Area Of Coverage

[XOFMOT]

Hello again! Heres a question I have been pondering.....

How far should I travel to perform lawncare services? I am so new to this business that the only customer I have at this time is MYSELF!
I know that I could just travel a couple of houses down the street and most likely start working, but I also know that 10 miles away there's a very wealthy community, and 20 miles away is one the the richest communites in the country (GREENWICH CONNECTICUT). I think the hardest part is that I am a NEWBEE to this industry and have yet to establish any type of credentials or referances at this time. Please Advise...Thanks!:D

[awm]

i advise you to work in your area until you can go to these wealthy homeowners wi the knowledge to do it right. meantime hit the books and stay with lawnsite. you need knowlege of fert, pesticide, proper care of the grass in your area and so many other thing. you wont learn it all in one yr. but you should be ready to tryim. if you go in now you may get a bad rep thats hard to overcome. goodluck ,later

[lawnboy82]

i would say to you to get experience with some small places for a couple of years. get at least one or two guys workin for you, and get a good cash flow goin before you get into greenwich. i have worked there before, right now i do a lot of work in bedford, and pound ridge. stay close to your home for the time being. to get into a multi million dollar home takes lots of good references, or at least 1 really good one that the people love. um what else? if you are workin at those places you gotta have at least 1,000,000 dollars in liablilty and workers comp on all employees. they dont wanna know that you just took their house because an uncovered employee wasnt on comp. what else? um some are good payers. again, there are really rich parts of greenwich, and there are other parts that are not so rich. but they will be really fussy about all the insurance and references and everything. just your home is not a good place to start from.

[mdb landscaping]

hey another person from good ole CT. im from glastonbury CT. i only travel as far as the surrounding towns. as i expand i may change my plans, but i seem to have no problem getting local customers. i just kept putting flyers out in the neighborhoods i wanted. i put out 100 flyers in one neighborhood and picked up three nice accounts. just scope out which areas youd like to mow in and put out flyers, or knock on doors and introduce yourself.

[lawnboy82]

yeah mdb- i dont think that he is goin for the small accounts in greenwich though. and if you have ever driven through that town a lot of the homes there reach into the millions no problem. so for somebody to go from no accounts to even 1 multi million dollar home would be a bit tough. what happens if they want 2 people there every day of the week, or 1 person there every day, or 2 people every other day? what do you do? personally it doesnt bother me that you are gettin into one of my coverage areas, cause i dont cut there yet. however i know some people who do cut there. they make good money from that, but they have lots of qualifications / recomendations / etc. and landing / maintaining those properties are no problem for them because their company has 100 employees. so it takes time before you can get to that point. however if you can get a 10 million dollar home for your first account ever please let us know of that miracle.

[mdb landscaping]

"just scope out which areas youd like to mow"
"surrouding towns"


lawnboy. i didnt say to get all accounts in greenwich. aim for the class size neighborhood that you can handle. my town has a lot of mulit million dollar neighborhoods as well. i took on homes that i can handle. im sure not all the neighborhoods in the surrounding towns are all upscale as well.

[WILSON BROS.]

Go where the work is. My closest job is nearly 15 miles. But we have several in that area. I do however run close to a 75 mile radius from my shop. Today four stops all comercial 200 miles round trip. And paid very well for the seat time.

[lawnboy82]

i guess what i was trying to say is not to get in over your head. and i know that there is no way that he can get all the accounts in greenwich, however if you do get enough of certain types of accounts, you may piss off certain people, and that may not be so good for you if ya know what i mean. even 1 large account may not be good for you. there are people, not to name names, who if you go and take a 150K+ account a year or however much it is, they may not be to happy about that. would you be happy about that?

[XOFMOT]

Thanks all, this has been very imformative for me at this time. To be honest with you, I would be a nervous wreck if I actually got a multi-million dollar home as one of my first accounts. From what I've read from all that have responed, I think I'll stick a little closer to my home area (Middle and uppper middle class incomes)until I gain enough experience and knowledge of this business. But please keep posting on about this subject. The more info I get the more I'll understand! Thanks

[TLS]

My closest lawn is 350 feet away from my garage, to the other extreme, the longest I drive is 14.8 miles for a 5 acre farmhouse. They pay dearly for the travel time as I dont like driving long distances. 90% of my cleints are withen a 3 mile radius.

[AndrewLawn]

best advice i can give is

1)don't quit your day job

2)buy quality equipment but keep overhead as low as possible,don't pretend you'll make 50k this first year,cause you won't

3)try and stay legal(insurance,taxes)

4)always do a GOOD job,even when its been a long day,"when the going gets tough the tough gets going"

5)be attentive,curtious,and creative...attentive:think of all the things you can do to make money,maybe a small landscaping job.
curtious:politeness pays off
creative:new ways to advertise,draw in customers,cut down time or increase sales!

6)Price jobs well...10 GOOD lawns is better than 15 or 20 mediocore/bad ones.this will come with time,you have to build up a client base before you can start picking and choosing and deleting the "bad" ones.

[Got Grass?]

All of my lawns are within 10miles in one direction from my house 90% of my customers are with in 5 miles.
Stay close to home for now and establish yourself in your own hood. Hands on experience running your own thing is the best way to learn.
In a couple years if things work out and you have the experience, then expand into that area. You dont wanna start out with one job in that type of area. In case it went bad for whatever reason, you messed up (not saying you will but), thay are to picky, etc... That would be your only reputation. Start out with the easy stuff and build yourself up.

Also if you will be doing plowing do you really wanna try and drive 20 miles in a blizard just for one house?

I get people calling me all the time to work in this on town about 30min away and I had the hardest time at first telling people "sorry I currently dont work in that area" but I'm glad I did becasue I now have plenty of work arround here and starting to get known, & many potential plow cust's.