Digital Social Hour - Interviewing the $100M Man I Abraham Gray DSH #424

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

Abraham Gray comes to the show to talk about his journey to success as the $100M Man. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Basically, I want to loan you money if I need it. Yeah, speaking of a ton of money, I know you had $100 million liquid cash at one point. Right now, would you rather have cash or assets? I mean, I'd always rather have assets. I almost, well, I don't want to say that. I want to have most of my money in assets. I always want to have a certain amount liquid because when there's really good deals, you want to be able to buy them.

Right. But I wouldn't want to have a majority of my money. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, guys, we're here with Abraham Gray today, all the way from Atlanta. How's it going, my man? Doing good. doing good. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. It's good to see you. So you're still buying real estate right now? I am buying a lot of real estate. A house a day still? Not quite a house a day anymore. That kind of stopped probably around last August. But for 2020, 21,

20, most of 22, I was buying about 30 homes a month. Wow. And what was the thought process with that? You just wanted to stack up as many as possible? Yeah, well, most of them were actually fix and flips. The market is so high right now that it doesn't make sense to do a lot of buy and holds. I used to, when the market was a lot lower, bought tons of properties and kept them as rentals. I still buy houses for rentals, but everything that I'm keeping long-term right now is like creative deals. So like owner finance deals, sub two deals.

Those are the ones I'm keeping for rentals. But most of the stuff I buy, I pay cash for. And all those I basically fix and flip. Yeah. The sub two strategy is incredible. Pace just came on last week. I saw you collabed with him before. Yeah. And you're actually using that strategy to buy businesses now too as well, right? Yeah. I started with business actually before real estate. So I'm 49 this year and I started my first business when I was 15. I started doing real estate when I was 22. So it was kind of like six years later or something, seven years later. But yeah, I started my first few businesses.

I was making a lot of money and then I ended up buying other people's businesses, some competitors to grow my business. And it worked out really well. I figured out some really cool creative strategies to do the deal. And since then, I got hooked in doing creative deals with business, of course, with real estate. Actually, when I met Pace in 2020 is when I really started doing a lot of creative deals in real estate. I always did a few here and a few there. But once I met Pace and seen how crazy he does it, it really motivated me.

And I learned a lot from him. And now I do a lot with real estate too the model makes so much sense with creative financing because you're not putting up any of your own money right very very rarely do you put up any i mean you can get private money lenders for the small amounts you need or you can use your own money i happen to have like a lot of money so i use mostly my money for the um for most of the projects but if i don't want to, yeah, I have probably dozens of people that basically want to loan me money if I need it. Yeah, speaking of a ton of money, I know you had $100 million liquid cash at one point.

Right now, would you rather have cash or assets? I mean, I'd always rather have assets. I almost, well, I won't say that. I want to have most of my money in assets. I always want to have a certain amount liquid because when there's really good deals you want to be able to buy them right but i wouldn't want to have a majority of my money in um in cash i would say you know 10 well depends how much money you have but if you if you keep 10 to 20 percent of your um money in cash i think you're pretty good and keep in mind if you have a lot of assets you usually could

borrow on those assets anyway so you can usually come up with cash pretty fast if you need to. Yeah. Your assets are very liquid because they're real estate. You could take a loan out against it. They're a business where maybe you can get an equity loan as well or sell equity. Yeah. Yeah. I have crazy amounts of money in real estate, like over 50, $60 million and most of it's free and clear. So yeah, most of that I could, I could get loans pretty, pretty easy if I, if I need to. Yeah. Is that something you've done yet or? I've taken like some loans out on properties, but most of my properties I really own free and clear. Yeah. And I saw one clip, you were spending millions at Lowe's. Was that on home repairs?

Yeah. So, you know, we do about 20 to 30 rehabs a month and uh our average rehab is you know 40 50 000 so it adds up you know half of that's probably materials half that's probably labor yeah but yeah we spend a lot of money and uh and most mostly we buy at lowe's home depot stuff like that you got to be one of their biggest spenders definitely in my local branch yeah my local branch for sure i'm surprised they haven't contacted you directly. Yeah, they have multiple times. We get pretty good discounts when we buy a lot of stuff. They usually take 20% off, 15% at the worst case.

