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.

Most of us daydream of starting our own business.  If you work for someone else, even if it is doing something you love, there are issues that you have to contend with.  If the work you love is lawn care, its common to see flaws in how the people you are working for are running the business and to think, “Hey I can do better than that”.  Also the allure of starting your own business is that if you are a success (and we presume you will be), you are the one making money off of the work of others.

So maybe its time to stop daydreaming and get out there and start that new business.  There are some steps to follow to accomplish that dream.  The first commandment of starting a lawn care busiess is that you are still starting a small business and you will need to follow many of the procedures that any small business start up will go through.  A visit to the small business association in your town is always a positive first move.  They will have literature, some free courses and sometimes free consultation with retired people who know all about how to start a business.   If you can get that kind of help, you will get a fast track education in what you must do to get your new business up and running.

One big step any advisor you consult will have you take before you do anything about your dream of starting your own lawn care business is to write a business plan. This is not as difficult as it sounds.  It is basically an organized documentation of your dream combined with some real world research in how you will make that dream a reality.  The primary purpose of your business plan is to give you something to take to investors or to a bank or some other lending institution to get funding to start up your new business.

If you have all the money you need or if you already have the equipment you need to start your business, maybe you don’t need a business plan.  But it still is a good idea to write one.  The process will force you to create a five year plan so you set out on day one on a path to growth and success.  And even if you have enough money and equipment to get started, you will want to grow and expand and that might take a small business loan.  That is where having a business plan in  place will pay off.

Before you quit your “day job”, think about the steps you will take to make your new business profitable quickly.  You may need to spend a few months while you are still employed by someone else building your equipment inventory, planning for a storage facility and landing customers who will give you their lawn care business when you break off from the world of being an employee and launch your business for real.

The research you do now before you make the big step of setting up a new business will be a life saver down the road.  There is a lot to learn such as whether you will incorporate your business or just pick a business name and get started.  You should spend some time learning about how to keep the books, do the accounting and manage both the money you make and the bills you will pay as a business.   You can think through if you will employ others and get some training in what involves as an employer both financially and legally.

There is more to running a lawn care business than gassing up the mowers and going to work.  By doing your preparation work while you still have a paycheck coming in, you vastly improve your chances of success because you will “hit the ground running”  That fast start will get your new lawn care business off the ground for a long and successful as well as prosperous business for you.

There may be lots of reason you had when you began to start your own yard care business.  It is a natural way for you to take your skills at creating masterpieces in the yards of your customers and turning it into a business.  It could be that you work for a yard care company and after watching them bumble the business side of things, you just know you can do a  better job.

One of the biggest reasons that people of every discipline give for going into business for themselves is that they can get rid of the boss and finally call the shots on how the business will be run.  One of the great joys of running your own yard care business is that when you are a success, that sense of accomplishment you get as you see your business prosper is a thrill  that you could never experience if you spent your career working for other people.

You also get to set the tone and the “corporate culture” when it is you that owns and operates your yard care business.  How many times have you worked for a boss who wanted you to work hard making his yard care business a success but that boss didn’t know a thing about yard care and did not get in there and do the work with you?  You can correct that by getting the best from your employees by being just as hard a worker as they are.   And by  creating a genuine spirit of teamwork and cooperation in your employees, you will get so much more from them than the failed management practices of your previous employers.

There is an old joke about working for yourself that you will have a fool for a boss and a lazy staff.  That joke points out that when it is you who is in charge of the business, all of a sudden, how things work takes on a new perspective.  Now it is you who notices the failings of the workers you are paying to make your business a success.  Now it is you who cannot always go out on every job and work shoulder to shoulder with them because you have marketing to do or you have to meet with the investors or stay back and work on scheduling or taxes.

The paperwork and management detail that it takes to run a successful company is often one of the hardest things to take when you are the one running the lawn care company.  The one thing you love about lawn care is being outside, working with nature and turning lawns into things of beauty.  So when you suddenly have to spend work time doing duties that go with managing a company, you actually find yourself doing what you love to do less than before and doing what you hate, paperwork, a lot more.  That is a serious drawback to owning your own lawn care business that you should be aware of before you launch the business.

You will also work much harder then you ever knew you would be able to work when it is your business on the line.  When you were an employee, you might have had to work overtime every so often and when you did, you may have gotten extra pay. When you own the business, you will live and breathe that business.  It will come home with you sleep with you and you will work overtime virtually constantly.

