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How To Start Your Own Lawn Mowing Business

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Bring Your Logo To Life

How to start your own lawn mowing business

Once youve generated your logo design, it is yours to keep and use for promotional materials.

We recommend using a service like;Zazzle, which provides quality printing services for a variety of materials, including business cards, flyers, banners, and letterheads. You can even choose to have your logo design presented on products, apparel, and retail packaging.

Our logo designs can also be utilized for business branding, social media , and more.

The First Thing You Will Need Is A Vehicle

The first thing you will need is a pickup, a truck, van or car with a tow bar. If you already have this then this is great you have just saved yourself some money. If you have not yet bought a vehicle ;then you are going to have to do this

I have been supplying lawn care leads to a guy who is starting off in my area in the last week. He has been operating out of a station wagon with a mower and line trimmer in the back. He has secured nine new accounts this week and this weekend he is off to pick up a van.

It is better you sort out the vehicle soon rather than later as it can become a bottleneck for your business and you could find your vehicle holding back your growth.

You dont have to buy something really expensive. In fact, I would recommend that you buy something that looks tidy and has low miles if possible.

If you need to start with a wreck, then do that. Just make sure you park it on the street when you quote. You dont want the potential customers to see it, and you do not want to leave oil stains on their driveways. If you need to do this to start then plan to get into a half-decent looking vehicle as soon as possible.;

Choose A Type Of Logo Design Font And Color Scheme

When designing your logo, youll have to choose between having a logo with a graphic or a text only lawn care business logo.

Option 1: Graphic

This type of logo displays your business name with a themed lawn care business graphic that will be displayed in a few different layouts. The graphic will either sit next to your business name, or it will sit above it.

After choosing this, youll need to choose your favorite font style and color pallet to generate your first set of logo choices.

Option 2: Text;

This type of logo displays your business name or just the initials of your business name in a stylized way using creative fonts and typography.;

After this, youll choose a color pallet and generate your logo choices.

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Localising Your Lawn Mowing Business Website

Although you may operate in a small or large area, unless you literally only operate in a small village, you are going to need to think of the other keywords that people might use to search for a lawn mowing business.

Thinking back to my Northampton example, people are obviously likely to also search for Northamptonshire. Equally, people also like to search much more locally. Northampton can be split up into Abington, Billing, Collingtree, Cotton End, Dallington, Duston etc. As a result, you need to make sure that these keywords are also included in your website.

For the major areas and those that you really prefer to work in, I can recommend that you setup localised landing pages on your website. These pages would look something like this:

<website address>/lawnmowingservicenorthampton or <website address>/lawnmowingservicecollingtree

This is going to help the search engines to understand exactly where you operate and give you a better chance of appearing in the crucial first sport in the SERP.

What Are The Startup Costs For A Lawn Care Business

How to Start a Lawn Mowing Business Using These Resources

The cost of starting a lawn care business can be as little as the combined cost of buying a mower and printing some flyers in your neighborhood. However, as you grow your business by increasing the number of jobs and the complexity of the work that needs to be done, additional costs may come into play in order to keep you sane and profitable! The key costs of running a legitimate lawn care business include:

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Consider Specialising In A Specific Landscaping Service

The landscape and gardening sphere contains a lot of specialisations. While it can be tempting for startup landscape businesses to specialise in everything, biting off more than what they can chew can lead to disastrous results ;if the business fails to meet customer expectations

For new businesses, it is recommended to start with the basic landscaping services. This includes plant moving, fertilising, lawn mowing, garden cleanup, leaf and dirt removal, seeding and spring/fall cleaning. Once the business gains enough funding, the business can hire a landscape contractor and/or a gardener to extend its services to other specialised fields, depending on the needs outlined by the business target market. Regardless of the number of specialisations provided by the business, its important to maintain the business quality of service.

Are You Thinking About Starting Your Own Lawn Care Business

There are a lot of good reasons;to start your own lawn care business. You can be your own boss, get healthy and ditch that commute. I can help you avoid the pitfalls and build a successful business that will give you a great income for years to come.

A lawn mowing business is exactly;that. A business. You cannot stumble into a successful;lawn care business. It takes planning and trial and error. A lawn care business set up correctly can shave years off your starting time and get you to the making money phase a lot sooner. I have done all the trial and error in the last thirty years so I am going to help you avoid making the same mistakes I have made so you can get your business profitable a lot sooner. Sound good? Then read on.

There are simple things like planning your route in the opposite direction to that traffic that will save you hours of time spent sitting in your truck.

