How to find investors for my lawn care company

[Johnny boy]

Summer of 2018 I was selling cars going nowhere.

I made a post on here about starting a lawn care company.

GOLD! - HOT! - Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

21 and currently selling cars at the moment. I’ve got some money to throw at something. I just bought a used trailer and have some lawn equipment. Got a pro website, branding, and I have decent copywriting skills for posting ads. Started with craigslist, Google AdWords and I’m on yelp and...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

During the summer, fall and winter of 2018, I learned a lot of lessons about management and how to actually run a business.

This spring, I signed up a full schedule of customers for recurring services only for 12 month plans.

This year, I moved out, got my first place, managed the business, had an amazing time, and kept things going strong. As we go into the winter, I will have the same monthly revenue since customers signed up for 12 months plans.

I want to grow the business and am looking for investors that want a place to park 20-30k and see it grow much faster.

A single crew can bring in 8 thousand a month while costing 5 thousand in expenses. This year that paid for my living expenses but with another crew it would make things much easier.

I can easily manage many crews because of the scalable nature of how I set up my business. We perform simple, recurring services. Which makes it easier to higher low-skill laborers and with less mistakes. We only sign up customers with recurring scheduled maintenance, so our scheduling is extremely efficient, and there are no gaps in our schedule.

And since I am signing up each customer for a 12 month time frame, I'm not out bidding jobs all day, allowing me to manage more effectively. We have GPS tracking for the truck, so I can see which jobs they are at and what they have left. Everything is handled remotely. All customers have a card on file that is charged automatically at the beginning of the month and we have cancellation fees if they want to cancel. We are not busy chasing invoices and have 0 accounts past due.

I am confident that 5+ crews would be easy. Our costs are nearly variable, so we only have expenses when we are working (biggest costs by far are labor and gas). If I had 10 crews working, and the economy crashed and we had to downsize to 3 crews, it would be easy to do. There is little risk for being overexposed, which makes it much more of a safe investment.

I can put up collateral. I own a truck and trailer with equipment. I also own a 1977 datsun 280z. I also have a kidney that I don't really need. I will put all of them up as collateral for a loan. I am more sure of my business than I am of the sun coming up tomorrow.

I want help in finding investors for this business of mine. I want to have at least two crews working next year, and more as the year goes on.

If you know anyone, or know good places to look, let me know.

Thank you.

 

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[Dan_Cardone]

Summer of 2018 I was selling cars going nowhere.

I made a post on here about starting a lawn care company.

GOLD! - HOT! - Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

21 and currently selling cars at the moment. I’ve got some money to throw at something. I just bought a used trailer and have some lawn equipment. Got a pro website, branding, and I have decent copywriting skills for posting ads. Started with craigslist, Google AdWords and I’m on yelp and...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

During the summer, fall and winter of 2018, I learned a lot of lessons about management and how to actually run a business.

This spring, I signed up a full schedule of customers for recurring services only for 12 month plans.

This year, I moved out, got my first place, managed the business, had an amazing time, and kept things going strong. As we go into the winter, I will have the same monthly revenue since customers signed up for 12 months plans.

I want to grow the business and am looking for investors that want a place to park 20-30k and see it grow much faster.

A single crew can bring in 8 thousand a month while costing 5 thousand in expenses. This year that paid for my living expenses but with another crew it would make things much easier.

I can easily manage many crews because of the scalable nature of how I set up my business. We perform simple, recurring services. Which makes it easier to higher low-skill laborers and with less mistakes. We only sign up customers with recurring scheduled maintenance, so our scheduling is extremely efficient, and there are no gaps in our schedule.

And since I am signing up each customer for a 12 month time frame, I'm not out bidding jobs all day, allowing me to manage more effectively. We have GPS tracking for the truck, so I can see which jobs they are at and what they have left. Everything is handled remotely. All customers have a card on file that is charged automatically at the beginning of the month and we have cancellation fees if they want to cancel. We are not busy chasing invoices and have 0 accounts past due.

