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United Kingdom
Be the McDonald's
of your town's gardens.
Not the bloke with a mower.
The brand, the local web page, the customer sign-up, the scheduling app and the price calculator are already built — and already running a real round in Swansea. £197 a year puts all of it in your name for one area, and locks everybody else out of it.
Two minutes. No payment today, and no salesman rings you.
- No van. No £10,000 franchise fee. No training academy.
- One operator per area — 1 running, 99 founding places left
- No monthly fees, ever — and your £197 never rises
Great businesses run on systems.
Building the system is the hard part.
Ask anyone whether it is faster to open a McDonald's or to build a burger shop from nothing. Nobody thinks the burgers are the hard bit. The hard bit is everything around them — the name people already trust, the way the day is organised, the till that just works.
Gardening is the same. You already know how to cut grass and trim a hedge. What takes the year off your life is the rest of it: a website nobody visits, quoting in the evenings, chasing money, a diary in your head, and being completely unknown to the street you are working on.
That is the part we have already built and already tested on a real round. You bring the graft and the local knowledge. You are not buying a job — you are skipping the year that most people never get through.
You could build all of this yourself.
Here is what that year looks like.
That road is walkable. Plenty of people walk it. It just takes a year, costs more than £197 a year, and most give up somewhere in the middle of it — usually in the first wet winter.
This isn't a plan. It's already running.
Everything on this page is the software the Swansea round is managed with today. Not mock-ups, not a roadmap — screens from the live system.
Your whole round on one screen
Open requests, active subscriptions, and who you are seeing this week. This is the actual dashboard — the Swansea round is run from it, which is why it has the things a round actually needs and not the things software companies think it needs.
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Who you are seeing, and when
Every customer and every visit day in one grid. It rains, you move the day, the customers are told. No phone calls, no diary in your head.
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Your own page, on a site that already exists
Your photo, your team, your prices, your reviews — on a domain with history behind it instead of one registered last Tuesday.
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Customers price themselves and sign up
They measure their garden, the calculator uses your rates, and they subscribe. You get a notification. That is the end of quoting in the evenings.
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Everything else that eats your Sundays
Customers, requests, your team, holidays and your rates — all in the same place, all on a phone while you are stood in a garden.
“I'm early, and I'd rather have the map full of people who are good at this than have £10,000 off ten of them. That is the whole reason the founding price is £197 a year instead of £997 and £47 a month. And to be clear, because I would want to know myself before handing anyone money: if you join at £197, you stay at £197. I am not coming back for the difference later, and I am not switching you onto a monthly. The higher price is for the people who turn up after the founding places are gone.”Ben Gillott Founder, Shear Power — still cutting grass in Swansea
What it costs to start a branded gardening business
| Route | Up front | Per year | Van | Exclusive area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lawnscience franchise | ~£24,000 +VAT | Ongoing fees | Yes | Yes |
| Greensleeves franchise | ~£10,000 +VAT | Ongoing fees | Yes | Yes |
| On your own | £0 | Website, software and paid leads — plus a year of being invisible | No | No |
| Shear Power | £0 | £197 | No | Yes |
Franchise figures are the fees those companies publish themselves. Check them — we would rather you did. They include equipment, formal training and a support department, and we do not pretend to match that. What we are is the version without the £24,000.
Everything in the box
- Exclusive rights to the Shear Power name in your area one operator, no exceptions
- Your own branded area page on an established site built & hosted
- The business app — schedule, customers, inbox, team, holidays included
- Customer sign-up and payments, running on your rates included
- The public price calculator for your area included
- Automated review capture included
- The printed Operations Manual, posted to you not published online
- Two branded work t-shirts posted with it
- Direct mentoring from Ben — not a call centre as needed
- Usual price for all of the above £997 + £47/mo
- Founders offer — no monthly, ever £197/yr
The Operations Manual is posted, not emailed, and there is no digital copy. It is the part that took years to learn and it is not going out as a PDF anybody can forward.
Thirty days to get you running
Your area page live, your rates loaded, customer sign-up working and the app in your hands. If that has not happened within 30 days and the hold-up is at our end, ask and you get the whole £197 a year back.
What we will not guarantee is that you will make money — that depends on you turning up in the rain. We are selling sophisticated business management software and intellectual property, not leads.
