How a kid, teenager or adult can get started in Lawn mowing with Little to no Money

[Music] we want to look at a couple of instances in the Bible where people were really really really being blessed and had such tremendous opportunities and they just went totally haywire how do you know that sometimes you can get a severe case of the stupid [Music] are you guys we got a jam-packed show today because we are going to talk to you guys about how to actually get free equipment yes a free lawn mower free weed whackers blowers and this admittedly will work a lot better if you're a kid then you Fr if you're an adult so you may have to modify some of these techniques and this was actually talked to me by a person in the comments on a video I did a long long time ago so before we get too deep into today's video make sure you read the comments we're also going to teach you guys how much to charge to cuddle on we're gonna teach you how to do your initial bids also when you're going in to cut along to mow lawns for the very first time we're also going to talk marketing strategies how to market your business for next to nothing we're also going to talk about how to design your fliers there's a right way and not quite as right a way of doing it and really what you're gonna find out today is gonna be pretty much bass-ackwards for what you think and then we're also going to teach you how to position your company for growth so if you're not in this just for the short term but you think this could be your long game we're gonna teach you what to put what pieces of the puzzle to put in place to make that happen so without wasting any more time let's get into today's video [Music] let's see hey Alex let's eat cake what Jake thinks of what we were saying okay so Alex and I were talking earlier nice proposed a scenario past them if you were sitting at home and a kid knocks on the on your door maybe someone from the neighborhood that you've seen around once or twice before so a familiar face this is hey look would you let me mow your lawn for you this year if you would borrow me your lawnmower to do it what would you think of that as long as the mower stays at my house I won't I wouldn't care okay so that's the catch the kid says what I'm trying to do is start my own lawn mowing company and I need a more to use I'll mow your lawn with your more all-season for you for free if you let me mow it so that I can go out and earn enough money to buy my own lawn mower okay I mean it's my mowers not alike great so one really cares sure go ahead I see you get your ma your more your log done for the year for nothing that'd be nice and your mowers going out and helping somebody start their own company now it's gonna be probably pretty acceptable for a kid what do you think Alex I mean yeah because you tried to help somebody out now here's where it gets really interesting if the kid is savvy what he's gonna do is go you know my ultimate goal is I'm gonna hopefully someday be able to buy a weed whip and I'm gonna get this and I'm gonna get these other tools but he doesn't ask for them because now what he's done is he's planted a seed in your head and if he's really smart if your wife is there he says that to her yeah and he doesn't ask for anything because then when you guys are out and about you're at a garage sale or you're on Craigslist or wherever guess what happens if you find this amazing bargain buy it you're gonna buy it and probably give it to the kid as a gift aren't ya yeah this kid's gonna have more tools and equipment that he could ever yeah so there's how you get if the kid has tried to get started he doesn't have the right tools and he doesn't have money to get started that's one way of doing it the only way would change if it was I do it for a kid but if it was some older guy I'd be like yeah I'm a little sketched out about this guy right exactly so if it's an older guy trying to get started with no money the best thing that he can do is he's gonna have to save some money up and go to Craigslist he's gonna have to I mean I've cooked I I picked up probably a half a dozen free lawnmowers all right in fact let's go see one of the free mowers I got there's one right in right there that one and that's a good more now here's the but here's the thing that is a battery powered mower big giant free sign on it thing runs like nobody's business and with the battery powered mower especially if you're a kid getting started no gas to worry about nothing right I mean and these older battery powered mowers especially this Black & Decker I'm gonna recommend we pop that battery out so these guys can see the difference they have these gigantic battery packs that just they go and go yeah that's it that's like half the weight of the mower right there I'll it so I can actually see it there you go yep so that's it there's an example of one of the three mowers that you can get you just got to keep your eyes and ears open for them using they're out there they're not great and they're nothing like what we use but you don't need this to get started you you'd literally need a push mower a 21 inch push mower go out mow ten yards and then you've got enough money to buy a bigger better one and just keep reinvesting and Lori you bring a load a room for the beginning part just to get stuff off the sidewalks and stuff yep get it off the sidewalks a broom works great you don't need a blower that's a great tip too so that's how you get started really crud I think we got a little bit of rain the next thing we should talk about is how do you get your equipment out to your site you don't necessarily have to have a truck or a trailer like this to be able to move your equipment up to a site let's walk through a couple different scenarios for you guys let's say you just have a truck and maybe you're a younger person and getting on Tona trailer is a little bit intimidating or maybe in your area you might need a CDL to tow a trailer and you're not qualified to do it there's a company called the ramp raft that actually has a trailer assembly that goes right into the back of the pickup truck so you can load the four-wheeler first or the mower first yeah either one that's why we made this this height here so for right standards you don't have to lower the deck or the engine or anything to fit under under your rack in the front just love the thought he put into this thing you just got to appreciate and admire somebody that's like well you basically built it for yourself why I'm pretty much so it's got a lift assist gate right now we're using gorilla one man operation this gates actually surprisingly heavy without it without an assist I