That kind of commitment goes with the territory when you are the boss.   Because the business is “your baby”, it is easy to get obsessed with success and to take problems that come along hard.  Many small business operators get ulcers or get overworked easily.  You should be prepared for the demands of owning a business so it doesn’t hurt your family life because those demands are real and you should be ready for them in advance.

It is very exciting to own and operate your own business.  But success comes with a cost.  Talk to others who have started lawn care businesses so you get a feel for the tough road that lies ahead.  If you do that, the pitfalls of the job of being the owner of your own lawn care business won’t surprise you and you will learn to be a winner and to guide your new business to great success.

Starting a new business of any kind if hard work.  That is just as true when it comes to a lawn care business as any other field of endeavor.  Before you even start putting together a business plan or talking about the idea of owning and operating your own lawn care company, its good to make sure your reasons for starting a lawn care business are good ones.  The purpose you have for going out on your own will have has much to contribute to your final success as any other factor.

There is a certain pride that you will enjoy when you have your own business.  And it is true that people who start their own companies often become very wealthy.  But even more small business people fail or make a good living but never reach tremendous wealth.  Even if you do realize huge success, that success is built on days, weeks, months and years of hard work and careful planning and development of the business.  It is not a bad goal to want to own your own lawn care business to make big money and enjoy the status of being “the boss”.  But make sure that desire for money and glory is combined with a strong work ethic and a good grasp of the realities of what lies ahead.

Perhaps the best reason to start your own business doing lawn care for people is that you love the work.  Lawn care is a terrific career if you really like to work outdoors.  You get plenty of sunshine and fresh air working on making the lawns and gardens of your customers look great.  Of course, you do endure some difficult weather sometimes but for the personality that loves being outdoors whether it is hot or cold or even rainy, building a lawn care business will be a good fit to who you are.

There is also a lot of creative expression possible in lawn care work.  The reason people hire you is to take a lawn or garden that looks bad and turn it into a thing of beauty.  You use the tools you have mastered to sculpt that outdoor space into something your customers will be proud of.  That is a worthwhile advocation for anyone.  And when you walk away from a job well done and admire the thing of beauty you made, you can get that same thrill that artists get when they make the world a more beautiful place.

Your desire to own your own lawn care business may be that you know you can do a better job than the company you work for.  If you have built up strong relationships with customers, it is very common for a skilled lawn care professional to start a new business and be very successful taking away dissatisfied customers from another service.  If your focus is on the service you do and on making your customers happy and you know how to recruit and keep skilled workers, you have the basic skills needed to be a big success running your own business.

Lawn care can be a business that will keep you busy and making money for decades.  It is somewhat recession proof because everybody need to have their lawns taken care of.  Your business is built on relationships with long term customers and that means you may never have to spend a dime on getting new customers.  Good lawn care businesses thrive on word of mouth and once the word gets about the quality work that you do, you will have more customers than you know what to do with.

If you have the skills, the aptitude and the right motivations, you can be a success starting your own lawn care business.  The research process to learn more about what it will take to start that dream business will give you the “nitty gritty” about the work that lies ahead.  If your vision, your dream and your excitement for getting your lawn care business up and running cannot be diminished by the hard work that lies ahead, you are a great candidate to own and operate a business providing lawn care to dozens of happy and grateful customers all over town.

Usually when a person thinks about starting a new business, there are a lot of costs.  But there are ways to start your lawn care business without spending a dime.  All you have to do is get a few customers and begin working to generate cash flow and then the money from those customers will help you have the funding to pay for the expenses of your business.  But you have to know how to find ways to get the business up and running and do so without spending any of your own money.

For one thing, you don’t have to spend any money to “start a business”.  You can create a company name, print up some flyers and even business cards on your home computer and presto, your company just became a reality.  Down the road you can go to the county clerks office and register your company name so nobody else can use it.  Even that usually only costs $20 or so.  It is when you incorporate to become a financial entity that the costs come up and you can put that off for a long time.

You can get your business going using the equipment you have and even the transportation you have. If you have a pickup truck and the lawn care equipment you use to mow your own lawn and take care of it, you are in business.  Use that home computer you have to create some flyers to put out on people’s doors. Take an afternoon and walk the entire neighborhood and put a flyer in each persons front door announcing you are in business.

