How to Start a Lawn Care Business With $0 (Step-by-Step)

So you want to own or start a lawn care and landscaping business, but you have no money. This video is for you. You found yourself in the right place. If you watch all the way to the end of this video, I'm going to be sharing with you how I would start a lawn business if I had zero money. For those of you that don't know, my wife and I have built a seven figure lawn care business. We'll do about 1.1 million this year. We have three locations. It essentially can run without us. If we took all of that and mentally took it away from us to where we did not have that today, right now, this is exactly how I would start a lawn care and landscaping business. If I had literally zero money in the bank, the very first thing I would do is I would knock on 500 doors. I would go door to door and I would knock. I would introduce myself and say, hey, my name is Will. Just got out of the military a few years back. I am now starting my lawn and landscaping business. I'm offering bush and bed service primarily right now. I notice your bushes need to get trimmed. Do you mind if I could add you to the schedule? And I would literally like, that would be my pitch. Can I get you on the schedule? Bush and bed service. Now mind you, I have no truck, I have no equipment, I don't even have a uniform. I'm probably showing up in whatever polo. I got literally nothing. I would knock on 500 doors out of every hundred doors. As long as you're somewhat, somewhat competent in conversating with people and kind of making a laugh a little bit, just having a good time, having, having a conversation. One of them is going to book, one of them going to say, you know what? Yeah, sign me up, get bushes and bed service done. Then what I would do is I would look at the job because again, I have, I have a little bit more wisdom now because I've done a lot of this before. But I would look at the job and say, okay, cut it up into three components. Is it going to take me a quarter day, half day or full day? I have no idea how long these jobs are going to take. Part of growing a business is paying the price of being uneducated. So you're going to quote this job and you might quote it 20 bucks and it might take you three hours and you're making $7 an hour. It's horrible. But that's the cost of doing business. When you don't know, that's how you get started. That's how you learn that is the price of education versus sitting in a traditional classroom with a whiteboard in the front and a teacher. This is real life education. The more you fail, the more you learn, the more you get better. This is part of the game of business and part of entrepreneurship. So I would knock on 500 doors and I would get at least out of those 505 customers to book. That's one out of 100 doors that actually answer. I would get to book. Then what I would do is I would say, all right customer, I will need a 50% deposit to secure your spot on the schedule as well as get any materials. So I would also maybe include mulch into that. If you could kind of put some, you know, five or 10 or 15 bags of mulch on the front flower bed for them as well. Look up Home Depot. How much does a bag of mulch cost? $3. Okay, I'm going to need maybe 10 of these. So that's 30 bucks right there. Plus my time is going to be an hour or two hour job. How much do I make? Well, at my job I was making 20 an hour. We got to at least make that. So that's two hours of labor. So that's four, 40 plus the 30. That's four or five. That's 70 right there at a minimum. Now mind you, what you make at your W2 job is not going to be the same that you need to make in business. It's typically 2 to 3x that at a minimum, probably 3x that. But that again, you don't know that yet, but you'll learn. At a bare minimum, you're going to charge 70, 70 bucks for the job. So you're going to say, look customer, I need half up front and then I need the other half when I'm done with the job. And if you could sell five of those jobs out of those five 500 doors and make 40 or 50 bucks as a down payment up front times five, that's $250 that you're going to get. The number one thing, I'm going to give you guys a little bit of pull back the curtain a little bit to help you guys. The number one reason why most people don't succeed in the beginning is they're not charging enough. So whatever you think it is on this scenario, it was 70 bucks. Just wing it. Just double that. Honestly, just double it. It's going to be 140 bucks. Clean up the bushes, trim the bushes, pull the weeds, install the mulch. Trust me, the customer is not going to be that upset. They're not going to that struck on the price. I promise they're not. You just need to be able to sell to them that you're going to do a good job and that you're going to get it taken care of. And if it's not to their satisfaction, you will make every effort to make sure it is done to their standard. That's what you're selling when you're going door to door. Look, building this kind of business can feel lonely. That's why we built a private school community that is based off of a ton of other home service business owners that are literally going down the same pathway as you. We are winning together. You get all the tools, resources and direct access to us. Join the movement today. The links in the description below. In that scenario though, let's just assume on average maybe it's $100. $100. Okay, so