How to Start and Run a Lawn Care Business

Featured image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay

Running a lawn care business is an excellent way to earn extra cash. It can allow you to add another income stream to your current business. There are so many benefits associated with starting up a lawn care business that you should seriously consider it.

Choose the Right Lawn Care Equipment

When building a business, choosing the right equipment is crucial. You don’t want to spend your hard-earned money on equipment that will break down after a few uses. If you are just starting, you do not have the capital to purchase the tools you need altogether. Even if you don’t have a good credit score, a loan could be the right choice for you. Just look for landscaping loans for bad credit online.

Buy a Good Lawnmower

The first piece of equipment you’ll need is a lawnmower. There are various options available for lawn mowers, depending on your budget.

It may be best to go with a push mower if you’re just starting your lawn care business. They are inexpensive and easy to maintain. However, they do not perform well in hilly or uneven terrain.

Riding lawn mowers are ideal for larger jobs and handle hilly terrain well. The tradeoff is that they cost much more than push mowers and require more maintenance.

Purchase a Sturdy Weed Eater

A weed eater is essential for any lawn care business because it allows you to trim around obstacles such as fences, trees, shrubs, and flower beds in your clients’ yards.

Choose Clients for Your Lawn Care Business Carefully

At some point, you might want to take your lawn care business to the next level. Perhaps you have been doing it as a side job and now want to make it a full-time business. Maybe you have been working for an existing company and now want to strike out independently. Either way, you need a plan of action.

One of the most important things you will need to decide is who will be in your customer base. This will determine what kind of advertising and marketing you will do, the services you offer, your equipment and staffing needs, and everything else related to your business.

Check Your Budget

When you are just starting out, it’s essential to know how much you can afford to spend on each piece to use in your new lawn care business. No one wants to go broke before they even get started!

So once you have an idea of what you can afford, look at the equipment that fits your budget without breaking the bank. For example, if you can only afford $500 or less on a new mower, look at secondhand mowers in this price range before buying anything new.

Learn While You Earn: Experience Is Key

When starting a lawn care business, it’s essential to get some experience by working for someone else. You will learn valuable practical experience, but you’ll also learn about mistakes to avoid.

There are many opportunities for work in the lawn care industry, including jobs at local garden centers and nurseries or working with landscape professionals. After gaining some experience, you can start a lawn care business of your own.

Start Small, Grow Big

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’d like to go big. But there’s a lot of risk in that approach. If you invest a lot of money in expensive equipment and vehicles, it’s harder to recover if your business doesn’t work out. And if it does work out, you’ll be strapped for cash early on because so much of your funding has gone toward things you need to make money (like trucks and mowers).

On the other hand, if you start small and grow your business as demand increases, your initial costs will be lower. Because of that, you can reinvest your profits and use them over time to expand your business.

While the job may not be the most glamorous, it can help you to get your feet wet as a businessperson while making valuable connections.

Purchase Insurance for Your Lawn Care Business

Liability insurance is vital because landscaping and lawn care businesses can cause risk to yourself and others. Here are some examples of what could go wrong:

You might accidentally damage someone else’s property. This could include anything from cutting down the wrong tree to driving your mower over a fence.
Someone might get hurt on your property or by your equipment. For example, a client or passerby could trip over your tools or get caught in a lawnmower accident.
Lawn care work can be risky, and accidents are common. Your employees could get injured on the job.

Insurance is a must-have for anyone starting a new business in lawn care.

Develop Marketing Materials and Give out Flyers

Making up flyers is the easiest way to get the word out about your new company. You can place these on doors and windshields or hang them in public places. However, do keep in mind that this may not always be legal. So check with local authorities before doing anything like this.

Some people choose to hire someone to drop off their flyers door-to-door. This can work well if you don’t have the time or energy to do it yourself. Flyers work best if you target specific areas where there are a lot of older homes that the owners may not be able or willing to take care of on their own.

When creating flyers, make sure they look professional, as this will help build trust in potential clients.

You can also place notices tailored to a local audience on social media platforms. Often you can even do this at no cost.

However you decide to market your business, be sure to include a brief description of the services you offer as well as your pricing and contact information.

Conclusion

It can seem like a massive undertaking if you’re looking to start a lawn care business. That’s because it’s not just about cutting grass. You have to factor in marketing and customer service. It can seem like a Sisyphean effort to get your company off the ground. However, any beginning lawn care business can become an enjoyable success with these tips.