Getting the Word Out About Your New Lawn Care Business…

Advertising is a core component of any successful business.  Even if you are setting up a lawn care business, you will need a plan for getting new business and that plan is usually  considered to be your advertising or marketing plan.  When we think of advertising, we tend to limit it to Super Bowl commercials and those obnoxious ads for Geiko Insurance or used cars that come at us nonstop on TV.  But there is a lot more to advertising than that limited approach.  In fact, the vast majority of businesses find ways to get new business and get the word out about their goods or services without ever advertising on television or on the radio.

Lawn care is not a “retail” operation in the sense that you don’t have to have dozens or hundreds of customers patronize you each day to make money.  You build relationships with long term customers so there really is no need to spend the large amount of money it takes to advertise on a large scale such as TV or radio spots.  But any contractor business, which is what your lawn care enterprise is, must always be building the business.  Customers come and go so you have to find new customers to keep your income stable.  Moreover, if you want to grow your business, you have to find ways to bring new clients onto your roster so you can afford to expand the size, scope and profitability of your lawn care business.

The good news is that you should completely ignore any temptation to go into wide scale marketing.  Lawn care is a local business and the one of the great things about working on lawns for your customers is you have a small group of loyal customers that to deal with directly on a weekly basis.  You may from time to time do a “one time” project for a friend of a customer. But those are courtesy jobs done for customer relations and not the heart of how you will make  your living.

The most elaborate kind of advertising you might consider that reaches out to a large segment of the community would include flyers, a yellow pages advertisement or taking out a small ad in the local newspaper.  These marketing strategies are still focused very much on your local community.  Of those three, flyers may be the best because you can isolate which neighborhoods you will advertise in and combine the flyers with word of mouth.

Another quite effective type of advertising for your lawn care business is as simple as it is powerful.  By putting the name of your business on your truck and other vehicles, you get maximum exposure as you work in the neighborhoods where you have customers.  People get to know the name of your business as you drive the streets locally and that advertising is highly focused because it is seen where you already are enjoying success.

But of all of the forms of advertising that will bring you the most business, word of mouth and networking is still the most potent.  When someone needs a new lawn service, they will prefer the service being used by their neighbors based on watching you work and on the good opinion of people they know.  This is why when you are working with a customer, maintaining a warm and responsive relationship with every customers is important.

Don’t be afraid to do a few chores for free for each customer.  If they have something unrelated to your work that needs to be done, do it for them.  That good will is pure gold in marketing value. As you get more well known, your company gets well known and you add customers with little more effort at advertising than that.

Funding Your New Lawn Care Business…

For many people who want to start a new business, getting funding is a big issue.  That is certainly true when you want to start your own lawn care business.  To get your lawn care business going, you need customers, equipment and workers.  If you are just starting out, you may be able to do all the work yourself.  But if you are going to need the equipment to get to work right away.  If you sign a new customer, they may want you to start work that day.  So you need the equipment to get the customers.

One approach to getting around the start up costs issue is to use the equipment you already have.  If you were a lawn care contractor before you decided to turn your operation into a full time business, you may have a lawn mower, edger and other equipment and a pick up truck so you can begin taking care of your first customer’s needs.  If not, you might be able to borrow the equipment from friends or lease it until you get enough customers so you have the cash flow to use to get good equipment.

But many new businesses seek out a small business loan from investors or from a lending institution such as a bank.  If you have a solid business idea that you can document in the form of a business plan and the lender sees that your plan to start a lawn care business will most certainly work, then you can get that loan which will fund enough equipment to get started.

One thing you must do to go to a lender for that loan is document what you need and what those costs will be.  Be sure you are complete in your evaluation but don’t pad the request.  If you need a new truck to transport equipment to the job sites, include one in the funding request.  But don’t make it a luxury vehicle.  Remember, it is in your best interest to keep the loan reasonable because you have top pay that loan back and you don’t need high loan payments when you are trying to start a business.

To justify the loan, you will also have to show that you have a good business model that will result in customers and a successful start up for your new business.  The bank wants you to succeed but you have to show them that you are firmly in touch with the local lawn care market and you have a plan for bringing on enough customers to make the money you need to live and pay back the loan with interest.

This is going to take some research and a well prepared document that shows in detail how many customers you expect to start business with, how much you will charge for your services, how much overhead and upkeep will cost and how much of your income can go toward paying back the debt.  Each of these figures must be grounded in reality.  If you already have 20 customers that you will bring into the business from your contract work, then you have the grounds for this evaluation because you know the kind of income you can generate from those customers.

Also be prepared to document how you will grow the business so the lender knows you have a plan for success that will result in full repayment of the loan.  If you are using investors, they want to know they will make money from your business as well.  If you do your homework and document your business well, you will have no trouble getting the funding you need to jump start your new lawn care business.  You will be on your way to an exciting new adventure in managing your own business to great success and financial reward.

Free is Good in the Lawn Care Business…

One of the things that people who succeed in running their own lawn care business like is how you approach your work.  Unlike, when you work for someone else, you are not just doing time to punch the clock and make a paycheck.  The quest to build your own business is much more of an adventure and a huge, all consuming obsession or hobby than it is “just a job”.  There is no such thing as “punching the clock” when you own the business.  You are always thinking of ways to find new customers, make the customers you have happy so they will keep you on and recommend you to others and to fine tune the business so you are productive and profitable.

Customer service is more than just a slogan when you make your living working for a roster of loyal customers.  A lawn care business is not like a grocery store.  You don’t have hundreds or thousands of customers.  You may have a dozen or more when you start out and perhaps a hundred or so for an established lawn care business. Everything you do in building that business revolves around getting and retaining customers.  You don’t just think about customer service, you live and breathe it.

There is one principle of customer service that is one of those hidden tricks of the trade that successful lawn care professionals know. That principle is, “always look for a way to do something for your customer for free.”  This may seem to run against the concept of working for making money.  But there may be no more potent way to get new customers and to cement an existing customer as one who will stay with you for years than to occasionally find a way to give them some service that is above and beyond the call of duty.

A give away is an outstanding way to land new business especially in a very competitive market.  Even if you are talking to a potential customer that you connect to via a reference, nothing gets your foot in the door better than offering the first session of lawn care for free.  You can present this as a trial offer so the customer can get a feel for the quality work you do.  Make it no obligation so the customer knows he or she can enjoy the free service and not have to sit through a sales pitch.  You are literally letting your work stand on its own two feet.

When you go to a job site every week and spend a few hours there, it is easy to see things that can be done for the customer.  This is particularly true of a residential customer.  You may see a tree branch that should be taken down or removed from the property or a section of a fence that could use a few nails.  Part of your maintenance on the account is to visit with the customer either to deliver the invoice, discuss future work or pick up a check.

If you offer to take care of that little job that you or your crew noticed for free, that can endear you to that customer.  That little free service will come back to you in customer loyalty and in many referrals that will serve to grow your business simply because you took the time to be nice and do something for free for the good customers that you have.

Employees Are the Backbone of Your Lawn Care Business…

When you start your lawn care business, you may be able to handle a handful of customers yourself.  But if you plan to grow and to see your business prosper, you will have to take on lawn care workers as employees.  And the quality of those employees will be what makes you a great success or causes you to lose customers and flounder as a business.

Management of employees is a real art when you are trying to grow a business.  To be a success, you need just enough workers to handle the yards you have to care for and no more.  If you have too many employees on the payroll, your costs will eat up all your profits which will hurt the company.  But you may be hesitant to lay off good employees while you build the business because good employees are hard to find and sure as you reduce staff, you will get more work in and you may need those employees.

Similarly, it is a disaster if you have a surge of business and you don’t have the staff to handle all the work.  That means you, the boss, has to get out and work on lawns when you should be doing the work of running the company.  It also means overtime for the employees you have which cuts into profits and wears out your crews as well.

