Inspiring Conversations with Adam Geuy of Adam Geuy – Realtor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Geuy.

Hi Adam, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am the son, nephew, and grandson of very hardworking and highly skilled carpenters and contractors. Our lineage originated in Germany and brought that attention to detail and precision with them. My grandfather’s company had a reputation for building beautiful barns throughout champaign county and central Ohio. Many of which later became bicentennial barns and we’re noticeable due to their unique design character. My father and uncle continued the family business and focused on high-end residential construction, and I began going to the jobsite with my father when I was 10 years old. I loved “helping” with the framing and especially loved seeing the trim, baseboards, flooring, cabinets, and other character details and finishes added to the home. It always amazed me how they could take a set of blueprints and an empty plot of land and create something so beautiful for someone. I loved how precisely my grandfather could measure and cut these pieces of trim. They came together so perfectly that you could barely feel where one board ended and another began.

Now, digging footers, basements, and shooting grade is another story. My dad could pluck a golf ball out of a sand trap with a backhoe so following along those passes with a shovel and a laser wasn’t as tedious or laborious as it could have been. Pouring concrete was a love/hate endeavor. At first, I really enjoyed it. Knowing the footers were the perfect depth and the little sticks of rebar we drove in the ground to show us how much concrete to pour made the job easy. I wasn’t a fan of building forms for the basement walls or tearing them off after the concrete has hardened. Pouring a slab for someone’s basement floor and garage was exhausting to place yet so rewarding to smooth and finish.

Perfection wasn’t a scale or range to fall in. It was binary. A one or zero. The finished product either was or wasn’t. If it wasn’t? You tore it all out and did it again. Each home we built was loved and cared for as if it was being built for my grandmother to live in. It was difficult for a little boy to understand why things covered over with dirt or behind drywall needed to be so perfect. It took years for me to understand that each piece builds the foundation for the next. If step one was flawed, then everything you build up or out from there will be flawed too.

In my teenage years my grandfather was fully “retired” and my father and uncle began building pre-engineered buildings. We built a senior citizen’s center, and fire department, a wastewater treatment facility, and several large additions to a factory that made landing gear components for military aircraft. We even built a new stadium and building for concessions, bathrooms, ticketing, and equipment storage for my high school. Thinking back as I write this, that was all pretty cool. At the time I hated it. Now the concrete pours are hundreds of square yards. When we poured the slab for the high school we had to start at 6am and the heat index rose to over 100 degrees. The concrete was getting hard faster than we could place and level it. It was grueling work and my only break was when I got to join my team for high school football two-a-days!! The first practice ended and the other kids got to eat their lunch in the cool athletics building and I had to go back out and keep placing concrete. Then practice two which, ironically, focused solely on conditioning. Then back out to the site to help finish the job we started.

For those that don’t know, a pre-engineered building is sort of like adult tinker toys. All the steel framing, sheet metal, insulation, windows, every bolt, nut, and screw are delivered on semi-trucks and flatbeds. A crane unloads it all and we sort through it and erect the building.

Wood is soft and warm. Steel is hard and cold. Plywood and siding were replaced by sheet metal. One slip and you could seriously injure yourself and others. Roofing a house is certainly dangerous and hard work but roofing a factory is a different animal entirely. The primary en-suite fully custom bathroom with Italian marble was replaced by a commercial bathroom with an eye wash station. All the love and detail were replaced with form, function, and practicality.

By the time I am graduating high school and it was time to consider going to college and whether to take over the family business, burnout was an understatement. My dad and uncle weren’t going to retire for many years so my life was looking like more of the same for the foreseeable future, and I just wasn’t interested in that. I tried for a couple years after graduating because I didn’t want to be the generation that walked away from the family business, but I just couldn’t find the same passion my father possessed. I even tried working for some of my family’s competitors but quickly learned that the attention to detail and perfection focused mindset was something relatively unique to my family’s business.

I moved to Columbus with my best friends who enrolled in The Ohio State University. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in and didn’t want to waste money, so I postponed enrolling right away. I got a job at Best Buy, went on to sell roofs, windows, siding, and sunrooms and still couldn’t find my calling. I was good at selling and had spent a lot of time learning how to overcome objections, negotiating, and other sales techniques, but more times than not the high pressure, control focused sales strategy felt icky.

I quit construction sales and went back to technology. I worked at AT&T mobility and found some real traction. I was in a store where people came to me wanting a product or service we sold, rather than sitting down at someone’s dinner table. At the time only AT&T sold the iPhone so there were plenty of opportunities to push the other products and services the company sold at the time. I was making more money than almost all of my friends and no more blisters, burns, cuts, and scrapes.

