Honestly I think you make it sound impossible to start, people don't have to buy a new 50K ute, 15K trailer, uniforms. logos etc to get started. I started my mowing/handyman business with a 20 year old Falcon, my old lawn mower, a $99 whipper snipper, Ryobi 18V battery blower and a 20 year old box trailer I already had. The only money I spend to get started was insurance. Used the mower and tools I had from home and my hand tools out of the garage. Advertised on local Facebook pages and did a couple of letter box drops and started mowing lawns a few days later, bought more and better tools as I made the $$. Now using an express van and enclosed trailer. Still don't have any of the other google BS, logos, sign writing etc you are on about, got more work than I want with plenty of contracts with disability services, local caravan parks, marine rescue, Real Estate's etc. Worst thing you can do is charge by the hour, if you charge by the hour you get penalised for working harder. You can easily make $120 plus per hour doing quoted jobs once you get the experience and speed.
You can start with any car, and you don't have to have a trailer either. Lots of blokes run around in Prado's, Disco's, Pathfinders etc doing this kind of work. Plenty of space for tools with the seats folded flat. And I think it is best to use the customers green bin rather than cart around grass and hedge trimmings and take it to the tip, waste of time and I hate hauling a trailer. Sometimes have to leave bags with customers if the bin is full and in my experience most dont mind, they just put it in after its been emptied.
You certainly could do it the way you suggest and nothing wrong with that, and when starting out it might be good but I feel that if you want to make really good money doing this then there are certain ways to do things that are more professional, efficient and commercial driven. Working out of a wagon is not ideal, where do you put the mower, folding the handle down 40 times a day to fit it in isn't an option for us, how do you store the fuel, having it in the car with you is not an option, where do you put the green waste, very rarely would we fit it all in a customers green bin and they often want to use them for there own green waste. One mow in some properties and its full! I would never leave green waste at a customers house and ask them to dispose of it! We factor in the tip price with our quotes. Like I said, nothing wrong with doing it the way you suggest, plenty of blokes out there doing it like that successfully and if that works for you / them thats great, but we don't do things that way and this video is how I would recommend doing it from my experience. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, really appreciate you commenting. Cheers
Agree 100%, the quickest was to go broke is buying a 50K ute, 20K trailer and 12K worth of marketing and BS just to mow lawns $30-$70 a pop. All you need is a mower, blower and line trimmer and a way to transport it, I literally started off with my garden tools I already had in the back of my old Falcon I had with the seats folded down.
Hello mate, just want to thankyou for all the hard work you put into these videos. Am 21 about to start my own business and these videos are really helpful 👍
Hey Jamie, thanks for taking the time to send this message mate, really appreciate it. Messages like this really make a positive difference so I'm stoked you found it helpful. Good luck with your business 🤙🏻
Hi mate, any info you could share on billing customers and collecting payments, invoices, and how that all works with customers who pay cash, would be awesome 👍🏻
Hi mate, I found your video really useful and full of good tips. I just looked through your video library and noticed here are no further ‘how to’ videos? I’d be keen to see one on the finance side of things i.e tax, invoicing etc. I see a lot of videos coming from the U.S which doesn’t help us aussies. Cheers
Hi mate, thanks for watching and commenting. Yeah I’ve been meaning to make a video like that for ages as a bit of a follow up to my last video about business but just haven’t found the time. Thanks for the reminder that I need to do this lol 👍🏻
Thanks mate, really appreciate the feedback 👍🏻 When watching it back myself there are heaps of little things I feel I missed out but it’s hard to get everything into one video. Will touch on those extra things in future videos. Thanks again for watching and commenting. 🙂
Van is best for security and weatherproof. Although a ute with some good toolboxes also works Always buy a galvanised trailer. The painted ones will completely rust out in a few years. If you have the money buy new gear. I found 2nd hand gear not worth it. But start with what you can afford and as you make more money upgrade your equipment. Turning up in a reasonably modern vehicle with well maintained tools makes you look more professional and you can charge more accordingly.
Thanks, mate! I haven't done a specific video on how to price jobs yet, it's in the pipeline. In the meantime, you could go and check out McPhee's Gardening Services. He has done some beneficial videos about pricing and quoting etc. Cheers.
Hi Kai, thanks again for a wonderful and informative video, I've learnt so much from all your videos, please keep them coming! I'm soon to start a lawn care business down in Vic and am still having trouble on deciding on some equipment! Would you recommend the HRU216 greatly over the HRU196? I only used the 216 for 1/2 a day but certainly found in incredibly heavy and with wheel spin on lawn when engaging, although great bag size, or do you end up with both mowers having a backup as well? Do you use a zero or stand on mower much daily in residential properties? Also whether to go petrol shindiawa 263xs or a battery husqvarna 525LST line trimmer? (I plan to use battery husqvarna hedge trimmers and pole saws) Any advice and knowledge would be much appreciated! Thank you mate!
