Mowing Grass Solo CAN Be Very Profitable...
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- Опубліковано 22 тра 2024
- Mowing lawns as a solo lawn care operator is tough, but you CAN make really good money doing it... You're probably NOT going to get rich mowing lawns as a solo guy, but you CAN earn a comfortable living. I currently have a great team/crew I work with, and in all transparency could never do the volume of work we do without my crew/team. That being said there's not a DRASTIC difference in profit between a superb owner/operator business vs a mismanaged or inefficient lawn care company with employees. In fact, I would say it would be better to be solo than to have an inefficient team... frankly, it's just not worth the headache if you don't have a good crew. In this video we're doing a real time mow on a couple lawns, and I"ll discuss my mindset of what I'm personally looking for when trying to find profitable lawn care clients.
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MY STORY:
In 2016 I had been in law enforcement for 7 years.
I was not in control of my schedule, I was hardly making any money, and I was away from my family working nights and holidays. I was capable of more, and I was silently suffering. I knew I was selling myself and my family short.
I started Florida Turf Pros as a side hustle in 2016 before going full time in 2017.
My lawn business changed my life.
I control my own schedule, control my own income, and I am proud of what I have built; a business that supports me, my family, and some employees.
If you are a lawn care business owner, this channel will be a valuable resource for you.
This really is a great industry to be in, and I hope that by documenting my journey it will help you.
-Jonathan C. Christian
How many lawns are guys mowing solo a day? What do you look for in profitable lawns?
I could do 11-13 by myself a day 7:30-5 id be beat tho
These small lawns, are perfect for driving a spray machine over them, spoon feeding a turf program.
4-7 a day depending on the route
Ranging from $65-175 per home
5000 square feet or less. No push mowing. Will do any lawn as long as it's profitable.
5.35 mowing today
My partner and I are both teachers. We have about 140 clients in a beach town within about a 2 mile radius. 95% are small and ugly. I think I actually prefer these - super quick and hard to mess up on when they’re ugly to start!
💯 !!!
I used to do approximately 20 to 22 of these sized yards in a day. Ugly yards owned by people who don’t talk to you but want the grass cut consistently are the best. By raising prices I can now do 12 to 15 properties in a day, or 3 to 5 large properties and make the same as I used to make cutting 25 yards. I focus more on nice properties now because they usually need over 40 services throughout year compared to an ugly yard that might only get 30 cuts during the growing season. They also want mulch and pruning so that at least doubles the revenue of each customer. I aim for $1000 a day mowing, or $1500 in profit for basic landscaping maintenance like mulching pruning. Plant installs have netted me as much as 4,000 in a day but being heavy on the mowing doesn’t leave much time for those.
If you're hitting 1k a day mowing you are absolutely crushing it.
Realistically I hit 1k one or two days out of the five days I mow, assuming there aren’t other setbacks. But I’m pretty close on the other days so small adjustments here and there until I’m hitting my goal consistently. $75 twenty minute yards are ideal to me.
If I do all my properties in one day I’m doing $1200 problem is im a one man team I usually spread out those 7 properties throughout the week
Weedy yards also keep growing in droughts and weedy yards also start growing earlier while Bermuda is still dormant.
Just saw a new lawn care BZ in my area. Man that truck, trailer, and equipment were so new it almost blinded me as it went down the road. So new And pretty that it hurt my wallet looking at it!😅 It's nice to be running my old but well cared for equipment because it is all paid for.
My entire business is in the neighborhood that I live in. I have 90 accounts all in my community that I live and they are duplexes. So the lawns are half the size of normal lawns and I get almost the same price. I’m killing it! Wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t even take any lawns outside my neighborhood!
Well done!
I trim weeds in cracks, keep up with it every week and it only takes a few seconds.
Great video
We do the same.
man I love your approach, Im about to start in Australia doing EXACTLY what you do, Ive done weeks of research on youtube and you make the most sense by far
Go for it!
Just subscribed bro! I appreciate the knowledge dude!!
