Lawn Service
Summer is here, hurrah. Better get the lawn mower serviced the grass is starting to grow and you’ll be out there twice a week for the next few months; ring any bells? If you are like me and had to mow the lawn as a kid you probably hate doing it as much as me (I live in an apartment now).
If you don’t mind doing the lawn though then there are millions of people just like me out there who live in houses and would happily hire you to do the job.
Even if you don’t own a lawnmower you can get a reconditioned one pretty cheap. If you want to last the season then go for a petrol powered one as you don’t need to plug it in anywhere and it will be more robust, plus you can get the blades sharpened periodically to keep everything running at optimum.
www.lawnsite.com has a host of information provided in a forum format. It seems that 20 customers are around average with the bigger guys managing 50 or so. That’s a lot of hours mowing but given 12 weeks of mowing 3 hours a day plus weekends you could see yourself bringing in a healthy additional income (and its only about 12 weeks of work).
Assume you had 20 customers with average sized lawns and charged $10 a cut; you would soon be taking home $2400 on top of your current income. www.lawncare-business.com says that his minimum charge is $35 per job, which sounds high to me, but if its achievable you would be pulling in almost $8500 each summer on top of your day job, and that’s a decent rise in anyone’s book.
When you start you will probably use a hand push mower, a strimmer and a hoe for the edges but as you develop your business and invest in better equipment you will be able to finish jobs faster, and thus take on more customers. You can also invest in a 2nd or 3rd mower and hire people to help you if you find that you are taking on too many customers. Remember that 10% of a job you don’t do is always better than 0%
I have read in forums before that this business is too competitive and that in some areas all this kind of work is done by immigrant labour, which can’t be undercut, and other such excuses. The truth is that people prefer to have workers around their homes and families who they can trust. If you start by approaching people you know, you will soon be in business. Take this further and hand out some flyers, put an ad in your church hymn sheet, whatever it takes there are customers out there waiting for you.
Stock can be as simple as the three items listed above and your own sweat or it can be a complex array of tools, trailers, trucks and paraphernalia as you will see if you visit any lawn care related website. Don’t get carried away when you start out, get the basics and prove that you can do this, and that you enjoy it. If you find it problematic, unsatisfying, or you just aren’t up to marketing the service then you can walk away no more than a few dollars out of pocket.
If on the other hand you get too many jobs you can either upgrade your equipment, get a ride on to speed up your work, or simply buy more “low end” equipment and hire some help. You can then either keep a percentage of the fee, or simply charge for use of your equipment if that seems fairer.
I was conservative with my numbers above, if you did 50 customers each summer at $35 a lawn you’d be looking at a $21,000 income for 12 weeks work. I guess you’d have to get help or you’d be flat out….and what happens when it rains?
You might want to include additional services such as fertilisers, weed killers etc at an additional charge (but minimal extra work).
If you live in downtown New York or Central Hong Kong then I guess you didn’t read this far; did you?