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You might want to start out a little more cautiously until you get a better handle on it. You could do design work and include reviewing bids and making recommendations rather than being a general contractor until you really know what you are doing.
Everyone wants to make money marking up other peoples work because there is a lot of money to be made doing that. But that situation only exists when you manage the entire job. You'll find that you won't get too many opportunities to draw up a design and then find a few subs to do it while you stay out of the way and make a percentage. The reason to pay a general is for the capability to not only find subs, but to schedule them, get the best out of them, inspect their work, approve it AND REJECT it, and to have the ability to get them to finish it right. That means you have to know whether their work and materials is good and that you can stand up to them when it is not. Until you can do that, there really is no sense for someone to hand the reins and the % over to you to do it.
Project management is how that mark up is made. It is a big risk to take that money and then to hope that the subs will all just work out. No one wants to pay extra without getting extra and you, or I, or anyone else, won't get those contracts for very long if we don't back it up.
One thing you, and other designers, have to really think about is that there can be very expensive consequences as a result of our designs that come from "errors and ommissions". That can be from not noticing that you diverted water runoff and it causes damage to someones finished room in a basement or ice at the end of a driveway that causes a fatal accident, or who knows what. A $500 design could cost you thousands in damages just from what you draw on paper. Thatgets multiplied if you are hired to manage the job and the subs do work that you do not reject and a retaining wall fails and crushes a Mercedes or a kid in the process.
That kind of responsibility needs experience to keep you financially safe from damages and in order for you to get the work. You have to realize that your potential clients will always look at you in comparison to others as a whole package. All it takes is one person who they feel is better suited to complete the whole package, even if your design ideas sound great, and you are left out if you are trying to sell the whole package.
Someone else made the point that people shy away from hourly rates and cost plus because, well, if you can't estimate the cost, how would you expect them to? So, it is much easier to sell jobs when you can say it will cost $x. Now you have to understand that you do not have to sell the complete job since it is out of your expertise at this time. You can sell the design work first, which in my way of thinking should always be the case even if you were to build it.
The key to selling design work and not having the client bleed you with revisions and lots of extra exercises is to write contracts that state exactly what you will do as specifically as possible including how many times you'll meet with them, how many revisions you'll allow, and MOST important - the hourly rate that you will charge for work outside that defined contract. You will be amazed how decisive people will become and how smoothly the process moves because they will make sure to stay within those bounds. You can also put many disclaimers in your contracts and on your plans to cover your tail.
After that, you can give them another proposal to help select contractors and consult with the contractors. You may want to review bids and make recommendations for hiring contractors for small money as it will give you an opportunity to get a feel for what they charge which is very valuable in making price estimations in the future without a whole lot of responsibility. It also gets contractorsto see you as a source of work for them which never hurts at lunch time or cocktail hour.
It is not easy making a living as a designer because most people look at the contractor as the one stop shopping and they see them out building work they like. Many ask who landscaped you house and few answer with the name of a designer. In order to get the design/project management work you have to be the first contact which is very hard to do. Garden Centers, landscape contractors, architects, and engineers will have more first contact than a landscape designer.
Next point. You want to be an "environmental" landscape designer. That cuts out a big portion of an already hard to work market which ties one hand behind your back. The home owner market for environmental landscaping is very very weak. They tend to be earthy people with a strong liking for doing things themselves. Where environmental landscape design has a market is not with the earthy crunchy folks, but with bigger developers in highly regulated areas (I do a lot of this). The place to get work out of this is by making contact with land surveyors and civil engineers. These projects are designed in the permitting process long before many people even know a piece of land is getting developed. I have to warn you that it is very political and you have to work as an advocate for the developer and not Green Peace. The good news is that you get to apply your creativity and knowledge to soften the impact of development that was going to take place with or without you. Best of all, you will be known to the client before he begins to think of the rest of the landscape design and why change horses in mid stream?
Look into "errors and ommissions" insurance to cover your tail.
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