Share the wealth - Landscape Ontario

December 18, 2024

Landscape Trades Landscape Trades - December 2024 January 2025 Mentor Moment

Transferring decades of experience to the next generation

Four years ago, Fred Post set out on a mission to share his decades of landscape design expertise. Today he’s doing just that through an online learning platform. With courses, ebooks and personal coaching, he’s helping new contractors and homeowners navigate their landscape design questions. Balancing his career and passion for mentorship, Fred is committed to helping others thrive in the industry he loves.

In 2020, you decided to find a way to share the knowledge and wisdom you’ve accumulated during your long career in landscape design. Where are you with that mission four years later?

I actually started up a website and it's under a platform called Teachable, where you can create courses and ebooks and you can do one-on-one coaching. So a client can book a six-hour or one-on-one session to learn how to do what it is that I do when it comes to 3D designing. And there are also ebooks on coaching, for example, how do you take that very first email where the client comes in and says, ‘What do I do? How do I get your services?’

There are steps in place in order to have a young, up-and-coming professional learn everything from how to respond to that email to how to approach the client when they come into the driveway and meet the client for the first time.

There's so much information — you don't take 40 years of experience and all of a sudden plunk it into just two courses, right? I really started to focus on this in the last couple of years because of a health issue. It puts my life into perspective where I really don't want to go to the grave with all this information that I have.

So I find it very important to try to pass this on, whether it's of monetary value or not. That's not really the point. The point is to be able to turn two years of learning, for example, into a two-week period. So the Teachable platform itself has really helped me share that knowledge, as well as Facebook groups.

Who is your main audience? What kind of students are you attracting?

New contractors who are coming out of school and people who want to design and those who want to sell. It always takes a little bit before you get some traction on how to eliminate some of the unknowns, like, how do you defer something that you don't have an answer to? And how do you do small talk? People new in the industry are, first and foremost, who I'm trying to help as much as I can.

And then, the flip side is the homeowner. If you go to my website, you'll see one section is for professionals and one is for homeowners. How do you teach a homeowner how to hire somebody? I have so many people who come to me and say, ‘How do I hire a landscaper?’ So I wrote an ebook for the homeowner.

How many people have enrolled in your courses or interacted with the learning content you’ve posted online?

Since I went live, it's been a constant stream; there's probably two to three that come on board every week. We just started advertising because I really wanted to have a full plate of information posted. So we created a whole bunch of courses, videos and tutorials. We've got a whole bunch of ebooks available. It's been a bit of a process to get all that information together, I really didn't want to launch it until there was a lot of stuff that people could go to. So I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of people that are already on board without even advertising.

How do you stay on top of current best practices and trends to ensure what you're sharing is still relevant?

I still work for a boutique firm in Toronto that does some pretty high-end landscape stuff. I designed for them and I also freelance design for people throughout the States. Every state is unique and by doing freelance, it’s really kind of cool because you see how the midwest is totally different from the south, and the south is totally different from the east. When you have a client base that's all over the place, you get that extra bit of exposure to materials and style trends.

I still travel back to Europe all the time. And I love visiting the gardens out there and seeing what's new because they seem to be the trendsetter. It's really cool to see how things progress over there and how they slowly come and develop over in the Americas.

Do you have any advice for landscaping veterans about mentoring younger generations?

If you have that opportunity and you’ve had a 30- or 40-year career, it's very easy nowadays to come up with a system where you can mentor somebody. Just be a phone call or email away.

And writing an ebook nowadays is so convenient. You can still make money off of what you learned, and it doesn't have to go to waste. So if people want to jump on the bandwagon, I would say go for it, because the internet is out there for everybody and it can be a great resource and tool. Even if you don't want to do it for money, then put it out there because it's valuable information.

How does it feel when you see someone thrive after learning from you?

Somebody just contacted me last week and they said, ‘Hey, Fred, you taught my daughter last year and she's doing great. It really helped a lot.’ It's nice to hear that kind of stuff where somebody just really excels and shines after they have a one-on-one session or after they do a tutorial. Yeah, it feels great!

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