Wesley Martin

Wesley Martin, thanks for spending some time with me.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Glad to be here.

Yeah, well, the way I usually like to start these conversations is with a simple but pretty complex question, right? Who is Wesley Martin?

Okay. I would say that I'm a simple country boy. I've always lived in the southern part of Florence County. You know, I live in Effingham now. I love it there. I've traveled extensively, and I used to think that I wanted to live in a big city, but I come to find out from traveling different countries and stuff, I realize that I just like to live in the country. I think the most important thing about me is that I'm a blood-bought child of God, that I know that Jesus shed his blood to redeem me, and unfortunately I needed that blood shed because I'm a sinner. I'm somebody who, I want to glorify the King. I don't always live up to that standard, but I do want to live a life that would bring His name glory. And I want to, I'm very passionate about South Carolina. I think South Carolina is a very unique state. We have a very rich history dating back to the 1600s. We have a great culture of hospitality and friendliness and being polite. And yet we're also this very same state that came up with the Gadsden flag, the Don't Tread on Me flag. We're very independent-minded and we're very— we want to have our rights. We don't want to be told what to do. I think we're a small state, but I think we're on the precipice of greatness. I think a lot of people are realizing that our conservative values are attractive for business and for, you know, raising a family. And I think in a lot of ways I'm defined by my South Carolina heritage. I think I'm in a lot of ways I embody South Carolina culture. I'm certainly in love with it. So apart from my love for South Carolina and for Florence, especially in the Pee Dee area, and apart from my Christianity, I'm also very involved in, in business. And I like to do— I like to have an abundance mindset. I like to— I don't see other people— like, I'm in the real estate business. I don't see other people in the real estate business as my competitors. I think that there's plenty for everybody. And I'd like to not only real, you know, I like to be very opportunistic in the sense that I try to see opportunities anywhere they come, but I also want to help other people see opportunities because I've been so blessed. I have mentors who taught me things and opened my eyes to things that I never realized. So I kind of want to pay that forward and show other people that you're walking through a world that's full of opportunities and sometimes you don't even see them.

So I'm curious, and I want to come back to the abundance mindset because I think that's something that people don't talk about nearly enough. Mindset, I think, is crucially important. But where did the love for South Carolina and really diving into and pressing down on that come from?

Yeah, so as I said, and I have a bad habit of, you know, answering questions in a roundabout way, but we get back to the point. As I said, when I was a young guy, you know, a child, early teens and stuff, I used to always think, I want to go move in a big— to a big city. And make a whole bunch of money. Okay. Um, but I've been blessed as I, as I mentioned before, and God's allowed me to, I've been to, you know, Australia, been to a bunch of different places in Europe. I've been to Asia, been to a lot of major cities and stuff. And I think what really, I've always been a country boy. Okay. I've always lived out in the country and I've always liked living out in the country. But I think going to those major cities while it's a lot of fun, gave me some perspective for the intangibles of living in South Carolina, which is the culture, the people, You know, I remember distinctly being in Europe and I would try to talk to somebody and they would stare at me and they spoke English and they would stare at me and wouldn't even talk. They looked at me like I was crazy for even trying to talk to them. Whereas in South Carolina, you can strike up a conversation with just about anybody and they'll at least see, you know, at least try. Um, so I think it really, really started getting hammered into me after I had some perspective and realized that going to these big, big cities was not where I wanted to live, maybe visit. Um, but Also, again, being raised in the country, I love the outdoors, love to hunt, I love to fish, I love the simple things in life. I like people, I like to mind my own business, I like when people mind their own business, you know, so I like kind of living, you know, off the grid a little bit, away from town. But I think also a lot of it has to do with the Christianity, with, you know, one of the infections I see that society has now is what's called relativism, which is you make your own truth, be true to your own self, you know, whatever you want, you can do it, you know, if you think it's right, then it must be okay. Well, that's just not, that's not it. That's not true. There's tangible right and wrong as defined by God that's going to be right or wrong no matter how you feel about it. And I think in South Carolina, because of our strong Christian heritage, I think we still embrace that. Whereas there's other places that you may go where, you know, they say it's okay to do whatever. And so I think there's things like the culture. Also with South Carolina, we have, in my opinion, the most beautiful state in the union. We've got the Appalachian Mountains if you want mountains. We've got the beach if you want the beach. Okay, we've got forests, we've got fields, we've got swamps, we've got marshes, we've got wetlands, we've got Everything you could want except a desert, and who wants a desert? Facts.

