The Code To Winning - $500M PORTFOLIO: REAL ESTATE MOGUL ON BUYING PROPERTIES & BUSINESSES || ABRAHAM GRAY || EPISODE 092

Episode Date: October 20, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with Abraham Gray, a self made entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $500 million, who started his first business at just 15 years old. Over the years, he has built an empire that includes ownership of more than 50 companies and a real estate portfolio of 225 properties. He also sold his company We Buy Gold for $100 million, a milestone that cemented his place among the most successful young business owners in the country. He is known as a true powerhouse in the entrepreneurial world, having launched over 100 businesses and made his first million by the age of 19. Abraham takes us through the full journey, from a teenager with a bold idea to a business owner operating across multiple industries. His background spans trendy businesses like axe throwing and escape rooms as well as serious investments in real estate, and he explains how he decides what to buy, what to build from scratch, and when to walk away. He also shares his experience in the lending business, his thoughts on investment opportunities like gold and hard money lending, and the hard lessons he has learned from failure along the way. We talk about what it really takes to grow a gold business into a $100 million exit, and how that win opened the door to everything that followed. This conversation is packed with practical insight for anyone who wants to build real wealth through business and real estate. Abraham breaks down how he manages a portfolio of 225 properties, how he builds and leads dozens of companies at once, and why branding can set your business apart. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur looking for your first idea or a seasoned owner ready to scale, this episode will show you what is possible when you start early, think big, and never stop building. Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:20 First Business at Age 15 06:30 How to Evaluate a Business to Buy 10:02 Sales vs Negotiation & Building Rapport 11:44 Scaling Goldmax to 300 Locations 17:53 Buying Real Estate in the 2011 Crash 21:40 Current Real Estate Market Strategy 24:34 Risk of Buying Businesses vs Real Estate 26:50 First Step to Start in Real Estate 30:49 Managing 225 Rentals & 40 Businesses 36:32 The Most Important Trait in a Partner 41:23 The Most Important Lesson in Business 44:07 How to Negotiate Price vs Terms 48:50 Learning From Bad Deals & Bad Partners 51:10 What Matters Most to Abraham Gray

When I was 15, I never thought I could become a millionaire. Millionaire seemed like crazy. So I never bought anything that wasn't just building back in my business. So every single thing I bought at that age, 99% was stuff that I can make more money on. What's really cool, all these businesses that I got into that I made tons of money, some of it I came up with, but a good bit of it, my friends of mine came up with. And what's really important is that once you find other like-minded, positive people, people that do well, you've got to get yourself in that network and always share ideas back and forth.

What does the term winning mean for you? If I had to pick one word, winning equals... The code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Today we have a very, very amazing guest. Interesting guest. I'm going to give you a brief introduction of who we have. I was going to say in the studio, but this is he's building. So in his building, the studio set up.

Without further ado, I'm going to give you a brief introduction. We have Abraham Gray. Abraham Gray is extremely successful starting his first business at the age of 15. He owns multiple real estate over 225, over 40 businesses. His net worth is approximately around $500 million, half a billy. He sold one of his companies. We buy gold for about $100 million plus dollars as well. Again, if you are curious in learning about business,

curious learning about real estate, upscaling, and also managing multiple different businesses. This is the episode for you. I've been looking forward to my brief introduction with him since I met him to actually interview him. So without further adieu, the man, the myth, the very legend himself, Abraham. Gray. What's going on? You know, you're so modest for these kind of introductions. And the one thing I was talking about, or your business partner, you're just so, like,

You're just a chill guy. You know, it's definitely a chill guy. That's definitely the Abraham. I act like a homeless person. It's a good way. It's a good way of doing business, you know. So it's very nonchalant. I call you king nonchalance.

I appreciate that. I want to get straight into it. Thank you again, sir, for the opportunity to learn a bit more about your success, your business. But again, more than anything, the one of the things like Maya, is just your character. So I'm grateful for allowing the hospitality, allowing us in your building. allowing us to learn a bit more about you. So I'm excited to learn more in the future as well. So thank you very much for that.

Yeah, of course. Anytime. So you started your first business at age 15. What was it and what drove you to start at that age? Yeah. So my first business was selling sports cards. I grew up really, didn't really live with my parents. I kept going to foster family, faster family.

And sports was like the thing that really connected to me. So that's what keep me happy going, all that stuff. So I really got into collecting sports cards when I was little. And then when I was 15, I went to some baseball card shows and started selling some of the ones I have to some dealers. I bought a bunch all the time when I went. And I saw that you can make money buying and selling them. So eventually, instead of just selling to dealers and buying there, I got my own booth and started buying from just regular people selling it. And I saw, like, I was really good at knowing what stuff was worth.

that I was able to get the most for stuff, able to negotiate with people to buy stuff at a good deal. And before you knew it, that was my passion, one of the sports. And I turned that into a business, and I loved it, and I made money, and I liked it even more. I love that so much. And obviously, you've made over a million dollars before or at the age of 19 as well. Most people at that age nowhere near that amount of wealth. What mindset do you think you had about money that most people completely have missed?

Yeah, so when I was 15, I never thought I could become a millionaire. Millionaire seemed like crazy. But I saw that, again, I didn't live with my parents, and I moved to multiple foster families. I lived in boarding school for over a year and a half and more foster families. And anytime I wanted something, I had to either act very good to whoever I was living with to get them to get me something or ask them for stuff. And I was always dependent on people. And I always, I didn't have power, I felt like. I always needed somebody else.

I hated needing people. Even to today, I never asked anyone for anything. So what I realized is as I started to make money, I could do whatever I want. I could buy whatever I wanted. I didn't have to ask people for permission. I didn't have to behave and make them, you know, get me stuff because I was behaving. So I just got addicted to the fact that the more money I made, the more stuff I can do, the less I had to listen to people. And that's what really kept me going.

