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How to Start
A Lawn Care Business
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T I P : Kevin Whiteside's Tips for Starting a Successful Lawn Care Business
Download free report with free tips tricks and advice for starting your own lawn care business.
Planning Your Lawn Care Business
Successful businesses have business plans - and starting a business becomes much easier when you have a plan.With a lawn care business, you don't have to develop a complicated business plan or hire an expensive business plan writer to compile a plan for you. If you are starting a lawn service business as a one-person operation, a simple plan will suffice, and there are free tools online that will help you.
The main purpose with a business plan is to guide you from start-up to successful lawn care business. A good plan shows you start-up costs and how many clients you'll need to turn a profit, with a timeline of tasks to reach your goal.
Bplans.com is a business planning website with hundreds of sample business plans. They have one specifically for starting a lawn care business. You can see it here: lawn care business plan.
Steps to Start a Lawn Care & Maintenance Service
- You'll need to get a business license from your local city or county office (state-by-state listings here).
- If you are not using your personal name as your business name, file your fictitious business name with the county clerk. If you want to incorporate your business, you can review information online to see how incorporating may benefit your lawn care company. Get a business tax ID from the IRS website. You can also get information at the website about business income tax, self-employment tax and estimated taxes.
- It's important to keep personal and business finances separate, especially come tax time. You can open a business bank account with a FDIC insured bank in a few hours for minimal cost. It's a good idea to interview a few banks to compare services. There are many other benefits that a business account can offer, so make sure to ask.
- Meet with an insurance agent to discuss your insurance options. The IIABA (Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America) can help you find a reputable agent in your area. You can also use insurance network websites to get business insurance quotes for free.
- In order to make the most of the tax benefits your lawn maintenance business offers, meet with a local tax accountant. If you decide to cut costs and do your own business bookkeeping, get a business accounting software program like Quickbooks Pro to make record-keeping easier.
- Give your customers a professional first impression of your business when they fist contact you. iTeleCenter gives you a high-end phone system - features like private toll-free number, voice mail, multiple extensions, send/receive faxes online, enhanced call forwarding, and music-on-hold (to name just a few) for a fraction of the cost (starts at just $9.95). Setup is simple: no hardware to buy, nothing to install.
- Get business cards and other promotional materials you'll need for your business like brochures, flyers or postcards. Hand them out to people you know and include them in all correspondence. Business cards can work surprisingly well as cheap advertising too. 250 Free Business Cards. See also: 30-50% off Postcards, Brochures and more Design your own marketing materials online using professional templates. Designs provided, printing done for you.
- Set up a website. A website can help you advertise your lawn care services by showing your previous yard work, including photos (a picture is worth 1,000 words), providing contact information, offering discounts and detailed information that potential customers want. You can save money by creating your own website with simple online design programs, or outsource the job to an affordable website designer.
Lawn Care Business Start-up Guide
How to Start a Lawn Care Business
Drive around most neighborhoods, and you'll see a lot of lawns. Many people have then, but most don't want to take care of them. And don't forget commercial properties too.
Mowing grass is one thing, but maintaining a beautiful, lush lawn is something people will pay money for. That's where you come in as a Lawn Care Professional.
This complete Guide to Starting a Lawn Care Business not only shows you the basics, you learn how to become the BEST, so you can have an instant advantage and get new clients before your competition gets them. With a higher demand for your services, you have the ability to charge higher rates and earn more money.
- Follow a Step-by-Step Outline from a business expert, so you understand exactly what you need to do to start your lawn care business.
- Where to Find Professional Resources you can contact and ways to save money on start-up and operating costs.
- How to Get Customers Fast: Discover marketing and advertising strategies that will enable you attract a continuous flow of customers and turn a profit faster.
- Download Now: Start a Lawn Care Business
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Marketing Your Lawn Care Services
Get Free Publicity
Besides advertising in your local yellow pages and placing ads in newspapers and neighborhood mailers, you can save money by writing a brief press release or "letter" to your local paper announcing the opening of your lawn care company.Offer a special discount or free offer for first-time customers, and publications will find this more newsworthy. This means that they're more likely to publish news about your company. Include a photo of previous work you have done to demonstrate your skills and entice new customers to try out your service. Your press release doesn't have to be long, and you can find press release samples here: How to Get Free Press.
Advertise your services, find clients online and bid on projects with contractor networks like The Online Contractor's Network
, BidClerk or Service Magic
Postcard Marketing
Do a postcard mailing to introduce your lawn care service to potential customers (businesses and/or individuals). Using low-cost online services makes this an easy marketing task. First, choose a special offer thatyou want to announce to potential customers. Second, design your postcards online using professional postcard templates with VistaPrint (you can get 50% off here). And third, get targeted leads from a lead generation company like Resource Nation.
How to Get Customers for Your Landscaping Business
Most landscapers agree, the hardest part of running your business can be finding new customers. Make it easier on yourself - find out from Expert Steve Low what marketing works for landscaping businesses. You don't even have to spend lots of money!
Steve give you tons of strategies "how-to" style. You don't have to do everything - choose a technique that you want to use and put it to work for you.
Strategies include business cards, brochures, buying lawn care customers, clubs and organizations, coupons and gift cards, co-marketing, door hangers, going door to door, flyers, internet marketing, lawn signs, customer letters, direct mailing, newsletters, newspaper ad, phone book advertising, phones and telemarketing, postcards, referrals, sports, testimonials, trade shows, truck and trailer advertising, word of mouth and more...
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Lawn Care Business Resources:
- Small Business Tax Deductions
Get informed of basic business tax laws, and you can save yourself lots of money. Find out 20 different ways that tax deductions can increase your business profits, and how to complete your tax returns for less.
- How to Incorporate in 3 Easy Steps
Is it preferable for you to form a C Corporation, an LLC or Partnership business? What are the differences - and how do they affect you? See which is the best business structure for you - another smart way to maximize your income.
- Do-it-Yourself Small Business Legal Forms
Instead of hiring a lawyer to draw up general documents, you can buy standardized legal documents that can accomplish the same thing and save you lots of money. Do you need client lawn care contracts? Hiring forms? Borrowing and lending paperwork? You'll find over 60 legal forms WITH Instructions!
- Business Insurance Quotes - for Free
Do you need business insurance? As you may already know, anything can happen in business, and you don't want to find yourself unprotected. Find out exactly what kind of benefits you can get with a free quote before you make a decision.
Lawn Care Business Start Up Supplies
Save money on business expenses, and you can increase your company profits.Find wholesale supplies and equipment for your landscaping business through the GoWholesale Search Engine. Search for any wholesale items and lots of companies who have the landscaping supplies you want. Compare offers to get the best price.
No membership required. Plus, you can learn about industry trends and the best bargain sources in their wholesale forum.
T I P : "How Do I Write a Proposal?"
Use Professional Proposal Kits to create proposals, contracts and estimates. Proposal Kits make your work easier - plus they protect your business, can get you more clients and create more accurate quotes for you.
Lawn Care Business Associations
- Planet Professional Landscape Network
Planet's mission is to cultivate and safeguard opportunities for their members, professionals in the landscape and lawn care field.
- Landscape Network
An organization that connects customers to landscaping and lawn care contractors.
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