Free tips on running your own
Lawn Care /
Landscaping Business.
By:
StartALawnCareBusiness.com
For this weeks tip, I want to share an email we recently
received.
Dear StartALawnCareBusiness.com:
Two months ago I was
laid off from my job of 12 years. I am tired of working for
someone else and I have started my own Lawn Care business.
I used my severance
package and all my savings to buy a commercial lawn mower and a weedeater and a leaf blower. I also borrowed a thousand dollars
from my
In-laws to buy a trailer and a sign for my truck. I have put up
some flyers but I am not getting any customers.
This has GOT to work
because I can't find a job and I have already invested over
$5000 in my business.
What advice can you
give me?
Signed: (Name
Withheld)
Michigan
I want to point out that when
he wrote his email, this man had not yet purchased our
StartALawnCareBusiness.com guidebook and software.
We occasionally receive
emails like this and it is always difficult to give new business
owners all the advice they need at this point because there is
so much we need to learn about their businesses. What type of
lawn care equipment have they purchased? Is that equipment
correct for the lawns and customers they are targeting? Are
flyers their only source of advertising? What type of customer
base is available in their area? Do they have experience in the
business? Have they started small or are they immediately going
for the $100,000 state mowing contracts?...and countless other
questions.
The frustrating thing about
these emails is that this advice and the answers to his
questions are covered in our lawn care business guides. By
reading through our guides and doing a small amount of research beforehand, new business owners
can save themselves from getting into a position of desperation
that comes from making business mistakes in the early days of
their lawn care companies.
Now, this gets us to the
point of this week's tip:
Never
APPROACH YOUR
LAWN CARE BUSINESS FROM A POINT OF DESPERATION
We believe strongly in
building your business methodically. This is not to say that
you cannot get up and running within the first week of starting
your business. However, if you rush out and buy equipment
before you even know if your customer base will support it then
you might be forced into making bad decisions in the future.
Think about the mindset of
this person. He has spent all of his savings PLUS he has a
$1000 loan from his In-laws. Can you imagine owing your In-laws
money for a business that you don't even know will work? He
will now be forced into taking whatever lawn care jobs come along
first.
Let me tell you something
about customer psychology. Customers can SMELL desperation.
When you are on their doorstep giving them an estimate, they can
tell if you can be talked down on your price. You might start
out with an estimate of $40 but before long you have dropped
your price to $25 and you have included leaf raking. Yikes.
And before you walk away from this job, you will spend two hours
trying to make $25 just because you owe your silly in-laws
money.
It doesn't end there. We all
know that referrals are a great form of free advertising. What
type of referrals will this guy get? He will get referrals that
will expect him to work for two hours for $25. That is just no
good and you cannot run a long-term lawn care business with that
strategy.
Plan right, don't jump the gun, and
never be forced into running your business from a point of
desperation.
The writer of the email
eventually did review our guide. Though he made some mistakes
in the purchase of his mower, he has now learned how to target
better customers than the ones you get from putting up
only advertising flyers - "el cheapos".
This is just one of hundreds of
tips found in the
pages of the
"Start A Lawn Care Business" Lawn Care
Business training program.
Contact us anytime. Best luck with your Lawn Care Business
copyright 2009 www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com/
You may freely distribute this Lawn Care Business tip
providing all links
remain in place and it is printed in its entirety inclusive
of this notice.
