Hannah: So hello. Welcome to the Studio Sessions. Today we're with Andy Stedman. Andy is a college alumni and it's really great to catch up with him. So hello.

Andy: Hello.

Hannah: Thanks so much for joining us and having us in your amazing studio.

Andy: Very welcome. It's quite quiet today, so we're in this room, which is good. It's a bit more of a nice backdrop.

Hannah: Lots to look at.

Andy: Lots to look at.

Hannah: Hopefully not too distracting. And so, yeah, we're gonna work through some questions with Andy. Just understand a little bit about your background, how you got into garden design, how you built your incredible design studio and what projects you're working on now. Okay. So how did you get into garden design, Andy?

Andy: So I, growing up, my parents moved house a lot with careers, and the last big move was to the Middle East. So when my dad was looking for a job move that came up, the opportunity came up. My brother was at uni, I was in first year sixth form and my sister was at secondary school. So the timing for the family was as good, as good, as good as it would have ever been and I had to redo my A-levels.

So I went in a year behind technically everyone in my class, but it gave me a bit of thinking time and really to understand what A-levels I actually wanted to do rather than just doing the ones all my mates did at my first school here in the UK.

So I chose Art and PE because they allowed me just to do two, and I played a lot of rugby and did a lot of art and graphic design and stuff like that.

And then during the summer holidays, because obviously Dubai's very hot, so every school holiday I'd come home and labour for a local landscaping company, mowing lawns, strimming, trimming hedges, working with their foreman to understand how to lay a patio back in those days.

And, yeah, the rest is history really from the landscaping point of view. Then the rugby career ended due to injury. So I came home full time and then family still in Dubai. Some of them still live out there. So we've got some connection there.

And then worked full time in landscaping. So I went with the same company I was labouring for for 18 months as an official subcontractor full time, and then left after 18 months.

So I just got a bit of an itch to want to do my own thing, and I'd always had that. I never really wanted to be employed. I'm a bit of a know-it-all and probably overly confident where I shouldn't be. But yeah, I think by having jobs, I realised actually I can carve my own way and do it myself and learn from it, whether it's right or wrong.

And I still have that now, that approach to things. So yeah, I got my first pickup truck, started word of mouth, spreading my wings, doing a bit of everything, getting subs in and mates in. So I had a mate who's a tiler who helped me, a carpenter to do our decking, and I was learning from them.

And then slowly but surely got my first official apprentice and then shortly after dabbled in design.

So I sort of understood what was needed as a landscaper with a design package to landscape from. So tried to understand a very basic version of drawing board, tracing paper layers and that sort of stuff, and started doing mood boards and the basics just from what a potential client was showing me during a quote meeting and site meeting.

Did that regularly with regular maintenance rounds, return clients, but nothing massive. I think we were probably, you know, fixing fence panels more than we were doing full decks and patios.

And then I met my now wife and went travelling around Australia with her for six weeks. So we were both at a point where we wanted to just pause, go and do that gap year and get that out of our system.

And we were literally in a camper van together after meeting each other three weeks before for six weeks, and we obviously got to know each other really quickly.

Did a working holiday visa, settled in Surfers Paradise and both ended up doing quite random jobs. But it was a really good opportunity to test where our interests lie, what each wanted to do moving forward.

So I ended up doing highway maintenance and security night shifts. So we were strimming down the highway on the Gold Coast at night, which was random, but because I was on a working holiday, I could only do a few months' contract at a time. Then you have to move on to the next thing.

And then I ended up doing swimming pool building for Compass Pools, who we now do work with here. So we would do the coping stone. So we'd do the ring rebar and concrete around the top of a fibreglass pool, and then go back a few days later, or once it's dried, to stick the coping stone down, and then the landscaping contractor would follow.

So even doing that for three months gave me an in-depth experience on how an in-ground composite pool is built and the process, which I'd never seen here because obviously at the time - now with these heatwaves, I think we're going to see it a lot more here. And we are already with our clients.

And then I ended up working for a corporate team-building company, and I built with another guy who was an ex-SAS, ex-Marine called Denny, an adventure park basically for our boss called Ray, who was a very interesting guy, also ex-military.

But do you know those two-wheel ride-on things called Segways?

Hannah: Oh, yeah.

Andy: So we built an off-road track for Segways, but I applied my landscaping to building this track, and I did all the fencing and all that stuff, and that was interesting to understand what materials were easily accessible at the equivalent of a builders' merchant here.

So yeah, that was an interesting build. And then I just ended up working for them as a facilitator until my visa ran out. We did corporate team-building tours around wineries on Segways, clay pigeon shooting, really cool stuff.

Anyway, that was a great last job to have before we flew home. And then whilst the last few weeks being there, we both obviously had to get serious about what we were going to come home to do.

Andy: And design was always in the back of my head because I knew it was the piece missing to win and do better landscaping if I was going to continue to do that.

So I basically decided to hone my skills. And before I even got back, I think the week I got back, I started the course. So I had it paid for. I borrowed some money from my parents.

I had a little attic loft office in their house because they lived in Dubai. Their house was free, luckily, and we lived very cheaply for a while whilst I was picking up work again, finishing my course in the evenings and weekends.

And then my wife obviously got a job where she still is now, so we both really got our teeth stuck in and got serious because we almost got the travelling out of our system - the dilly-dallying and partying and drinking and messing around - and then hit it hard when we got home.

And then shortly after I won two really good clients who we still work with today. So we're on their second property for both of them.

And this is however many years - I mean, here's my certificate. Show off.

Trying to think of the year. Is it even on there? No, I can't remember the year. Oh, 2014. So that was the year I completed my Diploma, but I did it in a year.

