In Black America

This week on In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. speaks with T. Dallas Smith, founder and CEO of T. Dallas Smith & Company, the largest African American-owned pure tenant representation commercial real estate country in America, with a focus on mentoring young African Americans in the commercial real estate industry.

The full transcript of this episode of In Black America is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.

Announcer From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America.

T. Dallas Smith Again, I knew I wanted to be in commercial real estate, but I didn’t know anybody. So my sister happened to be dating a politician who was the one guy in town, Michael Hightower. So I called Michael. It made sense to me. Let me call it the most influential person I knew to see if he knew everybody. He did. He introduced me to a guy named Bill Coleman. And I asked Bill, is it possible for me to come and shadow you? Because I’m thinking about getting into commercial real estate. He said, I’ll work it out. It may not be with me, but it’ll be somebody in my shop. Ended up being a guy named Steve Gotme. He was kind enough to allow me to shadow him, and he took me around, showed me and left things in properties that he sold before clients that he was working on working with. Because I’m going to take you to a meeting. Don’t say anything, but you can sit in on a meeting and listen.

John L. Hanson Jr. T. Dallas Smith, founder and CEO of T. Dallas Smith and Company, the largest African-American owned pure tenant representation commercial real estate firm in the country. For more than a decade and a half, TDS and company has taken pride in catering to the needs of clients requiring office space, industrial facilities and land. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with affiliate offices in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Short Hills, New Jersey. Their projects span the nation in 1989. Smith became the first African-American broker at Cushman and Wakefield of Georgia. Six years later, he would go on to pioneer the brokerage division of Atlanta’s landmark African-American-owned real estate and construction firm H.J. Russell and Company. Throughout his career, Smith dedicated himself to expose the African-Americans to the commercial real estate industry. In case you weren’t aware, less than 4% of commercial real estate executives are African-American. I’m John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week’s program, T. Dallas Smith and Company with founder and CEO T. Dallas Smith, In Black America.

T. Dallas Smith December 2006, I was I was partners with another guy had another company I was partners with but that company was kind of going under. But during that process, I met a young man who happened to be 19, came to me and wanted to get into real estate, and a lot of people would do that. No, but years, I would say, do you have a license? And people typically say, no, I don’t. I say, get your license, we’ll talk. I’ve done it over the years for at least 50 people and nobody ever came back. But this kid, Leon Benton, came back in three weeks with his license, which is unheard of. And at this point, I’m going, okay, The company I’m a part of is kind of about to go under. I get the epiphany that this kid is a lot like me and that what I really need to do is start a brokerage company and I can help this guy and help other people who look like me get into the space.

John L. Hanson Jr. Under T. Dallas Smith’s leadership. His commercial real estate firm, T. Dallas Smith and Company would go on to work with some of the largest companies in the nation, from Microsoft and Coca-Cola to AT&T and Fedex. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Smith grew up in an all Black neighborhood in Hunter Hills. But when his family moved to College Park, it was an eye opener. He quickly learned that the color of his skin would dramatically affect his experience in the world. Smith knew early on he wanted to make a lot of money, and commercial real estate would make that happen. In 2006, Smith was at the height of its commercial real estate career. He had been mentored early on by Thomas W. Taft and would later pioneer the brokerage division of H.J. Russell and Company, where he served as a division vice president. Today, T. Dallas Smith and Company is the largest African-American owned pure tenant representation commercial real estate firm in the nation. Recently In Black America spoke with T. Dallas Smith.

