What's new

Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Live your best life.

Tired of paying for dead communities hosted by absent gurus who don't have time for you?

Imagine having a multi-millionaire mentor by your side EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has been a cornerstone of Fastlane, actively contributing on over 99% of days—99.92% to be exact! With more than 39,000 game-changing posts, he's dedicated to helping entrepreneurs achieve their freedom. Join a thriving community of over 90,000 members and access a vast library of over 1,000,000 posts from entrepreneurs around the globe.

Forum membership removes this block.
IMG_8618.webp

Office^

Got a new iPad Pro. Love this thing. All the business runs on web apps anyways so I don’t need any windows software or powerful programs. Can do basically anything on this.

Stores great, looks great, great battery, I love working on it.

Have been creating org charts, training material, SOP’s and systems on notion all day.

Super ergonomic. Table slides right over my lap and it’s comfy sitting in the chair.

BrainFM playing on a home speaker. I take breaks and have a coffee and play guitar.

We are expanding to buy riding mowers and take on more work since we turn down a lot of it and it’s a big drawback to our advertising.

Here’s the math: anywhere around 15% of the properties people want quotes for are too big. It could be even 30% but I’ll be conservative.

The average revenue from these would be around $300 a month.

Our average customer pays $150 a month if you do the math for all properties.

This means if we signed up 100 people we would have $15,000 in revenue a month. Since we missed out on an extra 15% of people paying $300 a month assuming the same closing rate, we would’ve had 15 more customers paying $300 a month.

That’s $4,500 a month in missed revenue since we didn’t sign up those 15 people for every 100 we signed up with smaller properties. That’s 54,000 a year.

30% margins (on the low end) on the 100 customers paying an average of 150 would be 54,000 over the course of a year.

Our margins on the 15 customers would be 16,200 over the course of a year (low end)

If it’s getting expensive to advertise (it is), then we could be spending as much as $200 to acquire a customer.

For those 100 customers, that’s $20,000.

If we took on larger jobs, we would spend the same on ads.

So let’s run the scenarios.

$20,000 ad spend

100 customers (small properties only)
180,000 additional yearly revenue
$200 ad spend per customer
$150 average revenue per customer per month
Yearly revenue to ad spend: 9:1 (higher is better)
Yearly profit to ad spend: 2.7:1 (meh)

Taking on large jobs with riding mowers

115 customers
234,000 additional revenue
$174 ad spend
$170 average revenue per customer per month
Yearly revenue to ad spend: 11.7:1 (30% higher!)
Yearly profit to ad spend: 3.51:1 (30% higher)

$16,200 added profit for the same $20,000 ad spend.

Not to mention increased profitability from using riding mowers on the medium-largeish properties we currently do.

It’s estimated we can service the larger properties about 25% faster.

It’s estimated about 1/3 of properties would benefit from riding mowers.

So a 25% increase on 1/3 of properties is a 8.33% increase in capacity on average for each crew.

If everyone has a riding mower, we can take on 8.33% more properties and more revenue per crew for the whole company.

Our crews with one person working alone bring in 10,000 a month of revenue for 12 months and we profit no less than 3,000 a month net net for them (including all expenses and office and everything else. It’s at least 4-5k gross profit per truck without the office or other stuff that doesn’t scale linearly)

That means we could have 10,833 per crew, and with the same costs we are at an extra $10,000 of revenue per year and an extra $10,000 in profit per year. At net margins of $36,000 per truck per year, we would now be at $46,000 net margins per year.

That’s a 27% bump to our profit per crew with the efficiency of larger mowers just based on operational capacity.

Old margin 30% net on $120,000, new margin 35% net on $130,000.

(Gross margins would be the isolated costs of a single crew like labor and materials and gas, net margins are after office expenses and other ‘running a business’ costs. Important to understand the unit economics and the differences between the financial terms)

Something else we want to implement eventually is a single loading bay at the lot for yard debris where the guys can back the trailer up and dump everything into a massive trailer that’s dumped once a month or something.

Right now the guys have to drive to the dump and empty out waste every week or more. It takes 90 minutes or so.

That’s 90 minutes a week per crew. They work about 35 hours a week so that’s 4.3% of their time spent dumping grass.

Doing this could increase their capacity and revenue by 4%

Another $4,800 a year per crew in additional profit minimum.

Would raise net margins again by 3.5% to 38.5%.

Gross margins would be like 46% to 55%.

Eventually I want to add more complimentary services to what we offer. There’s gotta be a way to keep it organized. Like a crew that handles simple projects or sprinkler maintenance or something. I don’t like that but it would help with our advertising costs to increase revenue per ad spend.
 
Membership Required: Upgrade to Expose Nearly 1,000,000 Posts

Ready to Unleash the Millionaire Entrepreneur in You?

