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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Devaniel Adams, a wholesaler in Central California. Devaniel shares his journey from humble beginnings to becoming a successful real estate investor. He discusses the importance of focusing on wholesaling, the transition from being an agent to an investor, and the keys to growing a successful business. Devaniel emphasizes the significance of character development, data-driven decision-making, and maintaining liquidity in a challenging market. He also shares valuable lessons learned from his experiences and offers insights on connecting with sellers and building a strong team.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Devaniel Adams (00:00)
I always go back to data, not drama, right? Wherever you guys are at that you’re listening in your business, right? Whether you’re fully, you know, optimized and available, whether you’re just looking to make your first hire, second hire, third hire.you always want to operate from a standpoint of data, not drama. A lot of the times we can get very emotional,
We can be in the storm and our head can be spinning, right? Operating like a chicken with their head cut off. But we want to rely on the data and what it shows
Michelle Kesil (02:00)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Devaniel Adams, who is running a wholesale business with his team in Central California. So excited to have you here today, Devaniel.Devaniel Adams (02:19)
Absolutely, no, I’m honored and I’m humbled for the opportunity to come on here and share and talk to you.Michelle Kesil (02:25)
Absolutely. I think our listeners are going to take something awayfrom how you’re approaching your systems, operations, and creating your wholesale business. So we can dive in.
Devaniel Adams (02:36)
Let’s do it.Michelle Kesil (02:38)
Yes, so just first off for those who are not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?Devaniel Adams (02:45)
Absolutely. Yes. So as you mentioned, Michelle, we operate in central California. ⁓ We try to ⁓Master one trade at a time right rather than being the jack-of-all-trades. So we primarily focus I would say about 85 percent of our operations on wholesaling ⁓ and ⁓ Every now and then based on you know extra strategy We might you know flip a few take a few down as rentals things like that But yeah, we’re a small lean and mean team as I like to say, you know a team of five We focus heavily just on intentionality ⁓ Emphasis on ourselves process, you know being intentional with every seller. I think that’s
is what attributes to us getting deals at a deep discount on the wholesale side. And ⁓ yeah, we’re just all serving a bigger purpose and in real estate and our business happens to be that vehicle that gets us there.
Michelle Kesil (03:37)
Amazing. And is your wholesaling also only in central California?Devaniel Adams (03:44)
It is, it is, yes. So we like to stay in our backyard, let’s just say that. And we’re focusing on going deep rather than going wide.Michelle Kesil (03:52)
Yeah, absolutely. How did you get started in your career?Devaniel Adams (03:58)
⁓ good question. I love this question. how I got started. So I actually come from a background of no real estate investors, not even homeowners, things like that. I grew up myself personally in humbling beginnings. I’m living on section eight in South Central Los Angeles. And if you know, you know, right. But, you know, I never had that.role model to look up to in terms of like real estate and know entrepreneurship and things like that right so I’ve always had this entrepreneurial bug in me but I never knew what business I wanted to dive into I knew that I was like blessed by God with certain skill sets and abilities right but I couldn’t just I couldn’t navigate to know you know what that vehicle was for me to serve my purpose so ⁓
I had a few mentors, I was in corporate America, I had a few mentors that always mentioned real estate, real estate, right? And I’m like, dude, I have no money to buy a house. ⁓ Before getting into real estate, I barely learned that you can buy a house with a loan, right? I thought everyone was buying it cash. So that just shows how little experience I had coming in.
And I had a few mentors that would put in that bug of real estate, real estate, right? And ⁓ eventually ⁓ I did some research, looked at some social media accounts, things like that. And I reached out to a local company here that ⁓ was very ethical and that was my biggest thing. I didn’t just want to be a part of something that was thriving from financial standpoint, but I wanted to be a part of something that also. ⁓
was very intentional and very purposeful, right? Because I think when you put that those things first, you know, the money will follow. So I ended up joining the team, right? And then within that team and getting my license as an agent, that helped me to kind of understand the investment side, understand real estate as a whole, build capital to then later and invest in. I would say probably a year later from getting my license, I fully went into the investment side and that kind of birthed our company.
