Abraham Gray

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Introduction to Abraham Gray's Journey

[0:00] Hey everyone, welcome back to Attractions Insights. I'm your host Dimmitri Mihilof, founder of Attractions

[0:07] Marketing Pros and America's Best Attractions Road Show. On today's episode, we are talking with a true

[0:12] powerhouse in the business and entertainment world, Abraham Greg. Abraham has built and sold more than 400

[0:21] businesses, had a 100 million exit and today owns companies spinning

[0:26] entertainment, residential, commercial and private lending. Abraham also speaker and mentor. He known for helping

[0:34] entrepreneurs scale smart, create systems and think on a much bigger

[0:39] level. So let's dive right in. So Abraham, welcome. Yeah, good to good to see you. Yeah,

[0:44] it's been it's been a little bit since we spoke last time. I'm so happy to have you here as we starting uh for people

[0:51] who doesn't know you and doesn't know your story. Can you tell us how did you start your business journey at age of

[0:58] 15? Yeah. So when I was 15, I started my first business which was selling sports

[1:04] cards. So I collected them throughout my younger years and I turned it into my first business. I was really into

[1:10] sports. I really knew my cards. I knew what everything was worth. I started going to shows and buying stuff and

[1:15] selling stuff and then eventually ended up with my own booth, ended up with my own stores and from there just went from

[1:21] one business to another. And of course in the beginning I was always into fad stuff. So stuff that was very hot for

[1:28] short periods of time. So maybe for like a year to like three, four, five years. And uh eventually got into stuff that

[1:34] was just good all the time. So now I do a little bit of fat stuff, but mostly I do a lot of stuff that just stays around

[1:40] for for a long time. What kind of mindset or influences like helped you shape the entrepreneur you've become in?

[1:47] I always had to listen to people and do everything that people told me to do, which I don't like to listen to people. So, my background is my parents got, you

[1:54] know, divorced when I was a baby. I lived with my mom for a little while, then moved to my dad. But, ever since I was like 11, 12, I I moved from like

[2:01] foster family to foster family to boarding schools and then more foster families. And I just didn't really have

[2:07] control of anything because I had to do whatever they said. I didn't have any power because I didn't have any money. And once I started selling cards, I

[2:14] started having money. I was able to do more things. I didn't have to listen to people as much. And that was just kind of something that that drove me to to do

[2:20] more and make more money and be able to uh to do whatever I wanted. So, I like freedom the most that more than

[2:26] anything. And the more money I was making, the more freedom I had because I could do what I want. So, that's kind of

[2:32] what drove me. And from there, you know, I just kept growing into more businesses. And then of course in my

[2:37] early 20s I got into real estate. Started buying tons of real estate. I bought thousands of properties. I still

[2:42] own like you know over 200 and something rentals. But I I keep buying a couple hundred properties every year that I'm

[2:48] fix and flipping. Adding a few more to my rental portfolio. And now now it's just fun. You now it's just like I love

[2:53] talking to people, negotiating, willing and dealing. So it it's it's just like more of a fun thing.

[2:58] So I know that you made your first million when you were 20 years old. Tell

[3:04] me this early success. How did it shape and what did you learn that guide you

[3:09] today? Yeah. So, obviously when I first started doing stuff, I was like, "Oh man, it's like impossible to be a millionaire and

Lessons from Early Success

[3:16] impossible to make all this money is hard." And then once I started making a little bit of money, the next year I

[3:21] made a little bit more. Then I made more. And then I I just saw it's not really that hard. You just got to be

[3:26] very aggressive. You got to be first to everything. You've got to get people to really like you. And you've got to know your stuff. you got whatever you're

[3:32] doing, you have to know that industry. So I that's all I did. I just focused 247 on learning the industry that I was

[3:39] in at the time to be better than anyone else. I made sure that I was first to see everything, first to post everything, first to do all that. And

[3:45] before you knew it, you know, I went from making 50,000 a year to a hundred to a few hundred to, you know, closer to

[3:51] a million. And I was able to save a million dollars before I was 20. By the time I was 19, like right before I

[3:57] turned 20, I had a million dollars in my bank account, which was kind of cool. This is back, you know, a long time ago,

[4:02] back in the 90s. And yeah, from then on, I was just like, look, anyone could do it. You just got to take my philosophy

[4:08] of what I did and you could do it toward any business and you could grow businesses. And then eventually, you

[4:13] have to to grow bigger than that. You have to um, you know, have employees, you have to um have processes and stuff

[4:20] like that because the first four or five years I was in business, I just did everything myself. And then uh eventually as I grew I I started having

[4:27] employees and then managers and then all kinds of staff and processes and and all that. So but I use the same principles

[4:33] just with more people. It's so interesting to hear your story. Uh because like a lot of people complain

[4:40] here that it's not equal opportunities. Can you tell me from your perspective?

[4:45] Do you think United States is definitely country where everyone have equal opportunities or even if it's not equal

[4:52] like you mentioned your your parents divorced and you were traveling from foster home to foster home but do you

[4:59] still feel that if you really try and you can be successful

[5:05] percent I I'll tell you that that I I I am around tons of people that want to do good and I tr I help a lot of people and

[5:11] I train a lot of people and a lot of the people that are very aggressive and that really are not lazy and care and want to

[5:16] do it and put all their effort into it do very good. But I could tell you that 90% of the people are just lazy. They,

[5:23] you know, I could teach them stuff or someone else could teach them something and you could know it, but you got to apply and you got to do it. Most people

[5:30] just when it comes to applying it and putting all your effort into it and going 100% that people just don't want

[5:35] to do it. It it it's crazy, but I see it over and over and over again and then they complain that it's not equal or

[5:42] whatever, but no, it's because you didn't put 100% into it. Think about all the stuff you put 100% into and and the

[5:48] results you get and think about all the stuff you put less than 100% into and the results you get. If you don't put 100% into something, when I say 100%,

[5:55] like when I was doing well and started and all that, I did I put 100% into it. I didn't go out. I didn't go out with

[6:01] friends that much, you know, once in a while. I didn't like hang out. I didn't spend money on other things. I I put my

[6:06] money back in the business. I try to learn and be better than everybody else. I would study the cards. I would study

[6:12] what stuff goes for. I would study. So like when people brought me stuff, I didn't have to look it up. I I just knew what everything was. But that was 100%.

[6:18] I spent all my time doing that. If you don't spend all your time on that, you're not going to be as good as somebody that doesn't spend all their

[6:23] time. You look at any athlete, anyone, you know, that's great. You you could see what they do on the off days. I

[6:29] mean, they're practicing, they're shooting hoops, they're throwing balls. I mean, they're they're putting 100% into it. Those are the people that are

[6:34] best. So, it's the same thing in business. If you um if you know everything, but you don't actually put 100% into it and you have distractions,

[6:41] distractions could be anything. And they don't have to necessarily be bad distractions, but like a lot of people are like, "Oh, you know, my family is

[6:46] more important than me or my kids are more important than me or my, you know, religion or my this or my that." So now

[6:52] what they do is they don't put all their time into growing their business. They put 30% into their business, 30% into

[6:58] their family, 30% into their church, 20% into whatever it is. And that's not

[7:03] necessarily a bad thing. Like everyone doesn't have to put 100% into growing their business and being super successful. But the people that are the

[7:09] most successful in business are the ones that do that. You know what I mean? Like if family is more important to you, there's nothing wrong with that. But if

[7:16] religion is more important to you or whatever it is that's more important to you, there's nothing wrong with that. But you're taking away from growing

[7:21] something else. So you're just going to be a little bit behind other people that put 100% if you're only putting 50 or 60

[7:27] or 70 or whatever it is. So that that's just kind of what I see. I see people having other priorities instead of just

[7:33] making money. And a lot of the priorities they have are good priorities. They're good priorities to have, but you can't do those other

[7:39] priorities and be as successful as somebody else that puts 100% into growing their business. Nice. I like that. Now let me ask you

Overcoming Mental Barriers

[7:46] also another question which a lot of times comes up like I'm I'm looking online and people complaining you know

[7:52] I'm not successful because of let's say my background or I'm not successful because of my skin color or I'm not

[7:58] successful because of some some other limitations I have. Do do you believe that again that it's really all in your

[8:06] mind? It nothing else stops you. Yeah. No, it's 100% in your mind. So it doesn't matter what skin color you are,

[8:11] what religion, what it doesn't matter guy, girl, whatever you are. It doesn't matter because every single type of

[8:17] thing out there, there are positives for being white, there's positives for being black, there's positives for being a

[8:22] female, there's like there's some things that no matter who you are, you have an advantage over other people on. So, you

[8:27] just got to figure out what the advantages are you have over other people and use it. There's plenty of people that are successful no matter who

[8:33] you are. It's just they knew how to use that to to be successful. So, that's just a stupid excuse. That's that's

[8:38] craziness. It doesn't really matter. Everyone is equal 100%. you just it as

[8:44] long as you do the right things and do the same things other people are going to do, you're you're going to be as successful as somebody else. I'll tell

[8:50] you the biggest problem with people. This is the biggest problem. The biggest problem is most people want instant gratification. That that's the problem.

