The Iced Coffee Hour - Meet The Secret Genius Behind Elon Musk

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Carl Medlock, a.k.a Tesla whisperer, tell us what it was like to work at Tesla in the early days and why he started collecting Teslas first ever model of car. Carl runs us through the details of his entrepreneurship and business endeavors and gives us insight into what it takes to become a successful businessman in the auto industry Check out Storyblocks and sign up for the Unlimited All Access Plan: https://Storyblocks.com/ICH FOLLOW CARL MEDLOCK HERE: https://medlockandsons.com/ https://www.instagram.com/c__medlock/ Check out the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/icedcoffeehour  Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_p... Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ... For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Carl Medlock. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. And I don't know what else is supposed to say. So far the podcast has made and just guess. I've guessed you guys made $682,351 on podcasts. Not bad. $203,000, $318 is how much money is doing that. For someone outside of the YouTube thing, that was a pretty good guess.

I'm going to expect more out of you this year. We'll do it. Your next goal is going to be $6.50. 6. By the end of this year. Let's do it. All we need is for you guys to subscribe. Put the like button, comment down below for the algorithm.

And anyway, we got a really. exciting episode today because this car behind me, I may have done a thing, and this is the newest addition to the Staphaelie. Got the 2010 Tesla Roadster, one of 26 in yellow. And how this all came to be is because I found you on both CNBC and the What's Inside Channel as the original Tesla whisperer. You were the one who's keeping these cars alive. And you were also an integral part to the development of these cars and a lot of the early history with Tesla. So today we're going to be sharing some secrets about Elon Musk, Tesla, and everything else you didn't know that you need to know.

Is that a good intro? Oh, I was scared. What number of, what number of employee are you of Tesla? I would say I'm probably in the 300th. 300th employee of Tesla. Probably somewhere in the 300 range. So walk us through your story and how exactly you found yourself to that place. The quick version of the story is I was a car dealer here in Seattle, but when Tesla was looking for somebody to be their first employee outside of the California area, what they did was they were looking for a technician with a master technician experience.

They were looking for somebody who owned a business previously, and they were looking for somebody who had managed a dealership, and they were looking for somebody who had worked on high-on cars. Apparently, I was the only person in Seattle area that checked all those boxes on LinkedIn, and they contacted me and asked people I wanted a job. I didn't know who they were. Kind of laughed. Tesla, hold on when I Google you. And I literally was Googling the guy as I was talking anyway. Long story short was, I turned the job down. I wasn't interested.

Dealership was doing great. I didn't have any reason to go anywhere else. And the economy in 2008 kind of took a dive. And I ran out of inventory from my car dealership and the phone rings. And it's Matt Jim Bruno from Tesla Motors calling back and see if I was interested in that job. And I thought, well, you know what? Absolutely. Been reading up on you guys, which I hadn't.

Been reading up on you guys. I really look like I'd be entertained the idea of coming to work for you. And I'll take that free trip to San Carlos. So that's what I did. What were those early days like for you? Like what was your first day? What do they have you do? If you're at a stoplight and you just mash your foot to the floor and you spin the tires

and eventually you get the car straightened down, that's kind of like the first day's at Tesla. You literally were running as fast as you could run. You're on an airplane. You know, somebody would call you, hey, where are you today? That's kind of one of the famous things was, where are you? we actually my team would use uh we used facebook messenger for private messages between my entire team whoever was working with me because if we did email then somebody could read the email or whatever but if we had something going on that we wanted to get done um behind the scenes we would just use

facebook messenger chat that way with everyone oh and so at the time it was just the roadster that was being sold correct this is before the model s came out just the roadster and like there was the one prototype which people don't really know this but the original Tesla model S prototype was actually an S-500 Mercedes that had been lengthened, and a roadster drive train was stuck in that model, that S-500. It was the first model S. It was white, and it was maroon, and I don't know what colors. All the cars was that car became.

What was your first impression of the roadster? It was first started working with Tesla. So I was actually driving a Ferrari 360 at the time, and I was just, I went to work for Tesla, and I went to San Carlos to drive for the interview, and they gave me a ride in one of these cars. I instantly realized that you have power right out of the hole. As soon as you mash the throttle, you can take off, and the cars just shoo!

The difference between that and a Ferrari or a gas engine car was, you have to wait for the RPM's to come up so you get the torque pattern and you get up into the torque curve, and then you actually had power. So a Ferrari 360, you were doing 70 miles an hour in first gear before the car actually had any real power. A Tesla Roadster has power right off the bottom. It's the same as turn around.

blender is instantly on and they're just fast they're quick did you take the job for Tesla before having driven the car I did actually really I never saw one sad unseen really I had never seen a roadster when I took the job how good was their offer that you were willing to because I know your car business was somewhat going wasn't wasn't going as well as you would have liked but how good was their offer as a company who at the time wasn't doing that well either they were just getting themselves off the ground very competitive you know they kind of felt me out you know I now I look back on that and I And I think about what Matt, the questions Matt Jambrano asked me. And, you know, they were feeling out what your price point was.

And you know what? They made me a very fair offer. And at the time, you know, I came from the car dealership industry. And the health insurance you have a car dealership is, it's worse than not having insurance. And you'll spend $2,000 a month per person and then have a $6,000 deductible before you can even start using the insurance. It was just awful. And so I go to work at Tesla. And my, even my, or medications were $5.

It's the best insurance that I ever heard. So there was a lot of perks that came with Tesla. And they gave us a lot of stock options to start with. I mean, they gave us 40,000 options, some of us to start hire out. It was funny, they talked about right after I was hired, people, I was like, yeah, I just went for Tesla. I'm so excited. And then people said, like, they just went through a layoff. I'm thinking, oh, wow, that sucks.

But that's when they ousted Martin Iberhard and a bunch of other people, right, in October of 08, right, when they were calling me to hire me. Can you say what exactly the offer was and the decision and like why you decided to do that instead of however much you were making? I basically took a 40% pay cut to go to work at Tesla. The offer was 120,000 or maybe 125, I think. And then it was 40,000 or 20. It was 40,000 options. And then they did a reverse split right before the IPO, which made them 20,000 options. But still, that's a lot of money.

It wasn't at the time because my strike price was 90 cents. No. Your strike price was 90 cents with my strike price. Oh, yeah. I was like at 90 cents, who's going to take them seriously? I mean, because I surely wasn't. I mean, I was, I love the job, but I didn't take it. At 90 cents, who cares?

