Archive for the 'General Business' Category
Newbie Landscaper Pro Landscaper, my newest book. At over 450 pages, this is the greatest collection of question and answers I have researched from my Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. At times the responses to questions can be a little long winded but I have left them that way intentionally. I wanted [...]
March 18th, 2021 | Posted in Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Book | No Comments
There is a constant desire and drive by new entrepreneurs to go out and explore. The boundary of how far they are willing to explore seems to forever be pushed further forwards. If you find yourself doing this with your own lawn care business, here is a cautionary tale from someone who has been there [...]
November 17th, 2014 | Posted in Business Failure, Commercial Customers, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Pricing, Problem customers, Start up, Trials and Tribulations | No Comments
What will you be doing as spring nears to get back in touch with your lawn care customer base? Will you call them? Email them? Simply show up once the lawn starts to grow? Well you might want to consider sending out a spring lawn care customer letter and see if it can generate you [...]
January 29th, 2014 | Posted in Brochure, Business Card, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Sales Letter, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Logo, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Mowing, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers, home show | No Comments
A novel method to making your landscape customers happy and getting them to talk about you and your business may be to get them involved in the project. Everyone loves operating machinery but should you get your customers this involved? That is the question asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Sure it might [...]
December 18th, 2013 | Posted in Compact Utility Tractor, Excavator, How to get, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Mini excavation, Referrals, Tractor, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Most of the time you are fighting tooth and nail to get new landscape customers to call you by using various methods of marketing. But what do you do when a call comes in from a potential client that lives a little outside your immediate service area? It creates a dilemma that you must weigh [...]
December 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Excavating, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mini excavation, Trials and Tribulations, lawn care equipment | No Comments
The longer your business is around and operating, the more times you are going to find yourself being asked if you would offer this service or that. Before you brush off a request on a service you have yet to offer, consider this story from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. One entrepreneur decided to [...]
November 20th, 2013 | Posted in Hardscaping, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Mini excavation, Retaining Walls, Upsells, lawn care equipment | No Comments
There are a lot of methods out there one can use to create a price for building a retaining wall however most of them just don’t work. The biggest error done is basing a wall price on it’s total square feet. In this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, we will see why [...]
November 12th, 2013 | Posted in How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Pricing, Residential Customers, Retaining Walls | No Comments
I am happy to announce the release of my newest lawn care business book. The Pro Lawn Care Business Playbook. You can order it here in both paperback and kindle version.
So many new lawn care business owners pause at the moment when a decision is required of them. Or they fail to plan how [...]
November 12th, 2013 | Posted in Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Book, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Lawn Care Website, Marketing, Pricing, Search Engine Optimization, Start up, Upsells, Website, lawn care equipment | No Comments
If you don’t have enough choices to make when starting your business, here is yet another one to consider. What is the best way to keep your financial books? Should you keep your business finances separate from your personal finances? Should they be combined? As we will see in this discussion from the Gopher Lawn [...]
September 30th, 2013 | Posted in Business Failure, General Business, Lawn Care Business, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs | No Comments
Having a bunch of landscaping equipment within your stable can be helpful in many ways. Sure it will help you get those landscape jobs done, but did you also know you can use it to attract the attention of even more clients? That is exactly what this one landscaper did. He has found his equipment [...]
August 16th, 2013 | Posted in How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Upsells, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Depending on a bunch of variables, you can find yourself plenty busy with lawn care work but producing little profit. This tends to especially be a big issue the first year a new company is in business. If you find this to be the case with your company, consider some of these tips to increase [...]
August 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Pricing, Upsells, lawn care equipment | No Comments
It’s amazing how we can make concepts so complicated at times. How to find customers? Why does this become such a huge and unobtainable goal? Sometimes it’s as simple as going out and getting them. As we will see from this discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, a simple goal to find a [...]
August 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Edging, Fall Leaf Cleanups, Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Pricing, Tree Removal, Upsells, Wood Chipping, bed edging, lawn care equipment | No Comments
A lot of lawn care business owners besides mowing also offer landscape services as well. Each state seems to have it’s own laws that regulate these landscape services. As we will see in this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, sometimes you can get away with not having a license and sometimes you [...]
July 26th, 2013 | Posted in Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Start up | No Comments
Should a lawn care company charge more for one type of customer over another? Will residential customers pay more for mowing than commercial clients or possibly is it the other way around? That is a question many new entrepreneurs ponder and ask on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Here we see some great insight [...]
July 25th, 2013 | Posted in Commercial Customers, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Pricing, Residential Customers, Start up, Upsells | No Comments
Getting together a group of local business owners to talk shop can be a very difficult task. It seems that, many times, these ideas come together initially with the best of intentions but end up not working out for a multitude of reasons. Here is a great discussion on this topic from the Gopher Lawn [...]
July 23rd, 2013 | Posted in Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Marketing, Start up, Trials and Tribulations | No Comments
Some landscape jobs will come along that might just seem outside your scope to accurately bid. When that happens, it is best to break the job down into smaller sized projects that you can more easily price. As we will see from this discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, smaller pieces are a [...]