think they charge about three thousand dollars or so I don't know their price to be honest with you or their setup but let's say that that's above and beyond what you can do see this work fan right here this work Faneuil Hall a lot of tools in the back back this work fan will be able to haul your push mowers your weed whips your blowers everything else you have Wilkin fit rut nicely right into the back of that so what you don't have a truck it's not the end of the world it's not exactly it's not the only thing you need now if you do end up buying a truck and a trailer make sure the truck is specked out to be able to tow the trailer let me know in the comments down below if you guys would like to see a video where i show you how i spec out all of my work trucks so you went ahead and you got your mower and now you want to go out and get your first account but you have no idea how much to charge them well don't worry we're gonna make this simple the average in the industry is around $1 per minute so that means every minute you spend on someone's line you should be able to pay yourself about a dollar all right you guys let's be very clear in this pricing strategy before we move forward when I set $1 per minute I was actually referring to something along the lines of this 52-inch Toro grandstand we get $1 per minute for this more it may take us 30 minutes to cut an average-size yard with this more meaning we can charge $30 but now if you're gonna try to do the same lawn with this push mower right here it may take you an hour that but that does not mean you get to charge them $60 because you're using a small or more remember your competition may come in with a much bigger faster lawnmower than you but you still want to be able to land those jobs so you have to adjust your price according to the size of the more that you have a smaller push mower like this you may only be able to get 50 cents per hour or 75 cents per hour to be able to go head-to-head with the bigger more and even a 52-inch more like this is going to be out competed by a 72-inch like this one or 72 inch like this one so if you have a bigger more you're going to be able to charge more per minute if you have a smaller more you're going to have to charge less per minute because you have to balance out the time I hope that clears that up now let's move on to the next tip now it may seem a little daunting at first to try to figure out how many minutes am I going to spend on somebody's yard and here's where we're going to use your own yard your grandma and grandpa's yard maybe your neighbor's yard is an experiment and what you're going to do is you're gonna mow your yard with a stopwatch you're gonna count exactly how long it takes you to mow your yard then you're going to go to a neighbor's yard that will let you mull him and you're gonna and hopefully it's different than your yard and you're gonna stop watching time that one and you're going to do that for a few different yards out there and you're gonna write it down in a notebook and that will give you an idea when you go to a brand new yard that you've never seen before you can use the yards that you've already mowed as a comparison to know about how many minutes it took you to mow those yards really what should then happen is if you go ahead and give them a bid for it and you are charging them thirty dollars it better not take you much longer than thirty maybe forty minutes to complete that yard if it takes you over an hour that should tell you that you're not paying yourself enough money for that project hope this helps you out let's move on to the next tip so as you can see you guys we had a storm come through here knocked down one of our trees and do quite a bit of damage but that's not what we're looking at today today we're looking at one of the most effective forms of advertising you can do and it's not a letter like this it's not even a full-color magazine or even a flyer one of the most effective forms of advertising you can do is write there a handwritten letter a handwritten letter we'll have an open rate that's way higher than any non personalized piece of mail that you can send out when you really want hyper effective results do a handwritten letter but we're gonna actually take this a little bit further let's do it okay you guys so this next one isn't scientific but it's actually just the way I work I'm gonna show you my mail for the month this is it right here this is my mail that I get for the entire month I don't open anything unless I absolutely have to I even have mail that says open by law or something like that I still don't open it till I come across a letter like this now if you guys have been watching in my videos you may have seen this sitting right there in four or five six other videos because this is the one piece of mail that I opened because it's got my name right on it here's the card that was inside this was brilliantly done so a handwritten note on the inside followed by his business card let me read this to you Stanley I'm sorry I did not get a chance to speak with you since we were in a meeting Oh since you were in a meeting I'm new to the area over by Mendota village I run an Edward Jones office and I'm currently introducing myself around the area please let me know if I can ever help best Christopher now this guy showed up at my doorstep and I don't like solicitors so I just shift him away and you guys may experience that if you go door-to-door but this handwritten note is the only thing that I'm opening this proves just how hyper effective this is this is an easy way for you guys to get your mail open but let's talk about what you send people a handwritten letter like this with your card is perfect Flyers are also a good way to do it but a lot of fliers get ignored with the rest of the junk alright so next let's talk about fliers and how you should design it because hires is a great way to get your message out and I want to show you a few different flyer designs see if you guys notice anything unusual about these we've got nice color font on these bright colors one thing that you should automatically start to see with all of these is they blend together that's the problem with a typical flyer that you get out there how do you guys think you can stand out by just having brighter colors well maybe but here's something that I'm gonna suggest you go the exact opposite way instead of having a brightly colored flyer and these get typically about a 1 to 2 percent response rate just do a black and white letter with simple font and sign your name at the bottom in that black and white letter doing about Me section tell them who