The Iced Coffee Hour - From Broke To Bugatti | How Steve Hamilton Made $500 Million

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

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So you might know Steve Hamilton from his $30 million car collection that he showcases on YouTube, but you might not know about his billion dollar business that actually funds everything that he started when he was just 18 years old. And today he breaks down exactly how he did it and the unbelievable secrets of how to run a billion dollar business on this episode of Smash the Like button. And subscribe because we're closing it on 400,000 subscribers and it's one click away. It would mean the world to us and it's free. With that said, let's get on with the episode. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. I am Steve Hamilton and I am super pumped to be here today.

Hold that thought, Steve. Before you go into that, I want to thank today sponsor Rocket Money, formerly known as True Bill. Are we not addressing the fact we just changed clothes? We don't need to. All right, because we're in a sponsorship bit. And listen, for anyone who knows me knows that I love saving money, which is exactly why something like Rocket Money is absolutely perfect. With Rocket Money, you could cancel unwanted subscriptions, lower your bills, set up budgets, monitor your credit score and get a clear picture of your finances all in one place. What they do is they basically find recurring charges that keep showing up in the same amount from the same vendor. And then they let you know in their portal so that if you're no longer interested in them, you just click cancel.

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The link is down below. Now let's get back to the podcast. Thank you so much for making it. Thank you. We've both had a crazy trip this last day. We just came back from New York minutes ago. set up and we're here at like 10 p.m. at night. So it's like 1 a.m. New York time. And you told us that you just traveled from Hawaii. Yeah, I got home from Hawaii yesterday, was in Chicago for 20 hours,

and then flew right back out here at 3 a.m. Chicago time to what is that, 1 a.m. Vegas time. And then my body's still on 11 p.m. Hawaii time. So I don't even understand what's happening right now. And what brings you to Vegas? We are here shooting a show for Amazon Prime. It's called Banging gears and so we're racing JDM vehicles with European vehicles in the same horsepower and trying to see who has the best time trial along with stragg racing. It's like racing around basically the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. That place is badass by the way. There's a, I mean, you know this area, right? And there's a military air force base right there. So we're sitting there. And all day long there are these crazy jets flying all over us. It was really surreal to be there today. Did you already do the races?

So it's, it's, it was a pretty messy, uh, we're the first. They're shooting the first two episodes of like 14. And they got a lot of organizational stuff that they got to get together at this point. So I would say that in two days, I've only been here today, but Tommy and the other crew were there yesterday as well. In two days, they may have got five minutes worth of footage shot. So tomorrow is the day that they got a lot of makeup to do. It's a lot different than YouTube. Because on YouTube, it's like every moment is content.

You just turn the camera on with something like Amazon and imagine. There's so much that goes in behind the scenes. Yeah, and I can do one spiel. I can talk for 10 minutes and they can cut that 27 times, where this one's a little, it needs to be a little less aggressive on the cuts. And I think there's 20 crew members there. It's kind of insane how many people are needed to make that type of production. Are you driving your cars?

Are those the three? Yeah, we've got the GT3RS to 765 LT and the 918 out here today. And what cars are you racing? I'm raising the G2. Somehow they wanted me to do the GT3RS, which is the cheapest of the three, but also the workhorse on the track. that thing does not break no matter how hard you drive it. I love it.

So I'm looking at these cars that you just parked out front of the house. They look absolutely incredible. For me, I guess I'm not very cultured when it comes to, you know, luxury cars and everything. So I'm looking at these cars, I'm like, okay, I guess it's just like a couple hundred grand of pop, something like that. Is that about in the ballpark? The GT3RS is about 250. The orange one, the McLaren 765 LT, those are going for about 600.

And then the gray, the portion 918, those are with the, I have the YSack package, So it's about $2 million. That's a $2 million car. Yes, yes. And Natalia is driving it on the track. And we're like literally racing these things full speed. And there's no insurance on the track. And how much does that worry you when you're driving?

Because here's the thing. I was driving a car just recently. And there was a semi in front of me. And it ran into a cardboard box. And the cardboard box flew over the semi and it hit my car. And it did a little bit of scuff. Like does that scare you something like that could happen? Way less than it should.

Like, I have a weird lack of fear about it. So, like, at the Hamilton Collection, we're all about sharing our cars with the community. So it's not uncommon for me to have eight, ten friends over. We've had followers come over and drive all the cars of dinner. We did a homecoming thing where I let 16 students take all my hypercars actually to homecoming unshaparowned. So I just have an irrational lack of fear about it. And I should, but I don't know.

And then the SENA wrecked, too. Like you probably don't know about it particularly, but I had a $1.2 million car, get T-boned about two weeks ago, three weeks ago. And that changed it for a few weeks. And now I'm back to the irrational lack of fear. How did it get wrecked and how did it feel? Like how to make you feel? What was the initial gut reaction? We were with James Stradman and it wasn't him, by the way. We had 10 cars getting ready to go out to dinner. We were celebrating. And we got out of my neighborhood, 10 seconds out of my neighborhood. And I'm like the last. lead car and the last car is the one that got hit. So I get a call and it's nobody that we put on camera, but he says, I just got hit. And I'm like, you think that I would say, are you okay? But he was talking to me and he sounded okay. So my first gut reaction was, and I'm not a horrible human, I swear. My gut reaction was, is it like, is the car okay? Again, he's talking to me. He's like, all right, Steve. I'm like, dude's talking to me. Clearly he's okay. And then he goes, no,

it's pretty bad. I'm like, oh my God. And so I made a U-turn and I get, well, right after I make the U-turn, I call my, our videographer. I'm like, dude, you got to get rolling right. Like, you got to roll this. Like, I'm not saying this is a great vlog, but we need to document this and like people want to know what happened. So Aiden is our videographer and he starts rolling right away. And then when we get there, again, Aiden was not the driver. But we get there and I, I realize that Aiden was the passenger and I'm like telling him to like, he got, he just got hit at 40 miles an hour and I'm telling the poor guy to video this and I'm like oh my gosh aiden I'm so sorry I didn't know you were in the car but dude had the camera ready and he was filming um so props to him

but yeah so that uh he just pulled right out into traffic basically like I have the subdivision he pulled out onto a busy street didn't see the lady oh wow so it was his fault it was his fault yeah and just a special thank you to country financial insurance which camera am i looking at because I want to just a special thank you to country financial for keeping me insured and not dropping me as a result. They have actually really fantastic rates, and I'm not just saying this for their, like, fantastic coverage, they're still keeping me insured.

We're being extra careful with the vehicles. Are they covering it? Yeah, they're rather going to be mailing me a check in a week or so. How does that work? Is that a stated value? This is all new for me. When I had to insure the Ford GT, it's not a normal process like you would call up GEICO.

I mean, I don't want to insure. They actually dropped the Tesla Roadster. They said it was uninsurable after a year of insuring it. That's really weird. Parts. They insured 100% of my cars and there's almost 30 of them in the fleet and I have funky ones like the Kuntash, the Testarosa. I've had an old Porsche Safari. Like there's nothing that they haven't insured.

Some of them took a week to get back with rates, but my insurance is incredibly cheap. I pay less than $30,000 a year for all cars. I know, I know. But it's because you have so many of them that like, well, I guess, but you know what? What's your insurance grant? What is it? Yes. Mine all in is probably $3,300.

a year for this four four cars I think a lot of it has to do with the air a lot of it does have to do with the area and we're in a very conservative town that's very mine's miles mine is like oh yeah I'll put a 200 miles a year in the GT I'll put 300 on the Tesla like that's you know I just get everything down with really high deductibles yeah all of mine are like max deductibles yeah what happened with the SENA though was that just a stated value so so they call it a they call it a cash value I think but I ended up they were extremely reasonable like I ended up getting, those are going for about 1.25 million right now.

I got that plus registration plus tax. So I'm getting about a $1.4 million check from them. Wow. Yes. Yeah. And then is the plan to, do they take the car then? Yes, it's gone. So they take it.

I tried fiercely to get the car back. Houston Crosda really wanted the car. So I was trying to negotiate something for him. And they wouldn't do it. They had to send it to Copart. There's actually an only law that prohibits anything nine years or less. Yeah, if it's wrecked, they can't give it or sell it back to the person. And you crashed your Bugatti, right?

No. Oh, all right. Yes. I have a habit of scraping cars as I pull into drive. It was like I did your GT3. My GT3S pulling into your driveway. I scraped the crap out of that. And that's a low driveway too.

And you just have to come in a bare like any, like any semblance of an angle will not scrape. You just can't go like head on. Yeah. Or just put the front lift on too. Oh, yeah. Which I did not do. I just didn't realize it was that.

And then it scraped bad. But yeah, Bugatti, I was pulling into David Dobrick's driveway. And his drive, like Beverly Hills is, really hilly. It's called Beverly Hills, right? But I didn't realize that. So I like get in there and it just I'm like, oh my gosh. But did you see the driveway going up and thought that like I could do it or you just weren't thinking? I think that I was hitting it at an angle and that's what she said. But I was hitting it in an angle and it wasn't a good enough angle. And yeah, lesson learned. I just won't park in his drab. Like it's really steep. I shouldn't have I shouldn't have pull it in.

What was your thought when you first heard that crunch? Was it like this is good content or like what did I just do. Yeah, whenever I mess up and I mess up plenty, I'm always like, yeah, you guys can roll it. Yeah, you can film it. Like, it's fine. I'm human. And so, yeah, it's both. And then David Dauberg whips out his phone right away. And he's like, oh my God. I'm like, all right, well, if he's doing it, it's going public. Like, and he was a good guy. Like, he checked with us to make sure it was okay. And I'm like, of course. And it's almost like, and you can't even really see me in it. And the guy that was my passenger, he's getting text. Everybody assumed it was him. And like, he's clearly the passenger. But he's the, but he's the only guy you can see. So to other people that meant he was driving. So he took most of the heat.

