From Cards and Collectibles to Real Estate Riches with Abraham Gray
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Not one person that could fix it. Like you need the House. There's just so many people that have to do it and no one's ever going to agree to fix it because it benefits all them because they all need it. Of course. It's never going to be fixed. Of course. It's going to be what it is. Yeah, it'll get fixed right after they make it illegal for sitting representatives and congresspeople to trade stocks. Oh, yeah. The day that that happens, yeah, the tax code will get fixed the next day. Yeah.

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of Like the Opening Says Man, the show that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in studio, ladies and gentlemen...

I got a dude that, I mean, I don't know, man. Do I use the word baller too much? Do I use that word too much? I might. I don't know. But this cat is a hardcore entrepreneur. He has founded over a hundred businesses. He buys them. He creates them. He's done it all. He is the co-host of the Private Money Lending Mastermind. So it was a master at raising capital, placing capital, making money on capital, or my favorite word, arbitrage, if you will.

And he's here to share a lot of knowledge with you today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio. This is Abraham Gray. Abraham.

What's going on? What's up, dude? Oh man. It's cool to be here in Vegas. I love that dude. Love that you're, I love that you're here in Vegas. Yeah. Now we just mentioned you're, you're from the ATL. Yeah. Of which, you know, I have some roots there back in the day. You live in Buckhead currently. I live in Buckhead. You know, I like to think that I'm the guy that killed Buckhead. I like to think that. Yeah. And I heard the story. You might, you might have. Yeah. I think I'm actually the guy that killed Buckhead if you think about it. And it was so funny. And that story, if you will, um,

Well, you know, I'm not going to tell a story. We had a club there. I ran the club. Super Bowl came. A very famous pro bowler who will go unnamed. Hey, Lewis. Came to the club. Some people got killed. Yeah. There was a murder trial. At the end of the day.

Everybody kind of got off except for that club. It's kind of just nuked the whole thing. Yeah. And that was, and that was the end of Buckhead. It was the end of it as we knew it then it is now transformed into a, the Rodeo drive of the South, if you will. For sure. Don't you kind of miss the dirty days of walking down? Yeah. What was it? Bolle way. What was the main right there? There was a lot of Luluz bait shack and metropolitan pizza. And yeah, yeah. All the, all the old school stuff that the chili pepper dude, all the good stuff. Probably different now. So that's a few decades ago. Yeah.

Thanks for dating me. I appreciate you. A lot of the, yeah, you're pretty old, but a lot of the, two years older than you, my friend. Three. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. Three years older than you. That's where we're going. I was born in 75. Okay. I was born in 72. Yeah. Three years. Yeah. I'm tall. I'm taller. I'm taller than you are. Okay. All right. Keep going. Yeah. No. So I actually used to live in Vegas for a couple of years. Did you? I played poker.

Nobody even knows about this. I don't talk about it that much, but I played poker here for many years. In 2004, 5, 6, I was really big into poker and I played all the World Series events, all the WPT events. So I would just travel to all the big events were. And yeah, I was on a bunch of final tables and did pretty well. So what got you into poker? I just got into poker probably maybe in the early 2000s and started doing really good online.

And I was like, man, I was killing it on party poker and poker stars and all that. I was like, let's go and play like on the casino. So yeah,

I started playing tournaments at casinos, started doing really well, made a bunch of money. But the problem was it became a job. It was really fun in the beginning. And once you like do it every single week or every single day, it became a job and it was crazy hours and I got really out of shape and just got back into business. It was terrible. Okay. Let's talk about how you got into business in the first place, just in general. So tell me about where'd you grow up? So I was born in Florida, Miami. I grew up there. I started my first business when I was 15.

And from that, it was sports cards. I was big into sports when I was younger, so I always collected cards, turned it into a business.

From there, just grew it from- Were you just trading cards like on eBay? Yeah. eBay just started back then. Okay. Did you have like a brick and mortar or what were you doing? No. I actually, so back then, Protege, I mean, it was like prodigy.net. Like before AOL, it was Protege. So they had like boards on there where you could- Yeah. Protege, yeah. Yeah. So we used to, they used to have boards so you could buy and sell stuff. And that was kind of the first time the internet kind of really took off.

And from there, I always did shows on the weekends. I would travel just from show to show, the weekend events, and buy and sell. And I started doing really well. What did your parents do? So I never lived with my parents for a while. My parents, my mom, I hadn't seen really since I was maybe like eight years old or something at the time. She lived in New York, but I was in Florida. I was a problem kid. And I ended up like...

in a bunch of different foster families. I had problems with school, like getting in trouble all the time.

And my parents couldn't handle me. My parents got divorced when I was like one. Yeah. But I lived with my mom for a while, got in fights, then moved with my dad for a couple of years, got in fights, then just live with random people basically. And then boarding schools until I was 15 when I moved into my grandmother's house. And that's when I started the sports car business. So obviously, dude, that's, you know, that's a horrendous background. Like that's, that's really hard on a kid. Do you think that that

Now, looking back at it as a 52-year-old man or 49-year-old. You're 52. I'm 49. You're 49. Yeah, 50 is old, man. I'm not that old yet. Looking at it now as a middle-aged man sitting across me, would you say that, I mean, obviously it's terrible when you went through, but that had to have just built this incredible force of resilience in yourself. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you learn a lot from it. I think that's what kind of

Got me to where I am today. I learned a lot and I did stuff based on that. So I think if that didn't happen, I'd be a totally different person and it worked out in my favor. So I'm happy. But I think there's I think the hinge point there is so many people would have an experience like that as a kid. And some people do. Right. And they use that as an excuse to underperform the rest of their life instead of fueling it.

So what do you think was the difference in you that made it turn into fuel instead of an excuse? The difference for me was, first off, I was a really bad kid. Like in my younger years and even my teenage years, I was really bad. Like I was at a point where I was either going to be like in jail the rest of my life or just be super successful. It was one or the other, depending on which way I went. It was for sure. Or both at different times if you want to go Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, 100% potentially. So I just, I really...

you know, I was in boarding schools. I was on these foster families. I didn't really have my freedom. I had to listen to whatever they said. I was, you know, stuck. I didn't have, I just didn't like it. And when I started selling these sports cards, I started having some money. I was able to kind of do my own thing. I didn't have to listen to people as much. And, you know, that's what kind of got me going to where I was. I was like, you know what, if I have my own money, if I could not have to listen to people, I have my freedom. That's what I really wanted. And that's what pushed me to just keep going. I just wanted to be able to do whatever I want. And how

How can you do whatever you want? The more money you have, the more freedom you have, the less you have to listen to people basically. Yeah. That's a good, you know, it's, it's funny when you ask people what money means to them for you, it means not having to listen to anybody else. Like my answer is like, what money means to me? It means time. Like I can, I buy time. That's what I buy with my money. You could buy time, but, um, but freedom is like the ultimate. Yeah.

