Plan assumes the under-$1,000 start, no employees, and a goal of eight to twelve paying lawns by day thirty. Check the season box first: a March start and an October start are different plans wearing the same title. Start month:
Week One: Build the Machine (Days 1–7)
- ☐ Register the business name and structure, sole proprietorship or single-member LLC
- ☐ Open the business bank account and order the debit card
- ☐ Get general liability quotes and bind the policy. No lawn before this box is checked
- ☐ Check your city or county business license requirement and file if required
- ☐ Buy the tier-one kit used: 21-inch walk-behind, string trimmer, blower, gas can, ear and eye protection, hand tools
- ☐ Set your numbers: hourly floor, minimum visit price, first-cut multiplier, close-rate tracking sheet
- ☐ Order 250 door hangers and simple cards with your real phone number
Week Two: Claim the Neighborhood (Days 8–14)
- ☐ Mow for the two or three friendly first customers at full price, timed for a weekend morning when the street is awake
- ☐ After each first lawn, knock the two nearest doors with the neighbor script
- ☐ Hang fifty hangers on the streets immediately around those jobs, no farther. Respect every no-soliciting sign
- ☐ Log every conversation
- ☐ Claim your Google Business Profile on day 8
- ☐ Ask first customers for reviews the day they pay, not later
- ☐ Post the before-and-afters somewhere public
Target by day 14: three to five paying lawns inside one contiguous cluster, two reviews, one quote pipeline of neighbors who said maybe. Lawns: Reviews:
Week Three: Make It Repeat (Days 15–21)
- ☐ Assign every customer a service day
- ☐ Send the completion text after every visit, starting with lawn number three
- ☐ Time yourself on each lawn honestly; fix any quote your watch disagrees with
- ☐ One evening quote run, two or three estimates after hours, using the driveway script
- ☐ Knock the doors adjacent to every lawn you cut, every cut
- ☐ First office hour on Sunday: invoice, photograph receipts, log mileage, review the week's close rate
Target by day 21: six to nine lawns inside one or two adjacent clusters, invoices sent on one date, close rate known. Lawns: Close rate: %
Week Four: Correct and Commit (Days 22–30)
- ☐ Fix the route geography: re-price any lawn outside the cluster with the drive included, or plan its polite exit at season end
- ☐ Adjust the price band based on the close rate, once
- ☐ Presell the next add-on to your three best customers using the notecard method, one service only
- ☐ Set up the two savings motions: off-season percentage and repair percentage, moved automatically on invoice day
- ☐ Write your season decision memo, one paragraph, choosing the winter fork and its first preparation step
Target by day 30: eight to twelve paying lawns, a repeatable weekly rhythm, two funded savings accounts, and a chosen winter. Lawns:
Season Checkpoint
| Start month | Adjustment to the plan | Done |
|---|
| Spring: full runway | Standard plan as written; density built now compounds longest | ☐ |
| Early summer | Demand is desperate: raise the floor price from the start, lean on neighbors-of-current-lawns, compress weeks two and three into one, run the off-season percentage higher from the first invoice | ☐ |
| Late summer or fall | Weight toward cleanup and leaf programs, learn the aeration-and-overseed window immediately, make the winter-fork decision in week one instead of week four | ☐ |
| Winter: preparation season | Complete setup, source used gear at its cheapest, study for the pesticide license if that path calls, pre-sell a spring route with door hangers in late winter | ☐ |