Michelle Kesil (06:43)
Amazing. That’s so inspiring.How did you decide on wholesaling? Like why did you choose that as your avenue?
Devaniel Adams (06:53)
Can you say that again?Michelle Kesil (06:55)
Yeah, so why did you decide that wholesaling was the investment avenue for you?Devaniel Adams (07:01)
Yeah. you know what? Interestingly enough, I actually always wanted to be, well not always, but once I got into real estate, I wanted to be a flipper. I wanted to have an operation. I wanted to have a team of 30, 40 employees, right? And I want to be a flip heavy operation. But once I got deeper into the business, I was actually able to understand how capital intensive flipping is, right? I was able to understand the cash conversion cycle. You may, you be$200,000 poor on January, but then come April you’re know, $400,000 richer, right? So there’s just the inconsistency and instability of like, you know
Conversion cycle on the money there I kind of I wasn’t too fond of it right and then I stumbled across wholesaling where
know, you’re a cash conversion cycle as opposed to you know, four to six months flipping it may be you know, one to three months depending on your marketing strategy.
I found that it’s easier to scale
right, because it’s not as capital intensive, time intensive. ⁓ And I also found that my skillset, along with, you know, a lot of our team members now was, you know, the intentionality, right, and living kind of in purpose and the ability to connect with sellers on a deeper level, thus
yielding higher profit margins for us. So when I seen Ocell and I was like, it’s just a no brainer, right.
Michelle Kesil (08:25)
Yeah, amazing. And how like how did you learn to go about it as a wholesaler? You mentioned you had some mentors and but yeah, how like how’s the experience been for you?Devaniel Adams (08:41)
Yeah, it’s been good. you know, ⁓ I speak to a lot of people that are agents who are looking to get in investing. They always have a similar question, right? Like, how do you take off that agent hat and transition to being a investor? Right. Or, you know, how do you just go from someone who lives in aor works at nine to five and wants to be an investor? Right. But I think it’s all about finding opportunities. Right. And finding problems and providing a solution to it. And
me, as an agent, how I went.
and transition into wholesaling. I found it easy because as an agent, our fiduciary duty is typically, you know, what will benefit this seller the most, right? Is it listing it? Is it doing this? Is it doing that? So I found that approaching the sellers the same exact way that I did on the agent side,
approaching them the same way on the investment side was typically good, right? And we know the indicators for a good investment off market property, right? High distress, you know, typically.
tight timelines, right? They need speed and the convenience and they’re willing to trade some equity forward. So I went into those appointments the same exact way, just like, here’s your options. I’m going to let you know what option I think is best for you, but you let me know. And my job is not to convince you, you know what you should do. But my job is to provide you all of the options that way you can make the most decisive and informative decisions. So I found that the transition was a bit easier ⁓ coming from being an agent.
Michelle Kesil (10:43)
Absolutely, that makes sense. And what are some keys that you feel have made the biggest difference in allowing your business to be able to grow and to run smoothly?Devaniel Adams (10:59)
You know, ⁓ honestly,it’s a lot of intangibles and a lot of like practicality. So I feel like just who I am as a person definitely attributes to it because every business, every relationship, every
partnership in general will have its challenges and the ability to overcome those I think is what separates the winners and the losers. Right. So for me, I believe that your business is only a reflection of you and your and
your character, your business can grow further than the character that you have as a person. So I’m always constantly, you know, doing character development. And for me, that kind of goes back to just my spirituality and like submitting to, you know, someone higher and God and constantly just looking at my weaknesses. And I think that’s attributed to not just the culture we have now, cause now all of our team members embody the same thing. They’re constantly like, Hey,
do what I’m good at and excel at but let me also be aware of my weaknesses so I can you know make the adjustment get the feedback and then adapt accordingly so that’s attributed to like a lot of our success ⁓ and why things are kind of going smoothly for us.
Michelle Kesil (12:09)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s great.What are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?