Plus, it was really fun. You know, once you find something you're good at, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's making money, playing certain sports, chess, whatever. Who cares? Singing. Once you find something you're good, you just want to keep doing it and do it as much as possible. And you want to see how good, how much better you can get at it. And you want to be the best. So that's kind of how I took business and how I took sports cards at the time.

And I just saw, okay, I was making $500 a week. Then I started making $1,000 a week. I was like, all right, how much more can I make? I'll start to make $2,000 a week, then $5,000 and $10,000. I was like, shit, you know, where's the limit? just wanted to keep it going and the more money I made the again the more stuff I can do but then when you made that amount of money was there at a point where you felt like you were spending it on things that are unnecessary where you just continued like building from that

so I never bought anything that wasn't just building back in my business so every single thing I bought at that age 99% was stuff that I can make more money on it was very rare like I didn't buy any I never had fancy clothes never had jewelry never had the coolest, whatever expensive stuff. Even cars. Like, I could buy whatever I wanted. But I just had regular type stuff always. I knew that was depreciating assets.

So every single time I had money, I was addicted to buying more product at the time that I could make more money on, more sports cards. So that's kind of, and I hated the feeling. This is the worst feeling. When you know someone brings you a deal, and it's a great deal, and you can make a lot of money on it, but you don't have enough money to buy it. It sucks. because you're basically losing money.

So I always saved all my money to be able to buy anything that came to me. And I never wanted to be short. Okay. And obviously you have fast forwarding right now. Obviously we'll end up segue in getting back to it as well. You've bought, you've ran, and you've sold over 400 businesses, obviously, in a lifetime. What was the process of evaluation and trying to determine what was a good investment regarding buying a business? Yeah, I mean, you basically just look at the financial.

and you see what type of employees they have who works there. Make sure the owner is not running it. But it's a simple math equation. Anyone that I could do the second, third grade math can figure it out. You figure first off how much money is it making. And based on how much money is making, what type of multiples is it worth? Average businesses are three to four times a multiple. A crappy business could be one or less.

A really good business making a lot of money could be four to ten times or more. Most businesses that most people buy, are in that three to four times a multiple. And when I say multiple, multiple of the profit. So whatever the profit is that it's making, you usually pay three to four times. If you're paying all cash, then you want to pay a little bit less.

If you're able to get some sort of owner financing or a very creative deal, then it can be worth paying one or two times more multiple because you're getting a good deal. And then with businesses right now, what do you think is an industry that people aren't aware of that are potential for a gap?

people can actually try and invest in as well. I mean, obviously right now, you know, AI type stuff and tech stuff's taken over. So I just see more and more people making money coming up with really cool AI type things that help all kinds of businesses. That's not what I'm into. I'm not really good at that stuff. But I'm more into real estate. And so I'm buying a lot of home service type stuff.

So that's, I think, something else is always going to be needed. People are always going to need people to plumb their house and do the flooring and paint their house and take trees down and do landscaping and all that type of stuff. So I'm, I'm looking at more growing the home service businesses because I already do tons of fix and flips every single year and have hundreds of rentals. So that kind of also fits into what I'm doing. But yeah, that that's a business that will always be there. I'm glad you mentioned that when you speak about that because obviously I think I told you yesterday that I'm stationed. I live in Utah. And because of religious purposes, not only

only do we go on our mission. I was on a two-year mission in like Ghana. You come back and naturally because we gain the skills of knocking doors, majority of people, as they become 21 or so. BYU as well, graduate, by the way, you end up like doing the door knocking and like field. And so it's something that's super big.

And one of the industries that I've, you know, people go to can be securities, can be solar and pest control. Many have come and gone. Pest control has remained like consistent, like over like 15 plus because people still like you need it exactly i mean people don't want bugs in their house they don't they don't like scratching and all that type of stuff and matter of fact i did pest control in 20 it's 2019 in deluth we lived around deluth but i did tequila that was my first experience oh you lived in you live in

georgia i lived in georgia that's guinnett county yeah yeah and guinnett counties where i lived but we were in um this was my best here was actually atlanta because it was the one area where i felt like the people were the best my hardest was like new jersey see my least favorite was probably California, but my good year in terms of sales was like we did Decula, we did um, which part of it. We did all of us, everything around Atlanta, but not really Atlanta, you know, so that's where it is, which kind of goes to my question. So, um, which trade you think is very important? Sales or negotiating? I mean, they're, they're both very important for different purposes, depending on what you're trying to do. But, um, I would say that to be good at

sales, you have to be good at negotiating, so they kind of go together. But more importantly than even that to start is you've got to get people to like you. You've got to build rapport with people. So I think building rapport with someone is first, then sales, which I think sales and negotiation go together would be, would be next. But if you can't negotiate, you're not going to be good at sales. That's true. And have you always, like, did you always have the trait of sales, or something that you developed over time? I think that everyone develops it to some degree. I've kind of always had it because I used to buy stuff myself.

So I learned from when I'm buying stuff from people, like what they did to me. So I try to do that stuff. To other people, I just got better and better at it. The more you do anything, the better you get at it. So I used to really go to sports card shows every single weekend, every single weekend for a long period of time. And as I went, I got better and better. I buy as I bought more and more stuff, I was able to work better deals from people. And then I was able to, when I bought stuff myself from all these people, I learned how to get them to like me and trust me.

