Average Startup costs?

[JP Landscaping]

wow Andy, you guys have it pretty tough as far as getting into business. Where I live, you don't need a license, or to register your business, or insurance to run a business that provides services.

You can claim your income on your personal tax return. same with an LLC or DBA. All the net profit goes directly into your personal income tax return and is taxed at your rate.

But here, $100 will register your business and the insurance companies don't track your gear with gps. Also insurance is determined on expected gross income. If you are starting out, you can get 1 mil liability for a few hundred bucks a year.

As far as patrolling... I guess for the same reason you don't need to register, we don't have people inforcing it.

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

This is fascinating as I don't think it has been brought up yet. Can you tell us a little about this kind of insurance and when it comes into play?



Would you have to do this for both a dba and an (llc/scorp)? Or is this based on the way you register your business?

Directors and Officers liability insurance is a policy that covers you should the company get sued for any reason, but where it really comes into play is if the company were to not have enough insurance or insurance didn't cover whatever happened.

On the second question I take images of everything I own, it's something I have always done, this way there are no questions.

[psparaco]

Originally Posted by psparaco

dirty for now. Cant afford or justify coughing up $200-$600 to go legit when it doesnt get me more business . just a piece of paper. spend the money on better equipment to get bigger jobs. go legit when you got the extra. my guess within 1-2 yrs running, i'll be legit. have to start somewhere. this is only the start of my 2nd year in operation. I opened my doors so to speak on april 1, 2009.

Several proposed equipment purchases i am looking into are as follows:

5X8 open trailer - $599.00
hitch and all accessories and have it installed on my car****$200-$300.
license for trailer and insurance****$300

additional mower - $150.00

total needed $1350.00

I plan to save up as much as i can and purchase them with cash. that way i dont have any more debts than i need to. If i dont have the cash for it. then i dont need it. all a trailer wil do for me is allow my loading and unloading to speed up and allow me to carry a 2nd mower.

my fiance will be helping april til the end of the school year ( we have a 6 yr old at home) and sept til end of october. i may hire my neighbor for june-aug unless we can get a sitter for 5 hours or make my days longer to support the workload. my hours of operation are 9am-2:30pm with 30 minutes for lunch. on average it takes me 30 minutes per lawn to do. including travel time, load/unload. if i have my fiance helping it takes about 20-25 min per customer. so we can easily knock out 10-15 lawns a day and 50-75 lawns per week. so 50 is my goal for the year. 75 is the max i will accept unless i hire more but by than. i'l have enough to go legit and have my trailer.

the reason for such a small trailer. its 350 pounds empty. my car's towing capacity is 1,000 lbs. so 2 mowers, trimmer, gas, blower is about 500lbs which includes weight of the trailer too. that means if i can get a commericial walk behind mower under 400lbs. i am golden. oh it needs to fit too which i layed out on autocad and tried different patterns. I have autocad a graphic design software cause thats what i did for an office job for 12 yrs. computer aided drafter. i drew the trailer footprint. all equipment footprints and played with it til everything fit. now if i wanna save a few pounds, i can put the trimmer and blower in my trunk.

again all this is up in the air. winter(off season) allows me to do tons and tons of research and planning.

well time to put the little one in bed. be back soon.

paul

NIX everythign i said i was planning on getting. I was in a bad car accident thursday 02/25/10. Some woman in a truck go figure, ran a red light and creamed my car. My car is totaled so no chance in ever seeing what my equipment looks like all in the trunk like i used to do last year. right now i am worried about when i am getting a new car once the insurance claims are settled. If i play my cards right. i am going to try to get a used truck to replace my car. for now i am car less with a gash in my head and moderate pain all over my body mainlly my back and neck. both air bags were deployed thank god. i think thats what saved me. and i was wearing my seat belt. i'll keep you all posted on what happens in the coming weeks.

paul

that sucks Paul, take care of yourself and get well.

[dulle]

hi new to here but I really enjoy landscapeing and am looking at starting a new bussiness.
so how did you guys spend at the start to promote your bussines?
and what kind of matterial did you use to promote it?


Dulle
saskatoon sk

[JP Landscaping]

I started out by buying a pick up and some common tools like rakes, shovels, a wheelbarrow, some hammers, levels, string line, measuring tape, etc.

Then i bought a trailer after I started getting more jobs. I rented a trailer from Homedepot a couple of times. It was like $25 for the day so that's an option if you don't want to invest into a trailer right away.

I advertised thru craigslist. I got most of my business from there. when things started to slow down, I spread about 300 professionally printed glossy small fliers door to door. out of that I got about $6500 worth of work. But craigslist and referrals pretty much took me thru the season.

Just remember that when you start out, you usually start out by yourself and add employees as you need. I could get about 2-3 jobs a week and that was enough to have me busy for at least 40 hours. So you don't need to have a ton of jobs to make money.

If you're averaging $2000-$4000 per job. sometimes one job will get you thru the week. It did sometimes in my case.

[Steve]

NIX everythign i said i was planning on getting. I was in a bad car accident thursday 02/25/10.

I am glad you are ok! Keep us posted on how this turns out.

[EgLawns]

I personally started with only $0, but that was because my dad already had the equipment. That was about a month ago. Sence then I have bought a new trimmer, gas so about $300.