The Iced Coffee Hour - TheStradman Breaks Silence on Burned Lamborghini, $1M IRS Audit, & Car Market Bubble

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

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Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. 2.7 million is what I paid for the car. And what do you sell it for?

I sold it for... No. And I will drive this car more than anyone's ever driven a coding set. What's the craziest thing you've seen in the car market? Where to begin? There's more money in the market than ever before. You believe that maybe some of it's fake. I know it is.

Anyone who's in the business know that there's some fishy stuff that happens at those auctions. I had a plan. I had an idea. I turned a $600 video camera into $10 million. What triggered the audit? I owed like a million dollars. Holy crap. I was in a dark place.

It was tough. Then I'd just have to turn it on for the camera. Is marriage on the horizon? Soon. When are Strad Kids going to happen? James, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. Thank you for having me. So you just did this video where you went through the entire value of your car collection.

It's almost $4 million worth of cars. I'm so curious, how much. much has your collection gone up in value over the last year? It's crazy because a year ago I had the Konexeg, and I don't have the Konexegg anymore, but I never own the Konexegg out right. If I own the Konexegeg out right, or if we include that in the total value of my car collection, then it was actually way more a year ago. Probably would have been like five, $5,6 million. See, the fact that there's such a variance. Right. It could be five or six. It's off by a million. For sure. A car like that, though, it's like, how do you value that car? I didn't own that car outright also. But yeah, there's a huge

variance. The car market right now, guys, crazy. Every day it's different. What's the craziest thing you've seen in the car market right now? Where to begin? Like, seriously, I saw a GT2RS, paint a sample, nonsense, whatever. Two point four million dollars asking price for a two RS, a nine eleven, for two million. Okay, but that's asking. No, I know, I know, but still, like, I saw that this morning. $2.4 million for a two RS. I mean, four five eight specialties, perita, those are like two million I mean, everything is just out of control right now. The one thing that shocked me, I blinked, and the price of a 430 scooteria, $700,000. I remember when those were like low 200s for a solid car.

Yep, I had one. What happened? And I paid low hundreds. It was a salvaged title, but I paid low hundreds. I think people are starting to realize after Ferrari dropped the luce, it's awful. It looks like the Apple car with the Ferrari logo. It looks like a Prius. A Prius actually looks better.

Like, the worst thing. I think Ferrari has ever done in their history was this car. And immediately, I've talked to every dealership, Ferrari drops the luce, and instantaneously, their phone is off the hook and everybody wants the good stuff. So you know what's crazy is I learned today they actually sold 500 units of that car, $300 million of revenue for Ferrari. And they said that they did all of this in two months when they were expecting five or six months. You can say whatever you want.

right? You can control the narrative. Like that's the internet nowadays. You can say whatever you want. Ferrari can say whatever they want. Ferrari is one of the most powerful brands of all time. They have so many clients that will just buy whatever, right? Because they need to maintain their resume. They got to stay at the top

of the list. And I don't know if you guys saw, but the new F80, their new like Halo car, an aperta convertible version was just spotted in Italy and they're going to build like three, four hundred of those. So these Ferrari guys are like, oh, we got to get a luce. We don't want a luce. We want nothing to do with it. But if it helps us get an F80 Aperta, they're going to do it.

So when you say 500, it's like, there's so many Ferrari collectors around the world that are just going to buy anything. I mean, look at the peril they sell. They sell everything and everybody eats it up that wants the cars. So that was my thought, is that maybe people are buying that car as like the ticket to basically be entered in the lottery to get some of the other cars. They don't actually want that car. Nobody, nobody wants that car.

At $650,000 to, six, that thing is going to set a record for the biggest depreciation. curve of any car ever. Is there any chance that you are wrong? No. There's literally no chance. But if everyone were to sell that Ferrari, wouldn't it destroy their relationships with the dealers that would then

sell them, the halo car, whatever the more desirable? They'll keep the car for a year or two. You know, these guys, these upper echelon Ferrari guys are so wealthy. 650,000's not that big of a deal, right? If they take a two, three, four hundred thousand dollar loss, like whatever, because if they're able to get an F80 a perta, that's instantly a million

$2, $3, $4 million more than they paid, they're totally fine, right? So that's why these guys are so wealthy they're able to eat it. How many people are actually going to buy a luce that that's their only Ferrari or they have one or two Ferraris? I don't see it happening.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. It's kind of like the guys with the Ferrari Roma where they go and get that car to be able to be offered the car above that, to be able to be offered the car above that. It's kind of like Rolex almost. You have to work your way up the system. And they go to Ferrari events, rack days.

The challenge. If you're a part of the Ferrari Challenge program, that is huge. Like Ferrari has this sort of checklist and you want to check each box, right? So buying cars is one thing, but also you need to go to the events. You need to be a part of the Ferrari Challenge series. Social media helps, right? Like there's all these different things. And what's crazy is I feel like Lamborghini's starting to follow that a little bit too.

I was about to ask because you have quite the Lamborghini collection. Do they play those games? Not yet. Not yet. Now, I do know that Lamborghini has like kind of like a scoring program for their clients. I've seen it. I've seen my personal score. I've seen like the stars that I have. You know, they have like a note section and it'll tell like, you know, YouTuber, etc. Really? But I just think that the Lamborghini brand isn't strong enough to command, you know, any value out of that, right? Like the temerario, the revuelto, there's just not much enough demand. Like they need to sell so many that anyone can walk off the street and pretty much buy one.

So how do you get points at Lamborghini? So it's the same thing as Ferrari. Buying cars is obviously critical, going to events, being a part of the Lamborghini race series, just like the Ferrari series. You know, social media, if you're a, you know, an actor, an actress or, you know, anything famous that helps as well. So it's kind of like Lamborghinis trying to emulate Ferrari, but it hasn't mattered yet because the brand's just not as strong. I think a big part of it is Ferrari produces so many different models. of cars, whereas Lamborghini just doesn't produce the same number of special additions, right? How long did you own your Konig Seg for?