[8:56] And I'm guilty. Everyone's guilty with certain aspects, right? You don't like put all your effort in and bust your ass

[9:02] and get like make money like that first day or that first month or that first year. Sometimes sometimes it takes years

[9:07] to build up, right? So people would rather not put all their energy into something because they don't see the

[9:14] progress or they don't see the the achievements for a long time down the road road. So that's very hard for

[9:20] people. And it's the same thing with people that are overweight and fat, right? So I'm I'm overweight. I was really overweight for a while. And the

[9:26] reason why is because instant gratification. I loved eating ice cream. I loved eating cake. I knew that that

[9:31] wasn't good for me. I knew that I shouldn't eat as much. I knew I shouldn't be eating a pizza every day and all that stuff. But man, that was

[9:37] instant gratification. Then that tasted so good. I loved it. It made me so happy right now. Right? So what you've got to

[9:44] do is you've got to not be happy right now, not eat all that stuff, you know, get get on a better diet, you know, work

[9:49] out better. And then down the road, five, 10 years from now, you're going to be way more healthy. You're not going to be fat. You're not going to be going to

[9:54] the doctor as much. That's very hard. That's very hard for people, right? That's very hard for me. I couldn't do it for a long time. I wanted that

[10:01] instant gratification. Luckily for me with business and making money, the instant gratification wasn't that

[10:07] important. I didn't have to like buy a brand new car. I didn't have to buy the best clothes. I didn't have to buy the nicest jewel. I didn't have to look like

[10:12] really fancy. I would just keep in reinvesting my money and learning. And then I knew down the road, 5, 10 years,

[10:19] whatever it is, I'm going to be super, you know, super successful, have plenty of money, and I have to worry about it. But it's very hard at the moment to know

[10:25] and see, you know, 10 years from now that if you do the right thing now, you're going to do it. And it's the same

[10:30] thing with eating. It's the same thing with anything else. Anything that you do in life, people do the wrong thing because instant gratification. Why are

[10:37] there so many people in jail that are criminals? Because you steal something from someone, you have a lot of money right now. It's just instant

[10:43] gratification. They don't they they don't think about, okay, in a few years from now when I get caught, I'm going to be in jail the rest of my life. You

[10:49] know, it's that instant gratification. And again, you can use that for any aspect of life. That's how people

[10:54] mentality are and that's how people are. It's the same thing with with I'm using things that people can relate to the most, weight and money, because those

[11:01] are the most things, but it really is with with everything. So, Abraham, you've operated everything from like we buy gold stores to escape

Spotting Winning Business Opportunities

[11:08] rooms, extra venues, real estate, lending. What's your formula for spotting a winning business opportunity?

[11:14] Yeah. So, it's very simple. You copy other people that are doing good. That that's really what it is. You got to

[11:20] copy people. So, I I look to see what other businesses are doing good and are

[11:26] brand new and just starting and I research it and I go and I I go talk to

[11:31] the owners or I go talk to the employees and I see something that I think could be really good and I I bring it to my

[11:36] own cities and I bring it all over the country. So, most of the stuff that I I hit that did the best is stuff that did

[11:42] exist somewhere and I basically just copied the idea and changed it a little bit or maybe just took the same idea and

[11:47] it just wasn't around that much yet. So being first is really important. If you have a really good business, usually the

[11:53] people that do the best in their business are are first. Like once you're like there's 10 people before you, you don't do as good. You know, people don't

[11:59] remember you or or whatever. But I find like the first people in other cities, other states, other countries that do

[12:05] something that it looks like they're very successful at and I just copy it and and bring it here. Some of it's I

[12:11] have my own ideas I put into it. But really, you you should always you should always find what other people are

[12:17] successful at and just figure out a better way to do it. Do exactly like what they're doing and just figure out a better way so you can even do better

[12:22] than them. That that's pretty much that's why you learn from so that's why I learn from so many people. You know, there's so many different groups I join

[12:29] because they're already successful at it. Like I want to learn from them and copy them. That's what you're supposed to do. if you have to figure everything

[12:34] out from the beginning. It's just it's uh it takes a lot longer and it costs a lot more money and the instant

[12:40] gratification is is not there. So, you've got to um you've got to copy people and you you try to do it in the

[12:46] right way. Remember you were saying the story how you started doing business with Beanie Babies. Can you share this story because

[12:52] it's very inspiring. Yes. Beanie Babies was my second business really after after sports cards. And back in 1997, I was selling

[12:59] sports cards. And people, these like mothers that were stay at home home moms

[13:06] started setting up at these baseball card shows with Beanie Babies. And I started making fun of them at first. I was like, why are they at baseball card

[13:11] shows selling Beanie Babies? That's crazy. And then over the the few months that I saw them there, every week they

[13:17] would get busier and busier. They have more people at their table and their booths at some point than I had on my baseball cards. And I was like, "What in

[13:22] the world?" So, I would go hang out with them. I'd be like, "What is this crap? And how why are people buying it? How do you get it? What are you selling it for?

[13:28] What are you making on it?" And I would just talk to them and and I learned about it and I got into it. So, I

[13:33] started, you know, going to all the stores where they used to go buy it from. And I used to make connections with some of the owners, a lot of the employees. I started buying the the

[13:40] Beanie Babies and started selling them. And I figured out even better ways to sell them and better ways to buy them and ways to buy bigger quantity, ways to

[13:46] sell bigger quantity. But again, it was copying. I I saw other people that are doing doing it very well, successfully.

[13:52] I copied them, but eventually I just figured out better ways to do it and I surpassed everyone that that did it. I

[13:58] was one of the biggest Beanie Baby dealers in the country for for many years. But that's how I got into it. And

[14:03] that's really how I got into just about everything to some degree. I copied something or somebody of some aspect of

[14:09] everything I did to some degree. You know, some stuff I came up with most of it, but I still had an idea from other people.

[14:15] How do you decide? Okay, so you copied somebody, you started doing something. How do you decide when, okay, I want to

[14:21] scale it? So, not just try it, but I see it works and I want to scale it. Yeah. Or when it's better to sell it.

Scaling Business Ventures

[14:28] Yeah. No, 100%. You got to figure out how much money you're willing to risk on this particular venture, right? So,

[14:34] figure out like, you know, put some numbers down. Okay, this is the most that I think I can make if I do it

[14:39] great. This is the most I could lose if things don't go right. This is how much I need to invest to be able to make this

[14:44] or be able to make that. And you you just kind of have to put it all in a spreadsheet or kind of in your head and

[14:49] figure out how much are you willing to risk and you know what the what the riskreward is. It's all a riskreward thing. So I have a spreadsheet that

[14:56] actually has like 20 different businesses on that I'm always looking at. And I figure out look how much money is it going to cost to do it. If it goes

[15:02] right how much can I make? If it goes wrong, how much can I lose? And then I have about between five and 10

[15:07] categories that I I rank them all. And based based on the highest ranking, those are the ones I'm going to try first. then those are the ones and and

[15:13] also it's based on how much other stuff I have going on right now. If I if I'm really busy, have a ton of things going on, I don't might not have as much time

[15:19] to start a bunch of new stuff, but if a lot of the things I'm doing kind of runs itself or I'm not super busy with it, I

[15:24] could try more things. So time and money and potential are a lot of the things. And then scalability. If um if I could

[15:32] try something that could be scalable into crazy amounts of locations, then those are the things I'm going to try first because if it does hit, I could

[15:39] really make a home run on it because I could scale it. But if it's something that's not super scalable, I might not try those as much or I might not sink as

[15:45] much money into them unless I'm very very confident. Now, if uh if it's something that's kind of newerish where

[15:51] not many people have done it, you just got to be a little bit more careful. But if it's something that a lot of people are doing and a lot of cities, a lot of states, you just go travel and meet

[15:58] everyone and kind of see how good, how bad are people doing to where what's the

[16:03] best and worst case scenario and how much money should I put into it to make that much money. That's pretty much what

[16:08] goes into everything. So you mentioned okay you rank the businesses by scalability by how much it going to cost

Criteria for Business Evaluation

[16:14] you to open. What what's other few criterias? Yeah. How how many people are doing it

[16:19] right now? How how am I am I like first? Am I second? Am I third? Am I fourth?

[16:25] How many people are doing it before me? How many what countries? What cities? What states are in now? I look a lot on

[16:31] different like websites of people that have stuff to see how busy they are. how I also look at their uh their reviews to

[16:37] see do people really like this, right? How how how good are the reviews? Do they have like a ton of five star reviews or not many? Um they have some

[16:44] bad reviews. So I I look at all that and then of course uh I look at the time it takes how much time will it take me to

[16:50] to try this? Well, you know, can I do this within a a month, a year, a week,

[16:56] or is this going to take me, you know, tons of people, plenty of partners, plenty of employees, and it's going to

[17:01] take me a lot longer to do? So a lot of that comes into play. And um I could share with you later, but I have I have a checklist of of a lot of things.

[17:07] No, no. Yeah, I I have it through one of your trainings. I think you were sharing it, so I remember it. Yeah, I've added stuff to it since then.