- Ultimate freedom and time, the same thing almost. - So you were selling cards at 15. Did you ever have a real job? Did you ever have a job working for somebody else? - I had one job in my life and it was when I was 15. - What was it? - I worked as a bag boy at a grocery store. But I was there for a little while. I started bagging groceries, bringing carts in. Then I ended up stocking. I got a little bit of raise, started stocking.

And then I was doing sports cards at the same time. So I was making some money on sports cards, some money. And then I just started making too much money on sports cards, got rid of the grocery gig and just went full time into sports cards. Yeah. I like to think that all great entrepreneurs are to a certain level, unemployable, like chronically unemployable, just because they just cannot, like you just said, I just, I authority has just never been something that you want it here. Yeah. You don't want people telling you what to do. It sucks. Yeah, it does. So you're selling, you're flipping sports cards, doing pretty well. And what did that lead to?

So in 1997, so this is back, I started, let's say 1990, 1991. So in 1997, something really, really crazy fad came out called Beanie Babies. And I was at baseball card shows and these middle-aged women would come in there with tables full of Beanie Babies selling them. And I was like, why are they at a baseball card show selling Beanie Babies?

And before I knew it, like week after week, all of a sudden I'd see their tables were busier than my table selling baseball cards. I was like, what the hell is this stuff? I got to learn. I started off making fun of them. I'm like, wait a second. Maybe there's something. So I kind of hang around their booths, start asking some questions. Where do they get it? What are they selling it for? What's the profit? And, you know, eventually pretty soon I learned, I learned the business and I became the,

probably the biggest Beanie Baby dealer in the country for many, many years. I was in Beanie Babies from 1997 all the way through like the early 2000s, 2003 or so, probably when I get out. So that's trend spotting is what that is. So is that something you've always had a gift for? Yeah. So I've been basically my whole life up until even recently, I'm always going into like hot ads or hot trends. And that's how I've made tons of money. I literally would pick whatever's really good at the time

Not being it forever, but being it for as long as you could possibly make a ton of money on it. And then once that's dead, just move on to the next thing. And I did that for a long time until recently. So when you spot a new trend or when you did before you did this, when you would spot a new trend, how do you accelerate your learning of it, what it is? How do you get into it quickly enough to where it's still viable? Because the hardest thing with trend spotting like that is-

Yeah, you don't want to be the last guy at the table with all the chips in your hand. Yeah. So I have a few techniques of what I do. So obviously, I'm always looking for trends. I have like a whole system of how to do it. But I always find multiple, and then I figure out which ones make the most sense. I'll go investigate them. Sometimes I'll go to other countries or other cities just to see how other people are doing with those trends because usually the trends start somewhere. Yeah. What's your system? Let's talk about that. Now I'm interested. Yeah, so...

But I would basically start, I would try like four or five things out of the dozens that I see. And then the ones that do the best, I grow like crazy. And the ones that aren't so successful, I just shut down. - So any trend that comes up, you figure out a quick way to acquire whatever it is and you can test out very quickly and then you dance with who brung you. - Yeah, and then the ones that don't do good, I just kill it soon so where I don't waste a lot of time or money. And the ones that do good, I just explode it all over the place.

But as far as how I find them, that's what you're asking. So my system really at the time was going onto Google and searching all kinds of keywords like what's hot in America? What's hot in Asia? What's hot in Europe? What's hot on the West Coast? What's hot on the East Coast? And then I'd have like maybe a hundred different phrases like that. And I'd type them in. It would lead me down a rabbit hole of a whole bunch of different things. And from there I'd find other shit. And then I would go ahead and research which ones make sense. Another thing that I would do is

when Groupon came out, that was a big one. I would go on Groupon. You can still do that today, probably. I'd go to Groupon and say, just see what sold the most in every city. I'd be like, all right, what's in Dallas, Texas? What's in New York? What's in Los Angeles? I'd pick all the biggest cities first. Then I'd go to small cities. Small cities actually could be really good because...

People have something good, but nobody knows about it. And some people are just content with their one location. So they don't grow it. So if I see something on Groupon that sells a ton of Groupon. Are you talking about products or experiences? More experiences than anything. Okay. But products could work also. So I just happen to do tons of experiences. Like what? Like products. So.

I was one of the first people that had escape rooms in the United States. I was one of the first people by far that had, uh, X-throwing locations in the United States, uh, arts and craft studios, all these different trends that got really hot in the beginning. Um, I found them early on either in other cities, other States. So like the X-throwing, I probably had like,

I was one of the top first five in the country. There's thousands, if not tens of thousands right now. Yeah. So I think the first two was like one in New Jersey. There was maybe one in Vegas, actually. Those were the first ones that were here for over a decade, but there weren't any others. So I saw some in Canada.

And I went to Canada, I went and saw them. They did really well. I checked out the, and you found this from Groupon. I found it from Groupon and from doing these Google searches. And another way that I find a lot of really cool trends is, um, on Facebook. So I'm on Facebook or really any social media, but Facebook is just what I use the most. Um,

And I'm friends with tons of people and people post places they've gone, fun things they've done. And I saw one day a friend of mine in another state that went to an escape room. I was like, what the hell is an escape room? Is like someone breaking in their house? Do they need a... And I figured out it's actually an activity where you go and you solve puzzles. It was really fun. I never heard of it. And I went there. I flew there. I checked it out. There was probably like only a couple dozen in the United States at the time. I was like, this is pretty cool. I got to bring this to Atlanta.

