240 | From Micro Victories to Mega Success: Adrian Smalls' Real Estate Secrets

May 23

[00:00:00] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolf gathering the King's podcast. I've got Adrian Smalls here on the Kings stage today, my brother. How you doing? Good,

[00:00:10] Adrian Smalls: man. How are you? Good. Good. You

[00:00:12] Chaz Wolfe: know, you know, we're good. We were just talking off air, how being an entrepreneur is all about being flexible. Took us a minute to get, get the tech tech situated here on this, on for this show.

But, but here we are nonetheless, right? Absolutely. You know, why don't you tell us what kind of business that you're in, brother? And, and we'll get rolling here.

[00:00:34] Adrian Smalls: Absolutely. So I'm in, you know, I operate mostly in the real estate. We handle the fix and flips. We also have a marketing division of that business that finds locates off mar off market properties.

And then also now we're getting into the construction and the development of, of real estate. So we have some property in, near Charleston, South Carolina. It's actually technically Johns Island. And then we closed, just closed on a 3.6 acre, property near Stone Mountain. it's right in front of a lake, so that's the other side of the business.

But real estate, we try to touch it all. And then of course, working on, two smaller, multi-family deals. I

[00:01:14] Chaz Wolfe: love it. yeah, you, you, you said it, we, you know, a lot, a lot of ways to go in real estate. Sounds like you're touching a lot of, different spots. It's actually what I, I love about real estate also.

I love the creativity of it. Mm-hmm. And how, how people, professionals can get involved and totally different angles. I, I first got involved in real estate, not even wanting to necessarily be a real estate professional, but is, I just knew I needed it. and I was wanting to. Put money somewhere for legacy purposes.

why, why did you get into real estate?

[00:01:42] Adrian Smalls: Man, that's a, that's a great question. So literally, like, when I was going to school, I, it was all like business, business, business, right? So I went to Howard University, got a BA in finance, and you know, I'm thinking like I'm gonna go to Wall Street route and, you know, I have a couple buddies like that.

And so I was slowly, I guess, subconsciously paying attention to my uncles who they were building houses, they were getting them moved, in South Carolina. So what happens is when the government or the county or the city is, about to tear down a house, if you contact them and, and talk to them, you can actually get yourself, you can put yourself in a position to move that house.

Onto property and almost like mini rehab it and reconstruct it and put it up. So literally you get the house for free except for moving it and, you know, putting it back together. Right. So I, it kind of piqued my interest and I was just, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I was just thinking about so much capital, you need to do that.

So, right. Fast forward, like I, you know, I got to the point where, you know, my uncle kept saying like, you know, are you gonna do it? Are you ready? And I wasn't ready. And, in like 2014, that's when I, pulled a trigger on the first deal. And I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't, you know, I wasn't experiencing well-versed in it.

What happened is someone asked me to borrow like $8,000, to rehab a property. She was just gonna put some windows and do some other stuff. So I was like, the mortgage g I just did what I could with what I had. It was eight grand. I didn't have a hundred thousand dollars laying around. Right, right. So I did that, and then all of a sudden she just defaulted and I kept trying to work with her on it, and she just finally was just like, you know what?

I don't, I, I can't, I, you know, Give the money back. And so I literally like, kind of impromptu had to take over the house and like, okay, now I have a house, now what do I do? It was like, I was like, you know, like most banks, I don't get in, in it to, to, to flip the property. I got into it to like lend money and get a return and move on.

right, right. So it was kind of, it was kind of funny. That was my very first real estate deal, like, you know, aside from purchasing my, you know, your first home, but my investment, my first investment deal. Yeah.

[00:03:48] Chaz Wolfe: Interesting. You know, it's, so, it like what you just described is even what we were talking about at the beginning here when we were having tech issues.

You just, sometimes you just get thrown into something and you kind of just gotta, you know, figure it out along the way. yeah, I, I've got so many questions for you around Yeah. around all of that and the nitty gritty of that in your history. But before we jump to that, I'd like to ask this question up front so people can kinda understand who they're talking to and kind of maybe your mindset.

W after all of this that you've built, I mean, obviously that was the first story you've done, you know, countless deals since then. Millions of dollars. Yeah. Why are you still at it? That's what I wanna

[00:04:26] Adrian Smalls: know first, man. you, you know, there's always something. At a certain point, I think I'm a collegiate athlete, right?