You know? Yeah, no, I'm with you. And so how did all the travel come about, um, for a simple country boy?

Yes, well, I, I was, I was honestly blessed. Um, I've always been sort of a frugal person. I've always been good at managing my money and, and, and holding on to my money. And I just was doing little side hustles and stuff and, you know, made a couple thousand dollars, you know, here and there and decided to run off with it. And it was, and the amazing thing was when I traveled, we had no itinerary, we had no plan, and we just showed up on a whim and walked around. And like we went to Europe and went to 6 countries. When we showed up, we didn't know where we were gonna go. We just flew into Amsterdam and then we picked countries off a map and said, let's go there. You know, so it's kind of more of an improvised adventure, but honestly, it was amazing. It was magical.

Well, I've seen a lot of people now who are adopting a bit of that lifestyle, uh, yeah, even while they're doing their day job. Yeah, I mean, with now post-COVID, the ability to work from anywhere or to be able to do whatever it is you're going to do from anywhere has led to a lot more um, almost kind of global vagabond kind of thing. And I think that's a neat way to, to do it, is just to go wherever the spirit leads. Yeah, you know, as they say. And I think that's the, um, yeah, that's a really cool— where was your favorite place you ever went to?

My favorite place was bar none Australia.

Okay.

And the beautiful thing about Australia is it An American's not going to really experience culture shock in Australia because their culture is very, very similar to ours. And in fact, they even, you know, I'm kind of a redneck, okay? And they even have off-roading, okay? They love Americans. Like when I went to Europe, they weren't really impressed with no Americans. When I went to Australia, they were like, wow, an American! They were so happy to see me. It was so clean. The cities were just so clean, so modern. I was in Perth, which is on Western Australia. It's the only city on the western coast of Australia, and there's like 4 million people there. And one of the things that stuck out to me the most was that I never sat in traffic for more than 5 minutes. The civil engineering, the planning for the cities was so modern that it just— it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Beautiful women. I mean, seriously beautiful women there. Very friendly people. It was like being in South Carolina again, where people will actually talk to you. People are willing to make a new friend. Let me tell you though, one of my most magical travel stories. So I always forget what the cathedral's name is. It's not Notre Dame, but there's a cathedral in Paris that's very famous. It's right on the same level as Notre Dame. It's on top of a big hill. And it's got gargoyles all over it. I think it's like Mont-de-Morte or something like that. I forget. Um, but as I told you, me and my friend had no itinerary. So we show up to Paris and we're just walking around randomly and it's the, it's the middle of July and it's hot. And I remember we, we asked a taxi driver to take us somewhere and where he took us, we had nowhere, no idea where we were at. So we're walking around for like 30, 45 minutes. It's hot and we're walking uphill. And we start getting real sick of walking uphill because we don't know where we're going and we're hot and tired. And, um, anyway, we just, for some reason, we decide to stick it out. And then we just randomly discover one of the major tourist attractions in Paris. This is this huge cathedral with gargoyles. And the most beautiful thing about it was we're overlooking the whole city because we're on the top of this hill. So we can see the Eiffel Tower. We can see the rest of, you know, Paris, the rivers, everything. And we didn't even plan for it. And matter of fact, we were walking around and we were honestly about to give up. Right? Yeah, right.

