Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gregg Visintainer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Gregg, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
School and I never got alone. Looking back at it I’m not sure if it was because I was always bored in class or just didn’t care to learn. The one thing I do know is that school is where my style of art started and developed. I was an 80’s and 90’s kid! One of the poplar kids magazines was the Highlights Magazine. This was before cell phones so time was spent a little different. I remember every time I went to the doctors office I would dig through all the book and magazines to find Highlights. I loved looking for the hidden items in the pictures and all the crazy artwork. I got frustrated when someone circled the hidden details because I truly enjoyed the experience. Growing up I loved Highlights Magazines, mazes, Magic Eye, Bev Doolittle, Where’s Waldo and doodling. Anything with hidden meaning! In class I would always be creating mazes for other students. Is was fun because students started to see how challenging I could make them and how much detail I would put in the mazes. In 6th grade this girl taught me these heart patterns and we would fill the whole paper with the design. I’m talking notebooks and many many hours of doing these hearts. After I got bored of that I started doodling with hidden pictures and words. My doodles would cover the desk, test, homework and anything else I could draw on. Teachers either hated me or loved me, never in between. Now my doodles are much more intense with a main image and take anywhere 40-80 hours with 20-200 hidden details inside the artwork all relating to the theme. I’ve been a professional artist now for 15 years. It is really nice to be able to see my development over 25 years and all because of doodling in school.
Gregg, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Gregg Visintainer AKA Viz and my business is Viz Art Ink. I am a TEDx speaker and a self taught artist who always wanted his own business but never thought it would be in the art industry. My artwork is all hand drawn with hidden pictures and words relating to each theme. The more you look the more you find. In 2007 I started selling my artwork at local farmer markets in San Diego. Throughout the years I have participated in over 1,000 festivals, art shows and events. When I was 27 I opened the Viz Art Gallery in Carlsbad, CA where I featured over 20 local artists and was my home base. After 7 years of running the shop I closed it down to refocus of traveling, art and my family. I’ve been very blessed to work with some incredible companies such Disney, DC Shoes, Grateful Dead, Falken Tires, U.S. Marines, U.S. NAVY, U.S. Air Force and others. I recently moved to North Idaho in a small mountain town with less than 1,000 people. We love it! I feel very blessed to be able to work at home anywhere in the world. Online, shows, wholesale and custom artwork will be my main focus for my business from here on out. Excited to see what the next 37 years will have in store for me!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Resilience is one thing every start up business owner or artist will have to conquer if they want to be successful. I wanted to quit the art industry many times. I truly felt like a fish out of water and had no idea what I was doing. I still don’t know how I got here but all I know is I never quit. When I started doing weekly farmers market I was also working as a server at a brewery. In the restaurant industry full time is 4-5 shifts with each shift being about 5 hours, 25 hours a week if I was lucky. I had time to burn, drinking and partying was getting old. I decided to see if I could sell my artwork at the local farmers market and it would keep me busy. Busy is exactly what I became. Within four months I had quit the brewery because I was doing 5 markets a week and couldn’t keep doing both. I had to pick either go full-time as an artist and quit the brewery or give up on the art hustle. Once I had all five weekly shows secure I knew I could give my two weeks notice. My weekly shows were Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and sometimes Sunday. Each show or market was in a different city throughout San Diego and Orange County. Show fees were about $60 a day for 4-5 hours of selling time. What people don’t know or understand unless you are a vendor is it takes 1-2 hours to set up and 1-2 hours to breakdown. It is back breaking work and I already had two back surgeries by the time I was 21. I felt the back pain every show and every hour on my body but knew I had to keep going because I picked this life as a vendor. I remember vividly it was in October and this week almost crippled me physically, emotionally and mentally. I started my work week on the Tuesday just like every other week where I drove 45 minutes to setup. I setup my booth, displayed my art but this time I didn’t sell enough to cover my booth fee, $60 plus expenses. I lost money for the first time in six months. I didn’t know what to think but I knew I had to pack up and get ready for tomorrow’s show. Wednesday came but this day I only had to drove 20 minutes, set up at the farmers market and the same thing happened. I didn’t cover my expenses, I was losing money working. Thursday came, drove 30 minutes, setup at the market and I barley broke even. I couldn’t understand what was going on and how all of a sudden this was happening. I also knew the next morning, Friday, I had to drive to Huntington Beach which was over an hour from home so I had to move on. Friday markets were my furthest weekly market and most expensive, $80 for the day. Woke up early, drove to Huntington Beach to get there at 6am, set up so I could start selling from 8am-5pm. I couldn’t believe it! I made zip, zilch, nothing, nada, goose egged it. I didn’t make one sale, never had happened before! In four days of hard work I lost over -$400 when I should have made over $1,500. I didn’t have a lot of money and losing any amount was brutal. This industry is tough enough but when you lose money back to back to back to back it can wear on you. Each show meant the world to me and made my body weaker with my bad back. That was the first time I really questioned what I was doing but resilience kept me going! The next week at one of the farmer markets I met a design manager from DC Shoes. A week later I got a contract to create artwork for them and helped me launch my business into the action sports industry. That was the beginning of my freelance work in 2008.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Hands down what helped me build my reputation in the art industry was my work ethics. I had to cut out all the bullshit such as partying, late nights and even watching tv. I was focused and knew if I really wanted a shot at this I needed to give it 100%. In my opinion you can’t be the best or truly successful if you don’t give it everything you have, you can’t half ass it. People will noticed and eventually it will show in your passion or product. I also made sure I did every show in San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles that I thought would help me. I wasn’t scared to try new things and was not scared to fail. I think many people noticed that in me and respected the hustle. Even when I was doing 5-6 shows a week I still had to find time to draw, create, build the website, ship orders and everything else that is takes to run a small business. In 2009 I did over 275 shows just because I was so hungry and was willing to do anything so that I didn’t fail. All those shows helped me get contacts and a lot of face to face with some important people my industry. Your respect and reputation is all you have at the end of the day so don’t waste it!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.VizArtInk.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vizartink/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VizArtInk/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOjhFGAMWPYIW0ycERTCMwg