From the time he was 12 years old, Andrew Letersky was cutting lawns with his father after school and on weekends to help maintain the family’s business properties in Belleville, Ontario.
He had no idea that early experience would eventually shape the trajectory of his life and career, leading him from pre-med studies to building a successful landscaping business to founding Ultimate Landscape Academy to help hardscapers and landscapers avoid mistakes he had to learn the hard way.
A Hands-On Introduction to Hardscaping
Letersky has always had a passion for hands-on learning.
“I was the kid that was grabbing scrap, cut-off 2x4s from my dad’s garage, and making these little contraptions and building this thing and building that thing. I just like to create,” he said.
His curiosity was legendary in the family.
“There’s a story told where I chased my dad out of the basement one time when he was wiring some electrical. ‘And why is that wire white? And why is that one black? What’s the red one doing?’ Ran him out of the house,” Letersky said. “But that curious nature led me into school, and while I was there, I continued to do the landscaping work when I came home for the summers.”
Originally planning to become a surgeon, Letersky was studying biochemistry and physics at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. But his hands-on work was calling to him more than his textbooks.
After his first year of university, Letersky took a job where he got his baptism by fire into hardscaping.
“My very first patio – I think it was about a 20 by 20 patio – and my boss believed in doing things the old-fashioned way. He gave me a wheelbarrow and a shovel to excavate, and a hand tamp to pack the base of the patio,” Letersky said. “It took days and days and days of just like hand digging and wheelbarrowing, and then wheelbarrowing the gravel back and hand tamping. I think I had a 2-foot level and it took forever to do this patio.”
But rather than crushing his enthusiasm, the experience ignited something deeper.
“I was like, ‘there’s got to be a better way to do this,’” he said.
That curiosity about better methods, combined with his determination to “figure it out,” became defining characteristics that would serve him throughout his career.
“I was very proud of the work when it was all said and done. I absolutely loved it because I got to learn a lot because that wasn’t the only one I did. We did some walls and I definitely learned the hard way to do it. It was a really good entry into it, because nothing I did after that seemed as difficult as hand tamping a 400 square foot patio,” Letersky said.
“And total aside, but I met my wife through somebody else that I was working with at the time, and now we have two beautiful children, so working there was fantastic!”
A Different Kind of Education
Letersky went back to school after that summer job and it no longer held the same appeal. He found himself already thinking about how he would run his own landscaping and hardscaping business the following summer.
He completed his second year of school and ran his own crew. The summer was a success, but a lack of certain technical skills kept him from taking on the projects he wanted.
“I found myself saying no to a lot of work,” he said. “I didn’t understand proper grade, weight distribution, aggregates, or how to read plans.”
Determined to close those knowledge gaps and feeling more passionate about his work than school, Letersky made a strategic pivot. He decided to take a gap year and applied to every construction company he could in Kingston. He landed a job on a road crew.
The next four months became an intensive crash course in construction. From excavation and laying out subdivisions to fine grading for asphalt and sewer main repairs, he was thrown into hands-on learning experiences daily. One particularly memorable moment? Cutting down a two-inch manhole riser to one inch with a diamond saw — from inside the manhole.
“At the time, it felt brutal,” he said. “But it taught me control and precision I wouldn’t have gotten any other way.”
He not only gained technical skills but also saved a significant amount of money. He used that financial cushion to take time off and travel the world.
“I was 20 years old and I thought I was rich. The world was in front of me,” Letersky said. “And at that moment, I remember thinking, ‘this is the life I want.’”
He realized he didn’t want to be tied to years of university or long hospital shifts. Instead, he embraced the idea of seasonal, intensive work that allowed time for travel and personal growth.
Still, honoring a deal with his parents, he returned to university for one final year. But by then, his focus had shifted. He bypassed most of his science courses, opting instead for marketing, economics, and business classes.
“I had already made up my mind. I was going to start my own company,” Letersky said.
In 2011, he made it happen. He launched Brickworks Landscape and Design as soon as he returned home to Belleville.
Building a Business from the Ground Up
The transition wasn’t smooth.
“I found myself like, ‘Okay, here I am starting a new business. I spent all the money I had made in the year working and traveling and having fun. I’m home. I’m broke. I’m on my dad’s couch, and it’s like, What’s the next step?'” he said.
While Letersky had spent summers in the area and done work for several clients, he had referred most of them to other businesses for year-round work. This created a new challenge as he needed to get his name out there.
“I think I only did about $27,000 in sales in year one,” he said. “It was the least profitable year I had ever had because of the amount of work that I had over such a long period of time.”
He learned a crucial lesson that would define his future success.
“I learned the power of networking. I was part of a small business group that my father had been part of for years, and I would go with him, and I would meet people,” he said.
