“Imagination is the beginning of creation.
You imagine what you desire, you will what you
imagine and at last, you create what you will”.
– George Bernard Shaw

Inside Hillcrest launched its website last month. The monthly newspaper, serving thousands of Hollywood condo dwellers, hitched a ride on the digital highway with the help of a Higher Power, in a sense. That’s because Hillcrest resident Leon Cortez, a former U.S. Marine combat veteran, is a Hillcrest 24 resident and owns/operates HighPoweredGraphics.com. He is a professional web developer providing social media marketing, graphic design and print media marketing and branding. And now he’s producing and developing Inside Hillcrest online.

The childhood artist hails from Nicaragua. However, he and his family fled the country in 1980, when an authoritarian regime took away everything his family owned. His father had worked there as a prominent criminal defense attorney. They first came to Miami but settled in Los Angeles. 

Leon recalls his well-educated dad working hard as a security guard in a new land to provide for his family.  That hard work helped Leon’s mother take English lessons and start from the bottom up at the Los Angeles Community College. Leon remembers how hard his dad worked to put food on the table and the family experienced many hardships along the way. Today his mother and father are buried  in Hollywood, California.

By 1987, Leon obtained his permanent residence, so, he decided to repay this country in gratitude and joined the United States Marine Corps. He served until 1992, serving with the 2nd, Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, deploying overseas and serving as a field artillery cannoneer with the 10th Marine Regiment during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He was also part of Operation Sharp Edge in 1990 off the coast of Liberia, Africa.

He has found great success in his current profession and has clients all over the country. He provides services for the worlds of business, music, medicine, law, real estate and much more.

You can view the webpage for this newspaper at Insidehillcrest.com.  Once there, you’ll find a home page with articles and graphics. You’ll also see links to back issues of Inside Hillcrest, which you can click to read. The online version also offers advertisers benefits they didn’t get from the old-school print version of the publication.  Online, ads, photos, artwork in general, appear in color.  And sometimes you’ll even see a carousel of visual items as the graphics before you move from one image to another, again, all in color.

Advertisers and their potential clients get something else online.  You can click a link to the advertisers at the Inside Hillcrest webpage to learn more about your favorite local business.

And the new year also finds him expanding his areas of expertise.  This year he’s offering video marketing which he can place on social media outlets to help people make connections and grow businesses.

He took on the internet – becoming what he calls a “gun-for-hire,” after the recession in 2007. Laid off from his high-paying advertising job – the company couldn’t afford him anymore – Mr. Cortez temped for a year.  But then he dipped into his 401K to start his own business.  High Powered Graphics was born in 2009. The next year he joined the Greater Hollywood Chamber of Commerce where he met Cindy Abraham, the editor of Inside Hillcrest.  Abraham, a realtor with Keller Williams Realty Professionals A Team Florida, hired Mr. Cortez to design her business cards. He now manages all things marketing including ATeamFlorida.com.  He also took over the graphic designing and layout of Inside Hillcrest.

Years of challenges tested him, for sure.  But these tests also reinforced his faith in a Higher Power, his inspiration for the name of the company that he created and the success he has achieved. Such faith was rewarded again during the Covid pandemic. For example, many businesses struggled or failed because of the ways our society changed to adjust to the disease. Mr. Cortez, says High Powered Graphics thrived. Which probably partly explains the following quote about the spiritual dimension of his work. “I’m just the manager for this business,” says Leon. “My God, the Higher Power, he’s the Boss.”