You can mow and rake in money with a lawn care franchise. If you admire being your own boss and love the mercy of mother nature, then landscaping is your good choice. But will buying a franchise impact your business negatively or positively?
A lawn care business is a business, therefore should run like one. Moreover, it goes beyond most people’s assumptions that anyone with any equipment can do it –which is valid to an extent.
For instance, someone might figure that a secondhand mower is good to go, and anything else should take care of itself. But a few months later, most will be out of business, too poor financially to keep on the business.
As a business, you are in charge of many important things. You have to estimate the right quotes, regularly service your machine, comply with local laws, collect money from clients, pay taxes, send out accounts, plus many other things.
Let’s outline the pros and cons of buying a lawn care franchise so you know what to do.
Pros
A franchise accommodates those with little experience
For most people, self-employment is strange. The majority lack skills for running personal businesses, and it’s unusual to start a business from scratch. However, if you get a good care franchise, you can easily explore new aspects.
For instance, a new franchise often has an already established and proven system for successfully tackling issues in the business. With them, you can thoroughly navigate the various mechanisms for running the business successfully.
On the other hand, our daily jobs make us comfortable, expecting the apparent monthly payroll without delays. If you wish to transition from your job to a self-employed business, you want to be as close to an employee as possible.
A new franchise has everything set for you, and your role is following the instructions. That removes extra anxiety that you’ll often experience when going in alone, having to bring in enough work to guarantee survival.
A franchise boosts your chances of success
Franchises run in the usual business model and often succeed at getting a new business. This is because they have made their mistakes already and learned their lesson.
Therefore, instead of making the same mistakes they made, you’ll pick their strengths and set them towards more success. New businesses are delicate in many ways, and having the opportunity to do everything right is very significant.
Established blueprint in marketing
For any typical lawn care business, marketing is often expensive. And if you are poorly established in the marketing world, it can be further disadvantageous. But with a new franchise, you can enjoy their already functioning local and national marketing campaigns.
Your new franchise will incorporate its own mechanics of marketing. They route incoming quotes in the entire territory to you using a freephone number, thereby upholding business startups whose marketing skills are still developing.
Support
At some point in your business adventure, you want to know what other operators are doing or how they handle certain problems. You can access closed, members-only forums to communicate freely in larger franchises.
This camaraderie is hardly found in the usual field of private operators. In fact, people rarely concentrate on sharing their business secrets until they are very successful.
Cons
The ongoing cost of running
The franchise business demands ongoing payment, some of which are relatively expensive. These fees can get to as much as 10k a year, and some are the cost of doing business–including marketing. That means some of these costs are going to be there regardless.
It is recommended to find out how costly your franchise will become and decide based on the comfort of your budget.
The franchise makes the rules of advertisement
Any advertisement feature you’ll carry around will be personalized in their brand. For instance, any flyer you make must have their number, and your business truck will read their name instead of yours.
It even gets interesting with business calls–these have to go through their head office, who then gets you informed. That said, it’s almost impossible to do personal advertisements under a franchise. In fact, you might deliver loads of flyers for your franchise yet get zero results.
Zero creativity
Anything and everything you do must go through the head office for approval, eliminating room for personal creativity. But what if you have a better idea for running your lawn business? It too must get assessed by your head office.
Even creating personal ads follows a similar protocol. And even if your business idea gets approved, they have a right to hold it and use it in other franchises besides yours.