| | | | American Academy of Landscape Design
| February 9, 2009 | | | | | Greetings! Winter in Chicago is always an adventure and this winter has been no exception. From what I read from my Facebook friends, it's been nutty all over the place.
Sincerely, 
American Academy of Landscape Design
www.aaldweb.com
847-657-7900
| | ToodledoI know it's a little of my normal topics, but I thought I'd share a tool I've been using for awhile. Other iPhone users will no doubt sympathize with me when I say I miss my To Do lists. As great as the iPhone is (it IS pretty cool!), it lacks a built-in To Do or Task list. Enter Toodledo. I gotta say, managing tasks is really simple with this. The iPhone or iPod Touch version, available from the App Store, works really well on the phone. The desktop version is web-based, so you can access it from any computer. The free version is fine for most stuff, and the paid version offers much more power. | Grading and Drainage
Chicago, March 12-13 (link)
Tuition: $495 (Save $50 if you register by 2/19)
 Okay, we all know that water flows from high places to low places. We also know that it travels by the path of least resistance. Now what? You just got that design project on the sloped site. You know you'll need some steps. But how many? How big? Grading can a tough thing to get your head around. In this course we'll take it down to its very basics. We'll explore how to read a grading plan and how to create our own. Participants will shoot grades with various instruments, from the very low tech up to state-of-the art electronics. By doing it ourselves, we understand better. We'll translate field measurements into plan form, take our spot elevations and interpolate contours. You have to understand what you're starting with before you can design something new.
Following are comments from the Design Workshop we ran in January.
"It was great meeting you and getting the great first hand teaching from one of the best. Your design ability inspires me." - Grant W.
"Thank you for your workshop. I appreciated your down to earth approach to teaching design concepts and how much you shared with us on what you put into the many projects you worked on over the years. Your passion for aesthetically meaningful landscape designs came through in your teaching. You were able to distill your many years of experience into a workshop loaded with information, examples and professional feedback. Not an easy task for a short seminar." - Cheri S.
"You did a very good job of keeping the course interesting as well as informative. Just like composition or a comedians joke well, you managed to create a learning experience for us in the same manner. It all came about in an entertaining circle of knowledge. I wish I knew if I had the potential to be a great landscape designer like you.... I will give my employer good feedback about you and hopefully they will send some more of us to another class in the near future. I am looking forward to as many as they will allow me at attend." - Marilyn C.
APLD 5.0 CEUs
PLANET 2 Education Units
enroll now
| Etiquette and The Client
 In this newsletter, I've discussed sales numerous times. In my view, people don't want to be sold to, but they love to buy. Our goal in sales is to get them excited about buying and putting them in a position where they want to buy and want to buy now.
We also know that people buy from people they like and from people they trust. So Rule Number One is "Be Likeable." How do you do that? First of all, be a human! Be yourself. When you meet a potential client, you don't have to go into "sales mode." Pretend you just met them in a social situation and begin there.
Some simple (and probably obvious) ideas: Offer to take your shoes off when invited inside. Leave the cell phone in the car. Ask if they have any immediate time constraints. Arrive early. If you are running even a few minutes late, call ahead.
If these things irritate you too, consider how they may be received by a client or potential client: Answering a phone call in the middle of a face-to-face conversation. Who is more important, the person looking you in the face, or the person on the phone? Forwarding forwarded emails without cleaning up the previous recipients. Unless this history is important to the message, you may be compromising someone's privacy, someone you don't even know. And speaking of email, in a business communication, it's best to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. It's easy for texting slang and abbreviations to find their way into emails and often the tone of the intended message gets lost. Remember that the recipient may view such usage as lazy or uneducated. Here's an article with more.Is all of this obvious? I hope so. | 10 Step Design Process
UPDATE: DOCUMENTS FROM OUR 10-STEP DESIGN PROCESS WILL SOON BE AVAILBLE ONLINE. GO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW AND LEARN HOW THEY WILL HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS. SUBSCRIBERS TO THIS NEWSLETTER WILL NOTIFIED WHEN THEY ARE ONLINE.
 Recently I did an interview with Chris Heiler at LandscapeLeadership.com where we discussed the 10-Step Design Process we developed at Garden Concepts. It is the process that governed a client's experience from start to finish.
Chris has posted it for download to your iPod or to listen to online, but only for members. Check it out.
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