I am confident that 5+ crews would be easy. Our costs are nearly variable, so we only have expenses when we are working (biggest costs by far are labor and gas). If I had 10 crews working, and the economy crashed and we had to downsize to 3 crews, it would be easy to do. There is little risk for being overexposed, which makes it much more of a safe investment.

I can put up collateral. I own a truck and trailer with equipment. I also own a 1977 datsun 280z. I also have a kidney that I don't really need. I will put all of them up as collateral for a loan. I am more sure of my business than I am of the sun coming up tomorrow.

I want help in finding investors for this business of mine. I want to have at least two crews working next year, and more as the year goes on.

If you know anyone, or know good places to look, let me know.

Thank you.

You can use google to search for an angel investing network.

I have a friend that did something a bit unconventional when he wanted investors. He sent direct mail pieces to business owners in his state. I believe he sent each one a small information packet that acted as a quasi-pitch and invited all of them to call him if they were interested in investing.

He did manage to get an investor that way.

You just have to find ways to get your pitch in front of people with money.

EDIT: Small business investment company (its a .gov) Investment capital

 

[Johnny boy]

You can use google to search for an angel investing network.

I have a friend that did something a bit unconventional when he wanted investors. He sent direct mail pieces to business owners in his state. I believe he sent each one a small information packet that acted as a quasi-pitch and invited all of them to call him if they were interested in investing.

He did manage to get an investor that way.

You just have to find ways to get your pitch in front of people with money.

I like that idea. Also planned on walking up to the courthouse steps friday at 10am when they have the foreclosure auctions and getting some phone numbers.

Thanks.

 

[The-J]

Your local Board of Trade has people who know the local PE scene, although your company is pretty small. You'd likely be talking to Joe Q. Lawyer, Esq. who has a fair bit of money and wants to see it grow locally.

It's also a good way to drum up commercial business, when I was doing my little marketing hustle locally the Board of Trade led to connections which led to clients + regular recommendations

 

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[GuestUser4aMPs1]

-How much money are you looking for?
-What specifically would you use the money for?
-What is the projected ROI?
-What's keeping you from self-funding either through profit or your own credit?

Some things to ask first

 

[Johnny boy]

-How much money are you looking for?
-What specifically would you use the money for?
-What is the projected ROI?
-What's keeping you from self-funding either through profit or your own credit?

Some things to ask first

1. I'm looking for 20-30k

2a To buy another truck/trailer/equipment
2b To have enough cash to avoid being spread too thin and having cash flow problems the first few months of building up the schedule in the months of February and March.

3. The return on the 20-30 grand? I could easily provide 15% yearly returns on that, if not more. All while putting up everything I own as collateral. Each crew profits about 35-40 grand a year. So that's why I am eager to have more crews.

4. I don't have the personal credit. I've tried. I already self funded this thing for one crew. I'll be able to grow it naturally without any debt eventually. But that is not what I want to do.

 

[Walter Hay]

Think outside the square. Service businesses are ideal candidates for franchising, and if you have a good system in place and it is profitable enough, it is worth considering.

See:
SELL ME SAT Forum Self-Promotion Opp: Offers, Links, Your Biz, More (September 2019)

Walter

 

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[Bearcorp]

I’ve shared this example before somewhere on the forum but check out this guy;

Gardening Maintenance & Lawn Care | Jim's Mowing

Your trusted brand for professional gardening services and professional lawn mowing available all across Australia. Contact us on 131 546 today!

www.jimsmowing.net

Started off like you with one crew, now there’s literally a Jim’s for everything. Jim’s Tool tagging and testing, Jim’s Dog wash, Jim’s office cleaning, you name it Jim can do it!

 

[Johnny boy]

Think outside the square. Service businesses are ideal candidates for franchising, and if you have a good system in place and it is profitable enough, it is worth considering.

See:
SELL ME SAT Forum Self-Promotion Opp: Offers, Links, Your Biz, More (September 2019)

Walter

That's the plan!

 

[PizzaOnTheRoof]

Interesting...

