One thing that is shocking, is that people think starting a lawn care business is simple. People think it’s just buying a mower, finding a few laws to cut, and well make money. Compared to many other businesses lawn care is well pretty straightforward compared to others to get started. The startup costs are a bit lower and there is steady customer demand with ones that pay you week after week for years because that grass doesnt stop growing.
But just because your good at moving lawns doesnt mean your good at building a profitable business and they are two very different things. Most of the mistakes you will make starting a lawn care business is before the first lawn is cut. New owners often fall into a trap of buying too much equipment, offering way to many services, to big of an area, or the worst underpricing.
There is a better way to approach this and one that we go into depth, before you buy the equipment you need to decide what kind of business you are trying to build.
This is a Part 1 of our 4 Part series where we’re going in depth on starting a lawn care business and we’re going to start with the plan. Part 2 covers making the business legitimate with the right business license, insurance and chemical guide. Part 3 will starting getting a bit deeper with startup costs, pricing, and what it will take to get the business profitable. Lastly, Part 4 focuses on finding customers, building your first route and the best part growing the business.
Lawn Care is the Service NOT the Business
The most important thig you need to do is to shift your mindset and understand that mowing grass isnt really the business, it’s simply the service you provide.
The business you are in is built around sales, reliable services, pricing, scheduling, route density and recurring customers, You can be the best mower in town with more accounts than anybody else but struggle to make money if you’re driving 25-40 minutes between every customer or mis pricing services, or lose customers because you aren’t organized.
So please, before you go out and buy equipment and get excited for that new zero turn make a few decisions.
What are you building? Let's decide.
First let’s actually start with the ending. What do you want your lawn care business to become?
Are you looking for a side hustle that generates money to pay for vacations and your truck on the weekends? Are you looking to replace your full-time salary? Or perhaps, you want to go big and have multiple trucks, several crews and a company that could eventually be sold.
Each of these is a valid reason to start a lawn care company but they have very different decisions that need to be made. A side hustle has very different requirements from a multi-crew business and well just doesn’t need the same things.
You need to try and define what you want the business to look like 3, 5, 10 years later and then work your way backward from there in order to design this the right way. If your goal is to generate $100,000 per year in take home pay, well then we can work backwards from there and translate it into actionable goals for the how much revenue you need, the number of customers and the weekly number of cuts you need to do.
Don’t stress over every number today, the goal of this part is just to try and understand where you want to go.
Before you Buy, Validate the Business
The step that a lot of business owners forget to do especially in lawn care is well…..proving that people actually want to pay you.
It’s exciting and it’s tempting to go out and buy everything possible for the perfect setup before approaching customers. You don’t need all that fancy equipment starting out and it can put you in the wrong position with thousands of dollars invested in equipment and well no money coming in because the schedule remains empty.
Starting to test demand isn’t hard just go into a neighborhood that you’ve selected and well know on doors. Then distribute door hangers, introduce your business in local Facebook groups or on nextdoor, establish a google business profile so people searching can find you. Offer those potential customers a straightforward provide for their first service and demonstrate what you can actually do.
One of the most important things to remember is that interest is not validation. Someone telling you, “That’s a great idea,” doesn’t provide you have a business but somebody actually agreeing to pay you for weekly service to maintain their lawn does.
One of the useful early goals is to secure between five and ten committed customers before making investments in equipment. Those first customers give you the revenue and they teach you what people actually pay, they will show you the questions the customers have and well that is how you do real market research.
Selling First then Equipment
Alright, so this leads to the most important rules for starting a lawn care business lean: buy the equipment the demand determines.
New business owners often do the opposite they buy the commercial lawn care gear that fancy zero-turn, the trailed, truck, wrap website and logo. Only after spending all that money and well taking on a ton of debt then do tehy actually start thinking about finding customers.
Instead, why don’t we reverse the order. Choose your target market, find the customers, confirm recurring business, then buy what you need to serve those customers. Then just reinvest profits into better equipment as the business grows. The first mower you buy doesn’t need to be the forever mower. In fact, used equipment may make sense or the mower you already own as a temporary starting point. Start smaller and upgrade as it grows.
Now, to be very clear I am not saying to avoid investing in the business. It’s to make investments because they are needed not in a hope to create a business.
Build a Lawn Care Business Plan You'll Actually Use
The business plan needs to be practical and help you understand how your lawn care company will actually operate and make money. Start with your target market by defining the zip codes, neighborhoods and of course the types of customers you want with customer personas. Next define the services. If your standard mowing service includes mowing, edging, trimming, and blowing make that clear. Anything outside of that can be treated as an additional service.
Next let’s start thinking about pricing and competition. Research the lawn care companies already services in those areas and look at their positioning how they actually sell their service and the reviews they have. Pay attention to what the customers are praising and what they are complaining about. The goal isn’t to charge less than them its to understand the alternatives your customers already have and determine where you can compete.
Next up you need to determine your break-even point. You need to know how many lawns you have to service each week to simply cover your costs before you actually start making money. We’ll go much deeper into this in Part 3 of the series. For now the important thing is recognizing that a business plan isn’t about perfectly predicting the future. It’s about understanding your numbers well enough that a slow month, unexpected repair, or lost customer doesn’t sink the entire business.
What's Next
In Part 2 of our How to Start A Lawn Care Business series, we’ll move into making the business official. We’ll cover the legal setup, licenses, permits, insurance, and the other pieces you need to protect what you’re building.
In Part 3, we’ll get into the money which is startup costs, expenses, what to charge and how to calculate that break-even point. And lastly in Part 4, we’re going to focus on finding customers.
The goal isn’t simply to start mowing lawns, it’s to build a lawn care business that can actually make money.