If I buy small amounts of stuff, I always get at least 10%. Nice. Now, I know you became a millionaire at 19. Has it always just been up, or did you have some moments where you lost it all or anything? No, it's just been up from there. I was really smart with my money. Like, you know, if you make your own money, you know, and you make it all and you bust your do it, like you're really careful with it usually. So that's kind of how it was. I didn't really, wasn't given anything and I made that money and I saw how hard I had to work for it in the beginning. And now I was really safe with it. I made really, you know, good investments, but safe at the same time.

And if I saw something wasn't going good, I'd cut it right away and not lose everything. I feel like that's so rare. A lot of the successful guys I talk to have lost it once or twice, some even more than three times. Yeah. They do stuff that's a little bit too risky. But when you first start off, you don't know what's risky and what's not. Right.

Luckily for me, I'm not really smart. Like I don't have, like I got all D's in school. I barely passed. I look smart. I'm an idiot. But I just have really good like intuition. I have really good common sense. And like, you know, I feel like a lot of it's luck, but a lot of it's just I have really

good instincts. Where do you think that came from? Was it from your parents? No, definitely not my parents. I never really lived with my parents much. When I was young, my parents got divorced before I was one years old. I lived with my mom for a little while and then my dad for a year or two. But I literally went from like foster family, foster family, foster family to boarding school.

Wow. To a few more foster families and then ended up living with my grandmother when I was 15. And that's when I started my first business. What was that business? So I collected sports cards my whole life. And my first business was turning the sports started my first business. What was that business? So I collected sports cards my whole life. And my first business was turning the sports cards into a business. I used to go to, you know, sports card shows, baseball card, football card shows every single weekend, buy, sell, and basically grew it from making a thousand a week when I was 15, 16 years old to

like 3000 by the time I was 16, you know, a week, 17, I was already making 5,000, 6,000 a week. 18, you know, 8,000, 10,000. By the time I was 19, you know, I was making 10,000, 12,000 a week at least. So you became a millionaire of sports cards at 19. Yeah, it was all sports cards. That's incredible. I actually have a pretty decent collection. Oh, really?

So I got lucky because I grew up in Miami. And in Miami, back, you know, I was born in 1975. They didn't have anything but football. They only had dolphins. There was no heat. There was no Marlins. So when you used to go to the stores to buy cards, you know, because that's what I liked.

I really liked sports when I was young. They didn't even sell baseball cards or basketball cards. They didn't have a team. So they only sold football cards. And I was really big in collecting when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. And that was around 1985, 86. And 1986 Tops was one of the best years for sports. It was actually 84, 85, 86. So 84 was really good because it had Dan Marino rookies, John Elway rookies. Those ended up being really expensive. And when I was buying them, they were worth pennies, a dollar, 50 cents.

Then by the time I started selling them when I was buying them they were worth you know pennies a dollar 50 cents then by the time i started selling them when i was 15 they were worth hundreds of dollars each damn 1986 was the year i bought the most cars i was like die hard in 86 are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest we'll click the application link below in the description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and. Click the application link below and here's the episode guys. Jerry Rice Rookie. And Jerry Rice Rookie, I mean, they were worth like nothing, not even 50 cents when I was collecting them. And by the time I started selling sports cards when I was 15, they were all $100, $150 each. And I had like dozens of them. And it just, you know, I got

lucky that baseball cards weren't worth that much in the 80 you know 80 45 86 there wasn't that many expensive cards but football there was a lot basketball there was too if i lived probably in like a basketball town i probably would have done really well because that's the year you know jordan rookies and all that oh yeah those are what six figures now crazy and if you get them graded yeah i mean you know when i first started selling cards the grading wasn't that big of a thing but now holy crap that's like what all cards are yeah i wouldn't buy any raws these days honestly yeah yeah so back then there was i don't even think there really was grading for the first few years i was in it yeah but then when it took off it took off do you still have a collection or you sold it

all i don't really have a collection i have like a few cards so i was a dolphin fan because i grew up in in miami so i have some damarino. I actually sold most of them, but I kept a couple autograph ones. And for some reason, I didn't keep his rookie card, which was my favorite card. I never kept it. And I did a podcast. And I didn't even realize I talked about this. And actually, it wasn't a podcast. It was a Zoom.

