Interviewing the $100M Man I Abraham Gray DSH #424

basically want to loan the 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.

But I wouldn't want to have a majority of my money.

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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, most of 22, I was buying about 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.

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 like a few here and a few there.

But like, you know, once I met Pace and, you know, seen how like crazy he does it, it really motivated me and, you know.

learned a lot from him and now do it 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

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.

But I wouldn't want to have a majority of my money in cash.

I would say, you know, 10%.

Well, it depends how much money you have, but if you, if you keep 10 to 20% of your 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 could 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 dollars.

And most of it's free and clear.

So yeah, most of that I could get loans pretty easy if I need to.

Is that something you've done yet?

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.

Wow.

And our average rehab is, you know, $40,000, $50,000.

So it adds up.

Half of that's probably materials.

Half of that's probably labor.

Yeah.

But yeah, we spend a lot of money in

mostly we buy it at Lowe's, Home Depot, stuff like that.

You got to be one of their biggest spenders.

Definitely in my local branch, yeah.

In my local branch for sure.

I'm surprised they haven't contacted you directly.

Yeah, they have multiple times.

We get like pretty good discounts when, yeah, when we buy a 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 it anything.

And I made that money and I saw how hard I had to work for it it in the beginning.

And I was really safe with it.

I made really 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 like lose, lose everything.

I feel like that's so rare.

A lot of the successful guys I talk to, I've lost it once or twice, some even more than three times.

Yeah, they do stuff that's a little bit, you know, too risky.

But when you first start off, you don't know what's risky and what's not.

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 booked smart I'm an idiot but I just have really good like intuition I have really good common sense and like I 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 families a 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 cards into a business.

So I used to go to

sports card shows, baseball card, football card shows every single weekend, buy, sell, and basically grew it from making $1,000 a week when I was 15, 16 years old to like $3,000 by the time I was 16, you know, a week.

17, I was already making $5,000, $6,000 a week.

18, you know, 18, 10,000.

By the time I was 19, I was making 10, 12,000 a week at least.

So you became a millionaire off 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 because 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.

Like it was actually 84, 85, 86.

So 84 was really good because it had Dan Marino rookies, John Aylway rookies.

Those ended up being really expensive.

And 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 cards.

I was like diehard.

In 86.

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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

84, 85, 86.

There weren'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, 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, 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 Miami.

So I have some Damarino cards.

I actually sold most of them, but I kept a couple like 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 this Zoom bought me a PSA Dam Reno 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 Dam Reno

legendary.

What a gift, too.

Cause with someone that has so much money, it's kind of hard to find gifts for you.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

And I don't want gifts.

You know,

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 and growing up I was a big Damn Marino fan so that was super cool I've gotten a few like really cool type 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 dollars of my own money out in

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.

you know, pretty fast, two months.

A lot of states, the foreclosure process is a lot longer, a lot harder.

And then, you you know, 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 like years ago.

I used to loan a little bit in second position.

And I thought I was safe, but man, there's a lot more to it.

But 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 like every week i do multiple double closing loans and then um emd loans what's up emd loans there if a wholesaler needs to 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 and it focused on that emd lending and people pay like crazy amounts you You know, you lend somebody 2,000 bucks, they give you 1,000 or 2,000 bucks back on top of the 2,000.

Damn.

So 50%?

It's 100%

in like three weeks.

Holy crap.

But they need it.

Like they can't do the deal without you.

And they're making 10, 15, 20,000.

So they don't care giving you a couple thousand.

You know what I mean?

If it's a bigger deal, they're making more and they could pay you more.

So I started doing that.

with

EMD loans.

And I actually partnered with Pace.

So me and Pace have a company together where we do it.

But those are the types of loans that I do.

And

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 to put their money out so I could 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.

No.

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 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 lent too much.

You're in second position.

You didn't realize.

And there's no equity.

Like, there's a lot of things people do wrong, but I still could help them afterwards.

But 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 like if they don't pay me, I know I could get the house back or sell it at the auction for more.

Smart.

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 more.

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 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.

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 25, 30%.

And then the person didn't pay them back and ended up, not only did they not pay him back, they sued him 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 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 loans that you got to 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 mark, when the real estate market is really hot, I'm like 80, 90% real estate.

Got it.

And then the rest, but like real estate kind of slowed down since the interest rates went up a lot in August.

And I kind of started doing a lot more business.

I bought a lot of businesses last year and 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 about a third, third, and third.

Yeah, you've invested into some interesting businesses.

