exerpts


	Excerpts (continued)

From Chapter 1 – Management (continued) “In the 1990s a young guy named Art (not his real name) made quite a splash on the local mowing scene. New trucks, new trailers, gleaming new mowers, fancy airbrushed paint jobs on everything, even a nice piece of property and a stylish new building – it was Art, Art, Art everywhere you looked. He made some of us nervous. But not to worry, for his business soon bit the dust. Rumor has it that so did his father’s lump sum retirement, some $180,000. The moral of this sad story is that Art knew how to spend but not how to earn. Don’t do that. Don’t start at the top and hope it works. Start at the bottom. Learn how to earn good money in a small, low-risk operation. Then you can expand to your heart’s content.” .... “Though there are no firm rules, small mowing businesses commonly spend about one-third of gross income on expenses such as fuel, insurance, equipment, repairs, and so on. The remaining two-thirds (give or take) is divided between the employees and the owner. Just where you make the split is up to you. You can give your employees all of it, some of it, or – if you’re as cheap as I am – none of it.” From Chapter 2 – Preparations On establishing your trade area: “When my son and I went into business, we hoped to create tight little routes within a few blocks of home. On about the second day, one of our neighborhood customers asked us to mow his apartment building, located in a suburb some eight miles away. In a week we had three apartment buildings and two houses in that same suburb! So much for working right around home. “In a city of any size, due chiefly to contractor turnover, there are heaps of jobs up for grabs all the time. But they aren’t necessarily in those two upscale subdivisions you’ve chosen as your favored turf. They might be anywhere, including on the wrong side of the tracks. “Plan to cast a wide advertising net. Go where the jobs are. If you don’t already know it, you’ll soon learn that there are profitable jobs and helpful, friendly people everywhere. If you must weed your routes out, do it later when you have too many jobs, not now when you have too few.” .... On varying work loads: “Suppose you decide to keep your day job and mow lawns part-time, roughly 20 hours a week. You line up equipment and start running ads in local papers. “What’s going to happen? No one knows. But normally, nothing spectacular happens. You start getting calls, start doing estimates, start mowing lawns. Usually, things are fairly peaceful. It takes a while to build a client list. “Usually – but not always. You might be hoping for $600 a week and suddenly find yourself with $1600. How? Well, you might bid a single strip mall – and next day the owner calls and wants you to do all 14 of his properties. Or you might wander in where some other outfit just went out. That happened to us once, and in two days we had a single stop with 20-some fancy little lawns totaling over $600 a week. Flier distributions (discussed later) can also produce startling results. “What to do? First, expect this sort of thing to happen. Not right away, perhaps, but if you hang around this business any length of time, sudden leaps in the workload become highly likely. “Second, when it happens, please don’t hire the first warm bodies you see and send them out to do the work while you go about business as usual. They might work. Then again, they might spend the day in the park, pitching woo at girls. You have to stay close all the time. Otherwise, you won’t have to worry about all those new jobs for long. Somebody else will be worrying about them. “Third, understand that mowing hours are highly flexible. There’s no such critter as a “40-hour mowing route.” Double the number of people and machines, and your “40-hour route” takes maybe 23 hours. (Due to inefficiencies with larger crews, doubling up won’t cut time in half.) Double again and you’re down to perhaps 13 hours. “All this is just as simple as it sounds. By adding or subtracting people and machines, you can handle enormously varied workloads without changing your own hours significantly. That’s what experienced contractors do all the time; it should not be otherwise when you’re just getting started. “But you can’t shift gears smoothly if you’re not prepared. So do your homework now. Know exactly who you are going to hire – family, friends, relatives, perhaps help from a temporary agency such as Manpower. Also do your shopping now. Know exactly which machines you’re going to buy (see the equipment chapter) and where you’re going to get them. Know the price, delivery time, warranty, financing. In short, be ready. All it costs is a little time.” .... And a tax tip: “If you operate from home, you could qualify for a tax deduction called “business use of home.” This means that a portion of certain household expenses – taxes, insurance, repairs – can be written off as “business expense.” Savings