This is not for everybody
It works if…
- You already cut grass, or you are seriously about to start
- You would rather have 30 regular customers than chase one-off jobs
- You want your evenings back more than you want to build a website
- You are happy being the face of a brand in your own town
- You can start with a car, a roof rack and battery kit
Don't bother if…
- You want a business that runs without you — this is graft, in the rain
- You want a van, a uniform and a training academy handed over — that is the £24,000 option
- You expect leads on day one; the page has to earn them and so do you
- You want to undercut everyone locally and race to the bottom
- You are not willing to answer a customer within a day
From this form to a live round
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Today · 2 minutes
You tell us the area
We check it is genuinely free and a sensible size to run — some are too big for one person and we would rather say so now.
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Within a couple of days
A straight conversation
Not a pitch. We are both deciding, and we turn people down. Ask everything, including the awkward questions about money.
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Same week
Agreement, payment, login
The licence agreement in writing, £197 a year, and your login to the office app the same day.
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Day one
Your area goes live
Your rates go in, your page goes up, your sign-up form starts working, and the manual and t-shirts are in the post.
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From then on
You run the round
Customers land on your page instead of somebody else's, and you get on with the part you are actually good at.
Find out if your area
is still free.
No payment now and nothing is committed. We check the area, and if it has gone in the meantime we will tell you straight and show you what is left nearby.
- £197 a year, locked. No monthly fees, ever, and it does not rise later — the usual £997 + £47/month applies to whoever joins after the founding places run out.
- One operator per area. 1 running, 99 founding places left.
- 30 days to get you live or your money back.
Check your area
Takes about two minutes.
The questions worth asking
Will my £197 go up to £997 later?
No. Not ever. This is the question we would ask first too, so here it is in plain English: you pay £197 a year, and that is the number on every renewal for as long as you keep the area. No monthly fee ever starts. Nobody comes back for the difference.
The £997 + £47 a month is what a territory costs once the founding places are gone. It applies to the person who enquires after the last founding place goes — not to anyone already holding one.
It is written into the licence agreement as a fixed annual fee, so it is not a promise resting on us being nice about it. Read that clause before you pay anything.
What's the catch at £197?
That we are early. There are 3,793 areas on this site and 1 of them has somebody running it. A brand with one operator in it is worth very little, so the founding price is set to fill the map rather than to make money on licences.
The real catch, if you want to call it one, is that you are early too. You get the pick of the areas and a price nobody after you gets — and in exchange you are joining a name that most of your customers will not have heard of yet.
Do you take a cut of what I earn?
No. The annual fee is the fee. We do not take a percentage of your jobs, your subscriptions or your customers. If that ever changes it would apply to new licensees, not to yours mid-term.
Is it really exclusive?
One operator per territory. Nobody else gets your area at any price while you hold it, and your area page is yours.
What does still exist underneath you is the local directory — other gardeners can pay for a listing on the area page below your panel. That is deliberate and it is on the table from the start: it keeps the page substantial in search, which is what makes it worth being at the top of.
How much can I actually earn?
Ben earns roughly £200–£300 on a working day in Swansea on lawn cuts and hedge trimming. That is his figure, on his round, after years of building it — not a projection for you, and not a typical first year.
What you earn depends on your area, your rates, how many days you work and how bad the winter is. Gardening is seasonal and weather exposed, which is exactly why window cleaning is part of the model. Anyone showing you a guaranteed income figure for this trade is selling you something.
What happens if I want out?
You stop renewing. There is no multi-year tie-in and no exit fee. Your customers are your customers — you built those relationships and you keep them. What returns to us is the Shear Power name, the area page and the app.
The full terms are in the licence agreement, which you get in writing before you pay anything. Read it, and have somebody else read it too.
Do I need a van and £5,000 of kit?
No. A car or estate with a roof rack does it. The model runs on battery kit — quieter, no fuel to carry, fits in a boot, and no complaints from the neighbours at half eight in the morning. Petrol gear is for the occasional overgrown job, hired if needed.
You will need your own public liability insurance. That is on you, and it is not expensive.
What if Shear Power disappears?
Fair question and one most people are too polite to ask. You would keep your customers and your reputation — those are yours, not ours. What you would lose is the name, the page and the app. That is the honest risk of paying £197 a year instead of £24,000 for a business with a support department behind it.
Can you guarantee I'll succeed?
Of course not, and be wary of anyone who does. We guarantee our own end of it — live within 30 days or your money back. The rest is turning up, doing a tidy job and answering the phone. We turn down people we do not think will do that, which is the only quality control that actually protects the name.
No payment today. 99 founding places left.