Yard warrior

Ahmed Hassan. Photo: The Larose GroupAhmed Hassan does everything fast. Listening to a recorded conversation  with him in slow mode, he’s still so excited that it’s hard to keep up. 

Hassan – who hosts Yard Crashers and Turf War for the DIY Network, cramming two weeks of landscaping into two days – spent his formative years watching his father work as a landscaper. Then, when he was 15 in California, he started his own full-service company and ran it until this summer. Now 36, he spends his time hosting television shows, speaking to industry associations and home shows and raising three kids.

“I’m also an astronaut,” he says, laughing. “I have an anxious personality. I figured out how to take all this energy I have – all of these wants and desires and ideas and fantasies that I conjure up in my mind – and get out there and make them a reality.”

Lawn & Landscape caught up with Hassan in between shoots to talk about how other contractors can connect with their local media, why DIY is good for the industry and the importance of doing what you love.

How would you respond to people who don’t want homeowners doing it themselves?
That’s just ridiculous. [laughs] That’s the mentality for people who think there’s a shortage of work in this country.
There’s no shortage of work in this country. There’s no shortage of money in this country. We live in a country where people spend $40 on a plate of food and throw out half of it. We live in a country that’s abundant, we live in a world that’s abundant. I don’t get that mentality. You want them to call you? They’ll call you on the next one. We teach. You don’t get to take that knowledge with you when you die. Give it up. Help people out. I love that.

I’ve worked with some guys like that – I’ve worked with guys who didn’t want to show me certain pieces of equipment or how to do certain things. I heard the comments a couple times: ‘If I teach you how to do that, you won’t need me.’ Well, it’s not about needing you. At some point, I’m going to learn this. You can be the Yoda in my life or you don’t get to. You’re not going to stop me from learning.

It’s like you teaching your kid how to make a sandwich, because then they won’t need you anymore. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. But you’re right. People do have that mentality. Those are the people who have more of a fear-based mentality.

How did you get involved with DIY Network?
A friend of mine was a landscape designer. She got featured on a show on HGTV called Landscape Smart about 12 years ago. I did a show, and was featured.

At the time I was just running a gardening business – I wasn’t even a landscape contractor. I was knowledgeable about what I was doing, I was totally passionate about what I was doing and therein lies the reason I do television.

I love what I do, I’m excited about it and I have all that energy around landscaping and designing and working with people and working outside. When you’re totally into what you’re doing, when you’re totally crazy about it, you have a different energy than someone who’s just doing it to make a buck. People are crazy about what they’re doing, who are fanatics about it – they start talking about what excites them and they start to almost vibrate. And I brought that energy to the first show I did, and from then on I had producers telling me ‘you have to host shows.’ I said, ‘I have a full-time job. I have to pay my rent. I need to take care of my family. I’m not on TV, I’m a landscaper.’

I’m just living my life now, and I let the cameras roll on it. [laughs] It’s a pretty easy gig. It’s because I love what I’m doing. You can’t fake love. You can’t fake being passionate about something. Anybody can see through that after a period of time. I basically do what I love and the money caught up to me, and the fame caught up to me.

Describe a typical day on set when you’re in production.
We get to the set, we do the drive up scenes. We make sure everyone’s in the right place so everyone can see them. We’re limited to two cameras, typically, as opposed to five or six, which I’d love to have, where you catch everything. Once we intro that, I love that part of the show where it says, ‘it’s time for demolition.’ When it’s time for demolition that means I can finally walk away from the camera and I can start working.

Because nothing is scripted, I’m just trying to make sure I’m giving really good directions. We get homeowners and we get friends. I’m always asking homeowners to bring a dozen friends. My job is to facilitate them. It’s like I got 12 new employees, I have no idea who they are or what they know, what skills they possess or not, and my job is to not only have them have fun but be as productive as possible. I basically wear them out – that’s my job, to wear them out.

How many people are you managing at that point?
Everybody’s managing a piece of that, but my job is to oversee what’s happening with the entire thing, make sure all the timing is done right and the producers are getting what they need for television, and we all get it done by the end of day two, without running into huge amounts of overtime, which we do every time.

On average we’re running about 30 people in each yard. Sometimes we’ve got as many as 45 people on a shoot.

Before I was doing television, I did production landscaping for a little while, slamming new homes. Every fourth house looked the same. Lawn, tree, seven shrubs, move on. But I had a 40-man crew. When you have a 40 man crew – we were working with six yards at a time, just half the block, and we’d just slam them. All irrigation in one day, all grading in one day, all the lawns in one day and move on to the next block.

That’s all my job is – keep everybody productive and make sure they have a good time.

What’s your advice for contractors who want to get more involved with their local or regional media?
I got media savvy only because I was doing it. First, you have to be inspired. You have to really love what you’re doing. If you don’t really love it, you’re not going to keep doing it. I’ve done landscaping since I was 15. I didn’t start doing television shows until I was 31. Do the math.

Figure out what your niche is – you might like to be a landscaper. But a landscaper does a lot of things: do you like working with plants, doing irrigation work? Are you interested in learning about soils and nutrition – what is it that you’re specifically interested in? Do you just like to draw pictures? Or do you like selling? What is truly your niche? Out of all the things you have to do with your job, what gives you the most happiness? Stick with that.

Then you have to use your sales skills. The best thing I can sell is me – that’s my product. The way you sell yourself is, you’ve got to b able to sell a producer, someone in the media, a writer, with an idea, and they’ve got to be able to pick up your vision.

Landscape Smart was the first show I ever did. There had to be something smart or interesting about the project. And I had to be articulate enough to sell that idea. You have to love what you’re doing and sell it to someone. Every design – we’ve done 60 on the show – has to be different. Nobody wants to see something ho-hum.

Any final thoughts?
Were all so stimulated and driven by money. What it doesn’t allow us to do is tap into inspiration. There are so many facets of a contactor’s life that make you feel like you’re doing this mundane thing. I call that circling the dream. Just live the dream.

If you don’t want to do a project, don’t do it, because it’s probably going to go bad. Figure out what you like doing and who you like working for, and do those kinds of projects. If clients seem like they’re a headache, listen to that inner voice and move on. I tell homeowners the same thing. We should be interviewing our clients just like they’re interviewing us.

The bottom line is, we all know how to make money. Let’s figure out what you enjoy doing, and you’re going to shine and get referrals, please customers and have long-term customers. You’ve got nothing to lose, just try it. If you keep doing work you don’t enjoy, is that what you want to keep doing? But you have to figure that out. It’s getting out of that mentality of getting out and chasing dollars. Do what you love and the money will catch up with you.

We all work for ourselves because we don’t want to work in the rat race, we don’t want to be a dumb monkey and work on the assembly line. We want more control over our own lives. Figure out where you’re valuable. L&L

The author is editor of Lawn & Landscape. Send him an e-mail at cbowen@gie.net.