Starting a Lawn Care Business from Scratch [Step-By-Step] Insurance, License, Trucks

Hey everyone, It's Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com and today we're going to be talking about six different things you must do if you're going to start a professional lawn care and landscaping business. The things that you might not have thought about, of course, think about equipment and buying the mower and all the rest of it. But these are the things you need to do to get started to have a licensed and registered business that's actually going to be professional, successful and profitable down the road. These are things you might not be thinking about. So let's go through them. Start starting off with registering your business. And it's actually really cool. Cause today's video, this is Austin. He's actually moving down to Texas. He's part of what we call the 3F program. He's becoming a franchisee. He's worked with us here locally for almost four years. And you can actually tell because he has an old, old, old T shirt on. It has the old logo, the logo, the golf ball on the back of the shirt. But he's gonna be starting his own business. So I thought it was very fitting that we'd be able to talk today about starting your own lawn care business. And the very first thing you're going to need to do is register your business, the name of your business with your state or your province if you're in Canada. So you're usually going to go in your dol, your department of licensing and register the name and create an LLC or a sole proprietorship or an entity for your business. So I recommend getting an LLC that stands for limited Liability Company, which allows you to basically operate your business. And if you those liability or you went, you know, someone came and damaged something or you damaged something else, they can't come sue you for your own personal property and assets like your own house or your own car. Now there's a lot of rules around this because you've gotta make sure you keep the business and your personal expenses and financials very separate. If in the court of law this is to hold up and actually protect you from liability if the business was to go bust or, or you were sued. So it's a great way though to be able to get started because it's very simple. You don't have to go worry about an S Corp or a C Corp or any sort of partnership quite yet. You get started with an llc, you can do a sole proprietorship, that's okay. But it's definitely from a liability standpoint, a great thing to get an llc Started. And typically you can get someone started for less than $200 online. So start your entity and then register your business name with your department of licensing. And I really recommend that when you get that name, don't use, like Bob's Lawn Care if your name is Bob, because at the end of the day, all your customers are always going to ask for Bob. You're never going to be able to grow the business, get employees, and allow those employees to actually treat your customers well and service them, because the customer's always going to be asking for Bob. And you'll never be able to sell your business because Bob will never. If you're Bob and you sell the business well, now there is no Bob in Bob's Lawn Care. And so I really recommend you figure out a brand name, figure out something, even if it is your city name, figure out something that'll allow the business to grow and for you to one day pass that business along to your family or to someone that you sell the business to. All right, number two is you've got to set up your bank account. And so you've got to have a bank account set up. But before you get the bank account, you've got to have that business name, you've got to have that LLC to be able to start the bank account. And when you get that bank account, it's going to be usually a local credit union or a local bank. And you can also set up a business credit card. So that way all of your expenses are on one singular account on a one credit card. A business checking and a business credit card will allow you to keep all of your expenses going very seamlessly and very cleanly. So you can keep track of them on QuickBooks, Flip FreshBooks, or whatever other software you're using to keep track of your expenses. And by the way, just to open up that bank account, you're going to need step number one. That's why step number one is first you've got to register the business. You've got to get what's called a ubi, and that UBI number is what's going to be required to open up your business account. And if you're going to have employees, you're getting an EIN number, which is an Employer Identification Number. And that comes from the irs. So, so remember step one, Department of licensing, get the business registered. You might have to go to the irs, though, to get an EIN number if you're gonna have employees. And then you can go start a bank account and get your business credit card. Get all Your expenses, going through those. So you can keep track of your expenses as the business grows. Third thing you're gonna need insurance. The first form of insurance, which is general liability. General liability insurance when you're first getting started, especially with lawn care, really simple services like mowing, trimming bushes, pulling weeds, you can usually get this for like 50 or 60 bucks a month when you're first getting started. And then it will go up over time as you hire more employees and your revenue goes up. So general liability is going to protect you from customer suing you if you damage something on the property of a customer or if you actually get damaged your own property, your equipment, your facilities, things that you want to make sure you get really good relationship with your insurance agent. To make sure that you know what's covered and what scenarios you are insured for. Number four, this is the logo and design. All right, so you want to create a logo that's gonna look really, really good, look really clean, look very professional. Focus on a color that's gonna make you stand out. Cause we're gonna use that color on your trucks down the road as well as all your marketing material on your website down the road, we're gonna use this color scheme. So make sure your logo is professional, alright? You can register your business name and all the rest of it before this. That's why this is number four is logo. Make it look professional. Don't look at look. Make it look cheap or make it look really old. Like make sure it looks clean, professional, easy to read. Because typically our target audience is an older client. They can't seem fine print or crazy fonts. Make it clean, simple, professional, modern. And keep in mind that it's going to be used on websites, print marketing as well as for your truck. All right, that leads me to the truck, of course. Number five, the most important fun thing that we like to do is buy trucks and equipment. You've gotta buy it. Then you gotta either paint it or put your decals on it, which are vinyl stickers that go onto the truck. And it's gonna usually have your logo, your phone number, make sure that contact information is on that truck so that as it's driving around it's like a moving billboard and you're able to get more customers. And you're gonna need to register that truck underneath your business's name using that UBI number. And then you're gonna need to insure that truck using your insurance company. So general liability we talked about before, but now you're gonna need auto insurance for Your truck, it's completely separate. All right, next you're going to need an online presence and website. This is the marketing part. Number six is marketing. First and foremost, you're going to need a great website. Lawncarewebdesign.com is a great place to get started. But if you wanna build it yourself, check out Weebly or Squarespace and a whole bunch sites where you can build your website for a low cost. So we got website. What other forms of marketing are there? Well, you can use Google, you can use Facebook, all these other platforms and online is a great place to at least get started for free, is make a Facebook account. Make a Facebook page so you have your own personal Facebook account. But then you've got to create what's called a Facebook page for your business and then create an Instagram page for your business. Start posting there every single day when you're doing services to be able to get for free your content out to your friends, your family, ask them to write a review for you on Google or on Facebook or on Nextdoor so you can get community buzz. That's all online marketing. If you don't like online marketing or maybe you're just getting started, like hey, I'm not really ready for trying to make a website or anything like that, you could potentially do postcards just like this. You can go to lawncaremedia.com and see a whole bunch of different options for things like postcards, door hangers. If you're doing different types of services, there's a whole bunch of different options. But this is a great low cost way to do marketing. And number six, even though it's last doesn't mean it's least important. You gotta go get customers if you're gonna go build a business. So make sure you have a good strong online website. It's like owning property. You can rent all day long and pay for ads all day long, but I'd rather own my property, that is my website because that's so important to growing your business in the future. So whether it be online or in print marketing with door hangers and flyers and postcards, all of that's onlinecaremedia.com and you can get started, get the designs, print them off and get your business started and get your first customers. And at the end of the day if this seems all daunting like oh man, registration and UBI numbers and I gotta go on this. Licensing and bank accounts, get started today. Get a few business cards, get a few door hangers and get started. Get your first few customers get revenue flowing and don't let the what seems like intimidating steps of starting your business keep you from getting started. But these are the steps you want to take if you're going to start it professionally and make sure your business is ready to grow, scale and be very profitable. I'm Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com, we'll see you tomorrow.