T. Dallas Smith Yeah, you know, I tell people I’m Atlanta born Atlanta bred. When I die, I’d be Atlanta. I love this city. And that statement came from somebody named Ralph from the Hill, who actually used to be a radio guy. And but it’s a true statement. And I’m grateful, grateful, grateful. When I grew up, I grew up in the West side Hunter Hill, it was Paradise. Everybody took care of one another. They didn’t have to worry about anybody breaking your house or anything like that. It was just a wonderful place. And fortunately, we moved in ’76 with a lot of other folks who look like us, moved out of our communities and moved out into the suburbs. You know, as a 62 year old man, I was 14 when that happened, but now at 62, I know we messed up. It was we thought we were going somewhere better. But, you know, literally the day we moved, there was the first day I was called the N-word. We were the first family on our street in College Park. And so I got thrown into this race thing really quick because I grew up in an all Black family, all Black community. I’d never dealt with anything racial until we moved to College Park. And I got a crash course real fast about, you know, some folks I want to see you come into our community. So I dealt with that at 14 and I tell this story in. The sad thing about it was I really wasn’t that upset with the kids who threw rocks at me and called me names. I was more upset with my parents for moving us out of Hunter Hill. And it’s full circle for me now. I bought a house on a hill a couple of years ago. The plan is to move back to where it all started.

John L. Hanson Jr. And what sparked that interest in real estate.

T. Dallas Smith You know, it’s funny. I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I grew up. The only consistent thing was I want I knew I wanted to make a lot of money. That was that was the one consistent thing. So I took a Forbes magazine in 1982 and studied with the richest people in the world did. That was ironically, the first year they came out with their list of 400 richest people, and I just took over. You know, this is before computers. And, you know, so I did an old fashioned index card write down Warren Buffett, investor, Omaha, Nebraska. And what is net worth? And I did with Boone Pickens you know old man Texas his net worth. So I did this with all 400 people and I came out with one conclusion that each the richest people in the world, they do four things. One of four things they got to remember, this is 1982. They’re in investment business, Wall Street, all business that was in Texas. Technology was kind of just coming up. And then this thing called real estate. As I mentioned, I’m from Atlanta. I wanted to stay in Atlanta so Wall Street would have taken me to New York or would have taken me to Texas. Technology just wasn’t my personality. So it left me with real estate. And I was a young man, 19 years old. I had a new car. My dad said that if I did well he’d get me a new car. I had a Fiat 6192 2-seater emphasis on a 2-seater, so I didn’t want to take nobody around on the weekends in the car. So that knocked out residential. So I literally just backed into commercial real estate. And so that was really what got started.

John L. Hanson Jr. And that first job with Atlanta Air Center Realty?

T. Dallas Smith Atlanta Air City Realty. I worked with a guy by the name was Thomas W Tift. Tift County. Tift College. I mean, it was that family. So this was 1982. I happened to again, I knew I wanted to be in commercial real estate, but I didn’t know anybody. So my sister happened to be dating a politician who was a porn guy in town, Michael Hightower. So I called Michael. It made sense to me. Let me call it the most influential person I knew to see if he knew about it. He introduced me to a guy named Bill Karma and I asked Bill, is it possible for me to come and shadow you because I’m thinking about getting into commercial real estate. He said, I’ll work it out. It may not be with me, but it’ll be somebody in my shop. End up being a guy named Steve Gotme. Steve was kind enough to allow me to shadow him and they took me around, show me some listings and some properties that he sold before clients that he was working on working with. He said, I’m going to take you to a meeting. Don’t say anything, but you can sit in on a meeting and listen. And so in the meeting, what I did not realize he was representing the tenant, the guy he was talking to was representing the building and they were kind of going back and forth before we left. They shook hands. We laughed. He said, You have any questions? I said, Yeah, well, I could kind of start off a little slow, but looked like he came to an agreement. He said, Yes, we did. I just got one question. I said, How much money? He laughed. He said, I was like $30,000 off that transaction. This is a 1982 median income for a family of four was $28,000. And I just saw this guy do that, you know, relatively easy. So I was like, Yeah, this is for me. And so I didn’t look back, but he was kind enough to take me to lunch. And while I was at lunch, I met a guy named Tom Thompson. Tom told me about Mr. Tift, and they say the rest is history. But I worked for Mr. Tift for six years. He taught me the game, so I was on the landlord side for the first six years in the industry and went through my first recession, and they never want to be stuck with this building. I want to be able to represent tenants and take them anywhere, regardless of what the market might do. And that’s what got me into tennant rep. And I had not looked back. That was almost 43 years ago.

