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Andrew, firstly sympathy. I am in the process of recovering from a serious health event and have not worked for 2 months but am fortunate that staff have kept things running albeit at a cost, at 67 have no intention in going back to what I was doing previously.
As to your op delay have you considered going private ? Most providers offer interest free options or could you take out a loan or mortgage? Just a thought.
Anyway going off the question, been in the trade over 40 years and 95% commercial and only do price work so hopefully can give some advice.
You say " business lawn mowing" so you mean commercial site grass cutting? If so there is a problem you will find that commercial sites will want a complete service of mowing,shrub pruning,weed control, leaf clearing, litter collection and will only want one provider are you able to do this? If so fine.
Getting commercial sites is not easy as unless you get in on a brand new site, the rest will more than likely have a contractor so you have to offer an incentive for them to change to you - better service, price reliability etc it's not easy and takes a combination of advertising and cold calling and persistence and most importantly presenting yourself and your business in a highly professional and competent manner to give the prospective client confidence.
As to pricing - look at a site and gauge the number of hours it will take to maintain to the clients spec ( most commercials are charged on a flat monthly rate, eg £1200 for 12 months the client pays £100 pcm for 12 months this is pretty standard in our experience) so take the number of hours and multiply it up by a minimum of between £60 and £120 per hour to arrive at a figure for 12 months maintenance. Yes not easy to guess how many hours when you have no experience of maintaining large sites and expect to make mistakes. Even after 40 years I still do! Oh and never disclose to the client the hourly rate!
Good luck anything else please ask.
Morning Peter.thankyou for your reply. The op delay was out of my hands unfortunately,admin in the hospitals had got lost,that's from last June unfortunately.so,moving forward, I'm not ,I'm still on a waiting list to see the surgeon,so in the meantime my wife has doom scrolled the internet and found a specialist that focuses on muscle imbalance around the hip,which is actually helping a great deal.at least i can do the odd job here and there with the help of my son while i support a walking stick.hopefully keeping my clients happy is the key.sometimes i just can't get out at all.
moving forward i have enough time to think about progressing.very interesting about when my son will be with me full time about the split invoicing.food for thought.thankyou for the guide in pricing.total different ball game to my hourly quoting as I have been doing.
Hi Andrew
A simple approach would be to find the right domestic properties where you can job share and invoice the customer separately .
You are probably looking at the larger gated properties where you can multi task but allocate your individual skill sets even though you may have complimentary skills it works best when you specialise e.g .
One maintains the lawn , keeps the edges looking crisp ,keeps the patio looking clean , general tidyness , the other person maintains the borders ,pruning ,topiary etc but keep everything flexible so you can collaborate on bigger tasks such as hedge cutting .
It gives the customer some initial definition on why you are invoicing separately .
Obviously a solo gardener is a very budget friendly option for a customer but in reality a big place always looks shabby because it's hard for one gardener to keep up unless they want you Five days a week whereas Two or more adds value .
It's just a suggestion it worked for me and you have probably realised how physically demanding and sometimes demoralising a solo effort can be when the sums don't add up for the effort you put in .
Hope you get your hip sorted quickly Andrew and make a speedy recovery.
All the best .
That really is very sad to have to stop the work you must enjoy. I'd be really upset and I'm 72! Don't like to sound pessimistic but would it be an idea to just pack up the gardening work for something less physically draining? Might be wrong here but can't help feeling that continuing this line of work will put a lot of strain on an artificial joint which has a limited lifespan.... you don't want to have to have it replaced in a few years.