[17:13] But these are the things that are important because once you figure all that out, you could see what what makes

[17:18] sense what what makes sense to do. But those are the types of things that you need to look for. Those are the most important things. Mhm. So let's uh discuss this because on

[17:26] on real example, right? the time when we met with you, we met through escape rooms and I remember that you mentioned

[17:32] that when I opened my first escape room in Atlanta, you came and scouted with your family and this is was part of your

[17:39] strategy to figure out if it works to figure out how busy we are. Right. So share a little bit more about what was

Scouting Competitors and Market Research

[17:46] your my thought process. Again, I just try to copy people and try to make it a little bit different. Right? So, anyone that does anything, if

[17:52] they don't look at other competitors or I, you know, there might not even be competitors, they could be friendly, you know, whatever, but anyone that's

[17:58] already in the industry, if you don't go scout out and and at least look at it and see what the what your competition

[18:04] is going to be like, where they're located, how they run their operations, how many employees you need, how, you

[18:09] know, how stuff needs to be built out, you're an idiot. Like, you're you're not going to do as good. It's it's just intel, right? Like, you know, our

[18:15] military, like we have intel, we have people that spy, we have people that do stuff. That's how you learn. That's how you get better at it. That's how you you

[18:20] save a lot of time. I was one of the first escape rooms in in in Atlanta. I think I was like the fifth one. You you

[18:26] were probably like the second or third. There was Marty had I think was the first one. It was like uh you know the

[18:31] zombie thing and it was kind of a little bit different than ours, but that was like the first one. And then there was

[18:36] like maybe one and and maybe you were two or three and then I was like one or two after you. Um there weren't many to

[18:43] look at. I remember looking on Facebook and being like, "Oh man, something called an escape room." This was

[18:48] actually somebody had it in another state. It's the first time I heard about it and I'm like, "Man, this is kind of interesting. What is this, you know,

[18:53] thing?" And I looked as an entertainment. I like, "Wow, this is kind of cool." So, I flew over there. I went through it. I was like, "Man, this is a pretty cool concept. Who else has

[19:00] this?" And I saw at the time there were three in Atlanta. You were one of the three. And I went to I went to all of

[19:06] them, of course. And I checked them out. It was kind of a fun concept. It was cool. I could see how people could

[19:11] really like it. Didn't really exist, you know. It was sort of like a video game that what you were in the game. So it

[19:17] was really cool and after I saw it and I saw the number. So what I did was I went to every single person in the country

[19:23] that I was able to find have has an escape room and I went into their booking software. It was Bookia or whatever it was and I looked to see how

[19:29] many bookings they had every single day every single week for the past, you know, for like I I think I researched it

[19:35] for like two three months and I was like holy [ __ ] these people are charging 25 or 30 some dollars an hour. Um they have

[19:43] hundreds of bookings every weekend or whatever it was. cuz I'm like, man, there's a lot of money. Like, they they don't need so much staff. Once you build

[19:49] it out, it's built out. I didn't realize in the beginning once you build it out, that [ __ ] breaks like forever and you have to make it solid. Over over years,

[19:55] I learned how strong you have to make stuff. But, but yeah, it was just like I saw how much money you can make and I

[20:01] was like, it doesn't seem like it would cost that much to do it. So, that's how I got into it. And I literally flew to I

[20:07] flew to a friend of mine and I was like, man, this is what we got to do. We opened actually the first one in another

[20:12] state in New Jersey. That was the first one. And right after he opened his, I opened mine. And then before you knew it, we had 16 locations um all all over

[20:19] in like five or six states. And yeah, we were we're killing it in the beginning. They were doing really well. And the way

[20:25] that I knew they were going to do well is by looking at everyone's booking software. I literally paid my assistant

[20:30] to every single day you mark in an Excel spreadsheet how many bookings like maybe 30 different

[20:37] escape escape rooms across the country, including all the ones in Atlanta were doing. And I knew exactly it. I knew

[20:42] probably more how many bookings you had than you knew because I was every day I would I would track it and I would see

[20:48] like how how many bookings everybody had. I was like, man, there's not many that aren't doing good and the ones that are doing good are killing it. It's like

[20:54] it's it's insane not to try it. So that's that's how I got into escape rooms and it it was literally if people

[21:00] didn't have booking, you know, on book or whatever you you guys use for for escape rooms, you could see everyone's

[21:06] booking, which is crazy. Yep. Yep. Yep. I'm sure there's a way to block it, but no one does. You could see It's hard to

Leveraging Groupon for Business Growth

[21:12] block it. I I like it to show up because then you can see how busy you are. If you're busy, it shows like, "Oh man, they are

[21:18] busy. I better book." So, I like it to show it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it almost has to show it because when you when you

[21:25] want to go book, it's going to show you how many spots you have. It has to or else you can't book. So, pretty much

[21:30] every escape room you could see how you could do the same thing with movie theaters. You do the same thing with ax throwing. anything that you have your

[21:37] booking time. You could go on to any single type of booking platform for any type of any type of venue and see how

[21:44] many tickets they have sold, how many tickets they have left. So, you can do that for for really anything because they have to show you because you have

[21:51] to know how many you can buy and what times are what times and dates are available. This is a big thing I used to do. I would go on to Groupon and I would

[21:58] literally figure out how many bookings you're selling on Groupon every single week. So I would track on Groupon it'll

[22:04] say 100 sold, 500 sold, thousand sold. So every single week my assistant would

[22:10] write down every single escape room how many they sold for that week on Groupon. So I would know how many two person

[22:15] tickets you sold, how many four persons, eight persons on Groupon, let alone how many you booked. And then with all that

[22:20] data together, I was like, "Wow, even if you don't have many bookings, you're selling a ton on Groupon or whatever

[22:26] other, you know, coupon uh sites there were at the time." And I'm like, "Wow, you know, you're making all that money

[22:31] even if people don't book because you're still selling the tickets." And at the time, Groupon would pay you as soon as people bought it.

[22:36] And what do you think about Groupon now? Do you use for any of your entertainment? Yeah, we're on we're on Groupon on

[22:41] pretty much everything. It It's insane not to be. So, I'm kind of lucky because Groupon takes like such a high percent

[22:48] for most people, but I I literally was doing millions of dollars on Groupon because I had so many different things around Groupon. I had so many locations

[22:55] that I had like the craziest deal that anyone ever had with Groupon. So they they literally took a very small percent

[23:02] from my bookings compared to anybody else. So I had a big advantage over everybody. And also the other really good thing about Groupon was Groupon

[23:08] made you discount your your stuff a certain percent. They didn't make me discount mine as much as they made

[23:13] everybody else discount theirs. So I was able to discount a little bit less and I was able to keep like most all of the

[23:19] money. They only got a small percent compared to what everybody else had to give them. So I had big advantages. But that that's an advantage. Once you have

[23:24] a lot of locations or you're you're make doing a lot of business with someone, they're going to give you better deals. So, that's another reason why it's

[23:30] really good to expand and grow because you could use your leverage. Uh because if you don't quit using them, they lose a lot of money because you have tons of

[23:37] locations. And not only did I have tons of locations myself, I got together with a bunch of my friends that had locations and other group on stuff. And we just

[23:44] paired everything together showing that look, we're going to all do it or none of us are going to do it. So, we had a big a big pull with them. And I can tell

[23:51] you that one of the advantages I got from the time when we start partnering up with you and we open a business

[23:58] together. I were able to jump on this train as well. I were introduced to group on rep who help you with bunch of

[24:04] locations and I was able to reduce commissions they take on my other businesses. So it's actually

[24:10] it's a big advantage. It's such a big advantage like you can kill other other competitors because they can't compete with with with that. It's such a

[24:17] different It's such a better discount that we had and and what we had compared to other people. We were getting like

[24:23] three four times what other people were getting. It was like you couldn't compete. Yep. And it's cool like not only they

[24:29] allow you to discount let's say instead of 50% discount, you can do much lower

[24:34] discount, but then also the commission that they take also reduce. So it's actually multipl way way less less than

[24:41] like a third of what they take from everybody else. Yep. Yep. Super cool. Now this is when I noticed you right. I I knew about your

[24:48] existence and I I was feeling that you are full of bologoney at the beginning.

[24:53] I remember my feeling like who is this guy? He's a joke. The guy in a flip flip flops you know everyone knows you the

[24:59] guy in a flip flops. But then I spoke with you I think year later after you open your location and then you telling

[25:06] me that you have 15 or 16 locations by that time and I'm barely trying to open

[25:12] my second escape room. And I was like, "Okay, hold on. I'm doing something wrong. I I need to follow this guy. I

[25:18] need to start looking what he's doing because no, he's real deal." And so tell me, what was your secret of scaling so

[25:26] fast? Once I see how much money you're able to make, I know first to market is the most important thing and having a

Secrets to Rapid Scaling

[25:33] good product. So I I had a big advantage because one of my businesses before escape rooms was uh well, I've had a lot

[25:40] of businesses before escape rooms and some of them had tons of locations. My jewelry business had 300 locations. So,

[25:46] I knew how to scale because um I've had lots of other businesses that had dozens of locations or even hundreds of

[25:51] locations. So, I kind of already had the blueprint to do it. And I knew just from my other businesses that that scaled

[25:57] that you only have a certain amount of time. Like I didn't think escape rooms were going to last that long. I thought they were going to be like a four year,

[26:03] fiveyear fad. They're going to be totally done. You know, that's what what I thought. And um I was like, if I don't

[26:08] open a ton of locations really fast, by the time I get to open them, the fad's going to be over. So, here's the thing

[26:14] that I did that and really I think all the bigger franchises did that you did different was we would have the same

[26:22] exact rooms and just duplicate them, make them over and over in every location. Uh and maybe change like, you know, one different room in every

[26:28] location where when you open your second location, you had totally different rooms. I don't think you had a duplicate room. I think they're all different.

