How to Start a Lawn Care Business IN 24 HOURS!

Hi, it's Mike from over at Landscape Business Course. Another question came in today by a listener that was very inspired by what we were talking about on the podcast and wanted to start their lawn care business today. The very same day that they listened to it, they wanted to get started right away. And so I wanted to put together a video on the seven things that the steps that I would kind of take if I wanted. If you're listening to this right now and don't have a lawn care business, what can you do in the next 24 hours to start a business and literally be making money tomorrow? What can you do? What are the seven things you must do to get started?

The number one thing you gotta do is come up with a name for your business and a logo. And I go into a long diatribe about both of those things, what your name should be and what your logo should be. But if you want to start within 24 hours, I don't think that's the best use of your time to think about what the name is or the logo. You can change your logo. After the first year in our business, I changed our logo. And it's not a big deal when you're still a small company, and so it doesn't take a huge rebranding effort. You don't have a massive amount of trucks that you got to redo all the logos on. So it wasn't a big deal to change your logo. You do want to get your name down, right? If you can, I always say, don't name it after yourself, just in case you want to sell it, or if you have managers in place that they feel that they can deal with the customers. And the customers aren't always asking for Bob, since it's Bob's Lawn Care. And so I'd not name it after yourself if I was you. We can go into more about the naming and logos and all that. But number one step if you're trying to start your business today is to come up with a name and develop a logo. You can develop a logo on freelancer.com on 99designs, all these other places. If you know a friend that can pump one out for you on a day, that'd be great as well. And that is any sort of freelancer, any sort of designer that will make that for you. You can get that usually done for on freelancer for 20, $30, you know, decent design. And if you have a friend, they might even do it for you for a trade or something like that. So make a. Get a name Make a logo. Step number one. Step number two is to create a very simple website and also a business card. You want the website to look decent, but at this point we're trying to get 24 hours to start a business. So it just needs to be. You need to get the URL set up and just use any basic designer, whether it be weebly even on godaddy other sites, Squarespace, they allow you to create a website and it just needs to be simple. It literally needs to exist for now. So you get the URL. And what I'd be trying to do is make sure that your company name, you get the URL of your company name. So for us, ours is Augusta Longcare Services. It's the name of our company. So augustalongearservices.com make that shorter. If you can get that URL. I wish we could have just gotten augusta.com, but try to get a shorter URL and try to get the name of your business. That's a big thing without having to do a whole bunch of abbreviations like NW for Northwest or trying to do LCs for lawn care services. It can get a little bit complicated there. So try to use your whole name. It's good for SEO and it's just good for your customers to be able to search you fast. So number one is get that logo and the name. Number two is try to get that URL for your website. Make the website and make the business card. And so that business card, you can design that yourself on Microsoft Word. You can also, you know, like I said, hire a freelancer designer to create that design for you. Doesn't need anything complicated, just needs to have your contact information, the services you provide. Very, very simple. So that's number two is to create that website and that business card. Number three. And especially if you have any sort of following locally on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter especially, you know, Facebook might be a little more local, whereas Instagram you might get a broader reach around, you know, all of the US where that's obviously not your market. But whichever platforms that you are on socially that you have people in your area that are following, you might be 3, 400 people, friends, family people in your local community, business leaders, etc. You can make that post and instantly have a lot of credibility and have people lined up ready to buy. And so I would highly suggest, number one thing you do as far as reaching out after getting the logo, after getting the business card, after getting the website and your name and all that squared away. Number three is to post on social. So make that post say, hey, I'm starting my business. If anyone was looking for lawn care landscaping services, you know who to contact. Number four is to talk to your friends and neighbors. And not just your friends and your neighbors, but your neighbors friends and your friends neighbors. So you know, if you have a whole bunch of friends, if you have five friends, talk to not just your friends and say, hey, I'm doing lawn care, but talk to both, you know, two or three of their neighbors, each one of those people and say, hey, I know your neighbor over there and I'm one of his friends and I am wanting to start my lawn care business. And so talk to them first. People buy from the people that they know, like and trust. And so if you already have friends, you develop those relationships that are trusting. And people that know you, they like you, they trust you. You want to go after those people first, kind of like the low hanging fruit as far as what customers you can get. So I would go after friends and family and then the people that are connected to them kind of second circle of influence beyond just your immediate family and friends. And then go one more step beyond them and go to their friends, their family, and, and go after them as your first customers. So that's number four, is talk to your friends and their neighbors and the closer network to you. Number five is my suggestion to kind of stay close to your shop. So that shop might be at your house, it might be a garage, another location, some land you might have for your truck and trailer. If I was you, I'd be looking within a mile, two mile radius and staying within that, as close to that possible. Especially when you only get 10, 15 clients getting started. You want to have that tightly knit route that is condensed and efficient. And so don't try to go all over your county or your city. Try to look for one neighborhood, two or three neighborhoods, a collection of neighborhoods, one part of the city that you really focus on and you get those clients clustered together. And then that way you can really dominate that market and expand from there. Number six is to share that you're starting a business at your church, your grocery store, your barber, your librarian, your accountant, maybe at your school, if you go to a gym, any place where you interact civically with your community, you can really share that. If you have grandparents in elder folks home or in a nursing facility, you can share that with them. Maybe put on bulletin boards. Remember, we're talking 24 hours here. If you're looking at this in 24 hours, you can do all these things and start your business. So sharing your grocery store, at your church especially getting to know your circle of influence and tapping into that network is amazing. Number seven, the last thing that I would say you need to do in the next 24 hours to get your business started is go door to door. So now you have a business card, you have a decent looking website that has your contact information, you have an email address probably set up from that URL. And so you can go door to door and what I would suggest you do and if you listen to the podcast and heard me before I talk about pre selling. So if you want to start within the next 24 hours, your business, by tomorrow, number seven, you should be knocking on doors after you made the website, your name, your logo, things are set up there, you share it socially, you shared it where you interact with the community. And now you go door to door, you start doing more of that cold calling kind of technique, whether it be on the phone or do going actual door to door, passing out business cards, letting people know that you're getting started. But one thing I kind of changed there is pre sale. So if you're going into spring right now or when you're watching this and you've still got a month until you start mowing, it's perfect time because you can go out there and say, hey, I'm starting to mow come March 1st, but now I know it's only the second week of February, but would you like to get on schedule to be on our service on our mowing route and then you can pre sell 10, 15 clients before you even get started. Don't even have to buy equipment. Like you notice in these seven things, you don't need to go out and get a mower or a trailer or truck. Like focus on the sales part. Do the minimum viable product as far as promotional material to get those clients, that's a business card, a little website, maybe a brochure or two. Very, very basic. Do that door to door pre sale, get the 10 to 15 clients on schedule. And if you're halfway through the season right now it's like June, July, you can just say, hey, I'm starting in three weeks, starting it, you know, July 1st. Would you like to start with our mowing schedule starting on that date? Pre sell it. Once you get that guaranteed revenue coming, you know you're gonna get two, $3,000 a month, then you have the confidence to go out and buy the equipment that you're gonna need, Buy the mowers, buy the trailer, buy the truck and really get started. Maybe you'll then you'll get a little more foundational, you'll get a little more solid over a website, maybe work a little bit more on that business card. But if you want to start in 24 hours, go through that list of seven things and I guarantee you can at least get started and you don't need to go out and buy a bunch of stuff before you do it. Thanks so much.