And the other students I'm still friendly with now took on average two years, but I'm sure it's because I applied my landscaping knowledge, practical knowledge, to the course.

So I had my landscaper brain on whilst learning the course and the modules, so I think that really helped. But others were bringing other experience in, so I was poor at some things and good at other things.

And, you know, Merit obviously isn't the best. But I think my approach was to get it done, understand the theory to apply in the real world to get the jobs I really wanted to be designing and building.

And then did the Grand Designs Live show, which was when it was a bit more or less home-showy. And they had a garden design section of the show, which was a competition, and the theme, I believe, was upcycle and recycle or something like that - Revive and Renew or something like that.

And I did quite a cool scheme with rebar from a scrapyard, old corrugated iron and recycled wood from a local charity in Chichester, and had all my mates come and help me do that over a weekend, like working till 3am.

And we loosely built it off-site as modular as we could get it to then build it on-site.

So that was an experience and the first introduction to a show garden. Off the back of that, indirectly, just by having that stamp of approval - we knew what we were doing and we came runner-up - it did help.

It wasn't obviously an official RHS show garden or anything, but it was a good foot in the door for, I think it was about seven grand investment.

And then picked up work thereafter, just continuing along the same path.

Instagram was a big thing early as well. So I think by that point I probably had about 3,000 followers purely from showing what interested me, which, if you scroll through your grid now, it's not dissimilar now to what it was back then.

So it's the way I see a collection of materials or the composition of the space, and then getting the angle on an iPhone, cropping it and sharing on Instagram has basically been my approach.

Nowadays it's more 3D renders than £100k-plus jobs happening, but it's still, if I'm there on site taking photos, it's still me physically taking them. So that hasn't really changed.

I think what has changed is my understanding of what's needed to get the most from social media, and it's consistency, but also talking in a language and terminology that a potential client would understand, not technicalities like me and you would talk.

Because they don't know what Vectorworks is. They don't know what CAD is. They don't know what a topographical survey is.

So if you can talk in a language someone who's at a glance seeing you on a scroll or your website, for them to understand how you help them - which the end result is a tangible finished garden - that is the key with every piece of marketing anyone could possibly do.

Andy: And then built up that team. So about a year after that, or a year and a bit, I knew I needed someone doing design or being available to do design more hours than I had in my week.

So I started working with a freelance designer called Dan straight away, who actually reached out to me. So it was just really good timing.

So we would bundle together site meetings every fortnight and he would come down. We would go and survey the whole site, meet the client, take the brief, have a consultation, organise a topographical survey if we needed to, if it's really big.

But at that time we would, you know, we're out there and take measures and that sort of stuff, which we don't do now. It's funny thinking about it now.

And then Dan and I would have a lot of back and forward whilst I would be project managing on site with our landscapers.

Hannah: Okay.

Andy: And then Dan would be our draftsman as such, as well as obviously adding his flair to design. And that worked really well for quite a few years. I'd say about three or four years.

And then we built up landscapers, labourers, foremen, and then, yeah, everything went downhill because of Covid.

We had a £250k project cancelled overnight because the developer decided to do it themselves. Literally the day they were paying the deposit, they said, "Oh, no."

And then I had my first daughter arrive early. So we were in NICU, in the hospital, for six weeks. So she was a Covid baby.

And that actually gave me a lot of thinking time to think, well, you know, I've built this thing. I've got lots of guys either employed or subcontractors pretty much full time who rely on me. Moving on, the next version needs to be really stable and predictable.

So during the downtime when the whole Earth was on pause and being in hospital just sat there, you know, staring at an incubator, not knowing what was going on.

Hannah: She's absolutely fine?

Andy: Yes, absolutely fine. She's challenging during the summer holidays because she's six now. And we've got a second one which adds to the mix. Yeah, absolutely fine.

And, yeah, just it was a perfect storm of stuff happening all at once. But the whole world was in, and people were in a much worse situation than I was.

So I think understanding that, I used to go on what my wife called "weirdo walks" in the evening because it's literally all we could do.

So I listened to audiobooks, and I probably listened to 20 audiobooks during the Covid period. And just literally walking around town and seeking the knowledge I knew I didn't have.

And one main part was a business mentor. And I got - now I know - I got targeted by what I now know is marketing.

And I had an ad pop up, I think it was on LinkedIn, followed the funnel, went to the landing page, got sold, signed up to a mentoring course and - best investment ever made.

Because you're paying for the answers someone else has spent ten years getting, or someone else's trial and error.

And now I'm probably £180k in spending on mentoring and business courses and stuff like that. I signed up to another one last night.

And it's an investment in yourself and the business to fast-track where you want to get to. So that helps.

So I managed to get that done and understood how to build a proper business, which is what I didn't have. Or I had my head in the sand to an extent and was a bit naive about it all, but ignorant to the business side of things. A bit cocky.

But that period taught me that the Mark Two of the business couldn't be that way.

Hannah: But it's interesting because you said at the start that you sort of knew that you were one of those people that wanted to work - not necessarily in this case then how that works, the business principles - but I think there are people out there that are entrepreneurial more so than others.

So the idea that you actually committed to that and go, "I'm willing to invest in my learning to take that to the next step."

Andy: Yeah. And it's where you apply that. In what industry, what business, what job.

And the course helped me do that because it gave me the template.

It's almost like a theory driving test. So here's the theory. Complete this and you'll be able to drive. So that's how I look at it in layman's terms.

So you pick up your own bad habits and good habits thereafter. But to be competent in something you need to do it continuously for 20 hours, statistically. So it's like trying to complete a computer game. You need to sit there and spend 20 hours on it to be good at Tetris or whatever.