[26:33] that's going to take a lot longer, you know, and plus the other thing that you did was with the second location is you

[26:39] made that second location the best location that existed in Atlanta. Like it was most high-tech. It was the

[26:44] coolest. It was just so much better than any other location, which basically why I'm saying that is because you had to

[26:50] spend a lot more time on it, a lot more money on it. And uh to me, it was more it was more important to just open them

[26:55] faster and have them better than the average, but not necessarily doesn't have to be the best. the best like the

[27:00] best escape room didn't matter, but you have to have a good escape room that was better than average. So, all mine were

[27:05] definitely better than average, but there was always like one that was better than me in every city. You know,

[27:10] like I'm not going to, you know, I my average location cost me $250,000 to build. I spent $250,000 a location and I

[27:17] had between four and six escape rooms in every single four or six different ones in every location. There's no way yours

[27:24] cost 250. When you did Mall, Georgia, that had to have cost that would have cost me over a million. Um, you I mean

[27:29] you do it so it cost you a lot less than it would cost me because you you actually build and do that stuff. How

[27:34] how much did that cost you? It would have cost me like double what it cost you. Yeah, it costed a lot. And I agree with

[27:40] you now looking back. I completely agree with everything you've done. And if I knew what I know now, I would 100% do it

[27:47] five times faster, five times cheaper just to open. Because I agree with you, if I just opened it as soon as possible,

[27:54] it would make same amount of money or even more just because it was so popular at that time. Yeah, it was so popular at the time.

[28:00] There's so much business you're losing because it takes so much longer. And then every time you come up with a new every time you come up with a new theme,

[28:06] there's a lot of quirks you have to work out, right? There's so many problems that you don't know until the room starts that you have to figure out, oh,

[28:11] this, you know, you got to change stuff. Plus, it costs a lot more because you're doing it for the first time. Like if you're just duplicating rooms after

[28:17] rooms after rooms, it just becomes cheaper and cheaper because you have it like perfected. So I know like you were selling escape rooms to people over the

[28:23] country. You were selling ones that you perfected that you were just duplicating. How much easier is that? It's crazy, right? So um you can do it

[28:29] so much faster and so much cheaper. So that that was that was just what I did. I wanted to come up initially. I was like, you know what? Let's just come up

[28:35] with different themes all over for every location. And we started to and that's how the second third location had a

[28:40] couple different themes. But then we're like, dude, after we looked at it, we're like, it makes no sense. like we booked the the duplicate rooms just as much if

[28:47] not more than the new rooms. Like it didn't matter. Like we we're creating new rooms for no reason. It didn't make any sense. So once we saw that and the

[28:54] numbers like from then on every location after like the third fourth location, we just had the same rooms over and over

[29:00] and we're just able to open them so fast and uh for for way less money. Now another question that I always had

[29:06] because I was expanding locally. So I opened one location locally, another location locally, then again and I was

[29:13] trying to understand how in the world you can open locations in a different

[29:18] cities, different states. And my main question was how do you find and trust partners?

Finding and Trusting Partners

[29:24] Yeah, that's very tough. It's very tough. So I try to focus on just my city. So I'm in Atlanta. I try to like

[29:30] most of my stuff I do I try to do just in Atlanta. Now, I've been lucky where I've done business since the since the

[29:36] '9s. And I've met lots of good people and I've had, you know, good partners, you know, that I've met 25, 30 years

[29:41] ago, 20 years ago, 15, 10 years ago. So, I partner with a lot of people that worked didn't work out and had nightmares. And then I've partnered with

[29:48] people that have done really well. So, in some of my businesses that uh from the n late 90s and early 2000s that I

[29:54] did a lot of, we weren't partners, but we do a lot of business back and forth together and we knew each other very well. We basically said, "Look, if we

[30:00] come up with some other cool concepts, you manage and run the ones in your city. I'll manage and run ones in my

[30:06] city and we'll just partner on them and that way we'll learn because we'll have more data. We'll know like does this work just in our city? Does it work

[30:12] across the country?" And and and from there, if it works, we can open up stuff in other cities. So, I had like I would

Building Trustworthy Partnerships

[30:18] say five good partners that people that I've dealt with that became partners of mine and they were all in five different

[30:24] big cities. So, I had Los Angeles, I had, you know, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Tampa, and of

[30:30] course, Atlanta. So, we had all these different cities and I had different people that I I trusted and we've done a lot of business with. And um every

[30:36] single time we had something good, we would put them in all those different cities and we would be partners on them. So, I would run the Atlanta ones, we'd

[30:42] each put in, you know, our share of the money. And then, you know, same thing in in Jersey, you know, they'd run them and

[30:47] put in their share of the money. In Tampa, you know, same thing in Kansas and LA, we do the same in Chicago. I had

[30:53] partners that we used to do the same thing depending on, you know, the business. Some partners didn't want to do them, some did. I had those are the

[30:58] cities I had a lot of stuff in because I had partners that lived there, but they weren't partners in the beginning. They were actually people that we used to do

[31:05] a lot of business with back and forth and we did so much business for so many years and we did so well together and we

[31:10] worked so well together and we became really friendly. They were like, "Let's just partner and that way we could do

[31:15] stuff faster." Everyone had different strengths, right? Like none none of us were good at the same things. So

[31:21] everybody's strengths we put together and we use that for every location and we're just able to open them faster and

[31:26] we have so much more data and we're able to get so much more better deals, you know, with Groupon and all these other places that we bought stuff from. So it

[31:33] just worked out. But you've got to you've got to build good connections. You've got to, you know, get people that

[31:38] are like you that are are good people that are trustworthy that are not going to screw you. And again, you're going to

[31:44] get some bad partners if you're if you if you try doing this. And you just got to got to learn from it. And you know,

[31:50] once you see they're bad, just you can't do anything else with them. And you got to figure out a way to get rid of that partnership. One person buy the other

[31:56] person out or sell it or or or figure out a way to get along. So that's really the trick. But you've got to just find

[32:02] good people like yourself. I know for somebody who is listening, it would be like super hard to go through

Navigating Partnership Challenges

[32:09] the partnership that goes south. How do you recover from it when something goes really really bad with a partner?

[32:15] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I've had a few businesses where stuff really went bad. I mean, there's there's different options, you know, like the first thing

[32:21] I would do is try to figure out if one person can buy the other person out or if nobody wants to buy the other person

[32:26] out, figure if there figure out if there's a way to sell the business to someone and and get rid of it that way. If that doesn't work, you know,

[32:32] sometimes we're like, uh, we we we make some agreements and figure out if there's someone we could put in place

[32:37] that could just run the business and we don't have to be involved in in it so much. Worse comes to worse, if none of

[32:42] those things happen, at some point you got to shut it down. So, you just got to uh have a good operating agreement ahead

[32:48] of time so you know like if this happens, what's going to happen and what everyone's allowed and not allowed to do. And then, of course, uh you know,

[32:55] worst comes to worse, you're going to lose money and just learn from it and and not do stuff with that person again or if you ever do, you know, have uh

[33:03] some really really tight, you know, things that happen and make sure everybody knows their rules and everybody knows um you know, just

[33:10] everything about what happens if things go bad. So you mentioned okay we have entertainment and you've done bunch of

From Fads to Gold: A Business Evolution

[33:16] different entertainment like X throwing escape rooms uh paint studios and you

[33:21] also had gyms. Now how did you get involved with the V by buy gold in the beginning in the '90s I was doing sports

[33:28] cards. I got into Beanie Babies and I met tons of people that I would buy from sell to distributors people that did the

[33:36] same thing I did but in other states and we became friends and we did a lot of business together. So that was like a crazy fad, you know, uh, Beanie Babies

[33:43] and and baseball cards, you know, were were really good for a while, too. So, I met a lot of people that were into like

[33:49] the same type of things that they were into stuff that you can make a lot of money really fast. And, uh, they were fads and we told each other, "Look, you

[33:55] know, we're we're good friends. If you find something the next the next Beanie Baby, let me know. Let us all know and

[34:01] we'll we'll work together and do it in different places." So, one of the people that I did a lot of lot of Beanie Babies

[34:07] with was Howard. and and Howard was in New Jersey and Howard called me and he said he said, "I know you're at this

[34:13] point I was actually into Webkins," which is another thing I was making a lot of money on. It's similar to Beanie Babies and other stuffed animal. And

[34:19] he's like, "Man, I know you're doing good with Webkins and Pokemon cards and Magic the Gathering and all the stuff, but man, gold is like crazy right now."