What kind of timeline are you looking at to start seeing ROI?

Will this ~15% be paid out over time? How long?

Are you just looking for a loan or an equity deal?

 

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[Johnny boy]

Interesting...

What kind of timeline are you looking at to start seeing ROI?

Will this ~15% be paid out over time? How long?

Are you just looking for a loan or an equity deal?

I can pay it back in a single year. Toss me 20k and you’ll be getting about 2k a month for a year.

I’m hesitant against selling equity because no one is as confident as I am about this business.

 

[Boo]

Raising 20-30k you're going to be dealing with mickey mouse investors who can't afford to lose a dollar. I promise you that it will be just as easy to raise 500k as it would be to raise 30k. I'd urge you to consider the former. You've proved the concept, now is the time to scale it out across a greater geographical region.

 

[Johnny boy]

Raising 20-30k you're going to be dealing with mickey mouse investors who can't afford to lose a dollar. I promise you that it will be just as easy to raise 500k as it would be to raise 30k. I'd urge you to consider the former. You've proved the concept, now is the time to scale it out across a greater geographical region.

I should. But am willing to start as small as 20-30.

 

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[PizzaOnTheRoof]

Raising 20-30k you're going to be dealing with mickey mouse investors who can't afford to lose a dollar. I promise you that it will be just as easy to raise 500k as it would be to raise 30k. I'd urge you to consider the former. You've proved the concept, now is the time to scale it out across a greater geographical region.

Nothing wrong with “Mickey mouse” investors.

Capital is capital.

And where’s this multi-millionaire who can afford to lose 500k on Johnny Boy Lawn Co.?

 

[Deleted73331]

Hi and congrats on your development. If you really are willing to back up the investment with collateral we are interested in provkding that kind of money through some of our clients who are willing to invest in small businesses. Let's try to work something out if you are serious about it.

Thank you!

 

[MitchM]

What about an SBA loan?

 

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[Johnny boy]

What about an SBA loan?

less than 2 years in business

 

[MitchM]

less than 2 years in business

Hmm, so I guess you just need to make some calls. There are really easy loaning sites like Kabbage and others for eCom businesses like mine.

Does anyone know if anything like this exist for the service industry?

 

[Johnny boy]

Hmm, so I guess you just need to make some calls. There are really easy loaning sites like Kabbage and others for eCom businesses like mine.

Does anyone know if anything like this exist for the service industry?

Yup.

 

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[Stargazer]

If that is all you want then I 99.9% guarantee that you already know someone who will have the spare money to invest.

You just don't know it and they don't know you are looking.

It is 1 or 2 of your existing lawncare customers.

Let me know if you need any clarification.

Dan

 

[Johnny boy]

If you're not looking for feedback, feel free to ignore this post. This isn't meant to be criticism, but constructive feedback on how you can improve your success rate when reaching out to people for money:

- Propose the terms upfront, and be specific. Saying, "I want to grow the business and am looking for investors that want a place to park 20-30k and see it grow much faster," doesn't instill confidence that you have thought about things from the perspective of your prospective lender/investor. Or that you're a serious business-person. I would never consider putting money in based on that, but if someone said, "I'm looking to raise $30K in debt, 12 month term, paying 18% annualized interest on a monthly basis, collateralized by the equipment and receivables from the business," I would keep reading.

- Don't ignore the most important part of the equation in your post -- customer demand. You talk a lot about how you can manage the extra crews, but you've given no indication that you actually have work for them to do. Do you have a waiting list? Are you getting requests that you can't service? How big is the backlog? My biggest concern wouldn't be that you can't handle the crews, but that you don't have enough business to monetize additional crews.