And I'm competitive and I've been playing sports all my life. And I think the will to win and to continue to, to build upon something is just kind of innate. Like, it's no, you, you, you keep battling, you keep doing it. It's for your own good. It's no like, I gotta hit this bar and make a million or whatever.

Like, you go past that, right? So most of us don't stop, don't stop. Like it's, it's just in us to continue to build and grow. Like we're, we're just about. What is next? And what can we do to impact like more people, like further reach, right? Like we're, we're, you know, why can't I do it globally? Why can't I think that way?

Why can't I grow and, and continue to push myself? So I think for me it's just that, it's just innate. Like you just, you continue to want to grow and, and, and get better and, and evolve. I mean, there is no destination. We all know that, right? You're just continually growing. Right. So that, that's it. You're just fighting the fight, you know, at the end of the day to be different in to Reba

[00:05:33] Chaz Wolfe: impact.

There you go. There you, I was gonna ask you like, what's the, what's the end game? But, but you kind of just said there to, you know, leave an impact to, to, to have, you know, a, a, a different story written, for you, your family, whatever it is. I, I'm curious before. Before success, to whatever degree mm-hmm.

That we've established that you've, you've reached so far, you know, cuz I've obviously you're still going. yeah. Was that, was this way of thinking, like in you as a athlete of like, I'm just gonna be uber successful in business or has that mindset of never stopping, just transferred over to business. It kinda,

[00:06:11] Adrian Smalls: it's, it's, it transferred over to business.

I had a tough man. You know, I, I was playing soccer, but I had an ex football coach, and you don't realize what impact people have on you. That's why I try to give back. I'm actually be speaking at an event for, the youth next, next week. But you don't understand the impact of, you know, how you train and teach, and speak to, to younger kids.

And so he was just tough. He was like, there is no quitting, there is no giving up. You know, it's for your team. You gotta have that passion. And so like going through that and understanding that, and also the growth of. You know, being down like four to one and you, you know, you get that pep talk at halftime.

It's like, if you don't believe it, it ain't, it's not gonna happen. And then all of a sudden you just rally up with the last little ounce of effort you got and you just take it one goal at a time and next thing you know you're winning the game. And when you see those little micro. v Those little micro ictories they become macro victories when you understand that it's all about perseverance, right?

You, you just gotta, no matter how it looks, you know, no matter how it feels, you gotta keep going. and so I think that that's it developing, the EQ business is more important about your EQ than your iq. There's a lot of smart people who can run businesses and do a lot of great things. But I see a lot of people tap out the emotional side of it, man, if you, if you can't raise that EQ or understand it and, and, and say like, I gotta keep an even keel, and, and move in positions and know that this is not the end, this is just a part of the process.

then you'll, you'll be in, you know, in trouble. You just have to understand that. So I think the eq, component of it is way bigger than iq. Yeah. And so that was what transfer transferred

[00:07:59] Chaz Wolfe: from me. I agree with you, man. I wanna dig into that. And so, specifically in business, let's just jump right to, something that you've done, that maybe wasn't the best decision that mm-hmm.

Forced that emotional persistence that you're talking about. Yeah,

[00:08:15] Adrian Smalls: man. Geez. In business, where do you start? Right? I think that the thing is, you know, even, even outlaying in that situation, I'll go back to that one to touch on it and, and I'll use others like the one where I started out as the mortgage person and then I went down that road.

While that was going on, there was another deal that I, took on in, South Carolina downtown. And I, you know, thought it was brilliant to just try to help out. Like, Hey, I'll rehab this house and I'll sell it back to the owner. She, you know, she couldn't do it, so I figured it'd be a, you know, a win-win situation to create a lease back so that she can then purchase the house 18 to 24 months later.

Well, that just turned into an animal. And the, the story with these two that happened back to back is important because when you, and when you realize or, or you, you feel the pain upfront, that's when you determine whether you're going to keep going in this business or tap out. Right? So she, you know, in this, this particular scenario, she drug it out for two and a half years through courts.

literally like I was, you know, subsidizing an income. the judge got to the point where he was like, Hey, you know, this lady's just a squatter, and so we finally got to that point, but, Who was stroking that check over that last, over those 18 to to 24 months while we were in court who had it all on the line, right?

