Steady Income
Landscaping solutions like lawn management have a great deal of job security to them, and can represent a very lucrative business for you if you go about it the right way. When it comes to any small business, you’ll find there are a diversity of unique techniques that can work, and some which will be common to any business.
For example, starting out, all small businesses seek to cut costs. Going forward they do as well, but increased reliability of income allows for larger margins of error in terms of finances. At the beginning, you want to operate at your highest level of efficiency and cost-effectiveness; and that can require surrogating employee positions with technology.
Having a time-tracking spreadsheet like this can help you manage employees efficiently without necessarily having to hire staff to do so. There are many solutions available which use cloud computing to provide apps that are non-locational, and can turn the task of keeping payroll into a simple matter of making a few clicks on a computer.
Products, Services, Or Both?
Once you’ve managed to get the infrastructural components of your new lawn business ironed out, your next step will be to delve into the sort of landscaping care you’ll provide.
You’ll probably want to offer products you can sell when prospective clients don’t want service.
Find top-quality sprinklers if you’re selling equipment, and additionally consider learning how to service landscaping equipment like this to increase your service provision surface area. The more things you can do for clients, the more clients you can serve. This will help you increase income and expand your business.
Grounds Maintenance That Is Qualitative
As with sprinkler repair, there will be many specific tasks clients will want you to perform. Figure out what those are, and you can feature them in marketing materials. One that’s very important involves ensuring grass is in an ideal position to flourish. It’s integral that you have means of keeping weeds out of client lawns, and means of providing them nutrients.
Aeration is a simple enough thing to do, but it’s a bit of a chore. Proper aeration can turn an unhealthy lawn healthy—with adequate water distribution, of course. Something else that is simple and many of your clients won’t want to be bothered with is actually mowing the lawn.
As a matter of fact, maintaining the grounds of clients could come to represent the majority of services you provide for clients. Ensure you get the necessary equipment, advertise such provisions directly, and perform them well. That’s something which can’t be skirted. You’ve got to provide good service to clientele.
A Firm Foundation
Once you have figured out what you do, how you do it, and what sort of infrastructure you’ll use to keep all these elements working together, you’ll need to budget things accordingly to figure out what you can do with what you have.
Tabulate necessary equipment, and determine whether you’ll go into provision of products, or focus only on service. Figure out whether you’ll need additional employees. Determine baseline costs to make profit, and figure out what competition is doing so you can match pricing.
Next, line out what’s defined in white collar industries as a “unique value proposition”. What do you do better than your competition? You may not do everything, but there could be one thing you excel at which you can make a primary revenue generator in your lawn business. Once you’re able to get out of debt with that, then you can branch out.
A lawn business has the potential to do well for you, but it will require work. Still, if you’re diligent, with a few hundred dollars and a little determination, you can get yourself a cycle of regular clients who allow you to branch out into more professional service provision.