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Is a Lawn Care Business Profitable?

Published on February 13, 2024

If you're thinking about getting into lawn care and/or growing your business, you've probably asked this question: Is a lawn care business profitable?

Answer: YES. TONS OF MONEY.

… IF you do it right.

Growing a successful, million-dollar lawn care business can be challenging, but if you follow the right steps, you can potentially make MILLIONS in your lawn care business.

Here’s my bold promise to you—By the end of this article, you’ll have the answer to the big question: Is there money in the lawn care business?

Use the knowledge and tools in this article to build a multi-million dollar lawn care business with WILD growth.

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Should You Start a Lawn Care Business?

There’s not a certain “type” of person that should start a lawn care business. You can become a lawn and landscape owner at any age with any income.

Even better? You don’t have to be a hard worker! Just a SMART worker.

Plus, you can make money in the lawn care business (especially, if there are sub-par lawn companies in your area).

Bottom line: The lawn care industry is right for ANYONE who wants to start a lawn business, has the passion to grow it, and wants to make money.

How to Make Money in the Lawn Care Industry

Step 1: Start With Your BEST Services

A lot of times, lawn care business owners try to do too many things at once.

They are trying to acquire new clients and offer services they aren’t trained to provide, or massive discounts that bleed profits dry.

But this type of client acquisition isn’t sustainable, and it's better to wait for the right clients to come along.

Ideally, you want to begin with a few select services, get great at those services, AND THEN expand. Typically, 1-3 services are a great place to start.

As simple as this might sound, many business owners are more desperate to find any clients than they are to find the right clients.

At the end of the day, your goal is to build a healthy business that makes money.

Which means, specializing in profitable services you know—not being a jack-of-all-trades.

Pro Tip: How to Make New Clients LOVE You

When you’re first starting, THIS is a prime time to get referrals

So give it 110% on your first 4 visits to a new property. After that, you can dial it back to your usual 100%.

Remember, happy clients are more willing to refer you. Consider creating referral offers that reward clients for successful referrals.

For instance, you might try a $15 discount on their next mow, or a free add-on, for each successful referral. 

Plus, offering free add-ons is a great way to indirectly upsell!

Notice I mentioned business growth as a pricing consideration?

Once you’ve combined your expenses and desired profits, make sure these numbers match up with your goals for the year.

Step 2: Nail Down Your Prices

If you want to build a successful lawn care business, you’ve got to properly price your services.

Here are a few of the many overhead costs to consider when you’re pricing services:

Notice how business growth is a pricing consideration?

Once you’ve combined your expenses and desired profits, make sure these numbers match up with your goals for the year.

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You can use software to make this really easy and perfect 100% of the time. Which brings me to my next point… 

Step 3: Use Software to Become Truly Efficient

Software is the ultimate answer to the golden question: Is there money in the lawn care business?

No matter where you’re at in your business, it’s never too early (or late!) to start using the #1 lawn care software in your business.

The best lawn care software for your business will:

  • Create faster routes:
    • Easily schedule recurring jobs
    • Get more optimized routes with ONE CLICK
    • View and update your calendar from anywhere
  • Win more estimates (in LESS time!):
    • In less than 5 minutes, you can:
      • Pull an estimate template
      • Automatically price all of the jobs based on your best numbers
      • Build it out for any number of clients (including unique information)
      • Send out rapid, custom, professional estimates to leads and clients
  • Build better client relationships:
    • Easily view client history
    • See all of your clients’ jobs, notes, and invoices
    • Track calls from clients and leads (and easily store call notes)

Service Autopilot does ALL of this and so much more! Plus, it’s specifically designed with the lawn care industry in mind.

Click here to watch the full Lawn Care Tour.

Step 4: Target Your Ideal Client

You know that client you LOVE, and you wish you had a million more of them.

To clone your ideal client, fill out a client persona template.

As you fill out this template, think about one favorite client to make this process as easy and accurate as possible.

Additionally, consider filling out 2-3 of these templates to get a better understanding of your entire target market segment.

Find Out the Emotions and Benefits YOUR Clients Care About

GET YOUR FREE CLIENT PERSONA TEMPLATES TODAY​

Step 5: Easily Become a Marketing Pro

If you want to make money and grow a successful lawn care business, you’ll have to become obsessed with marketing.

A common misconception among lawn care professionals is that they can’t start marketing until they can afford to hire a professional.

Just like scaling with services, you can do marketing yourself right now and hire a professional or freelancer in the future.

