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his baby vs. buyer's nightmare
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I once knew a lawn mowing contractor who was retiring and decided to sell his business. He'd worked it for over a decade, and although it was stable, it was sloppily run. Lots of badly priced lawns and customers who owed money. He had no idea what his business was worth, but he thought it must be worth a lot. After all, it was his baby, and he'd built it from the ground up. He advertised his business at a ridiculous price and sold it within a couple of weeks. I knew nothing about the sale until one day I bumped into an extremely unhappy buyer. He was struggling to turn a profit, and his customers were leaving him quickly. Apparently, the old owner was not opposed to doing odd jobs for his customers for free, which was definitely not on the new buyer's list of obligations. It was never even mentioned. That's the problem with buying a lawn mowing business. You're not only looking at your first lawn business purchase, but it's also quite possibly the first lawn business the current owner has ever sold. Blind seller dealing with a blind buyer. That can be a potential minefield. If you buy a business with well-priced lawns and good systems, you can turn it into something great, but if you buy a business with underpriced lawns and no systems, you may struggle to break even or even go backwards. When I sold my first lawn mowing business, I made mistakes. I learned from them, and when I sold my second business, I did better. Now I've sold over twenty lawn mowing businesses in the last couple of decades, and I've learned a thing or two about how to spot the red flags. The rule of thumb is you should invest one hour of research for every $1k you plan to spend. So if you're thinking about buying a lawn mowing business and want to avoid expensive mistakes, I've put together a free buyer's guide inside our Skool community. It covers what questions to ask, how to evaluate pricing, red flags to watch for, and how to handle the transition so you don't lose half the clients. You can grab the free buyer's guide here: Join the free Lawn Business Builders Pro group Stuart P.S. I found a great way to save on your batteries, too. If saving money and bringing dead batteries back to life interests you. |
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Build a Six-Figure Lawn Care Business in Your Spare Time. Stop trading time for money. Get one short, actionable tip delivered to your inbox every morning to help you work smarter and scale faster. Privacy Note: Join 5,000+ pros. 100% privacy, zero spam.
So you have all your lawn care equipment, and you're ready to get out there and mow some lawns. All you need now is for your phone to ring. But it doesn't. This is not because there's no work out there; it's because nobody knows your business exists. You need to develop a presence in the market, and you may think that sounds like hard work, but I can tell you from personal experience that it's not hard at all. Have you ever heard the saying: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."...
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