Devaniel Adams (12:23)
You know, different seasons kind of produces different focuses, right? And areas of emphasis. Again, we want to master one thing, I believe that singularity focus will go way further than, you know, focusing on 10 things at once. So coming out of, you know, this 2025 market, right, we can all agree that nationwide.speaking to lot of my buddies that, you know, operating different markets on the East coast and things like that. But it was a challenging market. And this market showed a lot of people’s weaknesses, including ours and areas that we need to capitalize or else we will drown. You know, we’ll be out of business. And there’s a lot of people, unfortunately, that did drown during this year. So for us.
what we’re looking to focus on is really just staying true to our systems, staying true to the foundations ⁓ and being more liquid. we, know, being a newer and a younger company, we’re hungry. We’ve had a lot of exponential success in terms of like, you know, revenue and kind of just growth wise in the last, you know, three, three years or so we were operating more.
risk friendly, right? We were taking risks, you know, and this market humbled us really quick. So we ran into issues with liquidity, which obviously spills over into, you know, marketing. It spills over into like your, your, your positive cash flow month to month, right? With your overhead and your expenses versus, you know, the revenue coming in on top of like, we were seeing multiple offer situations in this market. We were seeing, you know, because it’s multiple offer situations, they’re driving up the price, right? Inventory is still kind of stale.
Now we’re, know, instead of profiting 31K per deal on a wholesale, we’re now facing 15 to 17K. So if we would have stayed true to our systems, if we would have incorporated more disciplined systems in terms of just like kind of trimming the fat in certain areas, I think that would have been probably the difference maker for us. So going into 2026 for us, our main goal is to stay focused on that.
Michelle Kesil (14:41)
Yeah, absolutely. And what does that look like for you? Like how are those systems and operations going to be structured?Devaniel Adams (14:50)
Yeah, yeah, good question. So ⁓ again, I always go back to data, not drama, right? Wherever you guys are at that you’re listening in your business, right? Whether you’re fully, you know, optimized and available, whether you’re just looking to make your first hire, second hire, third hire. ⁓you always want to operate from a standpoint of data, not drama. A lot of the times we can get very emotional, right? We can be in the storm and our head can be spinning, right? Operating like a chicken with their head cut off. But we want to rely on the data and what it shows and the areas that are weak and et cetera and whatnot, right?
So coming in, as I mentioned, we want to first… ⁓
just maintain our positive cash flow. what that may look like is like auditing our expenses, right? What’s working, what’s not prioritizing liquidity. So, you know, if we could kind of come in and, ⁓ you know.
not put chunks of cash down, you know, in some of our properties and instead we gap fund that instead just to keep ourselves more liquid. We would do that. ⁓ As I mentioned already, right, we want to be more or less risk adverse, excuse me. And then one of the biggest things for us was renegotiating our vendor contracts. So our data companies, our mail companies, you know, our staffing companies, all those things. If our business isn’t performing ⁓ and you know, the rate at which it typically is,
And that means our vendors aren’t getting paid right in the rate that they typically are so like instead of just a
a non-important partnership, like let’s work together. How can we get things cheaper so we can save more money as a business, stay more liquid, but then also make it more advantageous for us. Therefore, we can produce more revenue for you guys and keep using your service. So renegotiating vendor contracts, that may be from one year to six months, that may be trying to get a cheaper cost per mail or per lead.
And then secondly is concentrating on our sales department. So a lot of the times, know, as operators, we’re typically the best salesman in our company, right? And if we’re growing, we’re scaling, we’re getting out of that seat, whether it’s full time or part time and whatever it is. And during a time like the market we’ve seen or any markets in general that are tough, you definitely as an operator, want to, you know, lead, you want to be the head of the snake, right? Not the tail. And you want to lead from ⁓
a situation or a position of ⁓ leadership, right? So getting back into that seat, hopping back on the lines, going on appointments, taking your acquisitions, you know, people on appointments, things like that. ⁓ And then also incentivizing, right, our team. So we’re incentivizing our team, whether it’s, know, our Dispo guy, ⁓ our lead manager or other AQ guy, we’re incentivizing them and
We’re also creating healthy competition. So, you know, pretty much closed mouths don’t get fed, right? So if you’re out there, you’re, making the extra step, you know, you’re rechecking numbers, you’re recalling up the seller, you know, you’re prioritizing those 15 to 20 minute conversations, right? There’s a higher percentage chance that you get that deal and you get paid versus, you know, someone else or me, right? I don’t want to come in and take your money and your opportunities. So we’re just creating that. And then really lastly is third, maintaining the culture.