Feel free to save this infographic, which includes helpful beginner’s basics for marketing your lawn care business:

In addition, here are some other ways you can begin marketing:

Bottom line: It doesn’t matter where you start marketing, so long as you start marketing.

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to the next level!

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Step 6: Focus on What Makes You Different

Have you ever heard this marketing quote?

Oftentimes, lawn care business owners focus on trying to be the best. However, they ignore the most important part of finding new clients… 

VISIBILITY.

How the heck are you supposed to get more clients if no one can find you?!

You’ve got to make your business stand out in the crowd to remain visible.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s preface this… 

While it’s SUPER important to be unique, this doesn’t negate the fact that you should always strive to put forth your best work and constantly aspire to get better.

These are a few examples of ways to create a unique lawn care business:

There are a MILLION ways for you to make your lawn business stand out against your competitors—just find somewhere to start!

Step 7: Start Hiring the Right People

The #1 obstacle that’ll prevent you from growing a million-dollar lawn business is hiring.

It’s not easy to find people who want to work an intense, outdoor manual labor job. 

Ultimately, you have to know WHEN it’s time to hire new employees and HOW to find them.

When Is It Time to Hire New Lawn Care Employees?

If you aren’t hiring soon enough, then you and your team will get burned out and overworked. However, if you hire too soon, you’ll lose money.

There has to be a perfect balance, so it’s extremely important you know when it’s time to hire.

Take a look at just a few key signs it’s time to start hiring:

  1. An employee has quit
  2. An employee has been fired
  3. Employee morale is plummeting

If even ONE of these statements applies to you, you MUST think about hiring new employees.

If you need to hire more people, you should ask yourself:

  • Do you have a process in place for new hires?
  • Are services running smoothly? Are clients happy?
  • Do you have the time and resources to properly train?
  • Do you have enough money to handle a short-term profit loss?
  • How many hours do you want them to work? 

Once you know the answers to these questions, you’re ready for the next step… 

Want to know how to find, train, AND keep great employees?

Get Your FREE Lawn Care Hiring Guide Now!

How to Hire New Lawn Care Employees

Don’t get desperate. Hiring the first person you find is going to cause more stress and headaches than if you were understaffed.

In order to find the right potential candidates for your business, start off by posting job ads on the major sites:

How to Hire Your Best Employees… Starting Right Now

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Step 8: FIRE Your Worst Clients

In order to answer the question, “Is there money in the lawn care business?” you have to know when to fire clients.

There are a few reasons firing your worst customers will actually MAKE you money:

  • You’re losing money on the job
  • Crews are exhausted and overworked
  • The client takes too much time away from other clients

When you realize it might be time to fire a client, you can do one of two things:

  1. Fire the client
  2. Raise their price

If you feel your relationship with the customer is irreconcilable, consider firing them. 

However, if your only issue is based on profit, try raising their price.

By raising prices on your least profitable clients, you’re keeping the ones that are making you MONEY. 

Plus, you’re saving yourself from overworking on jobs that aren’t worth your time.

Step 9: Use the #1 Software to Get a HUGE Advantage

If you want to know, “Is there money in the lawn care business?” then you’ll have to find the right software to maximize profits.

Unlike other lawn care software, the #1 thing that separates Service Autopilot from the rest is automations.

These advanced, customizable automations can automate daily tasks, such as:

  • Service reminders
  • Automated surveys
  • Past due reminders
  • Email follow-up campaigns
  • Assign to do’s for your crews

Automations will grow your business around the clock—even while you’re sleeping.

Additionally, Service Autopilot allows you to track how and where your employees spend time via our mobile app.

Service Autopilot has been proven to:

  • Increase efficiency
  • Maximize profits
  • Minimize stress and double data entry

Grow Your Lawn Care Business... Faster 
(and with Less Stress)​

Instant invoicing

Better scheduling

Manage your clients and employees all in one system

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Answer: Is There Money in the Lawn Care Business?

Question: Is there money in the lawn care business?

Answer: YES… IF you take advantage of the top expert strategies and tools presented in this article.

When you first started dreaming of your lawn care business, you had the ultimate goal in mind… 

  • To create a profitable business you could be proud of.

Now you know how to make money in lawn care and maximize profits in your business today!


Related: How to Start a Lawn Care Business With NO Money


Originally published March 10, 2020 7:00 AM. Updated on February 13, 2024 at 1:45 PM

Alyssa Sanders

Alyssa is the Team Lead of Content Marketing at Xplor Field Services. When she's not writing or creating content, you can find her watching a new sci-fi series or shoving her nose into a book.
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