Believe it or not, when you start a business you can have so many things going on in your head it can sometimes take you years to figure out all the little things that will save you time and equate to extra income.

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Dont Hold More Inventory Than You Need

Another way to ensure your lawn mowing business is successful is to minimize the amount of capital you have tied up in inventory and equipment. This is important because it allows you to better control your cash flow. You can manage this by having a system for tracking which inventory you have and where you get that inventory and at what costs.

It can also be very helpful to have a system for seeing which secured jobs and prospective jobs are in the pipeline and their projected equipment/inventory needs so you can make more accurate predictions about which inventory and equipment you will need in the future. This level of tracking also better educates inventory/equipment trends for larger purchases and seasonal needs.

What Are The Licenses And Permits Needed

How To Start Your Own Lawn Mowing Business – #3

To get started with only mowing lawns you will not need a permit in most municipalities. However, you will most likely need a business license that all business should have.

As you grow your business, you may offer herbicide applications such as RoundUp to spray for weeds in your customers landscaping beds. In most states you will need an additional license for that.

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Maintain Amazing Customer Service

The only way a customer will refer your lawn care business or write a review is if you provide amazing customer service. It isnt just that you did a good job, its that YOU and your team went above and beyond. You were kind, patient, and attentive. You didnt leave a giant mess behind, you were on time and responsive. Its all about presentation.

Survey Of A Lawn Care Business Logo

The branding of your new lawn care business can be a real factor in determining if your new business will be profitable and keep you in business to mow your customers grass year-after-year. Taking a look at two of the most popular nationwide lawn care businesses in the United States, BrightView;and TruGreen, we can see a few similarities with their brand strategy:

  • Their main logo is composed of text and nature imagery, without any busy designs or distracting fonts.
  • TruGreen also has their brand promise present below their logo.

Lawn care businesses like BrightView and TruGreen add very minimal elements to their logo but still maintain an overall professional image styled around nature. This seems to suggest that in order to create a successful lawn care business logo, you should keep your logo minimalistic, with few images, and let the simplicity do the speaking.

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Create A Business Marketing Strategy

Having a solid business plan, top-of-the-line landscaping equipment and highly-trained and skilled workers would technically be rendered useless if the business fails to market itself to gain customers. Investing in a good marketing strategy doesnt have to be costly. Business owners can choose to market their business by way of leaflets, brochures, business cards and by word-of-mouth.

Businesses can also choose to go digital by setting up social media accounts on platforms such as and Facebook where current and potential customers can reach the business for inquiries. However, business owners must always be responsive to customers at all times to maintain the business reputation and attract more potential customers by way of referrals.

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What Are Some Of The Biggest Costs

Start Your Own Lawn Mowing Business

If you stay small, say around 50 customers a week, you will be able to control costs to a manageable and predicable level. However, as you scale your business and begin hiring workers to help you with the work load, costs will escalate. You will need to consider factors such as rising minimum wage issues, payroll taxes, healthcare taxes, and workmans comp insurance. You will also need to spend on administration and bookkeeping of all of these costs because they can add up to more than most people realize. Probably the most burdensome aspect of running a labor intensive landscaping or lawn care company is the rising cost of labor and everything that goes with it.

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Step : Create Your Business Website

After defining your brand and creating your logo the next step is to create a website for your business.

While creating a website is an essential step, some may fear that its out of their reach because they dont have any website-building experience. While this may have been a reasonable fear back in 2015, web technology has seen huge advancements in the past few years that makes the lives of small business owners much simpler.

Here are the main reasons why you shouldnt delay building your website:

  • All legitimate businesses have websites – full stop. The size or industry of your business does not matter when it comes to getting your business online.
  • Social media accounts like Facebook pages or LinkedIn business profiles are not a replacement for a business website that you own.
  • Website builder tools like the GoDaddy Website Builder have made creating a basic website extremely simple. You dont need to hire a web developer or designer to create a website that you can be proud of.

Using our website building guides, the process will be simple and painless and shouldnt take you any longer than 2-3 hours to complete.

Recommended: Get started today using our recommended website builder or check out our review of the Best Website Builders.

What Kind Of Services Should I Offer

Most lawn care businesses have approximately 25 customers they see each week and offers services like these:

  • Adding mulch

And of course, these old standbys:

  • Mowing
  • Fertilizing
  • Fertilizer application

As you can see, theres plenty of landscaping services you can offer. Just remember to always provide an superior customer service experience for everyone you do business with.