On top of these challenges, lawn care employees are rarely highly educated or looking at their jobs as careers.  That means high turn over.  So on any given day you can start out thinking you have enough people to fill out the crews you need to put on the road only to find holes in those crews because some employees suddenly quit, never showed up or called in sick.

These are the headaches of management.   But the upside of management is when you do find some great employees who know the work and work hard.  If they also know how to dress, how to behave with customers and how to take ownership over their work, those are the employees you should guard for all your life and nurture and develop those crew members because they will make you a success.

Too often, there is an antagonistic relationship between management and crews on a lawn care staff.  It is important you see your employees as partners with you in your quest for success for the business.  One way to do that is to empower your employees to take ownership over the success of the company.  You can give bonuses or prizes for employees who have good attendance records or who interact well with customers and help build strong relationship with the clients of the business.

Get to know your crew.  Even if the turn over is so high that you meet new crew members every day.  If you manage numerous job sites, make it a point to get around to each one each day.  Stop the work and meet the new employees and greet the ones you already know.  Just that little bit of recognition will go a long way to help employees feel part of a great company and give them a desire to help you succeed.  Then if you have pizza waiting for them when they return and take them all out for beers once a month, those lawn care workers will become your best friends for life.

It is important to step back and review your attitude toward the people who do the real work of your lawn care business.  Resist the natural urge to resent them.  This is a natural reaction when your employee costs are the largest cost item in the budget.  That is as it should be in a lawn care business.

You are a service business and you have no product except for the work these employees do for your customers.  If you make it a point to value them, to treat them like family and even to “like them”, they will notice your attitude.  They will come to like you and like the company. And that simple relationship building step is the most powerful way to build retention and to make sure that when you finally build crew of trained and talented lawn care workers, you are more likely to keep them.

Doing What You Love for a Living…

There is a joy to lawn care that is hard for some people to appreciate.  To be able to work out in nature and enjoy the breeze on your cheek, the sound of birds as you work and the fresh air is just about  healthy a lifestyle as you can imagine.  And to be able to take a yard and turn it into a beautiful and sculpted work of art is a singular joy that is one of the reasons you may have decided to start your own lawn care company.

When you do for a living what is your passion in life, you really never do go to work.  Every day going out there to dive into the craft of taking care of lawns is a joy of life that to you is fun and not work at all.  Sure, there will be physical fatigue that comes with working with your hands and body all day long.  But that is the good kind of tired because you did something good with your time and you made the world a more beautiful place.

Many lawn care businesses are started by people who simply love to garden and work with lawns.  So they decided to take what is a passion and a hobby on the weekend and make it their way of earning a living.  One reason this is a natural next step for you may be that you have reached the limits of your creative expression simply working on your own lawn.  If you have more desire to work on crafting a beautiful lawn than you can use on your own home, its a natural next step to take your skill for lawn care and turn it into a business.

You may run a different kind of lawn care business than the big commercial operations.  There is nothing written in stone that you have to start a lawn care business that exists to become a corporate giant employing thousands of people.  Perhaps you want to just own a very small lawn care operation that lets you make your full time job out of a passion you have for lawn care and working with plants.  It doesn’t take that much to support that kind of lawn care business.  If you get just enough customers to give you 4-5 yards to do each day, that is sufficient.

Your passion for what you do will come through when you are talking to perspective customers.  But what will really make you a sought after craftsman of lawn care will be the immaculate job you will do on every lawn that is put in your care.   That is because you don’t come to the job with the objective of getting it done as fast as possible so you can make a lot of money.  If you created this lawn care business to give you a vehicle to do what you love to do and get paid for it, you can dawdle over each lawn and not quit until it is absolutely perfect.

That perfection will be admired by your customers and by his or her neighbors as well. Before long you will have more requests for your services than you know what to do with.  Then you can pick and choose who you wish to work for.  You might choose based on the whether the home owner has that same passion for a beautiful lawn that you do. Or you might select clients that can accommodate your meticulous insistence on perfection and don’t mind giving you the time to create a masterpiece out of their yards.

By approaching your working this way, you will never lack for income. You may even find yourself wooed by hotels or golf courses to bring your special vision for a truly great lawn to their environment.

That is up to you as to whether you want to take on that kind of challenge.  It could be your master work to create something magnificent from a larger setting like that.   But as long as you are true to your vision for what you want to do with your time and you are doing what you love to do for a living, the details will fall into place.  And you will never regret your decision to make a living with your own lawn care business living for the joy of your work rather than just working for a living.

Competing for Lawn Care Customers…

We live in a free market. That means that anyone who is going to be successful has to know how to win customers away from the competition.  This is no place for compassion.  Granted that if you win customers away from your competitor, they will lose business which will make it harder on them to pay their bills.  That is not your problem.  By building a solid methodology for winning new customers, you can capture all of the lawn care market you need from the local markets and see your business succeed.

Bidding on a new job and winning a new customer is as much an art as the work of lawn care is.  As the owner of your lawn care company, it falls to you to do customer relations and win new customers.  There is one thing to keep in mind about how to bid on a job and that is that winning the job is about a lot more than the bid.

You would think that if you can bid the lower price, you will get the job.  But home owners and property managers are smarter than that.  They know that just hiring the cheapest lawn care company is not a good idea.  If that lawn care company makes a mess of their property, they end up with a much worse situation than is justified by the few dollars they saved on that bid.

Your reputation is a big part of your presentation to a potential new customer.  If you must present all of your credentials in a bid or an RFP (Request for Proposal), make that document well grounded in the things that are important to customers.  You can bid a higher cost than some of your competition and still win the bid if the customer is convinced you are reliable and that you will do a great job on their lawn or the grounds of their business.

So include some text discussing your background, how long you have been in business and some notable customers who have used you for years.  If you come recommended by a customer the prospect might know, include that recommendation letter or drop that customer’s name in the proposal.  The prospect will pick up the phone to verify that you are doing a great job for that customer and that live recommendation is solid gold in putting your bid ahead of the rest.

Future customers want to know that you believe you are the best company for the job.  You can prove that by including an enticing offer that is hard for the prospect to refuse. Give the prospective customer a “coupon” for the first yard care session for free.  That costs you the labor, time and gas to perform the free service. But it is a potent marketing tool that invariably results in a contract for long term service.  Also don’t be afraid to include an iron clad, no questions asked guarantee of satisfaction with your work.  Good customers will not abuse that and they will feel confident in using your service knowing you stand behind your work with that strong a guarantee.

Learning to write a good proposal is a skill you will develop over time.  There is no “one way” to write a good bid so you can use your own personality and style in putting together your proposal to the customer.  If possible present your bid to the customer in person.  Then you can use your charm and establish rapport which is even more effective. But by becoming skilled at winning new customers, you will have a crucial skill that will  go a long way toward guaranteeing that your business will have a long and prosperous future ahead of it.

Coming Up With the Perfect Name for Your Lawn Care Business…

The dream you have when you imagine starting your own business may be seeing that name on advertisements or on your business card for your new company..  So when you begin to get organized to finally start that lawn care business you have been dreaming about, the name you pick for the world to know your business is important.  Its worth putting some thought into because your business name serves a lot of functions.

If it has been a dream of yours to own your own lawn care business for a long time, part of that dream may be having your name become part of the business name.  The good of that approach is that your credibility that you already have as a lawn care professional becomes part of that name.  A business name has two jobs.  One is to be memorable so people can remember who to call when they need lawn work done. The other is to inspire confidence and tell the customer something about your business.  If you name your lawn care company, George Hamilton’s Lawn Services, (assuming you are George Hamilton), you build that credibility into part of your company name.

The downside of using your name as part of your corporate ID is that it limits you if you are thinking of building a large company that extends to other towns or spans state lines eventually.  Also if you want to sell your lawn care business in a few years, you also sell your actual name as that corporate ID is a big part of the value of the business you are selling.

