Archive for the 'General Business' Category
Most commercial mowers will come with a factory installed hour meter mower. These meters are very important. They can tell you when you need to change your oil. When your mower will need an overhaul. Most importantly, they help determine the resale value of your mower. Whether you are buying a mower or selling one. [...]
August 31st, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Mower, lawn care equipment | No Comments
When you think of the different kind of customer to target in your business plan, you probably think of the usual residential and commercial customers. But what if you expanded your horizon and thought a little outside the box. Could you provide lawn care service to your local municipal government? Would they be a great [...]
August 29th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
We learn a lot of great lessons about business and life on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Some of these lessons stand out more than others. This specific lesson I felt was real important for everyone to read in order to have a head’s up about theft of lawn care equipment. The more you [...]
August 27th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Insurance, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Trailer, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Performing lawn care for a trailer park can differ a little from mowing residential homes. The plots are usually a lot smaller but there is also a lot more trimming than mowing. What’s the best way to price a mobile home bid? Is it even worth it? That is what one member of the Gopher [...]
August 20th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mowing | No Comments
Most lawn care business owners tend to think you need to take every bid that comes your way. The truth of it though is sometimes you need to know when to say no. Sometimes scaling up to take on a larger bid can throw off the delicate balance you have created in your business. More [...]
August 19th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
Do you find it difficult to keep your lawn care customers from year to year? At the end of the year are you in panic mode trying to get all your customers to re-sign back up with you the next year? It seems some lawn care business owners have this problem while others do not. [...]
August 12th, 2010 | Posted in Customer Retention, General Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
What a great discussion this is. Trying to figure out when is the right time to get lawn care customers. If you are new to the lawn care business or you haven’t started yet, you could potentially be picking different times of the year when you think it would be the best. You might even [...]
August 10th, 2010 | Posted in Door hanger, General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Start up, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
Buying an already functioning lawn care business is a way to get started with a bang. The upside to it is you should immediately have cash flow and hopefully a positive cash flow at that. But there are plenty of downsides to it as well. You need to weigh the pro’s and con’s before you [...]
August 8th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Start up, buying customers | No Comments
There is or should be a getting to know your customer period when you first get them signed up. Asking them questions and learning their quirks can lead to a long and profitable customer experience. Some lawn care business owners will try to force their view onto their customer and it tends to lead to [...]
August 3rd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Residential Customers | No Comments
Any time I hear about how a great story on how a lawn care business owner landed some commercial accounts, I like to share the story with everyone to help you see how others do it. We all need to hear stories and experiences from others in order to broaden our horizons. This story came [...]
July 29th, 2010 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
Lawn care business owners are in business to make money. It’s plain and simple. But are there ever times when it is alright to accept a lawn care or landscaping job when you know it won’t be profitable? Are there any upsides to doing this and if so, what are they? That is what one [...]
July 27th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Pricing | No Comments
You’d be amazed how much business you could drum up if you put your mind to it. Most lawn care business owners tend to spend more time working on jobs than marketing. What if you stepped up your marketing effort a little more? If you did, where would you put that additional energy? Would you [...]
July 23rd, 2010 | Posted in Business Card, Commercial Customers, General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Signs, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers | No Comments
When it comes to running the back office of your lawn care business, where do most lawn care businesses operate this from? Do they run it out of their home or do they buy office space? What about equipment storage? Where do they keep everything at the end of the day? Some lawn care business [...]
July 21st, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Overhead Costs, Start up | No Comments
A lawn care business owner shared with us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum a landscape trailer gate assist he made.
He wrote “I built this gate assist for my trailer so the gate would be easier to lift. I used a garage door spring that I had laying around. It didn’t take long at [...]
July 21st, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Trailer, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Have you been asked by any of your lawn care customers to give them a bid on adding some topsoil to their property? Did you find you were at a loss as to how to estimate such a job? A lawn care business owner had this issue and asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business [...]
July 15th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Pricing | No Comments
I know it sounds so cliche to say listen to your lawn care customers, but I think this is one of those simple issues that is way to often overlooked. One lawn care business got on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and shared with us a story on how he has been able to [...]
