Tweet
Hey All,
Me and my two friends started a company mid-May this year. Through a small base of friends and family accounts we've grown to about 29 weekly+5 biweekly accounts, (mostly through referrals) with small "jobs" coming in occasionally. I find most people will trust us (15 years of exp between the 3...we're all under 20 though) with mowing and mulching, but turn to big names who unjustifiably rip them off big time on major landscaping work. For example, a local garden center who plants shrubs and trees along with mulch rips off the entire area; these residents may be pretty well-off but theyre getting ripped....a job with 3 guys (paid no more than 10-12/hr) that took 2 and half hours...4 or 5 yards of mulch, 14-15 small shrubs, and a small tree in the front...1600 bucks for less than $100 of paid labor- and no complaints from the customer- job result was nothing spectacular. So you have the "have's" who throw their money away for landscaping improvements, and the "have-nots" who can't shell out the money because getting anything significant done would empty their wallets-that's my area (Southern NJ). Back to the point.
We do all our lawns in one 10-11 hour day (they average about $35 a pop), and then spend maybe another half-day with maintaining equipment or other miscellaneous things. We all have other jobs, but each have a little too much time on our hands. We started advertising with flyers in June (have prob gotten about 5-600 out) and have slowly but surely been picking up customers (maybe 5 from the flyers). Now for the idea.
We're planning advertising in March, and my idea for our flyer would be to advertise one (or more...ex gutter cleaning+mulching) FREE landscaping job...be it a medium-size planting, mulching, cleanup, sod-laying, whatever..."up to $500 value" (maybe even more...going by area standards)....with the 3 of us who are fast workers this on average translates to about 4-5 hours of our time. My reasoning is, if we sacrifice one day for say 2 agreements of all-summer mowing (and prob the next year, we do quality for compet. prices) and a steady income, it will be well worth it. Once you do the work, that person feels great thinking they got almost double the product for their money, you feel great because you picked up two more accounts and owe those customers nothing more. To be busy five days a week (we have nice equipment and work fast...and we're willing to work 6 days a week), we would need at least 100 accounts, and we don't anticipate on getting anywhere near that for at least another two years. So you do 10-12 days of hard labor over the summer (yes it might really suck for a few weeks if you get a good response), and you get 20 new accounts for the summer. Just pretend it's years before when you were busting your ass for someone else for 8 or 10 bucks an hour and it will feel a lot easier. Would sacrificing one summer of doing tedious, free work be worth it to have a successful, established business for the next 5 or 6? I think so. This stategy is probably not for established, career scapers but I think it's good for young people with immature businesses. Any thoughts?
Me and my two friends started a company mid-May this year. Through a small base of friends and family accounts we've grown to about 29 weekly+5 biweekly accounts, (mostly through referrals) with small "jobs" coming in occasionally. I find most people will trust us (15 years of exp between the 3...we're all under 20 though) with mowing and mulching, but turn to big names who unjustifiably rip them off big time on major landscaping work. For example, a local garden center who plants shrubs and trees along with mulch rips off the entire area; these residents may be pretty well-off but theyre getting ripped....a job with 3 guys (paid no more than 10-12/hr) that took 2 and half hours...4 or 5 yards of mulch, 14-15 small shrubs, and a small tree in the front...1600 bucks for less than $100 of paid labor- and no complaints from the customer- job result was nothing spectacular. So you have the "have's" who throw their money away for landscaping improvements, and the "have-nots" who can't shell out the money because getting anything significant done would empty their wallets-that's my area (Southern NJ). Back to the point.
We do all our lawns in one 10-11 hour day (they average about $35 a pop), and then spend maybe another half-day with maintaining equipment or other miscellaneous things. We all have other jobs, but each have a little too much time on our hands. We started advertising with flyers in June (have prob gotten about 5-600 out) and have slowly but surely been picking up customers (maybe 5 from the flyers). Now for the idea.
We're planning advertising in March, and my idea for our flyer would be to advertise one (or more...ex gutter cleaning+mulching) FREE landscaping job...be it a medium-size planting, mulching, cleanup, sod-laying, whatever..."up to $500 value" (maybe even more...going by area standards)....with the 3 of us who are fast workers this on average translates to about 4-5 hours of our time. My reasoning is, if we sacrifice one day for say 2 agreements of all-summer mowing (and prob the next year, we do quality for compet. prices) and a steady income, it will be well worth it. Once you do the work, that person feels great thinking they got almost double the product for their money, you feel great because you picked up two more accounts and owe those customers nothing more. To be busy five days a week (we have nice equipment and work fast...and we're willing to work 6 days a week), we would need at least 100 accounts, and we don't anticipate on getting anywhere near that for at least another two years. So you do 10-12 days of hard labor over the summer (yes it might really suck for a few weeks if you get a good response), and you get 20 new accounts for the summer. Just pretend it's years before when you were busting your ass for someone else for 8 or 10 bucks an hour and it will feel a lot easier. Would sacrificing one summer of doing tedious, free work be worth it to have a successful, established business for the next 5 or 6? I think so. This stategy is probably not for established, career scapers but I think it's good for young people with immature businesses. Any thoughts?
Comment