can be significant. However, rules governing this deduction are stringent, and claiming it is said to be a red flag to the IRS. Before claiming this expense, talk to a tax professional to be sure you qualify.” From Chapter 3 – Advertising “Occasionally, a reader asks me how much it costs to acquire a customer by advertising. The answer is ... I haven’t the faintest idea. But I’d say dollar-for-dollar is a good return (one $20 ad landing one $20 job). In our second season we spent $700 on fliers and landed $900 a week in new business in a matter of days – a huge bargain (the flier is in the Appendix). All things considered, though, advertising cost means little. In the mowing business a customer might stay with you 20 years, spend thousands of dollars, and bring scores of new customers via word of mouth. So whether you spent $10 or $50 acquiring him doesn’t much matter.” [This chapter discusses at length advertising methods, the advertising message, and cold calling, which is used to secure commercial jobs.] On commercial jobs: “Not to be overlooked when considering commercial jobs are subsidized apartment complexes. Midwestern cities contain lots of them, often scattered all over the town. In my experience, all of the larger complexes have offices and full time managers, which are your initial contacts. Probably you will be referred to the office of a local property management firm that works for the investors and manages not just the one complex, but five or fifteen. This is an opening to very serious money. We found this work to be highly lucrative.” From Chapter 4 – Selling “Selling property maintenance services is probably the easiest selling job in the world. When you think about it, most prospects actively seek you – they called you up, didn’t they? And you’re seeking them. So you’ve got desire on both sides. That being the case, turning contacts into customers often amounts to nothing more than working out the details – price, specific service, frequency, and so on. Further to the same point, when closing the sale, you don’t need a death-do-us-part commitment. People can try your service for a week or two or three while risking virtually nothing. That makes for very easy selling.” .... On estimating prices: “Many beginners rightly perceive the importance of accurate estimates. If you bid jobs too high, you won’t get many, and those you do get may soon be lost to lower bidders. On the other hand, if you bid too low you could wind up working hard for little money. So it’s important to get it right. “What is the correct price for a job? The correct price is a number that is satisfactory to both you and your customer for at least one season. Your are making reasonable money, and the customer perceives that she is not being ripped off. That’s the correct price. “Please don’t write to me asking for a universal scale of correct prices, or a nationwide scale, or a citywide scale, or even a block-wide scale. Except as you set it yourself, there is no scale. This deal is between you and your customer – one on one. “How do you begin [to set your price scale]? Start by setting a minimum price per stop. I don't know where you live and can’t tell you what this number should be, but it’s hard to see how you can make out mowing lawns these days for less than $10 to $15 each. This applies even to tiny lots in rundown neighborhoods. If an area won’t pay even this little bit, advertise somewhere else. “Most lawns today, especially in suburban areas, are large enough to pay far more than your minimum price. You can set your scale for these lawns in either of two ways. One method is based on time.... Another method is based on area....” [Both methods are detailed.] .... On negotiations: “Suppose you quoted $30 a week to mow the lawn. Mrs. Smith says $25. You can almost certainly compromise at $27, which should be within your wiggle room. If even that’s too much for her, you might point out to that $27 is only $2 difference ... only about $50 total for the entire season. If she’s too cheap to go for that, you might not want this job so much after all. “Salesman that I’m not, I’ve resolved lots of price objections with a ‘try it’ close that seems to work very well. ‘Mrs. Smith, I don’t know how I’ll come out at $27 a week. It seems low. But if it’s agreeable with you, let’s try it for a couple of weeks and see. I’ll keep time on the job, and we can talk about it later. Okay?’ “There is nothing to talk about later. Do a good job on her lawn. Charge $27 this season, $30 next season, $33 the next....” .... “As your business matures, you’ll probably have jobs you no longer want – distant, difficult, poor-paying. So too with equipment: The stuff you started with is probably slow and weary. What to do? Surprise, surprise! Worn out equipment plus bad customers equals a lawn mowing business to sell! Try not to buy one of these turkeys.” From Chapter 5 – Operations On mowing: “There are three things to know about mowing: Mowing height, mowing pattern, and blade sharpness. “Mowing height: Mowing height depends on weather conditions. In the cool, wet periods common to either end of the season, excess moisture can cause lawn diseases. Grass should therefore be cut short, in order to aid drying. “In hot dry periods, conversely, the problem is not too much moisture but too little. Mower blades should be raised, leaving the blades of grass tall to shade the roots and prevent them from drying out. “For recommended cutting heights and change dates, call local lawn fertilizing companies. Through the season in the Midwestern states, the usual range is from about two-and-a-half to three-and-a quarter inches. With tractors and other large-deck mowers, it’s a good idea to set cutting height 1/4 inch above the recommended level. Large-deck mowers tend to scalp (cut high spots too low). The added height reduces the problem. “Height adjustments found in owners manuals are not to be trusted. To set height, wheel the machine onto a flat surface such as a sheet of plywood or a trailer deck. Check height with a measuring tape, by measuring from the flat surface up to the leading (sharp) edge of the blade. That’s where the mower is actually cutting.” [In the book, this measurement is illustrated with a photo.] From Chapter 6 – Efficiency “....the dominating thought in the lawn business is that bigger is better. More jobs, more machines, more troops – more of everything, and when that is not enough, still more. Even old hands who should know better buy this silly notion. One local contractor named Herb spent 20-some years patiently building his weekly volume to beyond $6000 ... and then essentially gave his business to his foreman! Got himself a job applying fertilizer.” .... “A small, highly efficient operation will out-earn a big sloppy one every time.” [The bulk of this chapter details two easy time studies that enable you to analyze your operation. I show you practical ways to apply these studies, to make your business much more profitable.] “Let me conclude this chapter by returning to Herb, the contractor who gave his business to his foreman. His mistake was to pay too little attention to efficiency. He grew and grew, finally reaching a point where he was cutting massive amounts of grass mainly to pay the expenses of cutting massive amounts of grass. Along the way, he created an endless nightmare workload that finally beat him down. In the end, all he wanted was out.” .... “Again, please don’t get the impression from any of this that I’m against growth. Quite the contrary. But your numbers have to work. Bigger is not necessarily better. Better is better. “If your goal is to build a successful business, keep a close eye on productivity. That’s the number that’s controlling your income. When something is wrong with it, don’t ignore it or hope to outgrow it. Fix it.” From Chapter 7 – Professional Tips and Tricks [Many topics are covered in this chapter. Here are some tips on Scheduling.] “Agree to mow customer’s lawns on seven-day or fourteen-day intervals ONLY. NEVER throw ‘ten-day’ lawns into the mix, or you’ll soon be driving to all corners of the city every day. “If a customer wants you to skip their lawn one week, it is their obligation to call you at least one day in advance. (You can’t afford to drive around town with your crew, looking at lawns and discussing with customers whether a lawn needs mowing.) “Even when the grass is short, never skip a lawn unless the customer asks you to. They could want it mowed anyway, because of an upcoming yard party or other event. “NEVER share a job, i.e., you mow it sometimes and the customer mows it sometimes. This a cheapskate dodge. When the grass is up to your eyeballs, guess whose turn it is. “NEVER accept ‘Mow it only when I call you’ jobs. More cheapskates, more grass that’s up to here. “‘Deluxe Mowing’ (bagging of grass clippings, edging), if offered at all, is reserved for seven-day lawns ONLY. “Cut thin, weak lawns early in the day, as dew on these lawns is not a problem. “Cut thick, fast-growing lawns later in the day, after the dew has dried. “By law in many communities, residential lawns are not to be mowed before (usually) 8 or 9 AM. To allow for crack- of-dawn starts, scatter commercial jobs through the week. “When possible, avoid making special trips to customer’s houses. When you have a few shrubs to trim or a similar minor job, do it on your regular mowing rounds. “To allow for rain and other delays, limit your mowing schedule to 30-35 hours per week. If the schedule grows much beyond that, you need faster machines or more help. In a dry, trouble-free week, you should finish mowing no later than noon Friday. “Customers who do not care when their lawn is mowed should be packed into the early part of the week. “Customers who insist on late-week mowing should be eased back. Ease Thursday’s jobs onto Wednesday, Friday’ s jobs onto Thursday, etc. Otherwise, in