New to the game!

[Doug2542]

Hey Everyone,
My name is Doug and a friend and I are restarting his old lawn care biz.
We are already set up pretty nice with two back pack blowers and edgers, pull behind 42" I guess its called a scag, weed eaters, zero radius, you know the run down.
I have been posting adds on graigslist, and in two days I have done five bids. I have gotten two and a pool cleaning out of the deal. I have business cards being made and I am going to do door hangers soon. I am learning the whole bidding thing now. I need to find good and cheap ways to promote myself more. I am in this biz now because the company I worked for just closed its doors. Good old economy. I love working for myself and being outside so this may be a god send, you know.
Oh ya I live in Gainesville Fl. Well I hope to learn tons of stuff from you guys.
THANKS

[Steve]

Hi Doug,

Welcome to our forum!

It seems like you are doing a lot of great stuff there. If you are tight with your community and know a lot of people in the area, give them business cards and ask them to help you hand some out to their friends as well.

Keep us posted on how everything is going.

[VPS Lawn Care]

Not to far from me, about 1 & 1/2 hours away. Use the Penny Saver, put a short add in the classifieds, you can get it run 8 times a month for just $100.00 bucks a month, I have had alot of luck with it. Also get a web site up and running, they are cheap if you do it yourself. They are not as hard to build as you may think. Like Yahoo has the site builder tool for free when you reg. a domain name with them. Also go Daddy has some good tools and Templates. Web site will help alot if done rite. Good Luck.

[Doug2542]

Thank all for your input. Steve, Yes I have been networking all my friends that's were 90% of my business has been coming from it has been working well.

To my Valusia friend I will give the web site and classified a try soon.

I have lucked out. The other day a guy called me and he is subbing out foreclosure clean outs to me. I go in clean the yards and then keep them maintained. But I also take everything in the yard and in the house to the dump. Today was the first one wasn't bad at all, and maid $500

Thanks for your help all,
Doug

[Steve]

The other day a guy called me and he is subbing out foreclosure clean outs to me.
Doug that is fantastic news!

How did you land that? Any advice to others just getting started on how to do that?

[Doug2542]

Doug that is fantastic news!

How did you land that? Any advice to others just getting started on how to do that?

Hey Steve,
I had an add on Graigslist.com and the guy called me. Told me he knew this was a little weird him calling me off an add but he was looking for someone in my area and was wondering my abilities and if I could handle it. Of course I said I could. I figured how hard could it be. It was dirty hard work but it was $600 for about 9 1/2hrs of work. I got ,y business cards in today I will scan one later to show you. Thanks for having this site you have been a big help.

[Steve]

That is fantastic! I look forwards to seeing it.