Eventually I had some money saved up and was certain sales was going to be my calling. If I have the skill set and natural ability, what else could I sell? I had been aiming to get a degree at Ohio State since moving to Columbus and that was a sort of deal I made with myself after walking away from the family business. I would get a degree and make something of myself and selling iPhones wasn’t grand enough. I was a very talented writer all through school so I started off as an English major, quickly pivoting to Journalism. I took an intro to psychology class and loved it so that became my minor. I quit my job at AT&T and started serving and bartending in the evenings so I could go to class during the day.

I found myself in the same predicament as I had so many times before. I didn’t love any of this enough to consider it my calling and couldn’t see myself doing any of this professionally either. Still a little lost and confused I knew that any degree was better than none and I had made so many choices that I felt I needed to stick with at this point. Eventually I found the pre-requisites to marketing and changed my major to strategic communications with a minor in psychology. Marketing was exciting because rather than focusing a sales strategy or technique on an individual, I could reach the masses. I quickly took to the concepts of product positioning and writing copy that piques interest.

While working in restaurants I was sort of going through a different type of education that would serve me well in life. Every table or bar quest was an individual with a unique reason for going out to eat or sitting down at the bar. Some were celebrating a birthday, anniversary, promotion at work. Others just bought their first home and didn’t have everything unpacked or gone to the grocery to be able to make dinner yet. Maybe an expecting mother that was craving cheddar bay biscuits! I had families with a loved one in the hospital that stepped out for a quick bite to eat and wanted to bring their loved one something to eat other than hospital food. I had business professionals that would gather at the bar for a drink and discuss their pitch before the guest of honor arrived. I served professors while they graded papers and sipped on a small batch bourbon. Parties of 25 people that showed up an hour before we locked the doors for the night. People who observe Ramadan who had been fasting all day and wanted all of their order to arrive precisely at 8:02pm (sunset). I had easy guests, difficult guests, demanding, rude, kind, forgiving, and critical sometimes all at the same table or scattered around the bar. I like to joke that if you don’t have empathy and adaptability as a skill set, go work in the service industry for a couple of years and you’ll have it mastered. I learned that you must be able to find commonality with your guests or at least manufacture the style of service they came in expecting. I could have three tables at once and each of them gets a wildly different version of me. The business professionals rather I not even exist, and their minds were just read and their orders simply appeared in front of them without any interaction. The next table would be a widow that encourages me to sit down at the table with them, so they have someone to talk to and not feel so lonely. The third table could be a family with children that expect a bubbly and energetic server that engages with the kids and keep them happy and entertained. No matter who you encounter, there is some common ground to be found if you’re curious enough to look for it.

Working in that industry forces you to be keenly away of time management. You need to know how long it takes to make that drink, how soon you are going to receive new guests from the time the previous ones got up and left. How long it takes you to get ice, or clean glasses to the side stand from the dish tank. If you walk through the kitchen to check on your tables’ orders, you’ll be expected to run someone else’s order. Then when dropping that off those guests need drink refills and extra ranch dressing and you know your co-worker is probably just scrolling Instagram somewhere in the back instead of being on top of the needs of their guests. It doesn’t matter because 11 other people need as many other things from every corner of the building and you just must keep moving until 10, 11pm or even 2 am.

You also need to be precise when you measure everything from a $400 – 1 ounce pour of Louis XIII to the lime juice in a mojito. Before your shift you need to look at the projected business of the day and accurately determine how much orange, lemon, lime, and pineapple juice to squeeze for that day. Running out in the middle of the shift and having to break out the juicer to make more or stuffing blue cheese crumbles into olives “on the fly” massively disrupts those little timers in your head and impatience sets in around your bar. Impatience means lower tips and tips are what pays your rent and keeps the heat on in your apartment.

After about 4 years of going to OSU and changing my major from English, to Journalsim, to Strategic Communication, to political communication, back to strategic communication I realized that a degree in marketing required going to Fischer Business School at OSU to have a meaningful career. That meant even more school and to be honest, I didnt have the grades to get accepted to that level of post graduate. I ended up quitting school with no degree and just grinding out the days, weeks, and years working in restaurants. I worked at Red Lobster when I first started and after 13 years I was working in a very nice steakhouse. I served, bartended, even dabbled in management from time to time. I learned everything about how a successful restaurant operates and how razor thin the profit margins are. I had no idea I was actually taking business management and sales courses in real world application.