July 23rd, 2013 | Posted in Commercial Customers, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Pricing, Spring cleanups, Tree Removal, leaf clean up | No Comments
Why do so many of us fail at business? What makes it seem like it’s next to impossible for the average person to start a business? What kind of advice would you have to offer the average person, working a full time job who dreams of running a business? How should they even get to [...]
July 15th, 2013 | Posted in Business Failure, Business Plan, Debt, General Business, Growth, How to sell, Lawn Care Business, Start up, Trials and Tribulations | No Comments
Every landscape job you take on will be unique in some way. Here is one of those jobs that really stands out because of the tight area the job must be performed in. Normally planting a handful of shrubs along a property line wouldn’t stand out too much. But as we will see in this [...]
July 10th, 2013 | Posted in How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mulch Jobs, Plant Installs, Pricing, Sod, Sod Cutter, Trailer, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Are you looking to attract more high end lawn care customers? Have you had a tough time figuring out how to do it? Here is a great discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum that looks into this process. You should be able to gain at least a few new sales techniques from these [...]
July 3rd, 2013 | Posted in Business Card, Excavating, Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Mowing, Marketing, Mini excavation, Pricing, Referrals, Upsells, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
We all know the importance of having insurance, whether it be for your auto, theft, fire, medical, or liability. The reality of insurance though is it costs money to purchase and many start up businesses simply don’t have enough cash to go to all the things they would like to get. All too often insurance [...]
May 20th, 2013 | Posted in Business Failure, General Business, Insurance, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Overhead Costs, Start up, lawn care equipment | No Comments
A great way to make more profit on your landscape projects and have more room to be more competitive in your pricing is to purchase your landscape materials at wholesale prices. Why pay retail when you can potentially save up to 40% on materials? Sounds great, but how do you get those prices? That is [...]
May 15th, 2013 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Business, Mulch Jobs, Operational Costs, Pricing, Top Dressing | No Comments
Do you include a stop charge in your lawn mowing estimates or do you estimate the amount of time the job will take and create a bid based on that number? If you find you have a hard time coming up with a bid price, this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum will [...]
May 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Fertilization, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Pricing, Start up | No Comments
Taking on your first hardscape construction project can seem a little overwhelming when you haven’t had any experience with such work in the past. If you have any interest in expanding your company into offering hardscaping, you should consider slowly buying some basic tools and working on projects in your yard first. Which tools should [...]
April 23rd, 2013 | Posted in Brochure, Excavator, Hardscaping, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Mini excavation, Retaining Walls, Upsells, lawn care equipment | No Comments
We can learn a lot from a business that is doing great as we can from a business that is failing. In this story, shared on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, we get an inside look at a company that is suffering a slow death. It’s quite amazing to look at from the outside, [...]
April 16th, 2013 | Posted in Business Failure, Business Plan, General Business, Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Employees, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Partnership, Pricing, Start up, Taxes | No Comments
Drive down any street in the spring or summer and you are almost guaranteed to see a home with mulch around it’s foundation. With so many people doing that, you might figure it’s a good idea. But wait before you install your next mulch job and read this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business [...]
April 9th, 2013 | Posted in How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mulch Jobs, Pricing, Upsells | No Comments
Sure it’s great to make as much money as you can but if that means bidding on unfamiliar jobs, you have to be careful not to lose money. That is what happened here with this landscaper when he underbid a bush removal job. When everything was completed, the job ended up taking twice as long [...]
March 28th, 2013 | Posted in Brush Clearing, Chain Saw, Hedge Trimming, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Pricing, Start up, Tree Removal, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Trying to offer a lot of different services in your early years of being an entrepreneur can be rough. Sure it’s great to be open to make as much money as you can, but the down side is you won’t know how to bid all the jobs that come your way. This is the case [...]
March 27th, 2013 | Posted in How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Overhead Costs, Plant Installs, Pricing, Start up, Taxes | No Comments
When you are trying to sell a customer on a landscape project, how do you create the imagery? Do you walk around the property with a customer and talk about how you might add this plant here or put a mulch bed in over there? Do you hand draw out a design on paper? Or [...]
March 26th, 2013 | Posted in Brush Clearing, Gardening, Hedge Trimming, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mulch Jobs, Pricing, Upsells, bed edging | No Comments
It can be a very difficult task trying to figure out what your actual operating costs are per hour. So many variables are involved with this process. With such complexities, it is no wonder that many new business owners fail to ever find a consistent price they need to charge per hour to cover all [...]
March 23rd, 2013 | Posted in Business Failure, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Line Trimmer, Operational Costs, Pricing, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Have you ever heard of the term overhead costs? If so, could you name three of your overhead costs? When was the last time you created an income statement to check on your profitability? Do you create one after each job you bid on? Some business owners do that often and have a great understanding [...]
March 22nd, 2013 | Posted in Business Failure, GopherHaul, Growth, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Employees, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Podcast, Pricing, Start up, Wood Chipping | No Comments