And but like we were heading to Monterey days later. So it made that car super like famous well known because their TikTok, our tick tack blew up. So it was, I think it was a good thing. It raised our awareness. What damage did it do to the car? Not bad. It was far less than we expected. There was like a two foot long scrape on the very under part of the car. But you know what, Steve? Before you question why we change clothes again, we got to tell you about something that we do feel would actually help your business quite a bit, and that would be our sponsor, Streamyard. Steve, I know you've been wanting to start a podcast just like us, but if you wanted to do so, you don't need to build out such an expensive studio like this.

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Hold on, Steve. Don't get Stream Yard right now. Wait for the end of the pitch, man. I'm sorry. Whether you just want to start live streaming or easily create new content, Streamyard makes it simple to get professional and polished concrete every single time. Graham, I think you meant to say content, not concrete. But regardless, guys, just check out streamyard with a link down below the description. It helps us out a ton. Thank you so much Stream Yard and back to the podcast. We got to tell them. Okay, just sign up, please.

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I get to drive all these cars every day. And it's like normalized now. Like it's like, oh, well, I got to take the 765LT. All right. Like, it's just normalized for us. And you have people that come into our headquarters. And they're like so thrilled. They never see the like they don't see a La Frii.

They don't see a 918, a P1. And like we don't really. We just forget how like significant it can be to someone. Like I'm getting letters about how it changed people's lives. It motivated them. And like you probably get the same all the time. And, uh, it's neat to see that. and we always have to remember that it's significant to people.

So we always want to make sure that we're, I know I'm pivoting here, but giving people, like it's so important to give people access to these. And you'd be amazing how many people have driven that Bugatti. Probably 200 different people have driven that thing. It's, I'm a little bit insane. So how many miles?

How much you're selling it for? I'm hoping to get around $2.8 to $3 million. It's going up for auction at Sotheby's Amelia Island and Florida. We determined that would probably be the best way to sell it off. Why Sotheby's not like bring a trailer or like a... It's hard because we were trying to go a dealer route and the dealer's like, well, I have to be honest about its history.

And I'm like, it's always good to be honest. The problem is that on YouTube, you see the 1% of the time that I'm hooning that car and like going crazy. We're 99% of the time like I'm just driving and cruising in the car. I mean, I like to have fun with it. But the dealers that I've talked to, like they have a specific clientele that they need to be very forthright. And they got to say, yes, this car was abused for, but really the car was meticulous.

I maintain all my cars really well. There's a lot of influences out there that don't. But I maintain them really well. And we really do take care of them so that we can go beast them for that one to five percent. And so the dealer can't really tell that story according to them, like this clientele, they need to disclose everything. At auction, it's kind of at other people's discretion. So it's at their discretion to do the diligence.

So we're not trying to hide anything. Like I could have painted the blue part black and nobody would have ever known that it was my boo But we, we want to fix up the blue and it's, it's just, it's just gives people their own opportunity to make their own assumptions versus the dealer steering them into it. Or bring a trailer is, bring a trailer is amazingly like that side. I'm addicted to it. Every day I'm just scrolling. I bought several cars.

I've bid on 10 different cars on there. Bring a trailer actually has really high standards for you to be able to list. I didn't even realize it. I bought a testeroza that had like, nothing was disclosed. Flood damage, frame damage when I got it. And I'm like, I reported it to them. they like forced the seller to take this thing back. And they banned that car from being listed again.

So I, that transaction alone, I'm like, okay, if I'm buying and bring a trailer, like, your reputation is so important. Yeah, you're buying a pretty good car. And I listed a car, my Porsche Safari and like really thorough, picky process to get it on there. So I'm impressed and it built my confidence about really buying anything else. And so I got the GT. Hell yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We got an M5 from there. And I actually got that same Porsche Safari from there. I think that's all I've gotten from there. Oh, okay. Yes. That's cool. Yeah.

How do you get an allocation for the new Bugatti? So they are, what's the process? And what's the process like for buying one? Yeah. How does that work? So up until the last like three to five years, like Bugatti did not sell out of anything. Like you could call a dealer and get an allocation for something. And now there's a lot of like young money, young people that that can become influencers

and that can afford these Bugatti. Like the hypercar market is shifting drastically. you have a lot more youth buying hypers, and then you have a lot more people modifying and doing crazy things to them without hurting the value, actually. It's amazing in the last two years how you can go modify and do stupid stuff

and you're probably not going to hurt the value where two years ago, like there goes 500 grand if you do an exhaust system on your Bugatti. What was the question again? How do you get an allocation? Oh, yeah. And what's the process of buying a Bugatti?

So back then, easy. Now allocations are all politics and like I don't like just candidly, like their politics and it's it's knowing someone unfortunately. The Bugatti one's kind of a funky story. So I offended Bugatti directly. They had their, I was told by their old, I think he was their number one dude in the USA, but he's like, your video or you're pulling around Natalia on like a snowboard and you pushing the car

and then you dinoing it and doing all this stuff. He's like, that offended our factory workers. He's like, we had a company-wide meeting top down here at Bugatti for an hour about your video. And he's like at the end of the day, like we just, like I had to explain to them. Like, we just want you to have fun in your car. Like it's your car. And I need to tell them to that. So I had at that time when I'm having that call with them, I had an allocation with them.

Well, I had a, I had a like first spot on the waiting list. And they said I was sure to get that allocation. And then like, and then I get that call from him. And then all of a sudden like, they're telling me I'm not going to get that allocation. So I'm like, something's fishy here. Like, are they, are they playing games because of my channel? and I still don't have an answer on that, but then I met a great dude that had a customer cancel named Tim

out of O'Gara coach in Beverly Hills, and he's like, I actually have an allocation for an SS, confirmed allocation, customer canceled. So I bet Bugatti was very happy to hear that I secured another one that was guaranteed. And a lot of times you have to pay, like there's a whole middle market to that thing where people are like marking up allocations.

It's really obnoxious and like, I kind of can't stand it that there's middlemen that are like, hey, I know this allocation. I can't tell you who it is or where you're going to get it. I need $200,000 on top of it. And I'm like, I just, that just, I get it. It's business. Like, I'm a businessman.

People are in it to make money, but it just drives me crazy that there has to be a fee paid like that to get an allocation. But Tim was a great dude. No fee on top of it. Just had to wire him $600,000 right away. Another $1.5 million, like, I don't know, three months later. That's the other thing. Oh, so now, so that's,

How, like I got an allocation for my Pagani Utopia, much lower production count on that. Just having a really good, there's another story behind that I'm not going to get into. There was a lot of drama there too. There's a lot of drama and politics behind a lot of this and like, I don't play that game. That's what Schme was telling us of just how intricate it is,

especially I think with Ferrari is one of those companies where you really have to get in there, show appreciation for the brand by certain number of cars. They won't tell you what it is. It's a black box. But when you get in, then they'll give you these allocations. And I won't play that game.

Like, I'll be honest. Like, if there's a problem with the Bugatti, I've expressed it. Like, I've unfortunately thrown Bugatti of Chicago under the bus because there's been some issues with them servicing my car. I've been public about what it is like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to play that game. I'm going to give honest input always on our channel. And that will hurt me in some cases.

And I'll modify my Ferrari. I'm not going to specify which one, but Frye really doesn't like, especially when it's hyper-level cars. I'm probably never going to be on that list for Ferrari because they have such a deep bench of people that and they're only touching you know five percent of people that it's that's never going to happen at Lamborghini yeah i've made it to the lounge a few times but um but right now good favor with bugatti pagani utopia was a challenging one to get remacknavera not not difficult because they're not sold out it depends on on the exclusivity like how well they're selling i'm trying to think

what else we have on order um the new Lamborghini replacement that's replacing the event at we saw that at the lounge, it's very, very pretty. How many horsepower is that? I can't say, I don't think. My guess is 800. It's got to be eight. I was under NDA, so I don't want to shoot myself on the foot on that one. Could you give us a hint of anything?

Like, almost tease of... Without getting sued? Let me think how... I would say that it seems very different looking. Like, it's... It looks really nice. I'm really excited for it. It may or may not have a pretty significant horsepower jump.

and it may or may not have solved the rough shifting problem in the event to that I really hate. Yeah. And that's why I sold my eventador. But it may or may not. I don't know. Okay. Wow.

So tell us a bit of your background, how you got started and everything. Yeah. So when I was 19 years old, I basically had this epiphany. Let's go back even further. Hate to interrupt you. But I think your story, just being younger, not doing well in school, but not taking on like side businesses, like always being an entrepreneur. you're always hustling.

Yes. So, yeah, it came from nothing. Like five different elementary schools, zero money, family on welfare. Back then, food stamps, then it turned into the link card in Illinois. We had nothing. Like, four kids were sharing one, like, we had two bunk beds in a bedroom. And so you have to like, you just learn how to be frugal. You learn how to, like, fight for everything that you get.

And so, like, early on, I was, I had that entrepreneur of spirit. Like, I set up a bike shop in sixth grade where I was repairing local bikes. I started working as a caddy at age 13. So I've actually been working since I was 13 years old, 15 plus hours a week. Well, it got a lot more as I started my business. But then I worked at McDonald's because I paid a little better from 14 to 16, and then a local grocery store for about two or three years in the deli. So I worked.

Like I had to sacrifice sports in high school to go work because I wanted stuff. Like I needed nice clothing. I needed a car. And so that, I think, just. that work ethic or just like drive as a kid and like I didn't want to repeat the mistakes of my parents to be honest with you like there's there's uh I don't know I would say that I was the most rebellious like um and I've said it in my videos and I don't want to beat a dead horse but like I've never actually drank I've never had a sip of alcohol

because there was abuse like growing up like my parents abused alcohol and you see that and I'm like at first I just I made a decision not to do it because um it was like rebellious It's like, I'm going to show them that I can't do this. Like, it's so frustrating that I have to deal with this. Like, I'm going to show them that you can live life without alcohol. And then I was fine until 18. I didn't do it at 21. I didn't do it at 25.