So I had it for two and a half years. So what were all of the finances behind owning a Koenigseg for two and a half years? The Koenigseg, I was leasing it. I got the car from Houston, Krosta, in Las Vegas. You guys know Houston. Basically, we transferred his lease over to me. So I took over his lease. but also there was an exchange, a lump sum exchange, to Houston.

So I gave Houston cash. I gave Houston my Hummer EV, my 430 scooteria, and my Lamborghini Garado STS. And then I took over his lease payments. And then I proceeded basically just make his payments for the next 24, 24, 25, 26 months, whatever it ended up being. And the payments were $35,000 a month. How does that feel every day to spend $1,100? owning a Konexig.

Because you wake up in the morning and you sleep for 12 hours and that's $600, basically, that you are in the red, that you have to make that day, just to pay for the time that you were sleeping. So thankfully, it was structured as a lease to own. So every single lease payment that I made,

a high percentage of it went toward equity. And don't quote me on the exact numbers, but I want to say every payment was around $20,000 to $23,000, went toward equity. And then the remainder went toward interest. Okay. So that is huge, right? Like, I mean, that is everything.

Because a lot of leases, like, you literally eat the cost, right? At the end of the lease, you just return the car and it's a sunk cost and the money's gone. On the Koenig's egg, the way it was structured. And that really helped. The other big part was the tax advantages, right? So I have a YouTube channel. I film cars for a living. The Konig's egg was a business expense.

So I was able to write off that payment. So let's say hypothetically I'm in the 50% tax, you know, range or so. say so roughly you know it was reducing my tax liability by 50 percent so it was every single month it was reducing my tax liability by like 17,000ish per month so that helped as well so you have these different factors and then also the car was so incredibly rare that I thought which I was wrong about I thought that it was going to appreciate and value I also never planned on selling the car so I figured long term eventually it might be worth three four five million dollars and that that would end up offsetting all those lease payments too.

Okay. So what did you buy the car for in terms of a dollar amount? What did you sell it for? Right. And what was really surprising is I read the comments and people were begging you to sell the car. Yep. And then were congratulating you and happy for you that you sold the dream car. Yeah.

No, the thing I love about my audience, my audience is my number one fan, obviously, right? And they saw the change in my demeanor. they saw the change in my ability to produce content. They could understand the financial stress that I was going through making these payments. And I had, you know, I had explained this to them. I've always been a very open book in every single one of my videos. Like people know what cars I own, what cars I finance. The Koenigseg lease, the payment, like all that information was out there.

And so they knew the stress I was going through. And they also knew how special the car was to me because it was very special car. I mean, it was a car that I had a unique history with 10 years ago. a dream car. And so they, they understood both sides of the equation. And, and then when I sold it, you know, it was really sad. I do miss the car. But it was the right choice. It's allowed me so much more financial flexibility,

things that, you know, I didn't factor fully into the equation. When I bought the car, you know, I was, I was using my heart. Let's be honest, I wasn't using my brain. You know, I was, I was justifying the tax advantages. I was justifying with the equity because I felt like getting this car was such a once in a lifetime opportunity. to get because I had such a unique history with the car. And the idea of owning a coning seg was like an impossibility. So when the opportunity came and my buddy Houston had the car and

he was willing to work with me on the financial structure of the deal because I gave him the cars and then I made $100,000 payments to him for a couple, you know, probably like a year, not every month. It was like every three months I made a $100,000 payment. But he was willing to do that for me, right? And there was no interest. on those payments. So it was kind of like, you know, the perfect storm, if you will, to make it happen. And, you know, at the time, $35,000, it was a lot, but I was like, I can do this. I can make this happen. Like, this car is going to unlock opportunities that I wouldn't have had before, which it did. It's going to get me into the Koenigseg family. You know, Christian von Koenigseg is one of the most

inspiring individuals I've ever met in my entire life and to own one of his products while he's still, like alive is incredible. Like think about owning a Ferrari Daytona when Enzo Ferrari was alive. Like how cool would that be? Going to Monterey going on the drives with him. So all these justifications that I made is kind of what led me

to end up with the car. Now as far as the dollar figure that I paid for the car, it's kind of a little hit or miss because of the deal with Houston, right? What was the Hummer EVEY worth? You can say 100 grand, you could say 150 grand, right? Same with the SDS, same with the SCD.

I would say around two and a half to 2.7 million is what I paid for the car. And what did you sell it for? I sold it for $2,619,000. You broke even. Paid a lot of interest over two years, though. Let's say I made 25 payments and the interest was, let's make it easy, 10,000. That's what, $250,000 right there? That was interest.

I filmed a lot of content, though. I put 5,000 miles on the car. I serviced the car a couple of times. We'll call it even. That doesn't sound like that bad of it. And it's such a part of your legacy, I feel like. For sure. And when I think about my life and how special the memories were that I had with the car, it was the right choice.

Like, no regrets, right? No regrets. Did it unlock any other opportunities for you? It didn't unlock maybe the opportunities I was hoping it would. You know, I met a lot of people. I was hoping to go to the Konigieg factory. And, you know. Just do that now?

Yeah, I can just do that. That's the thing. The one thing I was hoping, I was hoping to film a video with Christian driving the car. I think that would have been insane. That didn't end up happening, which is totally fine. But, yeah, I mean, I had a ton of experiences. I took it up to Jackson Hole with curated on a rally. My friends all rode in it.