40,000 options. Well, I got $40,000. Hoopty, you know, that's all it was back then. But that's $50 million today. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah. What did you do with those options? Well, I kept them, and then I went through divorce,

and the divorce lawyer convinced the judge that the Tesla was going to go out of business in 2013, and they sold them all. No. At $38 a share. Exactly what somebody else is that. Somebody else mentioned $38 a share. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

To pay the attorney fees. That's the most expensive attorney I think I've ever. Oh, yeah. It was like whatever, 60 grand or something at the time, but now that's $50 million. I actually did some research to see if I had a case against the lawyer, but I don't. Even though he convinced the judge that they were going to go out of business and we're going to have to sell the stock to pay his lawyer fees. How often does that keep you up at night? I mean, at this point, you can't do anything other than just like,

The absurdity of it. Well, the good news is, I met you and I met a lot of great people through these cars. The bad news, I'd been retired. I'd have bought myself a helicopter. I've been on some island that I owned and nobody ever seen me again. But now, here's the thing, too, is we're also assuming that you would have held through all the boom and bus cycles. Because a lot of people say that were like, oh, I bought Bitcoin when it was $10 and now it would have been worth all this money. Realistically, a lot of those people would have sold it 100 or $1,000, and, you know,

And let's say if that hit $10 million. I mean, at that point, it's like, well, I may as well, $10 million. But it goes to show just how far Tesla's come. I don't really sell anything. Like, I have a bunch of losing stock, a bunch of Rivian stock as well. I don't really sell anything. I just like to buy it. And then if I can afford it and if I can afford to lose the money, I'll buy it.

Yeah. And then I just then I forget about it and don't think about it. So your initial offer was $120. And then you obviously, I'm sure, continued on this Tesla journey. What was it like over the next couple of years working at? Tesla and how did your position in the company scale? It was the most fun job I've ever had. And I'll tell you why.

First off, you have a new, you have a new topic. You have electric cars and it's a sport car and it's fun, it's fast. And you get past all the mocking. You know, where do you put the gas? You know, all that stuff. And that was early on. But it became fun because you're working with the best people. If, you know, for example, the way I was hired,

I had like six or seven interviews and every one of those people could have kicked me out. that I wasn't capable or the right person, right fit. But then I went through all those and I had to interview with Elon as well. And I interviewed with Elon and he asked me customer service stories. You know, what was your best customer service experience? What was, you know, this, what was that?

And then so I got the job based on what they had learned right then. And then the other aspect of the job was I actually had worked with a guy in 1998 here in Seattle and he was one of my final interviews there and I didn't recognize him. And he looked at me and the guy's six, five, black belt and judas. You know the type of guy I'm looking at.

You know, it's like a dark cloud in the doorway. And he's standing in the doorway. He goes, I'm not going to interview this guy. I thought, well, had a good trip. See you later. And it ended up being that he was the guy that I had helped out at a dealership. We both got dropped in a dealership. Basically got lost our jobs at other dealerships.

And both ended up this dumpy water. I mean, it rained inside. It's hard. It rained outside. It was a really bad deal. It's called University Ford. It's gone now. But we were both getting cheated by our group leaders

because each side of the shop had a different group. And, you know, we kind of teamed up his friends. And, you know, I never saw him again. He needed a ride. The last time I saw that guy, Jameson's Cummings, actually, the last time I saw him, he needed a ride to go pick up his motorcycle and motorcycle shop. Well, that dealership sold and they closed it almost right after we started there. So he went his separate way.

He went back to California and I went and did something else. And then here I run into the guy at the interview at the Tesla Motors. It's a little bit weirder that interview went because the guy that was the director of service at the time, Greg Zangey was also the past, I don't know if he's a world guy, for Ducati, and in 2001 I had a Ducati 916 that the bolts on the bike were all corroding and Dacotti says, oh, oh, you know, that was one of

six bikes that was shipped from Italy without the silica packs in the bags. So they said, well, you know, we're going to take your bike. So this guy flies from New Jersey, which I think is completely crazy. He comes to my house, which I think is even crazier. He takes my bike, don't meet the guy, don't see the guy, I'm at work.

Calls me up two days later, so I'm not getting my bike back. And I'm thinking, what's up with this? So he goes, oh, you know, we're going to buy you a new bike. We're going to give you a new bike. So I went down to Seattle, Dakotie, and there my new bike was sitting. Brand new bike, no charge to me. And they did that. So Greg Zengi asked me to tell the best customer service story I had ever had.

So I tell the story about how Dakotty, and I still don't have an understanding why Dakota did all this. Greg Zangi was Adam Fawcett's boss. Greg Zangie is the person who made the decision to give me that new Dakotty, and I didn't even know the guy. Wow. So years later, I run into Jameson Cummings and. Greg Zangy, which I never met Greg before. I run into these two. They interview me at Tesla.

So it was just like the stars aligned. Yeah, stars aligned and here we are. And you got interviewed by six people, you said? At least six. And one of those was Elon? Yeah, the last person was he was. What was that like? It was fun.

He's a really nice. He's actually a really good guy. I mean, he's incredibly smart, so he's intimidating in that regard. But if you look at him based on his kids, the guy loves his kids. He loves his family. He's a good dad. And he's just easy to talk to. We just had a conversation and I got the job.

And that's after the whole. PayPal thing. So he was, I mean, you already knew who he was and everything. He knew who he was still, if you look at the pictures, he was young, a lot younger. Yeah. And you know what? He had some very, for a guy not from the car industry and never worked at the car dealership, he had some very good questions. And I answered all of his questions and somehow, what were some of the questions? Just basically like a customer service, you know, what are the, some of the pitfalls you've experienced in the service industry? You know, what did you do to overcome those kinds of things? And he asked me questions and basically,

what was the problem and how did you solve the problem? I think he was trying to figure out what my problem solving processes were like. And then I, you know, I told them about because I had the highest customer satisfaction in the world at the Lincoln Merk dealerships I worked at. I beat out four or we did. I don't want to take credit for everything because I had a nice team. We, I managed a team that we beat out 4,700 other dealerships worldwide for customer service from Ford. They gave me a trip to cause. They were trying to co-op me.

They gave me a cryptocosemel and a trip to Maui and a bunch of other stuff. How do you get so good at customer service? Like Graham has to practice this with his courses. Like, let's say someone requests a refund. Graham's really good. He's like, hey, I'll give you refund. Always, yeah. He's a 21-day window.