And I'm like, well, if I made it that far, I'll just, there's no need to really ever drink. Same with work. Like, you know, there's certain aspects of my parents' life that trickled into their work life that made it really hard for them to rise above and be better. You know, my parents did work hard. Like, they provided for us. and I appreciate them for doing that. But ultimately, they just, they didn't have this skill set

or maybe the drive to get out of that rut. So I bought some wheels for my car. I had a 94 Z-28 that I worked hard to buy at the time. Bought some wheels for that, wanted bigger wheels later. Don't know why I didn't click earlier, but when I started looking for the 18s to replace the 16s that I had bought, looking on eBay, I'm seeing the price of them. And I'm like, huh, I wonder,

it's where the frugal part came in. I wonder if I can find these cheaper, like directly from the manufacturer versus having to go to a Firestone or somewhere. And then, of course, you call the manufacturer and they say, no, you have to buy this through a dealer. Like, you can't buy this from. So then I called the next day and I'm like, hey, this is Steve from Firestone. What's my price on those Eagle 07, 17 inch? And like, the vendor's like, well, they're, you know, $88 on sale of wheel right now. Like, they didn't even check.

Like, that was just fine that I said that. Wow. That, like that one vendor. I was 19. Okay. So that's the only vendor. Like a lot of things happen. I mean, I hate when people say that it's all about luck.

It's more about timing and taking advantage of it because everyone else had that same opportunity that I did that year. They just didn't take advantage of it, right? But that was the, if I called any other place, they probably would have shut me down or they would have said, okay, what's your name?

Like they would have checked a list. This one manufacturer was just very like podunk. Didn't really care about that stuff. So I looked on eBay, I'm like, huh, $88 a wheel. That's, you know, roughly $360 a set. These are selling for $550 a set on eBay. And this guy is selling them. I'm like, well, damn, that's $200 profit.

And that's a week or two. What was I working? Maybe 30 hours a week at $9 an hour. So, yeah, that was like, it was a week, it's about a weeks of labor. And I could make that like just listing an auction. So, like, I couldn't sleep that night. I knew it was going to be, I just knew it was going to be successful. I'd never felt that way before in my life.

life and so rolled up to the manufacturer and the next day and started talking to them I gave them a little business card that I had from installing radios on the side I didn't have it set up as a legal LLC or anything it was just a side gig and like again this was the right manufacturer right time only guys that would take a business card and start selling me product like everyone else needs a resale tax ID they need like they need a lot of information and not personal checks which I had I was using personal checks they gave me pricing they set me up question it didn't question So I got on eBay that evening and I started listing product that they had in stock right away. I'm selling seven, eight sets the first week.

So I'm all of a sudden making $2,000 or call it, you know, $1,000 my first week. And like that, that changed my life in my perspective. So from then on it was all about listing as much product and brands as possible. Were you underpricing the other people? Yeah, absolutely. It's just to undercut them a little bit. I was, yeah. Yeah, we were listing a lot of product that wasn't listed.

So it wasn't just, hey, I'm going to go find a guy. Like it was, I'm going to list as much as you might. than they possible because there was not, there were not many people on eBay selling wheels in 2003. So a lot of it was undercutting because my overhead was nothing. Like I was working out of my parents' apartment. So that made it a little bit easier to beat the guy that's in the shop. But you're storing all these wheels in the apartment.

They would sit in the foyer. So most of it, the other beautiful thing about this is I would get paid before I'd go buy the products. So like I would list 20 sets of wheels. I get paid the 550. I go pay the 360. I instantly have that profit, and then I use it to ship as well. It's like we got paid for everything ahead of time.

You know, fast forward to now, we have $30 million with the stock. We learned that along the way pretty quickly, I learned that if you stock it in quantity, you get better deals, you get more margin. Of course, there's more risk, right? But, yeah, like I would go pick up maybe 16 wheels and they'd be sitting in the foyer from the delivery, and then I'd have to prep them and strap them together

and go ship them. And then eventually they started being like three months into it. It's when I figured out the bulk thing. So I rented a little office space like, I don't know, I'll block down the road. And so that's a restart. So I'm this 19 year old kid that has his own office. I don't know. It was pretty surreal.

It was pretty cool. How much were you making back then? I think in my first full year. So I started June of 03. I think that I probably, let's say that even that seven months that I had that I probably maybe made 50 to 60K. so almost 10 grand a month. And then like the full year after that, it might have been 150, 200K.

Pretty amazing. You know, when I was in college, I was like, I want to make $50,000 a year. Like, I want to do sales. I want to make $50,000. Like that was the pinnacle for me. And back then, adjusted for inflation, that's probably closer to 80K maybe right now, 90K.

So I don't want to artificially make people think that that's like a low goal. Like that was my goal. And that was, you made it. And like, I did that while in college in seven months. When did you decide or did you decide to drop out of college? I did not, but I only, I was in a two-year college called College of DuPage. Okay. And so I started this like what would have been after my, I was kind of just finishing my first year.

And so it took me two more years to finish a two-year program. But I wanted to get that done. And I've even like, I've even thought about going back and getting a bachelor or a master's. like I actually signed up and enrolled at DePaul. Then they closed down the campus by me, like right after I signed up and then I would have had to try it. But then I'm like, you know what, do I need this piece of paper? Like I wanted that because I felt inadequate or something. Like, I don't know what it was. And I'm like, do I really need that at the end of the day? Like, am I going to go waste? I shouldn't. I only mean this as it relates to me because I think that

for many people that it's important to go to college, right? And unfortunately, when people make hiring decisions, I think that even though someone may be qualified without it, just decided against because I'm like, you know what, I've done pretty well for myself. Like, I don't need, I don't need to go get that piece of paper. And I've felt at peace with that decision ever since then. How did you grow with the business, though? Do you ever have any problems being taken seriously, being like 19 or 20 and, like, try to figure it out on your own?

I would say, like, I've always had, so I've always had the mindset, like, I've never been content even more, like, I don't feel much different now than I did when I was 19. And part of that drive is, like, never, never being content and never feeling like you've achieved peak success. And so it's always about like cool I've done this and immediately get working on what else can grow the business. So it's like it's having that attitude and that drive. So we started off with wheels in 03. By 08, we started doing tires. We were one of, if not the first guy to offer assemblies on eBay. So like in 2008, you could buy a full wheel and tire package from

us on eBay. I went and figured like everything I figured out myself, I went to a shop and figured out how to mountain balance, made sure that we were profitable, checked shipping on it, and it was good. And then once that was okay, I went and hired a few people. Actually, we had my whole family work. We had my brother Joel, my brother Mike, my sister, Jackie. That was like our team. And then my cousin. It was a five-man team. Super cool working with all your siblings, too. And then it was, okay, well, we've done eBay. We've done rem entire packages. How can we build our own brand? Like, eBay, there's no real value in having an eBay store. Like, anybody can come in and knock you out. Unless the product you're selling is, you're selling,

your own. Then there's uniqueness to it. But we went and launched Mr. Wheel Deal with a partner and a friend of mine. That was our own brand. And then that was kind of a website that didn't have a shopping cart. Like you'd go there, you'd get a quote request and there'd be a lot of interaction back and forth. And then in 2013, I was approached by a guy named Sean who had built like this awesome brand called Custom Offsets. And what they did was they were just a FIMIC gallery. You'd go there and you'd upload a picture of your truck. So it was a big showcase for what vehicles and then what modifications and what wheels you put on your vehicle. And he had like 20,000 trucks uploaded a strong communal gathering. And he bought wheels and tires from us. And he's like, how can I monetize this?

Like I have this engaged audience. I'm like, well, we have a database. We have a very healthy and robust database. We have customer service, mounting balancing, vendor relationships. Like we have all these stuff figured out. So we worked with him to do some logic around bundling package. We helped them with some of the developing and the back end stuff. Their job was was primarily to maintain the website and then to market it. And then they got a cut. So that and then same arrangement with the company we now run called Fitman Industries and Custom Offsets and Fitment Industries are the two biggest brands that we have. Same kind of partnership that happened where we were doing a lot of the stuff in the background. They were doing the marketing.

And then some other ventures launched along the way, including our own brands, Anthem Arcon, Anovia. And then we had all these funky things. I had a partner in Mr. Wheeldale. I had them doing this. There were like six different people involved kind of competing against each other. And so in 2019, early in the year, we merged all the things. companies together, created like an ownership structure around it. And it added like, like from December 31st, 2018 to January 1st, one day change my value. By giving up some of the company and

merging, my value increased dramatically because now you have all this complex, goofy partnerships and arrangements all bundled up into one common entity with one set of books. So that was one of the best moves that I made. And we've grown, we've grown 35 to 50 percent every single year we've been in business besides last year. It was. a little challenging. But once we merged, it was like 50, 70, 70 percent. So it really helped for us all to be on kind of the same page. How did you decide to bring in all the cars and start the Hamilton Collection?

So partner Sean in 2018, I was stepping out of a massage place. Legitimate. That's not what she said. It was, yeah, no, I heard that. Actually, there's a story about that. Oh, no. No, no. I know we get to hear the story. Come on.

All right. So it's weird how it all ties together because it was all in the same night. I'm like, I'm with my brother, Mike. And I'm like, my wife and I go to these like $25, like, foot feel spot or like Asian a spot. And like, I know they're legit because there's usually like four people in the same room together. So you're like, they're not going to give you a happy ending with three other people around you.

Right. So we find this one that's still open right by us in Winfield. Very reputable, like nice, nice town. And I'm like, oh, they're still open. So we get in there. And the first thing we realize is, okay, well, there's separate rooms at this one, but it's still called Asian spa, I think is what it was called. So we get in there.