I agree in that crappy yards need mowing too-i have old customers-they just want it done because they can't do it.i however try to be professional and do a good job whether it's well manicured or if the yard is a bit rough looking-using a string trimmer to do an entire back yard because of some silly thing about a pushmower- it's walking either WAY! It looks worse because you are suppose to be a prepared professional-I wouldn't pay you if I saw you doing that at the price you charged
Damn..... I love it. You Rock Jonathan!!!!
Love this content man! Honestly you give me a lot of encouragement when starting my own lawn care company. It's really tough but thank you for the encouragement!
Hang in there... you got it.
You dropping gems playa
Glad you enjoyed!
Thank you sire I am the same way. On everything you said. Thank you for clear that up.
I do the same. I use the lighter equipment when doing weekly maintenance. I use the big 80cc blower for spring/ fall cleanup only. It's heavy and overkill for grass clippings.
Great tip!
Always trim weeds in cracks. I like to spray roundup with a handheld spray bottle.
I never want my lawns to have grass in the crack or the street gutter.
By the way…absolutely love your channel and content
Thanks for letting me know!
have to say the ac units we do what we can and thats it. exposed wires we dont go near. i usually try and get my clieants to do rock or shell or even mulch around the ac units and all we have to do is spray when a weed pops. So easy to rip those wires to pieces and then there ac doesnt work and ac guy is gonna charge few hundred dollars to resplice wires. I wont pull the weeds or grass there. For equipment for me i have brands i love alot but i use what i can and works. honestly i prefer dealer support over anything else. also i think some of us other guys miss understand the per hour rate and here 200 and think thats for just that one lawn and not the over all as you mentioned you have others lawns around the corner. Great vid man. and ive had to do that. weed wack a whole yard. i hate to push mow.
Push mowing is the worst!
Thanks for sharing the formula, price/(time/60). I never calculated the hourly rate of the lawns I do and after having just calculated some, it seems adjustments may need to be made. One thing I do as a business model, I offer fertilization (four times a year) and weed/pest control (three - four times a year) to increase the value of my properties.
Sooo relatable! We probably have 60+ lawns in a mobile home community - decent size/odd size/hills you name it - difficulty level is higher than the cookie cutter type businesses can probably handle yet we have enough work there to stay busy 2+ full days a week - very few are pretty lawns but boy do they turn a high man hour rate! Clusters is key the ability to keep on moving along combing your way down streets 12 here, 7 there, 8 more there banging them out! Totally agree - weedwacker is faster than a push mower by far for areas that don't fit the standers
💯 ... great comment.
Love it ❤
Great channel. Love the weedeater tips. Br600 is goated lawn route blower. I went down the hand blower rabbit hole. No the br600 is lightweight and comfortable and all the necessary power for clippings. Useless for leaf season in new england but an outstanding lawn cutting blower
Great tip!
I know we live in two completely different income areas (mine being much lower) and every job is different, but if I was making 200 hr on a "mow-blow & go" I would definitely carry hand held clippers and spend 30 seconds to trim around those wires each week on that particular job.
I did like the video were you mentioned your don't trim around trees in shrubs that are planted in open lawns (pet peeve). I have not had a lot of those situations but that is advice I have incorporated into my own solo business.
I have always trimed cracks too in residential and offered spraying cracks as a profitable add on service on both residential and businesses that have excess amount.
I have been in the green industry for a few decades and I really appreciate, enjoy, and learn from your videos. Many thanks for talking the to time do this.
Thanks for the great comment. Enjoy your weekend!
Looking good man!
Thank you! Cheers!
Dude you are right on all that
Interesting you mow / trim / edge in that order. I typically edge / trim / mow but one subdivision I do mow first since they’re tiny lots.
I have that same chute blocker
Love it!
Thanks!!
Get it!
Same here. Stay away from air conditioners.
Yup. I have four or so customers whose HVAC's look identical... not doing it.