Who had to pay attorney fees, but you don't have any money. So literally I had to strike a deal with the attorney. It got to the point where so bad. I was like, man, I can't afford to keep going at this rate. So here's what we can do. Can you literally take a small percentage of the hourly rate, bump me up on the commission side because you know you were gonna, you know, more than likely win and you'll get your windfall on the end part.

And so again, you know, that's one of the things that I saw. I started out thinking like it was gonna be a $30,000 rehab. It ended up being 90, I was using credit cards to try to get through the whole thing. I was like, you know, taking on, personal loans, any type of like, payday loans. I was working at the same time.

Like, it was just ugly. It was an ugly time. And my wife's looking at me like, yeah, no, thank you. Like, I don't want to get into real estate. I don't, I don't, why don't you just quit? You know what I mean? And I, I, it's like so many times you have your, that, that discussion when you're down in the dungeon, when I say in the dungeon, you, you're in your mind.

You're in the bottom. Yeah. You're like, man, It's dark in here. It's cold in here. No one's here. You know what I mean? And like, how do you just fight to get out of that? You know? How do you pull yourself up out of that when you're getting pelted and every single reason to quit? Like, you know what I mean? So I think when you, you know, hit those roadblocks up front and you can push past those, it's just like fate over time.

It's like you build that muscle to say like, you know, I know I'm gonna fight through it, and I know that eventually it's gonna be all right. But you don't know that when you're starting out.

[00:11:06] Chaz Wolfe: No, you don't. And so, dude, I mean, obviously I c I mean, I, I hope the listener is, is, buckled in with their seatbelt, cuz I, the, the next 30 minutes, I mean, we're gonna roll hard on this one.

I could tell, but I, I could listen to you for hours, man. Like, yeah. I'm getting fired up over here just listening to this story. But I want to know in that moment, like when, like specifically not just in the dungeon, but when you were in mm-hmm. The dungeon during that time. When, when, when wifey was uncertain, when the courts were dragging your mind like all of that, what were the things that you did to climb out of the dungeon?

Of course you remember the sports, of course you remember the moments, the why. Yeah. Like all the, the cliche, you know, success answers. But what were you thinking in that moment? What'd you actually do?

[00:11:51] Adrian Smalls: Man, so getting myself back in that moment, I think the thing is like, you know, hopeful, like you're, you're hopeful and you're saying like, give me one good thing.

Like I was latching on like one little small, little victory and like I latched onto that, that one thing. And then I said, it got to the point where I said, this is an expensive education, right? I'm going to go through all of this. And just walk away and just say, I lost all of this, or I'm gonna just be like, okay.

I learned through it. So the, the combination of those two things, I just was latching on. And then the third thing that really helped me was, you know, the side on the bigger picture. I said, you know, my, I said to myself, do you think people who are worth a hundred million, you don't think that they went through this?

Like, I had to really talk to myself. Like, I'm like, you're woe is me. You know what I mean? Like, you gotta get on it and get moving. They have countless stories. The thing about it is that you don't hear the people that don't continue to persevere their stories. Like, ah, you know, I, I've done real estate. It doesn't work.

Right? You hear that all the time. And so, All of those things were happening in my mind. Like simultaneously I was reaching out saying, you know, any little good thing I can, you know, figure out or any little good thing that happens. any bump or anything, I was latching onto that. And then I was just saying like, you know, if you, if you wanna be the man, you gotta be the man, right?

Yeah. Like, you gotta like, you know, I just thought I just changed it. And I think that that toughness just started coming in, like, you know, like inch by inch, like fight back, you know what I mean? Like, what are you gonna do, quit? So those things like started pulling me out of it, man, and I, and I just started honestly too, saying like, man, what can you do?

Like, stop saying like, you know, it's so easy to get sucked into a victim mentality when you're getting pelted. Like, you're like, man, geez, a re like, can I get a break? Like, I was like, I could not get a break. So I was like, you know, it's so easy to fall into that victim mentality. But I was like, man, you know, just keep fighting.

Just, you know, one by one. And then also, you know, even like little things when you're hearing, you know, try to feed yourself. Motivation and other things, like I was just trying to pour things into me to change my mind, even if it was a temporary thing, like I might get, you know, you know, motivations fleeting, right?

That's kind of like totally here or there, but it was enough to kind of get me like, okay, come on. You know, get back focused. And then an hour later you're getting a pay. There's a, there's a three week stall on a court of appeals. Right. And you just gotta be ready for it. Right. She just gotta,

[00:14:19] Chaz Wolfe: ready. That's no dude.