Yeah, I mean, I got a picture with Christian, with the car. That was super cool. So, I mean, I had a ton of cool memories. I took it to Florida and I went 227 miles an hour at the Kennedy Space. Center. That was insane. So the experiences were incredible. Who bought it? So a guy out of Florida bought it. I'm not going to say his name, but it's currently living in Miami. Are you friends with a guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talk. Yeah, we talk. At some point I might film a video with him. Kears, what does he do for a living? Could you give us like a hint? So he is an entrepreneur

and I don't know too much about him, to be honest. So I sold the car with Curated in Miami. So the car is not like the easiest car to sell, right? Miami is obviously. obviously the best of the best. Gabe Nacosh helped sell me the car. He's the man. And he's got like a crazy network. And so I sent the car to Florida. You know, he was able to sell it to this guy. And he's a younger guy. He's got a career GT, big car guy. I think at some point I'll go to Florida and maybe film a video with him and, you know, get to know him a little bit better. But the deal kind of ran through curated. And so I didn't really get an opportunity to meet him. Do you add value to the cars that you own? So some cars, yes. I would say any car that's under

100,000, absolutely. Like this M4, when it comes time to sell that car, I probably will be able to sell it in a couple days because there's a lot of people that see an opportunity, a lot of social media creators, maybe YouTubers that, you know, kind of want to come here and have an experience of buying a car from me, maybe they're starting a YouTube channel, maybe they're doing a car giveaway. I sold my 458 to 8080. They did a giveaway on the car. So I'd say on those cars, absolutely. Once you get above, you know, 100 to 200,000, kind of the same thing. It's just a smaller market. Once you get above a quarter million dollars,

you have a very small market. There's not that many people looking to buy those cars. One thing with the hypercars too, a hypercar purchase is kind of, it's kind of an ego purchase, right? A lot of guys don't want their car to be Stradman's car if you're buying a million dollar car, right? You know, like these guys, these guys,

well, these guys are some of the most successful people in the world, right? Like, they want to roll into a car show in their Koenigseg, right? They don't want a bunch of people running up and be like, is that Strabbant's Conig? And the dude just dropped two and a half million dollars, right? It's kind of like if you're dating, you don't want to date someone who's like, oh, yeah, she dated, you know, this guy over here. And everyone's like, oh, that's, yeah.

Right, exactly, exactly. So that's not the case necessarily. But I think a lot of these guys, you know, YouTube is a YouTuber to some people is cool. but I think the older generation looks down at a YouTuber and be like, I don't want some of a YouTuber's car. He's probably abused that car, right? And a lot of people look at my channel and my filming style, and they're just like, oh, he abuses his cars, right?

He doesn't take care of his cars. Even though every car I own is regularly maintained. You know, I always warm him up. I drive them. I don't hit the rev limiter. I mean, every once in a while, sure. But like, overall, the cars are pretty well taken care of. And a car like the Koenig, I'm not doing donuts in that.

And the M4, yeah, I probably do donuts in that one. But like the Koenigzag, I do understand the car, the value of the car, the pedigree of the car, and I treat it as such. Obviously for you, it's a little bit different because it's an asset to use it to produce income. But for someone else who isn't necessarily in the business of buying cars, how much money should they have in order to afford a $2.5 million car? We've been running this podcast for almost seven years now. And if there's one thing that I have learned about YouTube strategy, it's not that volume is important. It's that it's essential.

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You got to give it a shot. One more time, opus.pro slash ICH with the link down below in the description. Obviously for you, it's a little bit different because it's an asset to use it to produce income. But for someone else who isn't necessarily in the business of buying cars, how much money should they have in order to afford a $2.5 million car? That one's tough. I mean, honestly, I would ask Graham. Like, you're the guy, Graham. You would know that.

I would say minimum. We're talking like you're kind of broke buying this car. Right. Ten times the cost of the car in cash. And I would say you probably are stretching. You could technically do it if that's your passion. For sure. But like you're going to be the brokest person driving that car.

So I would say for your guy about the car, minimum 25 million net worth. Right. Yeah. It should probably be closer to 50. To be able to drop $2.5 million on a car. And I would hope it would be higher. And I think like you said, It depends on the person.

What do they want in life? Like, what's their passion? You know, for me, like, I love cars, right? Like, based on the net worth that I have, I shouldn't own all these cars. Now it helps that I do YouTube as well. But also, like, this is what I think about when I go to bed. When I wake up, I think about cars. Like, I love cars.

Like, this is what motivates me to work. And so if you have a guy that, yeah, has a net worth of $10 million and, you know, he just loves Konexegg and that's his motivation, you could kind of get away with it. I mean, you know, you get it. pick and choose what path you want in life. And if you're a car guy, like for me, like, if I didn't love cars, I'd be living in a van hiking, you know, but I love cars. And that's what, that's what gets me working. Of all of your cars, which car makes you the happiest? Like you say, you know, you wake up, you go to bed, you think about cars. I imagine it's thoughts that are very

peaceful and happy. For sure, for sure. Which one provides the most happy thoughts. I think the thing I love about cars the most is the freedom. I love the freedom that a car provides, the ability to get in a car and go wherever you want. And, you know, any car can do that. I mean, obviously, I love Lamborghini, but I love getting in my truck and I love driving. I love road trips. I love, I love seeing the world. I love sitting behind the steering wheel and, you know, turning the music off and just thinking about life and where I want to take it. So I truly just love the automobile. It's not even that it has to have a V-12, you know. Now, taking that out of the equation, I mean, this Aventadour Roadster is super special to me. There's a vehicle upstairs, my dad's truck. That truck, oh my gosh, that is such a cool experience driving that thing. It's so nostalgic, think about all the memories that I had with my dad, with my brothers,

with my friends driving it to high school. You know, obviously, I love the car market. I think looking at the Mercilago behind Graham and, you know, I paid $2.75 for that car. And, you know, I knew it was a rare car. And, you know, the car's worth $800,000 maybe more here soon. I think that's fun. So, I mean, I love, I love my next project. I love the Revuelto, the Temerario thinking about the creation, what I can turn this into. You know, the M4 has been kind of a fun, kind of new look that I've been going for, trying to, you know, do something different that's maybe a little bit out there. I love the experimentation process. So yeah, I mean, there's kind of like a, there's just a lot of different reasons for why I love cars and different reasons I love certain cars. Is there a rule of thumb that you look at in terms of net worth versus what car you could afford? Not at all. It's just you look at that. Net worth is exactly the kind of car you can afford.

