Andre Gourd got tired of selling real estate, so he made a career change — now he sells to Realtors.
Gourd operates a company that can provide almost every service imaginable to help Realtors — and anyone else, for that matter — promote their work.
His company, Realty Productions, does websites, newsletters and training.
How many clients?
“Hundreds,” he said, sitting in the Keystone Heights office where and and three employees run the company. “Real estate agents don’t have time to do much of anything but sell. I’m a former broker and I realize that. If you’re going to appeal to them, you have to show that you can do all the work.”
Gourd is a French-Canadian of the first order — he’s from Montreal — but decided that he’d seen too much cold weather and moved to Boca Raton to sell.
“It was wild down there,” he said. “I thought I needed to be elsewhere and, for that matter, I might do something else. I was tired of the all-day, every-day grind.”
He and his family decided on Gainesville to take advantage of a college town but decided to rent rather than buy, just to make sure.
“We got a place on Lake Santa Fe and discovered Keystone Heights,” he said. “It’s a great lifestyle. We just got our second traffic light!”
He became connected to the area market through Pam Bingemann, a Beach realtor who has been president of the local association. The word got around and his business grew.
“I did some training for Pam and then I consulted,” he said. “It got me going and soon I was working with people like Norville Realty and Atkinson-Knight.”
He said he’s building through one-on-one service.
“We do everything and all I need is information from the client,” he said. “Lots of times, a web designer will make the page and then the client has to update it. Realtors don’t have the time. We do it for them. The same with newsletters. We do the work.”