And then it's a sliding scale. So then if you spend 1,000 hours or something, you'd be very good at what you do. And then if you spend 10,000 hours or something, you'll be an expert.

So that's the way, if you choose your career or what business you're building, you need to strive to be good at what it is. Don't dabble in it because you'll then be competing poorly against your competitors.

So I'm 23 years in now doing this full time, so I would consider myself somewhat an expert in being a garden designer, which I don't consider myself now because my team do that, and then an entrepreneur and business owner, because that's the last, say, ten years of what I've actually been doing.

I've been running the business. I haven't been clicking the mouse on CAD, but we've got a studio style we've built, we've got systems and processes from marketing and sales and the design process we complete for our clients, as well as the landscaping and then project managing the landscaping or working with a network of contractors we work with.

So it's the same approach to every step of the process.

But saying that, we had six years of just doing design only, basically. That was the period after building from scratch again, and we worked with a smaller network of vetted partners who basically were the subcontractors I was using before because they needed work after Covid.

So locally we were designing, introducing them. We had a referral fee, which is a touchy subject for many, or commercial agreement, but in my opinion finder's fees, referral fees, are a win-win for all three parties.

So designer, landscaper and client. It depends how it's being charged. If it's fully transparent, it's a win-win for everybody.

And I've worked with developers and architects across the board in, you know, whether that's a £500k house or £5 million house. It works the same. You're part of this mini network of trust.

So I've been pulled up on this on social media as well a few times with the whole commission thing. But I'm an advocate for it 100%.

And it means that the client understands that we're putting a landscaper forward based on past merit and performance of jobs we're happy with that they've done for us, or the process if they're new.

And vice versa, they know they're getting a package of drawings which has dealt with the whole design process for them.

Therefore their quote's more accurate, their scheduling is more predictable because they see every drawing they could possibly need. There's no doubt. There's less extras added on the end or variations.

And then the client's understanding that relationship's already established, so they don't need to pull out Checkatrade or go on Google to find a local landscaper.

I mean, the topic itself is someone who mows a lawn all the way through to someone who's building Canary Wharf. They could all come up in one Google search. So that's the problem.

And by having skin in the game of us committing to a landscaper, and then the landscaper paying us a finder's fee, that's how it works.

Hannah: So it's about finding that neutral ground. And you mentioned it - that trust. So it's building a relationship with the client that they trust that you're going to deliver the design that they spend money on.

Andy: And however that is discussed and commercialised is just different ways of doing things.

Andy: Right, yeah. And the biggest gap in the industry is designers being very good at what they do and designing a dream garden, but the client can't afford it at the end of the day.

But the client's coming to that designer, or Googling to find the designer in the first place, for a finished, tangible garden. The design is a step and a process to get there.

And I think a lot of designers and studios get that wrong. They've got amazing aesthetic studio style, but they ignore the cost topic.

And we've learned over the years through trial and error that cost is 101 in business and design - success in design.

Because even if your client, again, has got a £500k house or a £5 million house, ultimately they need to know what money they need in their bank account to pay for it to be built.

And the design fee is just the first - well, you've got topographical survey fee, then the design fee thereafter and then the landscaping fees.

And people just forget that end of the process because they're almost tunnel vision on design. "That's all we do."

And then they leave. They send the PDF to the client. "Oh, here's your design, Mrs Jones. Here's your invoice. Good luck with your project." Onto the next one.

So we've gone full circle to, well, nine out of ten clients, cost is either the problem or the positive.

So we've geared Vectorworks up to produce a cost associated with everything we're drawing.

So if you draw a patio with a certain hatch or line outline, it's calculating the square or linear metre and putting it in a table on the page or hidden on the layer or something somewhere in the workspace.

And then when we present that drawing to a client, we've got peace of mind that the CAD is doing that for us.

Because the old-school way is, if you send drawings to a landscaper, they're going to get a scale ruler out. And then you've got the risk of the scale bar being out by a millimetre because your printer settings are different to the PDF or whatever.

So straight away that's one anomaly or risk.

So we do the workings for our landscapers. Or if the client's getting their own quote, we've got peace of mind at least they've got guidance on industry standards of what the landscaping should cost them.

And that is just being tweaked. Our design manager and I are working on that at the moment. We've just had another wave of in-house design-builds, plus working with our better partners.

Every year under our belt, having more jobs and accuracy and final invoices to the client, that will just be fed back into the process.

And those tables will be updated to mid-to-late 2026 prices.

So it means the next ten clients we design for, they've got as transparent costings at every design stage as possible.

And it's the bit missing that most designers forget about.

Hannah: So costings are just so important. Again, coming back to that trust piece, that communication with the client.

And we'll talk about it in the Diploma at the concept stage. Like, even if it's an approximation, you leave that first meeting with the client saying, "Look, I've paced out your garden. Here's your range."

Andy: So when I first left, I used Duncan's fee scale on SGD website, which is no longer on there because I think it's 2020, 2018.

Hannah: I think they took it down - various liabilities or whatever.

Andy: Well, yeah, exactly. It's still real data.

So I then made my version of that because I'd done so much landscaping before.

So, okay, what's my costings going to cost to do a square metre of Iroko decking - screws, frame, cement, composite post, deck tape now?

So obviously regs change as well and building methods improve. And you've got to know your figures inside out. Have confidence in them.

So Jemima is in this office here. She has an introductory call with any lead or inquiry.

And even from that call, not knowing anything about the project, we can discuss starting figures of our design package costs, which politely gives them an indication of an initial investment.

And then with whatever information they've given us with an inquiry form or whatever, we use that to partly educate, but also onboard them however we can and help them out.

