Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Greer.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Adam. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Prior to graduating from the Art Institute of Orange County with my Bachelor’s degree in graphic design, I landed a job at a printing company in Garden Grove. It was scary for me as I had to leave my full-time position with Home Depot and start with this small company getting paid on a per job basis to start. There was plenty of work however. I was doing all kinds of designs from business cards for dry cleaners to banners for churches. My bosses mother was a real estate agent who worked for First Team Real Estate. Once I started working at the company she liked a lot of my designs and asked if I could build her a real estate brand and help her carry that into all her marketing items like business cards, signs and postcards. Once I did this for her we saw something great happen. This was back in 2004/2005 when the real estate market was on fire! All her co-workers and competition, quickly jumped on the bandwagon and hired our company to do their custom brand and printing of the various real estate marketing needs. We became Orange County’s #1 Real Estate Marketing company in what seemed to happen overnight. We worked with most of the top producing realtors in the county and surrounding areas and the snowball just grew bigger and bigger. We saw over 400% growth in the company in a matter of 3 years. When I first started at that company, it was just me and my boss in a 100 sq. ft. office and a little printer. To where we left off in 2008 in a 2,200 sq. ft. office, 8 machines and 7 employees. In 2008 the economy as you know took a turn for the worst, and the real estate side of things took a heavy impact. This left my boss and the company in way over their heads. With all the overhead and the bills stacking up, the company shut down in February of 2008. I was kind of scared. I started sending my resume out everywhere I possibly could, I even considered a career change just to make ends meet. However, I noticed, on a daily basis, I was getting more and more calls from our clients on my cell phone who were toughing out the hard times in the industry, who all told me, wherever you go, we will go. I looked to my girlfriend at the time (wife now) and said, I think I have enough here to start something on my own. She thought I was crazy and asked that I not do it but I was determined. I saw something there. I went into it with a different mentality. I wanted to run a similar business, but with little to no overhead. That’s when I started AG Designs and Marketing Inc. Coming from a creative background, I had no idea what I was doing on a business level so very early on, I reached out to other business professionals and took help from CPAs and Attorneys who made sure I was doing things right. I started the company from a laptop in my living room because we lived in a studio apartment at the time. Very fast, my snowball started growing. I would go from office to office with my samples and it was hard to leave most of these places without an order. As soon as they found out who I was and where I worked before, and saw the designs I was doing, they wanted in.
My sales increased very fast as well as the vendor relationships that I had started in the beginning. After about a year in the business, my Girlfriend and I found out we were going to be parents! I was freaking out. Asking myself things like what if real estate goes bad again, what if I fail, how will I take care of another person? This just fueled me, I worked even harder and bettered each aspect of what we were doing. We were the only one stop real estate marketing shop in Orange County. I hired my first employee do deliver orders to customers and do some light graphic design and mail prep in 2010 as I couldn’t do it all myself anymore. In 2012, I opened my first office on Beach Blvd. in Westminster near the 22 freeway. I’m not sure if it was a credibility thing, or just where the industry was, but as soon as I opened my doors at the new office, business got even better. I had to hire 2 more designers just to keep up with the work flow. We were preferred vendors out of several Real Estate offices all over the county. I started an Instagram page, that instantly opened doors for us on a national level and soon we found ourselves designing and shipping marketing materials all over the United States.
In 2015, I wrote a marketing campaign that enabled our customers to have a consistent marketing plan and automatic monthly drops in their geographic areas. This campaign was all the talk in the industry and opened so many doors for us. We were being contacted by every busy agent, top producer and real estate coaches trying to get their hands on this turnkey campaign. Since we have bettered the campaign and built on it. I was able to buy a house in 2015 and now have baby number 2 who was just born at the beginning of July. I plan on keeping the business growing but the overhead as low as possible.
Has it been a smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been very smooth as I’m a creative person and still learning the business side of things as I go. There are constant challenges and problems that come up however I found that I am pretty good at solving these problems and keeping the business going. The hardest struggle has been with employees. I’m sure any business owner can relate, finding good help, is the hardest thing to do.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the AG Designs and Marketing story. Tell us more about the business.
We specialize in Real Estate Marketing. We offer an array of printing and marketing materials as well as graphic design and mailing services. We are considered Orange County’s #1 real estate 1 stop marketing shop.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We are constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve we see in the real estate marketing industry. We are very tech savvy and do predict shifts and changes in the trends. We offer some of the cutting-edge stuff like Aerial photography and plastic business cards.
Contact Info:
- Address: 13861 Beach Blvd. #27 Westminster
- Website: www.agdesignsinc.com
- Phone: 7149003605
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agdesignsinc
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/AGDesignsandMarketing
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