And I step into the room and the lady's like, I'm getting in my boxers. And she's like, no, no, like you have to get naked. I'm like, she's like holding up. She's like, this can't see it. Somehow she knew I was in my boxer. So I'm like, okay, all right. Like I've done naked massages before. Like, all right.

I was all covered up. So I get in the bed covered up. And it was just a very different kind of like, very different massage. She was just like, there was some grazes happening, but I'm like, all right,

like, and then at the end, like 45 minutes later again, nothing full physical had happened, but at the end, she pulls the towel off of me. And she goes, she grabs,

she grabs it. And she goes, you want? And this was a test of, of my faithfulness to my wife, actually, because you're in like a trans, right?

You're like, you're like fully asleep, like at peace, calm. And then like someone just grabs you and like, it took, they're laughing out there. I hear laugh.

It took everything I had, but it also took, but it also was a quick. And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no. Like that, that I was put to the test because there's no emotional connection with this lady. Like, nobody could have ever known, but I'm like, no. And I came on when I told my wife about it. Yeah. What was her reaction? Would she just want to call this place up and like ring him out?

She's like, you should report him. I'm like, I'm not going to end up in the newspaper. Like, what if they have like camera. Yes. Yes. Yes. So there were some other things. along the way where you go back in hindsight and you're like, okay, well, like, she was on top of me,

like rubbing my shoulder, but like, jirating her hips by my head. And I'm like, all right, well, some of the Asian massages are weird where they do get on top of you, but she was a little like her privates were a little closer to my head, but like, you don't think, you don't, it doesn't add up until she pulls off the towel and grabs your junk. Now, where the story ends is I'm walking out of the spa. I look at my brother Mike. And he looked, he looked like he was sleeping and I'm like Mike like you know did they offer you something he's like no I was sleeping he's like wait they offered you something runs back in I'm like no no no I'm like get out here and then I get a call like right around that time where I'm texting Sean and he's like and I only remember that it

was that day because of what happened yeah he's like bro just get the event he sent me a link for an eventador at a Dallas Lamborghini and it's it's part of the same group I got my utopia from later and that's how I forged that relationship he's like just get it like I had been kind of towing around with the idea and he pushed me over the edge to get my very first supercar, the Lamborghini Ventador, and fell in love with that and then rapidly bought a Porsche GT3RS, I think, months later, and then I got my McLaren 720s. And then I realized that, and I mean this sincerely, but I realized how much people love these cars. And like, I genuinely love sharing my cars. Like, I told you about the irrational lack of fear. It's because the joy that I get from seeing

other people having access to these is so great that I just don't worry. I don't worry about the liability and maybe I should. But like, Just seeing other people interact with it, getting access to them. I'm like, I'm like, you know, and I just really love cars. I'm like, there's nothing stopping me from growing this fleet. And so it was just a systematic purchasing of more and more cars. Well, it seems like a bit of a spur of the moment decision to go and buy an Eventador. All of my cars have been like a spur, like 90% of them.

How much were you making to justify that you could just like, all right, you know what? I think it's a good decision. I want to do that. At that time, probably. I've always been actually pretty conservative. Like, even though I'm saying I bought an event door, like I typically live well below my, I have a nice home.

I have nice cars, but I'm typically well below my means. And so I would say that I was probably making one and a half to two million bucks a year at that time. Okay. So definitely could afford right? And the event door, well,

I don't know. That's definitely, yeah, one and a two million dollars. Yeah. What was the event there? $400,000? It was $312,000.

Oh, Yeah. Did you finance it or do you just buy it out? That one, that one I finance. So I do like, I have, I have 28 vehicles. I probably finance nine of them. And then I own, I have a stack of, you know, almost 20 titles in my safe. But like, if I can get, if I can get money and I'm sure you've talked about this for. But if I can get a note at two and a half to like four percent, I'm not going to go spend $2 million of my money when money was that cheap. Yes. I'm going to go just put it somewhere else that's going to earn me 8 plus percent a year. Are you comfortable to talk about your income over? time because I'm wildly curious when I see these types of cars. I think so. I think so. So I'm definitely not cash poor, but like you look at guys that launch software companies

and they may have a company that's not profitable but their but their company is wildly valuable, right? So you have people that have this billion dollar company, but they can't take dividends because their company's not making money. I think Elon Musk had that problem a while ago where he's like, well, yeah, I'm with buddy's couch. Yeah, yeah. He's like, well, I am worth all this money but like I can't sell my sock, like I, blah, blah, blah. So I'm not quite in that position, but like a lot of my equity is tied up into the company. Last year when, when, and by last year, I think I mean late 21, we had a billion dollar valuation put on my company. And so I don't own the full company. I have six partners, but today I own 40% of it. So that's, that's a pretty significant amount of

like net worth, right? That's, we'll call it 350 to 400 million dollars with the net worth. However, last year, we had our first year of basically we were flat in growth and like PE firms. That knocks a lot of firms out of the equation. Like they want high growth companies and we had always been one. So we should have sold in 2021. We didn't. And so I don't know what the value looks like today, but it's probably half of that. And then my percentage time that. So a lot of my value is tied up in that company. But but and I don't just have like I have a lot of properties and I sold a lot of them because I knew that market was at peak. I timed it perfectly. I buy when it's very clearly. cheap and I sell when it's very clearly high. I rarely play kind of in between. So I bought a lot of

my properties from like 09 to 13. And then I sold most of them in the last two years, maybe the last year, really. So I've timed it really well. And so I have income coming in from 20 plus properties. I have seven pet supplies plus stores. I have an Arby's. I have other investments elsewhere. So north of $10 million a year now at this point. So but, but that's that's probably less than I, maybe that's less than you guys would have assumed, but I think it probably is less than most. It's about, I'm so curious, let's start on the properties. Yeah. What did you buy?

What did you look for? Which ones did you sell? There's two reasons that I'm selling. One was because the market is at peak value. And then the other one is because I'm trying to simplify my life. It's the amount of stuff I'm, as I sell stuff and I still have to deal with it, I'm like, gosh, how did I handle this when I had exponentially more stuff to deal with? First thing I bought were single family homes and they were always like, it was less about investing. It was more about nostalgia. My grandma's house came up for sale that had not, like,

she had moved out of 30 years prior. It was the house she raised all of all of her children. Is that by coincidence? It just you saw it online or was it in the family they had to sell it? I'm like a big nostalgic guy. So I'm like, I put like Zillow follow reports on all the homes that I've owned like on the home alone house, uh, 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka. I'm like, I'm going to buy that house when it becomes available and I'm going to turn it into a big attraction and replicate what they did in the home. at the Brady Bunch House. Oh, I love it.

I love it. The neighbors will hate me, but I'm going to do it. So it was two things. It was that, like nostalgia. So I bought that. And then what did I do when I bought it? Oh, I think it, my sister, I let my sister live in it for a little while.

And then I started turning it into an income property. And then I also started buying the buildings that my business was out of. And that was where a lot of the equity happens. So I realized quickly that single family homes aren't really, in my opinion, unless you're dealing with really low income, like at that time, call it a $100,000, $80 to $100,000 house. I just don't think single-family homes are near,

like you only have one tenant. They're not generating the cap rate that I need. They're three to four percent out by me. So quickly learn that apartment buildings are the way to go, like multi-flats or if you're getting industrial that has six different condos. But I was focused on apartment buildings. So I bought a bunch of apartment buildings.

Most of them are six to eight flats. And so now you have, you know, six different tenants paying. So if one person vacates, you're still doing okay. And then your cap rates a lot higher. Like you just make more from an apartment building. Like a $600,000 apartment building is going to generate me $50K plus out there where a $600,000 home was getting me like $30, $35K.

That's just the way that it is out there. So I think I had, I don't know, 70, 80 tenants at one point across all the buildings. And then our company grew so fast that, you know, we were in 7,000 square feet, 20,000 square feet, 100,000 square feet. Did you just keep the building and then rent out the last one? I would always, so I would list them at a stupid high price, and then I would try to lease them. I wanted to lease them because if I can get someone to lease it,

then I could sell it for even more money, right? If you have a long-term lease tenant, there's really good money that can be had. I think a lot of developers try to do that. They build new buildings. They will sell it, but they want to get a guy in it so they can do. I'm seeing so many listed right now in Vegas, where the completion is over the next.

next few months, but they have a tenant already signed in, locked in for 20 years, and it's based on that cap rate. And they're going to sell that right away. They don't want that. A lot of them have offers. It's shocking. Even right now, they're in escrow. And they'll get 50% higher than what they would have sold that empty. Like, it's crazy. It's crazy how that works. So we just happen to get the stupid high offer where there wouldn't be a lease offer that would come in, but someone would be like, I'd get an offer within two weeks of my high selling price. I'm like, all right, well, I'm just going to sell. So that would pretty much happen every single time. I sold my 7,000 square foot. I sold my 20,000, sold my 100,000 one.

But most of the stuff I had was residential up to the last few years. And then we still own the building that we're in a 330,000 square foot facility up in Wisconsin. We have a 200,000 square foot facility in Batavia. And then we have another office building up there that's about 20,000 square feet. So own those three as far as industrial properties go. And then I had a bunch of residential, like I said. And then just sold them all. Most of it was to do it just trying to simplify my life.

Like I'm ready to sell a Porsche. I always want to be a part of my company that I helped build, obviously, or really that I started. I'm OG employee number one at the place, right? I always want to be a part of it, but I also want to take some chips off the table and have that comfort level where I have enough money in the bank where I'm like, okay, well, I could step away today

and be fine for the rest of my life. And I've banked away enough money at that point where I can live, I can live comfortably now, but I can live really comfortably by, really helping continue to build this company and get the value way back up again. What else do you own? You mentioned what you listed off quite a few. I started at the first of properties.