I was just helping people with real estate. And they were just asking me questions. And I happened to mention that that was my favorite card and you know this guy that was on on this uh zoom bought me a psa damarino rookie card like a few months later and i met him like at an event and he gave it to me i was like holy crap so now i have a damarino that's legendary what a gift too because with someone that has so much money it's kind of hard to find gifts for you yeah you know what i mean exactly and i don't want gifts but you know there, there's things that are cool, you know, like that's cool because that was like something like that was my favorite card, you know,

growing up, I was a big Dan Marino fan. That was super cool. I've got a few like really cool type gifts like that, you know, just sentimental stuff. So that's cool. Now you have some interesting rules when it comes to lending people money. Oh yeah. Could you explain them? Yeah, so that's probably one of my big things right now. I lend probably more money than anyone you know. I always have at least $10 million of my own money out in loans. Wow. Always, yeah, at all times. And then I also do a few other types of things where I'm literally wiring money almost every day back and forth.

So, I mean, I do like PML where I loan money out to people for fix and flips, but only in the Atlanta market. First off, because I know that market really well and I have so many people that want to borrow money, I could always have the amount of money that I want out. It takes like two months to foreclose in Georgia. So I know if someone doesn't pay me, I could get my money back pretty fast, two months.

A lot of states, the foreclosure process is a lot longer, a lot harder. And then I pretty much only lend in first position to where I know that if the person doesn't pay me, it's easy. In second position, third position, there's a lot more problems. I learned it the hard way years ago. I used to loan a little bit in second position. And I thought i was safe but and there's a lot more more to it but um a lot of the loans that i do right now actually are really short-term loans like a day a week a month that are not for fix and flips that are for

transactional funding when wholesalers need to double close they're buying a home selling a home but they can't assign it got it so i do a lot of those. Every week I do multiple double closing loans. And then EMD loans. What's that? EMD loans are if a wholesaler wants to lock up a property and they need earnest money, but they don't have earnest money, then I could loan them the earnest money. And actually that I learned from Pace. I never did that before in my life. So Pace Morby started a group, Go Gator Lending lending and it's focused on that emd lending and people pay like crazy amounts you know you lend somebody two thousand bucks they give you a thousand or two thousand bucks back on top of the two thousand damn so fifty percent that's a

hundred percent a lot of times in in like three weeks holy crap but they need it like they can't do the deal without you yeah and they're making 10 15 20 thousands they don't care giving you a couple thousand you know i mean yeah make a lot of you know it's a bigger deal they're making more and they could pay you more so um i started doing that with um with emd loans and i actually partnered with pace so me and pace have a company together where we do it but um those are the types of loans that that i do and you know um i always have money out and people are always calling me every day. And I actually just started a fund where people are investing now in having money, put their money out so I can give them good returns.

Yeah, that's cool to see you have good experience with lending money out because I feel like most people don't. I mean, I get more calls from people that are like, oh, my God, can you help me? I just did this deal. It's going bad. I need help. What can I do to get my money back? I'm going to lose. So I get more calls from people that are like, oh my God, can you help me? I just did this deal. It's going bad. I need help. What can I do to get my money back? I'm going to lose.

So I get those calls all the time. I'm like, man, call me before you do the deal. I can really help you. I mean, I'll help you after. But sometimes you put yourself in a bad situation because you didn't do the paperwork right. You lend too much. You're in second position. You didn't realize.