That's the most important thing. Get them to build rapport with you. And then be good at negotiating. And negotiating is just sales. Okay. Now again, we spoke about businesses and all that you've done. I like when you speak about gold max, obviously USA grew to over 300 locations generated over 200. 50 million in revenue, annual revenue. Can you take us inside like the business structure and

the foundation of what scaling that from the ground up actually felt like? Yeah, it was a crazy business. So I remember when I first got into it. What's really cool, all these businesses that I got into that I made tons of money. Some of it I came up with, but a good bit of it, my friends of mine came up with. And what's really important is that once you find other like-minded, positive people, people that do well, you've got to. get yourself in that network and always share ideas back and forth because if you hide stuff from other people they're going to hide stuff from you if you share stuff with other people they're going to share with you so i had a few really good businesses that i did with some other

people and we just did business back and forth together and we became friends and then this was the the baseball card and after that was like Pokemon and yugo magic of the gathering beanie babies all that stuff so once i got into one and i met other people that were doing it as i found beanie babies became good, I would tell somebody, and they would make a lot of money on it. And then when they found out Pokemon was good, they would tell me I'd get into Pokemon and vice versa. So, any of one of these connections that I had, a friend that I did lots of business with for many years, is like, man, the next hot thing is gold. Like, you got to get into gold. I was like, I don't know anything about gold. Like, what do you mean get into gold? Like, no, you don't

understand. Gold was $300 some dollars an ounce five months ago. Now it's over $600, $700 an ounce, and it keeps going up. People are selling their gold for way less than it's worth. buy it, make money on it, it's the easiest business. I was like, well, I don't know anything about it, but he's like, come, come fly to New Jersey. He's come fly to New Jersey. Let me show you what I'm doing. I've been doing it for four or five months now. I'm making crazy amounts of money.

I wanted to perfect it before I showed anyone. But come see how I do it and just see what you think. I was like, okay, so I flew there. What he did, he put ads in the newspapers showing that he had like road shows. And he would go to a different hotel every single weekend and buy people's gold. diamonds, watches, jewelry, whatever, anything that was value. And I was like, when I went there, there was like a line before to come in. It was like dozens of people.

I'm like, what in the world? Why are they all waiting in line? The economy wasn't that good. And people had a lot of gold that was outdated, broken, whatever, they didn't want anymore. And he was showing me how much he was buying, but I didn't understand how to tell if it was real, how to tell what it's worth. So afterwards, he's like, look, remember that deal I bought for $2,300? I was like, yeah, yeah. he's like, I have it sold for $7,000.

I was like, what? Like, how soon? He's like, tomorrow. Like, what? And then he's like, remember that deal I bought for this? And he was tripling his money and everything he bought. And he spent, he spent like $100,000 that weekend I was with him. He made over $300,000 that one weekend.

I was like, holy crap. I was like, how do you know, and then he started explaining to me how to tell if it's real, how to test it, all these different things. So I was like, yeah, I'm down. Like, I like it. So I learned from him for like a week. And I came to Atlanta and started doing the same thing. But then I was like, you know what?

Every single week, weekend, he goes to a different hotel, spends a ton of money on advertising and get people to come. And he has to recreate the wheel every single time. I was like, man, this is, you know, it's cool. You make a lot of money. But why can't we just have something where people just come to the same place all the time? You spend marketing. You make it nice. And he's like, well, I never did that.

I did shows. You know, this is what I do? I was like, well, what if I get a store, a storefront, good signage, good visibility on a busy road. just put a sign. We buy gold. And I sit there, I advertise, and just have people come to the same place, but they come every day instead of just the weekend. He's like, yeah, I don't know if they'll work, but like, you know, no one really does that. I mean, there's jewelry stores and pawn shops, but there's no one that just buys it. I was like, oh, let me try it.

So I got two locations in Atlanta. And, well, before I did that, I did do a few shows. I did really well. And I was like, that's what made me really want to do these, the stores because I had to move stuff all the time. So a month later, after I started doing these shows, I got some leases sign, and I just put a table in there. We buy gold, start advertising. People were coming up. They were lining up both stores.

It was crazy. We were making more money on these two stores than we were on all the hotel events. And it was easier because we had a permanent base. We had to move stuff around. The advertising was good forever because once we advertised, people would come the same place instead of having them go to different places all the time. So we went from two stores. within like the first month we had them open, we made hundreds of thousands of dollars on those two stores profit. We spent like very little money opening it up.

Maybe like 40,000 bucks because we just wanted to test it to see if it worked. After we saw that it worked, all our stores going forward, we spend like 200,000 plus on each store, making it nicer and all kinds of stuff. But we went from two stores to five stores to five stores to 10 stores. I remember when we had these two, three stores, I was like, man, if I could just make, you know, $3 million, $4 million in this business. That would be unbelievable, you know, over a course of, you know, the next few years. And, man, we made that like fast, like really fast.

So I just remember when 2011 was the year I made the most money, right? I started in 2007. 2007 was when this whole thing started. 2008 is when I really got bigger in it. But 2011 was the turn. That was the best year I ever had in my life as far as making money. So 2011, gold hit the all-time high at the time, which was $1,190.90 an ounce, which was insane. It was literally like 1,200 an ounce the year before.

It just went up every month. It would go up another 100, but it was crazy. Kind of what's going on right now. Now it's like in the 6,000s or 5,000s, it went back down. But it got to 1890 in 2011, and people were lining up at all our stores. And at this point, I went from two stores of five stores a tent. I ended up having 300 stores throughout the whole country. I started in Atlanta, but we had stuff in, I don't know, eight different states,

sit out, every city in those states. So, yeah, we were just killing it. We were just making, like, I remember 2011, every single month in my bank account, I had another million dollars. I didn't know what to do with it. It was like, it was a million dollars in my account or even more than a million every month. I was making more than a million dollars a month in profit. And I was like, what in the world do I do with this?

So luckily, I got lucky again. And I started doing real estate way before this, but it's kind of part-time. And I had a friend that taught me how to do real estate as an older gentleman compared to my age. He was 20 years older than me. And he said, you know what? I know you're super busy making a ton of money. But the market, the real estate market went from $200 a house to $20,000 a house. It's like went crazy down.

It makes no sense. He's like, you can't even build houses for five times. It doesn't make any sense. He's like, give me a few million bucks. Let me go buy tons of properties right now at the auctions and just throw. from the banks that are taking it back, because this was like the banking crisis time, 2011, if you remember, 2009, 10, 11, 12.

So I gave him like five million bucks. And I said, I'm too busy to discuss it. I just trust you, just buy, show me what you're buying every month. And we'll figure it out. The deal I made with him, he was gonna do everything, run the houses, rehab them, buy stuff, and we split the profit 50-50. So I loaned him the money.