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Customizable Models For Lawn Care And Lawn Care Services

The lawn maintenance business is adaptable to many different models. From the simple model of sole proprietorship that calls upon you to perform all aspects of the business, to the entrepreneurial model where you choose to run several garden care teams and complete employee scheduling from the comfort of your office.

You can target residential contracts or commercial contracts, depending upon the job sites available and your own business profile.

Blog About Your Lawn Mowing Work Whenever You Can

How to start your own lawn mowing business part3

Buyers love to read case studies. So be sure to take lots of photos of your work when out on site, this way you can talk about what you are doing, how you solved problems and include your customers response. A good time to catch up on this is in the off-season and you can schedule the blogs to go live each month throughout the year. Your blog titles could be things like:

  • Creating the ultimate lawn stripes in Northampton.

  • A busy day mowing lawns in Daventry.

  • Fixing a cottage lawn in Billing.

Just try to think along the lines of what people might be searching Google for and include lots of keywords. Your blog needs to be longer than you think they do, so aim to include as much detail as possible. Your paragraphs could be:

  • What the problem was;

  • Where the job was ;

  • How you solved it;

  • Your future maintenance plans;

  • What the customer thought about it.

  • From a word count perspective, aim for about 1,000 words as a minimum. But if you cant get to that many, just do as much as you can – its better to get some content up rather than none.

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    Find A Business Mentor

    One of the greatest resources an entrepreneur can have is quality mentorship. As you start planning your business, connect with a free business resource near you to get the help you need.

    Having a support network in place to turn to during tough times is a major factor of success for new business owners.

    How To Price Your Services

    Lawn care is a highly competitive industry. You shouldnt price your services at a higher rate than your competitionat least not until you are a well-known brand in the local market.

    To build a stable customer base, you have to find the sweet spot between what your competition is charging and how much you should make to run on profit.

    Start out by calling a handful of top-ranking lawn care companies in your locality to know their pricing. Remember that their quotes will be based on how big a property is, so be ready to give them specific details of the properties that you are looking to serve.

    Once you get an aggregate of your competitors pricing, you can match their rates when you offer price quotes to your customers.

    Another way to determine your pricing is by calculating the total money you are spending to run your businessequipment buying, staff payroll, monthly operational costs, etc.and put a mark-up based on that.

    A third way to set your pricing is by determining your yearly income goal and work backwards to achieve it. For instance, if you want to make $50,000 a year from your lawn care business, heres how your targets should look:

    • Per month target: $50,000/12 months = $4,166.66 per month
    • Per week target: $50,000/54 weeks = $925.92 per week
    • Per day target: $50,000/365 days = $136.98 per day

    Although you wont work seven days a week or throughout the entire year, its important to break this math down in order to determine the pricing.

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    How Have I Marketed My Lawn Mowing Business

    When I first started out, I was selling a total property maintenance service, not just a lawn mowing business and I invested in a fully branded, pop up gazebo, logo flags and paid for a pitch at all the local country shows. In some ways this was a disaster, in others, it was a huge success. Although I spoke to lots of people at the shows, my messaging was bit unclear and the type of service I was offering was not necessarily something that people could buy straight away. Across all the shows, I think I only picked up a couple of customers but one of which was a local lettings agent who kept me busy for about three years. When I decided to focus solely on lawn mowing, I was pretty much starting with a clean slate, which meant no customers, no portfolio, no reviews or anything.

    Since then, I have tried flyers, paid Facebook adverts, paid Google adverts, social media and magazine advertising but in my experience, just having a strong presence in the online search results has been the most successful avenue for lead generation. This means:

  • Creating an easily accessible portfolio of photos and videos;

  • Launching a clear and modern website;

  • Paying attention to search engine optimisation;

  • Having pages optimised for the locations you cover;

  • Make sure you have local code virtual numbers;

  • Creating a listing for your business on Google Maps, Bing Maps and Apple Maps;

  • Using customer review tools like Trustpilot and Google Reviews;

  • Blogging about your work;

  • Lawn Care Is Scalable From Lawn Mowing To Landscaping

    Start Your Own Lawn Care or Landscaping Business

    The beauty of starting a garden care business is that you can start simply by offering a lawn mowing service. Then, as your business and expertise increase, you can add other services on to your business. Services such as landscaping, new sod installation, weeding, tree trimming, and more.

    You could also consider expanding into other home and garden maintenance niches. So long as you have enough lawn care employees, there will be the potential to deploy them in a spinoff irrigation business or cleaning business. The numerous options available to you as a garden care business owner will allow you to take advantage of opportunities as your customers needs change.

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