I need help starting....

[M&MLandscaping]

I am currently going to school for horticulture, and I want to start up a small business this spring. I will cut lawns and shrubs, and want to do landscape designs and installations for customers. Would anyone be able to tell me how I should go about this? How should I advertise? How do I come up with a total charge for people when I give them estimates. And what kind of equipment should I start with? I live in a small town in Illinois of about 5,000 people. Any suggestions would be great, and I thank anyone who can help. Thanks - Seth

[P.Services]

i would recommend you do a search on each one of those topics, tons of info already about them.

[GroundForce007]

yeah if you just search the forum you should find your answers

[SouthernCutter]

I started two years ago with a 21 inch push mower, but im gunna guess since your in horticulture school, your not 14 like i was. I would just read in the commercial lawn mowing section on here, you might want to look into a quick thirty six great mowers, and very small for limited storage/transportation area. Just put out fliers, get your business license so that you can letter your truck and trailer and get business cards, wear shirts, maybe put a letter in the mailboxes of yards that dont look very good and offer landscaping jobs for lower prices and then make signs with your company name on them, you may have to start out by lowballing yards, yea it sucks, but you can get yards, and if you can do a quality job, then your customer wont care if you go up in price. BE RELIABLE and DO QUALITY WORK and it should work out for you. once you get a few yards to cut, you can tell them that you will mulch for them, and with the mulching comes bush trimming and weeding, and you will put in new plants if they want, or remove old ones. If you want anything else, just private message me, hope i was helpful..... Where are you in west TN? Im in knoxville.

[M&R Specialty Lawns]

Putting anything in a mail boxes is a felony....wouldn't recommend that route!

[Crusis]

Er, he's in the Illinois part of Tennesee. ;)


:drinkup:

[SouthernCutter]

i feel dumb now....last night his location said West TN.... or i glanced and saw Shelbyville.....one of the two, i dont know