I saw you make millions off axe axe throwing, 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,

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 i spent about 250 000 on to build to build out my average location profits

65 70 000 a month so like i get you know i got 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 um

were making over a hundred thousand dollars in profit in the beginning and actually right before i had my best locations were making like profit one 140 150 000 a month oh my god god a month so like i would get my money back in two months on those when i opened them but since they came down a lot so the business is probably like under half what it was before

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 i only 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 yeah that that's one of the problems why people lose a lot of money like you started 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'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, yeah.

All right.

So I might have, you know,

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, when you have the best hand and I don't give you all my money.

And then 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 in the way and they want to make it work but it's just bleeding and they and they put all their good money you know chasing bad money it's 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 and put, because time is more important than money like if i have something that's bad i'm putting a lot of time into it yeah so i just 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's that's more you know the way i look at it now having lived through a couple recessions now especially in the real estate space did you see them coming in advance were you preparing or did it kind of just happen I didn't see the last one was like 2008, 9, 10.

I really saw it coming a little bit, but nowhere near what it was.

I mean, it was so crazy, it didn't make any sense.

So, but I made a ton of money in that recession.

So I've heard most people like lose all their money yeah i actually made more money during that recession than than any than any other time in life history so a few different ways in business and in real estate both so i i've been making a lot of money ever since i was you know 15 and um 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 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 was just laying around.

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.

You still have them all?

I don't have them all.

I probably,

so this was like 2000 like 10, 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 2014, 15, they doubled in price, tripled in price.

I mean, I wish I kept them all.

They're like 10 times in 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.

Plus,

I never borrowed money.

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 will 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 damn so um it was basically we buy gold stores i actually started it there were no we buy gold stores that was you that was me there was nobody that had a we buy gold store until i started it wow there was cash for gold where you'd mail your gold in that that was started like a year before me yeah but nobody had actual stores so i started um a couple stores they did unbelievable like within within the first few weeks and then i went from like two stores to five to ten Before you knew it, I had over 300 and some stores.

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.

Oh, 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% on the high side.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, if someone brings a ton in it, you can negotiate with them, but you start off at 30%

and 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 six, 700 an ounce.

But now it's 900 a thousand.

I was paying them three or four hundred.

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 like literally the best real estate that was out there or even buy some some real estate and

for pennies of what a user was worth because it was a recession.

Everyone went out of business.

And then I had the best employees.

Like everyone was getting laid off.

And I was able to hire the best employees for like a lot less than what they were probably worth, but everyone needed a job and they were great.

And, you know, we kept, we had over a thousand something employees.

back in the recession and it was just 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 was just a perfect storm.

Seems like a lot of your success is timing and luck.

I'm telling you, timing and luck.

Literally, that's what it is.

That's cool, man.

It seems really attainable for people watching.

It's not like you're some mad scientist.

I'm an idiot.

I'm not really smart.

Yeah.

You got D's in high school.

You didn't even go to college, right?

Nah, I went for like a few semesters and dropped out.

Like it was, it was so boring.

That's so inspiring for people because a lot of people place a a lot of emphasis on school I don't know if it's from a parental side or something but

anyone that's smart anyone that's like a business person they all talk about how dumb college is I think you know like if you want to become a doctor lawyer or like parents you know that you know grew up that way tell their you know 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 I don't need to work anymore?

Well, I started making, you know, a few thousand dollars a week when I was 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

like, you know, 1990, early 1990s.

Wow.

And so that's like even a lot more money today.

Yeah.

You know what's really crazy?

I just saw someone post it on Facebook that if,

so I grew up, I watched 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

you, 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, 60s, that's so old.

Those people are old.

But like, if they had it come out now, it's like the 90s aren't, that seems like pretty recent.

No, but yeah, so that's, that's kind of.

Oh, so you had it early as a teenager.

You had that feeling.

Yeah, I had that feeling really early.

I, I,

yeah, before I was 20, I mean, I knew I was set.

I mean, I had a million dollars in my bank account when I was 19, right before I turned 20.

Man, the 90s, yeah.

In the 90s.

It's worth double or triple now, at least.

Right.

So

I just knew that I could, I thought I was going to 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 these these moms.

I remember those yeah

so I would make fun of them.

I'm like, why are you selling beanie babies at baseball card shows?

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 dollars i made in beanie babies and um yeah so i was one of the biggest beanie baby dealers in in the whole country man 10 million on beanie babies yeah they were that big oh my god like you could go to stores they cost five or six dollars yeah you'd buy them this over five or six dollars first of all she couldn't find them but i had like a creative way sell plugs yeah so i had a creative way to bribe people to sell me all their beanie babies basically but as soon as you buy them for five or six dollars you could 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,

but, you know, if you were able to figure out a way to get them.

People did that with sports cards during this last boom.

They would text their guys at Target stocking the things.

You buy all of them.

You do it with 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 Baby.

So

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 the, as whatever I was doing was like 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 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?

No, 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.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

See you tomorrow.