Exactly. It's a one to one. Yeah, exactly. How much money I have? Yep. That's a car you can buy. Yep. Exactly.

No, I mean, like my approach to buying cars is the polar opposite to yours, Graham. It's a, well, no, I shouldn't say the polar opposite. I should backtrack. YouTube is a big part of my life, right? Yes. When I buy a car, I'm always thinking YouTube, right? So in one year I have YouTube, and the other year, there's obviously there's the finances behind it, right?

Like, it's got to make sense. You know, then there's the heart. You know, I want a car that I love. Even if there was a car that was going to be the best YouTube car ever, but I didn't like it, I probably wouldn't buy it, right? It has to be something that I am passionate about, to an extent. What is the most financially irresponsible car purchase you've ever made? I mean, the Conexac, for sure.

For sure. But it doesn't sound like when all of a sudden done, it was actually that bad. That's the only car I've ever lost money on. Like a significant amount of money. That's the only one I've ever lost money on. But you still got to produce all of those videos. Yeah, yeah. But everything else I've done positive.

On everything. Maybe like, there might be some money, but I'm net positive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There might be some car that I lost like one or $2,000 on maybe. But even with the content, I've always been in the positive. Now, what about for the average person they're watching and they want to afford a per car. Do you have a rule of thumb in terms of what you could afford? I mean, I think so much of it comes down to this, how bad do you want it? What sacrifices are you willing to make? You know,

because when I bought my Gallardo, yeah, I wouldn't have recommended that to anybody else, but I know myself, right? I know how I think. I know how I operate. I know what's important to me. And so that I think there's so many different factors into the equation. You know, when I bought the gyardo, I was making 45 grand. I bought a car for 110. My net worth was, I don't know, 40 grand. right? So that wasn't even a one-to-one. That was like, I don't know, I don't know what the probability or what that percentage would be, right? Um, so I, yeah, I mean, I think, I think a big part of it depends on what are you going to do with the car. That is like the biggest factor. And that's what I tell people because I bought my Gallardo, not because I just wanted the car. I had a plan.

I had an idea. And then once I got the car, I went executed it. And that was building my YouTube channel. And so, you know, if somebody's just looking to buy a car just to flex, then you better have the money to buy it in cash. Now, if you're planning to do something with social media or you want to leverage the car in some business aspect, then it's a whole different ballgame, a whole different equation. And sometimes, like, the variables to that equation are pretty hard to define, right? And, you know, 10 years ago when I bought my Gallardo, you know, when I told people I was planning to start a YouTube channel, that was not a normal possible thing to do, right? Yeah. Obviously, that has changed dramatically now and social media is tried and true. So I think, I think that, you know, everything's shifted so much. Speaking of the Gallardo, I just saw what happened to it. Yes.

It burned. Yes, it did. And then you bought it back from the insurance company. Yep, I did. What caused the fire? So initially, I thought it was power steering. I thought that power steering line rupt, dumped fluid on the headers. Because based on where the fire was coming out of the driver's side intake, and based on what I had read online, that was a probable cause for the fire, tore apart the car.

And I discovered that it was the evap system, which was a part of the emission system. and I feel like it was kind of the perfect storm. So I went to a charity car show that morning that was in a park and I rolled the car onto the grass and it sat there for about two hours. Thank goodness the car did not catch on fire there because there was a bunch of other supercars all around me. It was this grass field. The car was sitting in direct sunlight.

We were at the charity event for two hours, got in the car, took it to lunch about 10 minutes away. It was one of the hottest days. It was middle of June. it had to be 100, 105 degrees. Like it was hot, not a cloud in the sky. And we drove it to lunch and I parked it in a spot with zero shade in the direct sun. And, you know, went inside, had a burger, hung out with the boys for a couple hours and the car just baked.

Just baked. And then I got in the car and it was, you know, 10, 15 minute drive home. And, you know, I was two, three minutes from the house. And all of a sudden I started to smell fuel. Now the Gallardo, all the Lamborghinis, they run pretty rich. You know, the car's 21 years old. I'm two minutes from the house. I'm like, man, that is pretty strong, but I'm so close to home.

Like, you know, I'm going to get home. I need to take a look at this. Like, something seems amiss, right? Like, there's something going on here. But, you know, I was literally one turn away from the house. In retrospect, right? In hindsight, obviously, I should have pulled over. But, you know.

So I think what happened, though, is that, the evap system, there's there's all these fumes right from the fuel system and at some point that ruptured and the fumes started started going out and it's a very tight little chamber and it was super super hot and it's not a common way for cars to catch on fire but based on what I read online it can happen it does happen and when I tore apart the car I could see that the fire happened where the evap canister is it's right above the fuel tank all the power steering lines are totally fine. Fuel lines were good, coolant lines were good, and the fire was right there for the evap system. And that's what caught her on fire. So what did the insurance company end up

paying? So I had never filed a claim before ever. And I was unsure. You know, I've obviously had a lot of cars. I've had a driver's license for 20 odd years or whatever. And thankfully, I've never filed a claim. So I wasn't sure what to expect. And, you know, first thing first, you know, I submitted all the paperwork. My insurance agent actually saw the video because it happened. The fire happened on a Saturday. And there were so many people around. Everybody was filming it.

You know, the social media person in me was like, I got to get this video up. So I posted on Sunday. So I wake up Monday morning getting ready to hit up my insurance and I have an email from my insurance agent. And they're like, James, we obviously saw the car caught on fire. Here's your policy number. Here's the phone number. Like, reach out. Like, if you need anything, let us know.