[34:26] This is like 2007. He's like, "Gold like just went from $300 an ounce to like $600 and some dollars an ounce. Like

[34:32] it's insane. It's over doubled in a short period of time. I just started going to these hotel events and buying,

[34:38] you know, putting ads in the paper and buying gold and buying different things that are worth money. He's like, I've

[34:44] been killing it for the last month or two and I just want to tell you like this is something you should look into. And I'm like, bro, I know nothing about jewelry. I don't even wear any jewelry.

[34:50] I'm not like that type of person. But he's like, man, I'm telling you can make a ton of money. I'm like, I'm already doing good what I'm doing, but like just

[34:57] give me another, you know, in another every week. Let's update me what's going on. So like another week, another two weeks. He's like, bro, I'm doing better

[35:02] and better. Gold keeps going up. an ounce, 700 an ounce, 750 an ounce. Uh, you know, it got to like 800 an ounce.

[35:08] It's like it just keeps going crazy and people are just lining up selling me gold and I'm like, "Okay, so I'm I'm

[35:13] just going to fly." And Webkins started to like started to be on the decline actually. They were I I was in it

[35:18] already for a few years and it was already in the decline. I was still doing really well, but I could see that Webkins were losing its popularity. So,

[35:25] and that was the main thing I was doing at the time. So, I I flew to New Jersey. I went to one of his shows. I saw a line

[35:31] out the door. or I saw people selling him stuff. I'm like I'm like this is crazy. Like what are you paying? He's like oh I'm paying like 30 cents 35

[35:38] cents on the dollar. He's he's like look I just bought $80,000 today. It's worth $250,000. I I just made $ 160,000 today

[35:46] when you were with me. I'm like holy [ __ ] And um and I'm like but I don't

[35:51] know anything about jewelry. I don't know how to tell if it's real. I don't know any. He's like I could teach you in like literally a day everything about

[35:56] it. You know everything you need to know. So I I you know we worked a deal where we partner if I open stuff in my

[36:02] city and that's what we did. So we started doing I started doing hotel events in in Atlanta and we were

[36:07] partners on it and then I was like you know this is kind of silly like we're doing these hotel events. We're spending all this money on advertising. We're

[36:13] making a lot of money but like every single week we'd be at a different place. So we had to redo all the advertising and you know I was like why

[36:19] don't we just get a store and set up a store and just keep advertising. Let people just come in the same place over and over and we could just grow it or we

[36:25] don't have to keep moving. He's like I don't know. That's kind of like weird. No one does that. Like, you know, there's jewelry stores, there's pawn

[36:31] shops, but like nobody does that really. It's like the whole hotel thing is kind of cool. Like, you know, it's like an

[36:37] event. It's like people come. It's like a special thing. I was like, let's just try it. So, I tried it and I did this on

[36:42] my own. He wasn't involved in this because this wasn't his concept. So, I tried it and um within the first month,

[36:49] like we were slammed. The first store was slammed. So, I open I opened my first store. I actually opened up two

[36:54] stores at the same time. One was in Sandy Springs on Roswell Road and one one was Mammala, Georgia across street you from Mala, Georgia. So those were my

[37:01] first two stores I ever had back 2007 and we literally had lines out the door. It it was crazy. We spent like 30,000

[37:08] opening the store. We made 50,000 the first month. So we already doubled our money. So then I was like this is crazy.

[37:14] So then we started opening up more and more stores and before you knew it we had over 300 stores and I partnered with

[37:19] three other people and we open up stores all over the country. So me and me and one of my partners opened up about 85

[37:25] stores in Atlanta that we had on our own and then we partnered with people that opened up stores in other cities because

[37:30] we you know we showed them how to do stuff. So we taught a lot of people how to do it that we were good uh friends with and they did it in California, they

[37:37] did it in in Texas, they did it in Florida and uh and in other places and that that's how that's how we grew so

The Rise of We Buy Gold

[37:43] fast in in the gold. But it was so much money so fast it it was crazy. So again,

[37:48] I only got into it really because Howard bugged me to get into it. I never would have got into it if Howard never called me. And you talking about the stores which

[37:54] called we buy gold. Everyone knows about them. Yeah. So we were the first ones. Nobody had a We Buy Gold store in the country

[38:01] until we we we did it and this is like early early 2007. We opened up the first store and from there Yeah. We just

[38:07] opened. So after after we had it for like 6 12 months, people started copying us all over the country. But we we had

[38:13] sign spinners at every single store outside and all this stuff. So people copy. No, all our signs said we buy

[38:18] gold. But you know we had a company it was we started calling it one thing in the beginning then we changed it to another name when we started going over

[38:24] the country. Yeah. The we buy gold signs were what we had everywhere and people knew what we did. It was a huge sign. We

[38:30] had the bit the best locations busiest corners of every street or and busy busy roads. So everyone knew where we were

[38:37] and that that was our that was our strategy. We would take the best locations in every single cities. In Atlanta we had 85 locations at our

[38:44] busiest time. We had a location on every single exit up 75 up 85 through I20 all

[38:51] through 285. We had every single every single um exit. We had a location and we killed it. And you know we uh we learned

[38:58] a lot to um to grow and do it in other places and you know we had a few employees and we had some managers and

[39:03] we had district managers and we had regional managers and we you know and and we just grew the as um we were able

[39:09] to because they were so profitable like it was hard to make mistakes. how much time passed before you decided to exit

Timing the Exit: When to Sell

[39:15] and why you decided to exit. Yeah. So, we got in in 2007. 2011 was our busiest year. We made the most money

[39:20] in 2011. Like every single month, like my personal bank account had another million dollars in it every month. Like

[39:26] I didn't even know what to do with it. It was like crazy. I had too much money. I never had that much money. Every month was a million plus dollars extra in my

[39:32] my personal account, not my business account. Right. So, it was it was a crazy that was 2011. 12 slowed down a

[39:37] little bit, but was still really really good. And then um and then 2013 started to slow down more. So what happened was

[39:43] 2011, gold hit the all-time high. At the time it was $1,890, almost 1,900. But

[39:49] keep in mind when I got into it in 2007, it was like $7,800 an ounce. And it's literally in four years went from 700 an

[39:58] ounce to almost 1,900 an ounce. And people were selling us stuff for more

[40:03] than they paid for it. It was broken. And they were selling to us for a third of what it was worth. It was insane. So,

[40:09] uh, we were, um, yeah, we we were able to just grow grow so fast. And then 2012, gold started to

[40:16] finally start going down to like almost 1,00. So, in 2014, the business just

[40:22] wasn't the same. People weren't lining up. People weren't selling. Most people already sold everything they wanted to sell. The economy started to get a

[40:27] little bit better. So, people weren't as desperate to sell. And, um, our best stores did did okay, but our average and

[40:32] and below average stores started to break even, even maybe lose a little bit of money. So, we started to uh to shut

[40:39] down some of the worst stores and then eventually just shut down more stores and then all our better stores we sold

[40:44] to other people. Some of the original actually my first store at Mallo, Georgia, right next to you is still

[40:50] there. I opened that in 2007. It's still there today, 18 years later. I sold it to my uh one of my managers in 2015 and

[40:59] he's been running it for 10 years himself. And I don't want to, you know, talk about him too much because I don't

[41:04] know what he wants people to know or not know. But let's just say he's doing better in that store than I ever did in that store. And that was one of my

[41:10] busiest stores. So he's he's crushing it. But he was like the smartest person that ever worked with me. He knew his

[41:16] stuff so well. So I knew he was going to do good no matter what. But I have a few other stores I sold people that are

[41:21] still open and they're killing it, too. So the difference was I had tons of employees and all kinds of expenses where um he just did it himself and his

[41:29] wife and maybe he had one employee that you know we had that he kept and so he had very little expenses and he was able to make money even at the slower times

[41:35] but once the times got busier he's just making like hand over fist like crazy amounts of money. I'm real happy to him.

[41:41] I still see him every so often and he's yeah his life is totally different and he's a good guy so it's good for him.

[41:47] Nice. When we partnered up with you on a pot nation and it's who doesn't know upscale indoor mini golf place concept

[41:55] with a top wall restaurant you purchased a building with a three units in it and

[42:01] two was occupied and one were vacant and this is where we built the concept. Can you share your thought process and

[42:08] strategy behind that move like buying instead of leasing? Yeah, I try I try to buy every single

The Power of Ownership in Business

[42:14] location that I that I have a business in. So it's there's very few that I don't own. First off, if you're going to

[42:20] spend I mean this was a project we were spending like multi-se figures on building this thing out. Like it was in

[42:25] the millions of dollars. So like it's crazy to spend that much money on somebody else's place and then have no

[42:31] control if they want to raise the rents in three years, five years and you know you have to leave. So it's it's just

[42:36] like the building doesn't c the building cost the same amount or less than what we we were spending on the on the on the

[42:42] location. So it just made no sense just to buy the building. Also, you can get really good deals from the bank on

[42:47] interest rates and time and everything else. I got really good rates and it just made sense. And it had two tenants. The two tenants paid more paid more on

[42:55] their rent than my mortgage was. So, you know, that's kind of how most my places are. And if you can own the building,

[43:01] first off, you're paying it down. You don't have to deal with with landlords that are going to raise your rents or,

[43:06] you know, just give you a hard time. And, um, you have full control of everything, which is just so much better. Plus, you get appreciation. The

[43:12] buildings always go up. commercial buildings are are incredible if if you have really good locations. All my all

[43:17] my commercial buildings are really good locations. You know, I have the one where I have a lot of my gyms in my

[43:23] acting locations, my arts and craft studios. The last couple businesses that I have that I really didn't own the

[43:29] building. So, I have a tree company I just bought. I didn't own the building, but my goal was to buy a building to put them in. And then I have se, you know,

[43:36] all these trophy stores. So, I don't own the buildings in in in some of those. Um, so I just bought a big building.