Andy: So often five out of ten calls aren't a good fit for what we do, but it's a sign that our marketing is working because they might have seen an ad that I've done or a nice picture on Instagram, and it's got them through to pick up the phone or book a call with us.

But that's why we have an intro call. So no one's time's wasted. We can say, "Oh, it doesn't sound like a good fit for you. Maybe just quickly Google local landscapers in your area because you just need your hedge trimmed," or whatever it might be.

That's an extreme example, but then Jemima tees up a video call with my brother, who also lived in Australia, but he's come back to the UK needing work and he has a sales background, so we've put both our backgrounds together.

But before that I did nearly 900 enquiries and sales calls myself, so I knew what was working, what wasn't working, what my mentor taught me.

And I took the cheesy sales script approach and turned it into what we now call consultative sales.

So Dave has a slide deck which is presented on a video call. We're answering specific questions that potential client has - in sales it's called a prospect. But again, it's cheesy because we're not digging for gold.

But you are helping that client understand how we can help them to get the tangible end result of a finished garden they can enjoy, improve their lifestyle, relax for better mindfulness, and have a safe environment for the kids to play in.

So that's what we're selling. And the rest of the slide deck is showing them the process of how we get there.

So that's our sales process in a nutshell.

And then the designers aren't even - that client isn't even on the designer's radar until they've committed to the process. And we don't do anything until we've been paid upfront.

So we're big enough now, or successful enough, for every client to have confidence in what we do and what we offer and how we help them. But that's taken 23 years to get there.

Hannah: But you're also very, very clear in what that process looks like.

Andy: Yeah. Without that, if we said, "Oh, here's £3,000 initiation fee for your project," they would think we're mental.

Hannah: But now you have a very clear sales funnel there. And you're very clear in what that process is, what it means for the client and what they can expect.

And if you're managing those expectations correctly, then that trust is built and therefore they're going to buy in.

Andy: Yeah. And a real-world mini version of that for a fresh designer who's just got their Diploma - a new designer has just got their Diploma - is as simple as an inquiry form on your website.

Or if you're using social media, Meta especially has built-in, ready-made funnels for you.

So if you're saying, "Please answer these ten questions before we even speak," that is ten questions of information you have to prepare for that phone call to help them better than if you're picking up your mobile every phone call.

Prior to me doing phone calls, we used a service called Moneypenny. I think they're still working now, but it's a remote call answering service, and that was purely to stop my phone ringing all day if I'm on the tools.

We're trying to, you know, dig a pond out on the digger. The last thing I want is ten phone calls.

So we used that for a while. And that was successful with an inquiry form. So that was £60 a month or something, like next to nothing, for someone purely to give me a run-through in the afternoon of who called, what they wanted.

And I then could prioritise who needed me to call them back.

So straight away, if I was a landscaper again, I would have a - if I didn't have a secretary or staff - I would have an external...

I mean, you can do it with AI now, but I think, another tangent, with what's going on with AI, the world is going to change, especially for garden design, in three years.

Andy: Yeah, we've already seen that. Chelsea - someone launched a do-it-yourself from a picture garden.

I think Vectorworks, Lumion, SketchUp, whatever we're all using, will either keep up to speed or something else built with AI is going to take over what we're doing as humans.

We'll just be an AI operator of designing gardens and putting human touches on it.

So if someone's coming to our design studio for our studio style, I envisage a prompt - equivalent of a prompt being fed to Revit - to produce an Andy Stedman garden design for that client.

So therefore human connection - two more tangents - human connection.

So us providing a more premium, high-end luxury service for our clients, clients will be buying human connection and our designers are going to see them more.

No more Zoom calls. It will be in-person meetings and they will be buying into more human experiences.

So once their garden's finished, we're probably 10 to 15 years off robots building a garden, or any trade, like a boiler being fitted in your loft. A robot can't do that yet, but within my six-year-old daughter's generation they will be seeing that happening.

I've already told her she won't be driving, and that's mad. Think about it.

So if we think this path we're on is accelerating exponentially on a hockey-stick graph, we can't compute. It's like thinking about how big space is. It's one of those things our brains aren't prepared for.

But human connection - we're not going anywhere. We're going to have people who, you know, people are going to obsess over The Sims and games and put their goggles and earphones on and be obsessed with computer games, but that's a fraction of people whose brain chemistry is already geared up for wanting that more or wanting an escape.

But our clientele, as I see it, are still going to be developing properties. They're still going to want luxury in their lifestyle because it's what they're used to.

They're still going to want an experience like buying a luxury car, having the wow moments and a bit of hand-holding and someone to complain about to get the result they want.

And that's what we'll be selling within three years.

And we're literally deep-diving Claude Wednesday to Friday this week to build a second AI brain because I feel like we're behind and I'm haemorrhaging money on Manus, which Meta owns, and it's just not doing what we need to do.

So again, I could geek out about AI, but -

Hannah: But AI is really interesting because obviously within the industry, I think there's a particular nervousness from garden designers that it's going to replace our jobs.

Now, there are certainly elements of our jobs that are going to be replaced. I don't think anyone can hide from that, but it comes down to staying on top of it so that you can use and utilise it as a tool rather than a replacement.

Andy: 100%. See, the best way to think about it is you've got to pull your head out of the sand, not be naive or - what's the word?

Optimist, right? Always get those wrong. Not a pessimist.

So think, okay, well, you know, I'm pushing 40. If I were starting again - I mean, the people on my course were various ages or second career, and a lot of our team are second career, or they've done a degree in something similar and want to be a garden designer.

