[NatureByDesign]

Hi everyone, this is my first time on this forum and i love it i have been reading non stop for a couple hours now and everything i read is really making me think about my own experiences and choices i have made. In order you to understand me i have to tell you all a little about myself. This is my first season as a freelance landscape designer, ( i know, hell of a time to start my own business). I have a degree, bachelors degree in environmental design and ornamental horticulture from DVC in PA and am currently working central NJ. My phone is slow, my advertising isn't getting me very far and I'm picking up new landscape contractors every couple weeks. I understand times are tough and people who are well established are also going through what i am. but it is very depressing for me. i am honestly at the crossroads of my life and am in total confusion. What do i do now, where can i go from here. and what am i going to do in the winter. I am still young so the idea of going back from my MLA has come across my mind but has pasted just as quickly because i know the work that would be expected of me and i think i have desire to go through it all again. i currently design everything using a program knows as vectorworks and i know most school still use hand rendering and autocad both of which i don't enjoy. i really do love what i do and as far as I'm concerned do a pretty a good job at when i have job. Like others have written everyone wants to get paid for their work and everyone wants to make $80,000 and up. i have come to the conclusion that this maybe a little far fetched for me due to my location and market i currently work in. but i just don't know what to do? do I stick it out and chalk this year up to learning or do try and a find a firm (which i have also had poor success with). what do i do? is it the economy, is it me? is it my advertisement? what should i do? throw in the towel, or push on. what do you think i should do?...

I also apologize for any grammatical errors but its too depression to reread what i wrote.

[roccon31]

im in exactly the same predicament you are in! i posted last night in a thread called "its bad" about similar things.

since you went to delval, you know my location. 10 minutes north of there. VERY slow around here.

i have been toying with the idea of finding someone like yourself to team up with and diversify my target market to do a broader range of work. i come from an excavating/paving/drainage background and this is 90 percent of my business. adding a landscape architect with a degree may be something i need, and maybe for you adding someone like myself would benefit your business. if you wanna talk about it further send me a PM! i'd be happy to listen to your situation and see if i can offer any help.

i told a very successful friend of mine last month "if i can survive the next year or two in this kind of market, i think i'll do just fine if and when the market returns." he agreed wholeheartedly and told me to hang in there as long as possible. makes a big difference in morale when people you look up to truly believe in you!

[Stonehenge]

I would tend to agree with roccon31 - Even though this is just your first year, if you can tough it out, but more importantly, learn how to scrap and scratch in a market like this, when things turn around you're going to be a much better business person for it. It's too easy to run a business fat and loose when times are good. Over the last three years I was forced to take a good hard look at how we do everything, where we spend our money, how we promote the business. Everything. And as I mentioned in Pelican's thread, I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but we're doing very well this year. Amidst all the competitors going out of business, we're rocking. If it wasn't so late in the season, I'd be hiring. But it's only because we got aggressive about how we handle our money, our people, our clients, our materials and our equipment.

If you want, PM me with what you're doing for marketing and I'll give you my $.02.

[Fine Edge]

Here's a good idea....
Instead of wasting your time trying to find work in a sluggish economy as a freelance designer just out of school, use all of the knowledge that you just paid for and work for another firm for a few years.
"But it's slow around here", Soooooo .... Get online, call other firms, post your resume, pack your things and move to another part of the country.
Don't just sit around and wait for things to happen in a big way especially since you are just fresh out of college. I'm sure your schooling wasn't cheap, was it? Who's paying those bills?
Get moving, you need to really look at ALL other options in your life. I've packed up and gone somewhere else before when my area of the country took a hit from the recession in the early 90's. Never went back.

Plus, I thought the only good things in Jersey were Eagles fans.
GO BIRDS!!!!!

[jshilan]

I agree with Fine Edge, try to work for an established firm. Even if it was a good economy, there is not a lot of value to contractors or homeowners with a minimally experienced designer. Depending on your interests, either work for an LA firm or a DB firm. If you do go the DB route, you should expect (and want) to work in the field. The only way to become good at your craft is to see built work. The only thing better is actually building the work with your own hands and see what is involved in the process. Learn everything you can in both design and production. Learn construction techniques, material costs, estimating, selling, customer service, plant material etc.

I am 30 years into this and building your designs or other peoples designs, is the absolutely the best way to learn how to design. It's easy to draw circles, but when those circles have a cost, size and weight associated with them, it's a whole new ballgame.

A few years ago I found some of my old drawings from when I just got out of school, they were so unrealistic that they might as well have been cartoons.

Get experience, design what you can and don't get down. This is a fantastic field that can be very rewarding and enjoyable. I tell people that I have the greatest job in the world. I get to play in the dirt, color, and improve the quality of peoples lives. Not a lot of people can say that.

I'm in Northern NJ (Giants and Jets territory).

Good Luck!

[NatureByDesign]

thank you everyone, i really do appreciate your advise and life experiences you have shared with me. however, truth be told i graduated in 2005 and worked for a large design/build for 3 years unfurtinately i was let go after the market started to slow down in november, and because i was not able to find another company to go work for, i started my own. i have quite a bit of experience in the field, i have worked for landscapes since i was 15. I started mowing grass and moved up from there. i am very much aware of both my strenths and weaknesses, its just... HARD. hmmm?

[Stonehenge]

I think what Fine Edge and Jody are saying is, look outside your comfort zone there. For example, Rex Mann used to run his business in Ohio. He saw opportunity knocking in Arizona, so he loaded up the trucks and moved out to Phoenix. Doing a pretty good business out there now, if memory serves. Bill Schwab moved out to SoCal after running his biz for awhile in Illinois.

We're doing fine here in Wisconsin, but I think we're an anomaly, because lots of folks are going belly up here. But there are always places where the state of the economy is different than where you are.

They're saying you might want to consider that and possibly make a change.

[agla]

Landscape design is a tough business to get going under the best of circumstances. It runs much more off of referals and reputation than it does from advertisement and promotion. It is much easier to build a referal network, a portfolio, and to learn and gain the non-design skills by working for those who are already there. You can call it hitch-hiking. Once you get to your destination, you get out on your own.

What often happens is that you have to take on work you don't really want to do in order to survive. That might mean having to build landscapes as well as designing them. It could mean that you have to take on little crappy jobs or do some jobs for less money. Pretty soon that is all you are getting because you get referals from those people and that is all that is getting into your portfolio. It is not necessarilly going to go that way, but it is a tough climb.

You need 50 jobs design of $1,000 each or 25 at $2,000, or 5 of $10,000 in order to gross $50k. Whe gets 50 design job inquiries a year, let alone lands them? That means that you have to get the higher paying work. They are not looking in the newspaper or at door hangers when they are going to spend thousands on design work. They won't hire potential either no matter how talented the person may be. They will hire the reputation every time.

[tfld]

Going back for your MLA would likely be nothing like you experienced in Environmental Design and Ornamental Hort. Lots of firms are now using Vectorworks (sp.), though acad is still the standard.

Many of the larger design firms are doing just fine in the sluggish economy and still hiring at the same starting salaries they were last year which can be close the 50k you're looking for if you're "talented."

I would advise going back for your MLA while business is slow and you're still young. I'll be 28 when I graduate with my BSLA and have no regret in my decision to leave my design-build to return to school. Diversifying and expanding your skill set is never a bad thing, only opens new doors.