John L. Hanson Jr. After those six years, did you go out on your own or you went to another company?

T. Dallas Smith So the after and the first six years I started, I ended up going to work for Cushman Wakefield in 1989 and at Cushman, I was the first Black broker that Cushman hired in Georgia. They were owned by the Rockefellers, which was interesting. The AMA was if you didn’t come from money, you didn’t work with Cushman Wakefield. Cushman was not with the bluebloods, No. And I didn’t come from the bluebloods, but my dad drove a taxi. I worked there. Lucky my mama kept kids at house. So it was God’s grace and his determination to place my feet where I needed to be. And so I ended up being at Cushman. I learned a lot. I learned a whole lot. One of the things how me and 40 other brokers and I stayed that way because it was I was never really in the pack. So that was really what I would describe as an island moment. But thank God for Mr. Tiff. I knew how to work hard. Nobody was going to outwork me. So grateful for that. And but yeah, it was it was Cushman Wakefield. I was there for six years.

John L. Hanson Jr. How did H. J. Russell and Company play in what you’re doing now?

T. Dallas Smith So, Herman Russell, when I came to Cushman, the very first cold call I ever made was to Herman Russell and left a voicemail message. And out of that, I spoke with his assistants. His assistant was named Barbara, basically told Barbara I was the first Black broker from Cushman Wakefield and I wanted to meet with Mr. Russell, who was somebody who I idolized my whole life. And as a business person, wanting to be a business person, as as stellar as he was, I know I can learn a lot from him and that’s what else I said. But that was kind of the period since he said, okay, well, I’ll tell him you called. And after that I just realized I thought it was going to take, you know, years, months and years to get a hold of him. But to my surprise, he called me in to less than 15 minutes to call me right back. And I basically just mumbled something because I was in the break room when he called me back. And, you know, I had a whole script of what I was going to say to him at my desk, and I just laughed. Mr. Russell, I said, I think you’ll call me back that quick. I mean, the break room, I’ve got the whole script at my desk. The things I would not say to you need to start laughing. But really, at the end of the day, I said, I don’t know how we may be able to help one another or if I can help you, but I’ve seen your career and I’ve watched you, and I want to one day be, you know, a businessman like you are. And I’d love to meet you. And he had me meet with Noel Carlyle, who was running his development business. We met and literally walking in the hallway after leaving Noel Carlyle, I bumped into Jerome Russell Hermann son, and he knocked my portfolio on my hand and helped me pick my business cards up. And he saw the business card Cushman Wakefield, because he said yes. He said, Yeah. He said, And you work with Cushman? I said, Yes. He said, you were a Cushman. I said, Yes. So, you know, we got to get together. I always been interested in commercial real estate. But that’s how Jerome and I got together and we got together and we would meet once a month to break bread and just to talk about real estate. We did this for three years. And in one of those meetings, he said, Well, when I become president of a cell phone company, I want you to come over here and start a brokerage division for us. And true to his word, the day he became president of the company, he calls it Man, you ready to go to work for so at a boring rate, The rest of the company started a brokers division for Herman, worked there for six years. And I tell you, man, I tell people are in my Ph.D. working for Herbert. I mean, he’s got the blueprint for how it ought to be done. And so really, all I’ve been doing and executing at Dallas with the company is what I saw Herman Russell do.

John L. Hanson Jr. What are some of the projects or clients that you all had at H.J. Russell.