And I gave him $5 million. The deal was he would have to pay me interest on his half, the two and a half million. million, but we split the profit and everything. So back then we were buying homes for anywhere from 10 to $25,000 to $25,000. They're all worth $250,000 now. And he bought like hundreds of homes. And over the next like four or five years, we sold probably 65% of them for like three times, four times what we paid. But there were 10 times now. So I should have kept them. But I still have a bunch of them. I still have a bunch of them now. So I have homes that I paid $10,000 for that are worth

$250. Like I have a bunch of those. And, you know, we split them. Half went to him, half went to me when we split up. But for the first like five, six years, he was just running them as rentals. And we were cash flowing on them all. They probably needed, you know, 20, 30,000 hours worth of work, most of them. So we had 30,000, 40,000 a house. But we were collecting, you know, a thousand a month rent. And then...

That was in Georgia, right? Everything I did was, everything I did was in the Atlanta market. So this guy specialized in DeKalb County, which is like Stone Mountain, Decatur, Lithonia. That's where he bought most of the stuff. But we bought stuff also other places, but we probably bought most of the stuff in DeKalb County. And that stuff just went up like over 10, 12 times more now than it was then. So I got really lucky with that. I made a ton of money on gold.

And then I had all this extra money and I just would give this guy money. And that just kind of exponentially grew as well. So I didn't have too much stuff that went bad in those years, luckily. But that's kind of how I ended up with so much real estate. I bought most of my real estate that I own now back in 2010 to 2014 when the market was not worth much. I bought hundreds of properties. I sold most of them, but I still have a good amount of them. And then after that, for about five years from 2014, 2020, I didn't do that much with real estate.

I bought a couple properties here, a couple of hours. 2020, the market got really hot again after COVID. And that's when I started buying a lot more properties. So since COVID, I mean, I've, to the 2020, I've bought hundreds of properties, but most of them I did fix and flips with. And then I would keep like one every single month. So I probably accumulated another one a month for the last six years. So I probably have another 60, 70. I've accumulated over that time.

And then the other 150 are from either back in the late 90s, early 2000s or when I was making all this money and the guy just kept buying stuff for me. So that's how I accumulated most of my property. It seems like you just happened to always enter the market. at the perfect time when buying real estate. Yeah. Would you, I'm not saying give a bold prediction, but where would you say is the next market opportunity for those willing to do? So what I would say is I'm just lucky.

Like I don't, I'm not good. I'm telling you I'm not good. I just get really lucky. I've had bad luck too, but I mean, luckily 90% of my luck has been good and 10% has been bad. But yeah, I mean, there's no rhyme or reason. Right now what I'll say is the market's super high. So I don't think it's a great time to buy a ton of stuff right now to keep. because I think there's more downside than upside.

Just prices are just so high compared what I've seen over the years. But if you buy it at the right price, it depends on what your exit strategy is. I do mostly fix and flips. So I own the properties for a very short period of time. I'm buying it for a little bit less than what it's worth now. I'm selling it for what it's worth now. But the rentals that I buy, I say I keep about one a month. Those, so everything I buy, I pay cash for.

I mean, I don't get loans for anything. So I pay cash for everything I buy and own. when I, the ones that I keep are the ones that I get creative deals on, meaning that I get like an owner financing type deal or some sort of subject to, which is where people have a mortgage and they just let you take it over. So those are the deals that I've kept over the last five, six years. Before that, it was all cash deals. A lot of them I still own free and clear.

Some have gotten loans on just to use the money for other stuff. But most of the stuff that by now I try to turn just because the market is really, high and if it does ever correct, I don't want to own a ton of stuff at this high price. If you're cash flowing on it and you have a good extra strategy of the rents higher than what you're paying or there's other things people do now, Airbnbs and co-living and all kinds of stuff, if you're making money on that, then it's still cool to keep buying as many as you have. But just to buy it as regular rentals right now, it's really tough to make money on anything as regular rentals with the pricing the way it is.

And it's majority, it's obviously residential. Do you own any commercial? Yeah, I own a bunch of commercial. So I am mainly like 99% doing residential right now, but I do have a lot of commercial. And most of the commercial that I buy is I buy it because they're shopping centers or office buildings like this one that I have my own businesses in. So I own lots of businesses. And almost every business I have is in my own shopping center. So I'll buy a shopping center.

I'll put some of my business in there and then I'll rent out the rest to other tenants. So that's how most of my commercial buildings are. And then I probably have another, you know, five or ten commercial buildings that I just bought really cheap at an auction or something crazy like that or was able to take it over with a creative deal, like a subject to type deal, owner finance. And I bought those because it just was a good deal. And there's a couple of buildings. I buy a lot of businesses. Some years I'm really, really into business more. Right now I'm more into real estate.

But the years that I'm really into business, I'll buy a lot of businesses. And the businesses, sometimes that I buy, have real estate with it. So that's some of the real estate I own too. Like if the business I buy is own, you know, owns the real estate that they're renting from, I'll buy the real estate with it. But again, that goes back to me owning real estate that I'm actually using for my own, my own purpose. And then what would you compare the risk factor in terms of buying and owning a business

or real estate, which one's more riskier? Well, I don't think either one is much more riskier if you know what you're doing. But in general, for an average person, buying a business is much. more risky because there's way more things that can happen in the business. When you buy a property, you could go inspect it and you pretty much could figure out everything that's wrong with it. Once in a while there's something crazy that you don't see, but it's not that often. You're pretty much going to see everything.

With a business, I mean, there's so much stuff that happens that doesn't happen daily and you can't just go in and look at everything. You can look at financials, but sometimes there's something about an employee or about a customer or about a supplier that you won't find out for months and months later. Some people buy from you once a year, once a quarter, and you won't find out until the next time they buy, like, what they're expecting or not expecting. And it's a lot easier for an owner to hide stuff in financials with a business. When you're selling a property, it's not that hard. You could pretty much figure out everything if you do the right type of inspection.