Well, it is, um, it's funny how things work out that way, you know, and, um, interesting, you know, one of the things that, again, I embrace the unexpected, you know, I think there's a lot to be said for, um, just kind of roaming around, and you never know what or who you'll meet. And so, yeah, I want to touch back on something that you, you mentioned earlier. Yeah, I talked about having, uh, and I do want to talk a little bit about kind of real estate and what you do in that. But, um, but before that, talk to me a little bit about that abundance mindset. When you say that, what— I mean, it could mean different things, I suppose, different people. What's that mean to you?

So I will use scripture as an example. Jesus talks about how, I think it may be in the Sermon on the Mount, but he talks about how you do not need to worry about, you know, God taking care of you. You do not need to worry about starving to death. You do not need to worry about your clothes and your raiment. And he gives the example of how God feeds the birds and the birds do not even work. Okay, and then he says, well, aren't you of much more value than the little sparrow? Okay, what that tells me is that there's plenty out there for everybody. Okay, there's plenty out there for everybody. And I like to, instead of going through life with the extraction mindset, which means I'm gonna take from you and keep it for myself, I like to come to agreements that benefit both parties. I feel like that's far more sustainable, and I feel like if you have a reputation for trying to do mutually beneficial business transactions, more opportunities will come your way, and your reputation will be better. People will want to work with you more, and especially in the real estate world, you know, I don't— of course I want to make money, but the way that I make money is to provide a good product. Provide a good house, provide a good rental, you know, make sure my tenants have, you know, what they need, that they're in a safe place, that if there's repairs that need to be done, I don't take 3 months to do it. I do it as soon as I can. So, and with the abundance thing, I mean, there's just, especially in America, God has blessed us materially like no other nation. You know, we're not the chosen nation, that's Israel. Israel, but I would argue that we've been given more money and more military power than even Israel has. And there's just— the way I feel about it is being born in America, you're born on third base, okay? And you just need to run home, you know? And another thing about the abundance mentality, a lot of people have this victim mentality, Chip Munn. And I'll tell you something, I don't know anybody successful with a victim mentality. I don't know anybody successful that's entitled, you know. I feel like the people that I know that are successful have this mindset of you can go out there and get it, but don't expect it to be given to you and don't expect that you deserve it, you know. Sure.

So I definitely subscribe to the go out and get it mentality for sure. And so I mean, how did you get started? What kind of real estate do you do and how did you get started?

So I would really say I do full service real estate. I'm focused primarily at the current moment on residential, but like, I'm building some townhomes here in downtown Florence, and that's going to be mixed. It's going to be 18 townhomes and 6 commercial parcels, so there's going to be a storefront element to it. Um, how I got started— so I go to the Baptist Temple, and I met a mentor, an older man named Nolan Johnson. He's in his 80s. He had a business with 155 employees at one time. And so my preacher, Bill Monroe, told me— I'm big into evangelism, okay? I like to win people to Christ and tell them about how they can be saved. My preacher told me one time, I was in his office, he said, "Wesley, we've got a man in our church named Nolan. He's one of the best soul winners in our church, and he's also a fantastic businessman.". And in fact, my preacher Bill, when he first came to Florence, he worked for Nolan. And I was sitting there thinking, well, you know, look at what my preacher's done. If he can work for this man whenever he was young, and if he, you know, speaks so highly of him, then maybe I need to go meet him. So I went and met him, and he told me— I told him, I said, well, how can I make money? And he told me, uh, Wesley, well, you need to consider, you know, insurance. You know, where you get residuals and sell policies. He taught me about IRAs and investment accounts and, you know, Roths and all this. Then he said, you know, real estate. And honestly, when I first met him, I told him I wasn't interested in any of that. I was very foolish. I said, well, real estate doesn't sound great for me because I like to travel, like to be different places. I don't want to be tied to one thing. Anyway, something, something I guess it was God whispering to me, "Wes, you need to call him back." So about 2 or 3 months later, I called him back and I said, "Well, I want to learn real estate." So he took me in, you know, he'd buy foreclosures and I'd help him clean out the trash, or, you know, he had rentals and I'd help him manage the rentals and stuff like that. And just eventually I started getting on the equity side of things. And what I found is real estate is truly a people business. Thank God, I believe I have pretty decent people skills. I love people. I love to meet people, talk to people, have conversations and connect and relate to people. So it just, it actually turned out that it was a field that I could be very gifted in. Um, and I just didn't realize it. And so the way I do real estate, I'm not an agent. I actually have no licenses or designations for real estate. I'm an investor. And what's really taken me to the next level is that I represent a group of investors. So I'll find a deal and I'll buy it, but oftentimes I have other people who are financing it. You know, I have other people behind me who will pay for it, and we come up with this a way where— don't think they're just giving me money. I mean, they're getting a return, you know, they're getting, they're getting a good investment for themselves. And what I found is there's a lot of people who have assets and have have liquid net worth who, if they find somebody with some hustle and some drive that they can trust, they would much rather give you the money to go do the deal than them have to be on the phone.