[43:42] It's 16,000 square feet. Now my trophy store is moving. My trophy store is moving into there, the tree company and

[43:48] and some other stuff. So that's my newest acquisition. But again, it's because I'm buying it because I have

[43:54] businesses that are close by that don't have a location they own. And I the rent. So the the trophy store that I'm

[44:00] moving is the biggest trophy store that I have. We've been in that location for decades, but the person that owned the

[44:07] building sold it to somebody else. and the new landlords are just screwing with us. They're like raising our rent and charging more for this and it just

[44:13] became too much of a hassle. So, uh I I wasn't even going to buy something this soon. But after like the last four,

[44:19] five, six months of hassles from them, I was like, "This is stupid. I should have done that anyway." And I finally found a really good deal. It's what I think is

[44:26] uh if I ever like change businesses or do anything else, I have really good locations. You could put any business there later that's going to be good. You

[44:32] have crazy visibility. I have big signs. If any of the businesses I have don't do good, I could always put a new concept

[44:38] in there and they'll always do good. The real estate that I'm buying, I know it appreciates a lot because they're in the

[44:44] best locations in the cities that I'm in. How do you find the locations for sale?

Finding the Right Location

[44:49] Because I'll be honest with you, like every time I'm trying to open new location now, I'm start looking at buying the location, but it's been hard.

[44:56] I'm I'm looking for lease and looking for sale and it takes me my new location in Charlotte that we're building right

[45:02] now. It took me almost two years to find a location for lease and I'm not saying to buy because there's nothing available

[45:09] good for sale or it's like in extremely expensive. So, how you find the

[45:14] location? Well, first off, I'm going to tell you that it's not easy to find good locations at at a good price. So, I'm

[45:20] always looking and I I I'm you know, sometimes I don't find anything, but uh eventually I know I can find something.

[45:26] There's always people that are going to sell at some point when they're motivated. So, I'm just always looking and then as soon as I I mean, I actually

[45:33] been looking for just kind of not really aggressively, but like a little bit on

[45:38] for locations for that trophy store for a few years, but just not super aggressively. But until the past 6

[45:43] months when the landlord started raising rents and all that stuff, that's when I started getting really aggressive with it. And once I start getting really

[45:48] aggressive with that, I found deals. So, you got to get good brokers that could just send you tons of of leads. If you

[45:54] get a good broker that sends you all the stuff that's for lease, all the stuff that's for sale, you're going to find some good deals. And eventually you're

[46:01] going to find some that you have motivated sellers that are going to give you a deal on it. So it's just a matter of having good brokers. You know, look

[46:07] on LoopNet, look on CoStar, look on, you know, Google and search different places and see what's available. But if you're

[46:14] looking for long enough, you're going to find a good deal, especially in in in a bigger city, there's just so much stuff

[46:19] that eventually someone is going to be motivated to sell something. And do you do you offer whatever they

[46:24] ask or you actually negotiate? And I negotiate a lot. You never ask. You never offer what they ask unless you're an idiot. I mean, um, now it depends

[46:31] like if if it's if it's like been on the market for a little while, you're never going to offer what what close to what

[46:37] they ask because it's been on the market. But there something that just went on the market and you think that they might have multiple offers and maybe, but I mean, that's not really the

[46:44] case most of the time. Most of the time stuff's on the market for a little bit. Commercial real estate is different.

[46:50] [clears throat] Like there's um some commercial properties that are on the market forever. It's not like a single family home where people know exactly

[46:57] what it's worth and there's tons of buyers looking to move into homes. With commercial, it's a little different. There's the big players that want big

[47:03] shopping centers and then there's people that just want to buy stuff for their own business and have maybe have a little space. So, you can definitely

[47:09] find better deals and find good deals on market for commercial, especially if you negotiate them. They might not be listed

[47:15] for a great price all the time, but some people if you make them offers, especially if it's listed for a little while and they really don't have a use

[47:20] for it, they'll they'll give you good deals. Everything I I was looking at is 200 300 a square foot.

[47:26] Mhm. I was able to buy this one for like this. By the way, this is the best location out of almost any of the ones I looked at like as far as visibility,

[47:33] signage, busy roads, and I and I I I paid under 140 bucks a square foot, which is crazy. But they really wanted

[47:39] to sell. Like they were retiring. They they just didn't need their building anymore. Um and there was just some

[47:45] things about the building that was like a little weird for for certain types of uses. So, it was 16,000 square feet. A

[47:52] little bit too small for drugstores and grocery stores and and big things. It's too small for that,

[47:58] but it's too big for people that just want three, four, 5,000 square feet. And it would have been like weird to chop it

[48:03] up and and and make a whole bunch of, you know, a strip center. So, it was just one of those that you have to find

[48:08] the right buyer for. Yeah. I I saw as soon as I I got it what I could do with it. And so, um, but there's always

[48:15] things like that. There's I guarantee you if you let me look for stuff for you, I'll find stuff 100%.

[48:20] Nice. Okay. Notice you just got to get good at it. You know, if you don't ever look for that type of stuff, how good are you going to

[48:26] be? You've never done it before, right? Right. So, if you've done it a lot, you're you're going to find stuff. Mhm. That's not easy that you got to be good

Common Mistakes in Scaling Businesses

[48:32] at it. Yep. Yep. So, you've seen businesses rise and fall. Uh what is the most

[48:37] common mistakes you see the new business owners make when they start to scale their business? Well, they they try to

[48:44] scale their business without having enough capital to do it. That's probably the biggest thing. So, I'm dealing with

[48:49] a few people that I loan money to on in the real estate business and they're killing it. They're making good money on

[48:54] everything they sell, but they're doing too much and now they can't afford to pay their bills. Like, they're they're

[48:59] having problems. But, I would say people underestimating how much stuff costs. And also having not the best locations,

[49:06] I would say, is another problem. And then employees is for sure one of the biggest problems. Like if you don't have good employees, if you don't have a good

[49:12] manager particularly, you're screwed. And if you don't have good locations, and then of course, if your marketing sucks, you know, marketing is crazy

[49:18] important. If your marketing is not good, you go out of business with the best product. So marketing, employees, location, and making sure you have

[49:24] enough capital to withstand and grow and do whatever you need. Like don't grow until you can afford to grow because you

[49:30] can make tons of money, but if you're growing too fast, you're going to go out of business because you can't afford to pay what you owe.

[49:36] You mentioned marketing. So let's talk about it a little bit. Obviously, it's you know my passion marketing for your

[49:41] entertainment businesses. What is the best marketing strategies you find? By far social media and and

Effective Marketing Strategies

[49:47] pay-per-click Google, but social media is by far the best. But I'll tell you something that's even been better for us

[49:54] like with the Putt PUD and with different things. The thing that made it go from average below average to like

[49:59] where we're actually, you know, doing really well is we pay to have these influencers come in. Influencers bring

[50:05] the most amount of people and a lot of of times you have the right ones. this residual and they just keep coming and and the word's out there and you have

[50:11] some viral videos. You can get influencers that have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers. Those cost a little bit more. Or you can

[50:17] get tons of influencers that have 30, 40, 60,000 uh followers. It's a lot

[50:22] cheaper. Just have a whole bunch of different ones come. But the most important thing is make sure that they're all local influencers. People

[50:27] follow them that are local. you know, for if if you have like entertainment businesses because you you don't give a [ __ ] to people. They have influencers in

[50:34] other cities and states, they're not going to come to your So, you got to find influencers that all their followers are most of their followers

[50:39] are all local and you pay them. A lot a lot of the smaller people, you don't even have to pay them anything hardly.

[50:45] Uh you just got to let them come for free and all food and all these different things. Maybe pay them a little bit. Uh but then the bigger

[50:51] influencers have hundreds of thousands of followers or the millions, then that's when you start paying, you know, thousands of dollars to them. And and

[50:57] again, it's it's worth trying all that stuff to see which influencers work and which ones don't. But for sure, social

[51:02] media ads and and Google ads are are really good. You know, we do we do different things there. Some businesses

[51:08] will work, some businesses that don't work, but you know, we do like Bowpack money mailers for some businesses. Some they they don't work at all, some they

[51:15] do. Depends on how much a customer is worth to you. If you have a business where every time you get a customer you're making thousands of dollars off

[51:21] on, then you could do different things. But if a customer you're only making a few hundred bucks or less, then there's

[51:27] different types of advertising you have to do. The certain ones won't work. So a lot of that is depend on on the type of

[51:33] business. Do you have a rule of thumb how much of sales you dedicate to marketing? Yeah, it's not really a percent of

[51:39] anything. It's just a matter of how much do I think I could spend and get the best bang for the buck. So some some

[51:45] types of um marketing, you know, I could spend a,000 and if I spent 5,000, I wouldn't get any more any more business

[51:51] because there's not between a,000 and 5,000, there's not much more you're really doing. You know, the new keywords

[51:56] that you're getting or the new whatever marketing you're doing is not going to be as helpful. So, you know, you start off by doing a some amount, 500 bucks,

[52:04] a,000 bucks a month or whatever it is, and then you go to 2,000, 4,000, and then you see, okay, well, once I get to

[52:09] a certain point, it's it's just not making me any extra money. And then you just don't spend that much and and again for every business a little bit

[52:15] different but I would try I try everything or I try for most things and

[52:21] um and see what works and what doesn't work and then I scale it down or scale it up based on that.

