Not many businesses have a process in place to get good reviews and majority of the ones that do are pushy, thus damaging word of mouth.

I think the way to go about it is to simply do a great job and have a small print out that has a QR code to your google review page. You can simply say to the client “if you’d like to leave a review, i’d greatly appreciate it”.

Also, customers don’t generally know about the importance of 5 stars so on your print out you could have something that mentions how appreciated 5 stars are or something like that.

Give your customer the choice and make it easy for them.

I’d cut out the physical labour entirely. Sell a product, you have the knowledge, ability and experience to sell so that’s what you should do. You could even start a dropshipping store and apply your sales knowledge to the online world. This has very little start up costs and very little time commitment.

Also, employees becoming your competitors is not something you can control, only mitigate. Hell if you treat them well enough you could profit from their business. Employees are still people, just like you and I. They’re influenced, manipulated, spoken down too, motivated, aggravated- just like us. Treat them like a human being and invest in their future (not only the future within the company) and you will come out much better then you left off.

I assume the manufacturers sell to many different retailers/outlets?

That’s quite interesting, I just looked it up and it appears to be common practice. I personally don’t see the point but none the less I was mistaken

She won’t reply. You asked to sell her soap under your brand, why would she want her soap to be known under a different brand? You need to ask if you can sell her soap at your shop (which would probably sell other soap or what have you). Not rebrand an item.

Offer them a slight discount. ‘I usually charge this but with the family discount it comes to this’. Giving friends and family discounts will bolster your word of mouth. You can still make profit while giving a discount.

As has been previously said, customers will return if you serve them well. I think the best way to do that is adopt a customer centric approach to your business and ideologies. Putting customers above profit (something not many business actually do) has many benefits.

Those prices wouldn’t work for you. People charge that if they have a zero turn which can smash through an acre quite quickly, making $70-90 reasonable. You’d be only doing small yards until you upgrade equipment.

If all you need is a push mower, buy a relatively cheap one, charge slightly higher then what others are charging and see how you go. Adjust pricing depending on how long you take and how many clients you are getting.

Maybe try some social psychology tactics- you could put certain things in the limo that discreetly nudges the client to give a tip. Research would of course need to be done so the strategy is actually effective as poor execution will have the opposite effect.

Surely there’s a good method of getting tips that’s been thoroughly tested. I’d recommend finding one of these methods.

The main thing is not getting into debt. That’s where all the risk is if the business fails. At the start you may have to use some of your savings to get up and running, successful businesses spend time and money preparing before launching. I spent about $3000 over a few months of my personal money getting my business set up which is really nothing in the grand scheme of things. Just DO NOT get a loan.