If you enjoy working outside and working with your hands, a landscaping business is an ever-growing opportunity that can easily become a rewarding career. To get started with this green thumb work, you’ll also need to have some training that gives you credit for your background. Here are some of the best tips on quickly starting a landscaping business.
What you’ll need before starting a landscaping business
The good news is that you don’t need to have anything more than a high school graduate certificate. If you have some college or after high school training, this is optional but not required. It is a must that you like the outdoors so any experience with agriculture, horticulture, gardening, and gardening design is a big plus. Some people have taken online courses in landscaping architecture and landscaping design that will be a great reference.
To get some experience and credit to your name, you can also go to local nurseries that can offer an apprenticeship program. It might even pay something in the end, but the real bragging point is that you show you’ve gotten viable experience in this field. Another good idea is to contact small landscaping companies to find work so you can see first-hand what the job is all about. This can further give you on-the-job experience that is a must.
Landscaping Certification
This is where you can learn more about earning certificates like NALP (National Association of Landscaping Professionals) to become certified for being a landscaper. This is more about the care of lawns and anything that includes water-based lawn care and watering systems. You can earn an online degree in 6-10 weeks and focus your studies on being a certified grounds technician or other related fields.
This is a business opportunity that does require you to register as self-employed so you can provide receipts for your work. You should also have liability insurance for yourself to cover any kind of damages that could work against you. If you need to hire a small crew, your crew should also be able to cover their own contracting insurance so there is no need to hire employees or deal with added paperwork.
What types of services can you offer?
A landscaper is more than the average groundskeeper or person who mows a lawn. It’s the overall coverage of helping to design a garden and maintaining these needs through a contract. There are also eventual changes that will happen throughout the year, to ensure that landscaping features are kept healthy in any season. Anything that is growing outside a home or business falls under this category so the job can be big or small.
It will also require you to plan irrigation, maintenance, fertilization, and nourishment of gardens and landscaping features. This will also give you direct access to the owner of a home or property that needs constant landscaping needs. It will be your job to ensure that these duties are performed every week depending on how much needs to be properly cared for and groomed at all times.
This is where the extra skills of knowing how to design a garden or landscape are meant to appear beautiful and relaxing. The better that you complete this task is an opportunity to earn respect for your work. It can also open doors with each contract that is added but doesn’t ensure that you’ll be an immediate success. You need to advertise constantly to get your name and credits out there to a larger market.
Advertising Your Landscaping Start-up
As a small business and self-employed contractor, you need to do some simple advertising that will appeal to a homeowner or spaces that require landscaping services. The best method is to make business cards and flyers that you can hand out pretty often. A simple flyer is great for basic costs for your services. This is where you also need to charge a competitive rate if there is local competition, so learn what their services are charging.
Start a website that can be used to add loads of pictures and help advertise your services much further. This website is what you’ll use to make social media posts and update blogs of ongoing projects. This also gives anyone with access to smartphones or tablets an immediate price guide of what your total list of services are including. Create a special page that features your best work and update this as the seasons’ change.
Don’t be afraid to show off your skills with simple videos and demos that show how water irrigations systems work. This also gives you a chance to align yourself with big brand names that are promoted to give you further credit even if you aren’t a sponsor of their products. This is a perfect example to showcase your tools of the trade and how efficient they work in landscaping services likewise.
Use as much social media plugging as you can, but don’t forget that handing out landscaping flyers, and knocking on doors is also a great selling tool. If you see a home that already looks like it has landscaping services, let them know you’re around and can improve what is being done while complimenting how nice the current service appears. Gentle soft-sell can open doors for a new landscaper who is constantly hungry for new opportunities. See our home page for more ideas on how to make extra money and get back to work.