Love the videos. I have applied a lot of these principles to my irrigation company. Do you all provide irrigation services and if so any chance we could get a video on those type of services? I never really focus on what people charge but always am curious as to if I'm overcharging or undercharging for my repairs and installations. Thanks
Irrigation is a good service to market!
In my area, a business that can drill a well, set up a functional Irrigation system- be it a digital or analog, could do good installing a well with chemigation.
We Make It Happen!
Does making stripes with my street sweeper count? Actually I can only see the stripes ( paths ) sucking of leaves 🤣. Great video. Thank you for sharing with us
Thanks for dropping in!
how dare you change your work boots or pants!!!
man some people are crazy. I completely agree with you, if the equipment works and does the job, then its good enough. You don't have to have top of the line equipment to do this stuff.
💯 actually doing a full video on this exact topic
I spray around ac/heat units.
Trimmer breaks something on the unit, insurance claim for sure.
I use the 800 STIHL all season long.
Much rain we are getting in KY, it moves the heavy wet grass.
I honestly haven't ran the 800 just looks big and heavy though
My problem with clents was that they wanted me to only cut bi-weekly. Caused more time and folks would not pay for thr extra time.
I am lucky with a unique market at the moment. I have 68 biweekly lawns all with a 5 mile radius. I am for $60 an hour as my location is unique for tax purposes and this is a side business still. I do take care of all the sidewalk weeds as well.
I have the rule when I leave the yard is great, as when people walk by and see the nice yard it is free advertising.
Yes
lol I thought I was the only one that has done that. You had me cracking up man.
all the time!
Lucky for me i live in a small town so 80% of the yards i do are all within 10 minute of each other. The other 20% of the yards i have are out in the country farthest is 20 min away but its a $250 yard its almost two acres. The others are within 10 minutes of city limits. The lowest house in the country is $100. I dont really go off a hourly rate just since some days i do all the small yards and make $700-$1000 in a day. Then days when i do the country yards ill do a handful each day and make $800 off a couple yards. I know if i was closer to Des Moines or Iowa City i know i would be doing small yards only.
You are preaching the gospel my friend. Keep it 100 lol!!! 💯🤟🏿
Let's go!
Weed whips can bang out some grass over a push mower, lol. I do the same thing sometimes. Makes me wonder if whipping is faster then push mowing. Great content.
THANKS
How do you price big yards for solo lawn care? Let’s say a 3 acre yard which is 122,447sqft. Got over 20 trees to weedeat around, and I have a 50” mower.
To be honest that sounds like a nightmare... a 3 acre lawn would take me probably 2 hours, and I can cut 6-8 lawns at $50 a piece in 2 hours... I'd be over $400 for that size property easily.
The clusters thing is the ticket. I've started to concentrate on that this season.
💯
Your the best...
I wish i was you...
I do hour long Master's type jobs for Multimillionaires for 65 dollars...
Bergen county NJ sucks.....
Jonathan, what is your opinion on raising price once you reach your max accounts. Do you rather have less accounts and make the same or maybe more. Or hire a help take more accounts and keep existing accounts. I've been seeing a lot of videos suggesting raising price instead of hiring help and acquired more.
It depends on what is the vision for your business.... you can either be maxing out profits or trying to grow... but we can't really have both. My business model was to max myself out, add employee then max ourselves out, then add a crew and max two routes out, then raise prices to reduce workload and enter max profit mode. I would say to have a clear vision of what you want and that will determine whether you should be using pricing to fuel growth or pricing to max out profits.
Do you do monthly pricing or is it strictly per cut? if you’re per cutting 40-55 dollars a cut roughly 38 times a year what would you give for a monthly price if that’s how you’d choose to bill to keep the income stream the same throughout the year?
I do price per cut, and it is proven to work well for us, but in all transparency, I really do like the idea of year-round contracts if your market will support it. It doesn’t work for all clients, but I am transitioning some of our newer clients to year-round, service agreements, because it is beneficial for both of them and us in certain instances.
Also I like cutting duplex’s. Half an already small yard. $40-$50 bucks
Very few small yards in my area, unless it is part of an HOA.