I, I so relate to that. I think everybody listening to, listening right now can as well, but I think back to three consecutive years, well, I, you know, I own multiple franchises. We're doing millions in sales. Mm-hmm. And, and we had three consecutive down years. And it was, it was probably the toughest time that I've experienced in business because I had grown really fast and I had set myself up beautifully if things hadn't been consecutive.

Back to back to back down years, if we had been great years, like the last three years have been. Mm-hmm. I literally had been, I had, I had done everything right. I had expanded. Right. I had the teams that, like I had, I had invested, I had done all the what I thought were right things and then downturn and then boom, boom, boom, boom.

And I think back to those moments. I had never thought about it like this until you just said this. That's when I was most glued to audible and to videos and to the things that I needed to scratch and claw and, and I was trying to find a win everywhere. And, I have this quote in one of my workbooks in our mastermind, it says that confidence is the drug and winning is the dealer.

And, and so like, I was just like, like what you're saying, I was just crashing and clawing for this win. I gotta find a win every freaking day. Right. And and that's what you just described, man. I got freaking goosebumps over here. I'm freaking ready to run through the wall. Yeah, we can just end the podcast here.

I think you've already delivered.

[00:15:46] Adrian Smalls: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:15:49] Chaz Wolfe: All right, well, let's switch, let's switch the energy here. Tell me about something that you did. You know, on the flip side, the, a good decision that was not so painful?

[00:15:57] Adrian Smalls: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing, and I don't know if it's a good decision, I think it's a multiple decisions that I made and saying to myself like, I need to show up, in places and I need to, to make sure that I'm present.

And what I mean by that is, I start, I got my start in the flipping side of it. I had, you know, I was marketing wholeselling businesses, selling off deals that we got. and one of the private investors came to me and was like, you know, she's like, people are always watching. Never forget that people are always watching and they're always interviewing.

She was like, I like how you conduct yourself. You know what you say you're gonna do, you do it. And I just was saying to myself, like being in meetings and going to the meetups and stuff like that, doing those decisions and making myself uncomfortable. Like, Hey, just go up and talk. Like simple things like that that people don't, you know, don't think about.

Most of the time business people were, we're extroverts, but we're introverts. We're, we're so busy. Like for me, analyzing the next moves and thinking about business and You know, sometimes we're like, you know, We look at people like, okay, what is the angle and what's going on? So I was like, you gotta get over that.

Talk to people and attract, you know what I mean? Attract the people that you're looking for. And so that decision to keep going to these meetings and these meetups and conducting business the right way, led me to the right people. And so I, I think it's just thinking about that, thinking thinking about that and stepping forward and, and saying, put yourself in a situation where you can meet the right people and just, you know, it's all the, the same saying, it doesn't change.

Get uncomfortable. Get uncomfortable. And I think that's the thing, those decisions that just showing up and finding a meeting, one or two meetings, and seeing how you can, be of assistance was, was the thing for me that kind of changed it. and it just goes back to mindset.

[00:17:40] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. I love obviously, the value of the relationship that you're, that you're talking about and how one relationship can, can, can catapult, someone's entire business, someone's entire life.

but, and I think, I think that every listener has heard that, and that's fantastic. Mm-hmm. What I, what I really heard from you just now, of course that was the, the, the how, like, This is what you specifically did. Search out key relationships. Fantastic. Get uncomfortable. I love it. But what I heard you say it was that it was a history of doing it over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Some days you went and you didn't want to. Some days you went and you didn't meet anybody. Some days you went and you felt like it was a waste of time. Some days you went and you met that person you didn't know. You met that person. But years later, you realize that it was that moment when you didn't think that it was that person that you had met that person, and then the last two years they've been watching you or whatever the, the exact circumstances.

So what I heard was discipline. Absolutely. What I heard was absolutely find the thing that makes sense and just do it over and over and over and over. Would you, would you add anything to that?

[00:18:47] Adrian Smalls: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, like the whole TV show, undercover Boss. What it said to me is you've always gotta get down on the front and be present, because it would've been easy at, at that point, like the business was kind of clicking that, oh, I don't go out in the field and I don't go on these ghost shows and all.