T. Dallas Smith When I was there at H. J. Russell we had BellSouth as a client. I’ve got to go back now, but I want to say we did something for Chrysler. I’m going back. I was in my 30’s, man, I’m 62 now. Now, the one that’s panned out was BellSouth, because we still have some other company. We’re still representing AT&T. Now to this day, we’re still doing work with them now. But we were I was doing some stuff at that time for Wal-Mart, for Target, sort of retail development. And then I was helping Harman purchase a lot of property. So if you’ve ever been to Atlanta and into the past goes off of a fair street north South Drive and fair, that whole block I helped to acquire over a three year period. So what I saw this man do who had a speech impediment, who grew up at the time, and he said he thought his first name was [Unrecognized] N-word because that was the environment. But I saw this man create, you know, at that time, he had over, I know, a half billion dollars of real estate. And working with him, he gave you absolutely zero excuses in terms of not being able to accomplish whatever it is you were trying to accomplish. He was simply that guy. He died in 2014. Miss him dearly. He’s got a book out called Building Atlanta, which I always recommend people to get that book to really understand what this man came from. And a lot of folks who came out of his shop who were doing extremely well because they they they sat at the man’s feet, you know, for for so many years. So you got you come out with no excuses, man. Zero.

John L. Hanson Jr. I understand. If you’re just joining us, I’m John L. Hanson Jr. and you’re listening to In Black America from KUT Radio and we’re speaking with T. Dallas Smith, founder and CEO of T. Dallas Smith and Company the largest African-American owned pure tennant representation in commercial real estate firm in the nation. Mr. Smith when did you start your own company and tell us about that process?

T. Dallas Smith December 2006. I was I was partners with another guy, had another company I was partners with. But that company was kind of going under. Doing that process, I met a young man who happened to be 19, came to me and wanted to get into real estate and a lot of people would do that. No, but years, I would say, Do you have a license? And people typically say, no, I don’t. I say, get your license, we’ll talk. I’ve done it over the years for at least 50 people and nobody ever came back. But this kid, Leon Benton, came back in three weeks with his license, which is unheard of. And at this point, I’m going, okay, The company I’m a part of is kind of about to go under. I get the epiphany that this kid is a lot like me and that what I really need to do is start a brokerage company and I can help this guy and help other people who look like me get into the space. So we became official in March 2007. We became, you know, all the paperwork and everything was done from that December. That, in turn, is now the president of Summit, the company. Within two weeks of him being with me and the guy told me train him up as a sign for I turned 60. This would be the one who would be running a company. So when I turned 62 years ago, we had a ceremony at the time handing over, you know, the presidency to Dallas Marketing Company over to him. And I couldn’t be happier, man. We’ve got some great people who work with us now. We got almost a little bit about 20 people in our shop right now. Not everybody’s in production, but we’ve come, we’ve come a long way and we’re still we’re working with some really great clients. Like I said, we’re still working with AT&T, still working with. They had actually been doing work for them for over ten years. It’s just been great, man. What I get more joy in seeing young people who come to my shop who didn’t know anything about real estate, you know, make their first $600,000. $100,000 is nothing life. It’s like, you know, just a proud papa moment to see those things happen. And so I always tell people, obviously God knew the joy that I would get out of this. And I’m so grateful. At the time, I thought I was born out of real estate and I will be December this year, be 18 years since that happened. So just grateful man, Extremely grateful. Blessed. Both my parents are deceased, but my dad got a chance to see. So at the start of it, my mom got to see more and they were just both happy and grateful to see their little. My mom was, say, a little preemie boy. I was I was born a preemie. But, you know, I’ve been at least 50. You know, my mom was a little boy and but grateful for my parents. And I got two sisters, just just a great family man and just a great business to be in. This is the only business I tell people. Well, you might be broke on a Friday and to be rich on a Monday. So commercial is a kind of representation.

John L. Hanson Jr. That brings to my my next question. What does it feel like when you sign and cut those six vs six figure checks?

T. Dallas Smith You know, it’s the first thing you learn something about Uncle Sam. Number one, you got to.

John L. Hanson Jr. Exactly.

