How to grow business
Hello, I am a new business starting up. I will be starting a lawn care and landscaping business. That is my passion to be outdoors. Also helping my local community. Keep a safe clean environment, I’m wanting to get to know the business better far as to how to get my business recognized and how to make sure that my clients are happy with my business.
Hiring the right person for growth
Hey everyone, I run a lawn care business that's been growing steadily. I work full time as a firefighter and have two part-time employees, but we’re pretty maxed out on what we can handle right now. I’m at a crossroads—I need someone I can trust to take on more responsibility, especially when I’m on shift. But I’m also not sure how to afford another employee unless we grow more, and I can’t grow much without that help. Bit of a catch-22. Any advice on finding someone who could help scale the business? Also open to creative compensation ideas beyond just hourly pay. Appreciate any input!Do you utilize battery-powered tools?
Handheld battery-powered tools have come a long way from their first iterations, especially over the past few years. I've started making the switch away from gas-powered equipment throughout the last few seasons for my business and have found the switch to be positive for my workflow and bottom line. This is a trend I believe will continue as batteries become more powerful and long-lasting. Are you utilizing any battery-powered equipment and, if so, do you have any favorites you'd like to share??
Direct Call Leads
We only pay per qualified conversation with homeowners. After a few years of hunting down bad contacts, getting ghosted and wasting money on ads and ad managers we internally built out a system that only costs money when a homeowner directly calls us looking for our services. It’s been a gamechanger and we even started selling these calls to other roofers and other industries/home service companies because there’s no real risk. Either you talk to a homeowner who wants you to come out, or you don’t pay. They can be kind of expensive but our ROI is at about 3.4x for a while now using it so I’m never going back to our old methods…unless someone has a lower risk option that doesn’t consume a ton of time.Sticker SHOCK! 😲
I have been doing my office's annual purge and came across some old invoices from the earliest power equipment my business purchased. Believe it or not, some of the equipment I use has doubled in price for the replacement model at today's cost. Since it is our responsibility as owners to be profitable enough to replace/repair equipment as needed, I find myself adjusting my equipment cost recovery number upward almost monthly in my budget. How often are you adjusting your cost recovery upward to adjust for the ongoing inflation?
Landscape Maintenance Business - Considering Restructuring Production Crews
When I first started in the landscaping business in 2015 I started running 2 person production crews that would do basic bed maintenance and mulching which is the core of business. I then for some reason or another we started running 3 person production teams likely in 2017 and have every since. Taking a long look at our payroll numbers annually and just efficiency I think it would be best to move back to a 2 person crews as we go out with a dump truck equipped with a dump trailer and walk behind skid steer so our equipment makes us more efficient to go back to a 2 person crew. How many team members are on your landscape maintenance crews? How many team members are on your landscape installation crews?
