Start A Lawn Care Business

Make money with a lawn care and landscaping business.

Archive for January, 2011

Is Lawn Care a Luxury?

Jan 27

Posted by Lawn Care Business in advertising lawn care, economy, lawn care customers | No Comments

Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, answered a question recently from a listener to his radio program:

Dear Dave,

We currently pay to have our lawn mowed each week. This expense is figured into our monthly budget, but we’re not quite out of debt yet. My wife says this is a luxury at this point, and I should cut the grass myself until we’re out of debt. What do you think?

Dave’s answer to this lawn care question was very close to the way we would have answered this question.

We believe most financial questions should be answered from a standpoint of a cost/benefit analysis.  In essence, does the cost of the product/service outweigh the benefit of that product/service. If the cost outweighs the benefit then it is a luxury.

Dave Ramsey mentioned that a Doctor or a Lawyer with a high income can easily afford to hire a lawn care company. In fact, high income households SHOULD hire lawn care companies instead of doing the lawn themselves as they will make much more money performing their careers than they will pay for lawn care. Ramsey goes on to state that someone earning $12/hour will probably not earn enough at their job in the amount of time they would save by hiring a lawn care professional, therefore, they should cut the grass themselves.

We think Dave’s answer if pretty good. However, we can think of many examples when a $12/hour employee would hire a lawn care company and a Doctor would cut his own grass. Ability to take time off work is a great example. $12/hour employees often have their work lives dictated to them by their bosses. They often have to work double shifts and weekends because their bosses tell them to. They are often scrambling for extra hour of overtime they can get to increase their paychecks.

Doctors, on the other hand, often have much more autonomy in their jobs. They are able to take time away from work and if gardening or lawn care is their hobby then they don’t want to hire lawn care professionals even if they can afford it.

As a lawn care business owner, it is wise of you to consider your customer’s cost/benefit analysis. Seeing their budget through their eyes can help you point out how valuable your services are. Yes, we all want roster full of high income clients. However, sometimes, a $12/hour employee often needs, and is willing and able to pay, you to cut their grass on a weekly basis.

Our lawn care business guidebook has a great section showing you marketing strategies to help you gain a wide range of lawn care customers. We believe you need a good mix of lawn care customers to have a truly successful operation.

Learn more at our main website:
Start A Lawn Care Business
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Hispanic Labor in the Lawn Care Industry

Jan 26

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

A recent Huffington Post article discussed the labor crisis in America and how undocumented Hispanic laborers are stepping in to jobs that require very demanding work such as lawn care and landscaping.  A response to the article stated:

“I have a friend who has a lawn care service and he pays 10-15 per hour with a guarantee of 20 hours per week, rain or shine. He rarely gets Americans to apply.”

Through our website, www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com, we get to speak with many lawn care business owners and people who are thinking about starting their own lawn care businesses.  It is no doubt that the Hispanic labor force has had a dramatic impact on the lawn care industry from a labor standpoint.

Since have almost 20 year’s experience in the lawn care industry, we speak with many people who are thinking about or in the beginning stages of starting their own lawn care companies.  We are noticing an increase in the number of Hispanics calling us to ask advice about starting their own lawn care companies.  In fact, many Hispanics who have worked as lawn care laborers are now taking the first steps in starting their own companies.

Tell us what you think about this.

Are you a lawn care operator who employs a Hispanic labor force?  Has your lawn care company been impacted?  Are you Hispanic who is thinking about starting your own lawn care company?

We attempt to stay up-to-date with all of the latest trends of the lawn care industry.  So, if you have a minute, write to us and let us know your thoughts.

You can contact us here:  Lawn Care Business Contact Form

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Money Raking Leaves – Even in January

Jan 26

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bidding lawn care, leaf blowers, leaf raking, money | No Comments

If you think the leaf raking season is over, you might want to think twice before putting the leaf rake away until autumn.

Last week, after a 7″ snowfall had finished melting, I was driving through a few local neighborhoods checking on lawn conditions.  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a sign proclaiming: “Leaf pickup. This area next. Last Round.”   This morning, I heard the familiar high-pitched whine of the county’s leaf vacuum as it made one last pass through our city’s streets.  If you’re still hoping to make money raking leaves, don’t give up yet.

While most lawn care customers have long since composted all their leaves, late leaf fall due to winter winds and a procrastinating public make it necessary for leave trucks to make one last pass during January.  If you are in an area of the country where leaf pickup is an ongoing concern even during January, it’s time to grab your gloves and leaf rake so you can make some much needed money during this long winter season.

Don’t forget, if you want to make money raking leaves, proper pricing is essential so you can make great money for your lawn care business.  Our “start a lawn care business” training package teaches you how to bid lawn care jobs including leaf raking.  You can learn more on our main website:

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

Make Money Raking Leaves - Even in January

Leaf Pickup. This Area Next. Last Round

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Dealing with Complaining Lawn Care Customers

Jan 25

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

Dealing with lawn care customers is often a tricky balance at best.  You, as a lawn care business owner, must attempt to understand the customer’s expectations of a job you are bidding and then balance those expectations with the amount you charge for your services.

