Are you sitting down right now? Then please, stand up. Turn around. Look at the poor cushion on your chair. You chair needs a break.

Idea? Go to MAHTS.

The final week of the MAHTS road show is now, with the big 2-day Atlantic City/ICPI certification/ Paverpalooza. Big fun. Big ideas. And food.

Listen. I’m sure your spouse is an awesome cook. But I’ve sampled the spread at MAHTS. The continental breakfast. The big buffet lunch. The hors d’oeuvres for dinner. (Tiny spinach cheese pies, spicy chicken on tiny wooden skewers? Awesome I tell you.)

This is $35, people. And you walk away with an EP Henry windbreaker. Even if you were to pull up to a drive-thru window and give the clerk $35, you’d be fortunate to walk away with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Let alone a jacket.

And those aren’t even the reasons you come to MAHTS. That’s just the icing on an awesome, grid-reinforced cake.

I could blather on about how EP Henry wants you to be successful, and that when you’re successful they’re successful, yadda yadda. You’re a smart contractor, so I’m not going to do that. I’m not big on the rah-rah.

Here’s what I'll do. I’m going to take a completely selfish angle to the whole of MAHTS. Let’s assume for now that EP Henry’s sole objective is selling more block (which hello? They ARE a business, you know). Forget about them for now. Let's just focus on the speakers.

They’ve got some awesome speakers. For example, one of our members, Jody Shilan, is a presenter for MAHTS. The guy knows his stuff. Enough that I dubbed him "The Snarky Professor" when he and I got to chat a bit.

He’s an excellent presenter and you get the sense that part of what makes him able to sell $100,000+ landscapes is his demeanor. When you watch him, absorb it. (That's Jody in the attachment below - he usually plays to a packed house, so get there early.)

And the most awesome part? Guess what he’s there to teach you? How to sell landscapes. The title of the class (Hardscape Design – Workshop) is a bit of a misnomer – he talks about design, but it’s more about designing during the sale, during the consulting process. How to manage the sales process, pick up on cues from the client and use that information to design something the client will buy. And how to recognize opportunities to upsell, and then how to do it. He’s really quite good at all of it. I mean I walked out of there having paid $50 for ice cubes despite it being well below freezing just outside. Sonofa...

Or how about one of the newer hardscape techniques, the use of flowable fill? Do you even KNOW what flowable fill is? (and I swear if you say “fill that flows” I’m sending you home with a note to your mother.) You’ll be able to hear from technical experts like Mark Antunes of EP Henry and design engineer Bart Shippee to teach you how flowable fill can give you stabilities for specific hardscape applications that you didn’t have the ability to build before.

And that’s just a few of the topics. What are some of the others? How about allowing your customers to finance their projects (no money down, that kind of thing)? There’s a track on LEED certification. Luxury marketing. Vander Kooi has a full day track on business skills.

Besides, you’re gonna need a break from all the snow plowing. Give yourself a day. Gets to MAHTS. Get WAY more than the $35 admission charge out of your investment.