He's very good at that. But how do you get to that next level of customer service? I know you gave the example of the Dukadi guys who just came, picked it up and gave you a new one. But what do you do? That's so special. Yeah. How do you prevent getting taken advantage of? Because sometimes there are those circumstances where you know it's false and you don't want to be taken, let's just say.

I probably do that a little bit different than you would imagine. Yeah. Okay. So the reality is I already know. People who are getting to take nice guys. I've been a nice guy my whole life. I've helped a lot of people. I'm not bragging about that.

I'm just saying I do. So you kind of get the signs. You get the, you know, I already knew they were going to take advantage of me, but I let them do it anyway sometimes, and then I'll just tell them about it. You know, I already knew that your AC condenser wasn't damaged,

and I already knew from the paint on your front bumper that we didn't do this, and the car was wrecked after it was here. But we're going to go out and take care of that anyway. And then it just feel like complete dirt because they caught in a line. Half of them, most time when I'm going to call them out, they'll pay for it. But I do it in a nice way. I do it. I don't try to humiliate it. It was, ah, maybe it was an honest mistake, you know, when I know. So you let people get away

with lies or in deception. You just do your job, chug away. And then of course, you know, you mention it to him, but it tends to work in your favor. It always works in my favor. Usually we do it straight with people. We're just seeing numbers adults, right? If you just have it, you know, I read a book a long time ago called difficult conversations. So you just kind of have him. He's got to be respectful, no name calling, you know, don't make any accusations. Hey, this is what happened. This is what I found. Oh, yeah. I forgot I ran into the back of that semi-truck and, you know, wipe my car off at the windshield. It was an honest mistake, you know.

I just made all that up. But the truth is, you catch it, you catch him on what are you supposed to do. You can't, you don't want to ruin your future business, right? I also run another book called Customer for Life. It was an old dealership book back in the 90s. But you know what? Every customer was for life. You treated them like, you know, you may lose this time, but you're going to gain next time.

And that's one of the things we do here. We just, sometimes we lose. Yeah, the community I've noticed is very tight. And you've been describing these. cars is like, oh, that's number 245, and that's this one. You know, every car by number with their owner. And you were explaining something that I found really interesting. Linking up two customers together, two owners of the roadster together, who have never met

each other, or trading their cars, basically, temporarily to drive one back to the other, who have never met. So a really strange coincidence here today, which doesn't happen ever before, is we have Venn's 905, which is the car you just purchased, and we have Venn 906. here. We also have VIN 687 here, which is the Venn number directly after the car that's in space, which is Venn 686. A guy called me, one of the cars was from a really small town in Canada. So a guy called me this morning while we were chatting it up, and I went outside to take the phone call. The guy called me up and he goes, look, I've got this car in a city, and I don't know how I'm going to get it to you.

Because I'm going to leave for a couple months and I don't know how to get it back either. And I said, well, that's funny because we've got a car here from that same town. You've got to keep in mind, this is a very small town. and in Canada. So we've got a car here from that same town. Let me get a hold of that guy and see if he can drive your car down and take his back. So I got a three-way phone call, made it happen.

And nobody never met each other before. And you know what? That guy, the other guy's handing his keys to this guy because he's going to bring his car down and swap up for his own. This is a really tight community. I would imagine that any roadster owner could go to any country in the world and get whatever they needed. They need a ride, no problem.

I guarantee somebody will come get them. How many roadsters were made? $2,500, 2450 is. about the reason I can't say definitely was there were some production gaps and changes like some validation prototypes were built during production time and then the sigs there was a little bit so I don't know exactly the number and I'm not going to lie about it because I don't I think right there are people out who claim that they have the number but I was I haven't actually seen the hard numbers I want to see it in writing now is this card developed when Elon Musk took over Tesla during

during okay before and during okay so could you describe that some of the history behind So one of the things, if you look at these cars, some of them early cars have a shifter, and the later cars have push button drive. Okay, well, they needed to make one of the reasons that Martin Iberhard and Elon Musk didn't see eye to eye was build cost. Now, if you look at the connections on a 15-1015 version of this car, all the electronic connections are all military grade, twist locks, they're even green, actually. And they're watertight. I mean, they're really the top of the top, right?

of the best you could buy. So we needed to Elon, and this was before my time, Elon needed to make the cars less expensive to manufacture. So they took out the shifter, which was an $1,800 savings. They took out the little tray, coin tray, which you don't have, and they took out, and they added a glove box, plastic glove box, plastic tray, got rid of a big piece of a limit that went across there. So anyway, they brought the prices down on these cars to where they could break even on them and not lose. Because it was costing like $110,000 just to build them, and they were selling them for 90 to 125. The most highly optioned cars were 160.

But so the early development of the Tesla, could you describe when Elon Musk took over Tesla? What was the company? The company was not selling. The company was doing events showing the car, but they hadn't sold a bunch of them yet. They were on weak knees. We're having trouble making payroll.

You know, Tesla was, you know, in June of 2010, they shipped a bunch of us and probably 25 of them. to the UK to go help put these cars together. So part of the problem with the Lotus Factory was they had a break room. It was about a 20-minute walk from the production floor. And they had to start their breaks when they got to the, is how we were explained, is they didn't get to start their break.

The clock didn't start ticking on their break until they actually got to the break in which is a 20-minute walk. 20-minute there, 30-minute break, 20-minute back. What are you at, 30, 50, 70 minutes, right? For three breaks. So there's 240 minutes. It's 210 minutes that aren't being produced in the Lotus factory because these guys are always on break.

So they sent us there, and we're all much flat-right technicians, if you guys know what that mean, you get paid by what you do and the faster you go, the more money you make. So all of us are old flat-right technicians. So we go into the Lotus factory, we start making waves. And they basically said, take off you just pestle, I guess. We don't want you here. So they wanted to kick us out of the factory,

but the powers of B, I'm assuming Elon at the time, you know, we're kicking them back in the line and saying, no, no, they're going to work on those cars. And there was a guy, I don't want to mention his name, Glenn. One of us went around. So these cars were all painted in pieces, and there was masking tape on the backside of every one of these panels or a permanent marker written on the back of every one of these panels.

And they would put the cars together in whatever there were. But the guys at Lotus were actually hiding parts because they were pissed off at us because we were getting the cars out. They were hiding the parts. So a guy named Glenn, he goes around the factory, and he finds a hood that we needed for a car to put it together. It's got the Venn number written on the hood. So we put it on the car.

