“I LIKE THE THRILL OF THE BUILD. WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I DIDN'T WANT TO BE A
PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER OR A POSTMAN. I WANTED TO DO EXACTLY WHAT I'M
DOING NOW. I WANTED TO HAVE A COLLECTION OF COMPANIES, AND I WANTED TO BUILD
AND GROW THEM. I KNEW.” —Brian Adams
Adams illustrates his words with
solid examples. Take, for instance,
Restoration Cleaners, which he started
in Houston at the age of 22.
“We got up to 120 employees and
were one of Inc. magazine’s fast growing
companies for about five or six years,”
he explains. “Then we got a knock on
the door. A private equity group, three
gentlemen with Harvard MBAs, says
they wanted to buy my company. I said it
wasn’t for sale.”
After some persuading, aided by a
“ridiculous offer,” Adams sold, thinking
it "pretty cool that a boy from Tyler,
Texas, had sold a company to people
from Harvard." As it turned out, Texas
know-how and a Culverhouse College
of Commerce degree trumped the big
guys, whose enterprise quickly failed.
“I bought it back from the bank for
less than half a penny of what I'd sold
it for. Now I’ve brought the company
to a healthy state, almost where it
was before.”
Restoration Cleaners is a
multimillion dollar garment and
electronic restoration and hotel valet
service. Adams’ other company, Rumber,
creates an alternative wood from
recycled tires and recycled plastic. It
ranges from horse and cattle trailers to
military applications with sales around
the world. Not bad for a 35-year-old.
The success should have been
foreseen, given Adams’ entrepreneurial
endeavors during his days at The
University of Alabama’s Culverhouse
College of Commerce.
“I had a pretty normal college
life,” he says. “I was an officer in my
fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and
involved in student government. There
wasn’t a Thursday night I didn’t make it
to Gallettes, and I know what it’s like to
sleep past 11 on a Friday.”
But ask him what else he was doing
and you get something like this: hiring
art students to sketch campus buildings
(prints for sale); creating shirts whose
profits enabled purchase of a downtown
bar; establishing a pickup and delivery
laundry service called Bama Butler;
setting up the first cash bars in fraternity
houses; and, for a time, co-owning a
laundromat.
How did he do it? “I have this disease
called ADD [attention deficit disorder],
he explains, so I live strongly to a
calendar. It saves times to be creative.
When I have nothing on the calendar,
that’s when I’m in the most creative
state. I set goals and I’m very strong on
evaluating them, not only in business
but as a father and husband. I’m
OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder]
organized.”
Did this emerging serial
entrepreneur really need business
classes? “Of course,” Adams says of his
management track. “Did Alabama teach
me to take $1 and make $3? Probably
not, but I learned a lot of fundamentals
on how to look at things. And I learned
the system. Prior to Nick Saban being
there, the business school taught me it
was all about a process. If you do these
things, certain results will occur. I’ve
lived by that all this time.”
He well remembers the Culverhouse
classes on small businesses and
especially “really, really getting into”
GBA 490 (Strategic Management), a
hands-on, upper-level course that
combines business-strategy simulation
with analyzing existing companies.
“I still keep in touch with Lou Marino
[professor of strategic management
and the James D. Nabors Instructional
Excellence Faculty Fellow]. And I’m
doing a case study with MBAs on one of
the companies I sold and the lessons I
learned. Oh, and I try to come back for
one football game a year.”
Meanwhile he wins awards. A few
include Houston Business Journal's 40
Under 40, Inc. magazine’s 30 Under 30,
and Entrepreneurs’ 2010 Outstanding
Leadership Award. Last year, Adams
and his BA Interests holding company
were named to the 2014 Empact
Showcase by Empact, an organization
recognizing impact and diversity of
young entrepreneurs. In ceremonies
at the United Nations, he joined the
ranks of former winners like Facebook
founder Mark Zuckerberg and saw his
company's name on the NASDAQ board.