Profitable yards for me depend more on the home owner than the yard. I charge a reasonable rate based on man hours to do the job. I provide a bid. They either accept it or reject it. I am good either way because I am either making a profit or not losing money.
I understand that for sure.
Man I’ve weed eated many back yards just like that lol! Glad I’m not The only one! I also don’t weed eat around those AC wires.
I had a lady so mad about it one time... not weed eating around the ac unit... I asked her to sign a waiver that I wouldn't be responsible for damaged ac unit and then she understood 😂
What do you think of Grace flip? And Spencer products one
Grassflap
I avoid wires and pipes like that as well.
Johanathan, I noticed you have never had an enclosed trailer and I am curious to know why... Maybe do a video on it?
When I started the open utility trailer was less expensive and checked all the boxes for me... I needed something lightweight, easy to move around in my personal driveway, and something that allowed. me to haul hedge debris. I see the benefits to enclosed, but for simplicity, an open utility has always checked all the boxes for me.
Starting a part time lawn business. I’m in the market for a mower. Should I get a 30 inch or 21 inch self propelled walker? Don’t want to invest in a zero turn and spend a ton of money immediately.
What size is your ideal lawn in your market?
We have been fortunate, and have good route density on 3/4 days we mow. The 1 day its not, is more rural 1 acre properties, and our man hour rate is much less, unfortunately. Johnathan, whats your take on larger properties? Have you done then in the past?
We also are not interested in trimming around wires. We are not interested in picking weeds from cracks either. We leave those little weeds for the homeowner to spray.
So I had a Monday that was taking us all day long, just like the other days of the week, but our revenue numbers were not as good... it was because we were servicing larger properties... I simply could not charge high enough for the larger properties to compete with our per man hour rate on smaller properties... for example, I would have to charge almost $200 for a property that takes us 1 hour to do, because that's the rate I could get if I did 3 smaller properties in the same amount of time. Hope that makes sense... I've found the smaller the yard the higher the margin... this isn't to say cancel all your big lawns... just slowly replace them over time with more profitable ones as you max out your schedule.
@@FloridaTurfPros thats been my thought process. I have to remember this is our first year and there is growing pains. But, yeah, I'm finding that the most I can get is 70$ on an acre (weekly) in my market and that's a hard sell. But even at that price, its taking us an hour, and we're not hitting our man hour rate when we could be cutting 2 lawns in an hour at 45 a piece. I am however, only using a 36 pro stance, so there's that too.. it wouldn't hurt to use a 52, and get my times down. Thanks for your feedback! Great video brother.
I use whatever lol side hustle till career. I do have my favorites but I really don’t care what I have as long as it works.
Same.
I'm starting out with a push mower what would be a good per hour goal?
What's an average size lawn that you would be mowing?
@@FloridaTurfPros roughly 5k
So far on my own for May 112 Lawns
That's great!
I used to cut grass but now i only reconstruct lawns from scratch kill off their old lawn bring in top soil 50lbs of high quality seed. roto till, areate, mix of rye and Kentucky Bluegrass 50lb bag of starter fertilizer and humic acid, I make 10,000 a yard...but when im done their new yard look like a golf course granrenteed...i have that shit looking like yankie stadium..😊
You see a lot of the same things in HVAC. Klein pliers aren’t good enough. I can’t believe you use Ryobi power tools. Commercial is where the real techs are. If your goal is making money and being profitable, it completely changes your perspective. Not impressing other people, who don’t even have a profitable business. UA-cam is about making money and it’s rare to see guys like you, keeping it real.
Got two 30 inch Scag’s
I bet those cut a lot of grass!
@@FloridaTurfPros so far 45 Each for May
I use the same weedeater gets the job done
💯
I want to start landscaping solo man, any general tips for marketing, and being able to go against the competition?
I have so many videos on my channel for this! 😂 Give it a look!
So you're getting $160 a month to mow the front yard of that house? 12months out of the year or only summer months?
