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My first year in the lawncare business.

#1

Dirk Landon

Dirk Landon

Hi there after 10 years of working for someone at an hourly wage I have stepped out to do lawn care on my own. I am nervous and a little stressed but also excited. I live on Vancouver Island bc Canada. Right now I only have 2 weekly mowing clients lined up. But I also have a spring clean up job and a large hedge job. I have logos on my vehicle and have spent some time putting out door hangers. Any other tips on how to get clients? I would like 16 weekly cuts is that to much for my first year. Any help or advice I will take. Thanks for welcoming me.


#2

Catherine

Catherine

:welcome:

I'm going to move your thread over to our commercial and residential lawn mowing section to see if we can find you some answers.

Best of luck with your new business! :thumbsup:


#3

T

TXDDAVIS

hey man .. we just started our own business also... but we are only doing municipal work... I dont have any advice for going after residential, but keep and eye on your local gov websites. sometimes there are jobs that are small enough for one or 2 people and they pay great. good luck to you


#4

Ric

Ric

Dirk Landon said:
Hi there after 10 years of working for someone at an hourly wage I have stepped out to do lawn care on my own. I am nervous and a little stressed but also excited. I live on Vancouver Island bc Canada. Right now I only have 2 weekly mowing clients lined up. But I also have a spring clean up job and a large hedge job. I have logos on my vehicle and have spent some time putting out door hangers. Any other tips on how to get clients? I would like 16 weekly cuts is that to much for my first year. Any help or advice I will take. Thanks for welcoming me.
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I think the number of clients weekly depends on how serious you are about Lawn Care. Are you making the Lawn care job your sole income or is it going to be a hobby and have another job besides. If you've stepped out to do lawn care on your own and try to make a living at the job You'd better be looking at 70 to 80 clients a week minimum. You'll need to make at least $50.00 hourly to cover your overhead, run the business and be able to have enough left over to live on.


#5

Dirk Landon

Dirk Landon

Ric said:
I think the number of clients weekly depends on how serious you are about Lawn Care. Are you making the Lawn care job your sole income or is it going to be a hobby and have another job besides. If you've stepped out to do lawn care on your own and try to make a living at the job You'd better be looking at 70 to 80 clients a week minimum. You'll need to make at least $50.00 hourly to cover your overhead, run the business and be able to have enough left over to live on.
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I do have a night job full time cleaning schools. But so no hobby. I want to pull in as much as I can and I'm out the door at 7am to start my day. But having the full time job dose not put me in as much stress as it would without.


#6

Ric

Ric

Dirk Landon said:
I do have a night job full time cleaning schools. But so no hobby. I want to pull in as much as I can and I'm out the door at 7am to start my day. But having the full time job dose not put me in as much stress as it would without.
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OK, Let me ask ... What type of equipment are you using? That will have a lot to do with how many lawns you can handle a week. If you're going to keep your school job then I would limit the number of lawns I would do weekly to maybe 25 because the lawn-care thing would be a supplemental thing. If you have the right equipment knocking down 5 yards a day would be a snap.


#7

S

sportsturfone

Dirk Landon said:
Hi there after 10 years of working for someone at an hourly wage I have stepped out to do lawn care on my own. I am nervous and a little stressed but also excited. I live on Vancouver Island bc Canada. Right now I only have 2 weekly mowing clients lined up. But I also have a spring clean up job and a large hedge job. I have logos on my vehicle and have spent some time putting out door hangers. Any other tips on how to get clients? I would like 16 weekly cuts is that to much for my first year. Any help or advice I will take. Thanks for welcoming me.
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The best way to do it is to do good work! Don't be afraid to ask your clients for referrals either! If they are happy with your services they will have no problem spreading the word for you and will usually be more than happy to help you grow your business! I work with Sports Turf One in Florida and we started out just mowing grass on local soccer fields. We now design and install real grass and artificial turf sports fields all over the country! Just don't give up. Hard work and customer service pays off!


#8

S

sidemouse

Do good work for a fair price.


#9

S

sportsturfone

sidemouse said:
Do good work for a fair price.
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That's the key! Do this and before you know it you'll be doing high end landscape design jobs and you'll be killing the game! Nothing beats providing quality service.


#10

jekjr

jekjr

I have a business in lower Alabama. We cut properties from 14 to 15 acres down to a few square feet. Normally work 40 to 50 hours a week many weeks. Have Three Tiger Cat Scags and numerous pieces of hand held equipment.

When I bid a job I normally bid at about $50 for the first acre and then $40 per acre after that. This will give over $50 per hour for a machine. We normally try to bid about $30 per man hour for other hand held equipment like hedge trimmers, Weedeaters, chainsaws......... We run a ZG222 Kubota with a blower on it and pulling a trailer to get up leaves. We shoot for $65 per hour for it.

Do excellent quality work and keep equipment that you can do the job fast enough that you can be cheap.

The best advertising that I have ever used is Facebook. There are many buy sell and trade pages on Facebook. What you do is join those pages and advertise on them.

Also create as large of friends list as you can on your Facebook page as well.

I normally work myself and two men and we have all he work we can do. Literally.

Hope that helps.


#11

S

sportsturfone

jekjr said:
I have a business in lower Alabama. We cut properties from 14 to 15 acres down to a few square feet. Normally work 40 to 50 hours a week many weeks. Have Three Tiger Cat Scags and numerous pieces of hand held equipment.

When I bid a job I normally bid at about $50 for the first acre and then $40 per acre after that. This will give over $50 per hour for a machine. We normally try to bid about $30 per man hour for other hand held equipment like hedge trimmers, Weedeaters, chainsaws......... We run a ZG222 Kubota with a blower on it and pulling a trailer to get up leaves. We shoot for $65 per hour for it.

Do excellent quality work and keep equipment that you can do the job fast enough that you can be cheap.

The best advertising that I have ever used is Facebook. There are many buy sell and trade pages on Facebook. What you do is join those pages and advertise on them.

Also create as large of friends list as you can on your Facebook page as well.

I normally work myself and two men and we have all he work we can do. Literally.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips on the advertising. My brother is starting a kitchen remodeling company and was asking me about advertising. I never really do it myself so stuff like that should be helpful.


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