Start A Lawn Care Business

Make money with a lawn care and landscaping business.

Posts Tagged lawn care business

Veteran's Day – 2010

Nov 11

Posted by Lawn Care Business in lawn care business | No Comments

I am in a unique position that I get to speak with lots of people who are just getting started with their lawn care businesses.   Since today is Veteran’s Day, I am thinking about many of the people who have purchased the “Start A Lawn Care Business” training guide this past year because they are either retired military or they are thinking about what to do with their time (and how to make extra money) once they exit military service in the near future.

It is always interesting to see a FPO as an address when we ship a lawn care guidebook to a member of the military.  We always wonder about your service to our country.  Our best wishes go out to you that your service has been a beneficial one to your life and that your return to the civilian life will be a safe and healthy one.

Thank you for your service:

Keith
www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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A "Successful" Lawn Care Business?

Nov 9

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

by: Start A Lawn Care Business

Too often in the lawn care industry, we think of success in terms of number of jobs per day, number of crews, or number of clients on a roster.  For full-time lawn care companies, these criteria are important to the overall well-being of a company.  However, the industry should never overlook the needs of the small lawn care business owner or the solo part-time guy just looking to make an extra several hundred dollars per week doing a handful of residential and commercial customers.

Though many large-scale lawn care business owners purchase our “Start A Lawn Care Business” training package to gain new ideas how to grow their businesses, the majority of the purchasers of our business program are aspiring entrepreneurs looking to either start a new lawn care business or current small business owners who are looking to expand their business, go full-time, and add employees.

I was speaking with a guy last week who saw on of our Leaf Raking Videos on YouTube.  The video stirred his interest and he is about the take the plunge, purchase a commercial leaf blower, and start finding clients.  The main question he has is how to bid leaf raking and leaf blowing jobs.  We run into these questions very often and this is exactly why we developed the “bidding tutorial and estimating software” sections in our lawn care business program.  There are too many variables to do flat rate pricing on leaf cleanup jobs.  Our estimating tutorial teaches you how to properly bid jobs without overpricing (or underpricing) your work.

If you are a one-man operation wanting to start or grow a successful lawn care business we encourage you to learn how to bid your jobs properly and grow your business correctly.  We believe the strength in the Green Industry lies in the hands of small lawn care business owners.

For more information on the Lawn Care Business training guidebook and software package, visit our main webpage at:

http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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20% Time For Lawn Care Innovation

Oct 12

Posted by Lawn Care Business in employees, lawn business strategies, lawn product development | 1 Comment

If you read this blog consistently, you have surely noticed that I am a big fan of analyzing successful, non-lawn care, companies. We can learn from other industries and apply their successes to our own personal lawn care businesses.

Google is one company I am constantly impressed with. Today, Google announced plans to help develop an off-shore wind farm to generate electricity for up to 1.9 million homes. If you live in a part of the country that does not have wind turbines, I encourage you to visit a wind farm. Last year I drove from Tennessee to Seattle and was amazed at the number of wind turbines along the way. Kansas seems to have thousands of windmills and the Hood River region of Oregon and Washington seem to have millions of windmills.

Windmills are beside the point I want to make today but they just brought to mind an impressive feature of Google and how they constantly innovate in their product offerings. Google allows their engineers to spend up to 20% of their time working on their own projects within the Google infrastructure. An engineer with an idea how one of Google’s products can work better or be more productive can spend 1 day per week innovating and redesigning the product. If his/her project is approved, it will be included in Google’s offerings. In fact, Gmail, one of Google best features, started out as a 20% time project by one of it’s engineers. Today, Gmail boasts nearly 200 million users.

So, how does this relate to your lawn care business?

What products could you develop for your lawn care business if you (and / or your employees) took the incentive to devote 1 day per week to innovation? Yes, I can already hear your answers and I can’t imagine giving lawn care employees free reign over 20 percent of their time. However, what if it was a supervised 20%? And, what if it wasn’t 1 day per week but 1 hour per day instead? For those of you who think 1 hour per day is still too much, what if you dropped it to 1 hour per week? I can completely imagine that your employees, or you, would respect the 1 hour per week of innovation time. I can only imagine the developments of creative employees and lawn care business owners being creative within our industry spending 1 hour per week on innovation.

