How To - Lawn Sprinkler

Craig,

We just ordered your sprinkler system course. We are located in Austin, Texas.

I wanted to share with you that I almost didn’t make it to the end of your website because of all of the negative comments about lawn maintenance. It was almost as negative as the political campaigns!!!

Our company, ###### #### Lawn Care, specializes in residential lawn maintenance. Last year, we mowed over 26,000 lawns. We have already done that many this year. We grew 20% last year, and we are up 11% this year. That is good, considering we had only 1-5/8 inches of rain from June 1 to Oct 1. And we had 44+ days over 100 degrees. And, someone said there was a downturn in the economy this year. Not true with us. We will do about $1,150,000 in sales this year.

We are also licensed irrigators. We have never installed because that is too competitive, and requires an aggressive sales force, of which we have none.

We do sprinkler repair for our customers (about 300 with sprinkler systems). Your presentation indicated we could make a lot more money by pushing the lawn sprinkler repair. So, bring it on!

Jerry

Hi Jerry,


I do have a site that is negative, , but it’s geared toward guys that think they can quit their office job and go make loads of money in lawn care field. Unfortunately the lawn care industry is to a large extent price driven, versus quality driven. Every day I see the “cheap guys” cutting the St. Augustine grass at two inches with dull blades and “weedeating” the bed lines. I try telling the home owner that no amount of water and fertilizer can overcome poor horticultural practices and they reply “yeah, but they’re cheap”.

Here in Florida anybody that can yank a pull cord or change a spark plug puts out a shingle as a “landscaper”. And they fail at a very high rate. This is not to say that you, or Tru-Green or Valley Crest do not make a lot of money. However, I can say that during my five years at Valley Crest, the irrigation repair division consistently made a higher net profit than the other divisions.

My pitch to these “wanna-be” landscapers is that instead of throwing 15-20 grand at a lawn care start-up, just get some hand tools, some training and a four cylinder pickup truck and repair lawn sprinklers instead. As you know, running a successful lawn care business takes at least as much knowledge as repairing irrigation. Without training, these “newbie landscapers” go out and scalp the grass and trim every Ligustrum tree into a mushroom shape and all the shrubs into squares or spheres. Taking care of living things correctly is harder than repairing pipe and sprinklers.

I apologize if my sales copy offended you, but I stand by what I believe.