And it ended up being one of the most seamless processes ever. It was super smooth. They ended up giving me $160,000 odd thousand dollars for the car, which was pretty incredible. It's a 06, Guyardo 50,000 miles. It's a gated manual. So that's everything, right? These cars are impossible to find.

It's impossible to replace. One of the things that I did during, you know, the negotiation process, if you will, is I went on bring a trailer. I went on, you know, auto tempest, car gurus, auto trader. I tried to find comps. And it was impossible to find comps. There was a manual gyrode spider that sold for 260.

There was a manual gyardo coupe that sold for 170. So there's some comps out there. So they gave me 160 for the car. And the best part, though, was the buyback. So I was like, hey, I don't want to sell this car, though. Like, I want to keep this car. I don't want the car to go to copart. Like, can I buy the car back from you guys?

and they sold it back to me for $31, $32,000. Whoa. So they just sent me a lump sum check for like $129,000. Can you fix the car for less than $100,000? Oh, all day. Oh, like, all day. So is this a lucrative way to make a little bit of money? So first off, there was no insurance fraud, Jack, Jack.

No, I'm not saying that there was. I'm just saying, is it lucrative? No, for sure, for sure. So obviously right now, there's a lot of unknowns, right? I haven't fixed the car yet. There's a lot of things that are undetermined. The biggest part about it is that the car now has a salvage title. So a huge percentage is just that loss and value. Yeah. Because all of a sudden, this car is not a collector car anymore, right? It's a salvage title. And when I think about like the 40th anniversary sitting

behind you, clean title car, if that was a salvaged car, that's worth hundreds of thousands of less just for that reason alone because immediately the collectors want nothing to do with it. No matter what the history, no matter what the condition is, no matter what the mileage. So that's like a huge factor. Now for me, the Gallardo, it's the car that I started the channel with, it's super sentimental. I'm never going to sell it. So it doesn't even matter, right? Like the fact that it's a salvaged title does not matter because the value of the car doesn't matter.

So in that sense, sure. Once the car is fixed, we'll kind of sort of see. There's a lot of unknowns like the body work. finding the parts is difficult, the time, the energy. The fact that I'm doing a lot of the work myself saves me a ton of money also. You know, the YouTube content is great too. You know, that's obviously going to offset a lot of the cost too. So for me, yes, it's the classic example of turning lemons into lemonade, right? So for me, I think it will work out. I am so incredibly lucky because I want to say five or six people came out of nowhere and saved the car with fire

extinguishers, that fire happens so fast. And I've gotten judged so much for how I reacted to it. But I promise you, if anybody watching this is ever in a car fire, you'll understand how fast it goes from zero to 100. But five or six people came out of nowhere with the fire extinguisher saved the car. If it would have burned for a minute, two minutes more, the car would have been gone, like just gone. It would have been unfixable. So I do feel very lucky from that standpoint. Why fix everything yourself? Because I even noticed that to pick up the other Gallardo, you know, the extra body, like, you drove like 11 hours.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're doing it all yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a multitude of reasons. So that's specific one.

My mom lives in Oregon. And that was in Portland. It was three hours from her house. And I don't see my mom enough. So like, this is the perfect time. Go get this. Save the money on transport. port. It's kind of fun. It's an adventure, right? It's a, it's a cooler experience. The guy I ended up

buying the shell from, the donor car from, dude, legend. The nicest guy. He had a ton of other parts laying around to that I ended up buying all these other parts that I needed. So if I would have just paid somebody to go get that and bring it back, I never would have met him, never would have gotten those parts. And then also I wanted to see my mom. That was like the main motivating factor. But yeah, I mean, doing it myself, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to sit here and tell you guys, I'm a, I'm an award-winning mechanic. But, you know, I like getting my hands dirty over the last couple years. Um, you know, I've gotten better at working on cars. I enjoy it a little bit more. I think it makes for more engaging content as well with me doing it. It saves me

some money too. It saves me a lot of money. And the thing I love the most about it, I control my destiny. I'm not relying on other people, right? I'm not relying on a shop to get the car, wait for their schedule to open up. This is my priority. I can spend 10 hours a day working on this car. I can spend the evenings finding parts. I can go to Oregon. I mean, I found that shell on a Thursday night. Friday morning, I was loading up the truck to go get it, right?

Like, I didn't even wait. I just went and did it. I control my destiny. And, you know, with the YouTube game, time is everything, right? And the faster I can fix that car, the better. And also, I'm going to learn more about the car, which I love. Like, I love learning more about these cars. I didn't grow up with extensive mechanical knowledge of cars.

I've learned a lot about the cars. And, you know, I think the content is honestly way more, way more fun, way more engaging. It gives me credibility to. Is it safe to buy and drive salvage cars? Now, really quick, I just got to say, I'm going to admit it. I get more excited about a good deal than just about anything else in my life. There's just something about paying less than you should that just gets me going. That, of course, is probably why I'm so excited about today's sponsor, whatnot, because it's that same feeling live on your phone.

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Again, that's even realities.com. You could scan the QR code on the screen or just click the link down below in the description and use the code iced coffee. Is it safe to buy and drive salvage cars? Can be. The crazy thing I've learned by doing this, there are so many corners you can cut. So when you buy a salvage title car, you could get a car better than factory.

You get a car that somebody cut a gazillion corners on that is absolutely not safe to drive. Absolutely not. How do you know? Because I'm on Facebook marketplace, and I'm like, well, that's a really good deal. And then I see salvage. Right.

But it looks awesome and it's half the price. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm just looking to mob around in the city, like that, that's cool. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think I think that's why salvage cars are so cheap is because there's that unknown. There's that risk. I think the big thing with a salvage title car is if you can find photos of the accident, right? If you can find what happened. And then also, when did it happen? If you're buying a car and the accident happened three months ago and it just got repaired, you have no idea. Whereas like my 430 scud, that was a salvage. This was a salvage. This was a salvage. This was a salvage. this event is a roadster. Now, those cars, the accident had happened four, five, six years ago. You could see it on the Carfax. Let's say, for example, it had 10,000 miles on it. And now the car has 17,000 miles on it.