And there's no equity. There's a lot of things people do wrong. But I still could help them afterwards. beforehand i could 100 make them pretty damn safe and you found out a way to even if they don't pay you back you can get it through the court in two months you said right yeah yeah so in atlanta you know i buy i'm the biggest buyer that's not like a hedge fund and i mean there's no property i won't buy at the right price so i'm lending basically about what i'd pay for it. So if they don't pay me, I know I could get the house back or sell it at the auction for

more. And I'm always going to get my money back that I'm owed, plus interest, plus penalties, plus all kinds of other stuff. Or I'll end up buying it and then just fixing it up myself and making money. Yeah, that's super smart. Because people loan with the intention of getting it back. But if that doesn't happen, there's no backup plan. Right.

You have a backup plan. Oh, yeah. I have a backup plan for all that. You have to, you know, going in or else a lot of people make mistakes.

They loan in states. They don't know their laws. So I've actually seen people call me. This is a big problem that I've seen lately is a lot of states have a usury law

where you're only allowed to charge a certain amount of interest. So I think like the lowest amount you could charge in certain states like the highest you could charge in certain states is like 18 that's like the most you know so texas is one and a lot of people in texas do real estate so there's a lot but like in georgia it's way higher but i've seen people loan money to people in texas at like 30%. And then the person didn't pay them back and ended up not only did they not pay them back, they sued them saying, look, you broke a law.

You charged me 25% when the most you're allowed to charge is 18%. Not only do I not have to pay you back, I could sue you and get a judgment against you. And I've seen that happen in Texas. So you got to know the usury laws in every state you loan money in because some, now there's ways around it, you know, charge them 18% annually, but like maybe some fees that you make up the difference or something, but you can't charge. And any attorney or title company shouldn't even let you do it. You know, for the most part, they should, you know, they should be the safeguard to not let you do something that you're not allowed to do. But some title companies, just whatever you tell them to do, they'll just do. And, you know,

so, but there's all kinds of nuances with, with loans that you gotta be careful of. That's interesting. Is real estate your main focus right now? I would say that I'm pretty like a third real estate, a third business and a third lending right now. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's usually like, so when the, when the real estate market is really hot, I'm like 80, 90% real estate and then, um, the rest, but like real estate kind of slowed down since the interest rates went up a lot and, um, in August. And I kind of started doing a lot more business. I bought a lot of businesses last year and, um, I'm growing a bunch of businesses. I'm always doing more business. And then of course the loans like really picked up the last, the last

couple of years. So now it's, it's about a third third and third yeah you've invested in some interesting businesses i saw you make millions off axe throwing yeah which i've been a customer of tons of those places the margins must be high because the axes are like plastic and like just wooden board right i mean the most expensive thing is is really the labor uh but the boards the boards they have boards now you can buy that will last like for a long time oh yeah so the axes don't cost much because you really really have to replace those they break some but it's really it's the labor but our average location that so i have 17 locations now wow yeah all over the country and the average location that i start from scratch, I spent about $250,000 on to build out.

My average location profits $65,000, $70,000 a month. Damn. So I get every location I open, I get my money back in four months. That's incredible. It's crazy. It's crazy. My first few locations were making over $100,000 in profit in the beginning. And actually, right before I had my best locations were making profit $140,000, $100,000 in profit in the beginning. And actually right before COVID, I had my best locations were making like profit,

$140,000, $150,000 a month. Oh my God. A month. So like I would get my money back in two months on those when I opened them. But since COVID, they came down a lot. So the business is probably like under half what it was before COVID. Those are still insane numbers though. Yeah, yeah.

