Why Starting a Lawn Care Business is SO HARD & Most People FAIL

You know, you have to put on your marketing hat. Then you have to put on your, you know, web designer hat, graphic designer hat, put your horticulturalist hat on.

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes here. And today I'm going to be talking about why it's so hard to build a lawn care business. Now I know there's going to be people saying in the comments, oh, it's so easy to start a lawn care business. All you gotta do is go out and get a little mower and a little weed whacker and it's really simple, low barrier to entry. And I would agree with that. And that's really why I love the lawn care industry is because it's easy to get started. But to actually grow a really good business that has high margins and allows the business to run on systems is a little bit more difficult. I'm gonna explain why that is.

It really comes down to the fact that to run a small business, especially a lawn care business, it requires so many different hats that you as the owner have to wear. You know, you have to put on your marketing hat and actually, you know, create a flyer and create a door hanger and create a yard sign. Then you have to put on your, you know, web designer hat and create your website and then you got to put in your graphic designer hat and do a logo. Then you've got to be able to do, you know, actually no lawn care and landscaping. Put your horticulturalist hat on. Then equipment like, my goodness, like trying to figure out equipment and fixing the equipment and maintaining it, hiring. And then you gotta do marketing. And there's just so many different things that you do every single day in your business that we're required to almost know what we're talking about in all these different disciplines and different areas of business. And if you're wanting to have a well oiled machine, you gotta know about these things and marketing and how to do a brand and how to make a website and that can be very, very difficult. And when you're first getting started, again, when we're first getting started, it's not like you have the money to go out and hire someone for all these different things. I'm gonna have a marketing person, I'm gonna have someone to do my hr. Cause I'm not very good at hiring. I'm gonna have someone take care of my equipment. A shop mechanic. That's not possible when you're first getting started. And that's what makes it so difficult is you've gotta know a little bit about all these different areas. And this is actually a big reason why we started the solo operator model at Augusta Lawn Care. For people to get started and not have to worry about branding and their logo and their website and how to do the sales and set up their CRM and automations. That's all of franchisees at Augusta Lawn Care. Because I just know, I know how overwhelming it is to jump into a new lawn care business and have all of these requirements to just do it right. And for a lot of you, you watch these videos cause you're like, man, I wanna build a business that's done right. I don't wanna just be flying by the seat of my pants out of a little notebook in my back of my truck, stuffed underneath my seat, writing down people's addresses and what I charge and giving them an estimate. That way I wanna actually do things right. And that's what is so difficult to get started, is you've gotta figure out all the systems. That's why we started the solo operator model for Augusta Lawn Care franchisees. Check the link out in the description. But I want to give you the few things that I would recommend you keep in mind if you're getting started. And really what I've learned over now, starting over 50 locations for Augusta Lawn Care, I get to see so many people start and I see what people struggle with.

Thing is that selling is the most important thing to do when you are starting a lawn care business. Now that is hard to do without a brand, without having a great brand that already has a website, already has a logo, et cetera. That can be difficult. It is possible, it's just difficult. And that's what is the hardest part. You don't have any brand recognition in your local market. People don't look at you like, oh, that's a professional brand. Like there's someone that can answer my phone calls and they've been around for 10 years. Like that's difficult to get that brand recognition when you're first starting out. Pricing. Another thing you would want to know when it comes to starting out your lawn care business is that pricing is the lever to your profitability. So as you grow and you focus on sales and you sell and you sell and you sell, that's great. But then number two, pricing is the lever that you pull to create profitability in your business. So at the beginning of your business, I want you to focus primarily on sales, selling, getting more customers, upselling your existing customers and generating more top line revenue. But as time goes on, you're gonna pull the lever of pricing to create profitability in your lawn care business. And the big part about being able to raise your prices is having that perceived value on the customer's end. So having a great website, having your trucks looking clean and logoed or decal'd or put paint them, having uniforms, having a business card when you go and meet them, and sending your estimate via a line itemized estimate within a day, not within 10 days or two weeks later after you meet them. These are all perceived value to the customer that allows you to pull that lever of pricing and not lose all those customers that you got in step number one when you sold, sold, sold. So step number one is sell. Step two is realize that pricing is the lever that you're gonna eventually need to pull to become very profit.