T. Dallas Smith Make sure you get good tax counsel, have a good, you know, lawyer, all of that. So that’s that’s the first thing is that thing bigger smile, more money, more powers. But I really have those problems and trying to figure out a place to eat or live and those kind of things. So I’m grateful, man. I just, you know, but, you know, wise counsel, making sure that you’ve got wise counsel around you, that you don’t do all the crazy stuff. Because I tell my young people stupid stuff I did because I tell them so they don’t do it. You know, it’s been it’s been it’s been a big take to make 100,000. Go spend 200. Don’t do that. You know, a lot of us do that kind of thing. I definitely did that. But, you know, you learn and I thank God my dad says no fool like an old fool. And I don’t want to be overlooked. So I’m still trying to stay green out the green enough to grow. Got you. And keeping people around me who can keep me sharper.

John L. Hanson Jr. How do you staying with yourself? I mean, competition.

T. Dallas Smith There’s competition out there.

John L. Hanson Jr. How do you distinguish competition? Is there competition that.

T. Dallas Smith You know and I like? What can we talk about? No. You know, at the end of the day, man, I’m a big firm believer that what’s for you is for you. And the biggest thing that I always make sure that we focus on is taking care of the client first. It’s not about your pocket. It’s not about the commission you’re going to make and see what is the best for this client. So if you genuinely mean that and focus on that and do what’s best for the client, that client’s going to always call you back because it trust me, all they need and they go to other clients, other customers before other brokerage firms, before different enough is people see the difference. And number one, like our logo is a lion and for reason the Lion Heart together is not just a solo like a tiger’s tigers hunt by themselves. And fortunately, most big shops have more of a tiger mentality. They do a lion mentality. And I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve seen, you know, the decimate across from the other decimate, cut the throat of the other one over fee. When at the end of the day you both have the same business cards and at the end of the day, you should be taking care of the client more than you are yourself. And so something is fundamentally. Simple to me as that is one of the biggest things that make us different. We everybody knows the biggest thing we got to take care of is the client. That means our fee is cut in half or whatever. The client problem gets solved. Is the client happy with the client? Be better off in the next 2 or 3 years with their business growing? And if those answers are yes, then those clients who call you.

John L. Hanson Jr. Now you are based in Atlanta. How do you all do business across the nation?

T. Dallas Smith So we’re probably doing it right now and I’ll saying about 38 of 40 states. The good news, what you just said, we are in Atlanta. We can cover 80% of the United States in two hours jumping on a Delta plane of a Delta flight. So we self service majority of all our deals. But for the ones that we may need some help on or something, we may have a joint venture partner. Some folks that we’ve done work with before and past and continue to do work with, you know, this helps them build great relationships over the years. So we we know a lot of people from, you know, north, south, east and west. So we can cover a lot of territory. And the goal is also just to continue to grow the community and continue to grow with our clients as clients continue to need more services. We want to be able to provide more service.

John L. Hanson Jr. Is the commercial real estate market similar to the homeowner market?

T. Dallas Smith I would say. And in one respect, you know, as it flows. Supply and demand. Right now, you know, the office market is taking a hit because a lot of people have not really returned back to work and a lot of places have overbuilt. So there’s a lot of office. So but, you know, when it’s this tough for landlords, it’s actually better for clients because this is a great time for a tenant to reconsider. Their lease is about to come up ideally within two years, particularly if you’ve got a full floor, a lot of space you want to get in front of that at least two years before it’s time to move. If you got 100 people, 500 people who trying to move, you need time to do that. So I tell people time is really your enemy or your friend. So if you’ve got at least a couple of years left and you consider this a big move, this is the time to have those conversations, particularly now when the market is really tough for the landlord, but could be really good deals for the tenants and this is the time to come in and do longer leases and that kind of thing. So we’re doing a lot of that right now in terms of use the call brand and extend. It’s a little modification of that now, but it’s, you know, it’s it’s supply and demand. But right now, you know, we’ve always been on the tenant side since I left the landlord business back back in the day. You know, these have the flow this it’s about how can you take advantage of those on behalf of the client, on behalf of your client.

John L. Hanson Jr. What does the term pure tenant representation means?

