Lawn Care Business: How to Start Your Business with 16 Tools

A lawn care business embraces power: Power tools, power cords, and power buttons. Lawn care people can see their work’s results immediately, inspiring them. They appreciate power. Gas power! Electric power! It doesn’t matter!

How do you get into the lawn care business? Consider this: While mowing your lawn, the guy who owns the rental unit next to yours might inquire about your availability for lawn care. It could be as simple as that.

You see lawn care employment everywhere, on large mowers, watering hanging plants, or installing rock gardens. The lawn care big picture includes large and small flowering plants and shrubs, varieties of lawn grasses, hoses, sprinklers, and ornaments.

Lawn care includes mowing, fertilizing, replacing sod, performing pest control, and seeding.

Tools

First, you must fall in love with the tools that get you there, so let’s discuss tools. A lawn care specialist’s tools start with hand tools. Here’s a list of hand tools directly used in lawn care:

• Pruning Shears
• Rake
• Wheel Barrow
• Shovel
• Hoses
• Tampers

Next, there are power tools:

• Lawn mowers
• Lawn Aerator
• Trimmers
• Edgers
• Blowers

These tools are powerful and often dangerous, so consider taking a safety course before using them. Once a lawn care specialist starts a business, the power tools, in particular, will need maintenance. Here’s a list of tools to keep around to do maintenance:

• Wrenches
• Screwdrivers
• saws
• hammers
• wire clippers

Once a landscape is completed, there’s a need for maintenance. That’s an opportunity. Sell your services one job at a time or with service contracts.

Scoping Out a Landscaping Service

Indeed, you should pitch service contracts to landscapers, too. It’s easier to farm work out to an independent contractor like you than hire an employee, and you can make that argument to a landscaping service. After they install a design, maintenance is necessary. You could profit from a relationship with a landscaper.

How Profitable is the Lawn Care Business?

Lawn care can become a very profitable business. Some people have made millions in the business, but don’t think it’s just dumb luck. Do your homework, bring knowledge to the job, do an excellent job of choosing equipment, accurately estimating job costs, and be a good judge of personnel. There’s quite a myriad of skills needed for success. You might learn to start a budget, for example.

In addition, people say to diversify because of the work’s seasonal nature and business downturns. Some diversification is natural, like offering snow removal services in the off-season or doing building maintenance work.

What are the Disadvantages of Owning a Lawn Care Business?

One disadvantage is that it’s a very hands-on business. If you’re looking for a business that lets you put your feet up and watch the money roll in, the lawn care business may not be a perfect fit.

In reality, day-to-day operations need a manager who knows it all to deal with everything that comes up. You can’t put it on employees to know this. It’s you, or you go out of business. Understanding the market you’re in will help when deciding about overhead: what equipment to buy, etc. Keep overhead low, as a rule. Hire employees who know the business.

Probably the most egregious disadvantage is that lawn care services put their lives on the line doing the work. High-powered electrical tools, heavy lifting, sharp blades, and changing ergonomic demands are all part of the injury causes in an industry like lawn care. For instance, you can amputate a limb with some of the tools. Lawn care has eight times the mortality rate of its closest industry competitor for this distinction.

Are you concerned about licensing? A business license is probably enough but check with your state. While a state may not require a license for lawn care, they may require landscapers to pass a basic exam for the trade if they do both.

Is Lawn Care a Good Investment?

Is there an over-amplification of lawn care businesses? It seems such a low bar for entry. It may be a case of finding something you love doing, and everything will follow, but the skeptic in anybody will want to look at the facts:

First, there are tens of thousands of lawn care companies in the US, but most are small-run mom-and-pops. In that case, the biggest problem is offering exceptional service and finding people who appreciate your commitment to the community. After that, the only delimiter is the size of the market.

If that fails, there’s incredible pressure to lower prices for services you can address. Price is a significant determiner of competitiveness in industries with a low entry bar. The real problem here is in hiring the quality of labor that stays around and makes your company look good.

One advantage of that situation is that your competitor’s service may suffer. You will get the work if you can find a way to corner the market on knock-your-socks-off service. As the founder and owner, you need even more commitment to adopt positive business relations with employees and be hands-on in everyday work.

Move Up to Landscaping?

I think lawn care work can even approach the aesthetic task of landscaping. It’s a different business, and landscaping takes a degree in horticulture or a related discipline, but then school is a great way to advance. The tools of a landscaper might be likened to sable brushes.

Landscaping requires an associate’s degree or a four-year degree, and there’s no reason you can’t pick it up while you work. While much of lawn care is maintenance work, landscapers dabble in landscape design and draw on their years of experience to create beautiful landscapes. As such, their tools include:

• Line
• Color
• Composition
• Proportion

In landscape design, attention goes into many details, including landscaping materials, large and small plant sources, and irrigation.

The Bottom Line?

The seasonal nature of the work can make lawn care a good investment. Doing the work can lead to more work. You’re outside. You drive a vehicle with the business name on it. It’s great advertising. Neighbors will approach you even as you work and inquire about your availability.

You’ll encounter so many “Ifs” in lawn care success stories, but one constant is the value of hands-on management. If that describes you, consider whether you can cross all your i’s, dot all your T’s, and make the business successful. A work ethic is a plus in lawn care.