If you had unlimited start-up capital what kind of firm would you start

[Thomas J. Johnson]

hhhhmmm… interesting. good point. think i’ll go buy a couple lottery tickets…

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I don’t know that it would be exactly the same with an LA office, but over the years I heve seen and heard so many people who thought that they could expand their landscape companies of all sorts beyond their own abilities by hiring all the right people to run their company better than they could. …. none of them could do it.

I do know lots of people who succeeded and brought in competent people under themselves to run aspects of the company, but I’ve yet to see anyone hire anyone who exceeds their own overall ability. Simply put, no one who has established his competency is going to entertain the idea of making it or taking it to the next level for someone who has more to gain from the employee than to give to the employee. They will either go on their own or to someone who has more to give.

It is a nice idea to buy a firm, sit in the corner office, and having all the right people making things happen, but it may not play out that way for long.

[mark foster]

Plus, the question is not “if you were rich”, it’s “unlimited start-up capitol”–which means you have to create something which is economically viable–not just a great hobby.

And why buy a firm in which you are not going to do anything!   Would you treat it like an ant farm or sea monkeys and watch it grow? Would you rename it Chia-Firm?

And just to be clear Trace–my first comment about the post BSLA education was not a total jest intended to dump on academics. It was about all the things that we have to learn by hard knocks and trial and error after school. I really do wish there was a post-bach school like that for those of us going into private practice.

 

[Trace One]

post-bach school for architects and LA’s is the apprenticeship, in other words, the two (or three) years of work you need before you can take the test, Mark.

And I have to re-iterate my support for Henry and his valuation of the teaching of pure design, while in school. How many  others have expressed that sentiment on this site? None, I think.

 I am aware that your bad-spelling post  was not in TOTAL jest, and I am also aware that it is unfortunate that you think spelling has anything to do with landscape (perhaps it is just lack of wit..we are not all James Thurber’s of course), but it also symbolizes the anti-academic ocean that has swept our society..Much to our detriment, IMHO…Middle east experts? – we don’t got ’em…Arabic speakers? We don’t got ’em….Adam Sandler types – we got ’em..

[mark foster]

trace–

My first post was not a total jest.  My second post, (the bad spelling post) was a total jest.  Condemn me for a poor attempt at humor, but slow down the “it symbolizes the anit-academic ocean that has swept our society” train.

I did not offer the first post as a criticism of academics or learning.  It was an attempt to present this idea only:   We could structure and condense the study of what takes private practioners decades (not 2 or 3 years) of hit or miss, haphazard, incomplete and random experience to learn beyond academics. 

It would have been something I could have used starting out–I have found that many regrets of my life revolve around not learning these things fast enough.  If I had the resources, it would be something I would like to attempt, to “pass it forward”  Thats all.

If you find my first post “anti-academic” fair enough.  I meant it to be something beyond present day academics because a person who’s profession is teaching can teach only so much to a person who’s profession will be landscape architecture.

[Trace One]

ok, sorry, Mark, you don’t deserve to be the focus of the the abuse that I want to condemn our entire society over.

 

But still, like I have said in previous posts, ALL my studio professors in my MLA degree were working, just about – and working at the height of their talents and profession..There was a pipeline, in fact, from the school to jobs with firms in Philly, whose principles (sp??) taught at Penn..

so perhaps times have changed…Or Penn was (is? don’t think so..) unusual…

[Nic Wurzbacher]

I would like to work with you. You said EXACTLY what i was thinking.

[Author]

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