And then I looked in Atlanta, there was a couple already before I started. And I was one of the first three or four in Atlanta. Now there's hundreds and hundreds in Atlanta, just from perspective. So what I did was, what's different than me than anyone else that does this thing, once I have one that does really well, I massively scale them. So I went from

one escape room to 16, 17 escape rooms in like a few years where most people have one and maybe they open a second one. Usually they don't. There's a few companies that, you know, open four or five, six, but it's not that common. Same thing with the, with the X drawing, you know, as soon as I saw it, it made a lot of money. I opened a ton. The business that I made the absolute most money on, um, was something that I did a different way. Right? So, um,

I just told you a bunch of different ways I find these really cool concepts and trends. But another way that works really well is I have a network of people that I deal with. So different people that I buy and sell Beanie Babies to, baseball cards, whatever, open neck drawings with or just people. So these are really creative people. They come up with other trends, sometimes stuff that I haven't seen. And we're always in communication and talking. So

when I find something really cool that I do that makes a lot of money, it does well in my state. I'll go tell like my network of a dozen people, like you should try in your state. And then we do it all together. So the business that actually made the most money on was the jewelry industry. I had the first, we buy gold store in the country. It didn't exist until I did it. And a friend of mine that,

Yeah. We did other business with that. We, you know, we shared different other things back and forth that we made really a lot of money on. It was like, man, you should get into gold. Like it was like $300 last year. Now it's $700. Like it's crazy. Yeah.

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At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

I'm setting up at these hotels on weekends. I'm just doing weekend events. I put an ad in the paper and I'm buying, you know, X amount and I'm making like $50,000, $100,000 a weekend just buying gold at these. It's crazy. People are just bringing it in. Keep in mind, this was back like 2006, 2007 when the economy started to go down. People had a lot of gold. Yellow gold was going out of style. So it was all really good timing. But

I was like, all right, I don't know anything about gold. At the time I was into another fad called Webkinz. It's sort of like Beanie Babies. It's a stuffed animal. I think I remember this. I made millions and millions of dollars on Webkinz. It was a really, really big fad. It was crazy. But I was still making a ton of money, but it's kind of down toward the end of the cycle of them, I could tell. And he's like, you should get into gold. I was like, well, I'm still doing really good Webkinz, but I see it dying. Let me come there in a few months. We'll talk it over. So now-

Fast forward a few months. I ended up meeting him. I went to one of his shows. I was like, holy crap. Like you're just buying a crazy amount of stuff. I didn't know anything about jewelry at the time. He's like, look, every time I spend a thousand dollars, I'm making 3000. And he was buying like tens of thousands of dollars when I was there. I was like, holy crap. It's that easy. He's like, I didn't know anything about jewelry. Like five months ago, I learned all this since then. I'm just weighing the gold and writing the number. And testing to make sure it's real. So I was like, all right, cool. I got to do it. So I was like, you know what?

I'm interested. I want to do this. I see their proof of concept. You showed me like a couple months of you doing this and making a ton of money. It's like crazy. So here's the thing. I don't want to set up at hotels every weekend, go to a different hotel, spend a ton of money. So what he did is he spent a ton of money on newspaper ads and just advertised people to come to these shows. I was like, you know, that's a lot of work. You're reinventing the wheel every single weekend. Why not just open a store and just have a store, advertise it. People keep coming to the same place. You're always there.

He's like, yeah, I mean, I never thought of it, but like you could try it and see. So I was like, all right. So I just rented a space.

On a busy road, open the store, put a We Buy Gold store, advertised. Like literally within the first couple of weeks, I had lines of people coming in selling me their gold. And literally at like 30% of what I could get for it. So again, if they had sold me for 30 bucks, I'd get 100 bucks for it. And they were like super thrilled. It was all stuff that they weren't wearing anymore. It was outdated, broken, whatever. It doesn't matter. And people needed money at the time.

So now we're back in like 2007, 2008 when the recession started hitting and everyone's losing their job. So I did that and I went from one store, like I opened a second store like instantly within a week. And then within a month I had like, you know, three other leases signed. And within like the first year I had 50, 60 locations. And ultimately over the course, I did about seven years. So like within the first four years I had over 300 locations. Yeah.

Jeez. Yeah. And these locations were making the worst locations I had. And these are really bad. So it was very rare, maybe 30, 40,000 a month profit, but like the best locations were a hundred, 150,000 a month profit. What do you, so I'm just curious because now I don't know, what did you do with the gold when you get, you melt it down? Do you, what do you do? Yeah. So you'd buy all this gold. Do you have a smelter? Yeah, more or less. So you'd buy gold and the really nice pieces you put aside and see if you could like

sell them to a jewelry store for a little bit more than the gold and diamonds are worth. But 99% of it, you would just send to a refinery. They'd melt it down and they'd basically pay you what it's worth. So every single, you didn't have to do it. You were just shipping it off, shipping it off. Yeah. Brinks would come by every single week and pick up like, you know, tens of millions of dollars worth of gold and, and take it off. Yeah. We ended up dealing eventually with the biggest refinery, which was Johnson Matthew in Utah.

And we actually went there and toured the place a couple times. Pretty cool. But they do crazy volume, and that's where we end up shipping most of our gold when we were doing it on a big sale. So I want to go back a little bit because we may have – now that we're buying tens of million dollars worth of gold, we may have outpaced some of the listers at this point. Like, oh, well, yeah, I'll just go open a store and buy tens of million dollars worth of gold. Yeah. Let's go back to –

the trend spotting. Let's go back to that. I gave you like five different ways. You did. You did. It was good. But each one was a different, it was different. But what I'm, what I want to know is, did you bootstrap all of those? First question is, did you bootstrap all that or did you go raise OPM? So I was fortunate enough to, in my baseball card days, made a lot of money. So I,

I was when I was 15, I was making, you know, 40, 50,000 a month. I mean a year. And then when I was 16, I started making almost a hundred thousand a year just selling baseball cards. And by the time I was 17, 18, I was making a lot and I was able to save over a million dollars cash in my bank account by when I was 19. So I always had some money. And from then my business just grew. So like I was making a lot of money every year in my early twenties. Let me ask you this as a teen, right?

Dude, I cannot even imagine like that kind of money rolling in at that age. I mean, and not just like the fact that you accumulated a million dollars and didn't just go blow it in every direction.

I mean, when you were first starting out, I mean, I guess maybe coming from nothing, you were like, I need this big pot. Like every dollar matter. I didn't blow money. Like I didn't waste money. Every money, every single time I made money, I would just reinvest it into other stuff that made more money. I never blew money. So I never had fancy cars. I never had still. No, still. No, still. I mean, I have a nice house, but.

