Lawn & garden
Mowing. Edging. Hedge trimming. Garden tidies. Plant watering.
One-on-one 4-week program to launch your local service business.
Four Saturday mornings online. First paying customer by your final session — or I keep working with you until you get there.
Some roles are quieter than they used to be. Costs are higher. Australians are spending differently — more on local services, more on the things that make daily life work.
Lawns still need mowing. Dogs still need grooming. Houses still need cleaning. Cars still need detailing. The work that has to happen in person, near where people live or work, isn't going anywhere. And the people doing it well are in higher demand than ever.
That's why I built Service Starters. To sit down with one person at a time and help them start a local service business and land their first paying customers. It's not overnight success. It's a start.
Unlike almost anything else you could start, this one is taking bookings within weeks — not someday. That's what makes it worth setting up properly.
One good job becomes monthly. The same lawn next month, the same dog next groom.
Most customers live within a 20-minute drive. Flyers, neighbourhood groups, local pages — close-to-home channels do the work.
Fast to start.
The kind of business you can begin on a Saturday — and still be running ten years from now.
Real services. Already in every Australian suburb. We don't teach you the work — we teach you how to turn it into a business.
Mowing. Edging. Hedge trimming. Garden tidies. Plant watering.
Residential. Commercial. End-of-lease. Builders cleans.
Mobile grooming. Dog walking. Pet sitting. Training.
Handyman. Painting. Repairs. Small builds. Maintenance.
Hair. Nails. Beauty. Massage. Personal training.
Detailing. Pool servicing. Pressure washing. Tutoring. Personal cooking. Aged care.
Don't see yours? If it's local, hands on, and people will pay for it, it probably fits.
A plan you can act on. Pricing set. Service named.
A first paying customer. Money in your account.
Most people don't stall because the work is hard. They stall because they can't see what "start" actually looks like. Service Starters takes you from one to the other. Four Saturdays. Just you and me. That's the whole job.
Hey,
For 12 years I helped people start service businesses. Not as a coach or consultant, but as the franchisor of a brand that grew from one location to over 30 across Australia and New Zealand. Some of those operators built something they loved. Some didn't. That's how it goes.
I exited in 2024, and since then I've spent a lot of time with existing and aspiring service business owners. The pattern I keep noticing is that people who haven't started are trying to solve problems they don't have yet — scaling, hiring, route efficiency, fancy branding, the perfect business name — when none of that matters until you have a paying customer.
I've watched more than 30 people go through this now, and I know which week people quit. It's the same week almost every time — the one after the first push, when nothing has landed yet and the doubt gets loud. This program is built around that week. Just you and me, four Saturdays, and someone who's seen it thirty times paying attention at the exact moment you'd otherwise walk.
— Nik
Looking forward to meeting you.
ABN, business name, the boring set-up done properly and out of the way.
Priced from what the job actually costs you, not from what the bloke down the road charges.
Live and findable. Someone can book you and pay you.
Designed, sent to print, and distributed in your suburb — not sitting in a drafts folder.
Money in your account, from someone who isn't related to you.
Me, one-on-one, through the whole program — plus a standing line to reach me after it ends.
Live with me, one-on-one — not recordings. 9:30–11:00am AEST on four Saturday mornings, starting the week you're ready. This is where the artefacts above get built.
Before week one you'll arrive ready — ABN sorted, business name decided, a basic visual identity built, and demand validated from real conversations.
The tools we use to run a service business — booking, payments, calendar, and customer comms — set up with you, plus the shortcuts that save weeks.
Define the offer, set pricing the right way, get your page live. By Sunday night, someone could find you, book you, and pay.
Map your channels, design a flyer, send it to print, start warm outreach. The hardest week, but the one that brings customers to your door.
The systems, the show-up, the ask-for-the-next. Most first customers land in week 3 or 4 — be ready when yours does.
Read what's working. Set the weekly rhythm. The program ends. The work doesn't.
Coffee in hand. Log into Zoom. Just the two of us.
Quick check-in. Where you got to this week, where you got stuck.
