I'm taking a chance...

[lpwhandyman]

Originally Posted by Richard Martin

I gave this lady a price of $20 per cut without having actually seen the property. Is that crazy or what? Sight unseen.

$20 to mow a property? Yep, that's crazy.

[Richard Martin]

Originally Posted by lpwhandyman

$20 to mow a property? Yep, that's crazy.

$20 covers the cost and leaves profit. It costs me $19 an hour to operate. I pay myself $15 an hour on paper. That's a total cost of $34 an hour. That's 57 cents a minute. If I stretch the job out to 20 minutes, that's a total of $11.40 in cost. I profited $8.60 on the job.

Or...

You can look at it this bizarre way. My laser printer costs me $25 a year to operate including paper, cost of the printer and the toner. My son works for Office Depot so I get the paper for free and a good discount on the toner cartridge which is good for 2,000 sheets. In 19 years I've only printed out a little under 6,000 invoices so that one toner catridge is going to last for years.

So cutting this one tiny little yard almost completely paid for a office expense for a year. Not bad.

And as was pointed out, that $20 could also be used to pay for the days gas and then some.

There is nothing wrong with doing the small jobs for smaller amounts as long as that small job doesn't interfere with larger higher profit jobs. I would rather put that $20 in my pocket than tell the customer that I have a minimum price of $35 and then not get the job. There's about 400 of these little tiny yards in this neighborhood, I'd like to get a few more.

[MOW ED]

Its all about making money and if you are making money you are doing it right. For all of you who think 20 bucks is cheap just read his justification. He KNOWS how much he needs to make per hour to make a profit. He knows that at 20 bucks for the time spent he is making money. How many of the members here can say that?
I will say that the true business people know this but how many threads are in this site asking how much should I charge to do xxxxxx? Its rediculous and I wonder how some people stay in business. Richard obviously knows his numbers. This is the kind of stuff newbies should read and learn from.

[MOturkey]

We had an account for a couple of years that I did for $15. It was a commercial property, and I never unloaded the mower, just used the trimmer and blew off the sidewalk. Took less than 15 minutes. Would it be worth it to go out of the way for an account like this? No, but it was right in the middle of my other stops that day, and I always figured it paid for that day's gasoline.

[Golfpro21]

like others have said, definately nothing wrong with a $20 account, if you know your numbers and your making a profit, there is no difference between a $20 account and a $80 account, I would even ponder the idea that if you could build an entire route of just $20 accounts it would be very profitable, especially if its a crew doing the work for you as you do not need to be near as picky and quality control is not that big an issue.

[orangemower]

Originally Posted by Richard Martin

$20 covers the cost and leaves profit. It costs me $19 an hour to operate. I pay myself $15 an hour on paper. That's a total cost of $34 an hour. That's 57 cents a minute. If I stretch the job out to 20 minutes, that's a total of $11.40 in cost. I profited $8.60 on the job.

Or...

You can look at it this bizarre way. My laser printer costs me $25 a year to operate including paper, cost of the printer and the toner. My son works for Office Depot so I get the paper for free and a good discount on the toner cartridge which is good for 2,000 sheets. In 19 years I've only printed out a little under 6,000 invoices so that one toner catridge is going to last for years.

So cutting this one tiny little yard almost completely paid for a office expense for a year. Not bad.

And as was pointed out, that $20 could also be used to pay for the days gas and then some.

There is nothing wrong with doing the small jobs for smaller amounts as long as that small job doesn't interfere with larger higher profit jobs. I would rather put that $20 in my pocket than tell the customer that I have a minimum price of $35 and then not get the job. There's about 400 of these little tiny yards in this neighborhood, I'd like to get a few more.

There's your ticket. You need to get a dozen of them and make bank.

[ShooterK2]

My first year in business I quoted a trailer house lawn at $20 because it was a girl I grew up with and she is now a single mom and I wanted to be nice. I wasn't making anything on the lawn, just breaking even. That lasted about 2 weeks.

Then the next door neighbor wanted in, and then the neighbor on the other side of him. Pretty soon that was a $60 stop for less than an hour of work total. Around these parts, that's good money.

Don't let Mr. Martin fool you. He knows what he's doing.

[Scagguy]

What Richard says makes sense for him because he's a solo operator. Those of us that have crews would go broke doing that. Remember, it's all about operating cost and profit margins.

[GMLC]

There was someone on LS that cut 30 $20 lawns per day in a 1200 home gated community. All about the same size as Richards $20 lawn. Money can be made if you want to hustle.
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