Become a member of the Fastlane Forum, the private community founded by best-selling author and multi-millionaire entrepreneur MJ DeMarco. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has poured his heart and soul into the Fastlane Forum, helping entrepreneurs reclaim their time, win their financial freedom, and live their best life.

With more than 39,000 posts packed with insights, strategies, and advice, you’re not just a member—you’re stepping into MJ’s inner-circle, a place where you’ll never be left alone.

Become a member and gain immediate access to...

  • Active Community: Ever join a community only to find it DEAD? Not at Fastlane! As you can see from our home page, life-changing content is posted dozens of times daily.
  • Exclusive Insights: Direct access to MJ DeMarco’s daily contributions and wisdom.
  • Powerful Networking Opportunities: Connect with a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs who can offer mentorship, collaboration, and opportunities.
  • Proven Strategies: Learn from the best in the business, with actionable advice and strategies that can accelerate your success.

"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with the most..."

Who are you surrounding yourself with? Surround yourself with millionaire success. Join Fastlane today!

Join Today
Vjev’t 90 nopavit e xiil qis dsix. Vjiz xusl ecuav 35 juast e xiil tu vjev’t 4.3% ug vjios voni tqipv fanqoph hsett.
Ot vjisi epuvjis dunqepz/opfatvsz vjev xuamf xepv vji hsett dmoqqopht? Nezci vjiz xuamf hmefmz xepv vji dmoqqopht epf duni qodl vjin aq?

Dep ov ci atif vu neli namdj us giif us tunivjoph?
 
Ot vjisi epuvjis dunqepz/opfatvsz vjev xuamf xepv vji hsett dmoqqopht? Nezci vjiz xuamf hmefmz xepv vji dmoqqopht epf duni qodl vjin aq?

Dep ov ci atif vu neli namdj us giif us tunivjoph?
Csepdjit esi op vjisi epf uvjis sepfun tvagg ov’t puv xusvj ov epf ov’t gsii vu fanq ataemmz.
 
Xjisi O mowi, vjisi ot e qmedi xjisi zua dep veli emm vjev gus sidzdmoph. O vjopl vjiz vasp ov opvu quvvoph tuom us tunivjoph. Zua jewi vu qez vjin vu veli ov, vjuahj.

O vjopl ov ot e hsiev catopitt, O lpux vji qsiwouat uxpis, e Cuunis. O jewip'v etlif jon jux nadj ji tumf ov gus, cav O civ ov xet op vji 10N+ sephi cideati ov opdmafif e gix edsit ug mepf epf ov ot up e neop tvsiiv. Katv vji mepf tjuamf ci xusvj 5N+.

Djidl ecuav vjev fanqtvis ev vji muv cideati emm vjuti hsett dmoqqopht TVOPL xjip vjiz esi qomif aq gus e gix fezt. O xet fanqoph tuni hsett ev vjev catopitt e gix fezt ehu epf O duamf puv fanq ov getv ipuahj vu hiv uav ug vjisi!
 
Membership Required: Upgrade to Expose Nearly 1,000,000 Posts

Ready to Unleash the Millionaire Entrepreneur in You?

Become a member of the Fastlane Forum, the private community founded by best-selling author and multi-millionaire entrepreneur MJ DeMarco. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has poured his heart and soul into the Fastlane Forum, helping entrepreneurs reclaim their time, win their financial freedom, and live their best life.

With more than 39,000 posts packed with insights, strategies, and advice, you’re not just a member—you’re stepping into MJ’s inner-circle, a place where you’ll never be left alone.

Become a member and gain immediate access to...

  • Active Community: Ever join a community only to find it DEAD? Not at Fastlane! As you can see from our home page, life-changing content is posted dozens of times daily.
  • Exclusive Insights: Direct access to MJ DeMarco’s daily contributions and wisdom.
  • Powerful Networking Opportunities: Connect with a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs who can offer mentorship, collaboration, and opportunities.
  • Proven Strategies: Learn from the best in the business, with actionable advice and strategies that can accelerate your success.

"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with the most..."

Who are you surrounding yourself with? Surround yourself with millionaire success. Join Fastlane today!

Join Today

Welcome to an Entrepreneurial Revolution

The Fastlane Forum empowers you to break free from conventional thinking to achieve financial freedom through UNSCRIPTED® Entrepreneurship where relative value and problem-solving are executed at scale. Living Unscripted® isn’t just a business strategy—it’s a way of life.

Follow MJ DeMarco

Get The Books that Change Lives...

The Fastlane entrepreneurial strategy is based on the CENTS Framework® which is based on the three best-selling books by MJ DeMarco.

mj demarco books
Back
Top Bottom