This is a bi-weekly lawn... We only mow about 9 months out of the year.
100% don’t get near ac units. Even the copper lines ya can break w the string I’ve heard of it happening before. I give them a very wide berth. If the customer wants to pay me to hand pull the grass from around them that’s fine.
Where you get your Hat
😂Great video thanks and thanks for the brake down
Omg Johnathan. I can't believe you didn't take your gloves before getting in truck, it save you 10 sec! That's 1hr a year.
Yes, we trim the cracks.
💯
Never understood how a Hvac Tech not run those fragile little wires through a conduit.We are talking thousands of dollars put into Hvac installations but will not use a few cents worth of pvc to run that thermostat wiring through ,which if cut will destroy the compressor by overheating. I think it's on purpose So their company can make money on the compressor replacement . Their work be so sloppy
Always gotta get those weeds in the cracks!
The most I’ve push mowed in one day with a 30 inch was 17 lawns by myself
That's a lot of work for one guy!
@@FloridaTurfPros
Yea it was sub contracting at the time, during the winter I was doing snow removal for 65 residential driveways. Had to get them done in one day by myself.
Started over from scratch,
Too much work for too little pay to say the least.
Doesn’t matter to me mowings mowing$$$ but I’ve only been in biz for 10months 1-5k sqft is money up to 15 customers!!!!!
I like nice looking lawns but at the end of the day as long as the person writing the check is happy and it cashes that’s all that really matters.
💯
Nothing looks crappier than leaving weeds in cracks
We also concentrate on ugly highway grass😂😂. Pretty grass take more detail work equal to more time spend.
💯
Even though it's a bad lawn that you were talking about in this video I certainly believe a push mower would have done a better job hopefully your customer don't see this video
Doesn't bother me if they do... The weeds were cut low and level 🤷
😊
$240 for 6 lawns today
12:02
And your funny
600 is more than enough.
Nope because it’s costing you to drive to location. Insurance for the company, insurance for the car, gas for the car, gas for the equipment
I suck at math but $40 x 0.2 = $8
What am I missing
.2 of an hour
You divide 40 by .2, you do not multiply it.
Are you solo now?
No, I’m not. I have a full time mowing crew and I focus mostly on sales, sod installation prep, and will help them mow on super huge mow days.
Maybe don’t show the customer’s vehicle and license plate number in the videos.
It’s weeds because you’re throwing weeds everywhere, take pride in what you do.
Have your lawns always been that profitable or has it taken time through price increases?
It has taken time through multiple price increases over the years.
You just said you don’t care if grass is nice or not you better start caring about these lawns. This is when the customer will drop you because if you don’t care, they’re not gonna care and hire someone else. I always recommend I think that maybe you should put down some seed or maybe some manure to in this patch or give some suggestions and thoughts and put an effort into helping customer. Vs. I don’t give a crap about your lawn. Just give me my money. I gotta go. Bad attitude and poor customer service skills.
Not really. I can tell the customers who value a high level of service. If they have kids toys all over the yard and the same trash on their back porch that was there 3 seasons ago, they really don't care. They want a lawn service to get in and get out. I understand what you're saying, but you're 💯 wrong about the customer service comment.
@@FloridaTurfPros
Yes, I can understand if the customer account is dirty and have stuff on the front porch, but the video you made look like a nice clean house with an ugly lawn . You mentioned you don’t care. You could do whatever you want but for me whether they’re dirty or not I make suggestions to help. A customer will take an account that you really care about their property versus. I don’t care about your property. Just make sure you pay me on time. Just tossing that out there bro.
I have 143 accounts and every single one matters to me. I always text them if I see an issue or a problem or something I can do to help it makes them feel comfortable and they enjoy my service. That’s why nobody fires me.
There's no way you can make $200 an hour, especially in Florida. Clickbait.
How so?
You didn't mow that lawn properly I've several spots you didn't run that mower over there probably gonna hire someone else
Probably so... I'm not very good at mowing.
I don’t care