Right.

Than them have to go to Lowe's and them have to deal with tenants and solve problems. If they can give you money and then you bring them back more than what they gave you, they'll give you money all day. I mean, yeah. So it's worked out pretty good. So anyway, to answer your question, we flip houses.

Okay.

Okay. We do rentals. We do. Like, I have some apartments and stuff for rent, and we also do development. Um, I'm, you know, Lord willing, building those townhomes downtown. I have another great partner of mine, Buddy Richardson. We do like land development, put in utilities, um, ditches, you know, roads, uh, you know, water lines, sewer lines. Um, we also do some private equity. So like, say, say somebody wants to flip a house and the bank won't loan them the money and they don't have the cash to buy the house, but we can do a private mortgage, a private short-term mortgage to help them buy the house and get it fixed up and sold.

Interesting. So that's a wide range. It really is full service. What about— so interesting, going everywhere from land development to, you know, development downtown. What do you find attractive about downtown?

So as somebody from Florence, it's been magical to watch. It's been truly magical to watch because 10 years ago downtown was not somewhere you'd want to be, especially not after dark. And just the amount of investment and, and money that's been poured downtown, um, I think we— one thing I love is the architecture we have. You know, you look at our library You look at the Performing Arts Center, you look at the museum, and to me, I feel like I'm in a big city. I mean, those buildings are just so modern and so beautiful, they almost seem larger than life as compared to Florence. You know, the Hyatt, we're sitting here in Victor's now, the Hotel Florence, which is so historic and beautiful. I think downtown's kind of, you know, especially for an old country boy like me, downtown's a little bit more classy. You know, you kind of, You kind of feel like, oh, hoity-toity, you know, a little bit. Without being, but not snobby. Not snobby, just a little bit more upscale, a little bit nicer, you know. I like the buzz of downtown because the one thing that's super cool about downtown with the Hotel Florence and with the Hyatt here, a lot of, anytime you come out, you're liable to meet somebody who ain't even from Florence. They may be here traveling through. I mean, I've met so many people who are just here for a night. I met people who are just here for a few nights or a few weeks for work. So you never know who you're going to meet. And I think they do a good job of keeping the streets clean. I think Dr. John Keith was very smart in bringing the police force, the police station here very early on. And you know, I'm a big supporter of the cops as long as they don't harass me too much, but they do a good job of keeping downtown safe and clean. For sure.

They're good at traffic enforcement too.

Oh yeah.

I have an unpaid ticket right now. Every now and then I park too long. But they really do do a good job down here. I'm curious why we've seen a lot of residential development. But here lately, at least, it doesn't seem like we've had— of course, with the Emerson and the big projects. I'm glad to hear that you're looking at doing again, 18 units, a small project, but by any means. Yeah. Um, what do you think, or what do you see as the opportunity? Is it the opportunity for you because it's, you know, kind of capacity limited down here? I mean, is it there aren't that many units and you think there's more demand than the—