July 12th, 2010 | Posted in Customer Retention, General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers | No Comments
Does your lawn care business have a website? If you do, congratulations you are ahead of the game. Many new lawn care business owners put off a website for far too long. It’s important to have a website to attract lawn care customers that are searching the internet for local lawn care providers. But just [...]
July 10th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website | No Comments
Finding commercial lawn care bids is not as difficult as you may think. Most times it comes down to picking up the phone and finding who to talk to or simply visiting the establishment and asking a few questions. That is what a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did when he found [...]
July 9th, 2010 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Fall Leaf Cleanups, General Business, Hedge Trimming, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Mulch Jobs, Parking Lot Cleanups | No Comments
A lot of lawn care business owners have experiences and skills from others industries that may not seem to mesh with lawn care at first glance. With some creativity, they may end up meshing perfectly. Take for instance this new lawn care business owner who shared with us his story on the Gopher Lawn Care [...]
July 7th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing | No Comments
I think most new lawn care business owners will go through a time when they sit for a moment and really question what it is they are doing. Are they making enough? Do they have enough customers? Is this business of theirs going to work or is it failing and they just haven’t accepted it [...]
July 3rd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Start up | No Comments
We got into a discussion about classified ads on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. This is a very important topic because a lot of lawn care business owners experiment with them. Print media is not yet dead. As long as your potential customers are reading the newspaper everyday, classified advertising is still a viable [...]
June 30th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Newspaper Ads | No Comments
Most new lawn care businesses start out with a lot of time on their hands and little money. You may think this puts you at a disadvantage, but that is not the case. It actually is the exact ingredients you need to find success in your lawn care marketing. As you will see in this [...]
June 25th, 2010 | Posted in Door hanger, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Residential Customers, door to door | No Comments
A great service you can offer to perform when you can’t mow due to rain, is pressure washing. Getting started offering this service shouldn’t be that difficult and it can help your business expand outwards. One lawn care business owner was looking to get into power washing and had a few questions about getting started [...]
June 24th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Pressure Washing, lawn care equipment | No Comments
What would you do if you received a phone call from a local landscaping company and they offered to give you all their lawn care customers? Would you find this to be a curse or a blessing? At first glance it may seem like a fantastic opportunity to jump on, however there are many issues [...]
June 23rd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Podcast, Residential Customers | No Comments
One of the big questions I tend to hear from entrepreneurs who are considering starting up a lawn care business is, how much will it cost to start up my new business? Costs can vary greatly depending on how big you go or how cheap you have to keep it but I thought if I [...]
June 22nd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Business, Start up | No Comments
Every lawn care customer is different and each will have a different view on how well they want their lawn maintained. Some customers will want their lawn to look as nice as possible and require a weekly mowing while others will want a cheaper job and have the lawn cut every two weeks. How should [...]
June 17th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Mowing | No Comments
For many new lawn care business owners, there is this tendency to be a wishful thinker. If a lawn care customer owes you for one month’s worth of work already, you might find that you try to justify in your head if you keep working, they will eventually pay you. You may also be afraid [...]
June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Debt Collection, General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
There are so many different ways to bill your lawn care customers, the number of choices can make your head spin. What methods works well for some lawn care may not work so well for others. There are many factors to consider when you are creating your billing frequency.
June 14th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Invoicing, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Prepay, Pricing | No Comments
Everyone has their own view of what kind of lawn care equipment you should get when you are new to the lawn care industry. Some will want to buy cheap equipment, others will spend their entire savings. But what would a lawn care equipment dealer recommend? Surely they have seen many new lawn care business [...]
June 9th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Line Trimmer, Mower, Start up, lawn care equipment | No Comments
When you start up your lawn care business, you can go a couple of ways when it comes to equipment. You can either take the low dow approach, which means the cheapest equipment you can find, or spend some big bucks to get new commercial equipment. Which way you go depends a lot on the [...]
June 7th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Truck, Mower, Start up, Tractor, Trailer, lawn care equipment | No Comments