Originally posted by MTR
Another move to FL? Gosh, oh, well, welcome anyway...
It is ridiculously tough and crazy down here regarding crowded competition among LCO. Like somebody had said "saturation" regardless what areas you live in. Yes, so much grass to cut, but if you expect to get paid like New England price or where you have come from, you have to bite dust a lot. There are ten of thousands of licensed & insured LCO as much as unlicensed & uninsured LCO (kids from highschool and retired war veterans, or social security benefits recipients) competing one another for just as little as $ 10 a cut, so go figure?
Anyway, your quality has to be right there to stay strong regardless of how much you make though.
Nothing specific against any one reply, but I find it amusing that no matter where in the country one asks about the biz, it's always "horribly competitive" and everybody is mowing lawns for $10. I suspect some of these replies come from those in good markets who want it to stay that way by shooing off newcomers with "advice" to stay out of such a downtrodden market.
Where is "down here" in florida? Many parts of Florida are genuinely economically slow and wages in general are low, so one would expect an oversupply of lawncare guys and correspondingly low rates. But that could be said about any area of the country. If you live where there aren't a lot of busy corporate people with high incomes but no time to mow their lawns, don't expect to make as much money.
But in some parts of Florida 50% of the population is too old to push a mower, and many of the others are too rich to dare be seen doing it themelves or bother with it. Stereotypes of cheap ethnic groups aside, people with money and aging bodies do spend more on lawncare than young people without money. I've done some research and in one particular area the median household income is $20,000 higher than here in the Atlanta suburbs (considered pretty upscale already) and I have had zero trouble in 12 years finding customers at good prices. As for the number of lco's....I can sit in traffic at a light here and watch 6 other guys trucks go by in the opposite lane. But I still don't have problems finding work. So one guy's personal opinion of how many is too many has to be taken with a grain of salt. My advice....ask some of these people "how many lco's are there in your area?" or "what is the population of your area?", or even "what is the median income in your area?". Unless they can answer accurately, I don't see how they can determine that there are too many lco's. Some people confuse the existence of "any" competition with "too much" competition.
So I find it hard to believe that in an area full of wealthy retirees, where the grass grows year round, where the median home price is over $200,000, where virtually every lawn I see in real estate websites is formally landscaped and well maintained, and where there isn't any place within 50 miles where a poor person could live, that there would be a "glut" of lawncare operators.
So the key is obviously to research your market using independent information, which is, admit it, far more objective than advice given by one of your prospective competitors who may not have YOUR best interests in mind when doling out the "advice".