How do I Get started in Lawn Care? pt #1

all right we have Lance Shepherd on the phone and Lance reached out to me via email had it city house had a few questions wanted to know it's um do you have a business currently not currently no that I plan to have one and the near future okay what kind of business are you going to be starting I'm going to start a lawn care service with mowing weed eating edging and simple gardening like mulching and just do simple we pull em and stuff like that okay whatever you locate it I'm in Virginia and the new River Valley okay how old are you Lance what kind of experience do you have up to this point mostly just working for a family I've worked on the farm and my actual job experience throughout my life has been in the automotive industry and I just kind of got burned out on so you worked on the firm list is we were you born and raised on a farm pretty much dairy farm the reason I ask that is because I mean I grew up in farm country and I know farm kids are handy I just need I'm trying to try to get myself into to what your skill sets are whether you declare them your skills or not so that's why I'm asking you these questions I know you're the one that actually has the questions but I want to make sure that I come up with the answers that fit you and for the people out there watching on YouTube they can kind of modify it and change it to fit their personality too so let's get into the first question you have lands okay business customers how how would I know about gaining customers while still competing with the larger local companies that already charged extremely low it's gonna be your reputation Lance so customers are going to switch from going with big box store lawn cutting to Lance Shepherds lawn cutting because they know who you are so start in your church starting your local unity let people know let them also know how much you appreciate if they will give your name oh if they will help you I tell you straight up people love to help other people it's just it gives them something to do especially a lot of the you're gonna be catering to the older crowd more or less okay because those are the ones you know the young bucks of them all they're online they're gonna let you go away you're 26 I'm 26 I'm gonna mow my own yard right so the older crowds gonna bring you in they're gonna be the ones that are gonna be hiring you and it gives them something to talk about hey you know Lance Shepherd the farm kid that married the farmer's daughter down the road he's starting his own lawn care business he does really good work and he's really nice see they're not gonna talk about you if you just come in you do the job and you disappear Lance if you do that you have no clue but if you do the job you knock on the door and you pick up a conversation with your customers guess who they're gonna know guess who's you're gonna talk about guess who's you're gonna come to like guess who they're going to want to see to grow it's a beautiful thing Lance you have you have the ability to do something that the big box store lawn mowing companies just can't do you have you you have your personality use it use it like a frickin tool Lance use it like it's a weapon like you're a samurai warrior and that's your sword it's the Lance Shepherd way all right necklace okay the next question I have is this is probably the biggest battle that I tried to figure out I'm currently I'm staying on that I have two children my little girl she's about two other half years old excuse me I have a son he just turned one so therefore we're primarily just living off of my wife's income and we're just trying to slowly start building up our savings we as all house and well my question is show more money from a bank to buy new or used equipment or should I just buy a new equivalent from a dealer that's more affordable that Leila pencil worried more or less about breakdowns and they would still have a warranty I'm not worried about two breakdowns because I can fix it just about anything it is nice to not not worry about it well you answer your own question there Lance because as soon as you said should I buy new so I don't have to worry about breakdowns I'm thinking you are the man to fix it right yeah you said that how many accounts do you have right now okay so how many codes do you have that are gonna pay for a brand-new lawnmower none how many cows do you have they're gonna pay for a used lawnmower absolutely none so do not go out and buy any equipment until you know what your accounts are how many accounts you have and what you can afford to do when you're building a business from the ground up with absolutely zero money your accounts pay for your equipment so you're gonna go out you're gonna start marketing right now this would be the best time if you look outside my window Lance it's negative eight degrees out and I am the absolute busiest I have ever been because I'm in my office marketing I have two computers going I am reaching out to people I am making sure that the world knows who we are because this is when the real go-getters are looking for their lawn maintenance especially if you're into commercial accounts which you may want to look into doing okay okay so don't buy any equipment till you know what you have for a cost you may only need a push mower to start with beautiful beautiful go buy a used push mower Lance and yes you're gonna have to sacrifice you're gonna have worries you're gonna have issues at the end of the day you're gonna have greasy fingernails because you're working on the lawn mowers because you can't afford brand new even to this day I don't buy brand new equipment for the most part I just bought a skid loader the other day ten years old but it was in mint condition I look for that depreciation for that initial outlay that profit that the manufacturer gets from selling a brand-new piece of equipment I look for somebody else to eat that so I look for I look for very gently used top-notch equipment and I'll go in and I'll buy that all day and all day and night I'll be I'll be very comfortable buying that because I know that the risk I'm taking shouldn't be that much if I really do my research on the piece of equipment versus buying a brand new one with a warranty now I I do buy both and you will get to the point where it makes sense it's the switch it's a logic where it makes sense for you to do both but right now starting out it does not make sense for you to go out and purchase equipment when you don't even know what you're going to be doing yet so start marketing you can start marketing today Lance you can produce flyers and your flyers all they have to be is just a letter just a letter introducing you and you can pull that up on board you can post that up on community boards you can start getting your name out there wherever possible look at where the companies that you want to compete with where are they marketing where do you see them where where are they popping up until you can afford to do exactly replicate exactly their marketing strategy you can take the free components of what they're doing where you're seeing them and start doing that I tell you the beauty is flyers work wonders and there's a way to do flyers as well and it's not as hard complicated as you think the best fliers the most effective flyers out there Lance they're just letters they're just a letter with a signature especially if you're gonna do a you do your own hand signature on them people appreciate that so to get back to your initial question no don't go out buying brand new equipment until you can absolutely positively afford it and it makes sense because there'd be times when it doesn't make sense and you can buy used equipment and get by so even to this day after 31 years of being in business Lance I buy new I buy used when it makes sense [Music]