They came back to the next morning and had an explosion. They were so mad at us for, you're stealing parts, you're doing this. you're doing that, it's like, there are parts. Not stealing anything. We're just doing what we're here to be paid to do. So I think the only reason Tesla survived was all those guys who went to the U. I would say there's probably 10 different events that made Tesla barely survive.

And we, you know, that was the 18. You worked at Tesla early on. You were the best there was, period. How long did you stay with Tesla far? I stayed there until 2013. What happened then? Instead of leave on your own? No, I got fired.

I, basically, my boss was, going out of his way to make sure that we were not getting the cars out of the door. He, backing up to March of 2012, I had sent out a, I had to send out an email to all, everybody in service and parts. I need to know what your last service, Ranger service service visit, how long it took. The time you picked up the phone until the time you, you know, parked the vehicle and you were done with that deal. And it became, it came, it was nine hours per car for a Ranger to come, take the phone,

call, get the parts, load the van, go to the car, come back. It was nine hours. So what happened was we didn't get to staff. So we're down at the factory setting up for the 2012 model lessons, a lot of us, and the cars were coming off the line is a disaster like I just described to you. And we didn't have anybody to because there was no staff. There was no extra staff anywhere that we needed staff. I ended up pulling 32 people from all over the world. I was spending basically $100,000 a month at the Fremont-Mariat Hotel to house these people and to feed them. and I got trouble for feeding these guys, and he goes, they need to take a break. And I said, they don't want to take a break.

He goes, well, legally they have to take a break. And I said, I know. And legally, they're taking a break. He goes, well, you need to make sure that every one of those guys goes out and eats and be gone on an hour. Well, keep in mind, we need to have 4,000 cars out. And we were working 100 hour a week. So for us to stop and eat three meals a day was just going to kill three or 400 of those cars getting out the door. And we barely made it.

We were there until midnight on the 2012 to get that 4,000's car out the door. we didn't have any extra time. So I was buying food on my company credit card to feed everyone. I would spend like 300 bucks a lunch to feed everybody. We were buying like banquet buffet, that wasn't horrible. It wasn't too expensive. I got trouble for that because he told me that they had to go down and eat. And it was basically a way to nail me on my company credit card.

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to sponsor us. Creative burnout is a real thing, and creative inspiration does not have to be so taxing. Learn more about how you can take your editing to the next level when you visit Storyblocks.com Again, that's storyblocks.com slash ICH, or you could just use the link down below in the description. Thank you so much story blocks and back to the podcast. And then the second thing happened was there was a car in Hawaii that was all scratched up. It was delivered to Hawaii all scratched up. But the car was sold in Seattle, so actually ended up knowing the lady. And then when I got promoted, I found out that that lady had never driven the car because

it had been sending a cone of Hawaii all scratched up. So my oldest son had just gotten married. I went to my boss and said, hey, you're only giving me $500 total to detail this car. Nobody in Kona, Hawaii is going to detail this car 500 bucks. They won't do it. And, you know, she lives in Las Vegas part-time and she lives in Kona, so she can't get the car there. What should we do? I'll figure it out.

It's your problem. So an email came to me from somebody way high up at Tesla and says, fix the problem. Because this lady had contacted Elon. And so somebody downhill had gotten the message. I was told to go to Hawaii. So I went back to my boss, and my boss said, I don't care what he says. You're not going to Hawaii for more than $500. I said, we need to take care of this lady.

She's in her third year of owning this car, and she still has not been able to drive it because it's so scratched up. So we got approval on an email exchange for $500. They would, Tesla would pay one way of that flight of the trip to Kona because he was going there for his honeymoon if he would detail the car for free. So we shipped all the chemicals, a buffer, the polisher, everything we needed to take care of a car, wet sandpaper, no matter how bad it was. My son goes there before he goes on his honeymoon.

He fixes this lady's car. She's raving about us. She loves the, I was just so happy. My boss looks at me and he goes, you're not going to live through this. Like what? You authorized this? He goes, no, I didn't.

Well, I got fired. He told HR that that trip was not authorized. We got fired. Both of us within about two minutes of each other. We got fired for an under-authorized trip to Hawaii, and the truth was. So I told Tesla's legal, I said, look, I won't sue you if you'll go and read my email

and that guy's thread. Because I had a folder just for this guy. He was so bad. in my outlook. And I said, if you'll read that folder for an hour a day for a week, at the end of the week, you tell me what you found, or whatever you, whatever you say to me, but the end of the week, we'll talk again. And if you feel like that everything is, as it should have been, no problem. I'm not going to sue anybody. But I just want to, I want you to read it so you know where I was coming from and to know that that was a legitimate trip. So they did that.

And the guy got demoted three times, but he still kept his job. So that's how I got fired at Tesla, what was being lied about. Wow. It was cutthroat back there because, Tesla had gotten this feet on the ground. They'd already created a massively good service team. These guys are the best and the best. Nationwide, worldwide. I mean, still these guys are A-Player players everywhere. I mean, a lot of these guys have gone to Lucid.

They're the top dogs at Lucid and Rivian now in other places because they were so good. So Tesla legal, two lawyers, read that folder, and I never got my job back. I probably could have. At that time, I was too pissed off. Why weren't they fixing your car? Why would they do that to you? Like, what's the motive? So the first thing was.

I was sent to Santa Monica before this promotion that I got to fire the Santa Monica service manager because this guy, my boss didn't like him. So he used me as his hatchet man. They fired him, and Bob had told me, the guy's name was Bob, that guy had told me that he'd been trying for two years to get somebody to wipe it.

They wouldn't let him take anybody. They wouldn't give him a budget to do it. So my boss had been for two years to mess with the guy that I had to terminate, just to mess with him, he was making that lady pay. That's the kind of guy he was. He's doing that everywhere. Oh, why?

He's just that guy. How did you fall into doing this? Was this right after you got fired? You decided you wanted to get into roosters? No, actually, strangely enough, the guy that called while we were having lunch. David Vaskovich, a close friend, actually, he called me, said he wanted to get his roger work.

He goes, nobody's working on my car with you. And then he talked to another guy and then another guy. And, you know, eventually we have all of them. Not all of them, but there's 37 of them here, I think, today. Was that legal for you to work on a Tesla car after working for them, like on the side. They sued me. They tried to sue me and basically wrote,

go after yourself on the envelope, sent it back. I never heard another word about that. Really? Yeah. Well, they probably originally tried to say it wasn't qualified. Yes. And then what they didn't know was, I was one of the one of the people

that were certifying body shops at the time. I mean, there was the main guy that did it, but occasionally, you know, there'd be an outlier, right? So here's my signature on the bottom of this form, right? So I have the body shop certification form. And I was like, so if I'm incompetent to work on the cars, how was I competent enough to train the people to work on the cars? How did that work?