Another consideration in picking a corporate logo is your internet web site that you want to create to support and advertise your business.  Experts in internet marketing tell us that the best internet URL is your company name.  So the best URL for George Hamilton’s Lawn Services is georgehamiltonslawnservices.com.  For this reason keep your lawn services company name short and easy to remember.  It is common for someone to see your truck signage or some other promotional material about your company and go to their web site and search for your URL using the company name.  So make it easy for them to find you on the internet and that will result in more customers coming from your web site.

Also be sure you check to make sure the name you have in mind is not already taken.  One way to do that is to “Google” the company name you want to use.  The other is to go to your county clerk office to register your company name.  They will find out if someone else has it.  If not, when you register it, you are reserving that name for your company so it is protected.

There are a lot of ways you can go in picking a lawn care company name.  Its not a bad idea to use a  whimsical or funny company name.  The guys who created the moving company, “Two Guys and a Truck” know the value of a humorous name.  It is memorable to your future customers which means a funny name has some serious marketing value.

Be sure you keep the name generic enough so you can add services and the name covers what you do.  If you name the company, George’s Lawn Mowing Service, that is a name that limits what you do.  By changing “lawn mowing” to “lawn care”, you can add trimming, gardening and other related services all under the same corporate ID.  So give this matter some thought even if you already have a name for your company that you really like.  Pick a name you love but also one that works for you and for your company as well..

The dream you have when you imagine starting your own business may be seeing that name on advertisements or on your business card for your new company..  So when you begin to get organized to finally start that lawn care business you have been dreaming about, the name you pick for the world to know your business is important.  Its worth putting some thought into because your business name serves a lot of functions.

If it has been a dream of yours to own your own lawn care business for a long time, part of that dream may be having your name become part of the business name.  The good of that approach is that your credibility that you already have as a lawn care professional becomes part of that name.  A business name has two jobs.  One is to be memorable so people can remember who to call when they need lawn work done. The other is to inspire confidence and tell the customer something about your business.  If you name your lawn care company, George Hamilton’s Lawn Services, (assuming you are George Hamilton), you build that credibility into part of your company name.

The downside of using your name as part of your corporate ID is that it limits you if you are thinking of building a large company that extends to other towns or spans state lines eventually.  Also if you want to sell your lawn care business in a few years, you also sell your actual name as that corporate ID is a big part of the value of the business you are selling.

Another consideration in picking a corporate logo is your internet web site that you want to create to support and advertise your business.  Experts in internet marketing tell us that the best internet URL is your company name.  So the best URL for George Hamilton’s Lawn Services is georgehamiltonslawnservices.com.  For this reason keep your lawn services company name short and easy to remember.  It is common for someone to see your truck signage or some other promotional material about your company and go to their web site and search for your URL using the company name.  So make it easy for them to find you on the internet and that will result in more customers coming from your web site.

Also be sure you check to make sure the name you have in mind is not already taken.  One way to do that is to “Google” the company name you want to use.  The other is to go to your county clerk office to register your company name.  They will find out if someone else has it.  If not, when you register it, you are reserving that name for your company so it is protected.

There are a lot of ways you can go in picking a lawn care company name.  Its not a bad idea to use a  whimsical or funny company name.  The guys who created the moving company, “Two Guys and a Truck” know the value of a humorous name.  It is memorable to your future customers which means a funny name has some serious marketing value.

Be sure you keep the name generic enough so you can add services and the name covers what you do.  If you name the company, George’s Lawn Mowing Service, that is a name that limits what you do.  By changing “lawn mowing” to “lawn care”, you can add trimming, gardening and other related services all under the same corporate ID.  So give this matter some thought even if you already have a name for your company that you really like.  Pick a name you love but also one that works for you and for your company as well.

Anticipating Trouble for Your Lawn Care Business…

When a person is in the planning stages of a new business, it is like preparation for vacation or a wedding because sometimes the process is full of idealism and optimism.  And that is healthy because when you set out to start your own lawn care business, it is up to you to demonstrate that confidence and optimism that you know how to make this new business spring to life and how to make it a success every step of the way.

So when you read the title to this article, you may have thought it was unnecessarily pessimistic.  It isn’t.  You can anticipate trouble that may come to your lawn care business and still have an ambitious, aggressive and optimistic plan for growth and success.  In fact, making plans for when trouble comes is part of your success plan because you are acknowledging that trouble will come but you are getting ready for it so it does not derail your plan for success.

Insurance is a good example of planning for trouble even though you are living your life with a plan for success.  We live in a world where things go wrong.  It takes maturity and experience to start a new lawn care business and that maturity and experience things go wrong.   By having a contingency plan to go to when there are problems, you take the teeth out of trouble because it is anticipated.  When problems arise, you simply execute your plan and accommodate the trouble so your ability to provide service to your customers is undisturbed.

After all, lawn care is a very physical business.   You have workers and machines at work and things can go wrong.  You work out of doors where weather can get in the way.  You work with nature and just about anything can happen even when working on the yard of the most civilized yard in town.  Nature doesn’t care how refined the grounds are so you should be ready if nature decides to get underfoot.

Equipment failure is not something that might happen in the life of any lawn care business.  It will happen.  So be prepared to perform emergency repairs while on a job site.  It is also a good idea to go to each job site with back up equipment.  That may mean having a reserve lawn mower and other tools so that if a breakdown threatens the crew’s ability to complete the job, you can pull the damaged equipment off of the job and put your reserve equipment in to finish the project.

Being prepared for weather interruptions is a matter of knowing your schedule and being ready if you have to bring crews in during a sudden rain storm.  You should have a contingency plan with your customers so if you cannot perform their yard care on a specific day, you can make adjustments to the schedule to get the job done as soon as the weather clears up.

You can even be prepared for injury to a worker.  First of all, hire experienced workers who know how to work with the equipment so the chances of injury are small.  But keep proper first aid equipment on hand and either you become knowledgeable in first aid and CPR or make sure someone is so if there is a medical need on the job, you can respond to it.  You should even go over emergency preparedness with your crews so, God forbid, if someone is injured so badly that they need to go to the clinic or hospital, you have someone delegated to care for the injured worker while the rest of the crew finishes the job.  Its all part of being prepared for when trouble comes so trouble can come and go and not disturb the ongoing success of your business.

Writing Your Business Plan for Your New Lawn Care Business…

Starting a lawn care business shares common steps with what anyone has to do to start a new business.  And a fundamental step of preparing to start your business is to write a business plan.  Sadly, people often procrastinate  on writing a business plan because they don’t know how to do it and they are intimidated by the process.  So understanding the basic steps of what you need for your lawn care business plan will help you get ready for this important step.

A business plan at heart is a document you prepare for investors or to present to a lending institution to get a small business loan to go into business.  It takes capital to start your own lawn care business.  There is equipment to buy, workers to hire, trucks and trailers to get, marketing materials to create and storage facilities to lease.  The funding will help you get that basic infrastructure in place before you have the revenue to pay for those costs.

Your business plan is a document to demonstrate to those who may give you the capital you need that you have a solid business concept.  It also discusses that the markets are there to support your business and that you have a realistic plan to build the business until you are making sufficient profits to pay back the money with interest or to give investors a handsome return on their investment.

This does not mean that you should skip writing a business plan if you already have what you need to start your lawn care business or if you have enough funding without taking on debt or investors.  The process of writing a business plan is a vital developmental step because it will force you to think through your plan for success.  You will create a detailed cost/benefit analysis which will call for you to gather real world cost values for the equipment you will need, the insurance you have to buy, the space you need to lease and to pay the workers you will need to support the business.

That research alone can be a lifesaver when you actually start your new business.  But you will also go to the next step of documenting if the market for your services is strong and how you will about growing the business over a five year period of time.  If you discover during this process that you do not have a sufficient market for your lawn care business, better to know that before you take the plunge of starting the business than after.  The process of building a business plan is a big step of taking your vision for your wonderful new business and making a real life projection of how that dream will play out in reality.