So if you don't know what you're doing, 100%, you can lose way more money buying businesses if you buy the wrong business. But, again, you should always buy a business and structure it to where the owner has. a decent amount of owner financing in it. Not because you can't afford the business. Like I could afford most businesses whether I get owner financing or not, but it's the fact that they can screw you really bad if they don't. You got to have leverage on them. So when I buy businesses from people,

I might try to get as much owner finance as possible. Usually I'm putting down 10%, 20% on the high side and then getting them to owner finance the rest pretty much. But if they lie about any single thing in the contract, about anything, I put in there that if you lie about something, I catch you, you're going to lose most of the money I owe you. So, like, it's very, very unlikely that they're going to lie to you or trick you because they have more to lose than gain because I have so much leverage on them.

Wow. Wow. And then for someone right now, let's say, watching this interview, obviously the net worth and accomplishments credentials you've gained over time may seem a little unattainable. What's the first step to start in trying to invest in real estate? Would you say it's multi-family? Would you say it's trying to find something, creative finance? What would you say is the first step right now?

I would say it's going to be a little bit different for everyone. What I would say is find something that you already know something about. And a lot of people, so I don't know shit about anything, that's fine. Find someone you know that knows something about something, right? The reason why I got into what I got into is because I had someone teach me what they knew about it. I wouldn't get into anything that you don't have someone that can teach you that you trust that knows what they're doing. So if it's single family, do single family. If it's multifamily, do multifamily.

If it's commercial, do commercial. If it's retail, I mean, whatever you know, whatever you have a friend or someone that you could ask questions to and knows that thing well and they're successful at it, how do you know if they're good at it? Because they're successful. They have a bunch. They're making money. You could tell these types of things.

That's the thing that I would get into, someone that could help you do it. And if you have nobody that you could ask, then you probably need to buy some sort of mentorship and learn from somebody. But you've got to make sure most mentorships are garbage. but there's some good ones out there. And you've got to like really check into the ones that you're getting and make sure the people that are teaching yourself are legitimate and know how to do it. And, you know, there's a lot of success stories in that mentorship. So that's what I would say.

And I'll tell you that some people I know will only do new construction. I don't like new construction. Why? A few reasons. I don't know. No one ever taught me new construction. So if I buy lots and do new construction, I don't know what I'm doing. What I've learned over time is anything you do that you don't know what you're doing well or don't have experience, that's a lot.

what you're going to lose on. They're the best people in the world at any type of business are going to make a lot of money. You could take the best business that exists, and if someone doesn't know what they're doing, they're going to lose money at it. So it's more like what type of knowledge and what type of help you have more than even the industry or the type of asset you're working with. Oh, that's money right there. That's absolute money.

And then I had another question I wanted to touch on just a follow up on that. I know you spoke about just 99% as residential, a small percentage is going to be a commercial. Would you say then, obviously, from that metric or those figures that you gave, residential, obviously it's given you more profit, but collectively on average, would you say it's more profitable than commercial? So when I say 99% residential, I'm talking about what I'm actively currently buying and selling. I'm only currently buying and selling 99% residential. Now, most commercial I buy, I keep. I don't sell a whole lot of commercial. Most of the commercial I'm keeping.

So I would say over 10% of what I own, 15% of what I own is commercial. But what I'm actively trying to do is 99% residential. So I make more money fix and flipping with residential. Residential, there's tons of fix and flipping. You can do tons of fixing. If you want to keep stuff long term as rentals, commercials 100 times better than residential. I have 225 rentals and 85% of them are residential, 15% are commercial. I make all my money on the 15% that are commercial.

Like my residential, I make bullshit money. I make some money. Some are good. But overall, you don't make a whole lot of money on residential, especially if you're buying stuff now with the way the market is. But commercially, you make just way bigger spreads, way more money. So if you're looking to get into long-term rentals, commercial is definitely, it's not even close, like so much more profitable.

But if you're looking to make quick money, because rentals, you don't make quick money. It's a long-term thing. If you're looking to make quick money 100%, I would say residential is way easier and way more people have it to sell, and way more people are looking to buy it. So you could turn stuff and make $20, $30,000, $50,000 of property over and over and over as a post on commercial.

It's harder to find as many deals and sell them. There's not as many people buying and selling them. But if you know someone who's good at it and you learn from them, the people that are really good at it make crazy money doing that. So again, you've got to learn from someone that knows how to do it. Way more people know how to do residential. Okay. One thing I did know is obviously we met on the 4th of July.

You were still working. You always grinding nonstop. I wanted to talk about, obviously, owning 225 properties and then owning about 40 different businesses. What would you say then personally the day-to-day operation? Do you have a company that is running it? Are you running it yourself? Because I know you're hands on.

I can see you like, like how does that work? So for all my rental properties, like the 200, whatever I have, those I have property management that runs pretty much everything. So there's a lot of properties I've probably never even been to, actually. There's probably some I've never been to. And then most of them I've probably been to one time in my life if I have been there. So I have someone that, no tenants know me or anything like that. So, yeah, you've got to have someone that runs all that.

And then as far as businesses, you saw when you come to my office, I have my businesses all over the walls. I look at those maybe once a month, the financials, and just kind of see how it did this year compared to last year, how it did this month compared to last month. and just see like what I see trending that doesn't make sense and try to fix that stuff. But I'm not at any of the businesses day to day. I have really, really good managers or really, really good partners at every single business I have.

And if you get really good business partners or really good managers, then you really don't need to be there. When you first start a business or first buy a business, you probably need to be involved for a certain amount of times, sometimes a few weeks, sometimes a few months, sometimes even longer. But once you have that system in place and you understand the business and you know who's working there and come up with, you know, systems and ways to check stuff, you really don't have to go there. And then with the structure of partnerships that you currently have, I know you pointed a few out of the people that I knew, some of interviewed as well.

