OP
Freaky Fido
LawnSite Senior Member
- Location
- Northeast USA
- Thread Starter
- #31
I was actually happy to post a loss on the books my first two years, but it was a tax strategy to reduce my taxes on other income while setting up the business for the future. I wasn't lowballing (deliberately anyway), just buying everything I could to write off/depreciate.I know a guy just like that. He retired from a corporate job with a nice chunk of change and a decent pension. Decided he'd go into landscaping.
He has two bidding strategies, and these are for bigger $10,000 plus jobs. He will either look at one of those websites like Costhelper, which if you ever have, the price suggestions are ridiculously low most times.
Or he will tell the client to get two other bids, and he will beat the lowest one by 10-15%.
Somehow he is still in business, but I know for a fact he has posted several loss years, just chewing away at his retirement money. But he just doesnt get it. has never really done a thorough look at his profit and loss....
One thing that didn't help my friend was his lack of attention to routine equipment maintenance and replacing equipment that just needed minor adjustments/repairs. He'd buy new blowers every year because they only blew hard for a little while and performance declined over time. It was due to nothing more than throttle cable stretch!
And he did stupid/inefficient things like running wavy mulcher blades on his Z with an open discharge and bagging with his walk behind and a catcher even though he had a rear bagger for the Z. The problem was his helper (son) couldn't get used to the tail swing of the bagger and kept damaging things, so they removed it. Running with the mulchers with little vacuum left a lot of stringers so they would go over the lawn with string trimmers after mowing to try to get them all, lol. And picking up twig/acorn piles was a 2 person job - one to drag the barrel and one to pick up the piles by hand. I showed him how to do it with one person, a grain shovel and a rake but he wouldn't listen. Vacuuming leaves with the truck loader was a 3 person job, one in the truck, one with a rake and one on the nozzle. So maybe they really were only worth $25/hr...