I knew working in restaurants wasn’t my life calling either. I was consistently encouraged to go into management, but I could see and overhear how unhappy my current managers seemed to be with their personal lives. They spent all their time at the restaurant and never had enough time to see their families and friends. Never took vacations and always seemed just north of complete burnout. Even the best restaurants I worked in were no exception. Why the hell would I voluntarily sign up for that? And, if I’m not going into management and not in school anymore, then what was the point of this whole Columbus transition to begin with?

Then covid-19 happened…

On my actual birthday I went out to eat with my family at the steakhouse I worked at. Covid had been on the news and it was starting to get pretty scary. The restaurant was already noticing fewer and fewer guests on the books from day to day and the staff was starting to talk. During my birthday dinner one of my managers came over to the table and sat down with us. he wished me a happy birthday and then promptly let me know that this was the last day the restaurant would be open for a while. World-wide Quarantine began the next day.

Like so many people I was clueless how I was going to make money and survive. I had no idea how long this would last, I was worried constantly about my family’s well-being and missed them terribly. I figured out how to gain unemployment compensation, and the stimulus checks went out. My parent’s seemed to be in good health, and I had money for my bills and then some. The restaurant was actually feeding us too! We could come into the building 1 day a week at a specific time and they had family meals lined up on the bar for us to take home. Salisbury steak meatloaf, chicken pasta with penne, chicken breast and mashed potatoes, cookies, salads, etc. It was incredible. Even a fortunate few of us got to come in and help with the takeout functions of the restaurant and work for cash tips. To be honest, I would have done it for free. Anything to get out of the house and be around people. Masked, latex gloves, and a three-month-old haircut, I was ready to be of service somehow.

The rest of the time was spent walking my dog, training my dog, playing with my dog, napping with my dog, taking my dog to the park, playing Xbox, reading, going for drives, and trying to keep track of the time and what day of the week it was. I had burned through tiger king and seemingly everything else of interest on the streaming platforms and found myself hopelessly bored but highly motivated to do something significant at the same time.

I have heard of people refer to Covid as the great reset. So many people learned what being essential meant, how to cook, learned a new skill, started a new hobby, experienced different ways to work or go to school, or simply had time to just sit down and reflect or their mortality and audit their overall happiness and quality of life.

Amidst the endless pondering and all my newly found free time I did the same thing. I had no idea how long quarantine would last but I have a personal mantra that the good thing about bad times is that they don’t last forever, and that this too, shall pass. I thought about my childhood. I thought about my experiences as a grown man. The various industries I worked in, my time at university, what I liked to do in my free time, and took a full audit of my strengths, weaknesses, and valuable/marketable skills. I also knew that I wanted control over my time, my future, and my financial, physical, and mental health.

During my childhood and teenage years, I learned every stage, step, material, and skill required to build a house. I know the differences of doing it right, doing things with care, love, and attention to detail. I know what things look like when they’re done wrong, sloppily, hastily, DIY vs professional, what meets building code and what doesn’t. Through selling roofs, windows, and siding, I know what these materials look like when they begin to age and the signs they exhibit when they begin to fail. Lifting shingles, foggy windows, etc.

I also know how to sell. How to get people to tell you the truth. How to identify what their actual problem is, what their motivation is behind the story they tell you, where the pain points are. I know how to overcome objections, and how to negotiate.

Working in restaurants I learned how to better adapt to the person I am talking to. How to connect with them and that everyone just wants to be heard and cared for. Hospitality isn’t about how cold the salad fork is or the perfectly manicured dish with the protein, starch, and vegetable positioned on the plate. It’s how people feel when they’re in your care. Do they feel understood? Do they feel like you’re one step ahead of the problems they may face? Are their allergies or dietary restrictions navigated perfectly? Are you making suggestions that they will be excited about? Are you being sensitive to the reason they chose to dine or drink in your venue to begin with? As with all things, it very simply boils down to the golden rule. You just treat others the way you would hope to be treated if the roles were reversed.

I also learned how to manage a budget and think like a business owner. How to make sure we deliver high caliber service with waste and avoidable expenses in mind. What sort of promotions we can run to drive traffic to the restaurant and how we can make a killer Philly cheesesteak eggroll appetizer using the prime rib we didn’t sell the evening before. When we butcher the beef delivery and cut our filet’s and ribeye’s the trimmings could be used to create the au jus that gets served with the prime rib this evening. That sort of creativity is paramount to operating a successful restaurant because the profit margins are so thin. How could I apply that business acumen elsewhere?