Unless you come to my house, you wouldn't know. But I mean, cars, I mean, I've never had like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentley, stuff like that. Just not your thing. Yeah, I mean, I have decent cars, but they're not like exotic. Yeah, just not your thing. Not my thing. It's so funny, man, that like...

you know, I guess each to their own. And I tell everybody that does this, cause you know, dude, I've got a couple of nice cars and that's fine. But at the end of the day, they are for me and everybody that I know that has a really nice car. I'm like, look, this is going to go one of two ways for you, dude, or you're going to buy this thing and you're, they're going to feel nothing after a week or you're still going to love it. Yeah. So if you've never had a car like that, maybe you

go rent one for a couple of days and just see how it feels. If you really, if you really enjoy cars and you have plenty of money, it makes sense to get it. I just don't care about cars. Like I really like cars. I would buy like nice car. I just don't, this doesn't do anything for me. So, okay. So where, where does your mind, what, what do you, what, what, what gets you? What, what's the thing?

- What do I do with my money? - Yeah, where's the joy? - I mean, I like to see it grow. So that's what's fun. So I invested into a few things. The three things that I put all my money into is real estate, more businesses and a lot of lending. So I do a ton of lending, a ton of business and a ton of real estate. And every single year,

I own a lot more property. I have more businesses and I have more loans on the books. So those are the three things that keep growing. But, you know, I love martial arts. I've been doing that for, you know, decades. So I'm always going. That doesn't cost any money. Not really. I own the gyms. So I make money off it. Just buy the places you like to go. That's it. That's what I do. So I have to buy a golf course now. Damn it. Hey, you know, they're available. You could buy them. What's crazy is people think that you can't buy stuff and because it's too expensive.

Most of the stuff that I've bought, I've used none of my own money or very little of my own money. Like it doesn't matter if it's a $10 million deal or $5 million deal, whatever it is, you could buy these things without using your own money or, you know, there's lots of ways to do it. Yeah. It's so funny talking about real estate. It's always like,

what comes first, the chicken or the egg, right? People are like, oh, well, I need to raise money or I want to get some investors so I can go do this. And it's like, bro, you get a good enough deal. You're not going to have a problem finding investors. Yeah, that's the key. If you get it, go get the deal, go tie the deal up. And then trust me, if it's a good deal, you'll know. Anytime you have bring someone a good deal, there's plenty of people out there that have plenty of money that want to invest and make money. If the deal is good enough,

You'll find people to loan you the money. If no one loans you money. Then you get out of the deal. No, if no one loans you money, it means that you're. The deal sucks. Exactly. That's what it means. That's all it means. Get out of the deal. Yeah. Well, let's talk about this because obviously you have a lot of cash heavy businesses. Right. And I want to lean this into, obviously, that's probably one of the reasons you started real estate investing, I'm guessing. Well, I started real estate investing when I was 22. I bought my first property in 1998. Mm-hmm.

I was making so much money in business. I had a friend that's like, why don't you start buying some property? First off, diversify a little bit. Plus the tax write-offs, the appreciation, like, you know, it's five, 10, 20, 30 years from now, you're going to have crazy amount of money, which I did. So I still own a lot of the stuff from the nineties and early two thousands and it's worth, you know, 10 times what I paid for it. So yeah,

Yeah, so it worked. And then the tax depreciation was a really big one, especially now there's so many cool tax write-offs. That is the one. Yeah. That's the one. Did you do cost seg depreciation? 100%. Yeah, cost seg depreciation, of course. Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny. Dude, I'll give you one. I don't know if you knew this or not. So one of my groups that I'm in,

We have probably the best cost seg dude in the countries in there that actually does them for like massive buildings, like whatever. I use someone like that. Yeah. And this came out of his mouth the other day and I couldn't believe this because somebody was buying, they were buying 300 something units. They were talking about the improvements they were going to have to do. And they talked about the roof and he goes, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Before you do that,

let me cost seg the roof because you can get, you can make bonus depreciation on the disposal of the roof you have and then write off the new one. And we were like, what? For the one you throw in the dumpster? He's like, hell yes you can. It's in the tax code. I was like, that's wild. There's so many scams in these tax codes. You know, it's crazy. If you just know everything that you need to know, you have a good accountant, you could probably make a ton of money and never pay any taxes or very little. Yeah. I mean, it's, again, there's, what is it? There's,

15 or 20 pages that tell you how you have to pay taxes. And then there's thousands that tell you how you don't. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's true. I remember when I was making the most money back in the gold days, the crazy things that all my accounts were doing to where it's a hundred percent legal. Didn't make any sense to me before, but now I understand it where you could basically do all these crazy things and just, you don't have any, you know, like, yep, you don't have to pay taxes because here's your zero. It makes no sense. So it's, it's, it's kind of a scam, but whatever you got to do it. If that's what everyone else does.

Yeah, I love that clip back in the day, not to talk about politics, but I just love that clip from about Dave Chappelle talking about Donald Trump in that first debate. And he's like, yeah, you know what? And I know the systems, Rick, because I use it. And you won't fix it either because the people that give you money use it too. I don't think anyone could fix it because not one person that could fix it. Like you need the House. And there's just so many people that have to do it. And no one's ever going to agree to fix it because it benefits all them because they all need it.

Of course. It's never going to be fixed. Of course. It's going to be what it is. Yeah, it'll get fixed right after they make it illegal for sitting representatives and congresspeople to trade stocks. Oh, yeah. The day that that happens, yeah, the tax code will get fixed the next day, which is never. So let's go back to all of these little businesses that you have because eventually, because you were chasing fads at the time. Of course. You were transpotting. Yeah.

At some point, man, the cards go south on you. The market turns, you're holding inventory. So how do you, how would you talk to me about pulling the ripcord out of a trend? Yeah. So you've got to, you've got to be able to see it. So obviously when it keeps going up, keeps going up, that's great.