They're crazy numbers. They're crazy numbers. Yeah. Yeah. So are you big on cash flowing businesses? Yeah. want businesses that cash flow i don't want to if it doesn't cash flow it's just a headache like i would get rid of it for whatever you know that's one of the problems why people lose a lot of money like you start off the conversation they whether it's real estate or whatever it is they fight whatever they're doing you know instead of just

getting rid of it like i'll cut i'll take a loss and get rid of it oh wow yeah it. Yeah. It's sort of, it's sort of like, it's sort of like poker. I treat it like poker. You know, you play poker, we're in Vegas. Yeah. All right. So I might have, you know, um, 10 hands, right. That I play with you. You might have the best hand eight out of 10 times. Like you might have the nuts or whatever it is. And I might only have the nuts twice, but I could still take all your money. I just got to know how to fold. You know, when you have the best hand and I don't give you all my money, and when I have the best hand, I need to take as much as I can from you. So I treat business the same way. I'll try all kinds of businesses, and I'll buy different businesses

and start different businesses. And when I see that it's not going the way that I really want, I just fold and lose whatever I need to lose. But the ones that do good, I just take all the money. Double down on it. Yeah. You're able to stay really disciplined with your emotions. I feel like a lot of people struggle with that.

Yeah. Emotions is very important. Same thing in poker. A good poker player doesn't have emotions either. Right. Yeah. Some people can't cut their losses and I feel like their ego gets in the way and they want to make it work, but it's just bleeding.

And they put all their good money chasing bad money. It's crazy. I see it all the time. Yeah. Is there a certain time period where you're like, all right, if it's not profitable within this amount of months, I'm cutting it. I mean, it depends on if it's a business, if it's real estate, I'll kind of use, you know, good judgment. I'll check to see if it's going the right way. And, you know, for different things, I'll see how long I need to give it. But once I see that I can't turn something around or it's going to be a loss, I'd rather just be done with it. Because time is more important than money. If I have something that's bad, I'm putting a lot of time into it.

So I actually need to get rid of it so I get my time back because I can make so much more money with my time. I feel that. That's more the way I look at it. Now having lived through a couple of recessions now, especially in the real estate space, did you see them coming in advance? Were you preparing or did it just happen?

I didn't see. The last one was 2008, 9, 10. I really saw it coming a little bit, but nowhere near what it was. It was so crazy, it didn't make any sense. But I made a ton of money in that recession. I've heard most people lose all their money. I actually made more money during that recession than any other time in life. How?

So a few different ways. In business and in real estate, both. So I've been making a lot of money ever since I was 15. And I always reinvested in my business. Or when I turned 22, I started putting in real estate. And I always had a lot of extra cash. So when the market went down a lot, I literally putting in real estate and I always had a lot of extra cash. So when the market went down a lot, I was like, it literally went down like 10%, like stuff that was like 200,000 was

selling for 20,000, 30,000, maybe on the high side. So I just went around and just, I mean, I had millions of dollars in cash, probably like 10 million bucks. I just laying around. I basically spent like all 10 million just on properties at like 10 cents on the dollar. And, um, I, I just kept it. I, it wasn't sellable. Like I couldn't fix and flip it. I basically spent like all 10 million just on properties at like 10 cents on the dollar. And I just kept it. It wasn't sellable. Like I couldn't fix and flip it. My fixing and flipping was dead.

Like anyone that fixed and flipped, that's how you lost money. So what I did was I just fixed it up enough to get them all rent ready. I've been renting them. And, you know, now they're worth like at least 10 times what they were. Oh, you still have them all? I don't have them all. I probably, so this was like 2010, 11, 12 was when I bought like that's where I put all that money in. I started selling them off 2014, 15, 16,

but I probably still have about 30% of them. Nice. And, you know, 2014, 15, they doubled in price, tripled in price. I mean, I wish I kept them all. They're like 10 times the price now. But, you know, it is what it is. So that's how I made a ton of money because I didn't sell them. I wasn't putting all my money. I wasn't, plus I never, I never borrowed money. You know,

I think borrowing money is really good and you should borrow money. But at this point, I just had so much money. I was making so much money during that time. I had always had extra money I needed to do something with. So I was just using that money to buy the real estate. And if I was borrowing money and I couldn't afford my payments, then that's how people got in trouble. If I was to borrow money, I would still only borrow money if I could afford to pay the payments if something went bad. That's why people really lost money. They borrowed money and they couldn't afford the down. If I borrowed money, if something really bad happened, I would still have the money to be able to withstand it. That's really important.