What else was there? I heard an Arby's in that. Pet supplies. Arbys, seven pet supplies plus stores. Okay, well, okay. Pet supply stores? Yeah. Pet supplies.

There was some partners that needed a financial arm. And I was, I can't get into too much detail on that, but like it ended up being where I was in the financial. I was told that I would need to put forth a certain amount. I ended up putting forth 4X the amount after two years. And I didn't think that they were being managed quite well. So I basically told them like, guys, I can't put any money.

Like you have to start putting money forth. Like I can't continue to bleed. However, if you guys give me 100% equity in all of the stores, I will assume all responsibilities within the leases, the loans that are outstanding. Like I will be the guy that takes the fall for that. And so I gave them that out and they took the out. And at the end of the day, I would have never invested in these stores because I just didn't want the headache.

If I could go back, I just wouldn't have put money forth. But we have an awesome person that oversees the store's name Kelly. And she has, like, worked to actually get them all profitable. Wow. Now, I want to sell them. And I have a lot of interested parties. Again, this is about simplification of life. Like, we've gotten them to where there's real value in the stores.

And so I just want to sell them. And I just want to have my wheel. Like I literally want to have my wheel company and that's it. And then over the next year or two, prop that up enough to sell some shares in that. And just like I feel kind of burned out at this point. I have other great ideas. The team and I were trying to make a vlog around launching business ideas. And we all came up with a bunch of ideas.

And like there were some great ideas. And we were going to launch a few of them, build the series, wait six months to a year to launch it. But I'm like, gosh, I just, it's not that I don't have the drive. It's just that it's so much work. And I just, I don't know. I'm really kind of, I've worked. You need to focus. What I didn't mention was I've worked 80 to 100 hour weeks and God bless my wife for like just being there for the kids, taking care of me.

But like for 20 something years, that takes a toll on you when you're working that much. And I think, yeah, I think I'm just ready to chill. Like it's too much. I want to talk about that. Yeah. But I also want to talk about the Arby's. Yeah. How did the Arby's come to be?

That's a same situation. Okay. Really. And the Arby's is folded as of like two days ago. Oh. So now I'm like trying to negotiate out of this lease. Yeah, I didn't even run and operate that one. They operated that fully.

Just as a franchise? Yeah, it's a franchise. So that one is gone, and I'm just dealing with getting out of the lease right now on that. So there's a 15-year lease sign. There's 13 years left in it. It's going to be fun. Do you like the food Arby's house? I do like Arby's.

It's not somewhere I go often, but every once in a while I'll get myself the roast beef with some Arby sauce and some curly fries. It's not what you think of when you think of. think of fast food. Very few people think Arby's. I think that's the problem is you just don't think about it, right? They don't market. They used to. They used to market a lot. I used to see their commercials all the time. I don't see them anymore. You know who does a really good job

of marketing? Who's that? Lexar. They actually do a really good job because they tell me to talk about them and then I sit here and I talk about them. Lexa is actually fantastic. They've said just quite a few memory cards and I got to say they are good. I don't get anything from saying it, but they are pretty good. Well, if you legit, don't don't get anything, then good for you.

They send us memory cards and hard drives. So what I'm hearing is ship ship them even more. Yeah. I love it. We all take your hard drives. Yes. Also send to the Hamilton collection, Naperville, Illinois. Got it.

Yeah, I'm sure we could, we could coordinate us on that. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. What are some of the business ideas that you were thinking? Now you got me wondering on that. Gosh, I feel like, I feel like there's three. And Tommy and Natalia, I know you're the other room listening, but sorry to throw you guys under the bus, but I told them all to come up

with three ideas each. So we had 12 ideas and correctly from wrong guys, but you'll have to yell. But I think my three ideas were voted the top out of all 12. We did an independent vote in the text. And I was hoping these guys, well, you know, Tommy had a, Tommy had a pretty good idea. They all had good ideas. They just weren't good enough to rise to the top. All right. And so I still may pursue them because they were my ideas. They still could happen, right? Like, if shit hits the fans at work, which I really don't think it will. Like, I think that, like, you look at companies that are failing right now, our competitor car ID, they had a $250 million valuation, and now their stock is trading under a dollar,

and, like, they've had negative profit. Like, I'm waiting for them to fall off, so, like, that should help our business if they inevitably fold. But you never know what happens, and I want to keep these in my back pocket. But I'm, I'm thinking of through all three of them and are like, gosh, like, I can't, I can't, like, one of them is a kid's. car toy like a power wheels like I can sell that but but you but it's all about it's all about creating some kind of app and differentiating it like you can take an existing one do a clever spin like

um be real I don't know if you prefer to be real that's that's that's what yeah be real just took something very simple um and then uh and then liquid like liquid death is brilliant they canned water but they made it look like it's beer so like that that's that's their pitch is that it's okay great like I think they're around a year and they had a billion dollar like something stupid crazy. So you can take a product and create something totally new that's never been done. You can take something that already exists and tweak it, which I think is easier to do, create that app, or you can create some kind of service. I think service is the most difficult because you usually have to be kind of on the floor there dealing with customers that walk in.

I think app is probably the fastest, like something software related is the fastest way to get rich, but it's also a lot of money required up front. I think building a product requires slightly less capital, but still a lot. That's more my wheelhouse. So one of them was software, two of or product-related. What are the most pivotal moments in your career, the choices that are decisions that you made that completely changed the trajectory of your business? Yeah, so it's crazy how if several things didn't happen along the way we would cease to exist.

One of them was reliance on eBay, like up until 08, 100% eBay sales. And eBay started to fall off quickly around 12 or 13 where their fee structure and everything just didn't get profitable. The market was too hoard out. And had I not pivoted and build our own brand, we would have been gone in 2012 or 13. eBay is like less than 1% of our sales now, where it was 100% when I started, right?

So shifting to that, adding tires to the mix that really differentiated us because not a lot of people have good websites built around bundling wheel and tire packages. That was huge in clutch for us. If we were wheel only, I don't think the profit would, maybe the profit would be strong enough, I don't know. I would say that there were a few pivotal moments during COVID,

where it got really scary for a month on sales where they tanked and we had a huge structure built around staffing. And we got really smart, really quick on getting lean, but then it went crazy when people got stimulus checks. So here we are like telling everybody our reductions and everything, blah, blah, blah. And so the warehouse got out of control. Like after a month, it looked like it was chaotic. Like orders were lost and like I went out in the warehouse for a month. And I was slinging tires and doing stuff. Like I couldn't even walk in my own warehouse.

I'm like, what happened, guys? So like, I hate to say it, but like if that wasn't fixed, like that could have crippled or crushed us. Those are a few moments that come up. But there's quite a bit along the way. I don't know. That's, it's crazy how intricate. And that's why so many businesses fail. It's crazy how many of those moments happen.

And it's just having the right skill set or the right gut that you need to be able to do that. Like I work with people that take three months to make a decision. and they say one of the best skills about a person that is a business owner is the ability to to just shoot from the hip and make an on the spot decision. And like a lot of these decisions that were pivotal were just quick like this is what I need to do right now. I don't have time to analyze this. Like this needs to be done immediately. And what was the largest unexpected hurdle that you guys had to mount, I guess? Um, unexpected. I mean, I hate to say it again, the stimulus checks. Like that was just like unexpected is just like comes up. It went like, we went from having million

dollar sales days to a four million dollar sales day so like you can't sustain four X growth for a straight month like when you're staffed for your staff just got a bunch of money just wanted to oh yeah oh yeah probably the PPP too uh yeah yeah that might have been part of yeah everything trickled down the PPP and then throughout you know it just oh the I forgot the unemployment benefits too they were getting $600 a week right 600 a week on top of the other unemployed did your employees did any of them quit or anything during that time too Or were you properly staff? A lot of people were scared to come into work.

And I also have an irrational lack of fear about COVID. I respect people's decision to wear masks. I get all of that. But I also just wasn't scared about it. And they needed someone that was that type of leader when the warehouse fell apart. We were part of the reason we were getting crippled out there was because people were worried about working. So I just got out there. I got in there at 5am and I left at midnight.

I was working 100 hour weeks in the warehouse for that whole month. month and and that's um that yeah so like that helped keep people start getting people building confidence having them come in we didn't really lose like we didn't lose many people because we didn't choose to we could have chose to lay off and terminate when we had that very scary month but we we wrote it out for a little bit um and I'm kind of glad we did but like a month after it went crazy, we hired a significant amount of people. We had to hire. And when I worked in the warehouse for 100 hours weeks, that's when I realized that I actually stepped away from the company for a year and a half and so did all the other owners. And a lot of it was that month, that month like completely

killed me. I'm like, I cannot do this again. Like, we just need to hire a C-suite. Like, I cannot be out in my warehouse juggling this. I need to hire someone that's high paid. There's a very big difference between like a guy making six figures leading a big organization. That's a smart guy, right? A guy making $100,000 years. It's still a very good employee. But there's a very, very huge difference between $100,000 and a $250,000 your employee. Like, I hate to say it, but the $250,000 year employee, like, I can step away.

My chief operating officer, I have not had to go out in that warehouse in, what, almost three years now. And I would actually have to go out there every year and rescue them during peak. Just the COVID spike one was the worst by far. Like it looked like we were going to fall apart. And he has done a great job. Like you just see the difference in that type of person. So we hired, we hired that group and all the owners stepped away for a year and

half. But when 2022 was clearly challenging and we were flat growth, we're like, okay, well, owners are going to step back in and give, give their all to try to turn the ship around. And so can you explain why 2022 was flat for you? Yeah. Yeah. So it killed the automotive ecom industry in general. Most of what I read on non-necessary items,

necessary items being like an alternator. If your alternator breaks, you're going to buy one anyway. But like ancillary items, like wheels, tires are oftentimes ancillary, but oftentimes not. The market was down 30 to 50% actually this year on the wheel end. It was closer to 30. We called almost all of our suppliers. And that was on.