so the thing that downtown is lacking now is, is people who live downtown. Because like on a weekend, you know, in the evening you'll see foot traffic, especially during like the events that we have downtown. You'll see some foot traffic, but like now there's hardly any. You know, we're meeting here at 10:30 in the morning, there's hardly any foot traffic. And the reason there's not much is because we need more residents. Um, I think that the more people who come to live downtown, it's going to be like a snowball effect, okay? The more people who live downtown, the more people are shopping downtown, more people are eating downtown, going to bars. So you get more people living here, you'll have more restaurants open up, more bars open up, you'll have more storefronts open up, more professional services like financial advisors and, you know, attorneys and tax professionals and stuff like that who can open up. The opportunity for me, especially with my townhomes, I think will be more, I would say, more young professionals or older people who maybe don't have children living with them anymore. My townhome is going to be about 1,250 square feet, which again, for a retired person or somebody whose kids are out of the house would be perfect, or for young professionals without children would be perfect. You know, we also are going to have dedicated parking, which honestly, if you know downtown Florence, there's not much. You mentioned the Emerson. The poor people in the Emerson, when Florence After Five comes through, they may not even have a place to park in their own apartment. Right. Yeah, right. So, and so there's actually, there's a bigger project, a much bigger project that's happening downtown, which is called Urban Square, which I believe is going to have like 130 apartments. I'm going to have some townhomes. I think it may be like a hotel. There's going to be some storefronts. And see, again, it comes back to that abundance mindset. They're not in competition with me. Number one, I'm providing a different project, or different product. I'm providing townhomes that are more kind of like a house, and they're providing more apartments. But number 2, the more people who live downtown, the better downtown's— the more desirable it's going to be. The more restaurants, everything. The more people who live here, the more, the more people are going to want to live here. For sure. The more buzz there will be, the more foot traffic we have.

Yeah, and we, and we've seen that. I, I think it's been interesting down here to see, cuz our office has been down here for We moved in roughly a year after the hotel, you know, we committed right after they started and moved in, you know, probably 6 months or a year after they finished in terms of getting our building up and ready and all those things. And a big part of that was bringing some, like you said, professional services down here. And of course at the time one of my best clients told me they were never coming to me. You know, they were never coming to my downtown office because— and of course then Victor's opened up and the hotel opened up and people started coming here and feeling more comfortable. And I do think that, that step of professional services coming down here and other businesses then brought in some of the residents. Yeah, it got that— the Emerson wouldn't have been built if you didn't have offices down here and starting to get some foot traffic. But I do think that you're right, that it's a snowball, that the more The more we have, the more there will be. And again, I didn't know the name of the project, but I knew that there was one kind of in the works that again wouldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for visionaries like the folks who were involved with Hotel Florence and Victor's. Big step. You know, now vision's key. You're obviously a guy with a vision. What's next?

