The question is: Would it be a waste of time to start a business if there are 188 lawn care/landscaping companies in a four-county area?
The answer is: No. Competition is a good sign. If you were going into a market and there weren’t any lawn care and landscaping companies or there were three or four and that’s it, that would concern me. I’m in Texas in probably one of the most competitive markets in the Unites States and there are tons and tons and tons of companies and there are a ton of companies popping up all the time. That’s a good sign. That means that we’re in a market that there’s a lot of demand. Of course there’s a ton of companies fighting for that demand, but there’s a lot of demand.
Any business that’s of any value or any industry that you can serve that’s of any value will have a tremendous amount of competition. It’s your job to figure out how to be better than the competition. You need to just simply figure out how can you be the 189th company but be in the top five. Be one of the best. You won’t be able to do that in year one and you won’t be able to do it in year two. It’s going to take some time. But you can start out being pretty good and you can get better and better. The competition will not be a problem for you.
There’s absolutely nothing about that that would scare me off. In fact, I would not go into a business that there wasn’t a lot of competition. I operate under the belief that I can do better than most of the competition. Competition is good. It proves it’s a good market. If there aren’t people out there on the Internet that can Google, searching for companies like you, that would be another thing I’d be concerned about. That’s not going to be a problem at all in a market with 188 companies. You know there’s a ton of people looking for vendors that need help. That’s a really good sign. Go for it. Good luck.