At some point it levels off. And once it starts leveling off, that's when you got to pay really close attention to see when it starts dipping. So once it starts dipping, you got to have a plan to how to get out of it without losing too much. But you made so much up here that if you lose a little bit at the end, it doesn't really matter, but you got to,

you've got to really understand like where, where the market's going to die and how to get rid of it without losing the most. So I always figured out ways to sell the best stuff and, you know, get out of stuff. I have like really good leases where I'm able to get out of different leases with different ways. But yeah, I was just always lucky enough to, to not,

stay in it and be like attached to any one business and let it ride a whole way down to where I'm losing money. Cause that's stupid. That's what a lot of people do lose a lot of money. They're in this business, they're super attached to it and they just don't want to let it go. I'm I'll let something go easily. I don't care. Well, I think that's, that's something that people don't understand is when they go into Lisa space for a brick and mortar business that may or may not be viable, how important it is to not get a personal guarantee on that space. Yeah. Not get a personal guarantee. Or if you have to put a personal guarantee on it, put

put it on for 12 months, you know, or six months. They don't put it on for five years, especially if it's a expensive lease or something like that. Yeah. People will get, could get really screwed. Yeah. I learned my lesson when I was really younger on that one. I did do a personal guarantee on, in my early twenties on one. And yeah, so I learned my lesson on that one. So I don't do it anymore, but I don't mind doing it for a certain amount of time because if you start a location, you're not going to leave in the first year, you know, you're going to write it out even if it is bad typically. Yeah.

But yeah, you don't want to be stuck for five years. That's miserable. Yeah. So it seems like now, I mean, you're kind of out, you're out of all of these fad businesses. You're really pretty much. I mean, I still have a few fad businesses, but they're not like the fad, the fad on the businesses that I have aren't like super hot anymore. They're kind of like, you know, now just leveled off. But yeah, most of the businesses I have now are not fads over the last like five, 10 years. I've started getting into just normal businesses that I'm kind of getting old enough to where

I don't have... You are getting old, by the way. Yeah, as old as you. No, I'm just saying that the grave is calling. It's chasing behind you. I actually saw the Grim Reaper looking for you when you walked in. I feel it. When you get to be this old, it's hard. You can feel it. I'm training with all these younger guys, and they're just so much quicker, faster. Yeah. Yeah, it's... Taller. Taller, yeah. You start shrinking, huh? Yeah, that's it. So...

But yeah, no. So I've given this guy shit and he does jujitsu or what? So she's going to kill me right here. Live on the podcast. We can do that at the end. If you want to do it. No, no, no, no. They're so choking me out on the podcast. Not to say that it probably won't happen at some point, but I just rather have it not happen today. I mean, if you start tapping, I, I,

This is a good chance. I'm going to tap now. I'm tapping right now. I'm tapping right now. Your wife is here as a witness. I'm tapping right now. There's no need to joke. So we back to your businesses. Yeah. No, so fabulous. So I was super involved in fab businesses in my twenties and thirties in my forties. I started getting more into like stuff that it's not really fat. A lot of the stuff will just last for a long time. So now, now I have like home service businesses. I have, let's talk about that real quick. Cause trades are a buddy of mine. Uh,

uh just exited his roofing business yeah nine figures i know a lot of people that tons of the private equity nine figures yeah so it's dude it's the dumb stuff that makes money man everybody wants to fly everyone wants to flashy they all want the flashy take what makes money that's all that matters dude plumbing yeah solid roofing solid everyone's gonna need that crap everybody needs it everyone doesn't matter yeah so what's your favorite home services trade that you're in um is it time to reimagine your future

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Well, I have some tree companies now that cut down trees. So we're on the East Coast. So we're really busy. We're going to where all the hurricanes just hit and crazy. Like we used to do X amount a day. We're doing like four or five times that because there's so many emergencies. Everywhere. Yeah, everyone needs. Terrible. But yeah, I'm probably going to get more of those. But I mean, we've done other stuff like granite and-

So I have like a whole team, a whole bunch of teams that do all kinds of everything, whether it's painting, whether it's flooring, you know, I have people that can do anything. So they mostly work on my own homes because I do so many fix and flips. But when I have extra time, then I'll put them on some other people's projects. So you bought your verticals, your vertical integrated home flipping business. Yeah. How many flips are you doing?

So in 2020, 21, I did over 200 each year. I would say like the market started to shift in 2023. So I probably do about half that, but I still do.

I still do a hundred a year, a hundred a year. So can you talk to me about the structure of your business to do that? So are you just at this point on top? Are you, you're not, you've got acquisition people, you've got dispo people, you've got project managers. So when it was super slam, the super busy 2020, 21, 22, I had everything, but now I've kind of, uh,

you know, downsize a little bit with, with the in-house team. Cause I don't need them. I buy most of my stuff from wholesalers and I just have a lot of connections with other, I let them do the dirty work, sell it to me and whatever. So I don't have to manage, you know, acquisition teams and all that. Uh, but I get so much lead flow from all the people that know that I buy that I could, I could buy enough, but I do have a little bit of, um,

in-house team because I own a home investor franchise actually in Atlanta. Yep. But you know, it's not that good anymore like it was. So I buy a home or two a month maybe from that. But the problem is don't you have to pay them a point on everything you buy? Pay them a lot. Yeah. Even if it comes from them or not. Yeah. But here's the thing. It's not in my name so I don't technically own it.

Okay. Somebody else. We might need to cut this out. I don't know. We'll go with it. That's good insight though. I don't, I don't own it like a paper. I, I, I basically funded it for someone else and they give me all the deals. Got it. Smart way. So the other stuff you're doing is completely separate from that as legally it should be. And I can testify to that in court. There we go. That's fine. Um, if need be. No, I like that. Um,

So you're just still doing 100. What margin are you mostly in Atlanta? Yeah, only only Atlanta. I go like 50 miles north, 50 miles south, 50 miles east, 50 miles. So you could drive from one project to another. It could be two hours. It's gonna be 100 miles or so. Oh, my God. But Atlanta is big. So that's where I'm at. 50 miles any direction from from the middle of Atlanta. I have two partners. So it's me and two other people.

I'm in charge of all the underwriting, buying, negotiating with the sellers. So I'm the one that does all that. Once I buy it, I hand it off to one of my partners that does all the rehab. He's in charge of all the crews and all the rehab. And then my last partner is in charge of like, you know, if there's legal involved, accounting, a dispo, selling the properties, dealing with the agents after we have them listed. Or, you know, we do buy a lot of properties that we don't want to rehab because either

It's just not an area we like to rehab in or, you know, our crews are busy or whatever. And then we'll just, we have a dispo guy that will sell all our stuff for us that we don't want to, that we don't want to rehab. And if they don't sell it, then we end up rehabbing it. But, and you own your crews. Yeah. They work for us full time. They work for you full time. How many project managers do you have?