And then they're like white as ghosts and that was it. That was the end of my conversation with Tesla legal. And what do you think the issue was that they didn't want someone who wasn't within their organization working on a car? Or they were just trying to stamp this car out and get rid of it? It was all based on how I was terminated, right? I was terminated for stealing, right? So they don't want somebody with that credibility problem working on their car. So that's why they went after me.

The truth was I never stole anything. and that was proven later. But I think the legal team just figured that I was, I think they assumed that what HR did and what this guy did was legal because HR did it, right? And they didn't, the lady didn't check anything. Nobody verified. I even asked her in front,

my laptop was a foot from where she was sitting to fire me. I asked her to look at that email. No, no, it's already been made. She wouldn't do it. Jeez. So you started off with one customer, one car. Where were you doing the work from? I have another business about 1.3.

three miles from here. Right now we're building street rods out of there. We build electric street rods. Gosh. Okay. We started with that word of mouth. How long did it take you to get something like this? We were, it's kind of funny how this happened.

So the owner of this building is also the owner of my other building. He owns a tow company. Stan's towing. So Stan retired eventually. This was a warehouse where they stored this, this building did not have water, sewer, or power in it. There was one, two out of it. it's in the ceiling with two light bulbs. I was always in here. It was used for storing direct cars and impounds.

That's all this was for. And so the owner of this property said, you know, you've always been good to me. How about, you know, you want to use that warehouse. I looked at this place and, you know, we used 30 gallons of degreaser because this had never had water. It was never had clean. It was an oil, before it was his tow yard. It was an oil storage depot for home oil for like furnaces and stuff. It was oil all over in here. disgusting. So you couldn't even walk

in everything like any dirty, but he gave it to me because it was so bad for $1,300 a month on a really long lease. And I thought, for $1,300 a month, I'm going to rip this place apart and put everything new. That's what I did. It cost me $60,000. I had an estimate from a contract for $400,000 to do what you see here. And it was $60,000 in parts and labor, because

I hired all the homeless to, you know, I found out I kind of chatted up with the homeless and found out which ones used to work for in construction and stuff. I hired them, paid them cash every day. They loved it. And now we're, they've gotten back on their lives. We're back back on their feet, and they're off doing other things now. And so when Tesla sells a car like this,

do they agree that they'll always be available to service the car? How does that work? It used to be a federal law that people had a manufacturing supply parts for 10 years. That law, I don't think, is it existence anywhere. And the Magnuson Act where right to repair doesn't really, really qualify either. I mean, if you have one of these cars in your name, that's a legally has to sell you parts.

But if they don't have it, they don't have it. And they don't have an inventory parts for these cars. I mean, every time I call them, zero. So what happens if I take this, the Tesla Service Center and I say, they would? Really? Most the time. We've had, I don't want to say, the state.

We've had, they'll get these guys in trouble. We've had several, you know, a smart manager, smart technician, knows when they're over their head. Instead of getting buried in the car and wasting time with the other cars they need to get out, like a Model 3s or Model X or Model Y's or whatever, getting out the front door, they automatically just call and we ship the cars to us. So there's a couple guys that are pretty sharp about that. They realize that it's going to cost them money and time to fix a car they don't know anything

about so they don't do it. I've heard stories about Tesla making offers to buy customer cars to then part out. They do. So if I took this car into a service center, would they make me an offer or would they just call you and then if nothing could be done? How does that work? That's a multi-layered conversation. So they would, you'll take it in for service and if you acted like you wanted a seller,

or trade it in, they would give you a trade-in value for this. But they're not paying very much. They've been paying like the yellow car that they part out. They pay like $35,000 for that car. Jeez. Why are they parting out cars? Why do they want to decrease the amount of... So they threw away.

Decreasing the cars decreases the amount of parts that they'll need in the future, right? And so they parted out 53 cars, basically because they owed people batteries, 3-0 battery upgrades, and they didn't have any. They didn't have any battery cases or anything. And the people who made this battery case originally, like the black case right there, the people that made that case, that was a barbecue manufacturer that made that case for Tesla. So they're not going to do it again. And so there wasn't any, so they had to fulfill their requirements, their legal requirements for the 3-0 battery packs.

They had to part out at least a few of the cars to get exchanged battery packs to get started. They could put new sheets in the batteries and new stuff. But that's why they bought, that and they don't have any parts. So early, early on, they threw away $13 million for the parts or that's what I was told. And now they need an inventory of something. I mean, if they're going to work on the cars, they have to have parts too. So how many Teslas do you have? We own 12 and probably eight parts cars.

What's the total worth of all of your Teslas currently? And what was it like three years ago? Three years ago, 12 Teslas would have been worth $500,000 tops. Now they're probably worth a million, I would think. And what's your prediction for the future value of these cars? I feel like if, you know, obviously it's such a tough question to answer, but if anyone's going to have a good estimation. If you look at history, you look at Shelby Mustangs,

4GTs, AC Cobras, Z28 Camaro's. You look at anything that's rare and low production and a gearhead can get their arms wrapped around, their mind wrapped around if they're going to buy it. They want to buy it. But as far as the values of these cars, you know, as long as they're still drivable, I would say in five years are going to be a bunch of these in museums.

You know, I had a pretty famous person bring me their car about a year ago and say, look, I don't want this thing. I don't want to sell it. You know, this guy's worth billions. And he just said, I don't want it anymore. What's the cheapest you ever bought a roadster for? And I said, cheapest I ever bought one for it was $10,000. He goes, well, that's what you're going to pay for mine.

And I said, ah, that's not fair to you. And he drove it here. Wow. A billionaire drove their Tesla race here. And I said, what are you thinking? And he goes, 10 grand, write me a check for 10 grand. What's you're paying for it? it was getting rid of this car is worse

on having a yard sale to me. You know, it's just I got to driving around and find him a home for it and he goes, and I thought of you and you know what? This is the home. Was there anything wrong with it? No.

Just had a new battery put on. What goes on through your mind just like acquiring like the 10th one, the 11th one, the 12th one? Like is there any desire to continue buying these cars or is it just the idea of buying them? You just want more. I want all of them.