In college I learned about human psychology and how different people process and react to information. I learned how to better communicate and, more importantly, how to listen. A skill dramatically reinforced and hardened from my time in the service industry. I learned how companies price and position their products and services in the marketplace I also learned how they advertise them based on various emotions (love vs fear vs anger), what problems they can solve, scarcity, fear of missing out (fomo), etc. I had three years of looking behind the vale of how marketing companies attract eyeballs and attention to their product or service then convert them into sales, revenue, and profit.

I also always wanted to buy my first house. I wanted a fixer-upper for cheap that I could restore and renovate. This led me to watch a lot of HGTV, especially during quarantine. While doing my audit, HGTV was streaming in the background while I was writing all of this out.

It finally clicked. I can combine these skills into a career as a Realtor. Seeing my grandfather and father build, manage and operate a business as well as my own experiences helping companies operate on a day-to-day basis; I learned the guiding principles for success in my own. How to treat your customers, how to balance your accounting, how to attract future customers, and how to build a sterling reputation amongst your peers would all serve me will in the formation of my own career.

Before even taking the classes, I could expertly guide a potential buyer through a home and identify the problems. I can easily identify the level of craftsmanship that went into the original build, explain the differences between a block, stone, or poured concrete foundation. I can look at a roof, windows, siding, gutters and downspouts and tell almost exactly how old they are or if they’re failing. I can almost always identify where water spots in the drywall are coming from, etc. I know how to fix almost any problem they may face the RIGHT way and tell if a contractor’s quote is reasonable.

I also possess an ability to listen, learn, accommodate, and communicate and I genuinely love hearing people’s stories. Their fears, ambitions, goals, and dreams. I can easily adapt to their personality and expectations while authentically being Adam. I can overcome obstacles, find solutions, lean on my own resources to see around corners and put out fires before there’s a whiff of smoke. I am naturally inclined to be hospitable and trained to detect the slightest signs of worry and uncertainty and do everything in my power to alleviate those feelings and stop at nothing to secure their ideal outcome.

I know how to market myself and more importantly how to market my client’s properties. I understand that attention is the most valuable currency in today’s marketplace and I know how to get it and hold it for as long as possible. If attention and momentum starts to wane, I know how to get it back. I learned that marketing firms treat their task as a range of methods running simultaneously. One approach that works to attract a potential buyer might now be effective on the next person, so you must be versatile.

In closing, I absolutely love helping people buy, sell, and navigate the real estate industry. I really enjoy being a part of someone accomplishing a dream they have for themselves and their loved ones. I get to use the suite of skills that I’ve built over the course of my life in the service of others. No hardcore sales tactics yet I still get to sell. No more building someone else’s company, reputation, or protecting their profit margin. Now I clock in everyday for my clients and work towards their goals. I get to use the skills I went to school for, the hospitality that I learned to cultivate, and the only time I need to be a ruthless negotiator is on my clients’ behalf. I have built a successful company focused on Real Estate just like the incredible men in my family that came before me. I get to approach every situation with the same attention to detail and relentless pursuit of perfection I grew up learning to appreciate. My grandfather always used to remind me to take my time, do everything right the first time, and produce a result I would be proud of. I think he would be very proud to see me doing exactly that. I know I am.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Absolutely not. I never felt like I had made the right decision. Not taking over the family business, moving away from home, going into sales, going to school with no endgame identified, spending so many years in the service industry…
At the time the decisions felt right but then as time unfolded, I always felt like I was on the wrong path. Like, what I was doing was not what I was meant for. I have always carried a sort of shame or sorrow for not taking over the family business and with that a feeling that I must do something truly meaningful with my life. No ordinary job would be sufficient and that I would have to build something else with generational possibilities. I put that pressure on myself, but it has been a lot to carry.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I’m a residential real estate agent in Columbus and Toledo, specializing in single family homes for professional couples who are moving up, relocating, or planting in a neighborhood for the next ten or fifteen years. A lot of my clients are physicians, attorneys, engineers, and executive operators. People whose work demands real expertise and who expect the same standard from anyone they hire.
What I’m actually known for is the way I read a house. I come from a multi-generation line of German carpenters and contractors. I was the first one in my family who didn’t take over the business, but I carry the eye. I can walk a listing and read it the way my grandfather and father would. Materials, age, code, what’s right and what’s wrong, what a remodel actually costs, and which patch job the seller did the week before they listed. That kind of read isn’t taught in real estate school. It’s a rare lens in this business, and it’s the single biggest thing my clients hire me for. I’m not a home inspector. I am your first line of defense before you start writing checks. That’s the spine of how I work, and it’s the single biggest thing my clients hire me for.

