Entrepreneur Business Opportunities

Opening a Lawn & Garden Service

If you are intent on starting a lawn and garden service, start by researching the competition and thinking through the business.

Wondering how to start a lawn and garden service? We take you step-by-step from start to success.

Best Practices for Writing a Lawn & Garden Service Business Plan

Many new lawn and garden service owners feel unprepared for the challenge of writing a business plan.

But even though you have primary responsibility for drafting a business plan for your lawn and garden service, you aren't entirely alone. These days, there are tons of great resources and solutions available to support the business plan writing process.

Our Business Plan Help section discusses some of the business plan resources other entrepreneurs have found useful.

Don't Ignore the Competition

Prior to opening a lawn and garden service within your community, it's a smart move to find out how strong the competition is. Use the link below to get a list of local competitors nearby. Simply enter your city, state and zip code to get a list of lawn and garden services in your town.

Before you open up shop, make sure you know what you will offer to your customers that provides a significant advantage over your competition's offering.

Learning More About the Industry

After you've evaluated your local competitors, it's essential that you learn from folks who are already in business. Local competitors are not going to give you the time of day, mind you. It'd be crazy for them to teach you the business.

However, an entrepreneur who owns a lawn and garden service outside of your community will be much more likely to talk with you, once they realize that you are not going to directly compete with them in their community. Indeed, many experienced entrepreneurs enjoy offering advice to startup entrepreneurs. In my experience, you may have to call ten business owners in order to find one who is willing to share his wisdom with you.

How does one go about finding a lawn and garden service manager in another city who you can speak with?

Here's one way to do it. Just use our link below, find somebody and call them.

Benefits & Drawbacks of a Lawn & Garden Service Acquisition

An acquisition can be a great way to enter lawn and garden service ownership. But it's important to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of buying a business before you decide on either an acquisition or startup approach.

PROs: Acquired lawn and garden services should be profitable right out of the gate; they should also be capable of demonstrating a loyal customer base, brand identity and operational efficiencies.

DRAWBACKS: On the downside, lawn and garden service acquisitions can be difficult to adapt to your unique business philosophy so it's important to make sure the business is capable of achieving your ownership goals before you initiate the buying process.

Is Franchising the Right Option?

The odds of achieving your primary goal of avoiding failure in business are higher when you join the ranks of franchisees in lieu of doing everything yourself.

If you planning on starting a lawn and garden service, a smart move is to assess whether there are good franchise opportunities available that might be the right move for you.

The link below gives you access to our franchise directory so you can see if there's a franchise opportunity for you. You might even find something that points you in a completely different direction.

Related Articles on Starting a Company

These additional resources regarding starting a business may be of interest to you.

Questions to Ask Before Starting a Business

LLC Advantages

Business Idea Evaluation

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