T. Dallas Smith Pure tenant rep means we only represent tenants and occupiers of space. We do not represent landlords. So you won’t go down the street and see two Dallas Living Company building on a sign on a building so that 99.9% of the time that’s the case, that we only represent our tenants. Now we may have an example where maybe a tenant who’s been in a building, they had a 50,000 square foot, 100,000 square foot building, but they’re going to sell that building and they’re getting ready to move into a landlord’s building because they want to get they want to get out of the landlord business and still be a tenant. And so we may end up having to sell that building to help them. But 90%, 99% of the time we are purely just on the occupier and the tenant services, not on the landlord side too. For me, I feel like that’s a conflict. How can I represent the building and now I represent you as a client? Who am I really loyal to? And so for me to not have that conflict is easier just to say, Hey, I’m only representing you in this transaction. Like I wouldn’t go in court, represent both the plaintiff and defendant, right? So to me, that’s what it feels like. So we’re pure tenant. We represent only tenants or occupiers of space.

John L. Hanson Jr. Mr. Smith before we run out of time and talk to us about the West Side future for.

T. Dallas Smith West Side, future for West, our Future Fund will be ten years next year. I’m the chair this year. I was born and raised in the West Side, the West. Our Future Fund was started around the time when Mercedes-Benz Stadium was being built, and this was something that Arthur Blank and Dan Cathy and Steve Sprecher wanted to do something that would be impactful. The question was, how do we put a $2 billion stadium on one side over here? And then you’ve got people living in blighted areas. What can we do about it? So they started this thing called the West Future Fund, West Our Future Fund. One of the biggest things that we do is we help to keep the taxes low for residents. That’s been their legacy. Residents who’ve been there from, you know, from for years, way before the stadium came. You know, we start bringing in new development value, start going up. And if you’ve been there, your taxes can go up too. But we’ve set up a scenario where there’s monies that go into West our Future Fund, that we help these people. The legacy residents cast their taxes. Even as property values start going up, they won’t be paying more for their taxes. We’re also buying a lot of property. We’ve impacted over 100. We put down about $120 million or $20 million in different projects over on the West Side, mostly in the form of single family homes. And those homes are being subsidized through philanthropic forces within our within sight of the website for you to find for residents who qualify and those residents who qualify for new home. We’re looking for a legacy residence. They have some kind of reference within the HBCU area, whether it’s Morehouse, Spelman, Clark, Morris, Brown, Teachers went to school there or you went to high school in the area. You have preference with the West Side Future Fund for what we call a home on the West Side. And so I’d encourage anybody who’s listening to this, just go to our website. Website the website for you to find.com and you can find more about West Side home on the West Side. I mean, we got a lot of stuff that’s happening over in that area. For me, it is the is the one area I would tell people to really take a look at on the west side, got a new park in that area. The beltline is in the area. And again, the house that I have, two miles from the front door, Mercedes Benz Stadium. A mile and a half.

John L. Hanson Jr. Where have you seen the greatest shift in demand for your services?

T. Dallas Smith Well, I guess larger companies, just about every large company we represented Microsoft when they came to Atlanta, we represented Nike, Airbnb, a lot of big companies. So, no, you know, just like they picked the ones who are good at what they do. I mean, like if you want a lawyer, you want a lawyer who specializes in whatever is the case that you want. Right. So these companies are learning they could save a lot of money with people who this is all I’ve ever done. You know, for 43 years I’ve been doing commercial real estate, primarily representing tenants. So a lot of stuff can be hidden in a lease that can cost a company a lot of money. And conversely, if you’ve got the right representation, can help you save a lot of money.

John L. Hanson Jr. TI Dallas Smith, founder and CEO of T Dallas Smith and Company, the largest African-American owned pure tenant representation commercial real estate firm in the nation. Have you have questions, comments or suggestions as to a future In Black America programs? Email us at inblackamerica.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and X. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Also you can listen to a special collection of In Black America programs at American Archive of Public Broadcasting at Americanarchives.org. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I’m John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week.

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This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.