Granted, lawn care is a different business model than developing a search engine. We have to be out there sweating through customers lawns before we make any money. On the other hand, can you imagine the profit increase if you develop a better method of weedeating a customer’s ditch or edging a customers driveway?

As we move into the winter months, I would like to challenge each lawn care business owner to devote 1 hour each week toward innovation within their business. You might work on a new tool to pick up trash in customers’ lawns without having to stop your lawn mower or you might develop better, more efficient, mowing patterns for your biggest clients.

Don’t expect results immediately because it might take you a couple weeks before your creative juices start flowing. Once the idea hits you please check back in with us here to let us know your progress.

We believe in innovation within the lawn care industry. If you are just getting started with your lawn care business or if you are trying to make more money in 2011 than you did in 2010, you probably just need some simple help with your business plan and your pricing strategy.

We have developed a comprehensive Lawn Care Business course that will help you start and operate a successful lawn care business. This is a huge business tool that also includes the estimating software so you will know how much to charge your customers for lawn care work.

You can learn more about the Lawn Care Business course on our main website: http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Make more money in 2011 than you did in 2010 with your lawn care business.

Sep 23

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

by: www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

After our blog post last week warning of the tax day deadline on September 15, 2010, we received a couple comments from people who want to make more money for themselves in 2011. Like millions of other Americans, they had just finished their income tax estimating forms and were surprised how little money they made thus far in 2010. Each of them asked: “how can I make more money with my lawn care business in 2011?”

If you are like thousands of other lawn care business owners, you are probably wondering how you can become more profitable in your lawn care business next year over.

What is the secret of making more money for your lawn mowing business without significant expansion of your services and lawn equipment?

There does not have to be a complicated answer to this question. From our point-of-view, there are at least three ways to make more money with your lawn care business. We are going to briefly outline these three methods in the article below. But if you are truly interested in making more money with your lawn care business, we encourage you to get a copy of our lawn care business guidebooks, training guides, and estimating software available from our main website.

Here is a three point overview of how to make more money next year with a lawn care business without significantly adding equipment or spending significantly more time mowing grass:

1) Get More Lawn Care Customers: Getting more lawn care customers is the first and most obvious solution to making more money with your business. It’s true though; if you are currently cutting grass for 10 customers and you increase your customer count to 20 you should, effectively, make twice the amount of income as before. Actually, if you follow proper route scheduling and other business secrets outlined on our lawn care business startup guidebook, the amount of money you make with a doubling of customers should be more than double. Proper use of economies of scale, better lawn care equipment selection, efficient mowing patterns which will reduce your work time on each yard, and better route planning will combine to help you add more lawns into your already-packed schedule.

2) Make More Money from Each Lawn Care Customer: If you charge your customers only for basic mow-and-go services, you are likely missing an incredible amount of additional income you could make at each service time from each customer. Add-on selling is a great method of boosting your revenue from each customer. Customers who are paying for basic mowing services might not be aware of additional services your company offers. There is always more work to do in your clients’ lawns. Your job, as a business owner, is to advertise all your services to your customers. Keep your eyes open for all additional services you can offer your customers. If you have ladders and the capability to clean gutters mention the positive aspects of keeping gutters free from leaves and debris. Many shrubs need trimming 3 to 4 times each year. Flower beds should be mulched in the spring and fall. Leaf cleanup service is an important addition to most lawn care services during the months of September through November and again in the springtime. Addition of these services is easy and allows you to make extra money from each customer without the need to find new customers.

3) Get Better Lawn Care Customers: Too many times, a young entrepreneur buys a lawn mower and starts accepting anyone who wants their grass cut and is willing to pay any amount to have the work done. Before long, new lawn care business owners have rosters full of demanding customers unwilling to pay the going market price for grass cutting on their small lawns. These customers want to pay only minimal amounts of money to have their grass cut as short as possible every two weeks. While having a small percentage of “mow and go” customers is fine for most lawn service companies, better money can be made off clients who are serious about having their lawns professionally maintained. Weekly mowing, proper blade height adjustments, striping, and knowledge of lawn care problems all help landscaping companies successfully win contracts with better lawn care customers willing to pay a premium price to have professional maintenance of the lawns and landscapes.

