Joining the team

[DillonB92]

Hey my name is Dillon. I am 17 years old and live in Memphis, TN. This is my first year mowing lawns. It has always been a dream of mine to mow lawns for people. I have wanted to do this since I was like 10. Now that I am old enough to drive, I decided to make it reality. I got the idea of actually going ahead and starting from a guy in my class. He has been mowing for 4 years now. I enjoyed talking to him and getting advice. I started in September of 2009 getting in the last few mowing of the season. Over the fall and winter I did leaf cleanups and cleaned gutters. This summer I have only 8 yards, but I enjoy mowing them so much. I didn't really have the money or the time to get out and advertise my company this year due to school and working at baskin robbins. I am hoping this next year will be a lot better. I hope to gain as much advice as i possibly can from Experienced Lawn Care Business Operators and learn a few tricks of the trade.

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Welcome to our forum! Were you able to do even a small amount of marketing with your limited budget and availability of time?

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[OhioMika]

Thank you for providing this site! I am Mika, and with Michelle we own Lawn and Order a full service grounds care company in NE Ohio. I have been a avid gardener and sometime landscaper for years, but this year began the business in earnest. We started April 1. As with most businesses, the lack of capital has hindered our marketing efforts, but have identified low-served areas and canvassed them with flyers. Customers get a 10% discount on jobs when a referral is successful, and we offer discounts for those with multiple properties. Estimates are given within 24 hours and calls are returned same day. We have already begun talking to new and current customers about snow removal and fall clean up.
We have found a niche market in small residential accounts and look to build that up. Also have researched the area in regards to snow removal and found a dire shortage of companies providing small homes/drives with snow removal. Equipment is usually too large.

We do not seem to have developed a tipping point message though. Our name gets attention and laughs, which make us heard above the noise, so to speak, but getting people to act and call us has seemed hit or miss. Any suggestions?[IMG]www.lawnandorderneo.com[/IMG]

[Steve]

Welcome to our forum Mika,

As with most businesses, the lack of capital has hindered our marketing efforts

What kinds of things would you like to do to market your business if money wasn't an issue?

[TaylorsCornerLLC]

Originally Posted by DillonB92

Hey my name is Dillon. I am 17 years old and live in Memphis, TN. This is my first year mowing lawns. It has always been a dream of mine to mow lawns for people. I have wanted to do this since I was like 10. Now that I am old enough to drive, I decided to make it reality. I got the idea of actually going ahead and starting from a guy in my class. He has been mowing for 4 years now. I enjoyed talking to him and getting advice. I started in September of 2009 getting in the last few mowing of the season. Over the fall and winter I did leaf cleanups and cleaned gutters. This summer I have only 8 yards, but I enjoy mowing them so much. I didn't really have the money or the time to get out and advertise my company this year due to school and working at baskin robbins. I am hoping this next year will be a lot better. I hope to gain as much advice as i possibly can from Experienced Lawn Care Business Operators and learn a few tricks of the trade.

Congrats on getting into the business. My recommendation is if you make enough money at your other job to get by, then take all your earnings from your lawns and reinvest it into your business. Keep building your inventory of equipment so that when your out of school, you will have a well running business that you can just fully jump into if you want to.

[DillonB92]

I was able to get some flyers printed and handed out. I actually didn't have to pay for actual printing only the paper. My girl friends mother insisted on printing them for free. At first I refused, but after only getting a few hits off craigslist, i had some printed. I printed two per page. They included the services I offered and a little about me. I went door to door and left them on peoples door. I didn't really get many hits of them. I passed out about 200 and got about 5 or 6. Most of my business came by word of mouth. 5 out of the 8 I have came from word of mouth.

TaylorsCornerLLC:

Thanks. I do make enough to pay my truck and cell phone right now in the summer. How ever once winter hits people stop coming by baskin robbins. I have invested much of Baskin Robbins money into my business and A LOT of my earnings from mowing into it as well. I sat down and made a list of services i would like to offer. Then i wrote down all the tools needed to complete that job. At first i bought Manual things like hand pruning shears and hand saw. That would atleast allow me to get some jobs to make some money. After getting a few jobs i was able to get some electric and gas equipment. I also went with manual labor incase my electric or gas equipment had issues.

[The Cleaning Doctor]

Dillon get a web site and put your business on google places/google maps. You will start getting a few calls off of these. You can get a site from google sites with hosting and get email for $10 per year. Beware though there are some limitations to what you can do with the building of the site.

[OhioMika]

If I had an unlimited marketing budget, I'd have commercials, signage, door hangers, bulk mailings, giveaways for clients.

What I have are flyers, me and my partner distributing them, me emailing members of the various Chambers to introduce us and offer services for home and office. Those tactics have worked, but its slow and as you know 1-2% response rate. Now interest is building for snow removal. So am hoping the snow removal will net us new customers who will pursue year round service.