January 24, 2020 Courses For Success

Starting a Lawn Care Business

People are working longer hours and jobs are more demanding than ever. Many people don't have the time to install turf or care for their lawns, and some simply prefer to have someone else do it for them.

An increasing number of people have noticed this opportunity and this has given rise to an overwhelming industry of self-employed business owners in lawn care and landscaping maintenance.

The demand for lawn care professionals is so high that most business owners find they need to employ multiple workers shortly after starting up to keep up with demand! If running your own lawn care business interests you, this guide will outline how to go about starting up and running a successful lawn care business.

Lawn care is not something that many people think of turning into a money-making enterprise such as a lawn care and landscaping business. There are plenty of residential grasslands and opportunities to start a business in the landscaping industry, by yourself or with a partner. Learn how to take care of grass and become a lawn care master with courses that you can finish at your own pace and in your own house.

The idea of starting a lawn care business or taking something as simple as lawn installation and care, and turning it into a care or landscaping business has never been this easy to accomplish. When considering starting a lawn care business you need to realize that it is more than just mowing grass and trimming edges. As with any landscaping business, you need to understand that there is plenty of scope to customize and scale according to your market, your needs, and your expertise.

Running a startup lawn care business from scratch offers many exciting opportunities to grow and expand what can be quite a lucrative business with impressive profit margins. To get fully prepared, you can browse our lawn and landscaping courses here.

Starting a lawn care business

While any business enterprise has its challenges, lawn care maintenance and garden care is a low startup cost business that you can run from home. This is great because all you need to get started is the right lawn care equipment and transport! The current demand for lawn care professionals is so high that many in the landscaping industry have increased their costs, which is great news for you.

The key factors in establishing a lawn maintenance business are:

Get hold of the correct licenses and permits.
Be clear about what you want to achieve and how you want to do it.
Identify your target market.
Choose the necessary equipment.
Looking into hiring employees.
Advertise your business.
Deliver quality service.
Hire a professional to look after the business accounts.
Grow your business.

These basic principles apply even when you are looking to start your lawn care business from scratch.

Of course, there may be specific skills that you need to develop or equipment you need to acquire to make your care and landscaping business a success. Undertaking an online course will help you to fill in any knowledge gaps that you have and equip you with the confidence and knowledge to build a successful lawn care business.

Lawn care as a hobby or starting a lawn care business on the side

A lawn maintenance business is a great way to generate additional income, particularly in times of high demand like spring and summer. Ideally, if you are looking to start a lawn care or landscaping business as a sideline activity it is advisable that you start planning your business just as you would do if it were your primary.

To do this you need to budget your time and expenses appropriately. You need to take the time to research your target market, plan your advertising, research local licensing requirements, and attend to the demands of your ideal client.

If you treat your sideline business like a real business you will stand more of a chance of increasing your profit margins much faster.

Lawn care on a budget or starting a lawn care business with no money

Many prospective lawn and garden care businesses never get past first base because there is a perception that it can’t be done without buying equipment.

Cash liquidity is not an insurmountable problem for someone determined to make a lawn business work. Using existing equipment or arranging to borrow equipment from friends or family can help get you to start your lawn mowing business from scratch.

Your potential clients will be attracted via word of mouth, printing and delivering flyers, and placing advertisements on community bulletin boards. Sure, growth will initially be slow, but if you apply sound principles and invest what you earn back into your landscaping company, either into new lawn care business equipment, equipment maintenance, or further education, you will begin to see progress.

Lawn care business equipment required

You can start a lawn care business with minimal equipment — a lawn mower and trimmer will suffice. However, if you are serious about building a lawn business, you will need additional equipment. This could include:

A trailer or pickup truck.
Lawn mowers.
Edge trimmers.
Hedge trimmers.
Hand tools.
Blowers.
Brush cutters.
Chainsaw.
Safety equipment.
Equipment for snow removal.
Pest control equipment.

What are the costs of starting a lawn care business?

At a base level, most landscaping and lawn care companies start out as low cost enterprises. Startup costs could be as low as the cost of a mower, whipper snipper, leaf blower and a trailer to cart everything around.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to buy into an existing lawn care or landscaping business, the cost could be as much as $100,000.

How to grow your lawn care business?

In the initial stages, it may be necessary to spend as much time promoting your business as you do working on it.

The great news is that at a local level a lawn or garden care business can be promoted organically via word of mouth. However, to maximize the reach of your business, it will be necessary to do a little more promotion than that. Some ways to help grow your lawn maintenance business can include the following strategies.

What are some of the best ways to market your lawn care business?

Pick a catchy business name that speaks to what you do. If you find yourself struggling for ideas, consider using a name generator.
Online promotion — including Google listings, Facebook presence, and a small website. List your business with local directories.
Use printed marketing material. Carry your business cards with you and hand them out at every opportunity. Print up advertising flyers and distribute them via letter drops. Post your printed stationary on local bulletin boards.
Use Calls to Action (CTA) in all promotions — both electronic and printed. A call to action is simply a direction to call, book now or take some action.
Market to existing customers and communicate with your clients, to ensure that they are all aware of your full range of services. You should be looking to turn a one-off lawn cut or landscaping job into regular maintenance jobs. Remain in contact with former lawn care clients.
The landscaping industry is crowded. So, make sure your lawn care pricing is competitive by keeping it low in the first few months. Let people see how good you are at mowing lawns and landscaping professionally before you bump up the price.

What are the best courses for starting a lawn care business?

For many people who are considering starting a lawn care business, a course covering all aspects of lawn maintenance and landscaping, as well as the critical elements of business operating and business finance, might be the first step towards success.

At Courses for Success, we offer several courses that would suit a prospective lawn care business owner.