Following these three ideas may sound simple but it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of accepting every customers that comes along and bidding the job low enough the make sure the customer doesn’t shake his head and find someone cheaper.

All of us here at StartALawnCareBusiness.com understand the difficulty of starting a lawn care business correctly, targeting the right customers, and pricing the jobs properly so you can afford to do excellent work for your customers and still make a decent profit for your business and yourself.

If you want to learn how to run a better lawn care business in 2011 we encourage you to purchase our lawn care business course. The program is designed to help you avoid the traps that many new lawn care business owners fall into. Instead, you will learn proven strategies for starting and running a successful lawn care business.

We’re keeping the low sale price on the program through the end of this month. Learn more on our main webpage:

www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com
Start A Lawn Care Business.com

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Quiting the lawn care business?

Sep 16

Posted by Lawn Care Business in leaf raking, start a lawn care business | No Comments

by: Start A Lawn Care Business

We received an email today from a guy who has decided to quit his lawn care business.

“It hasn’t rained in months. The grass has all dried up and I’m not making any money.”

I really feel for this guy. Anyone in the lawn care business (at least in the SouthEast) knows how difficult the last 5 – 6 weeks has been. Rain has been scarce and the only people having their grass cut are the customers who can afford to water their lawns either with a water hose or through an irrigation system.

Late August through early September is always a difficult time of year. Drought is a word weathermen like to use almost incessantly though this time of year is notoriously dry year after year.

Lawn care clients don’t want to pay for you to mow their dirt. Although there are methods of getting paid during the dry weeks of late August through early September (and our lawn care business program tells you how), you need to plan ahead. Though it’s a bit late for that this year, you can be ready for next year’s dry spell by simply taking a bit of advice from our guidebook.

Apart from the dry spell, the email this guy sent us startled me. I can’t figure out why anyone would quit his lawn care business at the END of the very worst time of year. If he was going to quit, he should have done so sometime between August 1 to August 15 immediately before the “drought” started.

So, why should this guy stick it out and continue with his lawn care business? One word…LEAVES!!!! Look outside. Look at your trees. The leaves are turning. If you are anywhere east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida the leaves on your trees are turning color and are about to dump themselves ALL OVER your lawn care clients’ yards.

Leaf fall is going to be HUGE this year. I can just feel it. And when your customers start calling in a panic because they need their yards cleaned, you will be thankful that you are in a position to profit mightily by raking their leaves and cleaning their properties.

So, if you are thinking about giving up the lawn care business since you haven’t made any money in the last few weeks, get that silly idea out of your head. Right now is the time you need to ramp up your business. Get to work making advertising flyers and handing out business cards. The money you make during the next couple months might very well rival the money you made all summer.

Also, if you haven’t started your lawn care business yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? This is a perfect time of year to start. Customers are scrambling all over themselves looking for dependable lawn care professional who will rake their leaves and clean up their yards before winter sets in.

If you don’t have a clue about charging your customers for your leaf raking services, take a look at our Lawn Care Business guidebook training package. It will help you tremendously in your efforts to operate your own successful lawn care business.

Check it out on our main page:
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com
Start A Lawn Care Business

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Happy July 4, 2010 from Start A Lawn Care Business

Jul 3

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

Hi Everyone:

We would just like to take a minute to wish you and your families a very Happy Fourth of July. It is a great weekend to take your mind off your lawn care business, just relax, and reflect on the enjoyments of freedom our nation offers us.

Happy July 4th.

From:
StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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I didn't get anything done today in my Lawn Care Business.

Mar 27

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

Have you ever felt that way?

I think every lawn care business owner has the occasional day when you put the equipment away at the end of the day only to realize that you basically accomplished nothing. It’s disheartening when you feel like you’re wasting time and losing money. Spinning your wheels is especially difficult for newer lawn care business owners. Keep your head up though. The main point to remember early in the game is that you are gaining experience each day you work on your business.

What has kept you from getting work done today?

If we put our minds to it, we could possibly list 100 different things that keep you from getting work done. Instead of making a list so long, we’re going to hone it down to 3 main reasons for a new lawn care business owner not accomplishing anything during a work day.