So I have a partner that's in charge of the project managers and then I have one main project manager that's in charge of all the crews. But like each crew has its own project manager. And then we have, you know, at least one inspector that works full time just going inspecting properties. Yeah. Yeah. That hits everything up. Have you had to change your buy box?

have you adjusted your buybacks buy box or you just buy less i don't i don't uh i never adjusted my buy box as as far as what i'll buy or where i'll buy it what i might have like a spread yeah that's what you might change so i might change like certain areas that i see aren't as hot i'll buy them at a lower you know loan to value but the

the good areas I'll still pay all the money for. It doesn't matter. You know, the good areas are still really good. How much of your margins gotten squeezed from 2021 to now? Huge, huge. Yeah. I'm making way less now on, on fixing flips than I was. I was making, um, you know, I was able, I was able to make 40, 50,000 a home in 2021, 2022. Sure. And I was able to buy, you

you know, 25 a month where now I'm buying 12 a month and I'm making 25, 30,000 a house. So I'm buying a lot less than I make a lot. So yeah, you know, exponentially it's way less, but it's, it's still good when you're doing that at scale. Do you guys have spec? You have spec, you have like,

house gets this flooring, this carpet, this paint. So we, we, we make them all the same. So we don't do new construction or we don't buy land. I only do fix and flips. Well, that's what I meant, but I'm saying you've got every single, here's our spec tile. Here's our spec sink. So every single house we do that is within, you know, so in Atlanta, the average home we sell is like a 300 and some thousand dollar home. So any home that we do, that's, you know,

let's say 150, which is probably the cheapest homes that we do all the way to, you know, four or five by 50, maybe 600. We all have the same pain, same flooring, same everything. But then we do some million dollar homes, like maybe once a

One every month or two, we'll buy like this really expensive home that we'll do. I would buy more. It's just hard to get really good deals on them. And then those, obviously we have like a special designer come in and they know that particular area market. And then we just go with what they say, but we have all our own. Every single home we do looks the same as far as the interior and exterior and paint colors and tiles and all that's LVPs. Yeah. Yeah. I got, I got crushed in the high end here when the market, when the interest rates turned and the interest rates turned, I was sitting on,

Eight and a half, nine million retail. Yeah. Through about five houses. Right, right, right, right. What year? This is 10 months ago. Oh, okay. This is when the market, when the interest rate changed, we were sitting on that much inventory. Yeah. We're sitting on five houses worth about eight, nine million bucks. And I did good on one. So the one in Sedona, we did good on. Yeah. Seven figure went on that house, but the rest of them, we got murdered on here. So I don't, I don't do like too many. Like it would be really hard for me to get murdered because I'm,

My average home is like a home that like is a starter type home that most people will buy. I don't do too many expensive. I do one expensive home at a time. Usually once in a while, two back when the market was a little bit better, but like, I'm going to be really safe on those. Yeah, dude, I'm the first person that that was dumb to take that kind of exposure. We just, it just,

We just had a lot of stuff kind of fall into our lap at one time. And it was like, we can do this and we can do a good job. And we made some money on, on, on the first couple and everything was going good. It's like, let's buy some more. And then the interest rates turn on. But yeah, you're right. I love like Chris Crone says, you know, Oh, he won't buy anything over the median price because he never gets caught holding cards. Right. Right. And fuck, that's good. You know, it's good. Yeah. And I do the other thing I do a lot of, so every single home that I buy that I fix and flip, I pay cash for every single one. I use my own cash for everything.

Um, but I do buy a lot of, uh, creative deals. I buy a lot of owner finance and subject to deals. And that's how I mainly build up the portfolio that I have, you know, on top of what I already have. So I, I own like, you know, a little bit over 200 and maybe 20 properties or so that's like locations. Some of them are duplexes or quads or temps, but actual, like just, um, you know, addresses 220 or so. And, um,

The way I grow those right now is Bailey Mason, you know, just by buying owner finance and subject to them. So every single month I'm probably buying about one a week that, that a subject to our owner finance. So what's your buy box there? I mean, obviously you got, I just need the cashflow as longterm rental. What's your minimum cashflow?

There's no minimum as long as so there's six things I look at and I look at them all on a scale. And if one's really bad and the other ones just have to be really good. So I cashflow is obviously the most important. I want the cashflow, but I like for them to cashflow like 300 bucks.

But some I have cash flow a lot more, some are break even. I even have some that are negative. The reason why I buy some negative ones are because I'm buying it for way less than it's worth so I could still sell it. Or maybe the interest rate is zero. I have a lot of 0% interest. So I don't care if it doesn't cash flow. I'm building so much equity and the principal pay down is so much every month. It doesn't matter. So there's different things like that I look at. There's six things, right? So the interest rate's important.

the, the amount that I'm paying for it, like compared to what it's worth is important. The cashflow, the balloon, if there's a balloon on it. So when I buy subject to, there's really never a balloon, but when I buy owner finances, I've 10 year. Yeah. It depends. You know, some people want sooner, some people want longer. So the balloons, the balloons are really important. I care about how much rehab is needed. When I buy these buy and holds, I prefer them to be as fixed up as possible because for a lot of reasons, obviously, but yeah,

And then the last thing is how much money is it going to cost me to buy this? Like my entry fees. So that, am I having to put down 10%, 5%, 20%? So,

All six of those things I just said kind of work hand in hand. If I'm buying it at a very low LTV, then I don't mind paying a really high entry fee or I don't mind, you know, maybe not cash flowing. But if I'm paying all the money, I'm paying 100% what it's worth. I need to make a cash flow or I need to have a really good interest rate or there can't be a balloon, you know, the balloon has to be longer. So all these things kind of play. So there's not like one particular thing, but I look at them all through.

all six together. - What's your long-term rental strategy? Do you have Section 8 mixed in then? - I have some Section 8s mixed in, but Section 8 works really well in like lower income areas. If you're in like a medium or lower than medium income area, then Section 8 works really well. But if you're in like a medium or higher, I don't think Section 8 is that great in those.

The reason why Section 8 works so well is because you can buy such cheap homes and you can get like 2% rent. But everyone I know that makes a lot of money and it does that. They're buying like these homes, they're paying 60, 70,000, they're renting it for 1400, you know? So you can't do that in the nicer areas. But I like Section 8 because you know the money's coming.

