Start Your Own Lawn Care or Landscaping Business

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Success

Cheryl Kimball

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781599185927
• eBook ISBN: 9781613083420
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

If you enjoy the outdoors, love nature, or enjoy the smell of fresh cut grass, then a lawn care or landscaping business is your chance to rake in plenty of green. Your business can range from lawn maintenance to applying chemicals, trimming and shaping trees to designing landscapes for residential or commercial jobs.Everything you need to start a successful lawn care or landscaping business is in your hands. Start turning green grass into cold cash today!

CHAPTER 1

The Green, Green Grass of Home

When you think back to the long, lazy summers of your youth, chances are your recollections are full of achingly nostalgic memories. Picture an oversized tire swing under a big, shady tree and tall, frosty glasses of lemonade wreathed in pearls of moisture. In the background the high-pitched whine of lawn mowers drone. If you’re like a lot of people, you were trudging along behind one of those mowers back then, pushing with all your might and sweating profusely, just so you could make a few bucks to buy some baseball cards or a really cool bike. You may have occasionally mowed down a few pansies or zebra-striped a lawn, but you sure were proud when the homeowner came to the door, surveyed your handiwork, and forked over the agreed-upon fee.

Mowing lawns or landscaping residential or commercial properties for a living can give you that same sense of pride—while earning you some pretty serious cash.

The Green Scene

There are many advantages to running a homebased lawn care or landscaping service. You’re master of your own destiny, and can devote as much or little time to the business as you want. You have a short commute to work if you’re based in your own community and can work at your own pace at virtually any time during regular daylight hours. You also can enjoy the fresh air, get a good cardiovascular workout, and bulk up your muscles.

The price of all this freedom and body contouring is relatively low—so low, in fact, that many new lawn service owners and landscapers use their personal credit cards or small personal loans to fund their new businesses. Once you invest in the tools and toys you need to manicure lawns or install landscaping professionally, you’re generally set for years. You don’t need much in the way of office equipment, either, and you can set your office up in a corner of the den or a spare bedroom rather than laying out extra cash for a commercial space.

Reality Check

This all sounds pretty appealing, doesn’t it? But of course, every Garden of Eden has a serpent, and lawn care and landscaping businesses have quite a few of their own coiled and waiting to strike. To begin, you have to be a lot more adept at mowing, trimming, and pruning than the average person. That means you’ll have to invest some time in learning gardening basics and techniques. You’ll have to be a disciplined self-starter who can ignore the call of a glorious spring day and diligently service your clients rather than heading for the lake or golf course. You have to be physically fit and able to handle the rigors of the job, which can include lifting heavy equipment off and onto trailers, and wielding bulky handheld implements for hours at a time. You’ll be handling potentially dangerous machinery and hazardous chemicals. You’ll also have to be a very savvy business manager who can administer cash flow, create advertising and marketing campaigns, and implement a survival plan that will take you through the lean winter months.

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Do You Have the Right Stuff?

Ask yourself these questions to see if you have what it takes to become a successful lawn service owner:

Am I motivated enough to work without a bear of a boss breathing down my neck? ___

Can I resist driving my sit-down mower over to the park for some R&R on beautiful summer days? ___

Do I have the stamina and commitment to slather on sunblock regularly and spend a lot of time wrestling with flowering trees in gigantic pots under the blazing sun? ___

Can I train my computer mouse to click on “Landscape Illustrator 5.0” when it really wants to go play in “Final Fantasy XV: Episode D...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Green, Green Grass of Home
• Chapter 2: Lawn Care
• Chapter 3: Landscaping
• Chapter 4: Mowing Down the Competition
• Chapter 5: Your Budding Business
• Chapter 6: Cutting-Edge Help
• Chapter 7: Tools of the Trade
• Chapter 8: Turf Tenders
• Chapter 9: Planting the Seeds of Success
• Chapter 10: Spreading the Word
• Chapter 11: Casting Your Net
• Chapter 12: Blowing Your Own Horn
• Chapter 13: The Green Stuff
• Chapter 14: Your Green Piece on Earth
• Appendix: Lawn Care/Landscaping Resources
• Glossary
• Index