Hey Ross, thanks for the support mate, really appreciate it. With the mowers it depends a bit on what sort of lawns you will be mowing. I do recommend having both to be honest. The 196 is a great little mower and at 45kgs is lighter than the 216 but pushing it around all day does get tiring after a while if you are doing it all day every day and any slopes end up being a real workout, especially in the summer, it has a nice wide shoot at the back so doesnt get blocked up as easy as the 216 when the grass is wet too. The 216 is about 60kgs so is a bit harder to move around but with the self propelled feature it's much easier to use when actually mowing with it. You'll get used to the wheels spinning at the start and just push it a bit when you start, it's worse when the grass is wet. I use a zero turn on the larger stuff and when I upgrade I will get a stander as they are far more efficient, but this also depends on what sort of lawns your doing. With the whippys you really need a petrol and a battery in my opinion. Battery for all the regular stuff and sometimes you just need the petrol for power and runtime. The Shindiawa stuff is good. If you are getting the Husky 525 battery combo it might be worth getting the Husqy petrol combi so when you do need the petrol gear the attachments work in both. Unless you want a dedicated whippy and not a combi unit? I use the battery stuff all the time but still carry the petrol stuff for the old job that needs it. But that's personal, you could get away with just battery gear for sure. Good luck with the business mate, let me know how you get on and if you need any help with anything give us a ring or drop us a message. 👍🏻 Cheers. Ki
Thanks mate. For scheduling I’m just using a calendar app these days and Xero for all financial stuff. I used to recommend Jobber as a great app for customer management, scheduling and invoicing all rolled into one but they stopped supporting Xero which just makes it less appealing for us now and I personally just find using a calendar app along with a notes app does the job just fine. I looked at ServiceM8 and many others over the years too but I find them a bit overkill for what we do. Also quite expensive if sending large amounts of invoices which we do as a lawn and landscaping business. We might send 20 invoices a day and some of those apps give you up to 20 a week then the prices rocket up. So yeah, I just find that Googles suite of apps works well for us. We also use Stripe to process card payments. Cheers
So what would you do if you get 20 or so regular clients the first 6 months and you charge them $40/hour. Then you get another 40 clients and your charge those $90/hour. Then they find out that you only charge old Elma down the road $40 wouldn’t they be pissed. Or would you say to the first 20 client look my prices are going up nearly 50%?? Genuine question.
Lots of different ways to handle that, you'd have to make a your own choices. No customer should know any other customers prices though unless recommended and then you know they know each other so you work out the prices accordingly. And yes prices should increase accordingly, but you also get faster, so that Elma down the road that used to take 1 hour for $40 would only take 30 mins now so it works out to be $80ph. As an example.
$40 is way too cheap, don't charge by the hour otherwise you get penalised for working harder and your income is limited by the hours you work. Quote jobs, work out how long it will take you and tell them how much it will cost not an hourly rate, otherwise you will get customer time your jobs and say well I am not paying you $40 as it only took you 50 minutes.
Honestly I think you make it sound impossible to start, people don't have to buy a new 50K ute, 15K trailer, uniforms. logos etc to get started. I started my mowing/handyman business with a 20 year old Falcon, my old lawn mower, a $99 whipper snipper, Ryobi 18V battery blower and a 20 year old box trailer I already had. The only money I spend to get started was insurance. Used the mower and tools I had from home and my hand tools out of the garage. Advertised on local Facebook pages and did a couple of letter box drops and started mowing lawns a few days later, bought more and better tools as I made the $$. Now using an express van and enclosed trailer. Still don't have any of the other google BS, logos, sign writing etc you are on about, got more work than I want with plenty of contracts with disability services, local caravan parks, marine rescue, Real Estate's etc. Worst thing you can do is charge by the hour, if you charge by the hour you get penalised for working harder. You can easily make $120 plus per hour doing quoted jobs once you get the experience and speed.
Great advise mate. Thanks for sharing 🤙🏻 super stoked you are doing so well with it. Love to hear stories like this.
@@lovelawns he's just taken the piss out of your video mate
You can start with any car, and you don't have to have a trailer either. Lots of blokes run around in Prado's, Disco's, Pathfinders etc doing this kind of work. Plenty of space for tools with the seats folded flat. And I think it is best to use the customers green bin rather than cart around grass and hedge trimmings and take it to the tip, waste of time and I hate hauling a trailer. Sometimes have to leave bags with customers if the bin is full and in my experience most dont mind, they just put it in after its been emptied.