If you don’t know how to write a business plan, don’t panic.    There is plenty of help available.  Your local library or book store is overflowing with books that will guide you through the process.  The internet is also rich with resources to take you step by step through how to research each section of your business plan and then how to go about writing that plan in a way that will be understandable and reasonable to your backers.

You an also turn to the local chapter of the small business association for help.  Very often there are retired business men and women who volunteer to help a new small business person like you write your first business plan.  Don’t be too proud to accept their help.  They know what you are going through seeing your vision for a great lawn care business go from dream to reality and they know how to guide you through this important part of your planning and preparation.

When your business plan is done, you will be happy you took the time to complete this process.  Part of the document is a five year plan for success.  That means when you are done, you have a roadmap for how you will take your vision for a successful lawn care company from dream to reality.  That plan will go through some changes and revisions as you go along.  But just having a map to start with can be a huge help in launching your lawn care business on its road to success.

Why Lawn Care Companies Fail…

Anyone who starts a new company does so full of optimism.  The fact that a huge percentage of new businesses fail within the first few years does not slow down the number of people launching out.  That’s a good thing because our economy was built on  small business.  So if you are just getting started with your new lawn care company, congratulations. If you are confident and optimistic, more power to you!  But it is also good to know why some other lawn care companies failed so you can head off trouble before it sneaks up on you.

Probably the number one reason a new lawn care company fails is failure to control costs during start up.  This is commonly a problem when the owner and founder gets a little carried away with the idea of being CEO and puts money into vanity expenses like offices or corporate vehicles or personal benefits.  Be aware that you should not think of rewarding yourself for the success of your new venture until it really does become a success.

This can also be a problem if you secure a small business loan and you have a block of funding from investors or a bank to use to start the business.  The value of a detailed business plan is that any start up funds you borrow are allocated to things that are critical to the start of the business with nothing allocated for unnecessary spending.  It might be that you don’t even set up offices in the first year of your operation.  The heart of your lawn care business takes place out there on the streets and in the lawns and gardens of your customers.  All of your initial expenses should go toward equipment, necessary workers to support real business that you already have and promotion to gain new business.

Lack of attention to customer relations and customer service is also the downfall of too many fine lawn care companies.  When you start your business, getting and sustaining a cash flow is absolutely critical.  So once you establish a base of a few solid, repeat customers, take care of them like royalty.  Talk to them all the time so you know if they are happy with your work.  Try to find new ways to be of value to the customers you currently have.  Don’t be afraid to perform a service for free for a reliable customer to lay the groundwork for that service to become part of your contracted work with that customer.  Your attention to customer service will assure you keep the business you have.  And it will

Finally, attention to the details of running a business that are not directly related to lawn care can create monumental problems for a new lawn care company.  Accounting, knowledge of legal and tax issues and paying attention to the nitty gritty that every business has to take care of can take your business down just as quickly as poor quality of work for your customers.   The last thing you want is to suddenly realize that you have not been paying your bills or that you are in trouble with the government because you did not take care of filing proper approvals, paying your taxes or other matters of business organization.

Take the time to understand every aspect of how to run a business.  It might mean you hire an “office manager” to make sure all of those business details are attended to.  In that way, you can focus on the thing you are the best at which is building the business and doing a great job for your lawn carte customers.  If you do that and avoid the common pitfalls that take down so many new law care companies, you are in for many years or prosperity and success.

Where is Your Lawn Company?

Many people who finally launch their own lawn services company do so after operating for some time as an independent contractor.  This is a good way to go because you can build your customer base but keep your costs minimal.  Often times you may operate like this doing most of the work yourself and so avoid having to keep “employees” or deal with partners.

The thing that may be pushing you to start your own lawn care business may be that you are just too good at your job.  Your business is growing to the point that you may not be able to service all the customers without changing your profile from an individual contractor to a small business owned and operated by you.  This is a natural growth and businesses that start because of this kind of growth curve often succeed because you know the business and you know how to control costs and take good care of your customers.

The problem comes when the needs of the business outgrow your physical space that you consider to be “home base” of the business.  In most cases when you start doing lawn care as an independent contractor, you may use the same lawn care equipment that you use for your home.  Your garage is your “home base” and you keep track of the business details on your home computer.

When you take that big step of actually starting your own lawn care business, you have a decision to make.  Do you continue to use your home as the base of operations for your business or do you invest in a business location to give you offices, a larger garage and storage facilities for the wide diversity of tools and equipment you and your employees will need to take care of the business you support?

The argument in favor of operating your small business from your home is economic.  If you can launch your lawn care business with little or more additional expense and avoid taking out loans, you can use the profits to buy more equipment, pay for additional workers and eventually afford a larger space.  This is outstanding business management if you can pull it off.

The problem is that you often have to invest in growth before the growth is a reality.  To try to grow a business out of your home and garage means there will come a time right before you finally lease space for your business that it will be overwhelming your home.  That can become a big problem for your family and for keeping the equipment of your business safe and separate from your private property.  It is smart to start out keeping costs low.  But when the time comes to formally launch your lawn care business, that may be the time to secure a small business loan and get a separate operating location for your new business.

Building and maintaining a separate location that is the physical location of your business has some real advantages.  For one thing, the people who work for you and do business with you have a place to work and interact with you that is only about the goals of your lawn care business.  Your family does not have to interact with your employees or clients and you can keep your equipment and paperwork of the business in one location secure and separate.  For you, it is a place to “go to work” and it gives your business a real legitimacy that is important when you are seeking to be seen a real business operating in the lawn care markets in your community.

A separate facility gives you plenty of room to store your equipment including trucks and trailers you may need to transport your equipment to each job site.  It gives you room to work on that equipment, clean it and effect repairs.  And if you select the right location, you have room to grow when you buy more equipment to support your rapidly expanding business.  Just as you dress for success, equip your business with a “home base” that is ready for growth because you know growth will be coming.  Then the physical location of your business can grow with you step by step to greater levels of success each year.

Up Selling to Your Lawn Care Customers…

When you begin to build your lawn care business, the backbone of that business is that roster of loyal customers.  When you can take good care of the mowing, edging and other basic lawn care functions that those customers require of you, that is the foundation of a profitable lawn care business.  But as the owner of the business, you are always thinking of ways to expand your business and reach the next plateau of profitability and growth.

One level of growth comes from gaining new customers for your existing services that you and your crew do so well.  Marketing, advertising and networking to friends and neighbors of your existing customers are all outstanding ways of adding customers to your roster of loyal clients who will help you become more profitable this year.  But there is another level of growth that do just much to improve the profitability of your company and that is up selling to your existing customer base.

Up selling consists of developing and offering new services to your existing customers to broaden the range of things you can do for them.  Up selling has been proven to be one of the most reliable ways to increase profits and to grow your business without having to invest any money in marketing or advertising.  That is because your existing customers already know you.  They are aware of how good you are at what you do.  So when you can offer a new service or a range of services to them that they can benefit from, they are open to your promotions because that relationship is already there.

You also have a lot of credibility with your customers as a lawn care expert and that credibility can be translated into more business from the customers you already have.  By keeping your client’s yards looking great, your customers develop a trust that you know what their yards and gardens need.  So if you come to them with additional services that are natural add on services to what you already for them, that is a natural expansion of that relationship of trust.

An easy to implement up sell is to offer fertilization and weed control services.  Since you already spend time on your customer’s yard each week, it would be easy enough for you to apply the right kind of yard treatment to keep the weeds down and the yard growing full and lush for your customers.  You can also apply pesticides and pre-emergent in the fall and winter and in that way offer year round services to your customers.

Once you get your customers thinking of you as their “go to” service for anything that might need to be done on the property, the range of services you can offer are vast.  You can provide services as diverse as cutting and delivering firewood, repairing fence, putting and then taking down Christmas lights, cleaning gutters, tree trimming and gardening.