rainy periods, your week’s work will spill into the weekend and beyond. NEVER skip a lawn because of rain or other delays. If you pull up to Mrs. Smith’s house and it starts raining, and rains for two days, when you come back to work start exactly where you left off – at Mrs. Smith’s house. “Weather forecasts are more accurate about WHAT is going to happen than WHEN it will happen. Don’t fall behind in your schedule because rain is hanging on the edge of the local radar. It’s raining when you get wet, not before.” From Chapter 8 – High Efficiency Lawn Mowing No excerpts. From Chapter 9 – Equipment “Compared to conventional tractors, zero-turns are expensive. It’s worth asking why you should pay the high price of such a machine. The answer is speed. Productivity. Zero-turn tractors earn more money than other types of machines. “Money, as we’ve said repeatedly, comes from speed. Mowing speed, in turn, is limited by three factors. One is speed over the ground. Speed over the ground is normally limited to ten or twelve miles an hour. Beyond that, on most lawns the mower bounces too much to cut evenly. “A second limiting factor is deck width. The wider the deck the more it cuts ... but also, on the down side, the more it scalps. Plus which wider decks might not pass through backyard gates, between trees and so on. So we have two limiting factors: over the ground speed of ten or twelve mph and deck width – depending on where you work – of perhaps 50 or 60 inches. “The third limiting factor is maneuverability. This is where the zero-turns truly shine. Conventional tractors are clumsy beasts, requiring turning, stopping, shifting gears, backing and filling, and so on. They’re just plain slow. “By comparison, a zero-turn absolutely flies. Plus which, in experienced hands it will cut practically anything – moderate hills, ditches, humps, ridges, within inches of trees, bushes, buildings and other obstructions – practically anything. Control is so precise that you can often eliminate trimming. And operator fatigue is low. I drove one of these tractors flat-out, all day long, till I was well into my sixties.” .... “When buying commercial mowers, you’ll often have a choice of engines. Always buy the biggest engine available. In tough conditions – rain, overgrown lawns, wet leaves – you’ll appreciate the extra horsepower and be glad you spent the money. In easier conditions, when a small engine might still be pushing near its maximum, the big engine will be loafing along at cruising speed. Other things being equal, it should last far longer.” .... “Dirt is the major enemy of small engines. It gets in through or around the air filtration system and mixes with the engine oil, turning it into a liquid grindstone that causes severe wear. Make sure all air filters are clean and properly sealed. In dry and dusty periods, air filter maintenance is a daily job.” .... “Vee belts used on commercial mowers are very expensive at mower shops. At belt shops they are typically less than half price. See ‘Belting and Belting Supplies’ in the Yellow Pages.” .... “You can save a lot of money by doing your own repairs (see the sidebar for information sources). At the very least, on your daily rounds carry along tools and commonly-needed items such as spark plugs, belts, belt dressing, and starter fluid. You’ll soon discover that each machine, like each person, has its own idiosyncracies. Carry what is needed to keep each one happy. [In doing your own repairs] "you can go much farther. Big outfits commonly have full-scale maintenance shops, with compressors, welders, grinders, and lots of other power tools – plus mechanics to use them. Such a shop not only saves money but sets you free. When something breaks, parts are on your shelf; when it cracks you weld it back together now. No more panicky 5:45 PM races to the welding shop, no more pleading for emergency service. “If you choose to do your own repairs, be aware that mowers are not like, say, Buicks. Buicks use Buick parts, and that’s pretty much the end of the story. Not so commercial mowers. Many parts can be welded or fabricated, and those that can’t – engines, pumps, hoses, belts, pulleys, spindles, bearings, cables, chains, sprockets – are nearly always generic. This is standard, off-the-shelf stuff, with wide-ranging commercial and industrial applications. It can be bought at a variety of outlets for a fraction of what you’d pay in a mower shop.” These are just a few of the insights you’ll find in the pages of *“Earn $300 a Day Mowing Lawns.”* There are many, many more. You won’t find any nonsense here, either -- no dream schemes. This is solid, practical information, the kind of stuff you’ll use to earn (or save) money every single day. And the entire book in the email version, sent to you overnight, is just $14.95. To get your copy, click the link below and scroll down to the ordering area.

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