Supplementing your mowing service with other jobs can be a great addition to your bottom line. We all experience slow periods in our business. Usually it is a result of seasonal changes, like a winter in North America. It may also come about because of drought during the summer causing unwatered lawns to dry out. This is the reason I am currently seeing a decline in lawn mowing in my own business. Here on the west coast of Canada we experienced an unusually dry spring, followed by a now very hot summer. In fact this past weekend we had a blanket of smoke come and cover the entire city from the large number of forest fires in the interior of our province as a result of the dry conditions.

So how do you adapt and have your business go from merely surviving to thriving during adverse conditions? You broaden your focus on lawns or even landscaping and look around at the acres of diamonds all around you. Think to why your clients hire you to look after their lawns in the first place. Maybe its because they are not physically able to look after it themselves, or maybe it because they work long hours and don’t have the time. Maybe they just rather spend there free time doing the other things they enjoy during there spare time. At any rate these are all possibilities as to why they haven’t tackled other non-lawn care jobs around their homes as well. In fact you’ve probably been so busy yourself mowing lawns most of the season that you did not even notice your customers broken fence, or cracked driveway, or leaking gutters, or dirty concrete, or rotten deck etc. My point is there is actually an abundance of work all around you if your willing to go after it, and in most cases all it takes is just pointing it out to your clients. I generally will offer up my services to customers for things I feel confident I can accomplish easily without much fuss. I am a pretty handy guy and can do a variety of jobs, but I try to limit the extras I offer based on liability. For example I can do basic home wiring and have done lots of projects around my own house like wiring in and installing new pot lights in my kitchen, but I would not offer this as a service to clients due to the liability and chance of fire if I missed something. I would however fix a fence, seal a driveway, pressure wash, clean windows, paint house trim, build a deck, install a new toilet, clean gutters, install Christmas lights, do snow removal, etc.

The possibilities are endless for supplementing your lawn care services during slow parts of the year. Use the notes app on your phone and setup an extra work note. Every time you visit your customer’s property to look after the lawn, keep your eyes open for other non-lawn related projects around the property and jot them down in your notes. Look at the adjacent neighbors properties as well. Then when things start to slow down, pull up your notes app and start to discuss it with clients or send a quick email. For neighbors simply leave your business card and a quick note explaining that you noticed while visiting your customer that they needed something done and offer a price for you to do it. I think you will be surprised at just how easy it is to stay busy even when the lawns do not need mowing.

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