- You should provide more detail on the success of the business, using financials. You said in your post, "A single crew can bring in 8 thousand a month while costing 5 thousand in expenses." So, $8,000 in gross revenue, $5000 in COGS for the crew, leaving $3000 in gross profits. But, does that include operating expenses? And how do those operating expenses scale with 3 or 5 crews? Do you need someone else to answer the phones? Someone to go out and bid? More marketing dollars to drum up customers? Additional legal and accounting costs to manage the business? Technology keep your crews running efficiently? Businesses don't scale linearly, and as you add crews, your gross margins may stay the same, but your operating margins are going to drop (and if you don't know the difference, you need to!). Do you have a pro forma for your scaled up business indicating that you'll actually be making more money with 5 crews? If not, create one and provide it. Believe it or not, you may not make much more if you're running things efficiently. And if you will, provide some substantiation.

- You don't want to make it sound like you're living on the edge. And you don't want to make it all about you. You said, "This year that paid for my living expenses but with another crew it would make things much easier." My first thought after reading that was that you're still having a little trouble paying your living expenses, and my money might actually go towards that instead of towards the business." In other words, you haven't convinced me that $30K is going to allow you to add a second crew *and* fix your cash flow problems.

- Provide some indication of customer satisfaction. This is huge. If you're running a service business, you should have reviews for your business somewhere. If you were to link to a review site showing consistent 5-star reviews, that's going to make investors much more comfortable. It would certainly make me much more comfortable. I want to know that when those 12 month contracts expire in a few months, most of your customers are going to renew. If you don't yet have a year in business to provide that data, it's your job to give some evidence that this will be the case. And customer reviews are a great way to do that.

Again, I'm not meaning to criticize. Just giving some feedback from the other side of the equation -- the potential investor.

Thank you for the honest feedback.

1. Specific terms: I did not request specific terms because beggars can't be choosers. What do I want? 300 thousand dollars at 1% apr. What will I take? I'll take 20,000 at *almost* whatever interest rate I can get. Because I know I can make money with it. There's 500 different combinations of funding terms that would be an instant "yes" from me. I assumed it would hurt me more than help me by being overly specific.

2. Customer demand: Our marketing spend was close to $1000 for the entire year. We still had to turn away dozens of people totaling about $40,000 of missed revenue. Customer demand is absolutely there. Also, because nearly all of our expenses are variable, even if there were 3 trucks and we only had 1 or 2 crews working, it would not decrease our profitability.

3. Business metrics: Yes, that includes operating expenses. And the way I have set up the business is for scalability. I can easily manage more crews. I only bid a customer's property once a year, so I don't need someone to bid jobs until there are more than 5 crews working. Also, I don't need anyone answering the phones. Our entire sales process is extremely automated, utilizing auto-respond emails and a great website. No I do not need to spend more that what I've already spent in technology for managing the systems in the business. I know that businesses do not scale linearly and mine is no exception. That is why I built my business with scalability in mind and have simple services that allows being able to hire low skilled workers with little training and little oversight necessary. It still works. All jobs are sent to Ipads bolted into the truck and can be tracked and managed easily from a laptop. With 5 crews there is still no need for any support such as management or secretaries. At 5 crews it would still have the same profit margins.

4. Personal expenses: 30k would be PLENTY for a second crew and cash flow. 20k would be fine too. I don't know what else to tell you. Perhaps I should just word it differently.

5. Customer satisfaction: We have 4.6 stars on google, and have a 90%+ customer retention rate this year (they can cancel just if they pay a cancellation fee).

Whatcha think?

 

[Johnny boy]

EDIT: Small business investment company (its a .gov) Investment capital

Just used slybroadcast to send a voicemail to 214 numbers from that list of investment companies. I'll go back and email them and link to a pitch deck if that doesn't work.

 

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[minivanman]

I’ve shared this example before somewhere on the forum but check out this guy;

Gardening Maintenance & Lawn Care | Jim's Mowing

Your trusted brand for professional gardening services and professional lawn mowing available all across Australia. Contact us on 131 546 today!

www.jimsmowing.net

Started off like you with one crew, now there’s literally a Jim’s for everything. Jim’s Tool tagging and testing, Jim’s Dog wash, Jim’s office cleaning, you name it Jim can do it!