I don't do that. I was like, no, I need to be out there because if something's going wrong, I'm gonna figure it out in the. Front end. So those types of things, when you're talking about making decisions and going to the meetings and being present, present and going to the, the, the, the shows that we have, the, the inspections and things like that when we first started out is important because again, that's where, that's where your business is, is that's the intake.

That's where you, you know, your customers get to meet your business. So, it's hard to, to, to give direction to team when you don't understand it at that

[00:19:35] Chaz Wolfe: level. A hundred percent. Yeah. What, what kind of discipline or process maybe do you have now for making decisions?

[00:19:44] Adrian Smalls: Man, so typically for me, I analyze it and I, I give myself no more than 20 seconds, believe it or not, to think about a decision.

And that why I say 20 and not instantly is because sometimes instantly you're off just a little bit. 20 seconds is I instantly made a decision, but now my mind is scanning through and making sure that I'm checking out all the, the yays, nays and possibilities. And then by the time I get to that end of that 20 seconds, I'm, I'm done with it.

That decisions is gonna be that decision. And the other thing is just like anybody else, I'm going with the gut first. Like if I, if my gut just, if I don't feel that I've done so many things in life, like, you know, like in, college, you purchased the gas station and the guy who sold us the gas station, I had a gut feeling.

I was like, this guy's not on up and up. And like low and behold, you know what I mean? It almost cost us $175,000 back when I was like 25 years old. Right? So it's like, right, you, you know, you have to go with your gut. But I have, I also validate, right? I don't have that as the end all be all. I'm gonna follow the gut, but I'm gonna use that 22nd rule.

I'm gonna analyze it, I'm listening to what you're saying, but I'm thinking through all the different scenarios and then I'm gonna make a decision. Strategically, it's about, you know, how it all fits into the landscape, right? Like, you know, are you ordering the steps? And then does these steps make sense, right?

That's more of a more drawn out process. But you know, as the day-to-day you've gotta be having quick decisions. You can't, you know, take too long to make a decision. And then, you know, I always say to people, rule number one, inspect what you expect. That's number one. Love it. Inspect what you expect. Hands down, I'm gonna always give you that decision.

And then I'm gonna inspect what I expect.

[00:21:32] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. I, I do this sometimes, but for the listeners that follow along, you guys know this, but I want you to pause. I want you to rewind and I want you to listen to the last three minutes, like 20 times. I think that, for the people who don't. Like if you didn't hear that and know exactly that that's what you're doing inside your business.

If there's any sort of qualms about how you can make decisions or how you can make decisions in 20 seconds or even before that, the stuff that he gave you before that just stop. You need nothing further. Pause. Decisions are everything. Where you are today is based on the decisions that you've made, period.

There is nothing further after that sentence. So literally, Adrian just gave you what you need in order to be able to make quality decisions with discipline, with toughness, with a history building for yourself in confidence like we talked about a few minutes ago. And you do that long enough. Your accuracy gets good.

That gut feeling that you're talking about, you start trusting it really, really, really tight and and you make less mistakes, doesn't mean that you don't make mistakes. It just means you let, make less mistakes, which means you're making better decisions, things are moving fast. we gotta go to the speed round here.

I want to ask you a couple questions here. Perfect. The question, that I always ask first is regarding one metric. So I want you to dial all the different things you got going on in real estate all the way down into one trackable metric is if you could only pick this one metric to track forever and ever and ever, what would that one metric be,

[00:23:05] Adrian Smalls: man?

So from a, like a K P I perspective, like are you talking dialed into the business?

[00:23:13] Chaz Wolfe: ah, that's a, the, the one, the one trackable metric, however you wanna define that

[00:23:19] Adrian Smalls: man. Ugh. I mean, I would, the globally, I would, you know, of course I'm gonna say the output, but I, I need to drill down on that. I think for me is the speed of action.

Like I need to measure the speed of action, like from the time we say yes to the time that something's implemented, because I'm gonna always be able to figure out where the bottleneck is. Between why we can't move something. Is it a person, a process, or something along the line that's keeping us from moving this thing forward faster?

And so by doing that, I'm, I'm gonna pull out what the issue is. I'm gonna be able to tell like, Hey, this is the issue. This is the cog in the wheel. Why you can't go from doing something in 90 days when that's the expectation. You don't hit that mark. It's somewhere in that, in that process. So I can do that on across.