An excellent entry-level course is the Certificate in Lawn and Garden Care Online course. This short course covers the key elements of starting and running an online business. These include:

The right equipment for lawn mowing.
Setting up your trailer.
Equipment maintenance.
Doing a professional job.
Advanced lawn care.
How to set up your business.
The basics of business operating, business structure, and expansion.

However, to be completely ready to start a lawn care business the best option is to take the Ultimate Lawn and Garden Care Bundled course package.

This bundle not only covers the essential elements of lawn and garden care listed above, but offers a total of 10 courses covering all elements of running a business.

A comprehensive bundle of courses for starting a lawn business include:

For those looking to turn lawn care into a related business, such is landscaping, a course like the Certificate in Landscaping Online Course is well worth doing. This will give you all the information you need to start becoming a professional landscape designer.

Whatever your needs are, whether you need help with your lawn care business plan, want to know how to look after your lawn mowers, or you want the complete guides to landscaping for beginners, Courses for Success have the right course for you.

What are the pros and cons of starting a lawn care business?

Besides the obvious appeal of working outdoors, starting a lawn care business has many benefits. Some of these benefits are provided below:

Lawn care is a repeat business

Basic lawn jobs are regular, which means steady, reliable, consistent income. Your customers will want their lawns maintained regularly — this makes for a reliable, bankable business book. Plus, given that it’s a fairly low cost operation, it’s possible to offer affordable lawn care to customers and make an impressive profit.

Lawn care is scalable, from lawn mowing to landscaping

The beauty of starting a garden care business is that you can start simply by offering a lawn mowing service. Then, as your business and expertise increase, you can add other services on to your business. Services such as landscaping, new sod installation, weeding, tree trimming, and more.

You could also consider expanding into other home and garden maintenance niches. So long as you have enough lawn care employees, there will be the potential to deploy them in a spinoff irrigation business or cleaning business. The numerous options available to you as a garden care business owner will allow you to take advantage of opportunities as your customers’ needs change.

Customizable models for lawn care and lawn care services

The lawn maintenance business is adaptable to many different models. From the simple model of sole proprietorship that calls upon you to perform all aspects of the business, to the entrepreneurial model where you choose to run several garden care teams and complete employee scheduling from the comfort of your office.

You can target residential contracts (homes, flats, apartments) or commercial contracts, depending upon the job sites available and your own business profile.

Lawn care supports the entry level workforce

If you do see the need to expand and you come to require extra employees, you can readily recruit labourers to assist you. The great thing is that entry level workers need little formal education and can be trained on the job.

This makes employing people a straightforward proposition for garden care business operators, with little to no add-on costs for training and education involved.

Franchising opportunities for your lawn care business

The lawn care business naturally lends itself to franchising businesses. You can tap into these pre-built business models and recognized brand names by purchasing one of the many established and highly regarded lawn care business franchises.

If this idea appeals to you, you should consider purchasing an existing business, which will give you an immediate customer base as well as equipment.

Income generating consumables

When you have a customer base of people needing lawn maintenance, you have a ready-made customer base that will be looking for related products such as special fertilizers, weed treatments and pest control. People looking for these products are likely to be regular buyers.

Providing access to these consumable products gives you the opportunity to create an additional, recurring income stream. In other words, offering these products to customers can help you build your business further.

On the other hand, there are some downsides to the lawn care and landscaping industry that you should be aware of.

Seasonal lawn mowing

While some may see the seasonality of lawn care as an advantage, you will need to plan your business around the peaks and troughs of winter and summer. These peaks and troughs can be mitigated by leveraging an additional business resource that suits your market.

This could include rubbish removal, gutter cleaning, general landscaping, and, in colder areas, snow removal with a snow plow. You don’t want to have to rely on your personal assets to help you stay afloat.

A lawn mowing business’ startup costs

Even at its most basic level, a lawn mowing business is going to require equipment and a means of transporting it. Depending on the size and scope of your business, this will require an initial expenditure and/or borrowing, and you’ll need to factor in the amount of time it will take for you to source your equipment.

High level of competition in lawn mowing and garden services

A quick perusal of the local paper or phone book will reveal any number of lawn mowing, landscaping and related businesses in your neighborhood. This is both encouraging and a reason for caution — if the local market has too many competitors it will be necessary to adjust prices, which will eat into overall profit margins.

The economic conditions make lawns a low priority

When hard times hit, both residential and business customers are likely to review all costs. In these times, it is inevitable that some customers will prune what they consider to be non-essential expenses.

For some, lawn maintenance will be one such cost. Owners of successful lawn, landscaping, and garden care businesses experience the freedom and joy of working outdoors while having the opportunity to leverage their business into significant income streams.

Start your lawn care business today

If the idea of running a lawn care or landscaping business appeals to you then take action today and start the lawn care course that best suits you.

Having the chance to create your own lawn care and landscaping business without complicated procedures is presented to you in the form of our online courses. If starting a business in the lawn care and landscaping industry is your ambition, then start learning about the service and how to create your lawn care business right now.

Why Courses for Success?

Courses for Success offers over 10,000 online courses, all of which aim to help you in your personal development and career progression. Not only that, but you can also study them anywhere and at any time, and take them at your own pace, too.

You don’t need career diplomas or specific experience to get started. With every course we offer created to be as accessible as possible, you can be sure that all of them, from our coding courses and trading courses to design courses and developer courses, will help to boost your prospects, no matter who you are.

Beyond just the education itself, students will be issued with a certificate online after successful completion of each of the learning courses they do. Our lawn care courses are no exception. Our online lawn care certificates that are recognized by industry leaders. You could really make a name for yourself in the lawn care sector by signing up for a Courses for Success short course.

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