[52:27] You always do marketing. There is no way that you open a new uh new escape room

[52:33] or new other company. You always do marketing. And and the other thing that I do for every business is SEO. So that's super

[52:38] important. So, if you have a website, you got to make sure that you come up before other people because again,

[52:44] anyone that comes up first is going to get all the business. Like, when you do a search for something, whatever comes up first, that's who you're calling or second or third. The top three are who

[52:51] you call. So, you have to make sure you're in the top three. So, you got to spend some money on SEO. You got to get someone that knows what they're doing to

[52:56] get your to get your website in the in the top of whatever searches. Now, a lot of people will say that SEO

[53:03] is stupid and it's just wasted money. Why are you spending money and like

[53:08] specifically saying that it's important? Oh, I don't want people to spend money on it, you know, especially if they're a competitor. Like, I get it. Tell them

[53:13] it's stupid. Like, let me do it. No, but I mean, it's common sense. Like, if you do a if you search for something, are

[53:20] you going to like scroll down like 20 30 to third page, fourth page, you're going to call everyone on the first page.

[53:26] You're going to call you're going to call the top three people that you see. That's what most people are going to do. So, you want to get the most amount of

[53:32] calls, the most amount of leads. And the only way to do that is for people to see you right away when they do a search. And the only way to do that is to have

[53:39] the the high SEO uh rankings. 100%. Let's talk about trends. What type of businesses or trends in the

[53:45] entertainment industry are you most excited about right now? I don't see anything crazy right now, but I did go to buy a few new things

Trends in the Entertainment Industry

[53:54] that I'm going to test out and and see what happens. A lot of the the problem is with a lot of the new like cool

[53:59] things that are out, it's hard to market for that stuff because nobody knows what it is. So until they come to your

[54:04] location and actually play it and see it, like people aren't searching for that stuff. So a lot of the stuff I just got, people aren't searching for. So

[54:11] it's going to take a little bit of time, but the the way to get it popular really fast is with influencers. So I'm going

[54:17] to have like influencers come for all these new concepts. And then once the influencers come and once people understand what they are, then I can

[54:22] start marketing for it. But it's hard to market for some of this stuff until people know what it is. We'll see what happens. But I have like a lot of cool

[54:29] different games that I got that I'm I'm throwing into my Burberry the Hatcher location. So ax throwing has been on on

[54:34] a big decline over the last year or two. There's no secret. I I've seen half the people have ax throwing locations close

[54:40] their locations like over half. And I see more people closing and um people changing it to other

[54:46] stuffs. Our axon location in Sandy Spring still does good. We still make money but like 10% of what we used to

[54:52] make, right? Like uh before COVID. So instead of closing it, I'm keeping 40% of it. The other 60% I'm changing to

[54:59] other concepts. So I'm trying all kinds of stuff there. And if they work, maybe I open a location with just that

[55:04] concept. And if they don't work, you know, I change it to a different concept. So I bought a few different things to try and some stuff comes in

[55:10] within the next couple weeks. Some stuff comes in January. But by the end of by the middle end of January, I actually have everything. And it won't even be a

[55:16] bury the hatchet location anymore. We'll change the name because it's going to be like a bunch of different concepts that

[55:21] are are pretty cool and new that um a lot of people don't even know what they are yet. Some there's a little bit here

[55:26] and there, but we'll see. We'll see how that does. So you just got to try a bunch of things and and see what happens. But I'm trying stuff based on

[55:34] data that I have of other people that have it. So for instance, I have Nitton in my office and he one of his best

[55:39] friends is a manager of Dave and Busters. So he he's um he asked the manager, "What's what's your best stuff

[55:45] you have at Dave and Busters and what's your worst stuff?" And we know what the best thing is at every Dave and Busters. We know what the worst things are at

[55:51] every Dave and Busters. So we actually took one of their best things that they have and bought it. And people don't really know exactly what that is yet.

[55:57] and and that's one of the first things that we're adding to our location and we're going to see how that does in a different type of location. So, some of

[56:03] the stuff that does good and bad at Dave and Busters, not necessarily will do good or bad at a different type of location because Busters is a kind of

[56:09] unique type of place, but we're going to try that stuff. So, we know what's good there. We're taking a lot of stuff that's good there. We're going to try

[56:14] it. And then we have friends that are doing good with different things in other locations. We're taking that stuff. Those are the types of things

[56:20] that we're going to try because we already see proof of concept and people doing good with it. So I again I have friends that have other concepts that

[56:26] are doing really really good with that aren't really around much and we're just bringing it and trying it and then based

[56:31] on all these new things that we have you know we'll get bigger locations different more locations for the stuff that does good and just go all in on

Structuring Partnerships for Success

[56:38] that stuff. I like that. Okay. You're probably the best person to talk about partnerships,

[56:43] how you structure partnerships and I know you've done multiple partnerships with the different structures but

[56:48] describe the most common ones. I have tons of different structures. There's two main structures. My main structure is I'm partnering with people

[56:55] that I've already partnered with that you know we already have big track records with and we all have different roles. We we'll some people are in

[57:01] charge of operations, some people are in charge of accounting, some people are in charge of legal, some people are in charge of just new new development, new

[57:08] business development or whatever it is, right? So we figure out everyone's role and we figure out what what they're

[57:14] doing and what percent of the business are they doing and what percent of the business that they want. So we ask how

[57:19] much percent of the business do you want and if everybody wants an amount that adds up to 100% perfect. If not then we

[57:24] figure out okay well you got to get less and you're going to get less based on you what you're do what role you're doing and how much work you're putting

[57:30] into it stuff like that. So the first con the first way I figure it out is everyone puts in an equal share of whatever percent they have. So if we

[57:36] have to put $100,000 into a business someone has 50% they're putting 50,000 in. Someone has 20% they're putting 20,000 in. That's probably the most

[57:43] common structure I have with with most of my businesses. The other structure is I have a few businesses where uh one of

[57:50] my partners that runs the business like day-to-day and is the one that's involved in the business and uh we do

[57:56] something where they get a certain percent of the business based on on them putting in the time and then they also

[58:03] would get a salary because they're they're for whatever work they're doing. If I have to pay somebody else to do what they're doing, how much would I

[58:08] have to pay them and uh figure out what's fair to pay pay them because they're doing it. So they would make money as a salary and then they would

[58:15] also get some percent of the profit either for free some percent of the profit for for running it or they would

Business Partnerships and Profit Sharing

[58:23] be able to buy into a certain percent or buy you know or buy into a higher percent down the road based on you know

[58:28] how the business is doing. So yeah some of the businesses I wouldn't ever do if I didn't have someone that could run it

[58:34] and so the partner is going to run it. So they would get a certain percent of the business, sometimes 10%, sometimes 25%. It just depends on what role they

[58:41] have and how how you know how valuable it is. And and typically if somebody owns part of the business, if they don't

[58:46] have, let's say someone doesn't have much money, so they can't afford to buy in, sometimes time is more valuable than

[58:52] than the money. So for for me, that's more valuable if they're good at it, if they do a good job. You know, I'd rather have someone that puts the time in. So

[58:58] um so they would get a certain percent for that and then some sort of salary for that. So those are the two main structures. And with those two

[59:05] structures, there's dozens of structures within each structure, you know, of how you could how you could do it, but those are kind of the two the two most common.

[59:11] And now, when you investing all of your money and you say uh the partner you partner up with, they going to be

[59:17] running it and they don't have funds to buy in. Do you usually structure it where I'm invest like let's say 100K, we

[59:23] open it, but then I want to recoup my 100K first before they get distributions or normally it's like, okay, I'm just

[59:30] spending this 100K and then we're doing distributions from day one. Most most of the time, most of the time if I'm putting all my money in, they would they

[59:36] would always get their salary first because they have to live. But after the salary, before they get their distribution, I would get my money back.