So whatever generation you are, everyone had to get used to the internet. We've all got used to having an iPhone in our pocket as our second, you know, thing to peel away from your face every day.

And it's just that again, but massive.

So what I'm getting at is you've got to double down and do it yourself, or your competitors are, and you're not going to have a job anyway in the first place. You're not going to get any business.

So I think, like I said, Vectorworks - we're all using it.

Andy: Do you still use it?

Hannah: Yeah, encourage use of it.

Andy: So they've got, we would hope to think, the piggy bank to get a contract with an AI expert and say, "Okay, look, we need this."

Otherwise, I don't know, Midjourney or whatever the next AI model is, is going to outperform all of our subscribers and they're going to go and use that.

Lumion's the same. I've already dabbled because there's gaps in what we've got access to.

I mean, we pay subscription for every hardware or software we possibly need as a studio. And there's still visuals I've seen that look better than what we're producing.

So we're needing to put a layer of AI on top to compete.

But then you've got the argument of, okay, well, if I'm already seeing from other data that raw, like I said earlier, raw iPhone videos of me on social media in my own garden talking about what we do is outperforming every other 3D Lumion animation or video we've ever shared, that's telling a story in the background as well.

So I think we're fatiguing with the whole AI argument.

Hannah: Because so many people say on the course, like, "Do we learn 3D visualisation?"

And obviously we only have 12 months to teach whatever's on the Diploma. So we will teach you what is required to become a garden designer.

What we then push you to professionally develop and recommend afterwards - obviously 3D visualisation and AI is going to come into that.

But being able to hand render and communicate your ideas visually, I think it's actually, to your point, going to continue being really relevant.

Because actually, if you can stand next to a client and go, "Look, this is sort of like an outline of what is in my mind that's going to work with you," again it builds that trust, and they know that they're not going to just get an AI output. You're actually investing in a person.

Andy: Yeah. And you've got the nuance of it's almost like an art piece or a collectible. You're buying into that relationship and that person's doing it physically for you.

Then that's going to be a big - I think we're going to, again, I've got a load of AD marker pens in there. They're going to probably come back out in the next year and I'll have to - they'll all dry out - I've got to order them again.

But I used to love doing that because the thinking space and I think the risk is high. You don't want to draw it all again.

So I think you're almost digging in three more layers of thought to physically draw on the drawing board.

Yeah, we, to be honest, we skipped that step because I think I've employed such good designers and they've tried and tested their own workflow.

And I think SketchUp - I could probably open my laptop now, open SketchUp and shut my eyes and draw a convincing 3D house for you, because that's where I spent my hours.

Because I think as a landscaper, I needed to visualise in 3D when I left in 2014 to then understand how it was built in reality on site.

So SketchUp for me was - because I already had a designer as a draftsman, like I said earlier, as a full-time freelancer doing 2D Vectorworks for me.

So even now I haven't opened a Vectorworks file for about eight years, so I wouldn't know where the tools are now because it's probably changed that much.

But SketchUp, if we've got a query in-house during a team meeting, or, you know, how's the transition of this spot height going to look with 800mm difference, you know, with a hidden glass balustrade or whatever?

That's where we would go, "Okay, let's just jump into SketchUp and build it in a 3D space."

But then it's just like the workings of your homework. So when the 2D plan's presented to the client, we've got confidence that those steps work.

And that's the same - that's where the renders, the hand-drawn stuff - it's a version of that.

And whether you skip it or not, I guess it's down to the workflow of your studio, how you work.

Hannah: Absolutely. I mean, SketchUp, we say quick and dirty. Build a visualisation so that you can support your client because not everyone can read 2D.

Like, even the best of us can't read all the 2D plans. So it's like, okay, well, 3D - this is what it's going to look like. Why is it a lot of shadows?

So it's like, okay, here's your clock, and this is like therefore your planting is going to be X, Y and Z.

Andy: Your neighbour's ridge that casts a shadow on the lower views.

Hannah: Being able to demonstrate that consideration is a key part of the process.

Andy: Yeah. And I think that the trick is not to worry that it's millimetre perfect or finished renders, because it isn't.

You've got to explain that to the client.

So our process now is mid-process, after a sketch plan and mood board and the client's opportunity for in-depth feedback and one revision.

So every revision stage - another piece of advice - keep your clients contained within one round of constructive feedback per both parties.

If it's husband and wife, wife and wife, whatever the scenario is - we often have architect and developer - we want their feedback together in one email. Not piecemeal.

Not something at one on an email, because our process is built to have one full round of revisions at each main of the three design phases.

Hannah: It's a systematic approach.

Andy: But therefore the creativity is allowed within those boundaries.

So every client meeting is of the highest value it can be because they've already given us their thoughts in one go. And we've made those revisions to our interpretation of that.

So basically try and tie your client down, is my advice, to one - even if it's a face-to-face meeting - and record it.

This is where AI does come in. So I use Otter AI or just put Google Meet on and Google will record it for you and give you a transcript at the end.

Send that transcript to the client. So, "Here's everything we covered. Here's a summary. Here's what we've agreed."

We get people to sign stuff off or at least put an acknowledgement in an email because that's what we're going to base our revisions on.

Otherwise anything extra they ask for we charge per hour for. And no one wants to be paying £100 an hour for something they've missed.

So, yeah, the mid-stage of our own design process we've built is 3D. So we get there as quickly as possible, and we've got a workflow and team set-up now where it's straight into Lumion.

Unless it's a working drawing or SketchUp, like I said, because Lumion - it's a blessing, but also a curse because we know it's a 3D world.

So some clients take it as gospel, set in stone. Others understand it's a 3D render.

