Get Rich – Get Real

Farrah Gray (born 1984) became, so it is claimed, an entrepreneurial millionaire at the tender age of 14, the ultimate American rags to riches success story, little wonder boy. Gray, with how-to book churner Fran Harris, is author of Reallionaire : Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out. Gray is now a 21 y/o Las Vegas real estate investor and motivational speaker.

The story goes that Farrah began wealth building at age 6 when he sold body lotion door to door. (He combined bottles of his mama's leftover lotions and sold it in his Chicago housing project.) He earned $50 or $9 with this venture, depending which version you read, and took his family out to a lobster dinner; "the big ghetto meal" according to Mr. Gray. It's been a while since I spent time in south Chicago but lobster was never the big ghetto meal – it was r-i-b-s, spare ribs, rib tips, baby back ribs, beef ribs, pork ribs, dry rub, mustard rub, Red Devil rub, grilled, smoked, barbecued.

Some stories begin with the ashy young Gray stating "I sold body lotion for $1.50 from door to door. In our house, we never had a full bottle of lotion. I got out of the shower one day and I was walking around and I found these different bottles of lotion. I mixed them all together and I called it First Impressions. I made $9."

At age 7 or 8 (depending on the story) he began carrying homemade business cards stating "21st Century CEO." Some claim his mama took him to a "how-to seminar" where he met and impressed someone, and some stories claim he had two Big Brother mentors, John W. Callaci and Roi Tauer (depending on the story). I can't find anything on Callaci and Tauer that deals with the rise of Gray's star. At age 8 Gray became co-founder of Urban Neighborhood Enterprise Economic Club (UNEEC) on Chicago's Southside. I've no idea who exactly co-founded with him but UNEEC raised venture capital, at one point $300,000, from fundraising; seed money for one or more of Gray's business ventures. Nor is it clear how Gray "grew up" in the Chicago projects when he was so prosperous before he grew up.

Between age 12 and 16, Gray founded FarrOut Foods, a specialty foods company catering to young people, beginning with a strawberry-maple syrup, a "we're too poor to buy syrup" recipe belonging to his grandmother. (He did not use leftovers in this venture.) "My grandmother used to make all of our syrup from scratch because we couldn’t afford it," he says. (I cook from scratch and find homemade more costly). In my day poor folks used sorghum molasses, syrup was not an option, and strawberries a luxury. FarrOut Foods was sold a year later making Gray a 14 or 15-year-old millionaire. Also during and/or shortly after this time he founded a radio show, pre-paid phone cards, a Las Vegas strip comedy show, a pre-paid MasterCard called goFarr, and various other ventures.

There's a story Gray began his fortune with a lemonade stand too, but I think this story may have been put out before the spinmasters had the spin straight, or it was confused with the kiddie entrepreneur who suggested a lemonade stand to the Farrah Gray Foundation, a venture capital fund that provides seed money to entrepreneurs under the age of 25.

Somewhere during his early years, press releases say age 6, some press never mention it, but Gray traveled with an older brother, Andre, to Europe and Asia. As the two brothers tell it, Andre acted as guardian and mentor because their mother, Paula Rushiddin, a single parent, was busy trying to make her way in the business world to support her five children. Brother Andre was a successful tradesman at the time, operating Export Now between 1988 and 1989. Some press reports Farrah's dad was in prison, but Andre credits their parents as motivating them to get out of the ghetto. Maybe there is more than one dad, but at any rate, it's not often a 6 y/o child of poverty from the projects gets to tour and chit-chat with Asian and European businessmen.

I'm acquainted with a Black millionaire or two and other affluents, none becoming millionaires at 14 or 15 but successful despite their late starts in the world of business. Their products were not leftover lotions or syrup but in the IT field, restaurants, professors, attorneys, etc. They also had one or more : financial backers, affirmative action, higher education, and/or minority contracting. For those unaware, many white businessmen, after exhausting government money for female relatives in the "woman as minority" affirmative action status, will seek Black front persons for government funds. Talented Blacks of course, but fronts nonetheless. Somewhere behind little Gray's "staggering" phenomenal rags to riches story are men/women who worked the system, most likely using minority youth government grant programs; with the Grays movin' on up to the penthouse in the Las Vegas sky.

Thanks but no thanks Mr. How-to Get Rich With the Inner Self. I'll hold other Blacks up as role models to my grandchildren. Dick Gregory, Matthew Henson, Adam Clayton Powell, Julian Bond, Andrew Young, Malcolm X, MLK, Ruby & Ossie Davis, Mae Jemison, hundreds and hundreds of truly self-made men and women, many who never became millionaires.

I watched an interview of Gray and he is quite the snake-oil salesman, a hustler of smooth talk, pimping how-to language as in : "There is no such thing as luck. There is hard work and determination. The power is really within you. Find your area of excellence and believe in yourself even if no one else will." Sound advice, but the same old positive thinking how-to remix.

Let's be real – Gray was not a pre-pubescent entrepreneur who succeeded by hard work and determination, no matter how often his Las Vegas backers say so. We're served up prepackaged success stories like this ever so often; pabulum for the poor, hope for the little guy, temporary inspiration from prominently marketed peddlers – assuring you luck has nothing to do with it, hard work and faith will lift you from the ghetto, the trailer park, the bottom rung – just yoke those bootstraps around whatever is in you and you can do it, in 9 steps. Marketing anyone can get rich against the odds - it sells, usually to the same no-such-thing-as-luck believers who spend rent money on lottery tickets. Gray is no more than those infomercials promising perfect skin, perfect vacuum cleaners, vitamins that heal, real estate secrets to personal fortunes.

The only real in Gray's reallionaire is it's another real phony how-to. And contrary to Farrah Gray's wisdom that "there is no such thing as luck," success, more often than we want to believe, can be attained by nothing more than hype and happenstance. For example, lucky little business boy George Bush becoming president, twice.