You certainly could do it the way you suggest and nothing wrong with that, and when starting out it might be good but I feel that if you want to make really good money doing this then there are certain ways to do things that are more professional, efficient and commercial driven. Working out of a wagon is not ideal, where do you put the mower, folding the handle down 40 times a day to fit it in isn't an option for us, how do you store the fuel, having it in the car with you is not an option, where do you put the green waste, very rarely would we fit it all in a customers green bin and they often want to use them for there own green waste. One mow in some properties and its full! I would never leave green waste at a customers house and ask them to dispose of it! We factor in the tip price with our quotes. Like I said, nothing wrong with doing it the way you suggest, plenty of blokes out there doing it like that successfully and if that works for you / them thats great, but we don't do things that way and this video is how I would recommend doing it from my experience. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, really appreciate you commenting. Cheers
Agree 100%, the quickest was to go broke is buying a 50K ute, 20K trailer and 12K worth of marketing and BS just to mow lawns $30-$70 a pop. All you need is a mower, blower and line trimmer and a way to transport it, I literally started off with my garden tools I already had in the back of my old Falcon I had with the seats folded down.
Cutting grass is always interesting.
It sure is!
Hello mate, just want to thankyou for all the hard work you put into these videos. Am 21 about to start my own business and these videos are really helpful 👍
Hey Jamie, thanks for taking the time to send this message mate, really appreciate it. Messages like this really make a positive difference so I'm stoked you found it helpful. Good luck with your business 🤙🏻
Great job mate. Fellow QLDer looking at starting one. Best video I've seen! 👏👏
Hey mate, thanks for the kind words. Stoked it helped you out. 🤙🏻
Thanks mate, thinking about starting up a business over here in WA. I'll be checking out some more of your videos.
Thanks for watching and good luck with your business.
Hi mate, I am just starting my gardening business and your wisdom helps me a lot. Thank you.
Thanks mate, really appreciate that. Good luck with you business. 👍🏻
Thank you so much for this video! I would love to see the video about your client management and stuff. Cheers!
Thank you. I'm working on it. Stay tuned.
Hi mate, any info you could share on billing customers and collecting payments, invoices, and how that all works with customers who pay cash, would be awesome 👍🏻
Hey mate, thanks for the suggestions. I really do need to do the follow up video to this asap…. Cheers
Telescopic silky forester saw and telescopic pole lopper are great additional tools too. Great video 👍
Good shout mate. I use the large 7m yellow Silky pole saw heaps. Very useful tools. Thanks for commenting and watching. 👍🏻
Hi mate, I found your video really useful and full of good tips. I just looked through your video library and noticed here are no further ‘how to’ videos? I’d be keen to see one on the finance side of things i.e tax, invoicing etc. I see a lot of videos coming from the U.S which doesn’t help us aussies. Cheers
Hi mate, thanks for watching and commenting. Yeah I’ve been meaning to make a video like that for ages as a bit of a follow up to my last video about business but just haven’t found the time. Thanks for the reminder that I need to do this lol 👍🏻
Lots of great tips, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching 👍🏻
Great video, some really good information, thank you.
Thanks Karleen, really appreciate your kind feedback and for watching.
Thank you for sharing your great knowledge,
time and effort for others. Always helpful cheers mate.
Thanks for watching and commenting mate ❤️
Great video - cheers Ki.
Thanks mate 👍🏻
This is a great video and perfect advice for beginners. Definitely the most important things to focus on starting out.
Thanks mate, really appreciate the feedback 👍🏻 When watching it back myself there are heaps of little things I feel I missed out but it’s hard to get everything into one video. Will touch on those extra things in future videos. Thanks again for watching and commenting. 🙂
@@lovelawns It was great
On to it mate 🔥
Legend 👍🏻
Van is best for security and weatherproof. Although a ute with some good toolboxes also works
Always buy a galvanised trailer. The painted ones will completely rust out in a few years. If you have the money buy new gear. I found 2nd hand gear not worth it. But start with what you can afford and as you make more money upgrade your equipment. Turning up in a reasonably modern vehicle with well maintained tools makes you look more professional and you can charge more accordingly.
You need a point of difference to every one else - something that makes you stand out from the other gardeners.
Yeah I like a van setup too. Great advise mate thanks for watching 👍🏻
Very informative video. Love it. Is there a video on how to price jobs?? Going to subscribe now and see what other videos you have. Great content 👌
Thanks, mate! I haven't done a specific video on how to price jobs yet, it's in the pipeline. In the meantime, you could go and check out McPhee's Gardening Services. He has done some beneficial videos about pricing and quoting etc. Cheers.