But you've also got clients who have had four properties before, and they've slowly taken on more and more of an investment, therefore more service providers and people like us.

Others have never done it before. They've moved into their forever home after downsizing because the kids have gone to uni, they've got £800 grand to spend, but they've got an extension, porch, driveway and the back garden to do.

And they're like, okay, well that - yeah, from day one, we try and help them wherever possible with the cost conversation, but they want to see, in comparison with the architect's drawings, where that money investment's going.

So the quicker we can show them the virtual reality and, you know, 3D render, CGI, whatever you want to call it, the better.

And then even then, like you said earlier, some clients understand the 2D plan, others don't.

So that still might be the first opportunity they get it and it clicks.

Or they have dinner, they get their iPad out and they're discussing the 3D renders together when they've got, you know, one short moment of time to do it.

And life's life. Everyone's lives are busy, so we give them enough time, but we've also got our own schedule to stick to.

That's another tangent I could go down, but even then we understand that, okay, they need to then digest, interpret and come back to us with a bullet-point revision list.

So then within our process, automatically they've got a second round of revisions with the 3Ds.

And we don't do anything until they've been presented that and we get that signed off. Or they have more revisions, which is hourly rate.

Because during that two weeks they might think, "Oh no, maybe this pool might work better four metres smaller," or, "Oh, our build has just finished. We can visualise the extension now."

So there's still a bit of leeway, but generally we lock it in to, this is what you're paying for. This is what our schedule is allowing.

Of course there's flexibility, but 23 years of doing this has taught us to put your own boundaries to get the best out of us and the best result at the end.

And then the final phase, which I believe is still the same as you guys, your modules teach, is the detailed design construction pack.

We also do planting plans and lighting, irrigation, everything at the end.

And we've also realised that out of, I don't know, 56 PDFs of drawings, 20% of clients open that end of the pack. Most of it's for the landscaper.

Hannah: Yeah, of course.

Andy: Our client doesn't need to know what primer slurry we're specifying or how many decking noggins we're recommending.

They've done their exciting bit. They've seen the 3D renders and they've signed it off. They just now own it. Done.

So we then box clever with speed of schedule.

So if a client literally just wants to book the landscapers in, we would do the first initial design detailed drawings to get an accurate pricing quote and final price together, whilst the design team in parallel was finishing off all the rest of the drawings.

Because we've engineered all the costs accurate enough to know what a square metre of flowerbed would cost to have the average combination of two-litre plants in.

So that's taken so long to get there and trial and error.

Hannah: But what's really good about your whole process, again, is you're capturing and you're learning.

So you said earlier that you're always revising those costs, and you're looking at those and you're comparing them and you're analysing that.

A lot of garden designers don't have the time to do that. So it's amazing that you have built your studio in a way that reflects that.

Andy: Yeah. So two things - feedback loops.

So don't be proud. Accept failure and reset error, and buy back time within your week or create time within your week to correct that.

So if your quote process or your fee scales are off by three grand because you've made no money in the last ten designs, pause for a Friday afternoon, correct that, and have confidence that you need to make money and add three grand on your fees.

Otherwise, what's the point?

The other big thing is reverse engineering.

So, for example, if I were starting from scratch and I wanted £100 grand profit in my bank at the end of the year, I would work out that target and then pick back.

So how many months of the year is there? Twelve. Okay. How many days of the week can I work? Four, because I have my daughter on a Monday, for example.

How many hours within four days? Eight minus an hour lunch break and headspace time.

And you just work that out.

And then a case of how many designs a month can I do if I was on my own again? Probably one a week max, because it's five days per design phase, whatever that might be.

And then what's your overheads and costs to pay my mortgage, pay my phone bill, fuel to see the clients four days a week, whatever that might be.

Just put it in a spreadsheet, and that's where AI can come in.

"Okay, here's my house bills. Here's my lease for my car. Here's our mortgage payments. Put it in a spreadsheet in Google Sheets for me."

And it would do it in two minutes. So it takes the emotion out of it.

And then that's always a surprising number.

So let's say as a household it's six grand. Okay, well how many designs does it take, profit - sorry, with profit on top - to pay six grand gross profit to get to £100k?

And it's simple economics, but you've got to be honest with yourself.

If you're a sole trader, limited company or self-employed, which is basically those two things, you're an entrepreneur and a business person. You're a designer as well in parallel, and that's a bit creatives forget.

If you look at the art industry, you can see the Anthony Gormleys and the commercialised design artists. They're the ones we know about because they're good at selling, they're good at promoting, they're good at running an art business.

We're not seeing the amazing intricacies of someone that's amazing at paintings in their loft who don't even know what Facebook is, because we don't hear from them. They don't sell it.

Hannah: We spend the last few weeks of every Diploma obviously talking to the students about professional development practice.

So whether that's anything from contract law through to specification writing.

But I'm - in particular, Duncan's very good at it as well - but I'm particularly focusing on marketing, sales, because it is so vital that our students come out and feel like they are aware of the requirements of starting a business.

Andy: Yeah. It's the lifeblood.

Without that, you don't have a business. So you need - then you need to know predictably where your next lead, not even client, is coming from to then spend the time on even bothering doing a specification.

So I said to you guys earlier, it's hard for me, 23 years in, to talk back to myself as I was when I finished the course.

But if I was to say that, I would explain - to get to the scale business we are now, we're spending up to £40,000 a month on Meta and Google Ads.

Google's like £1,500 a month, and that's just a token amount to be on Google. The rest is pumping into Meta.

And you should see the amount of ads and content we're having to create to feed that beast.

But the return on investment can be, on our best months, just for design fees, £150 grand.

But you can take a zero off of all those figures and have the same result back down to the scale of whatever your business is.