Before long, it will be your customers thinking of ways you can up sell to them.  It will be your job to continue expand the skills and uses of your equipment and your crew to provide those services to  your customers. But in doing so, you are becoming more valuable to your existing client base.  And you are increasing the size of the weekly or monthly invoice those customers happily pay for your services.  That is smart marketing and smart business management as well.

The Tools of the Trade…

The preparations to start your own lawn care business are not that different from starting any new business.  While the work you do of making people’s lawns look great is different from many businesses, the rules of how to start a business apply to you too.  And one big rule that you must obey before you get started is to know the costs of doing business before you launch out on your own.

Running a professional lawn care business must be done with a different approach than just doing lawn care to make money as a contractor.  You may have already learned a lot by loading up your small push Briggs and Stratton lawnmower in the back of your pickup and going around mowing lawns to make money.  Not that this is not good honest work.  But to actually upgrade from that stage to running a full scale lawn care business means you will think bigger, plan to make more money and approach the question of equipment with a bigger vision as well.

There are expenses that are a natural part of running a lawn care business.  Probably the top three expenses are (1) employees (2) equipment and (3) storage and maintenance of your equipment.  One reason you must do some realistic thinking about the equipment you will need to create a business out of your talent for lawn care is that knowing the “start up costs” is a big part of becoming a full fledged business.  When you finally have your business started, whether that means incorporation or some other format that you frame your new business in, you must be ready to get out there and start working as soon as possible.  That means moving quickly and efficiently to buy the tools of the trade for taking good care of your customer’s lawns.

The basic tools needed for lawn care are pretty easy to list.  Depending on the kinds of services your lawn care company will do, those tools might include lawnmowers, edgers, rakes, brooms, leaf blower/suckers, weed eaters, hoes, trowels, shovels and clean up equipment. If you have been doing lawn care either of your own place or as a contractor, you no doubt know this equipment well.  But that basic lawn mower that does a good job being used once a week in a home is probably not going to be sturdy enough to be used 8 hours a day, 5-7 days a week.

In addition to finding out the costs for “industrial strength” equipment, the types of contracts you will be servicing and the kinds of services you offer impact equipment needs.  If you are going to be the primary lawn care service for a large golf club, you will need large riding lawn mowers and other equipment that can handle such a big job.  Also think about storage and transportation of that equipment and any maintenance needs you will have in keeping the tools of the trade that make your business work in tip top operating equipment all the time.

As a rule, start out evaluating the equipment you will need for your first few months of business.  If you already have customers, just upgrade the equipment you have been using to be ready for the expansion of business you are planning.  Don’t invest in equipment to support hundreds of large scale corporate contracts if you are starting off with a dozen residential customers that will be the starting place for your business. Plan for today and for your next step in growing your business.  And grow your equipment and employee base to support the business as it grows.  That is sensible business management that will serve you well day one and for years to come as your lawn care business continues to grow and succeed.

Becoming Profitable in Your Lawn Care Business…

There are a lot of good reasons for starting your own lawn care company.  You might do it for the freedom that being your own boss gives you. You might do it to focus 100% on doing work that you are very good at which is making people’s lawns and gardens look great.  Or you might do it because you know you can do a better job running a business than the people you work for.  But the basic reason to start any business it to become profitable and successful so you can support yourself and your family and see your business grow and succeed.

So is it possible to make a good profit running a lawn care business?  Of course it must be otherwise there would not be lawn care companies that stay in business year after year.  To make your own business work, there are some basics of building a profitable business that you must keep in mind to apply to your situation as you launch your lawn care business and begin to get customers and generate revenue.

Profitability is not a complicated idea.  It is basically making more money than you spend.  But it is a mistake to think you can reach profitability simply by controlling costs.  Too many businesses have gone under putting all the emphasis on efficiency and cost savings and not enough emphasis on getting new customers and customer retention.  You can see profitability when you and your crews are all fully engaged in money generating work every working hour of every day.

This can be a challenge particularly as you grow to where you can need to keep multiple crews going every day.  To keep each team on a job site, completing work and then moving to the next job site and juggle the work and the workers each and every day is a test of your management ability.  But you learn the art of managing larger and larger teams and larger jobs as your business grows from just you and your small collection of tools to an empire.

As a manager, job one if customer retention.  Job two is gaining new customers.  Job three is cost control and making sure your teams are performing at peak efficiency while delivering top quality work to your customers.  The customer focus needed to become profitable must go further than just you, the owner of the business.  You must instill it in your employees.  It is when you can capture the business of a nice roster of repeat customers that you have the basis for profitability as you take care of the work these customers give you each week.

As the owner and manager of your lawn care company, you must always be looking for ways to capture more business.  This means marketing and advertising sometimes.  But it also means making sure the work you do for existing customers is done well.  If there was the heart of true profitability for your lawn care business, it is not primarily cost controls although that is a vital part of any successful business.  The real heart of profitability is customer satisfaction.

With satisfied customers, you can build a budget of reliable income from the monthly payments of that customer base.  Happy customers will give you new work as you expand the kinds of services your lawn care business offers.   And happy customers give you referrals as they tell their friends of neighbors about the lawn service they are so happy with.  That word of mouth marketing is free to you and it will get you more business than any other type of advertising.  These are all great reasons to take very good care of the customers you have and grow from that base to greater profitability each year.

The Steps of Starting a Lawn Care Business…

Most of us daydream of starting our own business.  If you work for someone else, even if it is doing something you love, there are issues that you have to contend with.  If the work you love is lawn care, its common to see flaws in how the people you are working for are running the business and to think, “Hey I can do better than that”.  Also the allure of starting your own business is that if you are a success (and we presume you will be), you are the one making money off of the work of others.

So maybe its time to stop daydreaming and get out there and start that new business.  There are some steps to follow to accomplish that dream.  The first commandment of starting a lawn care busiess is that you are still starting a small business and you will need to follow many of the procedures that any small business start up will go through.  A visit to the small business association in your town is always a positive first move.  They will have literature, some free courses and sometimes free consultation with retired people who know all about how to start a business.   If you can get that kind of help, you will get a fast track education in what you must do to get your new business up and running.

One big step any advisor you consult will have you take before you do anything about your dream of starting your own lawn care business is to write a business plan. This is not as difficult as it sounds.  It is basically an organized documentation of your dream combined with some real world research in how you will make that dream a reality.  The primary purpose of your business plan is to give you something to take to investors or to a bank or some other lending institution to get funding to start up your new business.

If you have all the money you need or if you already have the equipment you need to start your business, maybe you don’t need a business plan.  But it still is a good idea to write one.  The process will force you to create a five year plan so you set out on day one on a path to growth and success.  And even if you have enough money and equipment to get started, you will want to grow and expand and that might take a small business loan.  That is where having a business plan in  place will pay off.

Before you quit your “day job”, think about the steps you will take to make your new business profitable quickly.  You may need to spend a few months while you are still employed by someone else building your equipment inventory, planning for a storage facility and landing customers who will give you their lawn care business when you break off from the world of being an employee and launch your business for real.

The research you do now before you make the big step of setting up a new business will be a life saver down the road.  There is a lot to learn such as whether you will incorporate your business or just pick a business name and get started.  You should spend some time learning about how to keep the books, do the accounting and manage both the money you make and the bills you will pay as a business.   You can think through if you will employ others and get some training in what involves as an employer both financially and legally.

There is more to running a lawn care business than gassing up the mowers and going to work.  By doing your preparation work while you still have a paycheck coming in, you vastly improve your chances of success because you will “hit the ground running”  That fast start will get your new lawn care business off the ground for a long and successful as well as prosperous business for you.

The Joys and Pitfalls of Working for Yourself…

There may be lots of reason you had when you began to start your own yard care business.  It is a natural way for you to take your skills at creating masterpieces in the yards of your customers and turning it into a business.  It could be that you work for a yard care company and after watching them bumble the business side of things, you just know you can do a  better job.

