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Starting a lawn care business shares common steps with what anyone has to do to start a new business.  And a fundamental step of preparing to start your business is to write a business plan.  Sadly, people often procrastinate  on writing a business plan because they don’t know how to do it and they are intimidated by the process.  So understanding the basic steps of what you need for your lawn care business plan will help you get ready for this important step.

A business plan at heart is a document you prepare for investors or to present to a lending institution to get a small business loan to go into business.  It takes capital to start your own lawn care business.  There is equipment to buy, workers to hire, trucks and trailers to get, marketing materials to create and storage facilities to lease.  The funding will help you get that basic infrastructure in place before you have the revenue to pay for those costs.

Your business plan is a document to demonstrate to those who may give you the capital you need that you have a solid business concept.  It also discusses that the markets are there to support your business and that you have a realistic plan to build the business until you are making sufficient profits to pay back the money with interest or to give investors a handsome return on their investment.

This does not mean that you should skip writing a business plan if you already have what you need to start your lawn care business or if you have enough funding without taking on debt or investors.  The process of writing a business plan is a vital developmental step because it will force you to think through your plan for success.  You will create a detailed cost/benefit analysis which will call for you to gather real world cost values for the equipment you will need, the insurance you have to buy, the space you need to lease and to pay the workers you will need to support the business.

That research alone can be a lifesaver when you actually start your new business.  But you will also go to the next step of documenting if the market for your services is strong and how you will about growing the business over a five year period of time.  If you discover during this process that you do not have a sufficient market for your lawn care business, better to know that before you take the plunge of starting the business than after.  The process of building a business plan is a big step of taking your vision for your wonderful new business and making a real life projection of how that dream will play out in reality.

If you don’t know how to write a business plan, don’t panic.    There is plenty of help available.  Your local library or book store is overflowing with books that will guide you through the process.  The internet is also rich with resources to take you step by step through how to research each section of your business plan and then how to go about writing that plan in a way that will be understandable and reasonable to your backers.

You an also turn to the local chapter of the small business association for help.  Very often there are retired business men and women who volunteer to help a new small business person like you write your first business plan.  Don’t be too proud to accept their help.  They know what you are going through seeing your vision for a great lawn care business go from dream to reality and they know how to guide you through this important part of your planning and preparation.

When your business plan is done, you will be happy you took the time to complete this process.  Part of the document is a five year plan for success.  That means when you are done, you have a roadmap for how you will take your vision for a successful lawn care company from dream to reality.  That plan will go through some changes and revisions as you go along.  But just having a map to start with can be a huge help in launching your lawn care business on its road to success.

Anyone who starts a new company does so full of optimism.  The fact that a huge percentage of new businesses fail within the first few years does not slow down the number of people launching out.  That’s a good thing because our economy was built on  small business.  So if you are just getting started with your new lawn care company, congratulations. If you are confident and optimistic, more power to you!  But it is also good to know why some other lawn care companies failed so you can head off trouble before it sneaks up on you.

Probably the number one reason a new lawn care company fails is failure to control costs during start up.  This is commonly a problem when the owner and founder gets a little carried away with the idea of being CEO and puts money into vanity expenses like offices or corporate vehicles or personal benefits.  Be aware that you should not think of rewarding yourself for the success of your new venture until it really does become a success.

This can also be a problem if you secure a small business loan and you have a block of funding from investors or a bank to use to start the business.  The value of a detailed business plan is that any start up funds you borrow are allocated to things that are critical to the start of the business with nothing allocated for unnecessary spending.  It might be that you don’t even set up offices in the first year of your operation.  The heart of your lawn care business takes place out there on the streets and in the lawns and gardens of your customers.  All of your initial expenses should go toward equipment, necessary workers to support real business that you already have and promotion to gain new business.

