimated. I would tell them the price and they would almost always balk and say I was too high. Being new in the business and not wanting to lose customers, I would almost always drop my price immediately…sometimes as much as $10 per cut.

When I think back to those early days now, I left a ton of money on the table because I was too inexperienced to know how to give a good estimate and stand firm on my price. I probably lost thousands of dollars the first six month in business because I didn’t know how to give proper estimates.

If you are new to the business and you feel that you are just not making the money you know you should be making, I urge you to get our Lawn Care Business training coursebooks and training videos. The program includes a REALWORLD description teaching you how to price jobs and how to keep from having your customers turn away from reasonable estimates.

We have the lawn care business coursebooks, video training guides, estimating software, and business toolkit on sale right now through our main website. Learning how to estimate lawn care work properly might save you thousands of dollars of lost revenue this year in your lawn care & landscaping business.

You can order the lawn care business program through our main website: http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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How Much Money Can I Earn with a Lawn Care Business

Jun 1

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bidding lawn care, estimating, lawn care business, money | No Comments

How much money can I earn with a Lawn Care Business?

Many of our readers wrote to comment about our blog posting from January where we linked to our lawn care “earnings potential”  calculator.  The posting was designed to give you a goal for 2010.  Along with the posting, we linked to the Lawn Care Estimating calculator to help you discover how much money you could make (weekly income) during 2010.

If you took the challenge in January, we would love to hear how you are doing with your goal.  Are you making more money than you thought you would make or are you slightly behind schedule?  If you are behind schedule with your earnings, there’s nothing to worry about.  Though the year is almost 1/2 over, the season has barely begun.  June is a PRIME time to gear up your lawn care business and start picking up bigger and better customers.  The next few month are the time to really prove yourself.  With a bit of motivation, we know you can still reach your earnings goal for this year.

If you want to use the calculator to figure your earnings potential doing lawn care, check out the link here:

Lawn Care Estimating Calculator

We would also like to remind you that our Lawn Care Business Course is currently on sale through our main website.  The course will show you how to start and operate a successful lawn care business.  With your purchase of the lawn care business course, you will also receive the full set of lawn care estimating software to help you with your estimating and bidding. 

Check it out on our main site:  http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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