One of the biggest reasons that people of every discipline give for going into business for themselves is that they can get rid of the boss and finally call the shots on how the business will be run.  One of the great joys of running your own yard care business is that when you are a success, that sense of accomplishment you get as you see your business prosper is a thrill  that you could never experience if you spent your career working for other people.

You also get to set the tone and the “corporate culture” when it is you that owns and operates your yard care business.  How many times have you worked for a boss who wanted you to work hard making his yard care business a success but that boss didn’t know a thing about yard care and did not get in there and do the work with you?  You can correct that by getting the best from your employees by being just as hard a worker as they are.   And by  creating a genuine spirit of teamwork and cooperation in your employees, you will get so much more from them than the failed management practices of your previous employers.

There is an old joke about working for yourself that you will have a fool for a boss and a lazy staff.  That joke points out that when it is you who is in charge of the business, all of a sudden, how things work takes on a new perspective.  Now it is you who notices the failings of the workers you are paying to make your business a success.  Now it is you who cannot always go out on every job and work shoulder to shoulder with them because you have marketing to do or you have to meet with the investors or stay back and work on scheduling or taxes.

The paperwork and management detail that it takes to run a successful company is often one of the hardest things to take when you are the one running the lawn care company.  The one thing you love about lawn care is being outside, working with nature and turning lawns into things of beauty.  So when you suddenly have to spend work time doing duties that go with managing a company, you actually find yourself doing what you love to do less than before and doing what you hate, paperwork, a lot more.  That is a serious drawback to owning your own lawn care business that you should be aware of before you launch the business.

You will also work much harder then you ever knew you would be able to work when it is your business on the line.  When you were an employee, you might have had to work overtime every so often and when you did, you may have gotten extra pay. When you own the business, you will live and breathe that business.  It will come home with you sleep with you and you will work overtime virtually constantly.

That kind of commitment goes with the territory when you are the boss.   Because the business is “your baby”, it is easy to get obsessed with success and to take problems that come along hard.  Many small business operators get ulcers or get overworked easily.  You should be prepared for the demands of owning a business so it doesn’t hurt your family life because those demands are real and you should be ready for them in advance.

It is very exciting to own and operate your own business.  But success comes with a cost.  Talk to others who have started lawn care businesses so you get a feel for the tough road that lies ahead.  If you do that, the pitfalls of the job of being the owner of your own lawn care business won’t surprise you and you will learn to be a winner and to guide your new business to great success.

Starting a Lawn Care Business Doesn’t Have to Cost Anything…

Usually when a person thinks about starting a new business, there are a lot of costs.  But there are ways to start your lawn care business without spending a dime.  All you have to do is get a few customers and begin working to generate cash flow and then the money from those customers will help you have the funding to pay for the expenses of your business.  But you have to know how to find ways to get the business up and running and do so without spending any of your own money.

For one thing, you don’t have to spend any money to “start a business”.  You can create a company name, print up some flyers and even business cards on your home computer and presto, your company just became a reality.  Down the road you can go to the county clerks office and register your company name so nobody else can use it.  Even that usually only costs $20 or so.  It is when you incorporate to become a financial entity that the costs come up and you can put that off for a long time.

You can get your business going using the equipment you have and even the transportation you have. If you have a pickup truck and the lawn care equipment you use to mow your own lawn and take care of it, you are in business.  Use that home computer you have to create some flyers to put out on people’s doors. Take an afternoon and walk the entire neighborhood and put a flyer in each persons front door announcing you are in business.

To make it enticing, offer to give the first lawn care session to the customer for free.  All this costs you is gas.  You will get dozens of phone calls and within a couple weeks, you will have so many customers, you will be busy every day.  The money will start to flow and you will have the revenue to begin to buy more equipment and better transportation and even put a sign on your truck with your company name.

You can even find labor to work for you for next to nothing by offering a partnership in the company.  Offer to give your first workers 10% ownership in the company for the first year.  For the first couple months, there may not be any profits.  After you get a dozen customers or paying you for lawn care, you can pay your workers a portion of what you are paid.  Then at the end of the month, total up your profits.  Remember that you may wish to put back 40% of the profits for business developments.  If there is only $500 left after everything is paid for, you give your “partners” $50.  You do that for a year and you are free and clear and you got their labor in those crucial first few weeks of the business for free.

Also keep in mind that if you have good credit, you can get a credit card in the company name.  Get that card a couple weeks before the business starts and you have a little bit of funding to pay for gas and supplies.  Even if the credit card only has a credit limit of $5000, that is plenty to pay for supplies until you get payments coming in from customers.  Then you pay off the credit card from what you made from the work you have done and you never had to pay a dime of your own money even for gas or trash bags.

Eventually you may wish to expand the business to make it bigger and buy professional equipment and actually hire employees.  But if you have gotten your business up and running “by the seat of your pants”, banks and investors will in up to be back your lawn care business.  With their funding and your solid business management skills, there is no telling how big your lawn care business might get and how rich you might get by simply building a lawn care business that you started for free.

One Step Ahead of Success…

There is a question that you should ask yourself very early in your thinking about starting your own lawn care business.  It may seem like a silly question but it isn’t.  The question is, “Do I plan to be a success?”  You may think that it is a silly question because why would anyone go into a new business venture without a plan for success?  But it is surprising how many people start a new business and do not plan to be successful.

You have to make an effort to stay one step ahead of success.  But if success is coming your way as you think it will, you have to be ready for it.  Success in the lawn care business means more customers or more demand for additional services from existing customers.  It may mean a sudden arrival of a very large job like landing a golf course or a major corporate account which may call upon you to expand your business dramatically and quickly.  So think ahead about how you will respond to such success so when it arrives, you are ready for it.

When you began your lawn care business, you no doubt wrote a business plan.  Part of that business plan should have been a five year projection of growth for your business.  Perhaps you predicted a conservative growth of 10% for each of the first five years of the business.  That means that if you genuinely expect that kind of growth, if you have 50 customers, next year you will have 55.  Are you ready for 5 new customers this year?  Do you have the staff for that new business?  How will that growth impact your equipment needs?  If you need to add 10% more equipment to handle that business, do you have the storage for that equipment?  Do you have the transportation to send out crews to five new customers each week?

These are practical questions.  But if you genuinely expect to grow by 10% a year, that is a finite number. Because you are already supporting a specific number of customers, you know in detail how much resource each customer needs.  You know how many customers one crew of workers can take care of in a week.  You know how many mowers, edgers and other equipment to keep on hand and you know how much space and transportation you need to handle that workload.  Your business may be very well tuned to the current number of customers so you very little excess but you have sufficient labor and equipment to handle your customer load.

To stay one step ahead of success, you begin each year planning to add the workers, the equipment and the support space and supplies to take care of the anticipated growth.  Do a detailed review of your equipment and your physical facility and transportation.  If you are at capacity, begin now planning to acquire new equipment and new space and transportation if that will be needed when that new business comes along.

Notice we used the word “when”, not “if” the new business comes along.  If you genuinely expect to succeed this year, you know that business is coming and you are already making plans to accommodate it.   If you are not getting ready, you dream of success but if it comes, you will have no plan to handle that additional load.  That means that new business is not a blessing, its a crisis as you stress your staff and equipment to handle the new business until you can get ready.

Managing a new yard care business means being ready when success arrives so you smoothly integrate it into your business plan.  While you are planning, what will you do when explosive success arrives?  While you cannot buy ahead for a sudden increase in business of perhaps 60-90%, you should have a plan to respond if sudden opportunity, like that big golf course deal, comes along.

A strategic partnership with another yard care service to help you handle the load is one way to be prepared.  Or having your suppliers and financers ready to respond if you need to gear up in a hurry is another way to be ready for explosive growth. But start now planning for success.  Then when it comes along, you simply implement your plan and enjoy the success that any kind of growth will bring for your business.

