What Everyone Ought To Know About Starting A Lawn Care Business

2. Business Plan – Can You Make Profit?

Profit is the lifeblood of your new lawn mowing company.

You could make $1 million in your first year but if you spent $1.5 million then you lost money.

The key is profits.

Let’s talk about how to figure out if your new lawn care company can make a profit.

And how fast.

Money You Need To Spend (Expenditures)

Unfortunately – unlike software or consulting businesses – a landscape/lawn care business requires upfront cost.

1. Lawn equipment: Lawn mower, string trimmer, leaf blower, broom, rake, edger.
2. Grass care materials: Ongoing lawn feed, fertilizer, sands, grass seed, sod etc.
3. Truck/trailer to transport the lawn equipment to the jobs.
4. Operating a business costs: Insurance, permits, licenses, bookkeeping.
5.  Advertizing/Marketing: Spend money to make money. You will need to always be selling your services to customer neighbors and local homes and businesses. Sales cure all.

At the start you can get away with a lawn mower, trimmer, leaf blower, rake and broom (and a car to get it to the next job). But if you’re serious about this you need to think ahead and not buy junk upfront.

Money You Make (Revenues)

You make money when you perform your service for a customer. Once complete you send an invoice to be paid within 7 days to your business bank account.

Tips:

1. Have your business pay you a fair salary instead of just taking what’s left after paying your bills.
2. Sell packages. Don’t just mow. Sell a full lawn service or variation of (play with it see what works): aeration, dethatching, pest control, leveling, fertilizing AND mowing for a set price. Make the price much higher than just mowing.
3. When giving a quote for a job be sure to have the quote in writing along with a scope of work so the customer knows the price they are paying and the work they are having done.
4. If when you arrive to do the work the customer asks for something done not in the original scope of work. You need to add a variation to the scope and change the price.
5. DO NOT work for free. Know your worth.

How Much To Charge

You need to charge enough to pay all your costs.

• Go by lawn area and time to complete that area.
• Then you need to add in travel time and cost.
• And don’t forget about sales tax.

Charge more rather than less.

Business Plan: (Money In) – (Money Out) = Profit

You need to understand all the money involved. Get out a pen and paper and start playing around with the numbers. Do some research on used lawn equipment prices and have a think how you want to transport it to the jobs.

As a guide here is minimum price guide:

• $1,200 – Used Honda push mower, Used Stihl leaf blower, Used Stihl trimmer, other gear.
• $4,500 – Used pickup truck & trailer + registrations.
• $400 upfront and $75 per month – Business setup costs (permits, licenses, IRS setup).
• $150 per month – Ongoing business costs (insurance, bookkeeping).
• $250 per month – Getting customers (marketing, advertizing).
• $500 per month – Gasoline and maintenance

This is an approximate value and works out to $975/month and $6,100 upfront.

5. Getting Paid – How To Attract (And Keep) Customers

Now you’ve learned everything there is to know about lawn care.

You’ve sorted out your business documents and made everything legal.

And you’ve got a professional looking setup.

It’s time to get started making some money.

The first customers you will need to hustle for.

Think: Selling your service door-to-door (with a flyer) in your neighbourhood.

Let’s take a deeper look.

Getting Your First Few Customers

A tried and true method is handing out flyers.

But there are GOOD and there are BAD flyers.

Handout Flyers

Here’s some tips for making good flyers.

Here’s a bad lawn care flyer with no offer, nothing interesting and a guaranteed dud:

Here’s a much better flyer with a great offer, some interest and desire and a clear call to action with a deadline. Bing, bam, boom this flyer will get you some calls.

Join Local Facebook Groups

Local FB groups are very active.

You have 1,000s of potential customers in them.

Join the groups and see the vibe.

Don’t just come in full throttle advertizing your lawn care service. Guaranteed people will be asking inside these groups questions like:

• “Anyone know a good lawn care company?”
• “Anyone know who can pull some trees out for me?”
• “Anyone know someone who can take my green waste to the dump, I’ll pay?”

Join a few different groups that cover your service area and engage with homeowners.

Google Reviews

These days word of mouth is through Google reviews. Someone Googles “lawn care service my city” the first thing they see is the Google reviews.

Google reviews are kind of a chicken and egg problem. You need customers to leave the reviews so you show up high in search. But you have no customers without Google reviews.

• Step 1: Use the above two methods to get your first 20 customers.
• Step 2: Make sure you do an amazing job for those 20 and make sure they leave a Google reviews for your lawn care company.

How To Turn Past Customers Into Repeat Ones

Lifetime value of a customer is the most important thing to understand in the lawn care business.

You can offer huge upfront discounts to create the relationships because over several years each relationship may make you $2,000+. Repeat customers are the best.

Grass grows and dies and needs love and care… And so your business has a built in subscription model without even trying.

Here’s what to do.

Arrive On Time

Nothing is worse than a service based professional who is late. But even worse is not letting the customer know you are going to be late.

To avoid this problem: Use a tracking app that sends the customer a text when you are 30 mins away.

This is so dead simple but so overlooked. With the text message arrival app you are setting yourself apart from other lawn care businesses.

Take Pride In Your Work

It might not be your lawn but it is someone’s home. You can be sure they take pride in how it looks.

If you want them to give you repeat business you need to treat it like IT IS your lawn.

Give them lawn stripes. Do nice edge work. Create art with your work.

Clean Up

Always blow grass clipping and broom the driveway. Make sure everything is spotless. Your customer will love you.

Wear Proper Work Gear (Including Safety Gear)

Wear proper steel toe boots when mowing. Wear long pants with reflective stripes. Wear either a long or short sleeve collar work shirt with reflective stripes. Have your company logo on your shirt and hat.

Make sure to also wear hearing protection headphones.

Wearing the proper gear adds trust and authority.