So if I was - I mean, the first thing I learned was just boosting a post on Instagram, and you even choose the amount to spend a day.

So £8 a day, it means you're going to get another 14,000 eyeballs on the post that's already done, okay, on your 250 followers.

So that's a mini version of how Meta amplify their ads account and the petri dishes.

We said it earlier as well - consistency of posting to see what works and your potential clients or your audience want to see more of, and then double down on the ones that have outperformed everything else noticeably.

And a quick win is a boost - just boosting the post.

Hannah: So I think a lot of garden designers struggle with the fact that a lot of their followers on Instagram are initially other garden designers, and that's not really their client base that they want to -

Andy: Yeah. 50% of ours are. And half our DMs are questions - "What software do you use?" But I've got another Instagram account for that.

So that's my next entrepreneurial journey, as being a mentor myself.

So it's partly why we're building out the AI, to buy back my time to create my own business courses and stuff like that.

Because there's a gap. There's - it's the questions I'm constantly answering.

And I had - I'd soft-launched a mastermind last year for 20 seats in here, or we did ten a day, and it sold out in three hours.

So there's a market for the answers that I've spent 23 years trial and erroring and losing my hair over.

But as I said earlier, a mentor is the best investment as a self-employed entrepreneur out there. Not a bank loan at 11%.

And it's learning blood, sweat and tears from someone else and taking that ten years away off them and applying that to your own journey.

Hannah: There's only so many hours in a day. There's only so much that anyone can do.

So yeah, narrowing the window that you need to learn these things by learning from someone else.

And also what I've found about the horticulture industry in particular is everyone is so willing to help.

And so, I mean, the fact that you're even answering DMs on Instagram -

Andy: It's amazing. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, I've tried to systemise that or find an agency or whatever, and we've probably lost £80 grand on trying to distance - you know, trying to automate that process.

And I'm actually still posting at 7:00 when the kids go to bed on my own, after our video or our marketing team have had a bit of input.

I'm still hitting the launch - you know, the share post button - because I feel no one can do that better than share the vision or what we're up to as a studio than myself.

So that is basically where most hours of my week as commitment goes.

And our marketing agency was - he saw my calendar on our shared screen the other day, and I have barely any, apart from like the appointment today, nothing's booked in.

Because my time - I could go on forever - but I plan tomorrow today.

So every week I know what I'm doing tomorrow before I drop kids off at nursery and school.

And I get to my desk and I crack on with it.

But I've got the design work and the actual doing dealt with by our team.

But even if you're a solopreneur with kids, with a busy partner, with a busy household, you can still engineer your week to work for you rather than having death by papercuts with answering emails for three hours in the morning, by systems and processes.

And as creatives, we're even more left to our devices. Our brains go off on these journeys.

You know, you get in a rabbit hole on Pinterest looking for the perfect mood board image. That's four hours of your day, when if you actually give yourself - if you put a timer and say, "Right, I'm going to spend 20 minutes putting this mood board together."

But again, AI is going to do this for us. If you look at Canva - we've Emily, one of our designers, is our Canva expert user.

And as a team, all of our mood boards in the next few weeks will be created on Canva because it's filling the blanks of that dream mood board.

We know what's in our design team's head, rather than trawling Google Images for four hours.

If there's one image missing, Canva will fill it for us because, with a prompt, it will understand the vision which we want to sell to the client.

So stuff like that. I think our weeks will get shorter and shorter. We'll have more and more time on our hands because AI is going to be doing the filling the pieces of the puzzle for us.

Hannah: Optimising systems, using AI to release time, spend more time doing the creative stuff we're doing.

Andy: Yeah. And the other thing is data.

So understanding who your client is. You just can't help everyone.

But feeding everything you could possibly record into a spreadsheet sounds mental, but we've probably got 20 spreadsheets.

And they could be in AI now, but we're not pushing them in there yet, purely to give us where the next step forward to the business is going.

So is that what videos we're marketing and re-editing next week, or how many sales calls or inquiry calls has Jemima had this week?

Every single metric we record gives us a result to improve with at the end of it.

You know, the last couple of months have been one of the quietest summers we've ever had, but we've also got to look out the door, look at the heatwave we're having and how many of our clientele are on extra holidays, or they're not outside because it's too hot.

So the garden's dropped off their radar, a bit like in the winter. No one's in the garden in the winter, and actually this summer no one's in the garden either.

And it's been worse than the last three summers we've had.

So we've got four years of data to say, "Okay, well, this is a wild card. Let's prepare for a quieter July and August for next year," because otherwise we'll be in the same position of having a record May and then everything dropping off a cliff.

So you've got to apply human logic with a spreadsheet or AI helping give you logical next steps.

But yeah, buying back time with efficiency and using anything possible is key for your sanity, but also enjoying what you do.

Scaling to a comfortable size you want to get to. Not everyone wants 20 staff and a big studio.

You know, other people are happy just being a one-man band, being an expert at roof gardens or, I don't know, expert in freestyle planting. That's absolutely fine.

But to get there and have a booked-out diary with consistency and sanity, you need boundaries in the process to put in place to achieve that and enjoy your life.

And I think people from college and school, you just get so used to a metaphoric bell ringing or physical bell ringing, like a phone, and answering it and jumping on it straight away.

No one's forcing you to answer your whole email box in the morning. It's just what we do. It's - you know - we shouldn't.

Hannah: And we should build the systems that work for us.

I mean, some people work better in the day and some people work better in the evenings. And actually, it's nice that to be self-employed you have that flexibility.

Andy: You do have that control. I think that's the thing. That's the vision you have in your head when you think, "Yes, I will be better self-employed than I would employed."