You know, there's that history, right? You can look back. You can see like, oh, this car has been driven a lot. It happened a number of years ago. Here's photos of the accident. So it's really a case-by-case basis. And there's never a guarantee. Obviously, an inspection, right?

You can get a PPI, somebody who knows what to look for. You know, frame damage is obviously the most important thing that you're looking for. Not always easy to know for sure. But that's why they're cheap, you know. In terms of selling cars, you sold the Kuntosh. I did. And values have skyrocketed. What did you sell the Kuntosh for and why?

So I sold the Kuntosh for 565. I bought that car for $4.50, 475, somewhere in there. So, you know, I probably pocketed it around 100 grand, drove it across the country, filmed a lot of cool videos. But the main reason I sold it, though, is it was incredible to look at. It was just the coolest car. It was triple white, big old wing. I mean, every single Lamborghini that exists now looks the way it does because of the kuntosh. But it was very hard to use.

It was very hard to drive. I didn't want to drive it in extreme heat because kind of what happened to the gyardo. I felt like that might happen to the kuntosh. Didn't want to drive it in the wintertime. Didn't want to drive it in the snow. It was an investment-grade car. So I felt like, you know, the spring and the fall, I could drive it. And then even when I did drive it, you know, I wasn't going to take it on a road trip.

I had all this money tied up in it. And it just felt like, you know, YouTube is not only my business, but it's also my passion. And being able to take that money and do other things felt like the better option. I also had a Koenig at the time. And I had payments. And I wanted to finish the Batcave. And so I actually sold the Kuntosh for 565. I took 300,000-ish of that and I finished the Batcave, which I think is the coolest thing in this entire house, things that I'm known for.

I mean, the videos did amazing on it. Like there was a fantastic ROI. You know, and it's something I really wanted to finish. It's enhanced the value of this house significantly. And then I took the rest of the money and I was able to kind of give me some room, you know, to make Konig's egg payments while also investing in the channel, other projects, etc., etc. What's the car worth today? You know, it's crazy. Kuntosh's, they've definitely gone up, but they have not gone up like the mercy.

They've not gone up like the 2RS we were talking about. They've not gone up like the 458s. They haven't gone up like that. I would say $6,500 for my car. My car was a nice car, but it was not, it wasn't the car, right? The Kuntosh is one of the most confusing cars because they started building them in like 1974, up to like 1991-ish, give or take. So, and there's so many different iterations.

There's fuel injected. There's carbureated. There's fender flares. There's side skirts. Like, there's just so many different factors. And, like, the carbureated round body, like, 1985 cars are the cars to have. And they're worth way more than my car, which was an 87 quadruvalve. So, yeah, the car's probably, I'm guessing around $650,700 is what it would be worth now.

And how do you know when you pay cash for a car versus finance it? Yeah. I mean, I think a big part of it, um, is how much money I have in my bank account, right? What do I want to do? Other projects coming up in the future, you know, kind of the content schedule. Really content kind of drives everything. You know, right now, for example, I have the Temerario, I have the Revuelto, I'm rebuilding

the Gallardo, my 812 rebuild is almost done. I have the M4. Like, I have a ton of different projects, right? So financially, you know, the next car I get, I might end up paying cash for it because I have so many projects in the pipeline that I have. are kind of ready to go that I know there's a lot of revenue coming down the stream here soon. A lot of it would depend on the car, right? You know, something like the M4. I think I paid 65 for that car. Sometimes it's just easier to not finance a car. It's just easier to just send the wire,

get the title, register it, move on with life, right? Whereas other times it's like, you know, like the temerario. That car's financed, right? That car, including tax, was $500,000. I think I put down 250 because I'm like, you know, I'll put down 250. I'll use that other 250 to invest in other projects. You know, so a lot of it just comes down to timing. What's the cost to own so many supercars? Like with insurance, gas, maintenance. It's crazy. I mean, I have 19 cars in my car collection. The insurance is not bad. It really isn't. Now that the Cunning Seg is gone, I want to say every month I'm paying $22 to $2,400 for 19 cars. That's not bad at all. For 19 cars, yeah. How much is your insurance going to go up after the claim on the Gallardo? So here's

what's cool about the Gallardo. It was not a collision. It was a comprehensive claim. So it was a no fault. So it was a no fault claim so my rates don't go up. So all this time, the insurance has been the goat. The goat, literally. Now I've been paying insurance for 20 years. And when I add up all the money I've paid, it clearly exceeds $130,000. But no, I mean, that's why you have insurance, right? And That's why you pay it. How much debt do you have on your collection? So the Timurario, there's a loan on that. And then the strato, there's a loan on.

Timurario, I've had this car for a couple months. Like I said, I financed 250 of it. So I probably have, I don't know, 245, right? The strato, I've had that car for a couple years. I got a, maybe $100,000 loan on that. I'm pretty close to just writing a check and paying that off here soon. So I probably owe 50, 70 to 70, give or take. So, and then everything else is paid out right.

that's actually really not that bad. We were talking to, uh, Tvarish. And he's, he's like loaned on everyone. Yeah. And I'm adding this up. I mean, obviously he's doing incredibly well on his videos. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But that would stress me out. It's like every single one I see this like, as though it's a rental property with a mortgage. We asked, didn't we ask him like, who's the worst with money? He's like, uh, stradman. I'm like, dude, throwing stones from a glass house.

No, no, no, you're wrong, Jack. He said the opposite. It was. anybody else of financials are, but I have to assume it's me. Who's the best with money? Stradman. The best with money? Yeah.