To make it enticing, offer to give the first lawn care session to the customer for free.  All this costs you is gas.  You will get dozens of phone calls and within a couple weeks, you will have so many customers, you will be busy every day.  The money will start to flow and you will have the revenue to begin to buy more equipment and better transportation and even put a sign on your truck with your company name.

You can even find labor to work for you for next to nothing by offering a partnership in the company.  Offer to give your first workers 10% ownership in the company for the first year.  For the first couple months, there may not be any profits.  After you get a dozen customers or paying you for lawn care, you can pay your workers a portion of what you are paid.  Then at the end of the month, total up your profits.  Remember that you may wish to put back 40% of the profits for business developments.  If there is only $500 left after everything is paid for, you give your “partners” $50.  You do that for a year and you are free and clear and you got their labor in those crucial first few weeks of the business for free.

Also keep in mind that if you have good credit, you can get a credit card in the company name.  Get that card a couple weeks before the business starts and you have a little bit of funding to pay for gas and supplies.  Even if the credit card only has a credit limit of $5000, that is plenty to pay for supplies until you get payments coming in from customers.  Then you pay off the credit card from what you made from the work you have done and you never had to pay a dime of your own money even for gas or trash bags.

Eventually you may wish to expand the business to make it bigger and buy professional equipment and actually hire employees.  But if you have gotten your business up and running “by the seat of your pants”, banks and investors will in up to be back your lawn care business.  With their funding and your solid business management skills, there is no telling how big your lawn care business might get and how rich you might get by simply building a lawn care business that you started for free.

There is a question that you should ask yourself very early in your thinking about starting your own lawn care business.  It may seem like a silly question but it isn’t.  The question is, “Do I plan to be a success?”  You may think that it is a silly question because why would anyone go into a new business venture without a plan for success?  But it is surprising how many people start a new business and do not plan to be successful.

You have to make an effort to stay one step ahead of success.  But if success is coming your way as you think it will, you have to be ready for it.  Success in the lawn care business means more customers or more demand for additional services from existing customers.  It may mean a sudden arrival of a very large job like landing a golf course or a major corporate account which may call upon you to expand your business dramatically and quickly.  So think ahead about how you will respond to such success so when it arrives, you are ready for it.

When you began your lawn care business, you no doubt wrote a business plan.  Part of that business plan should have been a five year projection of growth for your business.  Perhaps you predicted a conservative growth of 10% for each of the first five years of the business.  That means that if you genuinely expect that kind of growth, if you have 50 customers, next year you will have 55.  Are you ready for 5 new customers this year?  Do you have the staff for that new business?  How will that growth impact your equipment needs?  If you need to add 10% more equipment to handle that business, do you have the storage for that equipment?  Do you have the transportation to send out crews to five new customers each week?

These are practical questions.  But if you genuinely expect to grow by 10% a year, that is a finite number. Because you are already supporting a specific number of customers, you know in detail how much resource each customer needs.  You know how many customers one crew of workers can take care of in a week.  You know how many mowers, edgers and other equipment to keep on hand and you know how much space and transportation you need to handle that workload.  Your business may be very well tuned to the current number of customers so you very little excess but you have sufficient labor and equipment to handle your customer load.

To stay one step ahead of success, you begin each year planning to add the workers, the equipment and the support space and supplies to take care of the anticipated growth.  Do a detailed review of your equipment and your physical facility and transportation.  If you are at capacity, begin now planning to acquire new equipment and new space and transportation if that will be needed when that new business comes along.

Notice we used the word “when”, not “if” the new business comes along.  If you genuinely expect to succeed this year, you know that business is coming and you are already making plans to accommodate it.   If you are not getting ready, you dream of success but if it comes, you will have no plan to handle that additional load.  That means that new business is not a blessing, its a crisis as you stress your staff and equipment to handle the new business until you can get ready.

Managing a new yard care business means being ready when success arrives so you smoothly integrate it into your business plan.  While you are planning, what will you do when explosive success arrives?  While you cannot buy ahead for a sudden increase in business of perhaps 60-90%, you should have a plan to respond if sudden opportunity, like that big golf course deal, comes along.

A strategic partnership with another yard care service to help you handle the load is one way to be prepared.  Or having your suppliers and financers ready to respond if you need to gear up in a hurry is another way to be ready for explosive growth. But start now planning for success.  Then when it comes along, you simply implement your plan and enjoy the success that any kind of growth will bring for your business.