Jamie Chen

From the professional magazines I read that my landscape design/build/maintenance company receives, things are picking up on the maintenance side. 

People are choosing to maintain the properties that they have and the people who do have their own properties are the most secure at this stage. It makes sense that they would protect their interests…[Read more]

I agree that those who sling their portfolios with intent will get the work out there. 

I think a major lack in general LA education is that aspect of the profession; how to go out and drum up business. 

We have to explain to all sorts of initially disinterested laypersons what our purpose even IS (and some of us don’t have a neat soundbite f…[Read more]

I just have a LinkedIn account right now, since I don’t have my own practice.

I think that if anybody wanted to tap into a “fan” relationship with their clients and have them do lots of “Likes” or whatever equivalent on other mediums, they’d have to be pretty high profile and have lots of built work. Or a TV reality show. 

Either that or do…[Read more]

Owning your own design business isn’t impossible. 

The big thing is whether or not people will pay for what you bring to the table. And if they can, you ARE in business.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what happens to the detriment of small design shops is that all the non-design work starts eating up the day. You spend more time chasing bits…[Read more]

I came across a similar question from the other side, the client side. It was a question posted to a gardener forum, where a home owner had just started looking into making their front yard and driveway better and was completely overwhelmed by all the different professions in the phonebook. 

Landscaper. Landscape contractor. A person who’s been…[Read more]

You are aware, perhaps, that having nice typeface and margins just so can only help presentations, but don’t have anything intrinsically to do with actual design?

So the big firms have standardization. Great. It seems like you wish to use their systems for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with good CRMs, project management, databases, and CAD…[Read more]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I’m still researching and I think something more CRM instead of a basic address book is needed. We need more detail than just basic contact info; who is a regular maintenance customer, who has spent over x amount of dollars with us and is therefore more lucrative and loyal. A way to tag them, pull up the tags quickly to…[Read more]

I’m wonder how you actually conceptualize designs yourself if you insist on such detail all the time right off the bat.
Don’t you do bubble diagraming at all? It’s not a plaza yet, it’s a nebulous “gathering space” connected with “circulation” indicated by dashed lines and everything has great big arrows, right? 

Thinking about species specifics…[Read more]