Would you say in those partnerships you took out the capital or it was like both ways? Or is it all different depending on what those? Yeah, it's all different. So I have luckily a lot of friends that I've and partners that I've known for decades and we've all made money together for so long. So most of my partners have a decent amount money. Now I do have new partners that I meet, you know, every year that I partner on stuff with and some of them haven't known me as long or haven't

as much money. But I would say anyone that I do stuff on a big scale with, whatever percent we own together, we both put in that share. So I would say most of my businesses, my partners put in whatever percent they own. I put in whatever percent my own as far as money, capital. But I do have a lot of partners that don't have as much money, but they have more time. Time's more valuable than money for someone that has a lot of money. So I structure with those types of people, like, look, you run the business.

I'll give you 25% of the business, 10% of the business, 50% of the business, whatever, for free, as long as you're doing this for this much time, and then you can also take a salary. So you'll get a salary, and then we split the profit 75, 25, 25, or 90, 10, or however it is. Everyone's a little bit different. Or I've had businesses where people didn't have as much money, and I would loan my partner the money they need for their share, and they would just pay me back with some sort of, you know, minimal interest or whatever it is. And that way they have some skin in the game, whatever. You always want people to have some skin in the game because they're going to take it more seriously and care about them more.

Or you just got to deal with people that are, you know, very good ethically and, you know, morally to where they're not going to screw you. Because most people will screw you. So the way to get people not to screw you is to really know them a while and see their character for a long period of time. or have them have some sort of significant amount of capital in the deal, and then less likely that will happen as well. And what you say majority of those, obviously, you branch out out of Atlanta in business-wise, just like your real estate's in Atlanta, right?

I mean, in Georgia. Yeah, all my, 99% of my real estate's in within an hour of Atlanta. Okay. All right. No, that's awesome. I mean, I've enjoyed the conversation so much. Let me start looking at the questions I actually have planned. You know what I'm saying?

That's usually my favorite podcast when we keep. going back and forth. And I think it's important when you spoke about partnerships. But when you say those that end up running the business, do you do your due diligence and like vetting them to actually make sure they can run the business? Yeah, no, 100%. So anyone that I have that runs businesses for me, I've known them long enough or I've seen what they've done in the past. So most of my partners are people that I've known for decades that I just keep doing new business with. But some of my newer partners that I have some business with, they were actually maybe my managers at some point for a little while and we became close and I saw their work ethic and I

saw their knowledge on what they're doing and I just turned them in from managers into partners. And then one of my last businesses I bought was a tree cutting service where we cut trees and stuff. Atlanta has more trees than anywhere in the country probably. So it's needed. But I used to do these events where I teach people how to buy businesses and everything else. They were business masterminds. and this guy came to one, and we became friends, and he was, like, telling me how we worked for a tree company and how he wanted to buy his own company, and this.

I was like, oh, let me help you. And, anyhow, I went from helping him to, like, being partners with him and then him just running the business. So that was probably one of the last businesses that I bought, one of the last few. And I didn't know this guy very well until he came to my business mastermind. That was, like, over three years ago, maybe four years ago. And we ended up buying a business together about a year and a half ago. And I knew him for a year and a half before we became partners. But I saw, like, for the last five, six years that he was in charge of another tree company, ran it,

and he knew what he was doing, or at least he tricked me into, you know, and he thinking that he knew what he's doing. So that's the kind of thing that I'll do. Either have a manager kind of progress or someone that's run a company that makes sense to just, you know, have them be partners with me because they already know that particular industry, and they're just going to run that business for us. And just with that, what's that one very important trait that you would look for before you end up partnering somebody? Honestly.

Someone that I think is, you know, means well. So the worst thing that you can do is partner with someone that just is selfish. So I look for someone that is not selfish, that is honest, that, and there's lots of different ways I could tell. Like even if I'm with you for a day or a few days, like just the things that you do. do. I could tell if you're how giving you are or how selfish you are, how, like, we go out to eat together. Are you offering to pay the bill or you're not? Like, I always pay the bill. Like, I always offer to pay the bill. I never let someone pay the bill. I mean, if we go out a bunch of times, then sometimes we'll split it, you know, like, you'll pay one time. But, like, if someone's

always trying to get you to pay the bill, someone's always trying to, like, take stuff from you and never give you stuff, you know, those are the type of people that overall are going to be bad people in general, but people that are always offering to be helpful and always give you stuff and do that type of stuff, those are typically people that you can trust because that's just the way they are. That's their human nature. No, I love that. That's actually, again, one of my mentors, Brad taught us that as well.

And the thing is always try and take on the bill that you end up like doing because he did the example. We were in Vegas at a steakhouse and it was multiple amount of us in which it was a nice. and fancy one but he just like takes on the bill he says he always hates the fact of that awkward thing of like you know who's going to be covered just just cover it yeah and i think it just sets like a big example because it actually shows that you're meaning you know business and you're meaning something and that you care about people you care about people you don't want you know you're not selfish that's what that's what it is you know it's especially if you could afford it you know some people can't

afford it but but if you're going to a place but you know sometimes we're going to a place that cost ten dollars 20 bucks like anyone could afford that if they really want to yeah but i mean i always do that at least the first time with every single person at least one time as well it's important it's important to offer people different things like uh when your buddy tyler came to me and was like oh i got a friend that wants to use the studio like how much will you charge him i said uh well it's not cost me anything tyler you like you could have it you could just have it for free like if you want to charge him go ahead and charge him he's like oh no no like you know he's my buddy like whatever he's like but you know but don't give it to him for free like he'll pay something i was like you know what it's

like it doesn't matter like it's not a big deal so um you know people come and come to my office all the time and ask for help and do different things and i just uh you know i just try to help people so when you see other people trying to help people that's the other thing forget about money right i could see someone helping someone like if somebody asked for something or someone asks whether it's a stupid question i'm stupid question and someone actually like cares and tries to answer it as opposed to someone just trying to shrug you off and whatever um especially if it's the first time you meet someone, you don't know them well. People that are more helpful and more, you know, want to deal with people and not just push

them off and be like an asshole, those are typically people also that have a better character trait and stuff like that. So I know people that always ask for help but never want to give help. Nothing to do with money, just questions or answers, whatever. And those people typically aren't, you know, care about more of themselves. And they just think they're better than other people. So I don't like people that think they're better than other people. I think everyone, I think everyone's better than everybody at different.

