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Billy Whelan comes highly recommended for his garden maintenance services.
Rodney College student Billy Whelan is ‘making green’ with a new lawn mowing business he launched in his lunch time.
The new company, Spotless Lawns and Maintenance, provides lawn mowing, weed eating, rubbish removal, garden and minor landscaping services.
It is part of Billy’s Year 12 business studies course, which requires him to devise a business and take it to market.
In this case, his market is the backyards of Mangawhai, although he has ambitions of expanding to Wellsford in the future.
“I thought mowing lawns would be satisfying and I would be able to enjoy being outdoors,” Billy says.
The project involved figuring out how much petrol his mower consumed per hour, so that he could factor his costs into his prices. He then set an hourly rate that pays him a minimum wage.
“I wanted to keep customers happy with the pricing. It was a bit of trial and error at the beginning, figuring out how long jobs would take.”
In the first week of his business, Billy has had 10 one-off jobs and has six recurring jobs on his books.
Billy says it leaves him enough time to still have a ‘surf life’.
He is a volunteer lifeguard, as well as a competitive sport surfer.
Billy will keep the business going until next year, when he plans to join the Navy.