I'm like, wow. And I'll tell you why in a sec. But so we finished, I think down actually seven or eight. I said we were about flat, so about flat sounds better than down seven or eight, because it's about flat, right? So we outpaced the industry, but I cannot stand shrinking. Like that drives me crazy, and that's a big reason why I jumped back in the mix, but there were a lot of things happening.

So right when the Ukraine war happened, that day, we saw sales go down 20 percent, and it just kind of sustained like that. It was weird, but that also times with tax returns. So Ukraine war kind of shattered consumer confidence that spiked up oil prices. Oil prices are very closely tied to our truck sales and truck is our biggest division. Supply chain issues are number one vehicle that people modify are 2023, the newest model. It was weird because five years ago, the average vehicle that they were by wheel for was six years old. And now it's the brand new, brand new vehicles.

People are throwing wheels on them. Supply chain issues with the cars. There are 20% less new vehicles produced. So that's our biggest year, right? So that's a problem. Supply chain issues on the wheel end. aluminum prices skyrocketed much higher than inflation. So when inflation was 8% or something, wheels went up like,

in the Trump era, they slapped tariffs on aluminum exports. So like each year for like three or four straight years, wheels went up like 25%. So a set of 20s was $1,000 is now $1,800 just for wheels. Crazy inflation. So people now can't afford wheels. Tires saw the same thing. So that all kind of happened.

the stimulus checks didn't hit in March. So we track every single month. We track year-over-year growth. If people didn't have stimulus checks in March of 2022, but they had them in 21, we're going to see a drop. And then people earned out their taxes earlier that earned the child tax credit was paid out all throughout 21. So tax refunds were a lot smaller.

There were a crazy amount of headwinds that I've never, there's like three or four more than I'm forgetting, but it's just crazy. It doesn't also be the fact that cars for the last two years have really gone up in value. people see their cars as an investment. It's a lot easier maybe to spend money on something that you believe is going up in value and you're increasing its value versus the car is declining and you're spending money

that you might not get back in the car. Yeah, that could certainly affect or they just have less money. That truck was 30 and now it's 45. Like I'm not going to go by wheels. What's interesting to me is from my understanding, it sounds like what you guys experienced to have that flat year was just a bunch of external factors all like pushing in all at once. Yeah.

How confident are you that because these things were out of your control? How confident are you that in the future, these external factors or something won't continue to push on you and cripple the business? And what are you going to do internally to make sure that you can basically continue on this path even with all of those factors? We, I forgot to mention rising interest rates. That's a big deal because a lot of people use credit cards and finance their purchases. And that was a big deal. And that also affected inflation. general affected people's pocketbooks with with property and whatever else it would be.

We we got very we got very close like when the owners got back in we looked at the highest level of expenses immediately. We realized that there was a lot of stuff we didn't need to spend money on. We also realized that we staffed for 50% growth and we were already overstaffed by 50%. So wages were I love my C-suite. Don't give me wrong. Wages were just not managed well. So we're like nearly 100% overstaffed. heading into 2022 and we realized it when by by almost the end of Q on that like okay guys we're going to probably be flat this year so we did a hiring freeze and then we had to do a few rounds of layoffs we tried to keep as many people as humanly possible but we were able to

just through attrition mostly through attrition just and the great thing is that there was such a strong there still is such a strong hiring market that I didn't feel bad because these people are leaving and they're finding other jobs. and I hope that they're happier. So managing every bucket of expenses down to a T looking for any waste, analyzing our pricing structure, like just getting in and granular on every single facet of the company. And we actually, despite being down,

we increased our EBITA by almost $2 million this year, even though we started the first half of the year, ridiculously high on expenses. So this year, even if we're flat again, should be really strong for us because we're just managing costs a lot better. It's just keeping a close eye. We have a daily, daily report that we look at on a lot of different metrics. Like, we're that, we're that finite with what we do.

And if there's something that's a red metric for two days, someone's looking into, okay, why was our gross margin X percent? Like, why is it down 2% from what it is? Someone's looking into and figuring out making sure there's not something broken right away. It's just managing everything really well. Trying to train people to, like, this is probably the most important thing. It's training your leaders and above to think like an owner. It's, oh, do you really need this, like, subscription?

Is this really going to add value? Like if you own this company, would you go pay $30,000 a year for this subscription? Making them think like that is making them make smarter choices and it's making them manage their wages better. So empowering them to be entrepreneurial like is another big segment of it. This is just a random, could be a stupid question, but why not just go public if you were considering getting acquired? We looked at the SPAC route. We looked at public. We looked at going to a private equity firm.

And just from everything that we looked at, it's felt like it would be easiest to just go the PE firm route. Public requires a significant amount of regulation. I have to be careful what I say, what I do. I just don't want to have that level of scrutiny. And you have to keep significantly, we do keep really good books, but you have to keep like 2X, what is required for, you know, any other private company, in my opinion. The P.Firm just seemed like the best strategic route to get us the cash that we needed. But so that's where I think will lean.

at the time. But that market's been decimated now too. Right. Are you also price conscious in your personal life as well? It seems like just besides the cars, you're, you're naturally a frugal person. I would say, I would say like, I would say frugal is the, is the wrong word, like in some ways. But it's, it's someone, some people have looked at the way I spend money and they're like, it is so complex. Like I don't understand how you. And for me, it's does what I'm doing provide like enjoyment or value to life. So if I'm if I'm in a plane, do I need to sit in first class? Like it doesn't really matter and so like I flew southwest on the way here. Like I sat and you know the the middle

of the of the plane like it's more like it was it was a more convenient time and I just don't really care where I sit there but like on vacation like am I going to go rent a big beautiful home versus a maybe a tiny condo? Yeah, I will I will go splurge and do that and I will go travel and enjoy that because that adds a lot of value that we travel with people all the time. And that raises the bar for that. That raises their enjoyment experience. So it's all just about how much happiness it brings me. And so I'll be, I'll look at grocery expenses and I'll be like, okay, like, we're

not going to order this candy on Amazon. Like it's three times the amount of what I can go get it in the store. Sure. I don't know. It's really funky. But I try to be very conscious. and not waste money away, but I'll also almost spare no expense

when it comes to enjoyment. Got it. What are your thoughts right now in the car market? Like just the car market has been hit pretty hard. If you're like, I'm amazed that dealerships haven't folded yet because I look at- Carvana's getting very close. Well, they did get close and then I think their stock bumped up

a few days ago or something, who knows? I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, decimated. Like the car value has gone down, you know, 20 plus percent. The hypercar market has stayed pretty stable. If not, it's actually going up a little bit. I guess people in the top wealth bracket,

even though they've lost a lot of their income this year, I think it was $500 billion or maybe it was more. They're still spending. Like, they're still spending stupid. Like the Bugatti Mistral that just got released five months ago, sold out completely. So their spending behaviors aren't really changing, but the middle class and everyone below is,

definitely watching their pocketbook not going and purchasing that vehicle that's driving down price. Raising interest rates on vehicles is making it a lot less attractive to go buy them. So I think that the market still hasn't fully corrected, though, because I know what I bought everything at, and it's still a lot more than what it is on a lot of cars. So I think it's got another 10 to maybe even 15 to 20 percent on some of the super cars. Can we talk about your collection specifically? I asked me this question.

I want to ask you to. So what's every car in your collection if you can. Oh, go. I'll be here a long time. I'll go as fast as I can out with what I got. Yeah, Bugatti Sharon, Ferrari, LaFririri, Portia 918, McLaren P. 1. The Sena is basically gone, but they didn't give me a check yet, so I still have to, I still

have to include that. Pagani Wira, and then I got a Ferrari 488 GtB. I have a Ferrari Testarosa, Lamborghini Kuntash, Lamborghini, Lamborghini Uris, 4GT, Audi R8, Jeep RUBACN 392, Rezvani. Nissan GTR. What else? Porsche Gt3RS. McLaren 765 LT.

I'm missing some of them, but we're getting close. Limos to 83 Cadillac Fleetwood limo and an 89 Lincoln Town Car that I just love driving. See, what surprises me about that list is that it's lacking a Mazda Miata. I think you could just probably,

if you add one of those, it will just complete the collection right there. We have a, my friend's daughter's name is Ellis. And she, she, she, you are speaking her language. She loves the Mazumiyadh. Very nice. Very nice. And a lotus of Mira would be, I think, pretty cool.

Yeah. I think a Tesla roadster version 1.0 would be very cool. Yeah. Let me know when you're going to sell that thing. I'd consider it. Really? That's such a neat part. For the right price.

I'd never dry. He'd rip you off, man. So he would, he would sell you a roadster. Yeah. If you went to him. But I really wanted a, a signature 100. So those are the first 100 Tesels that they delivered. And he says, well, if you want a car to hold on to for 10 years, I got this car here.

It's one of 26 ever made in yellow. Oh. That's it. And so when I saw the car, I'm like, I love it. And it's one of one yellow with the, oh gosh, Alcantara interior. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, there you go.

One of one of that. So I figured, well, it's a unique car. Yeah, but I never drive it. I take it out every, I'm the opposite of you. You just drive these cars. You don't care. Yeah, yeah. Every mile that picks up, I just...

Ed stress anxiety. Man. Yeah. Or if anything were to happen to the car, I could get a scratch. Like, you know, I scrape on the driveway. Gives your anxiety. Yeah, it ruins it. That's okay.

I'm surprised you don't have just like a normal daily driver. I do. If you're trying to go to the, you know... I didn't think about those when you're talking. Like a Camry or something? We have a Tesla Model X. And then I have the roadster on order, the cyber truck on order. And then I have an escalade.