you are tell him where you're going tell him where are you not where you live like the address but the area that you live in and then that's going to be more personalized and if you have a simple picture of yourself on it doesn't have to be high quality it does not have to be professionally done just a normal picture of you with your mower your setup is going to personalize that because one of them on a website one of the most open parts of any website is not the homepage it's not the products page it's the about me page and what you're doing is you're creating an about me flyer that helps the customers connect to you because really they want to know who's showing up on their lawn that gets that's been proven to get almost double the response rate then one of these brightly colored flyers so a simple black and white is the way to go now other ways to market your company is to use something called the next door app or Facebook marketplace these are also great ways to get your message out there and it doesn't cost a lot of money but you're going to have to do a little bit of research on them before you get going and one word of caution your phone will start ringing when you start marketing before you go out to people's houses if you are kid make sure your parents know exactly where you are you guys I can't stress this enough make sure that your parents know where you are what you're doing and they they have dibs on you at all times because the last thing we want is your business to go south because you had a bad experience so let's stay safe out there now let's get on to the next step and that's growing your business and what you need to do all right you guys one of the things that we have to cover is the fact that your head will make you a lot more money than your hands ever will that means you've got to invest into your own knowledge but maybe school is not for you well there is an online learning platform called Skillshare we've got over 25,000 classes everything from marketing entrepreneurship one of the classes that I specifically like to recommend to use by simon Sinek and it's in the leadership category but it's on the ability to become a storyteller and the reason I'm recommending this is becoming a storyteller is one of the first steps to becoming a better salesperson your company will be driven by sales and your ability to convey a story and relate with the customer is one of the key fundamental components that will propel your business forward faster than anything else and that's part of the concept of always striving to improve your knowledge so let's give you a little taste of it right now I'm often asked you know I've been such a good presenter and I like to joke that I cheat I only talk about things I care about and I only talk about things I understand you can't manufacture passionate you can manufacture energy you can bounce on the stage and scream and yell that's not passion that's just too much caffeine my name is simon Sinek I speak I write and I teach about the concepts that inspire us all sorts of classes that can help propel your business to the next level now the first 500 people that decide to check out skills here will get two months free using the link that I'm gonna put down below but on top of that even if you're not one of the first 500 people that check it out it's still only ten dollars a month and please remember this you guys what you put into your brain will make you way more money than your hands ever will over the course of your life your education is fundamentally the most important thing that you guys have to propel yourself forward don't ever short yourself maybe schools not for you but you still need to keep learning you guys please take this to heart and go check out Skillshare and they in the description down below so I'm wasting more time let's get into that I don't really have to waste time because we're gonna go right here so so when it comes time to grow your business you're gonna have to learn some basic accounting and basic record tracking I've pulled these books out because this works a simple notebook and I prefer to use a legal ledger well this isn't really a legal ledger but I prefer to use something along these lines these columnar these column pads or whatever and that just allows me to easily track everybody that knows me money enough for me this worked for decades because I wasn't doing a lot of jobs I was doing monstrous jobs so I didn't need a fancy accounting system to keep track of everything but in lawn care you do need something so as your business grows you're going to need a good way to route your jobs because routing is profit so one of the things you need to understand is if you have a job here and another job clear across town and then another job in the middle you want to make sure that you're routing your crew your routing yourself the most efficient way possible to travel the least amount of miles and to cut the most lawns you possibly can now this is not going to cut it there is a program that will do it for you and keep track of all of your accounting that's Jabra I've used jobber and the thing is I've seen big monstrous companies use Jabra I mean we're talking about thirty and sixty million dollar companies still use Jabra and so this is a great way for you to get your foot in the door with a software company and then to grow so it you can grow as much as you possibly want using this but there is an expense with that this system is free but this system won't route you this system won't voice this system won't do a lot of the things that you still need to do so as you grow just mentally prepare that you're gonna probably have to have an accounting system or a software system to grow with you see might as well get started the right way there's a number of them out there I don't know all of the features that the other ones use I'm just telling you about the one that I'm the most familiar with and then I'm very comfortable recommending and that's jobber and that's why I recommend it all right you guys so with that being said I hope this videos helped you out you guys tell me in the comments down below good bad or in between is there any points I missed one of the most important things that I want to say is read the comments because a lot of the tips that came in today actually came in from other lawn care companies commenting on my other videos and some of these tips were just freaking amazing and I wanted to share them with you and if you guys got some tips put it in the comments down below as always you guys god bless and go go and check out these two videos right here now god bless and go get them