Wesley? Um, you know, the Bible says without vision the people perish. Amen. If you don't know where you're going, how you gonna get there? You know, yeah, like my mentor, one of the things he taught me early on, Wesley, you cannot just drift through life. You can't just have these abstract things that you want to accomplish. He said you have got to have written down concrete goals, okay? You got to have a list of goals, professional, spiritual, health, family, written down, defined, and then you've got to come up with a plan to make it happen. Okay, a dream, a goal without a plan is just a wish. Okay, you've got to actually have, you got to know where you're going, you got to have vision. Talk about vision, my good friend Dr. John Keith, who if you hadn't spoke to him on this thing, you need to speak to him. Sure, I'd love to. He's one of the people who had the vision for downtown before anybody did. Okay, you know, he went to— I think he went to school at Duke for his undergrad, and then he, you know, lived in DC and went to Howard. And he told me how he would— when he was going to school there, he just loved being downtown. He loved the city feel, and he kind of saw it for Florence before anybody else saw it. You know, his friends, you know, who helped him early on his renovation career here in downtown, some of his properties. They told me that anytime they came here and were working in the evening, they had to have a gun. That's how bad it was. And yet he was willing to take that risk and step out to make something happen. So, and it's people like that who, like my project downtown, without people like Dr. John Keith, without people like Tim Norwood and Dr. Joe Griffin and Frank Chisholm and Dale Barth and and entrepreneurs like that. And, you know, without the vision of Mayor Lukila and the city council at the time, my project wouldn't even be a consideration. It's, you know, if my project get, you know, is successful, I'll be standing on the shoulders of giants, okay? I couldn't— it's because of the people who came before me. What's next for me? Well, I have a great friend of mine, Dr. Sam McCown, who's starting a hedge fund. Dr. McCown is the wizard, okay? He's the one who knows the stocks and knows the options and has the system, who's been able to beat the market for a few, for several years now and has a system that he's back-tested. I'm gonna be the salesman. I'm gonna try to help him get, I'm gonna try to help him get clients. So, you know, we're kind of, 'cause my goal, Chip, frankly, is to have my own private equity firm. Okay, I'm specialized in real estate and private lending. I'm good at appraise— I know, I know how to value real estate, not only present value, but I kind of— I think God's given me a little bit of a knack for seeing where things are going and what, what may be worth more in the future. But I would really like to take my group of investors and expand my group of investors, and I would like to deal in every financial asset. Okay, not just real estate, not just mortgages, but also private equity and company. So if you have a company that's not publicly traded, you know, I would love to find a young man here in Florence. Maybe they want to start a pressure washing business, but maybe he can't get the money for it. Well, we might be able to help him get a truck, help him get a trailer, help him get a pressure washing machine, and in return, instead of loaning him the money, well, we want a piece of that business, right? And, but, and we don't— young man, we don't want you to stay at one truck and one trailer. We want We want you to have 5 trucks. You know, we want to help you grow and continue. You know, so I'd like to have private equity and private companies. I'd like to be in the insurance business, you know, with my good friend Dr. McCown. We'd like to— if the hedge fund is successful, we'd like to expand upon that and kind of, like I said, incorporate that into more of a private equity firm, kind of like something like Blackstone or BlackRock. So that's really where I'm— headed, I'd like to, but you know, one step at a time.

Yeah, one step at a time. Well, that's fascinating, uh, and, and I look forward to watching that. Uh, I'm, I'm excited for you. It's, again, it's nice to see people with big vision, and, uh, I think that's absolutely required to get anything done. Oh yeah, no question. Wesley, one of the, or kind of really the only two formal questions And the one that I typically like to wrap up with is, again, simple but complex. You can think about a fictional character. It could be anything from superhero to somebody in a book that you feel like best represents Wesley Martin. Yeah. Who would that be and why?

So I don't have a fictional character for you, if that's okay.

I'd like to use—

I'd like to use a real man. Okay. And I would like to use a Elijah. All right. And I don't mean to— I don't want to sound arrogant because I, I can't call fire down from heaven for sure. I can't make it stop raining for 3 years. But you know, the Bible describes Elijah as a hairy man, which, you know, I've got dreadlocks for now and all this other stuff. It describes him as having a rough appearance, which as right now I do have a rough appearance. But he's described as kind of a man's man, you know, very masculine, you know. And the thing about Elijah was no matter what, he was going to stand up for the truth. Okay. And that's to me, that's the biggest problem with our culture. You know, the Bible talks about, you know, I think it's in the book of Isaiah when Israel was going through such hard times back in the day, how truth had fallen in the streets, you know, and I don't want to turn this political, but you've got things like, you know, men who think they can just magically become a woman. You've just got so much garbage going on, and it's because we've gotten away from truth. Well, Elijah stood up for the truth no matter what, okay? You know, you had King Ahab and Jezebel, and back then, if you even talked back to the king, he could enslave you. I mean, he could castrate you, he could kill you at the drop of a hat. And yet Elijah shows up at the king's court and tells him what it's going to be. You know, and tells him, you know, tells him the truth and isn't afraid to do it. And I would just, I would like, I would hope that God will give me the character and the wherewithal and the strength to no matter what to stand up for the truth, you know, even if like Elijah it means it's not gonna rain and we're all gonna go through a hard time and, you know, all these dreams I had of making a whole bunch of money don't work out, I would like to be the person who's willing to stand up for the truth.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Wesley, thanks for spending some time with me.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, good talking to you.