[mufflerman20]

hey guys just needed some quick info, my buddy and i just started a landscape buisness and we are only shooting for commercial accounts. we already have two but they are my father in laws places so we really didnt have to bid them. we made a call today and have to go bid another mobile home park tommorrow morning at 8 a.m. A Homeowners association will be paying us and their annual income is aroung 60,000. How should i base my bid with these numbers

[NC Lawnscapes]

WOW I hate to see this but it has Failure written allover it

Here is why

RULE NUMBER 1: NEVER NEVER NEVER go into buisness with a buddy or family member...........

Rule number 2: Commerical is nice and all but the real money is in Residential accts.

Rule Number 3: Never go into buisness with a friend or family member

Rule number 4: Never base your prices on the customers income

Rule Number 5: See rule 1 and 3 (never go into buisness with a family member or Friend

But to answer your question figure out how long it will take you mulptily it by your hourly rate and you have a total then add in any extras they may want Seeding, fert, pine needles, mulch, litter removal, sidewalk edging, flower beds..........The list of up sales can go on and on

(Which is why rfesidential is where the real money is)

Because if you have a commeriacl acct then tere is 10 companys trying to get the same one next season

AND Experience tells me that 80% of the commeriacl accts could care less that you do this great or that great all they care about is that the job is done and the bill is LOW

[mufflerman20]

well it goes like this. the friend has been doing my father in laws accts for the past year. So im going in with a positive income from the beginning. thats why im doing a partnership type deal. Plus my wife is handling all of the money and books. she's an acct. the problem with residential in my area there are so many companies in my area so its hard to get more than one or two accts in a neighborhood and u spend most of your time driving from one place to another therefore minimizing work time

[scott C]

y not haxe your f- in law solicit bids from others. It will give U a good idea on market pricing

[mufflerman20]

hey man thats a great idea i appreciate it.

[Bill Schwab]

Ok.. Stop the presses. A week or so ago, a guy posted here and was writing simlar type stuff. I forgot the thread already, but Paul steered it the best.

Before you bid anything, you need to sit down and calculate what an hours work costs you. Just because the two accounts you have is a relative, does not mean you are making money with them.
Since you can't pull last years records, you have to fake it by using projections. You might have to get a little calculous style mathmatics invloved, nonetheless, you have to start somewhere.

Calculate the hours in a year you are going to work, and also the costs of things like wages with labor burden, fuel, insurance, truck payments, advertising, etc. If you are running older equipment, make sure you figure in a maintenance budget. Divide the total cost of the things you will be spending money on by the number of projected hours you work, and that will tell you how much it costs you to operate.

Once you get that, you add in your entitlement, THE PROFITS!!!!!

Paul wrote that better than I but, thats about how it went.

If you don't do it that way Mufflerman, you are providing WAGS (Wild Ass Guesses) for everything you do, and unless you like roulette style business ventures, the odds are stacked against you.

[Lanelle]

Once you have determined your costs as described above, you need to know how long it will take you to do the various tasks that are listed in the specifications of services (by the HOA). For mowing, measure the turf. Determine the size of mowers that will be most efficent for the job (that you own or can purchase if you can sell enough similar work) and think about the difficulty of the mowing. Are there lots of obstacles? Are these mostly small areas or large open areas? Determine how much area you will mow per hour. This tells you how long one mowing will take, now multiply that by the number of mows for the season. Multiply the $rate that you need to get per hour by the number of hours it takes and add a few hours for cushion. Do this for each task required in the contract. Good luck!

[NC Lawnscapes]

Ok you say there is alot of companies in your area and you cant get more than one or two yards in a neighborhood because of that so you spend your time driving from job to job.

You have just described everyone in here during there first years or so.

The way to over come that is get those one or two and do a kick ass job and for a decent price and those neighbors WILL talk and reccomend you and then that is how over time you get tntire neighborhoods.

I hope you at least went into a LLC type of partnership because with having YOUR wife doing the books what happens when your buddy dont like the numbers she is crunching and isnt getting the typoe of money he was last year and thinks he is still doing as much work................

The reason I am forwarning you is I myself as many others have already went down this rocky road and about lost a REAL good friend over it till I got smart and bought his half out

[mufflerman20]

thank you all for your help. I will keep all of this in mind in the morning. We are suppose to be getting a list of "things to do " so maybe once we get those i can list some specifics to yall. thanks for your input again

[NC Lawnscapes]

a bid sheet???

[cutntrim]

My business name is C&C Lawn & Landscape and the C's were me (Dave Carr) and my friend (Adam Cowan). We started in 1992 and Adam burned out and left the business in November of 2001. Our business relationship is over, but we're still friends. Sooner or later, you may find that going solo is the way to go. Unless you have seperate divisions within a larger company that is generating $300,000+ per year, I feel it's a tough go being in a partnership. We probably only held out together as long as we did because we were in university tracking toward different career paths than landscaping for the first five years of the business, and therefor landscaping wasn't our "real job" during that time.

[eboo57]

IN ORDER TO KEEP COMMERCAIL ACCOUNTS WE TIE THEM TO A THREE YEAR CONTRACT. THEN WITH SIX MONTHS LEFT WE GO AND RE-SIGN THEM FOR ANOTHER THREE YEARS. GOING AFTER THEM EARLY WILL HELP SCHEDULING FOR THE NEXT YEAR, KEEPS ALL THE COMPETERS FROM TAKING YOUR ACCOUNTS AND YOU HAVE A BETTER CASH FLOW.
BILL THEM EQUAL PAYMENTS OVER NINE OR TWELVE MONTHS