Something that is short term or long term if we didn't hit our five year goal. I'm gonna go along the process and see what was the people or process that had stopped it or, or kept it from moving forward at the pace that it needed to move, because again, Everything in business and life is always changing.

If you can't move fast in a methodical, analytical way, you're gonna choke With business, it's, you have to evolve so fast. It's like going from, from MySpace to TikTok. If you don't evolve and change and move fast as you can, move in a process and get your team to understand that, that we don't wanna just move fast, we wanna move.

Right. And the dude that's back to your point. It's the constant practice of it. If you practice it, then your team can then position or reposition if something comes up. If one, one thing happens in our an environment or in our business, we can pivot quickly and deploy. We can be in six markets doing a different marketing strategy.

So long as we've been practicing moving at, you know, speed from first saying yes to the output. So speed to action.

[00:25:17] Chaz Wolfe: I, I, again, what a quality answer. I'm just gonna move on to the next question. what book would you recommend, for a six figure business owner trying to get where you are?

[00:25:29] Adrian Smalls: Hmm, that's a good one.

What book I recommend, and they're a business owner, I would say. Traction actually did a lot for me from a business perspective, right? Because you're, that you need to move, the things that you need to track and the, the minutiae of it, right? Like who has the rocks, who's doing what? I think is more of the technical aspect and the mentality, right?

Like, you know, the richest man in Babylon and all the books are great, but I think it's really about tactical when you're, when you're in a six figure range. Because if you're missing seven figures, it's all in, in what you're doing, right? Yeah. You're not jumping from six to seven because there's something wrong.

In your process somewhere.

[00:26:16] Chaz Wolfe: Yep. Yeah, that we like to call and gather the kings. you haven't mastered the basics yet. marketing, sales, client fulfillment, finance, hit repeat. And if you can't do that just over and over and over again, that's the only thing that's stopping you really from, from the seven figure mark.

there's a cog in the wheel, as you said earlier, so I love it. Okay. do you intentionally network or mastermind with other entrepreneurs?

[00:26:36] Adrian Smalls: Yes. Yes. And why? Because I feel like the thing is it puts you in a position for me. It opens me up and sometimes make me think about things that I don't think about.

So I intentionally, you know, network a mar I, I will make myself now, and this go, goes back to that thing. When you start seeing something work, you'll get motivated to do it. But when you meet, you know, there's a, there's a group here that meets up and they're, you know, Successful indivi, individuals. And it came about from talking to one person and, and then talking to another person.

And then when you're putting rooms and places based off of just opening up, opening your mouth, you gonna, you're gonna become intentional in doing it and saying that you know that you need to continue to do it no matter what level you're at. So now I'm definitely intentional. Before I was like, oh man, this is what I'm supposed to do, I think

[00:27:28] Chaz Wolfe: right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and sometimes that's all you have to go off of, until you've built the history Yeah. That we talked about. And when you can look back on that and realize that. Okay. I still not, may not be a hundred percent certain, but I'm pretty certain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're build you're building the history.

Okay. I got a question for you that wasn't on the list. I'm gonna throw you a curve ball here. if you only had one hour each week to work on your business, What would you do in the one hour to successfully run your business like you do now?

[00:28:00] Adrian Smalls: What would I do in that one hour? That's the great question.

So, for me, I think the thing is I would look if I only had one hour to successfully run the business, would I. Is what? What are we working on? What is the, that's always my question. What's next? That's number one. So I'm gonna look at what's next, what we're working on, what we need to do to make it happen.

And then what type of, or what personnel or technology do we need to get there? So I wanna analyze that in that one hour to figure out what, what, what's, what's happening? Where, where do we need to be? Where does the business need to be this week? Right Across the board from sales, marketing, or whatever.

Right? So I'm gonna ask that question, then I'm gonna say, what is needed to get there? And then I'm gonna say, what technology or personnel are we missing to get there? So I'm gonna quickly, in that hour just dissect, look at reports, I'm gonna look at where we are, I'm gonna look at where that missing is, and then I'm gonna say, okay, here's where we need to go to move to move it to the next stage.

So that's more of a tactical thing. I wouldn't be working on strategy per se. I would be working on just tactical things, from our operations to figure out what we need to do to move the business forward.

[00:29:14] Chaz Wolfe: What's next? What's, what's now and what's, what are we missing? There you go. Love it. Okay, last question here for you, Adrian.