More than Doug DeMiro. Doug DeMiro. No, no, no, no. I'm pretty sure that someone said that you were the worst, and it may have been Doug. I wouldn't be surprised. But every time that we talk to you, you are like meaningfully in better finances. Yeah, of course, yeah. Like every time.

So here's the thing that I will say. Every single automotive YouTuber that we are talking about, from let's say 500,000 subs up to 10 million, right? Every single one of them. Every single one of them is incredibly intelligent. Every single one of them has gotten to where they're at because of a ton of hard work. They've all made fantastic financial decisions. The paths have been very different.

And the narrative has also been very different. The thing about my YouTube channel that's very different than Doug's YouTube channel, my YouTube channel is about my life. I don't know anything about Doug. I don't know nothing about Doug. I know Doug has a career GT, right? But I don't know anything about his life. And that's because his content style is car reviews, right?

And podcast talking about cars. But I don't know anything about them. Whereas my channel is all about my life. And so you see the ups and the downs, the ebbs and the flows. I'm also an open book. I'm not embarrassed to say anything. I'm not willing to have people laugh at me, make fun of me. I'll tell people I'm leasing the Konexag.

I'll tell people about my monthly payments. I'll tell people about mistakes that I've made. And so what's different about that is that there's this narrative that is put out there. And depending on who the audience is, they're going to pick up the narrative differently than other people. And also clips are going to set a different narrative for some people than other people. The people who watch every single one of my videos, they get it. They understand what I do. They understand the decisions I make.

They understand the financial. AI is going to transform. your business. Look, we've all heard this, but if you've actually rolled it out in your company, you know how this usually goes. You make the investment, everyone gets onboarded, and a few months later, no one's using it, including you. Well, thankfully, today's sponsor, Superhuman Go, is actually built the stick. Superhuman Go is an AI chat that sits right on the side of your browser, ready to help with any task you're working on. It's actually from the makers of Grammarly, and it works inside the tools and sites your team already uses. Whatever's on your screen,

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Thank you again to Superhuman Go for supporting the podcast. Acumen that I have, right? But if you're only seeing a couple clips here and there, you have no idea what's going on. You just see me run around with a camera. You don't get it, right? But then a guy like Doug, right? A guy like Doug, you don't see anything, right? You just see that he sold cars and bids for $20 million.

Dude, this fly. I'm sorry. Dude, this fly is going to kill me. It's going to go on my mouth. I'm just choking die. It's just speaking so seriously. I know. Oh, my gosh.

This is adequate. I can see it in your guys' eyes too. Yeah. He's going to edit the fly to go in my mouth and I'm going to swallow it and pass out with AI, right? There was a point, though, where I was watching, hold on. So just so if we cut back into here and not like going from a laugh. Yeah, yeah. There was a point, though, where I was watching your videos where I worried that you seem very stressed out

because you had the Konex egg, you had the house. you had all these projects, you had a huge collection. I think you did a video talking about like your overhead or there was something like that. And I'm adding this up and thinking, oh my gosh. Like that would stress me out. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think stress is real, right? Like there is true stress, right?

And, you know, the stress sometimes there's short-term stress. Stress, there's long-term stress. In that moment, yes, certainly there was short-term stress. But I knew I knew I was totally fine financially, right? Like, I mean, I have a million dollar car sitting behind me that I own outright that I could sell in a day if I had to, right? I didn't want to sell it because I love the car. It doesn't mean I'm not stressed in the short term because I'm doing what I can to keep the car. But long term, I've always been totally fine, right?

And also, you know, a part of it is, is, you know, when you sell a car like the Konexeg, right? I wanted the audience to understand why I was selling it rather than just, oh, I sold the Konezeg. Like, I wanted to explain why I sold it, right? And I want people to understand, like, there's financial reasons for selling this because, you know, the audience gets very attached to cars. They understand what cars mean to me. And if I don't convey why I'm selling a car, they're not going to understand it and they're going to be upset. Like, oh, you just get a car and you just sell a car. Whereas the Koenig was such a special car, I really wanted to explain to people. I was, bro, what are we going to do? Is this ever happen before? You know what? I was initially thinking. I'm like really trying to hold it in. I was initially thinking we could edit around this and just cut around. I don't. I don't. think so. We're just going to keep this probably in the podcast because it gets it. If someone's watching this, I mean, they're getting a real deal with these flies. Can they

even see it though? Can they see the flies? I don't know. Are your camera? Is that good? I think so. Can you guys see it? Yeah, I hope they can see the flies. I hope you see the flies. If you can, I swallow a fly, I'm done. Like, that's going to be a meme forever. Perform the He'll. Yeah, yeah. You guys know how to perform that, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Your CPR trained on some level, yeah. He'll do the CPR. I'll do all the other stuff. Do you regret showing so much of your life? Yes and no. Yes and no. I think sometimes in the short term I can regret it, right? You know, people, lots of times people just don't understand the business.

They don't understand the philosophy. They see a clip. They'll say something on Instagram. I'm like, oh, this is so annoying. Why do I tell people? Because then people just make these assumptions, right? but I think that the long game that I've played on YouTube is a big part of my success is that I'm an open book, is that I tell people how it is, right? I tell people. I'm not ashamed of who I am

or the decisions that I make. I could control the narrative so easy on YouTube, right? I could make people think that I'm worth four times as much as I am, that I am the richest guy ever, that I just know how to print cash. I could do that. All day, baby, all day I could do that. But it's just, that's not who I am. That's not who I want to be. And I think it makes it a lot more relatable because so many people on the internet are like that, especially nowadays on Instagram. And you think about the Miami bros, that are the richest people you've ever met in your entire life that six months later disappear and you never see or hear from them again. Right. Like there's so much of that on out there online. Whereas for me, it's like, no, I'm a car guy. I love cars. I have a degree in accounting and finance.

