Today, I am looking for your feedback. If you have started, or have been involved with starting a business, I am wanting your story. I am wanting to compare the startup cost, marketing, branding, equipment needed, and time before making money. I wrote yesterday about what it takes to start a lawn care business. Even if you have started a lawn care business, I want you story. This will be a lot of fun and I will talk about the results soon.

In this economy, we all have to work together and learn from each others mistakes and successes.

After you have written your story, go take the free short test at SlightlyEnthusiastic.com. This test reveals what business profile you belong. Very good knowledge to hold onto and live by.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

This could make mowing fun!!

Today’s blog will be a little different than most.  I want to do a quick run down on what it takes to start your own Lawn Care Business.  Every Spring I see many people get into the business, and every August I see most of them get out of the business.  I haven’t been able to track them down because they disappear so fast, but I really would like to know why they quit!  Could it be that mowing 30 yards per week is hard work?  Or is it that mowing the same 30 yards per week is very repetitious?   Is it that all of a sudden the weather got really HOT and the grass got dry?  Maybe it is because they got another job opportunity?  I wish I knew, but whatever the case may be, I have always acquired more dedicated lawn clients in August than I do any other time of the year.

With that being said, what does it take to start a lawn care business?  The short answer is  a truck, trailer, lawn mower, weedeater and a blower.  If you get all new commercial grade equipment that will cost you right at $10,000 (not including the truck).  Acquiring the equipment is the easy and fun part of the whole start up your business thing!  Typically the sales companies will have parties and extremely good pricing and financing in about February to encourage everyone to buy new equipment before the season starts.  Many times they will offer 90 days same as cash.  That means your payments of about $400 start in June and continue on for 3 years.  Making that special purchase linger on for a long time and cost you more like $13,000 in the end.  Oh, and by the way, you still have to make that payment in the middle of the winter when the grass is no longer growing!  That is the part many people forget. 

OK, so you have your equipment now, you are real excited about making your millions mowing grass, it is March and the grass is getting close to needing cut for the first time, and your phone is not ringing.  Wasn’t the phone just going to start ringing the minute you opened your business?  All your buddies who have been mowing for years, their phones never stop ringing, ‘what am I doing wrong?’  You forgot that you have to let people know that you exist and you are in the mowing business now.

Onto marketing…what is the best way to market a new mowing business?  Is it the newspaper, flyers, door to door knocking, standing in front of Kroger with a table?  Unfortunately there is no secret to marketing for grass cutting.  I spent over $30,000 in marketing and advertising in 2008 and I got good returns on ‘landscaping jobs’, but very little on ‘mowing jobs’.  So I guess that means I am not good at marketing mowing.  Sorry I can’t help you on that one!

Anyway, I do know that starting a mowing company is extremely easy to do.  I also know that growing, maintaining, and making a profit with a mowing company will be one of the hardest things that you have ever experienced in your life!  I have been studying profiles of people over the last month or so, and I found this website, www.SlightlyEnthusiastic.com and it is a short test that will tell you what area of business you will succeed in.  I also found another website that teaches principles in business that are easy to understand, www.SurviveBusiness.com .   These two websites will take your business from a will fail, to a won’t fail.  90% of all small businesses fail in the first 5 years, according to the SBA website.

Don’t hesitate starting a business, but don’t hesitate to get help also!!!

Happy Mowing

Kevin Pigg and his Family

I am Kevin Pigg, and I am the proud owner of ThePiggPin.com.  I have been dealing with plants for 22 years and am excited to have this opportunity to share my knowledge with you through these blogs.  I have lived in the Mt. Juliet, TN area for over 8 years and have been a member of the Mt. Juliet/West Wilson Chamber of Commerce for almost 5 years.  The chamber has dramatically increased the quality of my business and has allowed me to meet people that have been a crucial to the success of my business.  Without the chamber, I would still be a hole in the wall wondering which direction to head next.

A Company Picture

Today I want to talk a little about how landscaping is important to you and why routine maintenance is critical to the life of your landscape.  Landscaping, no matter where you live, will affect your lives in either a good way or a bad.  The word landscaping has now taken on a new meaning lately and has encumbered every aspect of a lawn or garden.  When you travel on vacation, you notice when the hotel has weeds, or uncut bushes and it sometimes can make you regret signing up for that particular one.  Landscaping has become almost as important as maintaining the building.  With all the smaller type subdivisions being erected, now more than ever are you inclined to mulch regularly, plant a few colorful flowers, and keep the yard cut every week.  If you don’t, the neighbors will talk about you and we can’t have that now can we?

So let’s talk about some easy methods of routine maintenance.  The first thing is the yard.  If your yard is weed free, then very rare will it look bad, even if it needs cutting.  5 times per year is all it takes to get your yard weed free, healthy and green.  You can contact me and we can get you set up on a routine maintenance program for the yard that will knock the socks off of your neighbor’s lawns.

Now what about those flower beds?  The question stands, “Do you still just have the builder package for shrubs?”  This can make a big difference in how your yard will stand out from the others.  Many times you can change one or two shrubs and make your yard go from blah to hah!  Also adding a little color twice per year is really easy and little time consuming.  Sometimes if you add one or two pots full of color can dramatically change the whole look of the front of your house.  And what about those pesky weeds?  A combination of Round-Up and pre-emergent make weeds a non issue.  Contact me and find out more about how to have a maintenance free, perfect looking lawn year round.

Kevin Pigg
Pigg Landscaping
www.ThePiggPin.com
kevin@thepiggpin.com

Happy Yard

How to Keep Deer from eating Tulip bulbs

Deer are one of those animals that many people admire and get so excited when they see one or a family grazing in a nearby field.  They are not so appreciated when they are staring at you in the middle of the road at night while driving 35 mph!  They are also not appreciated when they come and have a feast of newly planted bulbs in your flower bed.

Today I want to give you a couple of simple things you can do to help deter deer from eating your tulip bulbs.

1. Somebody told me about grapefruit, but I have never tried it before.  They say to soak your bulbs and the planting area with the grapefruit juice and the citrus will make them move on.
2. Put out a salt lick block for them to replenish the salt in their systems, so they will not try and use your bulbs to do so.
3. Try planting a perimeter of daffodil bulbs around your tulips to distract them from the tulips.  Deer do not seem to like Daffodils for some reason.

Happy Tulips