1) No Lawn Care Customers – Most new lawn care business owners have days where there are no customers lined up. Don’t equate having no customers with having nothing to do. Stop sitting around moping in front of the computer waiting for your phone to ring. The next time you have no customers scheduled, get up early, load your equipment in your vehicle, and set out with the same frame of mind as you would if you had 10 customers. Go to the coffee shop early. Make sure people know you’re the owner of the equipment. If you don’t get bites by the time you’re finished with your coffee, let everyone know that you can’t hang around because you have a busy day (leave a few business cards). Head over to Lowe’s or Home Depot (or the nearest hardware store) and look at weedeater. When the guy comes over to ask if you need help, ask some questions about the best commercial weedeater they sell. Tell him you need it for your lawn care business and that you would love him to refer some new customers his way (hand him a business card). As the day wears on, think of other places you can stop where people congregate who might need your services. Hand out your business card and make contacts all day long. When you get home, even if you didn’t unload your equipment one single time, don’t be discouraged that you didn’t get anything done. You made great contact and pretty soon those contacts will turn into customers.

2) Lawn Care Equipment Failure – This is probably more disheartening than having no customers. Losing money is worse, to many people, than not making money. When all the people at the coffee shop (see above) are ringing your phone off the hook wanting their lawns done, it will madden you if your lawn care equipment is in the shop. Equipment failures happen. This is just a fact of life. There are a couple keys to reducing your downtime due to equipment failure: buy good commercial equipment and maintain that equipment properly. Change oil regularly, lubricate according to schedule, change filters, keep your outer stage air filter clean, sharpen your blades, and keep your belts in check.

3) Time Management of your Lawn Care Work Habits – Strategic planning is vital to increasing your efficiency as a lawn care business owner. Proper route planning is one of the biggest drains on a lawn care business owner’s time. After route planning, improper equipment selection and use of that equipment causes many lawn care businesses to lose the time value in their business. Knowing how reduce these time sappers will allow you work more efficiently an feel like you’ve actually accomplished something during your day.

If you have recently started your own lawn care business and you frequently feel that your just not accomplishing much in your business, we invite you to take a look at our main website. We have developed a great business package specifically designed for new lawn care business owners. Within the business guidebooks there is a tremendous amount of information that will help you attract new customers, select and maintain the proper equipment, and manage your time to work more efficiently and make more money per hour worked.

You can read more about us and check out the program at:

Start A Lawn Care Business www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Ya' Gotta Start Somewhere

Mar 20

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bidding lawn care, lawn care training, start a lawn care business | 1 Comment

Start A Lawn Care Business

I took a picture today I have to share with you because it brought back a flood of memories of when we first started our lawn care business way back in 1992.

Start A Lawn Care Business

I am not sure the driver of this van is operating a lawn care business (and I’m not sure if that lawn mower is properly secured) but I do know a lot of lawn care business owners get their start with a similar setup. I remember the days we first started our lawn care business humping around a push lawn mower in the back of a Chevy hatchback. It wasn’t ideal but is was much better than sitting in the accounting office where I used to work.

Before long, we bought a truck and upgraded to commercial equipment. Better equipment and more knowledge of the lawn care business allowed us to grow and attract better customers that paid more money. We all want brand new trucks and expensive commercial lawn mowers inside fancy enclosed lawn mower trailers. All that comes in due time. But ya’ gotta start somewhere.

The main lesson here is to start with what you have. You don’t need a brand new truck and expensive lawn care equipment to get out there and start making money right away.

What you DO need is knowledge. People who start their lawn care businesses the right way have a better chance of success than those people who buy the wrong equipment and price their customers all wrong.

In our lawn care business program, you will learn how to buy the proper equipment and how to price your customers. Pricing is a difficult strategy but we also include our lawn care estimating software to help you estimate and bid your lawn care customers.

Read more about the complete program at: www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Lawn Care Business Scheduling Verification with Foursquare

Mar 18

Posted by Lawn Care Business in customers, gutter cleaning, lawn business strategies | 1 Comment

Whether you are a small one-man (or woman) lawn care operation or a large multi-crew lawn care company, you already know the importance of setting a schedule and staying to that schedule. Ordinarily, a lawn care company verified their schedule by keeping a day planner and checking off their lawn care customers as the service was completed.

