Review of Landscape Leadership, a Membership Community for Landscape Designers

LandscapeLeadership.com is a new online design community which has great potential. The owner, Chris Heiler, has been active for years with the professional gardening communities online, like Ground Trades Exchange, so when I found out through the Garden Writer’s Discussion board that he had begun his own site for professionals, I was really excited.

The site is focused on creating and sharing the resources that will allow fledgling and experienced designers alike to take their business to the next level. Landscape design is a solitary pursuit for many of us, and it is a real benefit to have a private, ad-free place just for professionals to talk about how they do business and how to improve.

Ever wondered how other designers work? How much do they charge, what do their contracts look like, how do we all score new work? Landscape Leadership has made available numerous contracts, sales sheets, and other resources that others have used with success in their own design firms.

If you haven’t written up your own contracts for working with clients and contractors, or follow-up sheets to help you keep track of where your clients are in the sales process, no worries – you can customize the forms Chris provides (though you might like to run them by your own lawyer first if you have any concerns). If you do have your own established processes, you can compare them to the ones other designers use and see if there are any inspirations to take away.

I also love that Landscape Leadership is providing teleseminars, how-to videos, and audio downloads which focus on helping us be the best designers we can be.

There is a private Designer’s Forum as well, where we can ask questions of other designers and just generally form a trusted community of people who are truly serious about their landscape design business. I don’t know about you, but when I have a question or problem, I don’t have a lot of in-person friends who really know what my business is like who can advise me. The close, community feel of the forum makes me feel that it is a place where we can share frankly and really be honest about the problems we may encounter as designers.

Now, I do think this is an amazing new resource, but I do have a few small quibbles about the site, which Chris has been responsive to and is hoping to change in future:

One is that in order to download the forms, videos, etc, you have to click through three pages and accept the terms and conditions to finally download. This is a limitation of the software Landscape Leadership is using to run the site, and will likely be fixed in time. There are also some quality issues with his audio downloads – the content is fantastic, but the audio quality itself is poor. EDIT Nov 09: Both of these issues have improved substantially and are not an problem anymore – yay!

The other is that since it’s still a brand new site, there are only about 70 members as of December 2008 – pretty good for only being open a couple months! But most of the members are not very active yet, so while the forum feels like a great community, it could be so much more.

That’s why I’m spreading the word about this excellent new resource – the more people join, the better the community will be! There’s a $1 trial membership so you can poke around, check out the quality of the downloads and articles, and see if it’s right for you. Then it’s only $15 a month.

While some people may not like to pay for an online resource, think about this: if the professional tips you gather from the articles helps land you one job, did the yearly membership pay for itself? If the contracts provided keep you out of court from just one nasty client every five years, isn’t that worth it?

I’ve found that we value and use what we pay for, and the paid membership sites that I belong to have a much higher caliber of discussion than the freebie forums online. The forums that are free have horrible, intrusive advertising, anyone can read them (including your clients!), and there’s always a few idiots bringing down the tone of the discussion.

So far, Landscape Leadership is respectful, people are really sharing the nitty-gritty of how they do business, and I’m finding myself checking back often to see what’s going on and what new tips I can pick up. Click on the link below to try it out with the $1 introductory membership.