I started my own lawn mowing/weed pulling service I am a 45 yr old single mom . A couple of days ago a customer called up asking me if I wanted to do some work on his property I drove out there to take a look at it. It is a huge landscaped backyard with trails, shrubs, 2 fruit trees, a pond, and a waterfall. It has been overtaken by weeds as tall as 4 foot tall and theres cobblestone with weeds growing up thru the cracks the pond is 90% covered with cattails and overall it has unwanted plants and small shrubs everywhere. The customer wants it all removed pretty much everything thats living all greenery. (everything I mentioned above) heres my problem......Im not a proffessional company and I am interested in doing the job I just dont know what to charge without cheating myself and still staying under the price a proffessional company would charge. I have never done a project so big before and I need some help on what to charge this customer. also I am planning on doing the job myself I have a friend who is willing to cut down the 2 trees for me for free so I can just add the cost of that in with my pricing for the whole job size of property including house is9,844 sq ft / 0.23 acres   PLEASE can anyone help me as to what do I charge for this project? Or even suggest a site where I might find the info Im looking for. Thank you very much appreciated

troyann45/f/colorado

Judge Neil's Advice

I have never done professional landscaping, but from a general professional and common sense point of view I will be happy to give you some pointers.

First of all if you are in business you should really understand it fully or you are going to get yourself in trouble.  If you cannot adequately scope the work you should probably turn it down.  It sounds like you started out the service in a small scope within your expertise to make some extra cash.  Once you get your feet under you and grow you can start to expand out into other areas.

Now if you still want to go after the work after I tried talking you out of it, you should address several issues...

1) To get an idea of the price to charge you should check out local companies and what they charge.  You can use online yellow pages www.yellowpages.com and www.yellowbook.com to find a local vendor and pretend to be a client.  Talk to them about the job and see what they are charging.

2) You need to get paid up front.  Even if it goes against the industry norm.  It sucks doing work and not getting paid.  Even if he says he will pay right away, it sounds like you will have a subcontractor so you have to pay the sub anyway.

3)  Create a detailed statement of work.  Include specific details of EVERYTHING that will be done.  Will you cut the tree down?  What about the stump?  Who gets rid of the rubbish?  What is the time line?

4) Know your local laws.  There may be rules about landscaping work such as having contract licenses.  If you pull up a gas pipe with the tree roots who pays for it?  Are you insured?

Sounds like a lot of risk here... My advice would be to pass at this point and may think about expanding later....

TroyAnn

Congratulations on your new business venture. You definitely want to do your homework before taking on a large job. Working for free is bad enough but you certainly don't want to end up paying for the experience. A good resource for startup businesses is the US Small Business Administration www.sba.gov. Don’t do it alone, get good accounting, legal and business advice. Pay for it if you have to and be sure to account for these expenses in your pricing. Look into business organizations such as the Better Business Bureau www.bbb.org/us/for information, support and networking.

One way you could limit liability would be to breakdown the job into several smaller jobs which you could commit to one at a time or offer your services at an hourly rate in an arrangement where you would be working under your client’s direction. You may end up losing some or even all the work so be sure to watch your investment in the bidding and planning portion. Don’t forget to include your overhead expenses in your bid. Overhead expenses include but are not limited to your office expenses, transportation, time and material to prepare proposals etc. etc. It would be a bummer if your prospective client took your proposal to another service and selected their bid over yours. Actually that would really be a bummer since you have gone through the trouble of planning out the job and all your competition had to do was plug in pricing. A detailed statement of work (“SOW”) or proposal as mentioned by Judge Neil is would be advisable for either the smaller job breakdown or the hourly service. You want to make sure there is a clear agreement of the work to be performed. You may want to get good legal advice for verbiage to include on the SOW that would address unforeseen pre-existing conditions, natural disasters, relevant material or labor shortages etc. Your prospects will probably want to know how much the whole job is going to cost. Nobody wants to sign a blank check. You will have to work on your negotiation skills and present yourself as competent while still minimizing your business risk. GOOD LUCK and BEST WISHES