Lack of attention to customer relations and customer service is also the downfall of too many fine lawn care companies.  When you start your business, getting and sustaining a cash flow is absolutely critical.  So once you establish a base of a few solid, repeat customers, take care of them like royalty.  Talk to them all the time so you know if they are happy with your work.  Try to find new ways to be of value to the customers you currently have.  Don’t be afraid to perform a service for free for a reliable customer to lay the groundwork for that service to become part of your contracted work with that customer.  Your attention to customer service will assure you keep the business you have.  And it will

Finally, attention to the details of running a business that are not directly related to lawn care can create monumental problems for a new lawn care company.  Accounting, knowledge of legal and tax issues and paying attention to the nitty gritty that every business has to take care of can take your business down just as quickly as poor quality of work for your customers.   The last thing you want is to suddenly realize that you have not been paying your bills or that you are in trouble with the government because you did not take care of filing proper approvals, paying your taxes or other matters of business organization.

Take the time to understand every aspect of how to run a business.  It might mean you hire an “office manager” to make sure all of those business details are attended to.  In that way, you can focus on the thing you are the best at which is building the business and doing a great job for your lawn carte customers.  If you do that and avoid the common pitfalls that take down so many new law care companies, you are in for many years or prosperity and success.

Many people who finally launch their own lawn services company do so after operating for some time as an independent contractor.  This is a good way to go because you can build your customer base but keep your costs minimal.  Often times you may operate like this doing most of the work yourself and so avoid having to keep “employees” or deal with partners.

The thing that may be pushing you to start your own lawn care business may be that you are just too good at your job.  Your business is growing to the point that you may not be able to service all the customers without changing your profile from an individual contractor to a small business owned and operated by you.  This is a natural growth and businesses that start because of this kind of growth curve often succeed because you know the business and you know how to control costs and take good care of your customers.

The problem comes when the needs of the business outgrow your physical space that you consider to be “home base” of the business.  In most cases when you start doing lawn care as an independent contractor, you may use the same lawn care equipment that you use for your home.  Your garage is your “home base” and you keep track of the business details on your home computer.

When you take that big step of actually starting your own lawn care business, you have a decision to make.  Do you continue to use your home as the base of operations for your business or do you invest in a business location to give you offices, a larger garage and storage facilities for the wide diversity of tools and equipment you and your employees will need to take care of the business you support?

The argument in favor of operating your small business from your home is economic.  If you can launch your lawn care business with little or more additional expense and avoid taking out loans, you can use the profits to buy more equipment, pay for additional workers and eventually afford a larger space.  This is outstanding business management if you can pull it off.

The problem is that you often have to invest in growth before the growth is a reality.  To try to grow a business out of your home and garage means there will come a time right before you finally lease space for your business that it will be overwhelming your home.  That can become a big problem for your family and for keeping the equipment of your business safe and separate from your private property.  It is smart to start out keeping costs low.  But when the time comes to formally launch your lawn care business, that may be the time to secure a small business loan and get a separate operating location for your new business.

Building and maintaining a separate location that is the physical location of your business has some real advantages.  For one thing, the people who work for you and do business with you have a place to work and interact with you that is only about the goals of your lawn care business.  Your family does not have to interact with your employees or clients and you can keep your equipment and paperwork of the business in one location secure and separate.  For you, it is a place to “go to work” and it gives your business a real legitimacy that is important when you are seeking to be seen a real business operating in the lawn care markets in your community.

A separate facility gives you plenty of room to store your equipment including trucks and trailers you may need to transport your equipment to each job site.  It gives you room to work on that equipment, clean it and effect repairs.  And if you select the right location, you have room to grow when you buy more equipment to support your rapidly expanding business.  Just as you dress for success, equip your business with a “home base” that is ready for growth because you know growth will be coming.  Then the physical location of your business can grow with you step by step to greater levels of success each year.

When you begin to build your lawn care business, the backbone of that business is that roster of loyal customers.  When you can take good care of the mowing, edging and other basic lawn care functions that those customers require of you, that is the foundation of a profitable lawn care business.  But as the owner of the business, you are always thinking of ways to expand your business and reach the next plateau of profitability and growth.

One level of growth comes from gaining new customers for your existing services that you and your crew do so well.  Marketing, advertising and networking to friends and neighbors of your existing customers are all outstanding ways of adding customers to your roster of loyal clients who will help you become more profitable this year.  But there is another level of growth that do just much to improve the profitability of your company and that is up selling to your existing customer base.

