Building Brands and Overcoming Challenges: Brian Adams Shares His Story

Sure. My name is Brian Adams. I’d have these art students draw these pictures and then I would get the treasures in with them and we would build these t-shirts because I recognized that people needed identity right they wear them today with things like Hermes or, you know, Louis Vuitton. But back then they needed them with things like fraternity letters and clubs and organizations. From there, I started a bar. From there, I got into the pick-up-and-delivery laundry business, where I made deals with the university so that the bill would go home to your parents, and your parents would pay us to be able to have laundry service. I’d hire the old guy from the bar, he’d go around in a truck that we bought, take the items to wash the terriers and dry cleaners, take them back, and pick them up from you and I’d already had the money. From there I took the money and went to Chicago. I took my money, and I went and traded on the Merc. This is probably before a lot of y’all know what it is. 45 years old. I went and was trading live in feeder cattle. Said, this is, watched a guy commit suicide and no one real, it was crazy. Back in the days when that open outcry where you’re trading on the floor, when you saw the people screaming. From then, I went back to college and tried to grow the business that I had. It was called Bama Butler. I had moved to go and bring one of my best friends to come in to run the business. And in doing so, after running that, I got, you know, my first real dose of being an entrepreneur, you know, gave my friend a rubber stamp with my name on it. I got to learn a bunch of lessons about what not to do. I went and started another business in Houston, Texas. We ran it up. We were in the industrial cleaning business and the restoration business was sold to a private equity group. This equity group was a bunch of guys from Harvard.

They wouldn’t listen after we bought it. They told me we were gonna recap it. It was all gonna be wonderful. I bought it back less than four years later out of bankruptcy from the bank for less than 1% I sold it for. Then went and bought a recycling business. In that recycling business, we recycled about 100 million pounds of plastic and rubber, fully integrated, fully sustainable to go and try to sell rubber boards against wood boards to things like the government.

Moved the business to India, couldn’t make it work, got into the industrial laundry business, COVID affected, and got into the pre-retail business. Pre-retail business, we would get large containers of items over and we would do something to them before they were sold to the beginning. Then got asked to get into the returns business. Then from the returns business, we got asked to get into the software business. From the software business, we got asked to further get into the back-end logistics. So, you know, we’ve always been kind of the back end for the reverse logistics. So whether it’s recycling, recommers, returns, whatever, that’s what we do here in Houston at Retail Reworks. We’re launching a national network with about 9,500 stores around the country and return centers, and these return centers can do everything from the outer edges including we have our own logistics fleet, to move these things around, you know, about 50% of what the current option is right now to the marketplace, making everyone more sustainable and more profitable.

Man, I have lots of scars. I got lots of scars. I’ve had lots of people working for me. I’ve had to reinvent myself a lot of times. I’ve done lots of entrepreneurial things. I’ve done the YPO’s. I’ve done the EOs. I’ve done the strategic coaches. I’ve done the, you know, why he sees I’ve done all that stuff. I was in, I did all that stuff. Whereas, you know, you want to get recognition. You want to be a part, you know, you want to learn, you know, you, you constantly want to be learning, and so, what, what have I learned as an entrepreneur?

I’d probably say the biggest thing that I’ve done is that I’ve put myself around other entrepreneurs and become a student to them. I don’t care about the success they’ve had. I care less that they caught lightning in a bottle and were able to create XYZ. But you know what I mean when it’s the founder of Airbnb when I met him I only cared about the 14 and a half years prior that he started that business to go in public. Like I wanna hear about all the nos and all the failures and I wanna learn from that. And so I’ve gone off and learned a lot and you know, you gotta be resilient man cause you know, as it gets bigger and bigger the arrows get real hard and shot at you. And they hurt sometimes.

What makes you different or better? Man, if you don’t understand the vision of what you’re trying to do or the mission or the values you’re trying to do, it’s really hard to differentiate yourself. So, you know, we try to shorten the journey and give an excellent experience, right? And so what does shortening the journey mean? We’re trying to get the item from point A to point B, in the most cost-effective, sustainable, and profitable way for the brands. And so how you do that, you got to do good business. There’s a lot of bad business being done in the past, right? So like, you have to do good business first, first and foremost. And there was a lot of bad business in this space being done in the past before, you know when valuations were out of whack and when SVB happened in Silicon Valley Bank when that triggers when interest rates go up and the dollar gets stronger and commodity items like gold and oil don’t shoot through the roof, that’s a huge signal. And you have to understand what that means. And what that means is that the dollar got stronger, right? Because oil should be at like $250. So what that means is cash is king. So that’s called the Great Reset. So valuations that were valued at future earnings, if you go look at companies that were in the retail tech space, that were once valued during 2020 at 20 to 30 times gross revenues are now trading on a cash flow multiple of three to four times. So now their value or their equity is negative and their own and they got to understand what that means to be able to then find friction, right? Right, how do you reduce friction and make your services a win for the person in front of you and a win for the person behind you, right? So really having a core understanding of what your core competency is, what do we do best for someone? Yeah, I mean, that’s the answer to the question. So what do I do best, right? And so, and how can we monetarily prove that, and what are the metrics behind that?