The week's teach. Pricing. Channels. Delivery. Whatever this Saturday is.
We work it on your actual numbers. Real decisions, made there and then.
Questions, sticking points, whatever's in the way.
We close. The week's work begins.
Guaranteed two ways. Withdraw after the first Saturday, for any reason, and I refund the full $2,850 — no questions. And if you show up every Saturday, do the homework, and still haven't landed a paying customer by your final session, I keep working with you for another 30 days, free, until you get there. No fine print. No "but actually."
— Nik
A course. A video library. A Discord where you're on your own. A mindset retreat.
It's also not for ecommerce, dropshipping, digital products, agencies, or online-only anything. Service Starters is for real local services — a person or a business pays you to do something for them, in person, near them.
And it's not for people who haven't worked out how they'll deliver the work. We help you find your first customers. The means of delivering — equipment, vehicle, supplies, whatever it takes — needs to be sorted, borrowed, or planned before we start.
Better than most alternatives. One in three Australian households now pays someone for help around the home — $6 billion a year and growing. Pet spending hit $21.3 billion last year, up 35% in three years. Services spending is climbing at the fastest rate since 2023. The work is local, hands-on, paid promptly, and unautomatable. The harder question isn't whether to start — it's why you haven't yet.
Because they reward showing up. Because nobody is going to offshore your local lawn round, automate your dog grooming, or build an AI that fixes a leaky tap on Sunday morning (yet). Because the most boring businesses are also the most resilient. And because the time-to-first-dollar is days, not years — which matters when you need this to work.
It's four Saturdays of my time, one-on-one, plus the work between sessions and more time after if you need it. A month of undivided attention costs more than a seat in a room, and there's no room here — it's just you. If it turns out not to be for you, withdraw after the first Saturday and get the full $2,850 back. The terms are in the guarantee above.
Apply anyway. You need a skill you could honestly sell locally — we'll validate the idea and turn it into a business in week one. If you're stuck on what to start, say so on the application. That's a conversation worth having.
It probably fits. If it's a local service someone pays you to do in person — cleaning, lawns, grooming, detailing, trades, the lot — it fits. It works best where the work repeats, but that's not a rule. If you're unsure, put it on the application and I'll tell you straight.
It's four set Saturday mornings, but you pick the four weeks — you start when you're ready. And because it's just you and me, if life genuinely gets in the way of one, we move it. The rhythm is the point, though: four Saturdays close together works, drifting doesn't. If you can't give it four Saturday mornings, this isn't the right month to start.
You can start alone. Most people don't — they think about it for another year. Four weeks, someone who's launched more than 30 of these sitting with you one-on-one, and a hard finish line by your last session is what turns thinking into doing.
Yes. We'll build a business of your own — your customers, your pricing, your brand — instead of you being one of many on a platform. If you're already at 10+ regular customers and looking to scale, this isn't the right program. Different stage, different work.
Most programs are content libraries with a Discord attached. You watch videos alone, and the watching gets mistaken for progress. The difference was never the content — you can already google how to start a lawn round. The difference is it's just you and me, every Saturday, on your actual numbers, with no group to disappear into. I notice the moment you stall. That's what you're paying for.
Not at all. Most people I work with are first-time owners. The program is built for exactly that — someone with a skill or an idea who hasn't taken the step yet. Run a business before and want to start a new one? That's fine too. Both work.
The $2,850 is the whole cost — there's nothing else to pay me. The tools you'll need to run the business (booking, payments, tax) have their own pricing and are your call; most people run on under $100 a month. You keep everything you build, and a standing line to reach me after we're done.
Yes. Every one. I reply within 48 hours whether you're in or not. If you're not the right fit right now, I'll tell you why and where to go from here.
$2,850inc GST
One payment. That's the whole cost.
Withdraw after the first Saturday, for any reason, and it's fully refunded. See the guarantee.
If you've read this far,
you're probably the kind of person this is for.
The application takes two minutes, then a short call before anyone pays. I read every one.
— Nik
Tell us about yourself and your service business idea, and I'll get back to you within 48 hours.