My experience in doing lawn care for clients is extensive. I have been doing this for about 15 years, so I know a thing or two about the DO’s and DON’Ts of this business.
In this article, we will go over how to start a lawn care business the right way and we will go over some tips in order to make it profitable. To just understand the basics of starting a business, head over to our other article:
“How to Start a Business The Correct Way”.
Getting Started
When determining how to start a lawn care business, we have to determine why we want to start a lawn care business. What is the objective?
Are you looking to just make a few bucks on the side? Or, are you looking to make this a fulltime thing where the income potential is pretty much unlimited.
It’s up to you, but many people make more in 3-5 months of the year than the majority of people make all year round.
It’s up to you, but if you chose the latter there is a wrong way to do this and a right way. You must forget about ever keeping this whole thing under the table if you really want to excel.
It’s time to make things legit. No more limiting your income because you’re afraid Uncle Sam would be knocking at your door.
The time to act is now, because you deserve to make more money, and you deserve to make this thing legit.
Your first step in getting started is to form an LLC, obtain an EIN and registered agent service.
This can all be done with a professional business formation service. Bizee by Incfile has a Platinum level package that is really the best value for your money (IOO).
How to Start a Lawn Care Business: Do’s and Don’ts
The DOs when you start a yard maintenance business:
- DO open an LLC to protect your personal assets
- DO put the right systems into place
- DO hire 1099 workers
- DO get business insurance
- DO charge per man hour
- DO implement a referral program
- DO automate customer review retrieval
- DO pay your workers well
- DO take pride in the quality of work your business provides
The DON’Ts:
- DONT leave your personal assets unprotected by failing to form an LLC
- DONT try to do all the work yourself
- DONT go without business insurance
- DONT stay stagnant and settle when you can drum up more business
- DONT hire someone without running a background check
- DONT run your lawn care business without a system in place
How to Start a Lawn Care Business: Tips & Tricks
- Obtain new clients and 1099 workers up to a month before the season starts ( if you live where this can be year round, always market for more business and 1099 workers).
- Offer a deal for hiring your business for bi-weekly recurring work, and give a steeper discount when hiring for weekly, and so on.
- Charge per man hour- if you charge say $50-$100 per man hour (a common rate), you can more easily determine a great hourly rate for your 1099 workers’. We recommend anywhere between $20-$25 per hour per regular 1099 worker, and $30-$35 for leads.
- Use a reputable background check company for hiring your workers (your businesses reputation can highly count on this).
- Use a system like Booking Koala for your business where customers can book right from your custom domain name. Your 1099 workers can also go into the platform and accept work.
- This may go without saying, but we can’t emphasize this enough. ALWAYS go over and beyond for your customers. This does NOT mean sacrifice your other values, though. I have personally done great work one time on a new customers yard, and not only do they continue to hire me, they have referred me to 4 other clients.
If you have a worker that is not pulling their own weight, it is worth pulling them aside. Use your discretion, and if it is something that can be fixed, communicate that.
If not, you need to move on with a different worker that will take it more seriously.
More Tips:
- Form your LLC as soon as feasible financially, because people are always going to need yard work done. Use door-to-door flyers to obtain customers pre-season. Make it easy for them to book with you by using a QR code they can scan that leads to your booking page.
- Start out with a nice weed wacker and a push mower. You can find the tools, and brands we use in the next section of this post.
- Start on small yards. Many people even specialize in only doing yards that are around a half acre (also, tightly knit housing developments), because this way 2 people can do 2-4 yards in an hour or so.
You could charge $45 every 2 weeks for these yards instead of by the man hour. Therefore, this would equate to $135 per hour if it’s 3 yards, minus $50 per hour for the workers, leaving you with $85 per hour from 2 of your workers. $680 per day with just 2 workers doing 24 small yards. Not bad! Imagine if you had 10 workers that were busy every day.
How to Start a Lawn Care Business: The Tools We Use
We have graduated to a full on yard maintenance operation and use Echo for our hedge trimmers and weed wackers without fail.
Just about any push mower brand will do. Make sure you buy one with a mulch bag attached, and make sure it is a self propelled mower. This will make it easier on you and/or your workers. I stand by Briggs and Stratton motors for all our push mowers.
The clippers, and smaller tools can be pretty much any brand as long as it’s high quality. You can get all of this on ebay.com. Honestly, if you just want to mow lawns for people instead of all the extra work, you could turn out more lawns per day. Many people start out this way.
How to Start a Lawn Care Business: The Best Business Insurance
The best insurance company we have came across for this type of business, including many others is InsuranceBee. They work with you when providing a quote. The quotes obviously are free and they are no obligation.
They are partnered with many other insurance companies, too. So, if they cannot provide your business with insurance themselves, they will go leaps and bounds to find the right business insurance company for you.
Their customer service is unmatched in our opinion. You can not go wrong with InsuranceBee for a free quote.
Conclusion
There has never been a time like right this second to start a legit lawn care business. People will always be willing to pay good money to have hard workers that can provide a service of cleaning up their lawns and yards.
It may not be sexy in some peoples eyes, but you can make more money in 3-5 months than the majority of people make all year. We hope this article has inspired some, and we hope you can use it as a resource to further your career.
To find out how to get started, read our article “How to Start a Business The Correct Way”.