Number three. The third thing I would recommend if you're just getting started, to make that hard transition a little bit easier, is realize that equipment isn't the most important thing when you're first getting started. It just does not move the needle and doesn't matter because your needs for equipment will change as the business grows. If you start getting larger properties, you're gonna need bigger mowers. If you start getting more employees, you're gonna need more trucks. And the type of jobs that you get will determine the type of equipment and trucks that you will need down the road. So don't let paralysis by analysis get to you. When it comes to what kind of truck should I buy, what type of equipment, what type of mower, what size should it be? Just realize get started and that your equipment needs will change with time. It's gonna take a big thing off of your plate when it comes to all the different things, the checklist of things you're going to need to do when you get started. When franchisees leave here for training, they can sometimes have 50 to 100 different bullet points of things they need to do when they get home just to get started. And we've already done the website and the logo and all of those other things, but there's still a lot of things to get a business started. And one of the things I want you to take off that list is worrying about what type of equipment and what size of mower, what brand you should use. Get a local dealer that's close by you, that's gonna have great service and be able to serve you when you have broken parts and all the rest of it. But don't worry about the exact specifics and let that be the thing that keeps you from starting, because your needs will Change as the business grows.

Number four is the fastest and least profitable way to grow your business is geographical and service expansion. Alright, so the number one way, the fastest and least profitable way to grow your business is by growing geographically. That is. I'm going to serve this city. Oh, I'm going to travel 15, 20 minutes and go serve this city. I that's one way to grow. It's very fast. You simply need to add a link to your website, you know, maybe add the name of that city on your Facebook page and you can now service them. That's an easy way to grow. Another way to grow really fast is through service expansion. So instead of just doing mowing, now you're doing weed control, now you're doing bush trimming, now you're doing mulch insulation, now you're doing landscaping, now I'm doing paver patios, now I'm doing ponds, now I'm doing artificial turf, now I'm doing tree removal. That's a very fast way to grow the top line revenue of the business. But it's not going to be the most profitable way. In fact, it's the fastest and least profitable way to grow your business is through geographical expansion and service expansion. Which means I'm just offering more and more services. The reason it's the least profitable is because by increasing my geographical reach, I'm increasing my drive time, which makes my routes much less profitable because my crew has to drive 30, 40, 50. I've seen people drive two hours just to get to a job site. Extremely unprofitable. And if I add more and more services, I've got to train my crew for weeks on end before they actually become proficient at all the different services that I offer or I become handcuffed to a particular employee that might actually be telling me what to do in the business. Things that I don't want. Because they're the one person that knows how to install paver patios, they're the one person that knows how to create retaining walls. And now literally they can kind of bend me over a barrel and tell me what to do in my business because I don't know what they are doing. And I've now made such a complaint complex business, I am now the slave to my own business. Which is not the reason you got into starting your own company. And that is the freedom that comes with entrepreneurship.

The fifth and final thing that I would recommend to help with your process of getting your business started is to realize the first two years of your lawn care business are going to be Brutal. All right. Even once you get your website up and all the rest of it, there's. The first two years are going to be so hard. If you're just getting started now, just kind of in your mind, just put that reset button for two years later. Just realize there's going to be so many difficult things that you're going to have to go through. From figuring out pricing and then raising your prices and then finding a team, hiring them and retaining them. You're going to have people walk off the job and be mad at you. People are going to say mean things about you. You're going to be trying to learn and figure things out, and they're going to be judgin you. You're gonna have a hard time thinking about branding, like, is this good logo? What color should I paint my trucks or put decals on my vehicles or design my software or design my website and design all of the print marketing materials for my business? You're gonna be trying to figure all this stuff out. But guess what? It takes some time through your SEO. Your search engine optimization is gonna take some time. And usually it's year three that I see people do two things. One, they pull the lever of profitability, which was step number two, they pull that lever. And the second thing they usually do in year three is that their SEO starts to rank well on their website during a spring rush. Because the first year they might get started, their website was brand new. It wasn't ranking very well. They didn't have many Google reviews, didn't have great search engine optimization, didn't rank very well. But usually the second year, but then the third year, by the time you hit your third year, is when people hit their stride and they're now going into a spring rush when they're ranking very well on Google, people recognize in their community the brand has awareness, and then they pull that lever of pricing, they raise their prices and become profitable. So just keep in mind, if you're just getting started, the first couple years are extremely brutal. You are not alone. A lot of people have started lawn care businesses and most fail because the first couple years are so brutal when it comes to hiring people, figuring out your pricing for figuring out your branding. And I hope that these videos and this whole channel is really dedicated to try to help you make that process just a little bit easier. And I hope that it does just that. I'm Mike andes. Check out landscapebusinesscourse.com, lawncare media.com and lawncarewebdesign.com if you want to grow your lawn care business, and I'd love to see you in person at our conference next January. Landscape Summit. Just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference and sign up there. We'll see you tomorrow.

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