And is there any part in your mind that's like, okay, you know, if I buy this car, I can hold on to it. It'll be a good investment and I can sell it in the future for a better price. Or is it just like, you know, opportunity comes up. Sure, why not? I'll just get my, you know.

We often run ourselves down to zero dollars around here. We have, we have all this. Because everything is, we don't have any debt. The only debt we have is whatever's on the credit card from this month right now. That's the only debt this company has. So what we do is we take our profits and we buy parts cars or other cars. And right now, there are two cars coming up, which is part of the reason I sold this car. There's two cars coming up for me to buy for screaming deals.

I can trouble my money on them, so I buy them. One thing that's interesting to me is that you would expect electric cars, especially since this was one of the first ones, to have so many issues. What are some of the most common issues that you find in the original Tesla Roadster? The most common issue is people not playing in and let him go dead. So every other Tesla has the ability to restart charging if the car, if you have a power outage, power goes off. If you stop the charging on one of these cars, it will not restart.

You have to go back and restart it. And if you don't do that, three months like that, the battery's dead. That's the biggest problem, but it's self-inflicted. As far as the car's breaking, the PEMs, the power electronic module, that's what controls the AC to DC voltage and all that stuff. That component wears and some of the electronic components age out and we prepare those. That's the biggest thing. So how do the batteries die like that? Like if you don't plug it in, what's, how quickly do you have to get it back? And when is the point of no return? When you hear, if you ever walk by this car and it goes,

Beep, beep, beep, beep. It's a very distinct... That car's killing itself. Really? That's the final warning before it actually shuts the whole car down and says, this battery is smoked. Graham posted on his Instagram story asking for short, quick questions that we can ask our very special guest today. So we're going to get onto Instagram rapid fire question and answer.

Okay. Are you going to buy the new roadster when it comes out? No. Why? Too expensive. I'll build one. All right. Let's see.

What do you dislike about the roadster? That I don't have more of them. If you could say something, though, that, like, something that could be improved. All the things that could be improved on those cars, we have improved. Like, the suspension was awful. It handled awful. In a corner, you throw one of these things into it, you're better to pray. But now we've changed, we've changed all the shucks and devolving in the springs,

and we have that all dialed in. I think it was the one thing that I would tweak on these cars as a suspension. What was the lowest VIN you've ever worked on? I worked on Eelon's car, too. Really? Why did you work on Elon's car? Well, he left it at the, uh, I don't know how this happened, but he left at the Fremont Marriott Hotel,

and he wanted to brought back or bought someplace, and I ended up moving the car. That car had its own group of people. What was that like working for Elon? It was fun. Yeah? You know, he's done off. If Elon's micromanager and you, you're probably on your way out.

Really? You know, because he hires good people, let him do their thing. He's smart, but he also knows how to hire smart people. Was he social in the workspace, or does he kind of keep to himself? He wasn't social at all. I mean, he would talk to you if he needed to talk to you, but he didn't just go BS with people at all. I mean, even in meetings, he was...

Would he ever joke around or anything? I never saw it. So he was very, like, stoic and strict. He was very, I think he was very disciplined. What I would, how I would put it. I, you know, I stayed in the Fremont Mary at hotel for almost six months straight while they were set up to a factory and stuff. And Elon's kids stayed there too.

And, you know, one of the respectful things that everybody at Tesla did, which I thought was just without even saying it, he had this old, if you go to the, from a military hotel and you go in the front door and hard to the right there's a bunch of little cubby you can sit back in the corner back there that's where him and his kids went and you know what nobody disrespected him nobody went over there and talked to him when he was with his kids nobody said a word place was quiet everybody catered to him to his kids and him and uh it was just i i admire the guy for the way he took care of his kids it was uh you know that's the side of

that's the side of Elon and everybody not everyone gets to see yeah how is that because it seems like in a lot of the the media that we see he's he's absent from his kids life and he's always working and it seems like he's sleeping on the floors. Did you see a different side? I actually saw him sleep on a desk once. I deleted the photo. I should have kept the photo, but I deleted a photo on respect.

I took the picture and I thought, oh my God, you're going to get fired for this. So I deleted the photo. But he's a human being, right? I mean, he's got hopes and dreams and, you know, the way did he say is the worst thing you could ever do in the world to start a car company. I wouldn't recommend it. And, you know, it's tough.

I mean, he went from having an easy life. I wouldn't say it was easy, but, you know, being a car manufacturer and all those bottlenecks and stuff he had to work through, it's astonishing that he's gone this far. But he hires good people. I mean, he really does hire good people. You think that's one of the biggest keys to running such a successful business is the ability to hire well? I think it's the ability to hire well, but there's more to it than that. So, like, everybody that I hired at Tesla's never got fired unless they got railroaded.

The reality is to hire the right people for a position, like it would be easy for you to hire a videographer. or somebody else because you have a lot of experience in that space. For me, it was easy because I'd done every job that you could possibly do in the auto repair industry. So the guy, you know, anytime I was trying to BS me, it's like, come on, yes, give me the truth, you know. But the truth is I can hire people because I knew what I was looking for. I would hire somebody like, I would hire a guy that was an ex-service advisor, ex-service manager, ex-service advisor, X this, and I'd put him in a position of leadership. So if his team got into trouble, he could go out and help him.

them. And that's, so I hired one guy that could do four jobs. That was the key to hiring for me. And I, that's what I did. I mean, we called, they called our team, they get get shut done to him, the GSD team. Because all the people that were around me, I surrounded myself with were all those same people. All you just have to do is point. The red one over there. And you never thought about it again. You never had to check on any of their work, nothing ever, not once. So really good people is the best. It's the only way that he survived. Have you ever refused to service a roadster? Yeah, actually, I have. Oh, is that story? We've had some problems. We've had some problems with people feel entitled you know sometimes they'll come here and they think that

uh you know because they're worth a hundred million dollars and they've got that way by cheating everyone that they think the best way to handle that situation is to cheat me too and i just cut them off okay who you are you or i'll fire you you're talking down to me or one of my kids or you're being disrespectful or you don't want to pay your bill you're not a customer you're definitely not good customer so i keep you is the new one ever going to get made that's a good question i'm going to say yes to that because i've never seen nilon not do what he said he was going to do I don't know what the holdups are. Probably, I would assume it sales would be a holdup,

even though people like a sports car, two-door cars are the lowest sales of any manufacturer's cars. Sports cars, everybody likes sports cars. Everybody likes to ride in sports cars and drives them, but very few people can afford to buy them for a second, for a first vehicle. Yeah. Will it get built?