There are some, you know, bad stories I have, but overall it's fine. I like it. Yeah. But I, I love, I love section eight, but I think it's great. No, no. Section eight is really good if you do it correctly. Yeah. If you do it correctly and you buy the right types of homes. Well, yeah. If you buy the wrong types of homes. And you put the right stuff in them. A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. I am just people that made a fortune on it. I know a lot of people that teach courses on how to, how to make a billion dollars doing section eight, but a lot of people just think, Oh, section eight is great. So they could do it with it. You got to do it right. Like,

It doesn't matter any single business out there or anything that anyone's doing really good out there. There's a way to fuck it up and do horrible. It doesn't matter. You could be in the best thing, but if you don't do it right, there's people that lose money and everything. There's people that make it. And even the worst things where you think is horrible, there's the best people in that industry are going to make a lot of money. So it's like a section eight. Good. Yeah. If you know what you're doing, it's great. If you do it all wrong. Yeah. You could lose. Well, let's talk about this. Cause man, that's a big portfolio to have 220 doors is a big portfolio. Yeah.

And when COVID hit back in 2020, did you have a fear that like, oh shit, I got 220 doors. People are gonna stop paying. No, not really. So I own a good bit of it free and clear. So I don't even have mortgage payments on a lot of it. But I just have, people have to live that. I mean, most counties, you could kick people out pretty fast. In COVID, it was a lot harder. But

But there are like three counties in Georgia, in Atlanta, that are really tough. If people don't pay, they're like super, super, like they want them to stay as long as possible, even if they're not paying. So those counties I get a little bit worried on. So those, you know, I try to not buy as much. Those three counties that are really bad in Atlanta. But...

All the other counties, if someone doesn't pay, I mean, that's stealing. They just kick them right out. You go to the judge, you go to the court, they kick them right out. It's like, I don't understand how someone could just stay for a year and not pay. How is that legal? Like if someone's hungry, can they go to the grocery store and steal? Apparently, yes. In California, you can do that. Not in the rest of America. From what I see on the interweb, I guess in California, that is legal. You can do that. That's a little crazy, but whatever. That's why I'm not in California. It's nuts. So,

Let's talk about private money lending because you obviously put your own money to work. And I've obviously, so here's the thing, you have three other partners on this.

And the private money, no. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about your houses. Oh, yeah. Because I was going to say. So on my fix and flips. On your fix and flips, right? Because like an agent here came to me a couple weeks ago and was talking about a deal he just did. And he was like, yeah, you know, I took this house down. It's a million bucks. We're going to, you know, do this and it's going to be worth this. And I said, okay, cool. And I said, what's the deal structure? And he goes, well, the guy that's doing the work is.

he's going to do it, you know, at cost plus 10, I can see everything. And then we're going to split the money. I go, okay, cool. He goes, yeah, I put the down payment down and I love her. I go, okay, cool. What did you charge for your money? And he went, what

What are you talking about? And he goes, well, no, I took the deal. And I go, whoa, if you would have borrowed the money, would you, he have still done the deal? And he's like, yes. I'm like, then there's gotta be a cost to your money, dude. Like you gotta, you gotta build some of that. So if you said, you said a lot of the stuff you own free and clear, you're bringing your own money to the table. You charge money, you charge your partner's cost for that money or no?

Well, we'll keep in mind on the buying holds. I pretty much own all that. Most of the, right. But the flips you're financing too. I'm financing, but my partner's put in an equal share. Okay. So you are levering the fix and flips? No. So let's say it's me and two other people. Let's just say we all own a third each.

If we buy something for a million dollars, we're all putting in $333,000 of our own money. Okay. So everybody's just putting their own money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, got it. Luckily, my partners have all done good over the years. I've done lots of stuff with them. We all have plenty of money. Okay, got it. It's not like, yeah. But if they needed to borrow the money, you're 100% right. I would charge them. Okay, got it. Okay, cool. Got it. Let's go back to private money lending. Yeah. So...

obviously you're lending on your own deals. So when did you start lending on other deals? And let's talk about that. - Yeah, I mean, to some degree I've done it for over a couple of decades. I've loaned some people here and there, but like one-off stuff. I started making it like a much bigger business probably like five years ago, where I started loaning more people. And then probably over the last three years, I've got where I have over a hundred and some people that I'm loaning money out to at all times.

I actually use probably half my own money and half of investors money. So starting, I would say last year, about a year ago, did you, did you have a right to fund? I have, I do have a fund. Yeah. Okay.

So I have a fund, but I do it a couple different ways. So I have people that put money in the fund and then I actually have people that go directly on the security deeds or deeds of trust. And that's how they're protected. So I do it both ways. It works out really well.

So right now I have, you know, probably close to like $20 million out in loans and, you know, probably maybe 35, 40% is mine now. And the rest is, is just investors. And what, what deal structures are you looking for to loan money into? I only loan for fix and flips in the Atlanta market. First position. Yeah. 90, 95% first position. I do have some second position, but it's like,

You know, that's not what I'm really looking for. Yeah, gap funding is tough. There's some second position that makes sense, so I'll do them. But yeah, first position loans, really Georgia in particular, but- Is it time to reimagine your future?

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I loan basically up to what I pay for it. So if I, there's nothing in Atlanta I won't buy. Like there's not a property that I won't buy. It's just, if they screw it up, you take it over and take it over. So out of thousands of loans I've done, I've had to start the foreclosure process and,

I don't know, maybe like 15, 20 times. And I've only had the foreclosed on two. So there's only two properties so far that I've actually taken back that I've, I've sold at the foreclosure auction, but I made more money on them. As soon as they sold, I ended up buying them, um, uh, myself and just made an extra 25,000 on each one. I have had where I've, uh,

I started a foreclosure process and people were like, look, I don't want to get foreclosed on. Let me just give you the deed. And I made more money on those and stuff like that. So, you know, I don't like doing that because I'd rather just keep getting the interest, but I know I'm going to make more money. Unless the market just drops in half overnight, but I might have, you know, stuff in place in case that happens. What are your standard terms you're lending on right now? So I am lending at one and a half percent a month. So for every a hundred thousand, I loan you, someone's paying me 1500 a month. They pay me monthly interest every month.