But yeah, that's how I made a ton of money in real estate. In business, it was like unbelievable. That's the business I made the most money on was right when that recession hit. So obviously like the businesses I have now, I have a lot of entertainment businesses and all kinds of other stuff. If during a recession, those are not going to do good. But the business I made the most money on

was the jewelry business. That's the one we're talking about. We made over a hundred million dollars in profit. We did over a half a billion dollars in sales. So it was basically we buy gold stores. I actually started it. There were no, we buy gold stores. That was me. There was nobody that had a, we buy gold store until I started Wow. There was Cash for Gold where you'd mail your gold in. That started like a year before me. Yeah. But nobody had actual stores. So I started a couple stores. They did unbelievable like within the first few weeks. And then I went from like two stores to five to 10. Before you knew it, I had over 300 and some stores. Damn. Yeah. So I started like 2007 or so. By 2010, 11, I had over 300 and some stores.

Crazy. Yeah. And the business model is just people walk in with gold. You pay them 70, 80% on the dollar. 30 to 40%. Oh, 30 to 40. So if they had like coins and stuff, you'd probably pay them on the high side, like 80%, 70%, 90% even if they had a lot, but actual jewelry like rings and necklaces, most people pay about 30%, 40, 40% on the high side.

Yeah. I mean, obviously if someone brings a ton in and you can negotiate with them, but you start off at 30% and you know, you go up from there if you have to, but most people, this is the great thing about that time. Why it was so good. Well, when I got into it, gold was like $800 an ounce. It got all the way up to 1,900 an ounce in 2011. But literally, it jumped from like $200, $300 to $800 within that year. So most people that bought their gold bought it when it was only $200, $300 an ounce. And they probably paid double what it was worth. So they were in it for $600, $700 an ounce. But now it's only two, 300 an ounce. And they probably paid double what it was worth. So they were in it for six, 700 ounce, but now it's 900, a thousand. I was paying them

three or four hundreds. So they weren't losing much or breaking about even, but it was all out of style. It was all yellow gold. It was broken. It was stuff they didn't need anymore. Plus we're in a recession. Everybody needed money. So they had to sell whatever they had that was valuable. So it was just really good like that with real estate. I was able to get the best real estate rent, rent, like literally the best real estate that was out there or even buy some, some real estate. And, um, for pennies of what a user was worth, because there was a session, everyone went out of business and then I had the best employees, like everyone was getting laid off. And, um, I was able to hire the best employees for a lot less

than what they were probably worth, but everyone needed a job. They were great. We had over 1,000 something employees back in the recession. Everything lined up great. The best employees, the best real estate, people needed money. The gold kept going up. They were in it for way lower than what it was worth so it's just a perfect storm seems like a lot of your success is timing and luck that's i'm telling you timing and luck literally that's what it is that's cool man and it seems really attainable for people watching it's not like here's some mad scientist i'm an idiot i'm not i'm not really smart yeah you got d's in high school you didn't even go to college right now i went for like a few semesters

and dropped out. It was so boring. That's so inspiring for people because a lot of people place a lot of emphasis on school. I don't know if it's from a parental side or something. Anyone that's smart, anyone that's a business person, they all talk about how dumb college is, I think. If you want to become a doctor, lawyer, or parents, grew up that way, tell their kids to do it. But I think like anyone that's like an entrepreneur or anyone that, you know, has made a lot of money doing stuff knows that school is really unless you want to work for someone your whole life.

I mean, there's no reason to go to college. Yeah. What was that point in your life where you're like, I don't need to work anymore? Well, I started making, you you know a few thousand dollars a week when i was right right before i turned 17 and i was like holy crap you know my friends and my people i looked up to aren't even making that you know this is back in nine in like you know 1990 early 1990s wow and so that's like even a lot more money today. You know what's really crazy? I just saw someone posted on Facebook that if, so I grew up, I watched Back to the Future.