As careful as you are to balance a customer’s expectations with the price you are charging for a particular job, you will likely run into an occasional customer who is determined to be dissatisfied with any level of service you offer.    Ugh…those customers are annoying and they can derail an otherwise perfect day.  A perpetual complainer wastes your time and drains your enthusiasm.

As you gain experience in your lawn care business, you will learn to watch for warning signs during the initial customer contact and during the bidding and estimation process.  Proper interpretations of warning signs will help you avoid problem customers.  We are not speaking about an otherwise good customer who has an occasional gripe about your service.  Instead we want to help you avoid problematic customers who have never ending streams of complaints and continuously misinterpret the services you agree to offer.

We recently had a problem customer.  The annoying fact is that we gave this customer the exact same level of service that we offered our other customers.  We spent a great deal of time attempting to understand the customer’s complaint and determining if we had done something wrong.  To our dismay, the customer simply turned out to be one of those whiners in life that are never satisfied with anything.  I’m sure you know those type of people; they always feel that someone is doing them wrong and no matter what you do, you can’t help them to see the value in the product and service you offer.

After almost 20 years associated with the Lawn Care Industry we feel we have developed a “pretty good” strategy at avoiding perpetual complainers.  However, ocassionally, one or two problem customers get through our screening process.

Do you feel that you get more than your fair share of complaining customers?  If you are providing great service at a fair price, maybe the problem is your screening process.  To learn more about how to properly interview lawn care customers, read our main webpage about our Lawn Care Business training package.  We have included a great section showing you how to identify and weed out problem customers.

Learn more on our main webpage:

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

We have found that the overwhelming majority of our customer are very willing to pay a fair price for equally fair service.

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Spring Time Lawn Care Equipment Maintenance

Jan 22

Posted by Lawn Care Business in lawn equipment, maintenance | No Comments

Sunny skies and 50 degree temperatures.

I love days like these.  The sun is bright enough to warm your skin but the weather hasn’t turned enough to make the grass start growing.   These January days are perfect for doing pre-Spring lawn care equipment maintenance.  Let’s be honest here; at the end of last season we all had good intentions of performing proper winter maintenance on our equipment.  Sharpened blades, changed oil, fresh fuel filter, greased lubrication nibs, etc….it just didn’t happen, did it?  Instead, you threw a tarp over your lawn mower (without cleaning off the old decaying grass from under the deck lid) and forgot about it.

Now that most of last week’s snow has melted, it is a great time to pull the lawn mowers out from under the tarps and perform a few pre-spring maintenance procedures.  I read an article recently of a St. Louis lawn care company.  In the article they pointed out that quality lawn care equipment maintenance is one of the most important keys to running a successful lawn care company.  I believe that without proper equipment maintenance your company will eventually experience significant equipment downtime.  Significant equipment downtime can kill even the most successful lawn care business.

So, this winter, when you get the occasional warm sunny day, take advantage of the slow season to properly maintain your lawn care equipment.  Once spring rolls around, you won’t have the burden of getting your equipment ready while customers are lining up.

Side Note:  Are you trying to determine what equipment to buy for your lawn care business?  Our Lawn Care Business Equipment Buyers Guide that is included with our Lawn Care Business training course is a huge and beneficial resource for any lawn care business owner.  Guide teaches you how-to buy equipment based on your company’s needs.

This guide helps you purchase the right equipment and avoid buying mistakes that many lawn care business owners make.

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How to mow grass on a hillside.

Jan 21

Posted by Lawn Care Business in lawn care safety, lawn mowers | No Comments

After yesterday’s blog post on remote controlled slope mowers, we received a number of questions concerning the use of standard commercial lawn mowers on hillsides.

When mowing on slopes and hillsides, operators of lawn care equipment must use extreme caution.  Each individual lawn mower has  different center-of-gravity characteristics.  Though we give quite a bit of lawn mower handling procedures within the pages of our lawn care business training course, we strongly suggest you check the manufacturer’s guidelines of your particular lawn mower.

As a brief example, Scag Power Equipment has published a safe handling pamphlet outlining proper use of their Zero-Turn Radius commercial riding mowers.  Though each manufacture will have differing guidelines for their lawn mowers, Scag says that their Zero-Turn commercial mowers should never be operated on a slope greater than 15 degrees and they should never be running unattended.  There are many general guidelines telling operators to reduce speed and use care when approaching blind corners.

Government regulations on lawn mowers is becoming more strict too.  In fact, in a recent report the CDC send a strong message to lawn mower manufacturers on such things as developing Roll Over Protection Systems  for their lawn mowers.

Mowing on slopes increased the danger of operating a lawn care business.  So, we hope you will heed your equipments mfg.’s instructions.

Take care and be safe mowing slopes.

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Is your Lawn Care Business facing noise ordinances?