I'm trying to get the VCC. series. That thing looks right at my alley. And then the Rubicon 392 I mentioned is one. We keep the dailies at my house. We keep all the and the two limos are kept at my house because I'll, I'll drive the like I love them so much. And my kids like they're not embarrassed at all for me to roll up in 83 fleet with limo to pick them up from school. Like it's just such a vibe car. Like I feel like I'm in and we've kept them very original. Like I feel like I'm in the 80s when I'm trying to those things. So I love it. I'm all about vibe. What else do I have an home? I think that's that's really good. The excalate the Jeep, the two limos, Uris and the

Yeah, I was speaking to the Stradman a little bit and he was going over the cost of his Bugatti just like the ownership When he's got to get an oil change. He's got to replace the brakes. He's got to replace the tires how expensive those are Yes. What's the maintenance or like the upkeep on your cars look like? We just did a video on that So you guys can check it out if you want to see but it was actually I was around eight hundred thousand dollars a year now that included some upgrades that we did so I don't remember what they were but like upgrades and maintenance 800 grand a year but what that didn't include was depreciation. If you actually look at us putting 60 plus thousand miles on the fleet, now that includes some daily drivers that my wife and I drive, so it's not a totally fair number,

but that might be 35 to 40,000 to 45,000 miles. So we're still putting 20 to 25,000 miles on hyper's in supercars. It was like a million dollars worth of depreciation. So $2 million a year that it's costing me to do this. This is a tax question, but do you own the cars in the corporation? No, I see a lot of Montana plates when I go out there. and I don't. I do personally own them,

but I am using them heavily for business. Like a lot of these miles are put on for content. So we are actually going to try to make sure that we can utilize property appreciation for them. Working on it now. Yeah. Do you do all the simple fixes in-house, like an oil change and like breaks and stuff like that? Or do you send it all to the... I used to turn a wrench back in the day.

Like I did engine swaps. I did brakes. I just don't have the desire to do that right now. I should hire a full-time mechanic because it will be faster. Right. But no, we take them to different shops in the area. So how much does an oil change cost on a Pagani? A Pagani?

I don't even know what that one is. Do you drive it up to just like a jiffy lube? No. No, that one has to be shipped to Texas. For an oil chain. I have to ship like all these cars. Like the Bugatti goes into Chicago. That's not a far ship.

That's an hour drive. What else goes crazy far? Like when I get the remack, I'm going to ship it to California. I don't even know what a Mac is. It's an electric car. I broke all the top speed records. I was driving over 200 miles an hour on Croatian streets, and I got on national news.

I'm like golfing with Tommy the next day. We posted the video. I'm like, it's in Croatia. Like I wouldn't post something like that in the U.S., but like in Croatia, sure. And then Matté Remak, like literally the CEO of Bugatti and the founder of Ramats. He's messaging me on WhatsApp.

He's like, sending me all these links. He's like, yeah, you're all over the news. Wow. He's like, I need you to send me your license and some other stuff. I'm like, can I come back into the country when the car's like going to be almost done because my remack will be done end of this year. He's like, yeah, yeah, you'll be fine. I'll need to take you to the police station.

I'm like, I'm not going back to Croatia, not going back there. Jesus, gosh. Yes. So some have to be shipped. And Tommy manages all that stuff and he does a fantastic job. My whole team is great. I want to make sure I give them props because Natalia, Aiden, Tommy could not ask for a better team of people. They are really loyal to the brand, just really good people all around. I'm thankful to have

them. And they help get everything done around the organization so that I can focus on growing my business and doing other stuff. Yeah. So as simple as an oil change on a pagana, what's that cost? I don't know. I don't know. My gut is, my gut is that's probably a $3,000 to $5,000 job, but I don't remember that one specifically. I know the Bugatti, like the annual service is like around $30,000, and a lot of that is the oil change because there's like 16 different drip pan bolts and like it's, yeah, they have to take the whole back apart and it's a multi-day job. But I don't know that we've got to.

I'm sorry, I should. This is stupid. Why don't they just make it easier to change the oil in the car? Why do they got to make it so complicated? Couldn't it just be like one thing off to the side and they know they got to change the oil? You would think, like make a lot of money from it. Yeah. That's the thing.

If they're doing the hair, exactly. So it's like a description purposely try. Who knows? It could be that it's just not feasible or possible. Who knows at the end of the day? I don't know. I know that Houston, Crosda,

does a lot of his own stuff. He's a pretty smart guy. And I feel like that irks manufacturers when he posts that, but props to him for getting it done. Right. It's maybe a kind of a sad question, but what's the biggest catastrophe that's happened with you and your cars? McLarenceena.

The center that got T-boned. That was just the worst thing. Other than that, it was all tiny stuff. It's all just cars breaking down on the track where there were some small, many fires that went out really quick, that everything else was less than 20 grand. And I say that like, oh, yeah, it's nothing. It's just 20 grand, but like that's a lot of money. But relative to the McLaren Center, that's a $1.4 million loss, like everything else,

we've been very fortunate. And people have respected the cars really well. You have any idea how that's going to affect your monthly payment on the insurance? They haven't raised my rate yet, and they haven't dropped me. I've added my escalade today. that I bought six months ago because I forgot about it. Yeah, so, and they're like, here's your rate, $472 for six months on an escalade, which to me is phenomenal.

Yeah, it's really, really fascinating. But I like my insurance company. I, yeah. Do they do just in your state or are they like? They're like Midwest. They have a decent presence out there. I don't know if they get out this far. Country financial.

How do you balance the time between everything and having a wife and also kids? there's the old adage like family first right but like really it's really it's support the needs of the business but make sure that make sure that family is family is first in the way that like if it if it comes down to one or the other i'm always picking family like i will stop doing what i'm doing today whatever it may be if it's affecting my family um but my wife knows my goal is to to step back away and try to live a more peaceful life So it's, yeah, I know you have to go back to the grind and work 80 hour weeks. Like I, my life is work, family, and then managing the social media channel.

Like that, those are the only, like I don't, I rarely hang out with friends. And again, a lot of that's because I'm back at work. Like I, when I was stepped away for a year and a half, I had a very flexible and nice schedule. It's, it's just like finding the best times to work. So I work when the kids are at school. I work when they're in bed. And making sure I have that time in the morning. after school with them.

And then weekends I try to work very little, or I'll work when they're on their iPads. It's working when they, when I don't need to be present for them or when I can't be present for them because they're gone. That's how. And then, yeah,

and then carving out, you know, six to eight hours a week to shoot content and do fun stuff with THC. With such a demanding schedule, is it worth it right now? Or do you do it because you believe it will be worth it at some point in the future? Yes.

I don't want to pat myself on the back, but like in six weeks that I've been, I've been working really heavy for the last six weeks, and I probably will until there's a sale event. The amount of stuff I've gotten accomplished is seismic. Like I've saved us $4 million in six weeks heading into next year from vendors, but we're also going to,

we also have strategized a bunch of other plans to help move a lot more. But like the amount in the, like when you build a company from the start, I've worn every hat. I've worked in the warehouse. I've done email customer service. I know the way every single. single thing works in the organization. And so I can, I can communicate and act more effectively,

in my opinion than 99.9% of our people in our organization, because I see every aspect of everything. Like, I walk in my warehouse and I'm like, why aren't we double boxing wheels? We used to do that, like five years ago. Like, what, why are we shipping one wheel at a time when you can bundle two boxes together that saves damage and that's a lot cheaper? And apparently something just fell off or something got not communicated. And, you know, that ends up being a couple hundred thousand dollar savings. I see things like that in the last six weeks I've seen a significant amount of that. And some of it's not the way we used to do. It's I just went and visited another facility and I saw that they're doing something a certain way and then I have our team run an analysis. Oh, that's

going to save a half million dollars. Okay, well, let's do that. It's just I have a really good eye for recognizing opportunity and taking advantage of it. And yeah. I think that only comes though, from you building it from the ground up and doing everything yourself, just knowing how it works. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah, right now I'm working on supply chain largely. It's stocking, negotiating with vendors.

It's creating marketing plans. And like, so my goal is to visit every sector of the company and do that same kind of analysis and then just create a checkpoint. So like we have good team members, but I can use my, I can use my lens to go in and make these changes and then let them know what I did. Let them run it and create metrics around it to make sure that it's successful. Move on to the next department. So that's what I'm going to be doing over the next year?

And then what would you do afterwards? Let's just say you take some of those chips off the table. What do you envision for yourself? Like eight years from now when our kids are all in college, I think my wife and I will be traveling like half of the year. We just want to go have a lot of fun traveling within the next. Like if there's a sale event in two years, I think it's realistically probably two to three years.

just getting back to how it was mid-20 to late early, to early 20-22 where I just had flexibility in my day. I always have to keep busy. Like when I stepped away in June of 2020, I got bored immediately and I went and got my pilots license. I wouldn't get my lien certification for operating in the warehouse. Like I was bored. Like I need stuff to do,

but like I'd rather pick fun stuff that like educates me than have to work. 80 hours a week. So just a more balanced life doing, and I actually really, like, I less enjoyed when I first started kind of interjecting myself back into our wheel company a year ago, it was very high level stuff. It was like, okay, our wages are X percent. Like, how can we get that down? Now it's like super tactical where I'm working with frontline employees getting in the trenches and like, I love this part like the most. Like I love getting in the trenches working with team members that I worked with, you know, eight years ago. And, and that's, it's actually really fun for me to be back

in the mix. I love work. But I need to know that there's an end insight. So balance schedule, I think I'm spending good time with the family right now because I'm, I'm with them a lot of them when I travel. Yeah, really just better balance schedule. That's it. Yeah. So with the level of intensity that you have for work right now, would you say that overall it's like a really happy relationship between you and work? Or would you say that you're still doing it mostly right now in order to ideally like reap the rewards of two, three years in the future when the Salivet?

happens. I think I would say if if you told me there's no way that I could sell my company within the next five years, I would be less happy, but I'm really optimistic that we can, we can get a portion of it up and for sale in a few years. And again, I always want to retain part of it. I just want to take some chips off the table, but because I know that the end is not the end, but because I know that that's probably in the scope of reality within two years, I'm actually fine. Like I'll grab my laptop and find new projects to do. Like I could, I could rest, relax at night, but I'm like, eh, that's, that's, that's, that's, wasted time. I could be, I could be growing, adding more profit, doing something. So I enjoy it.