Learning the Tricks of Marketing for Your Lawn Care Business…

It is easy to get intimidated by some of the roles you take on when you start your own lawn care business.  You may be an expert at lawn care and everything that goes with it.  You know all about how to buy great equipment and how to keep it in good working condition.  You know all about lawns, gardens and how to support just about any request your customer’s might make of you pertaining to the outdoor space around their homes or businesses.

But being a busiess person means knowing about things you may have never wanted to know about such as accounting, management, taxes, social security, withholding, leases and employee benefits.  But these elements are just as important as the work you do at a customer site if you hope to be a success as a lawn care business.  One of the area of expertise that you should get over that sense of intimation about is marketing.

You don’t have to become an advertising expert to find the right marketing plan to promote your lawn care business.  On the other hand, if you want to succeed and see your business grow, getting the word out to new customers is a must.  You know that any business sees a steady turnover of customers.  While lawn care is all about long term relationships with clients, you do need to replenish your client roster continuously.  But more than that, if you want to grow, you should have  marketing plan in place that will bring you new customers regularly so you can enjoy the growth you want to see your service go through.

There are many avenues of expression that you can use to reach out to new customers.  There is television and radio advertising, newspaper ads, billboards, magazine advertisements, flyers and many more.  The first rule of thumb is to see marketing strictly as a means to the end of getting new customers.  Avoid the temptation to get too creative or “show off” in your marketing.  Just because Geiko and Sonic put funny advertisements on TV, that doesn’t mean you have to.  Those commercials are expensive to make so to afford to use that kind of high end advertising, you have to justify it in terms of potential new business.

You may get to the point in your growth that those flamboyant and fun commercials are a good fit to your marketing objectives.  But make sure your marketing goals are 100% built around your business needs so you don’t make the mistake of spending a lot of money or marketing that is not making your business lots of money in return.

Fit your marketing plan to the size of your business and to who your future customers are.  Many times a very simple and inexpensive form of marketing is also the most effective for getting you new business.  That sign that you had made up to put on the side of your company trucks and vans is outstanding a marketing.  You will get most of your new business from people who see in working in the neighborhoods where you already are successful.  By simply making it easy for people who see you out and about to contact you, many times you never have to do anything more to get all the customers you need.

By taking advantage of the least expensive and most productive advertising and marketing first, you can see your business grow while keeping your marketing budget under control.  Then when your lawn care businesses as big as Sonic or Geiko, then you can employ cavemen and cartoon lizards to get the word out about your business.

Knowing the Ropes

To start a business in any field of expertise, the first step to success is to know what you are doing.  While it may not seem that it takes tremendous experience to mow lawns, running a full service lawn business requires a knowledge of equipment, an ability to offer a variety of lawn and garden services and a knowledge of customer service and expectations that do require some experience and wisdom in order to see the kind of success you want.

The best way to learn the nuts and bolts of actually running a lawn business is to work for one.  This “paying your dues” phase is about more than just showing yourself able to do the various jobs that a professional lawn care specialist can do.  It is about sitting under the guidance of someone who is running their own lawn business and “spying” on how it is done and how your bosses handle various situations to keep the business moving forward toward success.

What initially inspires someone to start a lawn care business is their love of the work.  But what goes on in addition to doing a great job making your customer’s lawns look great is what is the difference between a lawn care worker and someone who is running their own small business that is focused on lawn care.  And perhaps the most important aspect of that business is marketing.

The primary way of getting new busiess when you run a lawn care company is word of mouth.  Pay attention to the boss when you are working for a lawn care company as a way of learning the ropes.  When you go on a job with the boss and owner of the lawn care company you work for, you will notice he spends as much time talking to the customer as he does doing the work.  That is the heard of marketing because by making happy customers, your boss will get referrals.  That is also very smart marketing.

By taking a job in a lawn care company, you are in the finest “college of lawn care” there is.  You are in the school of real life.  You will see why your boss’s company is a success.  You will also see failures and problems that crop up and how that lawn care company you work for handles those roadblocks.  If they do a great job resolving problems, they will be profitable and you can learn from their success.  If problems cause the business to lose money, you can learn from their mistakes at no expense to you.  That is also solid gold training you will use when you start your own lawn care company.

You will have to decide whether to confess to the lawn care company you go to work for that you are there to learn now to run a successful operation.  In some cases, that will endear you to the boss who will give you private lessons in management, taxes, accounting, recruitment, marketing, maintenance and all of the aspects that you must be good at to make your lawn care business thrive.

But it is possible that if you tell your current boss you are there to learn the business in order to start a competing business, that can create bad feelings or even cost you the job.  So you may have to keep your true motivations for being there to yourself.  Nonetheless, continue to do a good job for your boss while paying scrupulous attention to everything that lawn care company you work for has to do to be successful as a business.  You might even take notes and write up what you learn each day.  When you finally step out of the “employee” role and strike out on your own, those notes will be your Bible on what to do and what NOT to do to be a success with your lawn care business.  Your time in training will be time well spent when you avoid the pit falls and see your new lawn care company grow from the first day of operation on out.

Knock Your Lawn Care Customers Socks Off with Customer Service…

The lawn care business is all about customer service.  Your workers no doubt have the perception that all you do is cut grass.  But in reality you are creating an environment for a home or business.  You don’t “work for” that lawn or green space that you work on.  You work for a customer and the satisfaction of that customer is what will determine if you will be working on that lawn one time or if you have landed a long term customer who will use you for a wide variety of projects.

The lawn care business thrives on customer service.  And as the owner of that lawn care business, it is you who has direct contact with the customer.  In a way, you have to have two skills.  You must be a master of yard care to guide your workers to do a professional job on each yard.  But you also must be a master of customer relations and even psychology to understand the customer and to find out what you can do to make that customer happy.

Part of great customer service means giving your customers ample opportunity to stay in touch with you.  That means if they need to call you to reschedule their yard care appointment, to ask a question or even to complain, they don’t get put through a phone answering system that sends them to a recording.  Give them your cell phone number and no matter where you are, answer that phone. You might even have a cell phone you carry at all times that is only for customers to use to get in touch with you.   This might change when you have thousands of customers.  But most lawn care services are very local and you know your customers well.  Let them get to you so you can answer their concerns instantaneously.

Instruct your workers to also have a customer service mentality.  If they are working at a site and the customer comes out to talk to them, they should stop working and talk to that customer.  If a sweet grandma wants to bring them lemonade, drink it!  When you go onto a persons property every week, you become a trusted part of the home. So behave like you are part of the family and that bond with the customer will serve you well.

Also be on the alert for anything you can do for the customer that is above and beyond the call of duty.  Never miss a chance to do something for free for customers that you are building a long term relationship with.  It may be no more than cleaning up a mess around the trash cans or nailing a few boards up on their back fence to keep the dog in.  Those little acts of generosity will endear you the customer and build that sense of trust that results in long term customers who recommend you to friends and neighbors alike.

In every way behave like a guest when you are on the property of a customer.  Don’t smoke or allow your workers to smoke in presence of a customer and above all, don’t throw the butts on the ground.  Dress like professionals and have in a civilized manner even when working on the lawn of your customers.  Don’t embarrass your customer to his or her neighbors. Every minute you are working at a customer site, people are watching from the other homes in the neighborhood and they can see the sign on your trucks identifying your lawn care service.  Be aware of those eyes and use the time you are working to present a professional image to onlookers.  Those hidden watchers may be evaluating you to use for their lawn care service too.

Maintain scrupulous behavior standards for your workers when at a customer site.  You should clean up after yourself and leave the site looking immaculate when you are finished.  When the job is done, go to the door and thank the customer for the chance to work for them.  As you depart with a cheerful, “see you next week”, you build relationship and expectation that you will be back when needed to knock the customer’s socks off with outstanding customer service once again.