The investment paid off dramatically.
“In year two we did about $250,000. So, it was a pretty significant jump in business in a very short period of time,” Letersky said.
“That’d be one thing if I could tell anybody starting a business now—when are you planning on starting it? I don’t care when, but start letting people know now that you’re starting it. I waited until I started it to start advertising and marketing and networking rather than starting it ahead of time. That’s one of the biggest mistakes that I would go back and fix right now.”
Learning Your Numbers
From there, Letersky’s company grew quickly.
“Within a couple of years after that, we hit about a half a million dollars a year in the business and project-based work. I thought I had made it. I’m 25. I’ve got my own home. I’ve got a few trucks on the road. We’ve got guys working and everything else,” he said.
But that success on paper didn’t quite translate.
“After the Christmas party where I had been handing out bonuses, I had a conversation with my admin. She said, ‘What money are you giving away?’ And I said, ‘We got tons of money in the business,’” he said. “And just because I saw money didn’t mean it was my money.”
This crisis forced Letersky to confront his financial literacy gaps.
“My knowledge of financial literacy was very, very low. I didn’t know what fixed costs were. I didn’t understand overhead or the difference of variable costs or how it played a role in the business,” he said.
The solution came through education. He went to a seminar where he learned how to break down his business numbers properly and Letersky described himself as “obsessed.” He dove deep on everything.
“It takes about 30 minutes every morning for my grass crew to load the trailer with the lawn mowers and the weed whackers and the push mowers and all that stuff. I started doing the math, because with three guys on a crew, three hours a day is 15 hours a week. 15 hours a week is 60 hours a month, 60 hours a month, times eight months…It cost me almost $4,000 this season for me to have them offload a trailer and unload a trailer every day,” he said.
Armed with this information, he bought an enclosed trailer to reduce the inefficiency. This is just one example, but Letersky said the financial clarity transformed everything.
“We went right into 20 percent net margins after that. It was that first year I job-tracked everything that we did. I stayed on top of all my numbers,” he said. “We went from doing well and not being profitable to doing well and being profitable. And it was the snap of a dime.”
A Career Pivot
By 2020, after nearly a decade of success, Letersky was feeling burned out and ready for a change. He sold off his equipment and client lists and had grand plans with his wife and first child.
“We had bought a fifth-wheel travel trailer. I had spent time renovating it and we were ready to do a six-month lower U.S. road trip that winter,” Letersky said.
But a second child – and the COVID-19 pandemic – intervened.
Instead of the planned RV adventure, the family threw themselves into new projects: real estate, restaurant investments, and building their dream home. But something was missing.
“The following summer I had my biggest mental health breakdown that I had ever had,” Letersky said. “Not until years later did I realize it was because I was lacking the most important thing – passion in what I was doing.”
He went back to his RV dreams. They sold their custom-built home, bought a 40-foot motorhome, and finally took that long-delayed adventure.
“We spent five and a half months in a 40-foot tin can, traveling through the lower U.S. with a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and our seven-year-old golden retriever, and my wife and I,” he said.
The Coaching Calling
During the RV trip, something clicked.
“I actually got back into landscaping while I was on that trip. I started doing designing and consulting again because I had available time while we were traveling,” Letersky said. “As soon as I started doing that again, something in me started feeling better.”
Letersky was sharing his sales framework with friends when one said, “Man, you’ve got so much knowledge about growing a landscape business. You’ve got to be teaching this to people.”
The seed was planted.
“I’m not supposed to be out of the industry. I just need to be in the industry in a different way,” he said.
From his very first hardscaping job, Letersky has learned the hard way. Now he wants to make sure others don’t need to do the same. Letersky founded the Ultimate Landscape Academy to do just that.
His approach is built on two pillars: financial clarity and team building.
“The goal throughout the entire organization is to provide clarity on understanding our overhead, our finances, and how we price—number one to be profitable—and then how to build the systems and the processes that you need to be able to build teams and step away, which allows you freedom in your business,” he said.
Advice for Aspiring Hardscapers
Letersky will be sharing some of these hard-won lessons at the 2025 Hardscape North America in his session on selling value instead of competing on price.
“I’m going to bring a lot of personal development to my speech, and I’m going to challenge people,” he said. “I’m really going to put a mirror in front of a lot of them where they’ll get an opportunity to kind of reflect on some of their own skill sets and some of their own shortcomings.”
For aspiring hardscapers wondering if they have what it takes, Letersky says the industry needs people who are willing to learn, adapt, and grow. The question isn’t whether you’re tough enough for the work, but whether you avoid the mistakes that have already been made.
“Just because you’re a tough landscaper doesn’t mean you have to do things the tough way,” he said. “You can learn the smart way and then you can be the tough guy that gets the work done without being on-site.”