Good ol' Jim. I didn't know he franchised anything except mowing. The problem is, I think every franchisee Jim has, hates him. lol I get it that he is not selling Friend franchises but still. lol I love it.... just sayin. Last I heard he wasn't doing as great as he used to be, atleast in the mowing business. Also, Johnny, Jim has his mug on every truck out there. All people have to do is see his face on the side and they know it's Jim. I always liked his trailers. Short and doesn't waste room. A lil better on fuel I'd imagine.

 

[Bearcorp]

Good ol' Jim. I didn't know he franchised anything except mowing. The problem is, I think every franchisee Jim has, hates him. lol I get it that he is not selling Friend franchises but still. lol I love it.... just sayin. Last I heard he wasn't doing as great as he used to be, atleast in the mowing business. Also, Johnny, Jim has his mug on every truck out there. All people have to do is see his face on the side and they know it's Jim. I always liked his trailers. Short and doesn't waste room. A lil better on fuel I'd imagine.

Haha I have his book on the shelf but I haven’t read it yet, my girlfriend read it and said he seems very eccentric and confrontational so I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t too popular!

 

[Mark Trade]

@Johnny boy here's a brain fart for you, that you haven't yet considered. Time to think outside the square. There's an old saying;

Don't go to the mountain to see Muhammad, have Muhammad come to you.

Mention has been made of a bloke down here in Oz, who cracked it with various Franchises using his name. Jim's Mowing, Jim's Gardening, (has the penny dropped).

No???????..............................Ok, why not contact Jim direct here in Oz, and simply ask him the question, "have you thought of expanding into America and Canada". My name is Johnny, I currently..................................or,

If I can take 5mins of your time, I would like to show you what I currently do, here are my figures for the prior 12 months and here is my projection for the next 12, however I'm sure you will agree that past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. So to cover that shortfall, should it arise, I will implement the following...............(penny dropping yet).

Plant a seed in his head and watch it grow, or simply ask him, if he would like to be a silent partner for a period of 12 - 24 months, ROI would be based on $??,?????. Take into account, currency exchange and fluctuation rates etc. Make it work, the worst he can say is No. You also get the benefit of his experience and trust me, he has a lot.

Jim's Group

Jim's Group

jims.net

 

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[minivanman]

Haha I have his book on the shelf but I haven’t read it yet, my girlfriend read it and said he seems very eccentric and confrontational so I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t too popular!

I didn't know he had a book. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Dang!! And he has his own group! I knew he was big in the mowing business but I had no idea about his other ventures. Good for him.

 

[Mark Trade]

I didn't know he had a book. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Dang!! And he has his own group! I knew he was big in the mowing business but I had no idea about his other ventures. Good for him.

Jim's Book: The Surprising Story of Jim Penman - Australia's Backyard Millionaire: Moolenschot: 9780730368151: Amazon.com: Books

Jim's Book: The Surprising Story of Jim Penman - Australia's Backyard Millionaire [Moolenschot] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Jim's Book: The Surprising Story of Jim Penman - Australia's Backyard Millionaire

www.amazon.com

 

[Johnny boy]

If that is all you want then I 99.9% guarantee that you already know someone who will have the spare money to invest.

You just don't know it and they don't know you are looking.

It is 1 or 2 of your existing lawncare customers.

Let me know if you need any clarification.

Dan

I'll talk to them. Good idea.

 

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[Bertram]

1. I'm looking for 20-30k

2a To buy another truck/trailer/equipment
2b To have enough cash to avoid being spread too thin and having cash flow problems the first few months of building up the schedule in the months of February and March.

3. The return on the 20-30 grand? I could easily provide 15% yearly returns on that, if not more. All while putting up everything I own as collateral. Each crew profits about 35-40 grand a year. So that's why I am eager to have more crews.

4. I don't have the personal credit. I've tried. I already self funded this thing for one crew. I'll be able to grow it naturally without any debt eventually. But that is not what I want to do.

What town or city do you work in @Johnny boy ?

 

[Johnny boy]

What town or city do you work in @Johnny boy ?

Puyallup Washington.