Keeping Your Lawn Care Business Going Year Round…

There are a number of jobs that simply go idle when the weather is not cooperative.  People in the construction business know what it means to have to fill months of their schedule waiting for the weather to be friendly so they can work.  Teachers also are idled throughout the summer but not for weather reasons.  But when you are operating your own yard care business, you may not be comfortable with simply not working through the winter months. Not only is that hard on your business, it is hard to keep employees when they cannot make a living when it is cold and icy outside.  The bills still have to be paid, even when yard care is not as much of a hot business as it is in the spring and summer.

One way to generate business is to offer yard care services that are perfect for the winter months.  There are things that can be done to a yard such as turning a section in preparation for replanting and the laying down of pre-emergent chemicals that will stop weeds from growing in the spring.  Tree and shrub trimming are perfect winter yard care activities because the best time to trim trees is when they are hibernating.  By building your skills and equipment to help people with their tree needs, you can find work in the wintertime.

Of course, winter is also a good time for you to do your internal maintenance.  If you do have a week when you have no contract work to do, take advantage of those days by cleaning, repairing and tuning your mowers and other equipment.  If you have property and buildings that your business uses, these are also good months to do your upgrades, painting and other chores that you could not get to during the yard care business when you had to focal all of your energies on the ongoing projects of your customers.

From a business perspective, it is a good idea to bank some funds in preparation for these months.  Even if you have some fall back work you can turn to during the winter, your business will have expenses to be paid.  By setting aside a percentage of your revenue during the 8-10 productive months of the year, you have a slush fund to use for repairs and maintenance or simply to financially get by until you can begin working actively on yard care jobs when the weather improves.

It is also a good idea to do some creative thinking about how you will use months when yards are under ice and snow and you cannot perform your primary mission in life.  In states that get very wintry, there may be plenty of work to be had in snow and ice removal. This is a service you can discuss with your yard care customers.  They know and trust you and they may be quite open to contracting with you on a “per job” basis to come and clear the ice and snow from their driveways, porches, steps and sidewalks when Mother Nature unloads.

Many yard care businesses also diversify and offer services that are similar to yard care but customized to the seasons.  You may have the equipment to put up Christmas lights for people who want a beautiful display but are not physically able to decorate their houses, yards and roofs to fit their vision.  With your crew of trained guys, you can get up on those roofs and put those Santa Clause figures and lights wherever your customers want them.  And these contracts come with automatic follow up work taking down those Christmas decorations so they can be stored for next year.

Use your imagination to find viable ways to keep you and your crew busy all winter.  There is often work available on Christmas Tree farms helping people cut trees to take home for the holidays.  If you have the tools and the skills, you can even offer indoor maintenance work or fence repairs that can be taken care of during the months that you are waiting for the return of yard care jobs.  By being creative, you can keep your crew active all winter long and even keep the budget of your lawn care business working so you don’t lose any ground on your path to success just because it is cold outside.

Its Not About the Lawn.  Its About the Customer

If you asked someone outside of the business of lawn care what it takes to be a success, they would probably say that it takes an ability to do a great job taking care of lawns.  And it is true that anybody who runs a lawn care business must be able to perform the functions of mowing and trimming a lawn and offer other services that customers come to expect.  That might be considered a “minimum requirement” of a good lawn care business.

But if you are getting ready to start your own lawn care business, it is important you understand a hidden truth about being a success in this kind of work.  That truth is that it is not about the lawns.  It is about the customers. And once you focus the majority of your energies and focus on the customers of your lawn care business, you will have found the key to long term success and growth that will carry you as far up toward the latter of success as you wish to go.

To get a good feel for what you need to know to make your lawn care business a success, evaluate two things.  Get and understanding for why people hire a company to do their lawn care and then understand why they fire a company from working on their lawns.   If we made a list of how those two decisions are made, the ability of a company to do a good job of lawn care is on the list but it does not dominate the list.  Many lawn care companies can do a fine job of taking care of lawns but do a horrible job of customer service and customer relations and they fail.

People hire a lawn care company the most often because they come recommended.  That  means that they find out from a friend or neighbor who worked on their lawn or they observed who worked on their lawn and they decided they liked that company.  Word of mouth is the number one most potent marketing tool for any lawn care busiess.  And word of mouth depends on one variable only and that is customer relations.

If a neighbor looks down the street at a perfectly sculpted lawn, that will draw their interest in hiring that lawn care company.  But when they interview their neighbor about that company, that is when the recommendation will make or break of that new customer comes your way.  Similarly, many lawn care companies who can create masterpieces out of their customer’s lawns lose the contract because they don’t understand how to interact with customers and how to anticipate their needs.

When you go onto the property of a customer every week to do their lawn care, you are entering their private space.  That customer must have a sense of trust for you and for your crew to allow that invasion of their space to happen every day.  If the people you employ scare the customers or if they behave in a way that upsets the customer, that is a sure way to lose a client even if those workers do immaculate work on lawns.  That means that not only do you have to understand customer relationships, your workers must know how to handle customers as well.

Customer relations is also all about communications.  The customer doesn’t want to see you drive up, work on their lawn and disappear until it is time to pay the bill.  A person’s lawn is personal to them and they want to be able to access the management of the company which includes you, the crew chief in charge of that lawn and even the workers.  That customer should be able to walk out of their home while your workers are on the property, stop the work and talk to them and feel like they were responsive to their needs.

That customer should also  be able to call your office and get you when they have a concern or want to discuss new business.  That means you don’t route customers through an automated answering service.  Give them access to you, the boss of the lawn care company, every time they call.  If you are responsive to customers, communicate with them and let you know you value you them as much as you value their lawns, you will win many contracts with that approach and keep those customers for years.

As Strong as Your Weakest Link…

When you start your own lawn care business, there are a lot of new situations you have to get used to.  Perhaps you did lawn care for years as an independent contractor or you worked for someone else on their payroll.  The work of lawn care doesn’t change and if that is what you love to do, you are on the right track starting your own lawn care business.  But when it is you who runs the show, the world is a very different place.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment will be that when you own your own business, you suddenly are confronted with this new creature called an employee.  But it is the employees you have on board with you that will make or break your yard care business.  That means that one of the most important skills you will develop as a manager and owner of a business will be your ability to pick, hire and retain great employees.  That is because your business will truly be as strong as your weakest link.

If you used contract labor when you got busy before you turned your lawn care into a business, you developed some skills for evaluating who would be a good worker.  If you did get that chance, that judgment will be invaluable to you as you build your own small army of quality employees.  It is quite a balancing act to capture enough business to keep all of your employees busy and then to think about growing your business as well.

If you get a rush of new business, you want to capture it and turn those customers long term clients.  But you have to be able to add new employees to take care of all of that business and be able to trust those employees to take care of that business well so the job they do for those new customers is just as high quality as you would do yourself.  Perhaps the best important resource you can find is a labor source who can provide you with a consistent supply of workers who do a good job for you.  Whether this is a community that you network with to draw workers from or a placement service, you will benefit from having a way to recruit good employees without having to make that your job in life.

It seems that the balancing act of work and employees is one of the most difficult parts of owning a business to work out.  You might have too much business and not enough employees you can depend on.  Then you find yourself overworking the good employees you have and playing higher wages for their longer hours and you get overworked yourself which cuts down on the time you can spend growing your business.  Or you have too many employees when the business shrinks.  Then you have a decision of whether to lay off good employees that you want to have on call when your business expands.

Above all, when you develop a strong staff of good employees, you should bend heaven and earth to take care of them.  Morale in your employee ranks can be as much of a determining factor for the growth of your business as good customers or good equipment you need to take care of all those lawns that are the heart of your work.  Learn to be a “good boss”.  If employees you know are good workers develop problems, try to work with them to return them to productivity.

If you can keep a good group of employees working with you and you are always developing new talent, you will have conquered one of the biggest challenges of running your own lawn care business.  It will be a skill that will be a key component to long term success.  And if you can give your employees a little part of the success you are enjoying, they will become an even more valuable asset which is a loyal crew that will work hard for you because you take good care of them.