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[Larry's Lawns]

Hello to all from Larry's Lawns in Seguin Texas. I'm joining your forum in hopes of learning some of the basics through advice, hopefully avoiding having to make the mistakes for the lesson. Overview of my startup situation. - I reached burnout in the hi-tech field a couple years ago and escaped corporate ####. I spent some time doing mostly two things, sightseeing on my new bike and restoring an elder’s property to livable. Caring needs for this family member will continue. Some say I'm stuck in mid-life crisis now. True or not, I intend to never go back into such an atmosphere. I started Larry's Lawns last year as a part-time income generator using equipment already in the garage. Although most would find mowing lawns a huge prestige demotion from my previous life, it's much more compatible with my principles and soul. Having confirmed this to myself, and having completed the huge project of restoring the property, it's time to build the business. This year it needs to start becoming a full-time income. My desires are to keep it simple though. I think for this year I still want to stick to mowing and trimming as what I mostly do, but also expecting to fulfill some additional needs of existing customers as requested. I will start the year working alone and am undecided on getting help. We'll see what the future brings. Seguin is a smaller town but growing due to two cities encroaching on it, San Antonio and Austin. Last year I advertised only once, for one week, in the local radio station's freebee newsletter. That tiny effort kept me as busy as I needed to be until the weather became dry again. This year I will be in the phone book's yellow pages. It may be enough to get me ramped up to speed, but I will advertise more if my time isn't filled. Well.. got a lot of questions for y'all about things like; equipment, methods, bookkeeping, etc... but I see this is getting long. I'm looking forward to discussions with you and hoping as time goes by I can return more to the forum than I receive. Larry Puckette Larry's Lawns Seguin Texas

Lawn care business tips

Here you go Larry this might help some. http://www.gophergraphics.com/forum....;t=6844

[FourSeasons]

Welcome to the forum Larry

[Steve]

Hi Larry,

Welcome to our forum!!

Thanks Tim for posting that link. Great information there.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]Overview of my startup situation. - I reached burnout in the hi-tech field a couple years ago and escaped corporate ####. I spent some time doing mostly two things, sightseeing on my new bike and restoring an elder’s property to livable. Caring needs for this family member will continue. Some say I'm stuck in mid-life crisis now. True or not, I intend to never go back into such an atmosphere.

Can you explain to us more what your take is on this mid-life crisis point? This has come up before and I am glad you brought it up as well. There are many many forum readers, that will be reading this post and feel a connection with you already for what you have said.

The only difference between you and them is you made the jump. Can you tell us a little bit about what finally pushed you?

I don't want to put words in your mouth about how you feel so I would rather hear it from you. I do think many people get to a certain age and ask themselves as the look in the mirror, is this it? Is this as good as it gets? What ever happened to my goals and my dreams? I thought if I played my part in the game, I would find happiness. If I let myself be a cog in the machine, they would take care of me. And then all too often, you find yourself ground to a pulp wondering what happened.

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Beyond all that. What would I do if I just jumped in? Meet people! Meet a lot of people! Let everyone in town know who you are and that you are in the business of taking care of lawns. Get business cards out to everyone you can. Make phone calls to everyone you know. Have you used craigslist.com yet? If not, use it, its free! Get flyers made and hand them out. Don't want to walk and hand out flyers? Get postcards made and get a mailing list of your area and mail out postcards. Get a website up. Pretend you are running for office, because the process is very similar to what you have to do to get your business off the ground. Also read all the posts on here. Tons of info.

What's your thoughts on that?