What don’t you know (well enough)?

One thing that I did not understand early on and for a long time after was that the concept of that all landscape architects need to know and be good at a certain template of skills and knowledge to succeed is not necessarily true due to the diversity of the profession. I think I wore cement shoes for quite a while trying to do what I was taught was the way to do things and how to compete in the profession. Once I got over that the things that I had to learn were specific to the niche that I was/am working in. You’ve heard that out of me a million times, so I’ll move on to more general thoughts.

How to get work.

Learning how business was being done locally is a huge thing that is true in any niche. We are all taught a cookie cutter idea on this in school, but I really had to observe the bigger picture on who was doing what, how work (and referrals) flowed in my niche, where opportunities might lie, what that I could do that was

valued by others in that work flow

, and what things I needed to learn to make me a valued team member.

Leslie, those three areas that you mentioned you are weak in are exactly the types of things that were beaten into our heads by professors and cheerleaders of the profession.

I do a ton of pool plans (especially since the Great White Shark spike here on Cape Cod). I don’t touch the pool guts other than for accounting for the structure of an automatic cover if one is being used. The pool contractor is going to hold the clients hand and pick out interior details and try to upsell on the gadgetry, so thee is no reason for me to do it.

I used to do some basic lighting plans, but there again the products and gadgetry options are huge and ever changing. I tell clients that and they are all good with it.

Irrigation in my area is not something people like too pay to have designed, so again nothing to worry about. The contractors take care of it (in the field without a formal plan).

A really good example of some of the things young people coming out of school can dwell on unnecessarily. … that and having to have superior hand drawing skills.

We were also taught that we are important and need to take control of everything landscape – the less you do the more diminished you are. This is something that took me forever to learn. It goes back to the most important thing that we need to do -Get Work. Every time we over reach we are affecting someone else’s livelihood. Some would call it “leaving money on the table”.

But here is the thing. Most of us work in a not so huge environment where we are known and cross paths with other players in our markets whether they are builders, architects, landscape contractors, nurseries, stone yards, lighting suppliers, irrigation installers, excavators, arborists, …. We can affect them by what we do and they can affect us as well. One of the biggest things is that anyone of these is a potential marketer for us.
Bringing us on board for any of these folks has the potential to enable them to make more money or to lose money they could otherwise make by using someone else. It can speed up their project or it can slow it down. We can leave open opportunities for any of them to upsell, or we can close those by over specifying. We can make their lives easier with a plan to follow, or we can complicate their lives by specifying methods that are not how they normally do things. Plenty of other examples out there, but the main point is that if you can make as many of those things positive for the people around you without compromising the job you will be a valuable asset and they will all be referring you as much as they can …. especially if the next landscape architect is not following the same philosophy – ie, doing it the way he was told to in school and by professional organizations.

When you think you can’t compete with the ones that are doing everything because they do the complete menu better than you can, you might not realize that the one thing that you can do better is serve a different menu that meets the jobs needs better.

Never underestimate the importance of making the entire design/build team happy and not just the client. The team and/or its members are going to be around a lot longer than a single landscape design client. They are potential free marketing. Just make sure that they have reason to market you over others.