Gardening business...start up advice.

Have no website yet. Working on it at the moment. I have a Facebook page.
Thanks for the tip, have been out doing leaflets. One job tomorow , hoping the weather holds!

 

I'm torn, as they are nice enough as a pair (one is super grumpy, but it's not personal, and the other is so chirpy but talks and talks), but from a business perspective it doesn't provide the most effective use of my time.

 

Having run my own mail order business for many years, long before the advent of the internet, I can 100% agree with shiney. The vast majority of my new business over the years did not come from expensive advertising it came from word of mouth recommendations. My largest customer came from having been a recipient of my product from a "little old lady"who was quite demanding!. I didn't know the little old lady turned out to have many friends in high places which benefited my customer mailing list considerably.

 

You don't know who some people are or could be later on in life

 

Have one job lined up for Monday , hoping the sunshine will get people to start thinking about there gardens a bit more. Currently building up a website to go along my Facebook page and planning more leaflet drops next week!

 

Good one. Work on the website. Get some SEO plugins and learn how to tailor them yourself. I have Yoest and another one on my wordpress site and my website gets first page results for most local and city wide google searches. No big spending on all the companies that constantly email or call promising to boost me up the google rankings!

I've just settled my schedule for the year and have already turned down a few people who had been in touch asking me to work for them this year. Once the phone really starts going mad in April/May I'll be saying no several times a day. But this is the way I have chosen to run business... part time, with loads of free time to spend with my kids and almost no work stress from worrying about staff and additional vans/tools. You just notch prices up and up once you're full until you find a balance. If you win every quote you're too cheap!

The best clients from a business perspective are working families. The older clients can be friendly and it's stress-free if they are not out watching you and suggesting what you should be doing. I have a few older ladies on the rounds who constantly tell me to just come whenever, do whatever I think needs done and they don't comment or bother me at all. They love knowing they have someone 100% reliable who will always be there on the day they say they will.

Regarding leaflets, you don't need to try and advertise everything on a leaflet. You can just select a couple of things, perhaps general garden maintenance visits plus lawn cuts or something like that. If you write everything down you get a enquiries that you really don't want to handle and it becomes a pain. Low pay type jobs that involve hard graft!

What's the facebook page? I'll give it a like

 

You could get a simple walk-behind leaf blower with mulching functionality to take care of the leaf clearing part and then also add "organic mulching" to the list (I'd read up on a few roundups before going in for the buy, tho'). Just an idea!

 

Whilst everyone is on this subject

How does it stand for running a business from your home?

If you are only doing a couple of invoices/emails and holding your equipment at home, is that classed as running a business from home, especially if your address is the business contact details?

Thanks