In 2005, we began advocating the use of GPS technology. Quite simply, the tracks from a GPS serve as proof that you were at a client’s property. The track data from a GPS also tells you the time period you were at each property. By analyzing the track data you can make your lawn care company run more efficiently. You can also make some interesting discoveries such as customers that warrant a price increases based on the time it takes to finish.

I am still a believer in tracking your progress through your work day with the use of GPS technology. However, in recent weeks the use of GPS enabled phones has taken a HUGE leap forward. There is a new service called Foursquare.com. Foursquare is an app that you download to your GPS enabled phone. They have apps for Iphone, Droid, Blackberry, and a host of other mobile devices. Though I have just signed up for their service a few days ago, I am so excited about this new GPS-related service that I am going to tell you about it before I’ve even had a chance to review it fully.

Foursquare allows users to “Check In” when they have reached a destination. The user checks in on his phone using the app. Once the user checks in, a notification is sent to the user’s Facebook account or Twitter feed.

Here’s how I envision Foursquare working for lawn care companies. Let’s say you have 10 yards to do on Monday. When leaving first think in the morning you can send a message saying “leaving.” Later, when you arrive at your first client’s yard, you can check in and type in “arrived at Mrs. Smiths.” When your through with Mrs. Smith’s yard you can type in “leaving Smith’s.” When you arrive at your second yard, type in “arrived at Mr. Lewis (wants gutters cleaned, also).”

Now, there are two great things about this service.

1) When you get home, you have a visual reference of your timeline through out the day. You know when you arrived at each clients house and how long it their work took you to perform.

2) If you run lawn care crews, you can check your crews Twitter feed and know exactly where they are in their scheduling. If Ms. Smith calls and wants to know what time your crew will be at her house, you can tell her that she is next on the list and the crew started the last yard 15 minutes ago and should be at her house within the next 30 minutes.

The possibilities are tremendous for this technology.

As good as Foursquare is, they are not proclaiming to be a business application. They have a gaming scheme built into their app where you can win points visiting resturaunts. Irrespective of their initial motives, I belive the business community will quickly latch onto this app.

I’ve not put this into practical application yet so I am sure you need to read the disclaimers from the Foursquare company regarding such things as privacy issues and other concerns. Also, I know Foursquare has some competitors.

If you have tried Foursquare or any of their competitors, please tell me what your experience has been. Do you find it cumbersome to use? Does it post correctly to your Twitter feed? Is privacy a concern (keeping your Twitter feed private and not keeping your schedule and your clients private and not available to the Foursquare audience)?

As always, if you are interested in growing your lawn care business and using technology in the lawn care business to make money mowing grass and doing landscaping, we have developed a great business package that will help you Start (or Expand) your lawn care business this year.

Check us out on our main webpage: http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Asynchronous Risk vs. Reward Ratio

Feb 21

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

I had a great conversation with a business associate today concerning the concept of risk management.  In particular, we were discussing risks that far outweigh their rewards.

Risk management is a common subject in business and since this is a lawn care business blog, you may think we were discussing concepts such as giving 100% guarantees to customers who purchase landscape plantings.  Or, we may have been analyzing the spreading of landscape mulch and charging for maintenance without first properly treating the ground or placing weedblock as an underlayment.  Or we may have been discussing the purchase of a commercial 34 horsepower, propane fueled, 72″, zero-turn, front deck, lawn mower before even acquiring a single lawn care customer.

Climbing and a discussion of asychronous risk management.

While these are all great ideas to discuss, we were not talking business.  Instead, we were talking about free climbing a rock face without the use of proper safety equipment.

In your lawn care business, us proper risk management procedures.

Whether you are bouldering a rocky outcropping or starting your own lawn care business, it makes perfect sense to think strongly about risk management procedures. 

If you want to learn how to rock climb, seek professional rock climbing instruction (and use a rope!!!) 

However, if you want to learn proper risk management procedures for your lawn care business, purchase our lawn care business guidebook and estimating software package through our website:  www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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