So I think that’s one of the biggest things and that is one of our strengths. In a time like that, it’s easy to internally just kind of feel beat up, know, and feel a heavy weight on you, especially as a leader or any of your team members that are in leadership positions. So what that may tactically look like is like daily huddles, right? If you’re not doing daily huddles, whether you’re, you know, a two person team or a 15 person team, right? Doing two mil plus a year.
You have to make sure you’re doing daily huddles, right? Those are basically temperature checks, right? I want to know how every team member feels. I want to know, you know, what are our specific goals for this week, where areas we can capitalize, things like that. And then bi-weekly one-on-ones, right? We’ll dive deeper into that as well. ⁓ Re-emphasizing goals. What is our goals for this week? And then lastly, just knowing like you are the leader.
So your reflection of your team and anything that you’re enduring, they’re also enduring too. So you have to just make sure that you’re in a good place as well.
Michelle Kesil (19:53)
Definitely, I think that’s really powerful advice.Devaniel Adams (19:55)
Absolutely.Michelle Kesil (19:58)
What is an obstacle that you may have recently overcome that now looking back in hindsight you have the lesson and wish you knew?Devaniel Adams (20:09)
um uh liquidity um it’s pretty much that i mentioned um this year has been uh tough for a lot of operators specifically our business as well um you know we’re still doing well but just not as projected our biggest problem uh was liquidity we were more risk prone or risk friendly um this year so if i could goi would definitely be less risk adverse right i think because
Inventory was a little stale and home prices, know, statistically speaking, we’re sitting a little bit longer on the market. Flippers, right, which, you know, we work hand in hand with, right, people who are flip heavy operations or just investors. Their business will always kind of reflect ours, right, because we’re selling to them. We’re the salesmen to them. So since their inventory was sitting a little bit longer, they were a bit more conservative on deals and things like that. And
At the same time, this is a market where you have to be aggressive, right? ⁓ Because of all the political and economical things going on right now, sellers are a little bit unsure. It’s taken a lot longer to convert them into a contract. It’s taken a lot longer for them to make a decision, is what we’ve been seeing in our sales process as well too.
We’re also competing with other people. We were being hyper aggressive to get that contract and maybe make five, 10 K right. And try to increase our, increase our quality or a quantity over a quality versus at the same time,
those end buyers and those flippers are, are conservative on their numbers. So that’s already a recipe for disaster, right? We’re trying to like bridge the gap.
because of that, we started taking on a lot more flips than we usually do. So we went against our business.
kind of like, I would say like main business practice, which is, know, being 85 % wholesale, started taking properties down ourselves. So of course that came with, you know, hard money lender fees, private money lender fees, gap money
et cetera,
time sitting on the market, you know, our down payments on, you know, the hard money loans, which kind of decreased our liquidity, which made.
full on marketing every single month, tough, right? We have to prioritize like, you know, spend here, not spend here. It helped a little bit because as I mentioned, we went back and we renegotiated some of our vendor contracts. So
we was able to kind of come up with more liquidity within our business without taking on any loans or anything like that or credit. But ⁓ that would be the main thing, focusing on liquidity in a market like this.
Michelle Kesil (22:44)
Yeah, definitelythat’s important. So before we close up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where is the best place for people to find you and connect with you?
Devaniel Adams (22:55)
Absolutely. Every platform, ⁓ TikTok, Instagram are the main two for me, but everywhere, YouTube, et cetera, you can find me at execute underscore Adams. I’m constantly trying to just add value to others. I feel like that’s part of myGod given purpose is not just real estate or building operation, but ⁓ kind of, you know.
pushing others to reach their potential as those people did to me, eventually in my journey. So you can reach out to me on Instagram and TikTok, send me a message. love to add value.
Michelle Kesil (23:26)
Perfect, I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Thank you for being here.Devaniel Adams (23:32)
Absolutely. And again, thank you for the opportunity and the platform to just talk to you and share.Michelle Kesil (23:38)
And for the listeners that are tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on the next episode.