What would you do if you lost it all? Man,

[00:29:28] Adrian Smalls: I've been in that situation, right? So like, literally like in the crash when I was in the mortgage industry, like literally lost it all. Like why? Like I got divorced. The business was crazy. I had to move back to Charleston for a minute. I. And so I, when I started over, if I were to start over again, which, you know, entrepreneurs, we know what to do when we have to start over.

That's the benefit of going through the grind. but it was just, I would just understand what I need to, you know, the things that I need to work on right now to build something quickly. Like, you know, when I first lost everything I wanted to get back into the mortgage industry just in a different complex and rebuild.

But if I lost it all, now the first thing I'm gonna do is look for the opportunity where I feel like I, it is big enough in the space for me to operate and then I'm gonna go attack it, right? I'm gonna use the sales, like, you know, we all have a aspect of sales. Some of us more technical than not. I'm gonna, you know, look at an industry that I can go after.

That I can, you know, get in the sales arena of it and then take it from there. I'm gonna grow the business, I'm gonna make the calls, I'm gonna make the relationships, and then I'm gonna pivot from there. And then I'm gonna pull in, you know, using my experience from sales, the different team members or people that I need to make it happen.

I think once you know what to do, you know what to do, right? So that's what I would do. I would look for an arena that I feel like is growth in it. I would, you know, make the sales myself initially, and then I would put the team around me to, to get, get us to the next level.

[00:30:53] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. I love the, just the, energy that you bring to every little piece that you, that you put into.

I can tell, that you're just a very, very intense individual. I respect it actually. because I think a lot of people, even that are close to me. I would, you know, my wife would probably agree. That, that I'm intense. I think most entrepreneurs are pretty intense. it's just a matter of at what scale have we given ourselves permission, to like really go for it and be really who we're designed to be or you know, the intensity of that.

And so I just see it in you, man. I just see, I see full kingship in action. The intensity of it. I see, you know, just man, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna run hard with guys like you cuz I know I'm gonna run faster, further, stronger. You know what I mean?

[00:31:34] Adrian Smalls: Yeah. Why not? Why

[00:31:36] Chaz Wolfe: not? And why not? Exactly. let's do it Adrian.

How, how can, how can these guys find you? How can, how can the listener connect with you today? Where can they locate you? How can they, get, get to know you better?

[00:31:46] Adrian Smalls: Absolutely. I mean, of course you can go to LinkedIn, Adrian l Smalls. you'll see, my profile on a little blue, blazer. You know, that's me.

and you'll see the businesses underneath it. I'm in the Instagram some, you know, the Adrian Smalls at on Instagram. But those are the ways that you can mostly, mostly find me through LinkedIn or through through Instagram. Instagram. Facebook. I think I need to create a follower cause I'm always at 5,000.

Every time I go under it goes back. So maybe I'll just do another page or something. There you go. But those are the ways you

[00:32:17] Chaz Wolfe: can find me. That's awesome, man. Well, we appreciate, just obviously the, the, the nuggets. But dude, the intensity that you've brought here today, has just been incredible. Thank you for the valuable time and, I wish you nothing but success.

we're gonna, we're gonna do something together. I already know that I'm, I'm all in with, with Adrian Smalls.

[00:32:34] Adrian Smalls: Yeah, man. And so am I. Let's do it. I'm with it. I appreciate you. I appreciate you having me and, you know, keep, keep digging for the kings.

[00:32:43] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, that's right.

Join host Chaz Wolfe as he welcomes Adrian Smalls, a real estate titan with over 7 figures in success, to share his wealth of knowledge and experience. As the CEO and Founder of Real Estate Capital Exchange, Founder of Off4er, and Principal at HL Smalls Construction & Development in South Carolina, Adrian has more than 15 years of experience in the industry, consistently delivering exceptional value to his clients. In this episode, Chaz and Adrian discuss the power of micro victories, learning from costly mistakes, and Adrian's 20-second rule for decision-making. Prepare to be inspired by Adrian's dynamic approach to business and discover the secrets that can propel your own enterprise to 7-figure success and beyond.

Adrian Smalls:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriansmalls/

Website: https://www.off4er.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqupILVf3dkHPE1SRJMFing/featured?view_as=subscriber

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Off4er

Chaz's favorite morning drink to fuel him for his day

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