So, you know, I’ve grown up in a business where it’s a service-based business and we grew up competing for work on the streets and service providers. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s just say you carpet cleaner and two companies are carpet cleaners. They have the same people working, but they work from different families. They just have different uniforms. They both have the same vans. They’re just wrapped in different colors and they both have the same machines in there and all of their employees took baths and shaved that morning.

Which one of those companies, how do they differentiate themselves? Right, so what you can say is, hey look, mine’s better, I did a better job, and you’re gonna say, hi, how? Well, mine’s cleaner. Our carpets that we’re cleaner. And then another person who says, no, we clean the best. Right? Remember better, best. Yeah. Right. So at the end of the day, right? It’s which one cares the most who’s cleanest, right? So at the end of the day, the only way that those two companies can differentiate themselves is that the owner has to say, I care more. That’s the only way a service-based business can compete. Not competing in service-based businesses. Like I don’t take possession of inventory I’m not selling anything, we’re providing services. And the answer to what we do best is we can make you the most sustainable, the most profitable, and the most circular.

So that’s really what we do. And there are a lot of metrics behind it that say what you do better. But at the end of the day, as an entrepreneur, I would advise all of your listeners to be clear on what they’re trying to do. What’s the mission? And when you nail that down, every bit of language has to be around that.

You know, when I was in school, they didn’t have entrepreneurial programs. There weren’t entrepreneurial departments and colleges. , I’ve sat on the board and very close to the University of Alabama’s you know, department, entrepreneurial department. I’ve sat very, very close to that. And I’ve learned a lot. You know, the first thing that I’ve learned is that I don’t know what they’re teaching like, what do they teach? Like, how can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur? Don’t understand that. Yeah, like, you’re gonna teach someone how to have a heart. You’re gonna teach someone how to be resilient. You’re gonna teach someone how to handle stress.

Yeah, I mean, look, yeah, right. You can’t teach that. And can you teach someone acen? I don’t know if you can teach people acen. I learned that every day. I’m not quite sure. Can you go take $1 and make $3?

It’s as simple as that. So the first thing that, you know, in my entrepreneurial journey is that you know, I am an entrepreneur by heart. Like in a space of nothing, I enjoy creating something. So along my journey, what’s next is that you know, I’m passionate about building things. You know, my true love and nature of where I’m most happy is that I love to build things. I love to be a creator and build things. I mean, I don’t love employee reviews and reading financial statements with, yeah, that’s not that fun. But you gotta do those things because businesses have to make money and they keep you accountable. So along my journey, I started with partners, and I got away from partners.

My new deal has partners. I’m excited to partner, to be a good partner. I’m excited about that for my entrepreneurial journey. I’m excited along the lines of, you know, paving our way, you know, underutilized assets, you know, helping another industry because at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. So at the end of the day, you already have an existing asset doing something. How do you maximize that asset? Even though, look, you have a right and left hand. They look the same, but do they have the same capabilities? No, someone else’s more dominant hand. So look, it’s just like I teach my young son how to learn a new distinction. A new distinction might be learning how to ride a bike for the first time or learning how to dribble a basketball with your left hand.

It’s uncomfortable, but until it’s not uncomfortable. And, you know, so that’s a fun part of it too.

Yeah with some successful activities I’ve done to promote my brands. Man.

you know, I’ve bought businesses, but I’m real good at starting businesses because when you buy businesses, you inherit the phone number. And when you start a business, you get to go pick the new phone number. Right. And I like to pick the new phone number because then, you know, we’re all the, you know, bodies are buried in the closets and you don’t have to go pick out someone else’s. So what is the most fun I’ve ever had, okay, I’ll tell you one. I used to be in this. A business that had these like charitable golf tournaments.

Yeah, it was for insurance claims associations. And everyone pretty much did the same thing. They just had different colors, shirts on, and different colored stitching.

You have. What were you doing before?

Oh wow, okay exactly that one. A claims association, now how did you get invited to that one?

Are you a big golfer?

Where’d you grow up playing?

I played golf in college, Division I. I have a 14-year-old son going after it pretty well. I feel like I know the world by golf courses pretty well, so try me.

Of course.

I just played Pine. I just played Pine Tree and Everglades. The Everglades. You’re playing ball tea. Is that what you said?

Beautiful. I finally remember gas there. Yeah.