Greg Troyer: Building an Empire
Why do certain people seem to always excel in their endeavors? Is it luck? Timing? Talent? Entrepreneur Magazine lists several characteristics that the most successful businesspeople share. Among them are vision, focus, passion, lifelong learning, hard-working, integrity and gratitude. When talking to Greg Troyer about his ultra-luxury home building enterprise, he completes the ‘success punch list’ beautifully.
At an early age, Greg learned how to turn his passion into a lucrative business. By 12, his talent for music inspired visions of a career. “I was just driven towards the music industry. By the time I was in high school, I had a studio set up in my parents’ garage and was recording professional musicians. I found a niche that needed filling, put an ad in the music section of The Times-Picayune, and I was booked almost every evening. After graduation, I worked that business with great success until my late 20s.” The search for a family home in 1998 would change his focus and develop in him a new passion, but his goal-driven attributes and the formula he developed for success in his first business served as a blueprint for fabulous things to come.
“My dad was instrumental in me discovering my next passion. After showing him houses I was considering buying, he said, ‘Son, you can do much better than this – just build your own.’ I found that I loved the building process, and I was good at it. Like music, it sparked my creative energy and became something I wanted to immerse myself in.”Greg went on to gather the right team, incorporate Troyer Builders and focus on delivering the highest quality for clients seeking high-end, impeccable taste and a serious wow factor. “I’m self-taught at building, just like my music, so my approach is fresh and different. I’m the lead designer on every project, and I put my creativity into every piece of tile, paint color – every detail – to achieve my unique vision for the overall design.”
Aligning with Clients
The maverick builder explains another difference is that his company does all the interior design along with the client. His team of design professionals plans the whole house with the finished product in mind making sure they are aligned with their clients in producing a final product that is spectacular. “When you have separate parties working on different aspects of the build, the problem becomes figuring out how to put it all together. It’s frustrating for clients to coordinate different players who aren’t all on the same page with the same vision. Having just one, expert team takes away miscommunication and finger pointing. It’s all our baby and all our responsibility.”
Troyer’s all-encompassing approach includes several phases that Greg outlines. First, he makes sure clients have the right lot or land on which to ground the home’s layout. Next is design discovery where he asks what style each partner in the couple envisions — be it historic, modern, French traditional or another — in order to uniquely merge their wishes. Assessing the family’s lifestyle and needs are also part of the discovery process. The team then gets to work on creating architectural plans that continue to be developed until clients are happy with the design as well as the budget. Then begins the whole building process including interior design, culminating in the one-of-a-kind masterpiece that is the final product.
“I’m crazy about quality and think about what we can do to make each house better than the last one. I walk through each project with my site supervisors and if something isn’t quite right, we tear it out and start again. My dad taught me to always treat people like you want to be treated and you’ll do well in life. He also instilled in me the old-fashioned thought that your reputation is all you have. It costs to run a business that way, but it’s worth it. We’ve earned our great reputation. I’m proud that each project is a reflection of my values and my creativity. That’s why this business is so exciting for me and why the demand for our product keeps growing.
High-level Design and Craftsmanship
Troyer Builders operates from One Lakeway at the foot of the Causeway in Metairie, but their strength of reputation and stunning beauty of their portfolio are leading to growing popularity across the lake as well. As more people on the Northshore seek out the highest level of design and craftsmanship for their custom luxury homes, they are turning to Troyer for his one-of-a-kind offerings. “Once we built our first house on the Northshore, word of mouth among that clientele spread quickly. It’s the perfect market for us with room to grow and create new and different design that’s outside of the box. I’m very excited about it.”
Despite leading a team of professionals that is responsible for executing exacting, luxuriously detailed multi-million-dollar designs and building homes for his family and others that are nothing short of majestically magazine-worthy, Greg is refreshingly casual. There is no mistaking that he checks off the success boxes of passionate, hard-working, focused visionary, but he also possesses those grounding qualities of integrity, gratitude and family values that add longevity to success. It is evident that he is living his best life and loves what he is doing at work and at home.
“I’m married to my wife Heather since 2013. We have a total of six children from 18 down to one year old. I’ve stayed in the New Orleans area because I love the people, the culture, the food and the Saints, and I want to be close to family. I teach our kids to work hard and be accountable for their successes and failures. Some of the kids say they want to follow me into the business, but we’ll see. I can only hope that they find and follow their passions like I did. I still have a recording studio and enjoy doing that for myself, but I know I live a charmed and lucky life for having found something that eclipsed even my love for music. Building and design satisfies that same creative itch. I use parts of my brain and parts of my soul and have applied my talents to build an excellent business where I strive to learn and be better every day.”
Greg Troyer is the founder and CEO of Troyer Builders. Troyer Builders is located at 3900 N. Causeway Boulevard, One Lakeway Suite 105 in Metairie, Louisiana. For more information, please call 504-400-5150 or visit troyerbuilders.net.