things. So I try to act that way. So when I deal with a super rich person, wealthy person, homeless person, I kind of try to be similar every time with those people. And when I see other people that aren't like that, you know, I'm like, okay, well, if something happened, you know, they might turn and try to screw you over because that character is not, you know, not good. And it comes down to integrity. And I think, and I think that's why even sometimes people just fear from their experience. They've been burnt out. They're just afraid to do partnerships and all these different things because you often judge people according to one experience you end up having

and that can be very detrimental. Would you agree with that? 100%. If you have one bad experience with someone, you should almost never do business with them. But once you do business with someone and you become partners, whatever, I mean, there's a lot of things you need to put in place. There's operating agreements, contracts, all these different things. But that you need to do no matter what. But you shouldn't even get to that point if you don't feel 100% comfortable with this person. And, and there's There's just like when you date. It's very similar dating.

When you date, you don't get married the first day. You date someone, right? You date some people date for a long time. Some people date for a short beard, but you don't marry them until you feel super comfortable with them. So you could do like all kinds of deals with someone, not be partners. And then once you do enough deals to where you're comfortable with them, then you get to some sort of partnership phase and then a bigger partnership.

So there's ways to structure it to where you're, you know, somewhere in between until you're ready to go full on and get married and get married. What's that stuff? what would you say personally for you from all the experiences that you've gained literally from the time you were age 15 to now the most important lesson you've learned in business 100% be quick be able to figure out stuff right away because the best deals are going to go to the people that could do the fastest and building rapport if i don't get people like me and i don't and i can't act fast and make decisions quick I'm just not going to get anywhere. No one's going to deal with someone that they don't like. So if I don't build rapport to you, you don't like me,

you're going to give it to somebody else, even sometimes if you make less money on it because you don't like me, you like them better. So getting people to like you, I think, is the most important thing in life and business and anything, and then being quick and not, you know, you have to be decisive and you have to be super quick because no matter what business you're in,

if someone's asking for something and you don't get back to them fast enough, they're going to go to someone else. You don't answer your emails fast enough. They're going to start dealing with someone else. People want fast responses and they want to be able to get something done right away. You know, one of the things I think I also mentioned earlier on, I really look up to your, or the biggest trait is just how like nonchalant and simple you are. You know what I'm considering the success.

I was like, I wasn't even going to ask what your net worth. I had to go behind your bag before you came upstairs and asked a few other people that were going through them. And I think traits like that are so underrated. People are so obsessed with the image of what they look like and who they're trying to impress. And sometimes live beyond the means, trying to portray a character or something that they're not. How important has it been for your success to just continue to be the same person as you've been? You know, I think everyone needs to be comfortable with whatever they're doing.

And that's just what I'm comfortable with. I don't like having fancy stuff or clothes or anything like that. It's not comfortable for me. So I just, you know, I go to the gym. I do martial arts all the time. So I'm always like in, you know, workout clothes and stuff like that. That's just what I like doing. So I'm always wearing flip-laps.

It's easier to take it on, take it off. And if someone comes to me and doesn't want to do business with me because they don't think whatever up to them, then that's probably not someone I want to do business with anyway. So once someone gets to know me, they know who you are. They don't care what you're. And what I've seen in general over the years is the people, that look the fanciest and everything else are the brokeest like people trying to trick everyone and the

people that are just the most nonchalant like i know lots of really wealthy people um it wealthier than me and people that are you know there and a good bit of them like you would think they own anything yeah so um i just think that you just got to feel comfortable with with who you are and what you are and you don't need to go impress anyone awesome stuff i mean you teach people to create buy and sell businesses and real estate. What's the most common things students do wrong when they try to copy the model without understanding what it actually means to make it work? Yeah, they don't know how they don't either evaluate stuff correctly. They don't know how to negotiate correctly on terms. So terms are really important. There's two important things on every

deal. There's the price and the terms. The terms is when you have to pay, how soon you have to pay, how long you have to pay over, all these different things. I think that's probably more important in the price. Like, I could pay someone 100 times what it's worth if I get the terms I want. So, a lot of people don't understand how to mix and match them, right? So you're looking at, so you're looking at me, like, so some people might understand what I'm saying. Let's just say that you want, let's say your tie is worth $1,000, right? You're like, oh, I want $900 for it. So that's, 10% discount. I could buy for $900 and I could have got, you know, $100 worth of equity. Or I could say, you know what, I'll give you $3,000 for it, but I'm going to give you $30 a month until it's paid off.

Like, what's a better deal? Paying $3,000 for it with $30 a month or $900 for it right away? You've got to decide. But what are you going to do with the other $870 you didn't spend today? You know, you're going to make money on it. So like over, you know, so, you know, that's just a fast, stupid example. But the point is if you could pay somebody a dollar a month for, you know, until the $1,000 paid off, that's a way better deal than, than, paying $900 up front for it, even though you're getting a deal on it, right?

So you just got to know how to evaluate where the terms actually start getting better to pay more and do less. And a lot of people that you're buying stuff from, whether it's real estate, whether it's businesses, whether it's anything. It doesn't matter, cars or electronics. Some people only care about the price. They just want to be able to tell their friend they got this much for it. So you could give them a higher price and do some better terms. And there are some people that just want the money now and just want to be done with it and they'll sell it for really cheap. and they don't care.

So you just got to know who you're dealing with it. Every single time you work a deal with someone, you've got to figure out their pain points. What makes them want to do the deal? Like, they're not going to do a deal with you unless they have some sort of reason they want to do the deal. So figure it out, is it because of this, this, this, this, or that? And once you figure it out,

you structure the terms based on what's better for them. And what's better for them is different for everyone else. The terms that you create for one person will make no sense for somebody else. So I would say those are really important. And then this is, I'll tell you, actually in general, the biggest problem that I see with people trying to get deals, whether it's businesses or real estate, whatever, is they get too passionate about the one deal. And they just do stupid decisions. It makes stupid decisions and pay too much or whatever it is because they get so in love with this one thing.