And then my investors, I'm paying like 10, 12% a year. So let's just say I'm paying them 12%. So I'm paying for every a hundred thousand, I'm paying my investors a thousand bucks and then I'm charging 1500. So I'm making 500 bucks on every a hundred thousand. Any points up front? Yeah. I charge a half a point.

And that's just because I go inspected and do a few things. That's super fair. Yeah. So a lot of people are like, well, my hard money lenders only charge me 1% a month. I'm like, all right, cool. But you're paying three points up front. And if you want, I'll charge you three points up front and charge you 1% a month too. I will do that also. But everyone ends up paying more that way because most people, most people are out of the deal in six months or less. And if you're paying three points up front at 1% a month,

you end up paying more money, especially if you get appraisal fees and origination fees. That's super, that's super fair, dude. I mean, we just had a guy come to us for 2 million. We're going to charge him two points and 15% for 16 months. Yeah. And that's, that's probably similar to what I'm doing. Yeah. If you, you know,

More points, less interest. I mean, it all comes at one half dozen the other. So yeah, that's the type of thing I do. But I do it all in Atlanta. I only do Georgia. The reason why I picked Georgia, first of all, I'm there. I know the market really well. But also Georgia has like the most friendly laws in the country. So it takes 30 days before close in Georgia. You just have to put the ad up in the local newspaper. I think there's 159 counties in Georgia. Every county has their own newspaper. You have to put the

that you're going to foreclose in there for 30 days. And then the first Tuesday of the next month after those 30 days, you can foreclose. So if you time it right, it can be 31 days and you can foreclose. If you time it wrong, it could be 60 days. But between 30 and 60 days, you can get any single property off the books. And then there's something called usury laws, which is how much you're allowed to charge people. So it's not predatory lending. And Georgia, it's 60%.

So 60. Yeah. Six zero. Yeah. So I only charged like 18, 24 on the really high side. So I'm, I'm super low. Yeah. That's way under it. But there's a lot of States that are like 18%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of States that are 20, 40. There's a few States that have no user laws. You charge wherever you want. Yeah. But, um, so just Georgia works out really well. You could, I could charge, I'm never going to charge more than the usury. The only time I charge 60% is for late fees for late fees. I do charge 5% a month. Um, but,

you know, besides that, you know, most people aren't late if they are, you know, it's very little people don't want to be late. Cause I'm, I'm loaning them an amount that they have so much equity.

that they would be stupid to let me take the property over. Yeah. Well, you know, it's like I always, one of my favorite things, equity doesn't go to foreclosure. Yeah, exactly. It really doesn't. It just doesn't. Very rarely. In no case, because somebody's going to do something to get that done. People that have no idea what they're doing, potentially. Like homeowners that live there, they have no idea what they're doing, potentially. Not someone that's in the industry, you know? Oh, see, I disagree with that. I think a homeowner that doesn't know what they're doing, if there's equity and it's on the foreclosure log, there's 30 people knocking on their door. Yes.

are 30 people. You're a hundred percent right about that. That's how we buy so many good deals. But, but I'll tell you, I've seen a lot of these people be so stubborn where they just let the house go. You've seen that too. You've had to have seen this. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know that I've ever seen really unless somebody died and the kids just don't know what the hell's going on, which that happens too. That happens. I mean, there are people, there are people that are so stubborn. It's

It's so prideful. Like you're like, look, let me help you out. Let me give you some money. They're just like, no, no, no. They just want, they don't want to listen to you because they think you're, you know, I don't know. They think they're too good for you. Part of the machine. Yeah. So there's people like that, you know, they're idiots, but I see that. To part of the machine. So you mentioned that you've got other people that have come to you. So you teach people how to raise private money. Oh, totally. Yeah. So there's so many people that asked me how to do it that I started doing these masterminds about a year ago. And I, these particular masterminds, I do probably three a year. Yeah.

And probably like 100 people that come. And I teach from A to Z. It's two full days that I teach everything.

every single thing about how to find people that need to borrow money, how to find people that have money that want to put in it, how to underwrite deals, how to do all the paperwork to where you're safe, what you need to file, what type of deed of trust you need, and promissory notes, title insurance, all these different things. Anyhow, it's two days of just going through and then a lot of underwriting to making sure that people know how to underwrite a deal and make sure that they're loaning the right amount and not loaning too much. Because you can do everything right, but if you loan somebody more than it's worth,

You're never going to get paid. Yeah. Yeah. Not a problem. So, I mean, that's so interesting because a lot of people, but there's some, there's probably thinking, Oh yeah, private money lending. I don't have millions of dollars to lend. You don't have to. No. So I have people that do this that I've taught that have millions and millions and millions of dollars out. It's none of their own money. Zero. They're just, they're just making a fee for basically connecting the dots for people. That's all it is.

Bringing the world together, being a connector of people. That's what it is. Exactly. And I do it in a way that everyone's safe. Everyone pays me the monthly interest and I pay everyone monthly interest. So every single investor that I've had for years now, years and years and years now, they get every single month before the first of the month, they get a wire or some people want a Zelle or whatever. But either a wire or a Zelle, I think everybody gets every single month. I love that, dude. That's awesome. Dude, Abraham, you are killing it, my man. You are balling out in ways that...

you know, for, for a man of your age, which is really surprising that you still are, have the cognitive ability to do all these things is shocking to me, but, but yeah, there you go.

He's going to choke me out now. No, we're not choking him out. No, I'm just kidding. No, that'd be fun. That'd be a good ending. Dude, no, it would not be a good ending. It'd be a permanent ending to this show. It'd be an absolute permanent ending. Well, dude, look, man, you're... Dude, if they want to find more of you, how do they find you? Where do they connect with you? I mean, so I have a YouTube channel. You can go to Abraham Gray, G-R-A-Y, and check stuff out there. Obviously, follow me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all these places.

And reach out to me. I answer everyone's message. If you have deals you want me to buy or loan on or you're looking for stuff, yeah, hit me up. I'll give you my email address, abraham at mmatl.com. Send me whatever you want. Send me the deals. Send me the deals and we'll talk. I answer, I'm pretty fast on my emails. I'm pretty fast on answering all my messages. I love it. I love it, dude. Listen, if you took nothing else away from this today, like nothing else away, take this.

This is a dude that really kind of raised himself from eight years old on. And look at what he's become. Fuck your excuses, man. You don't have any. Go out and get it. See you next time.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

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