I think it's going to get built, probably 20, 23. I'm skeptical because he also promised to give so many of them away for people who did through the, you know, the referral program, I think he owes like 100 roadsters at this point. That might be an issue. Yeah, so I think that's going to be an issue. The other issue I see is that when he got rid of that program, he said that there was going to be a raffle.

Every 30 days, depending on how many referrals you bring in, you're going to have a chance to win a brand new model Y. We're going to give away, you know, these cars. As far as I'm aware, he never did that. I never once saw anything that indicated he ever gave away a car. It's just kind of a knee-jerk reaction, in my opinion, because back when these cars, there was, 600-each range,

whatever time period in time that was, they weren't selling. Okay, so Tesla came up with the Bank of America lease program for these cars. So they were a lot of some were leased, and that sounds like the same kind of gimmick to get sales up. I don't know to be true, but that's what I would, from what I've seen before. So I'm skeptical about the,

the roads driver coming into production, because I think by the time maybe it does, it's going to be outdated and they have to do it again, and maybe bring out something different. I mean, how much, not everybody needs a track car. I mean, a 10-second car, like the plat is, I mean, it took $150,000 to build one of those. If you wanted your own street car, those 10-second car. Now you just go down and turn the key, but not everybody has those driving skills.

I think if you're going to own a platt, you better go to school. I mean, because people are taking those things off road. They're fast. What's the maintenance on this car every year? It has a $600 annual service. And the funny story behind the annual maintenance on that car is about, about 2009, I would say May June, ish, people were asking about what was the service going to be. What was annual maintenance going to be in Tesla?

I never even thought about a major ship. So they created this service, which is really much a fluff. $600 service, it includes a wiper blade, a bunch of testing and the washer reservoir cleaned. And, you know, it's just ridiculous stuff you could get in a quick loop, right? That's what the service. And a bunch of measuring, we did a bunch of high pot testing. You know, but those tests were needed for the first couple of years, but these cars approved themselves. You don't need to do those testing anymore.

So what's the annual maintenance? Basically nothing, resetting the light, putting a wiper blade on, check on the tires and, you know, basic overview. Do you ever have plans to make a battery yourself where you could replace individual cells? We actually duplicated this battery already.

Can't get it out of the China tariffs. But eventually you'd be able to just blop in a new battery. I was going to send an email, an email and ask him about that. Because if he's going to build the batteries for him, I don't want to. But if they're not going to build them, I'm going to.

That blows my mind. So you just send Elon an email? Just him? Yeah. Just casually? I'll send him an email. No, no, no, no. No, no, not right now.

Okay. Tell him to subscribe to the iced coffee hour podcast. Say, hey, you might know Graham Steffan. He just bought the yellow roadster. Just Elon at Tesla. That's it. Musk at Tesla.com. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something.

Yeah. Mr. Musk. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something that's really easy. like that. Yeah. That's crazy that you could just casually say, hey, man, are you going to create the batteries?

It gets better. Could you share your last text with Elon Musk? I still have all his contact. No way. Is that a cell phone number? Is that like a, really? Yeah.

No way he just answers that, though. I, this is the same, he interviewed me on this phone, or the, he interviewed me, so I had a number. And everybody,

Elon was, Elon used to even, in public would tell people his email address because he wanted to hear the, he wanted to hear the straight scoop from people. He doesn't like things being filtered or any kind of BS coming his way. He likes the truth. Why do you save his name as Elon Musk?

Are you ever worried that like, if your phone gets stolen or something that happens, is someone like, because I, I think it's a joke. I mean, Alex's contacting your phone as Elon Musk. Oh, that is true. That is true. I literally have Alex saved in my phone as Elon Musk. That is funny. People aren't going to think, oh, this random phone I found on the street.

He actually has Jack and Elon Musk. Like, no one's going to think that. I'd say he's fine doing that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, he's just a regular guy. You know, when you work with him, there's no celebrity status going on.

It's like, I need that done in five minutes. And in four minutes, you hand it back to him. It's like, oh, the way it was. He likes people to get it done. He doesn't need to know me. I've contacted him once since I left Tesla. And what was that one time for? I was asking I needed some parts.

And, you know what that I do was right before the first CNBC video in 2019. And the next week, they were selling me parts that fast. Mentioned on the video and sent it to him in a message. The next thing I know is Carl Millick's buying parts from time. I'd went three years with no parts at all, nothing. So cool. Is there anything else you could tell us from your experience working with Elon? You don't argue with him.

When Elon makes, when Elon stands up at the end of a meeting and said, this is the direction we're going to go. You better get out of your chair and you better have that direction. Whatever the direction that is, you better go. Because he's not one for people back talking. He'll just let you go. He just gone. And I actually saw that happen.

Would you ever see him just straight up fire people on the spot? I saw him fire somebody. We were in a meeting and it was early on at Tesla and they were trying to convince people. This person was trying to convince people that they needed service centers in these locations, these locations, these locations, and Elon said, well, we're going to do this. That person kept talking. I never saw the person. That also happened during my interview.

One of the people they interviewed me, I never saw again. He's friends with me on Facebook. I didn't know he didn't work at Tesla until a year later. Because I didn't know anybody that worked at Tesla in the first place, right? So they're all new faces to me. So I go on going through my interview list. I'm like, because I took notes, right? What happened to this guy?

He got fired. As soon as he walked out of the door for interviewing me and they canned him. That's the way I worked. You know what he said? Didn't ask. I was just so curious. What do you do? What do?

He kept talking. I didn't want to rub off on me, so I was out of there. I think the Elon Musk stuff is so, it's so different to hear about it. It's so detached from what we're doing. Yeah, right? It's like you constantly are hearing about Elon Musk. Obviously, we idolize him because he runs the biggest company, you know, he seems like a great guy doing so much. What happened, by the way, to the Tesla shop in Arizona that burned down?

I really don't know. You know, I don't know the actual details. All I know is that shop burned in 2017, then in October. We're, you know, I don't know what happened, but I'm going to assume that they, the first fire was, you know, lithium ion doesn't burn up by gas, like sparks. That doesn't do anything to a lithium ion. But if you heat a lithium ion battery with like an air dryer or a heat gun, you know, it's thermal runaway. That's what you're talking about. So once that thermal runaway, have you ever watched a video on thermal runaway?