The rest is craft. Branded moving boxes with a glossy finish that don’t shed cardboard dust onto my client’s new hardwoods. Professional cleaners before closing. Lights on, blinds open, greenery on the counters, Bath and Body Works in the outlets so buyers walk into a home that feels alive. Inspection negotiations that actually protect the buyer. I’ll ask the seller to clear the hair out of the bathroom drains before closing, because no one should be pulling a stranger’s whiskers out of a sink on their first weekend in a new house. The work is the work. Either you do it or you don’t.

What sets me apart, if I’m being plain about it, is the lane I sit in. The Columbus and Toledo agent market is full of two archetypes. The legacy blazer realtor with no real depth, just polish. And the bottle-service influencer with a license and twenty thousand followers. The professional couples I work with are quietly tired of both. They want a peer, not a concierge and not a personality. They want someone with candor and authenticity that can go win them the house and be welcomed to the dinner party a year later. That’s where I live.

Brand-wise, what I’m most proud of is that none of it is a performance. The carpenter lineage is real. The hours I put into every file are real. I drive a loud black AMG, I have tattoos and I’m getting more, and I might show up dressed a little differently than the polished blazer adorned look you see on TV. When I say I’m in the business, I mean IN the business. Property tours happen with a high-powered flashlight. If I can peek in a crawlspace or pop up into the attic, I will. We walk the exterior of the home looking for issues. I’m pulling manufacture dates off the A/C and the mechanicals. I’m not going to be that thorough wearing a pair of Gucci loafers. I like to be comfortable, and I let my breadth of knowledge speak for me, not my outfit. My compassion, knowledge, and expertise are the value proposition. The approach is polished and professional from end to end, every lane covered. The clients who hire me hire me because of it, not despite it.

What I want your readers to know is this. A house is not an asset to me, and I hope it isn’t to you either. It’s where a chapter of your life is going to happen. The next ten years of birthdays, the twins coming home from the hospital, the recovery from a deployment, the holidays with the grandparents flying in. I take that seriously. The math must be airtight, and the financial logic has to make sense, but the feeling matters too. Hire someone who understands both.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
This has nothing to do with Real Estate, but my favorite childhood memory was showing steers together as a family. We showed steers all over Ohio participating in the BEST program and other parts of the country like N.A.I.L.E in Louisville and The American Royal in Kansas City. Our ultimate goal was to win the Ohio State Fair.

The last year our family did this I was too old, so we only bought one steer who we named Penguin and my sister, Leah got to show him all season. He was the best steer we ever showed in terms of quality and temperament, and Penguin was truly the mascot of our family. Penguin won Grand Champion at almost every show we took him to and there were a lot! He won Grand Champion Overall at the Michigan Beef Expo as well as the Ohio Beef Expo and we were beginning to be very optimistic going into the Ohio State Fair that fall. Penguin looked absolutely incredible at the state fair. He grew up and finished beautifully. His coat was shiny and thick and despite weighing 1300 lbs now, he was still as athletic and easy moving as he was all winter long.

For reasons we will probably never understand the judge placed Penguin second in his class. This removed any opportunity for him to move up through the divisions and compete for the coveted designation and accomplishment of Grand Champion Overall.

I immediately teared up before he got out of the show ring. My sister held it together while in the ring but immediately started to cry once out of the spotlight. She came out of the ring, dropped the lead to Penguin’s halter and collapsed into my arms. My sister and I fought like cats and dogs growing up but, in that moment, we needed each other more than anyone or anything else. I hugged her as tightly as I could as we shared the pain of defeat on the biggest stage of the year. All those early mornings and late nights in the barn preparing for that moment just to have it torn away from our grasp.

My favorite childhood memory is one of pain and defeat. It hurts even now at 39 years old to remember that day. That painful moment was a powerful reminder that no matter what, we will always have each other. We win together and we lose together. No matter what, we will always be there for one another and for that, we are very fortunate indeed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://adamgeuy.nexthomecbus.com/agents/1193356/Adam+Geuy
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adam.geuy.realtor/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adamgeuyrealtor
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-geuy-4ba599203/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@adamgeuyrealtor