Mike Andes says new lawn-care owners should start simple with mowing and basic services, then prune to what works. The Mount Vernon model stayed focused and hit 40-50% profit margins, while the Bellingham model started broad and had to cut back. Keep capital low, learn your market, and build from there.
About 80% in favor of A.
Approximately 40–50% profit.
If you have to start over, knowing what you do, would you A, provide few services at the risk of growing slower, or B, provide multiple services and then cut out services later? Oh, that is a good question. It's a good question. Alright. So what they're asking is like, when you're getting started, do you offer just a few services but grow a little bit slower, or do you offer a bunch of services and then weed out services later on? I would highly recommend somewhere in between that and I would tend to lean more towards A, which is provide few services and grow slower. I would tend to like I'm 80% in that direction. But I also realize that sometimes you don't know what service is going to take really well in your market. So if you're just getting started, you might want to do a few things. You might want to do property clamps, mowing, a little bit of treatments, some small landscaping jobs, and just see what takes. See what you're really good at and see what takes really well in your market. And you start to get a lot of calls about and gravitate towards those and start focusing and making those your core competencies. And yeah, So I would say, like I would traditionally say now, knowing what I've done in terms of doing B is growing massive amount of services and then having to scale back and make it super profitable afterwards. If you really look at the Bellingham model, they did B, they provided a bunch of services and then started cutting out services lately and become very profitable. And you'll see that in the profit numbers. A is very much like Mount Vernon, which is they're growing very slow. We're not trying to make it grow really fast, ultra profitable. Like we're talking 40, 50% profit.
And they only do mowing and property cleanups. That's like it. That's like it. Like nothing else. And so I really like that model. It's a lot less stress. If you really into growth though, and you're really into getting out of the field, you might do a little bit of some other services, see which ones do well and then cut a couple of them out later on. Just don't try to do 20 services. Don't try to do a whole bunch of stuff. And that all of those services entail getting big equipment. I'm okay with doing property cleanups and mowing and treatments because I can literally do get my mowing set up and then for cleanups I need a rake and I already have the blower and the things I need for the mowing and then for treatments. I literally need a spreader and buying granular. I don't need to go get a spray truck. I don't need to go big like that. If you're going to try to test out different services when you first get started, focus on minimizing your expenses and your capital expenditures. So I would definitely lean more in the direction of less services and scale. But when you're first getting started, if you're trying to kind of get things going, you might dabble a little bit in some of the smaller aspects of landscaping or treatments and just see what works. But I would highly recommend simple, simple, simple. The sooner you can do that, less stress, you'll keep more of your hair, you won't go gray as fast. Like, trust me, it's much better.
