Meet a Design/Build Revolutionary:

Meet a Design/Build Revolutionary:
Bill Ripley

Profile: Bill Ripley, Owner, Architectural Landscape Design Inc., Cincinnati, OH

Year in Landscape Business: 25

Focus: I have two revenue streams: smaller projects where I do design and hand off building to contractors; and larger projects where I do both design and general contracting.

Most recent project: A $250,000 home landscape renovation project

Design/Build Revolutionary since: About 8 years

Person who has affected you most professionally: My father

What you do in the winter: Retool my business

2009 Destination: Captaining a boat through the Windward Islands, Caribbean.

Takeaway from Kinman Institute:

There’s a better way to run a landscape design/build business than what most do, which is gravitating toward what they already know based on their experience with particular products. This limits you so much. If you are open to the client’s inputs and you design with an open mind, you will make much better projects.
The Kinman’s course will change the way you do business, the way you look at the business of design/build and your whole process, and will make you more profitable.
The course was an ‘epiphany’ for me. I never thought that clients would do the things Gary said they would do, but it worked.
It is not the size of the project that is important but the quality of the work you do and the value you create for the client that is important.

Advice for other professionals: If you have the ability to look at the design process differently, you will create better work, just because you’re not looking at it like most people.

I didn’t expect this course to be as it was. I thought I would learn a few things. What I learned was a much more superior way of doing business.