that, that'll give us 50 times five. Yeah, 250. So what I would do is then go out and get the tools you need, rake, probably some mulch based on the jobs, maybe a hedge trimmer. And so what you're doing because you don't have the money is you're putting the time in and going door to door, getting people to prepay half deposit upfront. And then you take that money and you go and buy the tools and equipment that you actually need. Garbage bags to put the clippings in to haul off that stuff. You're going to need to spend out of that 250 you go out, you do those five jobs. Guess what? You get the other 250, you've made 500 if you take out some product costs, which is mulch. I mean, maybe 50 or 100 out of that, now you still have $400 that you just made, plus you spent that on some tools. So now you actually have the tools to go do more. And then what you would do is you would go, if you don't have enough money to buy door hangers yet, you would go repeat that process, go knock on 500 doors. It's going to take you a long time. If you're a good salesman, it'll take you way less. But just have it in the mindset that you have to do 500 doors. Because where most people fail is in their mind, they're like, oh yeah, I'm going to knock on 10 doors and then get a job. No, whatever effort you think it's going to take, it's going to take 10 times that. It Just is what it is. You're not good at sales yet. You haven't got the reps in. You don't know how to sell to people yet. Like you don't have the skills required to do 10 door knockings and close two sales in every 10 doors. And that's okay. I didn't either when I first started. We all have to start somewhere but have the mindset of volume in your brain going into it so you're not let down. Whereas most people go into it thinking it's going to take significantly less, they don't get the outcome they want and then all of a sudden they're stopping their business three months into it because it's not working well. It's like dude, like you have an incorrect mindset, right? I would do that again. Get another four or five hundred dollars and then go take that money and start to get door hangers. If you guys haven't watched my previous video to this one, I highly recommend going and watching it. It's teaches you how to build a lawn care business with $5,000. One of the first steps, actually the first step is go on Vistaprint, order 10,000 door hangers for $600. Put your name, phone number, address and the services you offer on it. That's it. Put a cool picture in the background portraying what you're doing. Get those door hangers out, do the volume required, you will get more jobs. Don't buy the equipment until you've secured the sale. Most people get hung up, they go by the equipment first and then they don't have any sales and and so the equipment sits idle and dormant in their garage or shop space not making money. Go make the sales first, then acquire the equipment. Once you get at least 500 to a thousand, you can get your door hangers. You can start to move into creating a Google my business for free. You can start to post on the top 50 free business listings completely free and also start a CRM with Copilot CRM with less than 50 customers completely free. That's all free. Guys like you should be able to set all of that up. A lot of times in the beginning it really, really is a lot of educational stuff getting on YouTube watching videos like this. By the way, if you aren't subscribed, now is your opportunity to hit that subscribe button. That is in essence how, how you can get started in the lawn care business with literally no money. I see so many people get hung up on this that they, that they can't get started because they don't have money or they don't have the truck or they don't have this or they don't have that. Like when I got started I had I think three customers within walking distance. I still remember walking down the street with a push mower, a blower and a rake in my hand and I was literally walking to these customers properties because I didn't have a truck or a vehicle to drive far and serve customers. If you are hung up today on wanting to get started and not knowing where to start because you don't have the funds or you don't have the vehicle, if you can't identify the problem, identify a solution. Execute. Now when you're small and you're just getting started, you don't have a lot of capital, you don't have a lot of funds, what makes you think when you get down the road you're making 10k per month and another problem comes your way about how to make more money or there's not enough cash in the bank, or this, that the third. Or your truck breaks down or your employee leaves, like what do you think's going to happen? That's all business is. This is all business is solving literally problems. If you can't solve the problem now when you're small, you will never get to that next level to be able to be responsible and have that authority and be a good steward of the resources that you've been given that God's given you to get to that next level. So prove to yourself today, right now, that you can do it. Stop waiting, stop watching the next YouTube video. Literally go out there, you got two legs, you got two arms, knock on the door, talk to the Customer, get the 50 deposit. Take Zelle Venmo cash app. Whatever you need to do. Cash, check, who cares? Just get started. Your future self depends on it.