Up selling consists of developing and offering new services to your existing customers to broaden the range of things you can do for them.  Up selling has been proven to be one of the most reliable ways to increase profits and to grow your business without having to invest any money in marketing or advertising.  That is because your existing customers already know you.  They are aware of how good you are at what you do.  So when you can offer a new service or a range of services to them that they can benefit from, they are open to your promotions because that relationship is already there.

You also have a lot of credibility with your customers as a lawn care expert and that credibility can be translated into more business from the customers you already have.  By keeping your client’s yards looking great, your customers develop a trust that you know what their yards and gardens need.  So if you come to them with additional services that are natural add on services to what you already for them, that is a natural expansion of that relationship of trust.

An easy to implement up sell is to offer fertilization and weed control services.  Since you already spend time on your customer’s yard each week, it would be easy enough for you to apply the right kind of yard treatment to keep the weeds down and the yard growing full and lush for your customers.  You can also apply pesticides and pre-emergent in the fall and winter and in that way offer year round services to your customers.

Once you get your customers thinking of you as their “go to” service for anything that might need to be done on the property, the range of services you can offer are vast.  You can provide services as diverse as cutting and delivering firewood, repairing fence, putting and then taking down Christmas lights, cleaning gutters, tree trimming and gardening.

Before long, it will be your customers thinking of ways you can up sell to them.  It will be your job to continue expand the skills and uses of your equipment and your crew to provide those services to  your customers. But in doing so, you are becoming more valuable to your existing client base.  And you are increasing the size of the weekly or monthly invoice those customers happily pay for your services.  That is smart marketing and smart business management as well.

The preparations to start your own lawn care business are not that different from starting any new business.  While the work you do of making people’s lawns look great is different from many businesses, the rules of how to start a business apply to you too.  And one big rule that you must obey before you get started is to know the costs of doing business before you launch out on your own.

Running a professional lawn care business must be done with a different approach than just doing lawn care to make money as a contractor.  You may have already learned a lot by loading up your small push Briggs and Stratton lawnmower in the back of your pickup and going around mowing lawns to make money.  Not that this is not good honest work.  But to actually upgrade from that stage to running a full scale lawn care business means you will think bigger, plan to make more money and approach the question of equipment with a bigger vision as well.

There are expenses that are a natural part of running a lawn care business.  Probably the top three expenses are (1) employees (2) equipment and (3) storage and maintenance of your equipment.  One reason you must do some realistic thinking about the equipment you will need to create a business out of your talent for lawn care is that knowing the “start up costs” is a big part of becoming a full fledged business.  When you finally have your business started, whether that means incorporation or some other format that you frame your new business in, you must be ready to get out there and start working as soon as possible.  That means moving quickly and efficiently to buy the tools of the trade for taking good care of your customer’s lawns.

The basic tools needed for lawn care are pretty easy to list.  Depending on the kinds of services your lawn care company will do, those tools might include lawnmowers, edgers, rakes, brooms, leaf blower/suckers, weed eaters, hoes, trowels, shovels and clean up equipment. If you have been doing lawn care either of your own place or as a contractor, you no doubt know this equipment well.  But that basic lawn mower that does a good job being used once a week in a home is probably not going to be sturdy enough to be used 8 hours a day, 5-7 days a week.

In addition to finding out the costs for “industrial strength” equipment, the types of contracts you will be servicing and the kinds of services you offer impact equipment needs.  If you are going to be the primary lawn care service for a large golf club, you will need large riding lawn mowers and other equipment that can handle such a big job.  Also think about storage and transportation of that equipment and any maintenance needs you will have in keeping the tools of the trade that make your business work in tip top operating equipment all the time.

As a rule, start out evaluating the equipment you will need for your first few months of business.  If you already have customers, just upgrade the equipment you have been using to be ready for the expansion of business you are planning.  Don’t invest in equipment to support hundreds of large scale corporate contracts if you are starting off with a dozen residential customers that will be the starting place for your business. Plan for today and for your next step in growing your business.  And grow your equipment and employee base to support the business as it grows.  That is sensible business management that will serve you well day one and for years to come as your lawn care business continues to grow and succeed.