Probably should. It's scared. It's a little scary. They'll go from zero, you know, whatever the ambient temperature is in the room to 2,300 degrees within a few seconds. And so what happens when one thermal runaway happens, there's 6,831 cells in this car, right? When one of them thermal runaways, then it just keeps the rest of them runaway. And then it just tags every other car. So my thought was, and I don't know, but my thought was that they were charging a battery

and it had a resistive cell in it, recharging a sheet, and it shorted and it created the heat. You know, resistance creates heat and then heat and it combusted. I think that's what burned the shop down, but I don't know. How do you prevent that from happening here? Well, we do a couple of things. number one, we don't even go across the streets to 7-11 with anything charging. We don't go anywhere with anything charging in this building. We don't charge at night.

We have some safety protocols, and what we do is there's two people like that car right there. It turned off before it leaves. We leave. We just don't charge anything when we're not around. It's, you know, it's just about being diligent about being focused on what you're doing. But what about for a homeowner to charge this in their garage and they're out of town for a few weeks. So if the car will charge at all, they don't have any resistive cells. Okay. So it'll, it'll avoid that brick or it will, that sheet will, the car will only charge up to a

level that's safe. I don't think any one of these has ever burned up on its own. Not that I've ever heard of. I think it's important to recognize that anybody that drives one of these cars is somebody. Because look at what they had to pay. You, you guys have seen some of the names, right? So what, the other thing that's interesting is the community. community, the Facebook group for these cars is so tight. They're such a nice group of people. I bet you I could say, you know, I already know this to be true.

I could fly to France and have a place to stay. I could go to Spain and have a place to stay. I go to the UK and play over it. Anywhere in the world there's one of these cars, I can find a place to stay. They're just, the doors are open. They're just really nice people. It's kind of funny. It reminds me of the board eight yacht club, you know, except it's the Tesla.

Something with real value. Something with real value, guys. But it's like that's the community, I I think behind the car. Yeah. And there's so few of them made. Yeah. You know?

But also, what I thought was so cool is just, just knowing what sort of people have owned these cars reminds me of like the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame where you get the stars and you look down. It's like, that person has a Tesla. Why this crazy? Rib step. Brim step in this one. Now I got my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame except with Tesla.

What's your plan with it? Where are you going to put it? So this would go next to the Lotus, but that means I can't use that as a, filming set. So either the Lotus or this have to swap around and get a garage space. So I asked Alex, I said, hey Alex, you got an extra garage space, Alex lives close by. What if

we made an agreement so it's free but we can drive the Lotus? A set amount of miles per month. Oh, I'd get too paranoid. I would get too paranoid. You've seen me drive stick before, man. It's... Plus insurance. I know, but it's like, maybe what I'll do is I'll come over and I'll pull it out. What? Yeah. I'll tell you what.

If you want to, if you want to consider letting your son Jack, take out the Lotus, on occasion, you know, have a little bit of fun, then I would consider you know, letting that park in my garage. I'd be open to it.

Okay. And damages. 50, 50? There you go. Damages. Damages. We slitted it. Damages. Oh, shit.

Oh, we got it on camera. We got it on camera. Oh, I'm sorry. What happened? What? Check, what happened? I saw a screw. Hold on.

Yeah. Yeah. I did. I was so curious where that was from. It was from Jack's chair. I felt out. Oh, my gosh. You have liability insurance on this place?

Check, your neck hurts, right? I have a little bit of whiplash from that. The back pain. Thank you. Thank you. I have PTSD now for sitting in chairs. I thought that was your screw pumping. Because the thing is, realistically, I'll have both cars in the garage.

But just for filming, it would make sense to have something open with a car in the background. And it would also make a lot of sense. You have someone you trust and you care about it. You want them to have that 23-year-old experience. But you got to compete now with Alex When were you when you had your Lotus? Were you 23? Were you 20?

You can't drive stick, can you? But Alex doesn't want to drive the car. That's the thing. But mine's free. Yeah, but Alex doesn't want to drive it. This guy's one hell of a negotiator. Watch out. You tell me what you would do in this situation if you were Graham, okay?

Free? $150. Care. Great care of the vehicle. I drive stick. Very comfortable. Who knows? Who knows?

But he's not going to drive it. But he's not going to drive it. But free over here. What I would probably do is I'd offer to buy it from him. Let him use it when he needs to. Oh, no, no. I don't want to sell. I can't sell the car.

He's like, I just traded, cheated him. You see, I actually, I wouldn't be opposed, but I can't have three cars. That's like, that's so ridiculous. That is so ridiculous. That's when he puts the hammer down. That's what do you guys know. Graham doesn't put the hammer down. on price related things.

It's usually if they want me to buy some like, no, we don't need it. Yeah. Or like some business expense. It's usually business expense. I'm like, no, we don't need that. And Jack wants me to hire more people and I'm just like, I don't like. I don't like that with the overhead. I don't like making payroll.

Sure, I want more people to help us out here. But the reality is, you know, that my kids want me to hire more people. But the truth is, these are going to run out eventually, right? I mean, why don't we just work on our pace that we're working at? We'll stay as a family business. And if we get too big, then we'll hire somebody. but right now we're not too big. Yeah.

People are just waiting and they're not bitching. So they start bitching and then I'll have to do something. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I think it's going to be fun. I can't wait to see what you're spent on this is on this.

Yeah, because Dan, I already know what Dan's going to do, right? And I know what MSNBC's going to do. They're going to try to trick me, which they did in the first video. What was that? How? When I told Elon to go fuck himself. So you were watching the first video?

I saw the first video. I'm sure I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah, I told Elon and said, I go fuck yourself. Why did you say that on camera? Well, I didn't know. They were filmed.

Oh, okay. Because you don't know. When they're there for three days, you don't know what, you're like, we're just talking. That went right in the video. I didn't even know they were filming. Wow. Yeah, because they sent me that letter to cease and desist and all that stuff. And I go, fuck yourself and set it back.

And I've said that right on the video. So when people say, look, that's a great scene. It defines you perfectly. It's like, oh, that's the definition of me. Carl, thank you so much for coming on. I'll link to all of your information down below in the description for anyone who wants to reach out, along with your Instagram, because you're good at getting back to, you're good at getting back to people on Instagram.

Also, make sure to add us on Instagram along with a free stock that you could get when you send it for public using the code Graham, worth all the way of $2,000. Thank you, Carl, for having us, and you really appreciate this. This is in Seattle. So I don't know if we mentioned this yet, but we are in Seattle right. We came all the way. Yeah.

From all the way we traveled. So, this is a link for you guys. On the road. I fall off of a chair for you guys. Thank you so much for watching. And until next time.