So you, okay, but what you just said was not something out of enjoyment, but was more so out of like, okay, like I probably should be doing something right now. Because they're different, you know? They are. They are. I don't not enjoy it. I don't not enjoy it. Right. It's just, I always have to be doing something. I've thought of a way, oh crap, like I can, I can actually get started on that. I've thought of something to do. So I'm just filling that time. Is it going and driving a supercar, 180 miles an hour. That would be much more fun than that. No, but it's something to fill my time that feels productive.

So there's some value that I get out of it because it feels really productive. Right. So it does bring happiness, but a lot of it is also out of necessity and a feeling like you do need to do it because like you said, in two, three years, that is the light at the end of the tunnel you're trying to get there.

Yeah, and I would say it's pretty rare right now in the last, in the last few months that I've felt really stressed about it, even when I'm working really long days. Like, I'm actually, I'm okay with it again because I know there's a goal. So it's not really, it's pretty okay right now. And what's the goal with the Hamilton Collection?

To keep, like, to really get the collection to a, it's funny that you interviewed Mr. Beast, right? I did. Yeah, that was, yeah, I think I watched that a few months. You did that pretty recently too, right? Some months ago. Something like that. Okay.

Three months, four months. Yeah, I watched that one, I think right when it came out. Cool. I watched his video on how he cured a thousand people from blindness. Yeah. And like that got me thinking. I'm like,

I would love to cross over. Like the car follower community caps it like four million. Like Stradman is the most successful. And there's a reason he is because he's a really good dude. He's really fun to watch. But like there's nobody, there's a few guys like donut media. Demiro.

He's like, what is Demo 6? Okay. There is a top though. And then you have other guys like Nathan from Unspeakable, David Dobrick, you have Beast and like where they're just 10 million, like way above that.

So there's kind of a fix. Yeah. Oh, just fix. Yeah. But it's not really like the type of like show. But there's a lot of guys over, over 10 that have nothing to do. Like there is, there seems to be a lower cap for car stuff than there is other stuff. So I want to try to bridge that gap between how can I go do fun stuff like that, but use my collection or my cars.

And I don't know what the answer is, but I've challenged my team with that. It might mean doing slightly less content, but doing higher quality content. And I think that we do, our engagement's really, really good. I will say. I would say it would be better to have 4 million because the automotive audience is so enthusiastic about the content. And you see when James posts a video,

always a million views, no matter what he posts, the comment section is so positive. Everyone is supporting each other and is encouraging him. Very true. And so that audience for me is way better than 10 million where it's like,

they'll kind of tune in and out here and there. Yeah, so I think we're kind of at a pivotal moment, pivotal moment for the good. This is one of those moments where I recognize that I don't think we're anywhere near the end of the content line, but I think that we can create even more fun engaging content crossover, but still use cars. So I've challenged them with that. And it's doing that, but continuing to bring in higher quality vehicles, continuing to pitch the message of sharing the cars with the community, bringing the cars to charity events to drive people in there, making sure that people can access and drive the cars. It's just continuing to really build that brand.

I definitely think that there's a way that you could do that with more like spectacle type content with cars. I saw Mr. Beast on something. I don't know what it was, but he got like a bunch of buses lined up and he got cars like jump over. He did like 10 things in that video. I'm like, dude, like this was. That was pretty crazy. I also I remember I was with the Stradman and he was saying that he wanted to race like a plane and a super fast car, stuff like that. There's always ways that you could figure it out. It's just I feel like it would be a little bit different than like I guess I'm talking more about the charitable aspect. The problem with that is you. You you dance that fine line of like beast got some flack for it, which I think is silly because he cured, he paid for a thousand, like, but then you have cynical people that say, well, he's doing it all for,

he's doing it all just for content, but this still, dude, they're going to be cynical regards, he's still here to thousand people. Like, people wouldn't even know this is a surgery that, that needs attention if it weren't for the video.

And he wouldn't be able to do that if it were not for the videos. So it's how can, how can I, how can I help change people's lives? Right now we donate all, we don't, we donate all, well,

we say we donate all, profits charity, but we actually donate like almost all revenue to like top line revenue. So, you know, the channel makes $20 plus $1,000 a month, but it profits much less than that, but we're still donating $20,000 plus $1,000 a month right now. I want to, maybe it's not just donating that, but using that for stuff like what he did, using that to find that doctor, to find someone where I can help. Make a wish you'd be fantastic. Like kids who just want to be in a Porsche 918 and experience that.

The problem is that it's how do you, you, you know, have to maintain viewers so the channel stays relevant. Yeah. And so you can continue to grow it and earn more income so that I can help more and more people. So I have a lot to figure out, but I think we have the right personalities and collection. And I think we'll get there. And I have them on like,

we talk with a lot of influencers and it's like, it's fly by night. It's like, I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow, but I'm going to figure it out. And I have them on like metrics. I still keep it fun. Like we have a very laid back loose environment and we're actually,

our personalities are even more nuts in person than what people see on YouTube. it's usually the opposite. Usually people amp up for YouTube. We have to like tone it down a little bit. But like we keep a strict metric. We have everything already filmed a month ahead of time. I think you said you don't you do similar? Or no, that was Shmi.

That was Shmi that I actually asked, but you may. You may. Yeah. I'm always usually a few days to a week in advance. The podcast could be anywhere from one to eight weeks in advance. Okay, got you. Yeah. Shmi was talking about how he plans things like months ahead of time.

And we don't go that far, but we try to get a month with other stuff in the pipeline, pick days to schedule. It was Doug too. Doug takes three months off in the summer. Nice. And he has three months of content done in the pipeline. All scheduled too.

Smart. Which is so cool. So it just automatically post without him even having a single thing. We don't get that far ahead. But we also rate the content. And if it's going to be what we call three, that's our lower performer. I have them look at a,

and maybe you do similar, but I look at our total followers. It's not just how many people view the video. It's how many it is relative to your follower account, right? Because someone could get a 20,000 view video and have 20,000 subs. That's a really good performing video. That's 100% of your sub count.

So we try to make sure that at least a third of our subcount watches a video. And if it's not going to be that, it's not worth filming. But we want to make sure that two-thirds of the sub-counts. So right now we're at about $400,000. So I need two, what is two-thirds of that? 66 times four. Two, 65K. People need to basically watch that video or it's not really worthwhile.

So, yeah, we bringing metrics doing that. you'd be surprised how effective it is bringing my business aspect into the YouTube channel as well. Yeah. Yeah, for automotive, I think that's absolutely doable. And I hear the automotive crowd, and there's probably significant overlap with what you do. It's probably the same demographic or very similar. But when I talk to people that make most of the money from brand endorsements, they mention how there's a premium on viewership that is looking at automotive content.

Those people are typically willing to spend more. It's a different income bracket. so they can get 2 to 3x what a channel that doesn't do automotive does. I didn't know that. It is a pretty targeted audience. So it's not only just like what it is, but it's also like I know this guy who does like ride share type videos

and he can get like crazy brand deals because even if his view count is like 10,000, 20,000 views video, it's like you know exactly who you're targeting to. Yeah. Yeah, a very specialized audience. And the awesome side effect of this channel, is like fitment industries and custom offsets or other companies like it's hard to get our foot in the door with big influencers like we're like hey you know how you get the message

in instagram like i've got this business like i'd like to test out this this metric thing like nobody wants to hear that nobody wants to hear from a business but when i'm like hey i'm see from the hamilton collection like we're not for profit like you want to come drive a supercar or hypercar sometime like get my foot in the door with these with these people and then uh and then you know they realize that hey we're we're a pretty okay group of people and then i'm like hey you know if you guys want to make some money and do some pitches for custom offices fitment industries. Like honestly, James Strat, I'm like, this would be perfect for your channel because he's doing, he's doing other things right now that clearly do well.

But like, wheel and tires is his, his watcher base are probably more interested in seeing that in advertising, showing them on his vehicle. Like, that's actually good content. So I found this like network of, we've made all these awesome connections with some really great influencers. And now we have all these guys pushing our product for money. But it's just pretty neat how this has opened the door up for all that and it's and it's overflowing into my wheel business and helping Yeah, I bet that would be a huge opportunity for influencer marketing for you because it fits so perfectly

You're in it already. You're a fellow creator and you run the business Yeah, in the same field and the same field and demographic as so I also push our business for free obviously and I try to sneak something in into every video and there's a personal connection. It won't drop off like There's always a drop off when people start pitching an ad, but we don't really see that because it's just so seamless and people know I'm the owner so they know that I'm it's not as much an ad more just me talking about like what I own what I do that I think is a fantastic opportunity yeah is there is there anything else you want to talk about that's all I got really that's cool we would love to come visit you like ideally I want to go and see the whole collection and actually do like a sit down there

as well yeah that would be that would be fantastic you're certainly welcome in the weather's warm in Chicago there's only a few months of that but yeah you should make it happen June June and beyond yes sir deal thank you so much Thank you for having me. Doing this late, I'm sure with the time difference and everything, it's hard on all of us. I'm sure I'm just going to fall over at some point, but that's okay. Thanks for having me guys. Keep it together.

Thanks so much. Oh, you can also get a free stock. You guys can have me on Instagram. All of your information will be linked down below in the description. Thank you so much for watching everybody and... Until next time. In the description. What just happened with you both talking at the same time?