A lawn care business for home owners and small businesses is a respectable and lucrative way to earn money while enjoying the great outdoors. All you need to start is the lawn mower and some gas and you're in business.  

Thinking Like a Businessperson to Grown Your Lawn Care Business

To succeed at this endeavor and ensure that you get yourself a consistent stream of income, you need to treat is as a business. You are not doing this as a hobby. Every sound business should have a well defined product or service and marketing.

The product or service is what you will be selling. You need to be able to sell your prospects on what you will be offering in a one-minute pitch. Almost everyone can mow their own lawn. Give them an incentive to call your lawn care business. Do you promise to save them time so that they can focus on higher yield activities? Can they depend on you to mow their lawn on a fixed schedule so they don’t ever have to worry about it?

You must also market your product. It is not that hard to get the word out about a lawn care business. To begin, you can have your friends and family refer you to their friends and let word of mouth take off from there.   Once you get a few jobs, and do well, more referrals will come in and your business will grow.  You can also market yourself through local newspapers, church bulletins, business card boards or by going out and knocking on doors and promoting your services to neighbors and local businesses.   Once you have your business operation running with a few beautiful lawns as proof of the quality of your services, you can use those referrals to gain even more business. 

Retaining Clients and Offering More Services 

It is easier to get business from people you’ve already served than to get new business from totally new clients. For this reason, you want to build strong relationships with your existing clients.   The first step to getting repeat business is to do a great job. No one will hire you if they know that you won’t deliver. You should also be dependable and do exactly what you say you will do.   Once your lawn mowing business takes off you can offer services that complement your core offerings by adding other service such as landscaping services, new sod installation, seeding, fertilizing, tree planting, gardening, tree trimming, weeding, pool cleaning, gutter cleaning, spring and fall cleanups, firewood sales and snowplowing.    

Check with your local government or local Chamber of Commerce on business licensing and insurance requirements.

Check with an accountant for advice on how to setup your business for tax purposes.