Jan 20

Posted by Lawn Care Business in hearing protection, lawn business strategies, lawn care pollution, lawn care safety, lawn mowers, leaf blowers | No Comments

Noise pollution is becoming a familiar topic in many towns across the United States.

Okay, let’s face it, our lawn care equipment is noisy.  Our lawn mowers emit low thunderous roars and our backpack blowers scream out high pitched shrills.  We have written many times in the Start A Lawn Care Business blog that lawn care operators must take many precautions to protect their own hearing and the hearing of their employees from the noise emitted from lawn care equipment.

In addition to the common sense precautions we must take to reduce the noise levels in our own heads, community councils are becoming bolder in their efforts to tackle the noise issues to help protect their residents from the noise problems.  We recently read about a community in East Hampton that is attempting to restrict to hours noisy lawn equipment can be operated.

What do you think about restrictions such as this?   Are there happy mediums that can be struck between home owners and landscape professionals?  Can landscape companies make concerted efforts to reduce the number of minutes leaf blowers are used on each lawn?  Can lawn mower operators develop mowing patterns that reduce the time spend on each lawn?

The answer to the last two questions is “YES.”  In fact, our lawn care business training packages shows you how to develop mowing patterns that GREATLY reduce your mowing and blowing time.  Developing these mowing pattern not only allows your lawn care company to leave your customers with great looking lawns it also helps you reduce your time an amount of noise pollution you produce.

For more information on our Lawn Care Business training package, see our main home page:

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

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Remote Controlled Lawn Mowers – Kick Back and Enjoy?

Jan 20

Posted by Lawn Care Business in lawn equipment, lawn mowers | 1 Comment

What do you think when you first hear the term “remote controlled lawn mower?”

My immediate vision is of a guy lounging back in a lawn chair sipping a cold beverage while an unmanned mowing vehicle tools around his lawn neatly manicuring his grass.  Before you think about starting a lawn care company employing an army of remote controlled lawn care units, put down your cold beverage….we’re not talking about those types of lawn mowers.

While there are robot lawn mowers for sale to the general public for residential lawn care, as lawn care professionals we don’t benefit from these small units.  Afterall, when it comes to cutting grass on a standard residential plot of land, there is nothing more efficient than a capable operator on a Zero Turn or walkbehind commercial lawn mower.

The big advances for remote controlled lawn mower is coming in the form of heavy duty slope mowers.  Any of us who have ever accepted jobs mowing slopes knows it is dreadfully difficult and dangerous work.  Slope mowing jobs are fraught with equipment breakdowns and dangers to the operator.  Remote controlled slope mowers are changing the scene for many lawn care business owners who bid on slope jobs.

When we visited last year’s Lawn Care Business Expo in Louisville, KY, we saw a find example of a slope mower we saw a fine demonstration of a remote controlled lawn mower.  More companies are now entering the field and we are seeing some very interesting prototypes.  This angle on the lawn care industry is becoming very interesting.  As these companies begin to refine their remote controlled slope mower concepts our jobs as mowing contractors will become easier.

For more information and advice on commercial lawn mowing equipment that will be perfect for your lawn care business, take a look at our Lawn Care Business training guidebooks.


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Bartering your Lawn Care Business Services

Jan 20

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bartering lawn care, lawn business strategies, Lawn Care Advertising | No Comments

Have you ever bartered services or products in return for lawn care business services?

In our Lawn Care Business training course we describe how you can barter your services.  One of the very interesting lessons we teach is how you can very easily barter your lawn mowing duties in exchange for advertising from your local media companies.  Radio stations, television stations, newspaper companies, and many other advertising agencies all have physical locations and they all understand that a beautifully landscaped business location will help them display an aire of professionalism which will help them sell more advertising.

If you are thinking about purchasing advertising for your lawn care business this year consider bartering your lawn care services before you take out your checkbook.  You may very well find that advertising agencies are very willing to barter services instead of taking your money.

Beware, bartering is normally considered a taxable event by the IRS.  Please check with your tax professional.
To learn some of the inside tips of bartering your lawn care business, check out the business training course on our main webpage:

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

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Winners of the Clean Air Lawn Care Business Give-Away

Jan 19

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

Sometimes, you just need a leg up to help you through a difficult situation.

A Corpus Christi family has won a brand new Clean Air Lawn Care franchise valued at over $36,000. Wes and Marcia Neukam will be starting their Clean Air Lawn Care franchise in Corpus Christi in March. They hope to service their lawn care business’ clients using Clean Air’s methodology of clean, quiet, & renewable energy. Electric and biodiesel lawn care equipment helps reduce emissions of CO and hydrocarbons compared to traditional gasoline lawn mowers according to the Clean Air website.

The prize of a new lawn care franchise comes at a time when the Neukams are dealing with family health issues. Marcia and Wes are expecting. However, Marcia is expecting a complicated birth since the baby has holoprosencephaly which causes neurological problems.

Our thoughts go out to the Neukams as they grow their family and launch their brand new Clean Air Lawn Care franchise.

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