And they're like, when I watched Back to the Future, they took it back, you know, 30 years. So if they were to make Back to the Future today and they went back 30 years, that would have been like in the 90s. Like, I feel like old now. Because like when I used to watch, I was like, damn, the 50s back 30 years, that would have been in the 90s. I feel old now because when I used to watch it, I was like, damn, the 50s, 60s, that's so old. Those people are old.

But if they had it come out now, it's like the 90s aren't, that seems pretty recent. No, but yeah, so that's kind of. Oh, so you had it early. As a teenager, you had that feeling. Yeah, I had that feeling really early. Before I was 20, I knew i was sad i mean i had a million dollars in my bank account yeah when i was 19 right before i turned 20 in the 90s in

the 90s it's worth double or triple now at least right so um i i just knew that i could i thought i was gonna do baseball cards my whole life honestly so i was doing baseball cards and then all of a sudden i was at a baseball card show, and people started selling Beanie Babies, like these moms. I remember those, yeah. So I would make fun of them. I'm like, why are you selling Beanie Babies at a baseball card show? That's the stupidest thing ever. I'd make fun of them.

And then all of a sudden, over the next few months, I saw that their booths were way busier than my booth. I'm like, what is going on? Why do people want these stupid stuffed animals? So I started hanging out with these people that were selling them. I'm like, what's going on? I started looking. They started telling me a little about it. And then before you knew it, I started selling Beanie Babies and baseball cards at the same time. And eventually I was like, holy crap, it's so much easier to make money on Beanie Babies. I sold all my baseball cards and I was full time in the Beanie Babies. So my first million dollars I made in baseball cards, my first $10 million I made in Beanie Babies.

I was one of the biggest Beanie Baby dealers in the whole country. 10 million on Beanie Babies? They were that big? Oh my God. You could go to stores, they cost $5 or $6. You'd buy them for $5 or $6. First of all, you couldn't find them. I had a creative way to bribe people to sell me all their Beanie Babies. As soon as you buy them for $5 five or six dollars you can sell them on ebay for ten to a hundred dollars yeah like that's crazy i mean they didn't exist like you couldn't find them so yeah um but i you know if you were able to figure out a way to get them people did that with sports cards during this last boom yeah they would text their guys at target stock in the things and buy all the video games, sneakers, all kinds of stuff.

You could really make money on anything if you get into, you know, know what's hot and how to find it. But yeah, it was Beanie Babies. So that that wasn't that was the next big thing. And did you always have the motivation after making money at a young age or did you have a period where you were chilling? You know, as long as business was going good and I was still making money, I just had that drive to keep making more.

Like if business started slowing down, there were times where whatever business I was in kind of like died or slowed down. Because a lot of the stuff I did early on were fads. You know, Beanie Babies were a fad and everything. A lot of things after Beanie Babies were a fad. So as they died, I kind of took like a little time off, six months a year off, until I found the next big thing. But as whatever I was doing was good, I would just go as hard as possible because I didn't know how long it was going to last. That's a good mentality because a lot of people make a few million,

10 million, and they chill, they coast, but you're still at it. A lot of people think, look, you made all this money and you can keep making this money forever. But it doesn't happen that way. For most people, you get on these cycles and then all of a sudden you could keep making this money forever, but it doesn't happen that way for most people. Like, you know, you get on these cycles and then all of a sudden you can't make any more

money. So like make it all while you can, you just never know when it's going to stop. Absolutely. Abraham, it's been a pleasure, man. Anything you want to promote or close off with now?

I would just say, you know, follow me on Instagram. It's Abraham gray official. Follow my YouTube, Abraham gray, G R a Y. But you know, that's about it.

You know, I do some masterminds a few times a year, teaching people how to do business. But follow me on YouTube and Instagram and, you know, you'll see all about it. Awesome. Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for watching, guys. See you tomorrow.