What should my next move be?

[tyler_mott85]

Hey all I need a second opinion on what my next move should be with my company.

I have mowed lawns for 8 years now some for myself and some for others. I am just now starting to lean back towards my own business but I am still working a couple days a week for a friend of mine that has a LCO. He is looking to go full-time next year so I will be out of a part-time job.

This year I have put $900 towards logo design, Biz cards and equipment. I do not have a trailer. I only have a push mower so I cannot just explode this year. I do not plan on excessive growth this year anyway.

I am in a position through my regular full-time job (have my hours cut back to 24 hours now) and through helping my friend that any money I get out of my own properties I can just hold onto, outside of expense.

I have $1500 on hand right now that I could put into advertising of some sort. Or hold on to it and let my few accounts I do have ($540 a month from mowing) accumulate into a chunk of cash I could actually do something with next spring.

My question to use is what would you do? I'm a little guy. I have big guy experience. I know what I want out of my business in time. But my problem is limited cash and a poor economy. So here are the options I see right now. If you see any other options I am over looking please enlighten me!

1) Hold onto the $1500 cash and just hand out my business cards and do the whole meet and greet. Do no make any large purchases (I guess $1500 wouldn't be large) just wait for business to pick up to the point that it would actually be worth to buy a trailer and w/b.

2) Spend some of that cash hold on advertising. Fliers, truck graphics, signs, etc. The easy cheap stuff. I can't lose anything by doing it. Besides the money. And maybe I'll get lucky and get enough business that going into the fall and winter I can actually be confident in making a trailer/mower purchase in the spring.

The downside of the latter is that if I get too much business I will not be able to get the equipment I need to maintain them with my other two jobs as well. I can always (and would prefer) to step away from my regular full-time job and go to my mowing full-time but It just wouldn't be profitable for me with a push mower.

Thanks in advance!

[openbook]

I'm kind of in the same boat as you except I plan on working full time and doing my own thing part time.

I would go with number 2, def get truck magnets and signage. Spend a little on advertising, but keep saving that money. New toys are nice but I wouldn't get them unless it was absolutely necessary.

This year can be an experiment, work your 2 jobs but work on your business too. Find out what it takes to get and maintain x ammount of customers. What would it take to go full time? That's where I'm at. I might post my plans on here I'm just dragging my feet on it.

I like the name of your business. How many customers do you have? How many more do you think you can handle with your workload?

[THC]

Don't get magnets, you're better off with nothing. Big one colour decals are perfect.

if all you have is a 21" then advertise to small yards and suck it up. Also, thought I'm not sure how spring is progressing down there, when I started I put out 10k flyers (2 colour flyers btw not full colour) for spring clean up. I just bought a power raker and some hand rakes, plastic bags etc. Good little money maker spring clean ups.

[mowerbrad]

I would suggest that you save most of your money and spend a little on some advertising. I would go to a local printer and have 1000 fliers printed out on color paper with only black ink. These could be had for under $100 so you won't need to spend a bunch of money. Pass out those fliers to houses and areas that you would like to target. You could also spend a little bit on an ad in the classified section of the newspaper, nothing fancy, just something to get you name out there. I don't see any reason to not get magnets made out. Send some money on those and put them on your truck. This way when you drive around and are at a job you are constantly advertising. You could do all of this for under $200. Then you still would have $1300 left to save for larger equipment purchases next year.

[gtmorgan89]

You can get a lot wrapped up in advertising. My advice to you would be to use vistaprint.com. I ordered cards fro there at the beginning of the year, now they send me emails everyday offering free stuff (t-shirts are awsome)

[tyler_mott85]

Hey thanks guys! Great opinions!

I got my business cards from Gotprint.com 500 of them. Turned out great and they were less than $100.

I checked a little bit last night on their flier/postcard prices and they didn't seem too bad either.
I need to come up with some more images to put on my fliers. My business cards are just white with my logo and info on them. Not bad but I would like my fliers to have a little bit more background color or something.

I checked on magnets for my truck. less than $60 delivered. 12x24. I am not worried about full graphics because my truck will not be able to handle a large trailer. It is a nice clean white 1/2 ton but only has the 4.3 V6 so I will need to upgrade sooner than i'd like.

I'm leaning towards ordering magnets and wait to see what i do towards a trailer purchase. If i go enclosed I'll spend money on graphics for the trailer. If i go open I'll put vinyl graphics on the truck. I need HD graphic wrap anyway. I have too many colors in my logo for just a simple vinyl set-up.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make a low-res JPEG into a hi-res?

For now I'm getting calls just from word of mouth of people that know that I've mowed yards in the past. It may end up being enough for me this year so i can save up some good money.

