Yo!

Greetings everyone! Been reading for free for a while and decided to join. This is an awesome forum and I look forward to learning and growing our new upstart here in Orlando. See you on the boards!

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Hi Red Fox, Welcome to our forum! What got you interested in a lawn care business? What led up to it?

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What type of services do you currently offer Red Fox?

Thanks for the welcome. I have the best lawn on my block so I've decided to make it work for me financially - with the help of you guys. I've decided to step out of education after 6 years and start spending time with my 2nd love after kids - nature. The education profession continues to move in the wrong direction and has frustrated me, and many other outstanding educators, to the point of no return because of poor legislative actions, bureaucracy, and the culture of self-interest that exists in public schools. Kids come first and when you put their needs behind your wants I take issue. I plan to run for school board in the upcoming year - but I digress!!!

As for services, I am actually putting the packages together this weekend. I will offer the general services that most offer initially and expand into other areas as I gain more knowledge and experience. If you have any advice please share. I love learning!

[Steve]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I plan to run for school board in the upcoming year - but I digress!!!

That is great! When you start getting into the swing of campaigning, let us know, we have worked on a bunch of campaigns so maybe we can help.

Have you come up with a name for your business yet? Will you possibly use a name that plays off your teaching career? Lawn Professor? School Yard Lawn Care, or something similar?

I think I would play up the teaching part. I can envision a news paper article that goes something like this "From the classroom to the school yard: local teacher branches off into lawn care."

You could offer free lawn care classes once in a while as a way to attract media attention and still tie in the teaching concept. It could be your marketing angle and allow you to reach out to members of your community. Also it would build goodwill and open doors for you if you decided to run for office.

Let me know some of your reflections on that.

I love your ideas and the creative twist you put on the names you provided! You can go into business with ideas like that ** oh yeah, this is your business. I've chosen Green Dot Lawn Care. Reasons: 1. I hate cartoon like logos and prefer simple images (think Movado, Target, any automobile symbol, etc.) that will burn a picture into your gray matter (Large Green Circle). 2. My wife's name is Dorothy (Dot) and the circle looks like a large green dot. I'm going to print this week so I'll move to my windows PC (I'm a mac man) and post the logo in a few for your feedback.

Here's the logo:

Sorry about that. I didn't know that it would blow up like that. Looks great w/o all of the pixels!

[Steve]

Yea that is some good stuff! I like the behind the scene story too! Will you be putting your logo on the side of your truck?

What kind of marketing ideas are you planning on implementing?

Thank you for the kind words. I do plan on putting the logo on the side of my truck. Do you recommend stickers or magnet? For starters, I have 15 lawns from friends and family to get me going. I plan on doing the good old door to door for a bit and rely on word of mouth for now. All suggestions in this area are appreciated!