Everyone has natural ebbs and flows.

So I used to do my coursework at A-levels in the evenings till 3am because it's just - I had a second wind and it's just when my brain ticked in if I allowed it.

Hannah: I'd say the creatives are best at that time.

Andy: Yeah. Nocturnal.

But now it's impossible because life changed. Or my thought pattern or my process - I've built a totally different...

Now they're a note on my phone ready to process when I give myself time to do it, to get it off my head, get it out of my head.

Because, yeah, it's dangerous.

I think for one client you're charging, I don't know, full design package, say three grand. Like I said, I'm out of the reality of that because of the size we're at now.

But if you then spend the equivalent of six grand of your hours on a three-grand design, you're minus three grand that week.

And you're not going to get that back until you have two more that you are profitable on.

And you've just got to think that way. Every hour of your day, it needs to be billable and profitable.

So we're now a total design package based on the scale and scope.

So you might have half an acre. However, a third of that might remain as lawn because you've got a lovely lawn, human-scale, liveable space.

You're not going to need that much, but you might need a main terrace, a new outdoor kitchen, a pergola, a lighting scheme throughout, but the lawn's still not going to be touched unless you add pop-up or whatever.

So we've got the figures to work out, okay, yeah, they've come to us with half an acre, but the actual design space is 250 square metres, so our fees reflect that.

But if the client then goes, "Oh no, we don't like the lawn," or, "The kids want a sunken trampoline in the lawn," we just tag that back on.

So we've added that third back on. Now here's the difference in our fee.

We don't go and do it for them because they're a lovely client and we love getting on with them.

We do, but also we've got bills and a schedule and a fee to make.

So I think the danger with having a great rapport with your client is doing too many favours for them and going, "Oh, that's Mrs Jones. She's lovely. This hour won't help."

But one hour a day is five hours, and that's 40 hours a month, right?

Hannah: And you add that up over a number of clients because they're all lovely, and then suddenly your £100 grand that was in your target is out the window.

Andy: Exactly.

So that trickles down across our whole team. Like I said earlier, we don't do anything without being able to allocate money to it and all getting paid upfront for it.

So we're committing our team's time and investment to a client project. So we invoice accordingly.

But like I said, we've built the beast to be able to deliver that. And the trust is built and everything like that.

Andy: And the other thing with the social media topic, if I was talking to my 2014 self again, would be the most valuable content to create.

And social media is a constant evolution, but back to human connection - happy humans sell more to happy humans than anything else.

So a video of your client as a testimonial, which Vince, our videographer, has - his priority for us - did a really good one recently, is marketing 101.

If we had a grid of 100 clients speaking very highly of the process they've just been through with us, you can't get more valuable content than that.

But that might be a Google review or Trustpilot, whatever, or Facebook review. That is where you concentrate your time.

And it doesn't need to be overly edited.

Like we said earlier, you don't need six cameras like we've got here today or microphones.

Pick your iPhone up, call Mrs Jones and say, "Hi, hope you're good. I spoke to your landscaper last week. He said the garden's finished. It might be suffering during the heatwave, but let me come and have a look. Do you mind if I bring my camera with me and just record your experience of working with me?"

And literally just sit there with your iPhone pointing at the client and ask them - natural conversation.

And that is - people sell people.

Yeah. Don't move from that. Then don't overcomplicate your posting schedule, which is all too robotic anyway.

And then beyond that is tangible finished gardens because some clients don't want to be on camera. Others we've signed NDAs with, so we can only share their renders without the house or whatever.

But we've found our clients are very open if we've got it in our services agreement, in our terms.

They often query it and we explain, "Well, you found us on Instagram, so we want more of you. You know, we want to help your neighbours and your friends equivalent."

And then they understand, you know, we're going to respect their privacy. We're not going to give the address away. We're not going to show the cars that are on their driveway.

It's purely to have the site in context. So the house might be in the background, or we'll get the view that's not obviously showing access to site, whatever.

So once we go through that, they generally open up a bit.

So to battle the whole 3D render, false AI imagery - real gardens, even if they're only just finished last week or the landscaper's sent me a WhatsApp with 20 photos, we're sharing more of that.

Rather than waiting for me and Vince and the rest of our team to go and do portfolio shots when the garden's established.

That's gone out the window. That's dropped probably halfway back down my priority list now because there's a two-year time gap.

They might sell the house. They might sack their gardener or forget to turn irrigation on and all their plants will die.

So you've then missed that whole opportunity to go and capture that garden.

So we're sharing a lot more recently completed or under-construction footage than we were a year or two ago.

Hannah: That's really interesting, because I think a lot of new designers out there panic that they don't have a portfolio and, like, what are they going to demonstrate?

And I think there's two avenues to this.

What I tend to say is actually a huge part of the sales process is the process that the client is going to go on.

And secondly, you can share something that is in construction and you can show what it is that you're doing that complements that process.

You don't just have to show, "Look how big this Nepeta is now."

Andy: Yeah. I think if you look at every successful social media account, most of them are the journey and behind the scenes compared to the finished Netflix documentary.

That documentary - I try to think of one - I don't know, a TV series Instagram following might have 50,000 followers because it's series three, but the behind-the-scenes of the studio creating it might have 150 followers because you're seeing the batteries running out in the camera and the story behind that cameraman having a bad day or whatever that is.

So yeah, and it's back to showing the workings of your homework.

So if I was to - I need to do it, on my list - share the client journey in an 11-minute YouTube video, strap a GoPro to me and do the day in the life, that will outperform four days of me and Vince editing a video with a script and B-roll or whatever, because it's more interesting.