[59:42] And then after I get my money back, then then we would split up distributions. You know, that's typically typically how

[59:47] it would work. But sometimes if depending on how much their salary is and how much they need to make and sometimes we uh they give us a partial

[59:55] of their distribution to pay us back. And but yeah, ideally you want to get all your money back first after after

[1:00:01] they get their salary. And how you manage all of these

[1:00:06] different streams of businesses and incomes you do. So I mean all my real estate and all my

Managing Multiple Income Streams

[1:00:12] lending is all on spreadsheets. So I have Excel spreadsheets for everything. Everything I could look at and tell you in two seconds. And then as far as all

[1:00:18] the businesses, I look at the P&Ls every single month for every business. So I look at the financials and I could see

[1:00:24] how much they're doing. I I look at the bank accounts. I look at the bank accounts daily sometimes. So I see like

[1:00:29] money going in, money going out. I see the credit cards. I see um then every month I'll see the financials. So I'll

[1:00:35] see how much money did it make? Did it lose? Did it spend more money in in you know on this that it didn't spend last

[1:00:41] time or you know why why did this go up? Why did this go down? That that's just kind of what we do. And then hopefully you have a good partner or a good manager that kind of could if anything

[1:00:48] important happens they tell you right away. Okay let's uh go to the quick questions. Uh, what's the craziest or most

[1:00:54] unexpected thing that ever happened in one of your businesses? Craziest, most unexpected thing. Uh,

Unexpected Challenges in Business

[1:00:59] anytime you lose a lot of money, it's unexpected and it's crazy. I I I had a business back in one that I thought was

[1:01:07] going to kill it and I had a few partners. One of them was a good partner, one of them was a bad partner. And they just screwed me and my other

[1:01:14] partner out and just kind of stole a lot of money and and just did a lot of stuff underhandedly. I was always surprised when people would just to totally screw

[1:01:21] you over because again, why don't people do that? That going back to the beginning of our conversation, it's

[1:01:26] instant gratification, right? So, yeah, they did a little bit better than they should have done then, but guess what?

[1:01:31] The rest of their life, like no one's going to deal with them, and no one that I know is going to deal with them. I'm not going to deal with them because I'm going to tell everybody what they did.

[1:01:37] So, like they just [ __ ] themselves for the rest of their lives. I'm always surprised when people do that because long term it screws people so bad, but

[1:01:45] you know, they don't think most people don't think about it. that's, you know, they think about what's good right now. So, I would say like when people do

[1:01:50] stupid [ __ ] like that, it's kind of it's a little surprising, especially when I was earlier earlier on when I was

[1:01:56] younger. Now, now I nothing surprised me. I've seen everything. If you could go back and give yourself

[1:02:01] your 20 years old self, one piece of advice, what would it be? 100% to hang around more successful

Advice to My Younger Self

[1:02:07] people and learn from them. And uh I did it some, but I didn't do it enough. I would have loved to have hung out with

[1:02:13] more people that were really good at other things that that I ended up doing. I could have just got a lot better a lot

[1:02:20] faster. But yeah, I I would tell myself to do that. And then of course to get people to really really like you. That's

[1:02:26] what I'm really good at. I could get people to like me a lot. Like I trick people all the time into liking me. So I

[1:02:32] would I would try to get every single person as much as possible to like you and trust you. And then you really could just the sky's is the limit. You can do

[1:02:38] whatever you want because once people like you, they'll they'll teach you stuff. If you want to learn from them,

[1:02:43] they'll work with you and partner with you, if you want to do stuff with them, and then they'll buy and sell stuff from you and whatever. Anything else, you can

[1:02:49] just make a lot of money building that rapport with people. Make sure you're always positive. Make sure you build rapport and make sure you're hang around

[1:02:56] the right people that you can learn from and and figure out ways to help them to where they could help you. How somebody who's just starting up,

[1:03:02] they don't know any knowledge, but they probably have all time in the world, right? How can they get close to you,

[1:03:08] for example, and how can they get in your circle so they can start learning from you? I have people to come my office every

Getting Close to Successful People

[1:03:14] day. I literally have people in my office every single day. Here's the thing. People could do really good and

[1:03:19] learn and do stuff, but again, going back to the beginning, most people I could teach them everything that I know,

[1:03:25] but people just won't do it. People are just lazy. They think that because they know it, they're going to do good or not do good, and people always feel sorry

[1:03:31] for themselves. But what I've noticed is that most people are just lazy and just aren't going to put 100% into something.

[1:03:37] If you're not going to put 100% into something, it's very hard to get good at to do good. Um, in the beginning, you

[1:03:42] know, eventually you maybe you could. So, what I see is is people are like, "Oh, I want to tell me what I can do to

[1:03:48] help you." If I tell people all these different things they can do, I give them specific things to do and then a week later they're like, "Give me what I

[1:03:54] just gave you. Did you do any of the things I just told you?" And they didn't. Why? Because they're not easy.

[1:04:00] you have to actually put effort into it. And people are lazy and they don't want to put effort into things. Um, I always

[1:04:05] have plenty of stuff that people can do and if they do it, sometimes they're not going to see that instant gratification.

[1:04:11] Sometimes it's going to be months down the road or a year down the road and people can't wait that long. So that's why people aren't successful. You've got

[1:04:17] to know that you're building something now that's going to pay off later. If you need to build something today that's going to pay off tomorrow, it's hard.

[1:04:23] And most most of the things I could show you aren't going to you're not going to make money tomorrow if I show you today. And that's why most people quit and most

[1:04:30] people don't do it. Wow. So they need to find somebody who they can follow and just start doing small tasks kind of free apprentice kind

[1:04:36] of stuff potentially free but I mean doesn't have to be free like if you make money for the person you know you both make money

The Importance of Hard Work

[1:04:42] on it. You split like I don't want anyone to make me money and not make money but but most people that I tell

[1:04:48] what they can do that's not what I wanted to do. Well that's what you have to do. Like I it's not it's not what you

[1:04:53] wanted to do. Like I don't know what to tell you. Like then talk to someone else. Like maybe they have some maybe they have some other magical thing you

[1:04:59] can do. But you just don't get stuff for you know for doing nothing. Like you have to bust your ass. You have to work.

[1:05:05] I busted my ass like most of my life. People don't know what I did when I was younger. Now it it's paying off. But

[1:05:10] this is decades later, two decades later. I didn't see everything the next day either. I know that you work all the

[1:05:17] time and uh people don't realize but today is actually Thanksgiving day and we having this conversation and the

[1:05:23] reason why we having this conversation because I gave you link to my calendar to book anytime you would like and you

[1:05:29] decided to book it on Thanksgiving day and I'm like day I'm not going to be bothered. I'm not going to have people

[1:05:34] people calling me and doing stuff. So I knew like I wouldn't be distracted. And so you work but you work to

[1:05:40] technically it's work. you work. The two hours before this this this meeting, I was at one of my gyms. We're

[1:05:45] changing out the turf. So, I was helping the guys put the turf in and then I'm doing something. I had to do something

[1:05:50] at another location. When I say working, when I usually work, I'm on the computer like typing. It's It's work, but it's

[1:05:56] not work. I was sweating. I was lifting stuff, carrying [ __ ] um cutting wood. I

[1:06:01] was doing all that [ __ ] for two hours before we we talked. So, I was doing hard work today, actually. Wow. But it doesn't matter. You do what you

[1:06:07] got to do. And you know, um, it's kind of like fun in in in a way because you see the progress afterwards and but

[1:06:14] yeah, I mean, if other people ain't going to work on Thanksgiving because they're lazy, then you got to step in and do it. I love this. Now, what motivates you?

Motivation and Progression

[1:06:21] Yeah, those shouldn't work on Thanksgiving, but but you know, I like to, you know, obviously I'm going to I'm going to hang out with the family and we

[1:06:27] have actually lunch at 2 o'clock, so we got still a couple hours, but um but

[1:06:32] yeah, but until then, why not why not work and make make progress? What motivates you? because you don't

[1:06:38] have to work probably a day in your life for the rest of your life. Why you I think what mot I think what motivates everybody that's successful or even not

[1:06:45] successful is progression. If you have enough money and you're not bettering

[1:06:50] yourself and not progressing and showing that you you can do better, I think you just lose confidence in yourself. You

[1:06:56] know, self-confidence is really important, right? As soon as you can't better yourself and and see that you're

[1:07:02] doing better, making more or whatever else, helping bettering other people, then like what's the purpose? I think

[1:07:07] just knowing that you're bettering yourself, bettering people around you is is you have to do that or else you don't feel as good about yourself.

[1:07:13] And finally, uh where can people follow you and learn from you? Uh all my social medias, Abraham Gay

Where to Follow Abraham Gray

[1:07:20] Gray Y on Facebook, on Tik Tok, on Instagram, it's Abraham Grey official. And then of course on YouTube it's

[1:07:26] Abraham Grey G a Y. Those are the those are the ways to find me. And if you're in Atlanta, I have all different types

[1:07:32] of things that people come by my office. I have a monthly group that people come and use my office and I teach them stuff

[1:07:39] with other people in my office and then you know a lot of things are free just online. So yeah, hit me up and if we

[1:07:45] could do deals together, that's great. Abraham, this has been an incredible conversation. Your stories prove that

[1:07:50] discipline, strategy, and passion can truly change the game. Uh for everyone listening, if you found value in today's

[1:07:57] episode, make sure to subscribe to Attractions Insights on YouTube and follow us on social media. We've got

[1:08:03] more conversations coming with some of the brightest minds in the attractions and entertainment industry. And thanks

[1:08:09] for tuning in. And as always, keep creating, keep growing, and keep inspiring. Thanks for listening.