So for now I will check out some stuff for the truck for starters. I think I'll wait a couple months and see how my "regular" job pans out before I do fliers or postcards. I may be getting laid off so it may work out that I need some sooner than later, hah.

Thanks!

[openbook]

What do you need to increase the resolution on? a photograph? My digital camera makes a low res image but the size dimension wise is very large. You can decrease the dimension size and increase the resolution as long as the file size stays the same or gets smaller. Otherwise it looks pixelated.

[tyler_mott85]

The image I'm talking about is my logo that I made in a cheap $20 logo program. When I exported it to a jpeg file it came out as 275 kb and it will fill my whole screen without pixelation. However when I sent it to the magnetic sign company they said it was low-res and they would need a high-res to make it work.

http://www.lawnsite.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=139237&stc=1&d=1236649898

[THC]

The image I'm talking about is my logo that I made in a cheap $20 logo program. When I exported it to a jpeg file it came out as 275 kb and it will fill my whole screen without pixelation. However when I sent it to the magnetic sign company they said it was low-res and they would need a high-res to make it work.

http://www.lawnsite.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=139237&stc=1&d=1236649898

You can't make low res into high rez but what I've done is put that pick as a template in Illustrator then you can trace over it. Basically redo it from scratch.. this only works if you have Adobe Illustrator of course. If you don't, don't worry because it isn't that special a logo anyway, I don't like it. Sloppy looking and bad fonts (this only my opinion). I would just get the print shop to redo it for you.


edit: actually now that I think about it.. I remember while watching my Total Training vids for Illustrator that you can, I think the term is RASTORIZE it. I never needed to do that so I never did the exercise but once again I don't think that would do you any good. BTW, that's a GIF not a JPEG (or it should be).

[tyler_mott85]

Its saved as a Jpeg. That's how it was exported out of the logo software. Why should it be GIF?

I already have it on my business cards so I'm going to stick with it. I don't like the gradient on the Elite but other then that I'm content with it. I think I will just have a Graphic design company match it and fix the things I need fixed.

Thanks for the info tho, THC. I appreciate it. I did not think I could go from low to high res but I will try the rastorize.

Thanks again all I'll keep you updated.

[THC]

Its saved as a Jpeg. That's how it was exported out of the logo software. Why should it be GIF?

I just learn what I need to know so I'm FAR from an expert but I think cartoon type of images should be GIF and pictures should be JPEG. I'm not sure why so I googled it.:confused:

http://www.siriusweb.com/tutorials/gifvsjpg/


There's usually a drop down menu at the bottom of a "save as" window, in photoshop/illustrator there are over a dozen file options, but I've never heard of your type of software so I don't know.

[Q in Sac]

Will you be servicing the Metro Wichita Area? Once you determined that, then budget at least $200 for adviseting (business cards, flyers, car magnets). Try to get the most bang for you buck. You mentioned in your post that you might be getting "laid off". This could be a great opportunity to promote your business and get your name out there. Use the equipment that you have and then upgrade as you go. Save that money for future purchases. My 2.86 cents, :)

[tyler_mott85]

Yes, Q, I will be servicing Wichita area.
And for all of the comments, thank you all for your input! We all have to make decisions about our companies every day but sometimes it helps to hear what other people have to say about what you have going on to help you decide!

I will do some more advertising I am going to check some local companies on the magnets and see if I can get a better price. I will think about some fliers in a couple months. Right now I am getting about 1 call a day the last week or so from people that have heard that I am starting back up (Used to mow A LOT when I was in Highschool) So I want to see how far this will carry me before I spend money on unnecessary advertising.

Thanks again!!

[Q in Sac]

Get you a web site. Yahoo! has a great deal where you get a domain name (i.e. www.landscapepimp.com) and build it online for a $115 for a year. Here's the link http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/?s_fptrough=wh_acq_getwebsite_20081001. This is another advertisement you take advantage of.

[Trevors Lawn Care]

Yes, Q, I will be servicing Wichita area.
And for all of the comments, thank you all for your input! We all have to make decisions about our companies every day but sometimes it helps to hear what other people have to say about what you have going on to help you decide!

I will do some more advertising I am going to check some local companies on the magnets and see if I can get a better price. I will think about some fliers in a couple months. Right now I am getting about 1 call a day the last week or so from people that have heard that I am starting back up (Used to mow A LOT when I was in Highschool) So I want to see how far this will carry me before I spend money on unnecessary advertising.

Thanks again!!

If you are going to be servicing the Wichita KS area, email me at Tbrunckhorst@crownenterprisesinc.com so I can have you bid on a truck termianl that I have there.

Trevor