We have had customers call us wanting to know if we trim shrubs. When I said sure not only did we get the shrub job but also their grass as well. They would say I used this guy to cut my grass but he said he did not do shrubs.
Also there have been times when we got a customer who had a yard that for what ever reason was overgrown and had not been cut for an extended period of time. They wanted an estimate to clean it up and put it on a schedule. There will be people waiting in line to just cut grass but they will run like roaches when a light is turned on when it comes to cleaning up a property.
One question. How many of what size do we need to be a business?
For our part of the world I would say we have grown the fastest to the point we are at of any crew out there. We live in a kind of rural area of South Alabama. If we can continue to grow at our current rate two more years we will be one of if not the largest around us.
You are a business when you can be absent for a month or more and nothing changes for the worst.
When we kicked off our first courier company ( and you think garden care is cut throat ) I made a big mistake choosing my partners.
Every time I was not there for a week or more we lost customers so I just walked away and started up again.
Company no 2 ran for 22 years which included an 18 month absence with a major leg fracture.
While there were only 16 of us at its peak , this was a business. The original partners collapsed around year after I left & we picked up most of their customers.
We were the 2nd most expensive company in Sydney and the 4th most expensive nation wide but we gave an excellent service and treated our customers with great respect.
It is all about finding a niche and doing the extra bits even if it is at a loss originally.
As for equipment, we ran this company with a fleet of vans that were 20+ years old and motorcycles a similar age but we kept 2 spare vans and 1 spare motorcycle so no matter what happens we were never short on the road.
Our competitors demanded a vehicle 4 years old or less. I could purchase, insure and maintain a vehicle for less than the price of insuring a new van and the good do not know the difference.
I would advise you doing something similar, look for garage sales, bankruptcy sales , civic authorities auctions etc,etc,etc.
get as much gear as you can store and make yourself familiar with them and keep vital spares on your truck, belts, blades etc etc.
After you have been running for a year or so you will work out what you are doing, where your are going and what equipment you really need, then think of buying some new gear.
No good with a 48" you beaut ZTR if you end up doing 95% residentials with 30" access gates. Or having a fab mulcher when your customer wants the clippings removed.
Most customers will not know what you mowed their lawns with because they will be working when you turn up.
Uniforms look good but can cost a bomb. We never wore uniforms and we regularly carried well over $ 1,000,000 (retail value) to & from photo locations .
By not wearing uniforms our customers & their clients had to know us as individual people and that makes a big difference. It is the personnal thing.
It is easy to give a robot the boot or replace them with cheaper robots but not if he is known as a friend.
Uiforms can come latter but for start ups neat & clean is the order and charity shops are a good place to find work cloths. Every one of my drivers kept or for the motorcyclists had access to, a clean change , cleaning wipes & towels so we always walked in clean & fresh.
As for phone contact we set up our phones to cascade so if I was on the phone or could not answer the call diverted to another partner, then another , then the individual drivers, thus the phone always got answered by a human, even if it is the wrong human, people like to talk to people, I would advise you to set up something similar. If the call goes through to one of the team, he then sends your a text so you can get back to the customer, Answering machines are a no no and voice mail should be considered a last resort.
And yes this will make the phone bill a bit on the big side but 1 new customer is worth a lot of phone diversions.
So good luck.
My most successful customer is a one man operation dose mainly residential and has 2 government contracts for cutting pensioners lawns.
He runs 4 Honda self propelled, domestic models and 2 Cox ride on tractors 24" & 32" a couple of Honda trimmers, an Echo pole saw , Stihl hand held & back pak blower ( 2 each ) and 4 Sthil chainsaws
He buys his Honda blades from me in 100pr trade packs @ $ 4.00 /pr and changes them daily in peak season. I keep his 44 gal of oil here and do most of his maintenance , around $ 14,000 /pa including parts.
In season it is 14 hour days 6 days a week , he turns over the ride ons every 2 years so they are in good nick when sold & he gets a good resale and buys a new walk behind every year, same reason.
Locally he is called Flash because he always seems to be running, but that is how he makes such a good living. No uniform, no name on the truck, all word of mouth.
Started the business with nothing more than an add in the local paper 6 years ago and is looking at selling out in another 4 by which time the morgage will be paid off.
All this because he was laid off when the company he worked for went under so he had nothing, not even his last weeks pay.
