Looking forward to learning alot!

[Right Touch]

Hey guys! My name is Joe LaJeunesse, owner of Right Touch Landscapes, Inc. out of Hillsborough, NJ. I am 29, started my business when I was 15 and went full time with it at 26. I started out mowing lawns like alot of guys, but quickly realized my passion for hardscaping. I currently have two crews, a lawn maintenance crew and hardscape/landscape construction crew. I am so eager to get beyond the standard ground level patios and simple designs and hard started to develop a really good reputation for good quality work. I am looking forward to learning alot from this site- I have been a member for a couple weeks now and have spent many hours searching around and am very impressed by the professionalism on this site as well as the quality of work. I am ICPI Level 1 certified and plan on getting NCMA certified shortly. Any advice, links, spec sheets or anything else you think I would find helpful please send my way!

[Right Touch]

just an addition- everyone on this site talks about sketchup. What is it? It seems like a design program most of you use? I've tried just about every program out there- this one seems to be the most popular on this site, but I've never heard of it?!?!

[danf]

Look around in the "design" forum, you'll see a lot of SU stuff posted. It's a free program from Google. Well, there's a free program, and there's a slightly more advanced program that costs a couple of $$. 98% of what you will likely do in the first year or two can be done with the free version. How do you find it? Enter "sketch-up" in a google search. :D

It's an awesome program, but it takes some time to get the feel for it. I've been playing around with it off and on for a couple of months now and just now feel like I've got a decent grasp on the basic stuff. There's a lot of youtube videos that are "how-to's", check them out before you get very involved with the program; you'll save a LOT of frustrations that way!

[paversrus]

Welcome to the forum Joe!
As Danf mentioned- sketchup works great for alot of folks here on Prohardscaper, and there is plenty of support, tips, and tricks here also.
I would suggest going through some of the sketchup posts, then downloading the free version to see how you like it.