You've got to have lots of deal flow. And if you have lots of deal flow, you could pass on tons of shit and not get super emotionally attached to it. and just get the deals that make sense but if you're not getting a lot of deal flow and you only get one deal if it's a shitty deal some people just do whatever they can to keep that stupid shitty deal and it makes no sense so don't get attached to anything get a lot of deal flow and know how to negotiate and the difference between terms cash all these different things wow and you teach the negotiation part as well everything everything yeah so we do all day if you if you're with me all day you'll hear me on the phone you'll see me type emails and that's what i'm doing all day i'm so what's the what's like what's what's what's

happening right now in Salt Lake, we recently took up a lease of a nice commercial building where we're going to be doing, like, taking our studio there, but it's going to be like outsourcing to try and make a whole media thing. But eventually, like, we love the concept of just commercial. How do you teach that concept with those people to try and like leverage it? Because it's different creative finance and all these stuff with residential and commercial. Can you teach that as well? Yeah, of course. It's all the same thing. It's, it's, it's, It's like if you go to a casino and you gamble, if you're using, you know, red chips, green chips, black chips, purple chips. You're still using one chip.

It's just a different, it's just a different dollar amount. So, you know, with business, the person that you're buying it from, once you get to a certain price level, they look at stuff a little differently. So you got to understand, like, how these type of people look at stuff and how these type of people look at stuff. But there's a couple different ways people look at it. And you just got to get good at it. It doesn't matter, well, you know, what it is. What's the one investment, whether it's business, property, or a person, the investment that you made that changed the entire trajectory of how you view things? Yeah, just, I would say that every time I do any type of deal and it goes really good or really bad, I learn a lot from it.

So I don't know that there's one particular one that trumps every other one, but I'll tell you, like, on some bad deals I do. I probably learned more than on the good deals I do. So I think bad deals and people get so pissed off, they lost money or shit goes really bad. I probably learned more on all my bad deals than my good deals because the bad deals sting. You know, those you remember where the good deals, you're like, you're just making money, whatever. So I would say make sure you use your bad deals to really learn from and don't do those stupid mistakes again. So for instance, some of the bad deals I did early on, I picked the wrong partners. I picked the wrong partners that didn't, you know, that didn't have the good,

ethics and didn't care about everybody. They cared about themselves. And I bet you in the ass because when things go bad, they're going to do everything to protect them and try to screw you over. So I'm really way more careful with partners because of some of the bad deals I did in my early 20s. And then just in general, I've learned when you don't have people put skin in the game. That's how you get screwed.

Almost every deal I could look back at that I got screwed over time. People didn't have any money in the deal. So you just got to be way more careful when you do a deal and someone doesn't have any money in it. I do a lot of lending. You know, all my bad lending deals are, you know, when I look back at all the deals I've lost money on lending, which is a minuscule amount compared to what I do, but they all have the same traits. They're all where I don't collect monthly interest payments. I let people pay me at the end.

Those are the ones that go bad. Where I, you know, there's something like in real estate, if I'm not in first position, which is the first lender, those are the ones that go bad. So the ones that are like second, third positions, those are always the ones that go bad. The ones where you loan too much or different things like that and you trust people for different things, those are the ones that go bad. You don't have enough collateral. Those are the ones that go bad.

So you learn more, I think, from the bad things that happen than the good things happen. And that could save you way more money in the long term because you could do better deals and know how to structure stuff. I want to respect your time and know with the auction and preparation and stuff like. I just have two more questions that I wanted to ask. And the second last one is when we take away everything, the properties, the deals, the businesses, who would you say is Abraham Gray and what matters most to him? Yeah, I mean, I just want to be known for being a fun, a fun person that's a good person that means well. And, you know, I try to make everyone's life around me better. So that's kind of what it all comes down to.

I think anyone that you talk to about me will just say the same thing. You know, I'm kind of humorous. I try to be funny. I try to make people have a good time around me. I try to help people. And I try to make sure that everyone around me does well, not just me. And I always, when I do deals with people, I want them to do as good or better than me. So, yeah, I think that's kind of what people will see.

Anyone that knows me that's done anything with me or has been around me will pretty much have that same insight about me. But the last question, that's one thing because the code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Every single guest I've interviewed all has a different definition for Abraham Gray. What does the term winning mean for you? Winning means enjoying life. So winning, if I had to pick one word, winning equals happiness. That's what I would say.

Happiness is winning. If you have whatever the heck you have and you're not happy, it's all for nothing. So if you win, you have the best. And if you have the best, you're happy. So I know lots of people that have crazy amounts of money, but they're miserable. And I know people that live in a mobile home park and they're happy. They're way more successful. They're winning.

They're winning way more than the person that has a thousand times more money or whatever else they have. So 100% winning equals happiness. Love that so much. If you could let our viewers know where they can get a hold of you, if you don't jump in your mastermind or social media or whatever it may Maybe can let all view us know as well. Yeah, I mean, so the best way to get hold of me is to hit me up on Facebook, Instagram, Abraham Gray Official, G-R-A-Y, YouTube.

I post new videos every single month, multiple times a month. And then if you have deals, you want to buy for me, sell to me, whatever. My email is the best. I'm on my email all the time. I answer emails sometimes before people even send it to me. I give them answers. That's how fast I am. So my email is Abraham, my name, A-B-R-A-A-A-A-A-A-A.

H-A-M-A-A-T-L.com. So it's Abraham at M-M-A-L-A-A-T-L-A-T-L-A-T-L-A-T-L-A-L-A-L-T-L-A-L-A-L-A-T-L-A-T-L-A-R-RAT. And, yeah, I've had people say, damn, I was about to send you that email. You already answered it. So that's how fast I'm on emails. The code-twinning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow, Abraham Gray. Thank you very much, sir. Yep.

All right. Thank you.