Hi Kai, thanks again for a wonderful and informative video, I've learnt so much from all your videos, please keep them coming! I'm soon to start a lawn care business down in Vic and am still having trouble on deciding on some equipment! Would you recommend the HRU216 greatly over the HRU196? I only used the 216 for 1/2 a day but certainly found in incredibly heavy and with wheel spin on lawn when engaging, although great bag size, or do you end up with both mowers having a backup as well? Do you use a zero or stand on mower much daily in residential properties?
Also whether to go petrol shindiawa 263xs or a battery husqvarna 525LST line trimmer? (I plan to use battery husqvarna hedge trimmers and pole saws) Any advice and knowledge would be much appreciated! Thank you mate!
Hey Ross, thanks for the support mate, really appreciate it. With the mowers it depends a bit on what sort of lawns you will be mowing. I do recommend having both to be honest. The 196 is a great little mower and at 45kgs is lighter than the 216 but pushing it around all day does get tiring after a while if you are doing it all day every day and any slopes end up being a real workout, especially in the summer, it has a nice wide shoot at the back so doesnt get blocked up as easy as the 216 when the grass is wet too. The 216 is about 60kgs so is a bit harder to move around but with the self propelled feature it's much easier to use when actually mowing with it. You'll get used to the wheels spinning at the start and just push it a bit when you start, it's worse when the grass is wet. I use a zero turn on the larger stuff and when I upgrade I will get a stander as they are far more efficient, but this also depends on what sort of lawns your doing. With the whippys you really need a petrol and a battery in my opinion. Battery for all the regular stuff and sometimes you just need the petrol for power and runtime. The Shindiawa stuff is good. If you are getting the Husky 525 battery combo it might be worth getting the Husqy petrol combi so when you do need the petrol gear the attachments work in both. Unless you want a dedicated whippy and not a combi unit? I use the battery stuff all the time but still carry the petrol stuff for the old job that needs it. But that's personal, you could get away with just battery gear for sure.
Good luck with the business mate, let me know how you get on and if you need any help with anything give us a ring or drop us a message. 👍🏻 Cheers. Ki
@@lovelawns Thanks so much Ki for your help! Much appreciated! : )
Hey mate great video, what do you use for maintaining customer scheduling any software packages etc also payment methods that you use?
Thanks mate. For scheduling I’m just using a calendar app these days and Xero for all financial stuff. I used to recommend Jobber as a great app for customer management, scheduling and invoicing all rolled into one but they stopped supporting Xero which just makes it less appealing for us now and I personally just find using a calendar app along with a notes app does the job just fine. I looked at ServiceM8 and many others over the years too but I find them a bit overkill for what we do. Also quite expensive if sending large amounts of invoices which we do as a lawn and landscaping business. We might send 20 invoices a day and some of those apps give you up to 20 a week then the prices rocket up. So yeah, I just find that Googles suite of apps works well for us. We also use Stripe to process card payments. Cheers
@@lovelawns great thanks mate much appreciated hopefully you can talk about this in your next video
So what would you do if you get 20 or so regular clients the first 6 months and you charge them $40/hour. Then you get another 40 clients and your charge those $90/hour. Then they find out that you only charge old Elma down the road $40 wouldn’t they be pissed. Or would you say to the first 20 client look my prices are going up nearly 50%?? Genuine question.
Lots of different ways to handle that, you'd have to make a your own choices. No customer should know any other customers prices though unless recommended and then you know they know each other so you work out the prices accordingly. And yes prices should increase accordingly, but you also get faster, so that Elma down the road that used to take 1 hour for $40 would only take 30 mins now so it works out to be $80ph. As an example.
Yea i want to start at $ 40 too. But a couple kid's offer lawn mowing at $ 20
Microsoft offer laptops half the price of Apple too but how many people still choose Apple laptops. It’s not just about price. 👍🏻
$40 is way too cheap, don't charge by the hour otherwise you get penalised for working harder and your income is limited by the hours you work. Quote jobs, work out how long it will take you and tell them how much it will cost not an hourly rate, otherwise you will get customer time your jobs and say well I am not paying you $40 as it only took you 50 minutes.
Thanks for the video.
Did you get 100% tax write off for ure car-trailer tools and equipment?
Not really the sort of info I share on social media platforms mate. Thanks for watching tho!
Dont forget ya icepipe and reg trips to the broth.
Sounds like you’ve been working with the council a bit too much mate lol…!
Great stuff.
Thanks Wade 👍🏻
how much you guys making money per day?
Millions 🙂
@@lovelawns should I quit my job
HOw much should we charge for a 1/4 acre with a house on it, how about 1/2 acre in Australia ?
No idea how much you should charge. Depends on many different things.
✔️💯