I'm making decisions with my heart with my head. I'm building my YouTube channel. Content's important. But passion is important as well. I'm going to make these decisions. Some are good decisions. Some are bad decisions. And I'm going to tell you when I make a bad decision. I'm not going to lie about it. I'm going to tell you the truth.

And once again, I think for the long term, I think that's the play. Especially on YouTube where you're doing this long format, right? Short format is just the death of social media, right? Because you can do or say or be whoever you want to be. But the truth will always come out in long format. And it's so much easier to tell the truth. Could you imagine being a liar having to keep up with all these lies day after day, week after week, it could be exhausting where it's so much easier to just tell the truth, you know, and let people think

whatever they want to think. So tell us the truth. Which car has been the most difficult to own? Uh, the Koenigieg. By far. For sure. Not even close. Konigieg, all day.

Not even close. Konigieg is a very rare car, just the fact that I have to ship the car to California to get it serviced. That alone makes it difficult to own the financial, the payments, right? Uh, that made it incredibly difficult. The one thing that I learned about that car, I mean, I definitely loved it, but I also, it made me realize that it's just another car, right? You know, the first day of ownership was the most incredible day of my entire life. The first drive was amazing. Two days later, the drive was 95% of it. One week later, it was 90%, right? A month later, it was 80%. Six months later was 50%. Right. Like, there's diminishing returns very quickly. It ends up being just another car in the car collection. It doesn't mean that it wasn't an incredible car. car. You know, that car, that car was, when I say the most difficult, it doesn't mean that it was that difficult, though. Does that make sense? Yeah. What's the best bang for the buck?

Dude, M4. Like, in my collection, M4. In my collection, for sure. I mean, I paid 65 grand for this car. It had 5,000 miles on it. It's got all the tech imaginable. It's got insane power. You add a couple turbos. You make it E85 compliant. You're at 7, 8, 900 wheel horsepower. You can drive it every single day. It's a new car. It doesn't break. The S-58 motor in that thing is bulletproof. Like, in my collection, for sure, something like that. Now, the car market lately has been going crazy. What is the biggest misconception people have about what's happening? Oh, that's tough. I think, I think the hard part is that nobody really knows what's happening, right? Like, I think everybody has so many different ideas of what is happening. I think on one end, you have the social

media aspect, right? There's more demand for these cars than there's ever been. Because you can leverage a car into fame, into finances, into wealth, into whatever you want, right, into a name. That didn't really happen pre-social media, right? Like, you had to buy a car like this and yeah, you're, you're going to become famous by owning a car, but now that can happen, so there's more demand. So I think that's one factor. I think that there's a lot of, like, private equity money coming into cars. You know, cars are not regulated, like the stock market, like real estate. Cars are like art, right? It's easy to move a car, right? You can move a car from Utah to California in a day. You can't move a house, right? A house is stuck. So I think that's a

big part of it. I think people are starting to realize the investment potential because of social media. There's so much out there, right? I mean, curated, John Tamarian, love John Tamarian. He's so passionate. He's one of my favorite human beings. He's out there telling people like, these cars are going up in value. And when you listen to him, you watch him, he's so passionate, he's so knowledgeable, you're just like, Immediately after watching a John Tamarian video, you go on bring a trailer and you're like, what can I buy? I need to buy something right now. Like there's such urgency to it. So you have that. You have guys like Doug DeMiro, right? You have these podcasts, talking about the car market. Cars are so much fun as an investment too, right? Owning a stock is boring unless it goes up and value. You own a car. Like, think about my Marseilago. I pay $2.75 for that car. The doors go up. It's worth $800 grand now. It's a manual V12. I get to drive it. I get to take it to car shows. I get to meet people. I get to, I get to, to post it on the internet, right? Like, it just checks all these box. You own a stock, like, ho-hum.

I mean, if it goes up, right? If it goes up, incredible. But if it just stays flatline, you gain nothing. If that car was still worth $2.75, I've still had a great experience. So I think that's a factor. I think another factor is the luchet, the stupid Ferrari luce, literally the downfall of Ferrari. And like I said earlier, all these dealerships,

immediately their phone is off the hook, right? off the hook, like, I got to get anything that's good right now because EVs are taking over the world. Manufacturers aren't cool anymore. They're building a bunch of nonsense. I want an NAV12 manual or an NAV10. Like, that's what I want. I want the cars of my youth that are special cars. So that's another factor. And, you know, the other factor is the conspiracy theories, right? The dealers. So this is what I wanted to get into. I saw this video that said that these auction houses allegedly might be, you know, pumping the market a little bit with some fake buyers. It started off with the Ferrari auction at Meekam. Absolutely. Sold for crazy numbers. And then everything else bumped up by like 15%. And then there were

two sales on Bring a Trailer, which kind of raised a few eyebrows. There was an SLS AMG. Yes. It sold for like $700,000. Yep. Now, granted, that was a really unique car. It was a bit of a unicorn. I haven't seen another one like it. So maybe you could justify that and they said that was a real transaction. It went through the buyer paid. You saw the bidding on it though, right? I did. You saw how it went up? Yep. And even bring a trailer. I saw it made a little post. They made a statement said this is, you know, this was a legit, appears to be a legitimate transaction. How much of that do you think is just manufactured to make it look like? Oh, it's all made. Yeah. Oh, these, these auction platforms are a huge part of what's going on. And a lot of it is the phantom bidders. But you believe that

maybe some of it's fake. Oh, absolutely. I know it is with 100%. How do you, how do you know? Because I'm in the car world. I talk. I talk to people. I know. How, but how? What are it? Okay. So are you just like some guy says like, oh yeah, I know that. Like you're just taking this guy for his word? No, for sure. I mean, so yeah, there's a lot of different factors. I mean, the SLS, I don't know if the audience knows what happened there, right? Explain it. The car was, the car was bidding at what, three, four, five hundred grand, you know, going up in increments of $5,000. And then all of a sudden, somebody dropped a $200,000 increase. So it went up from $500 to $700,

whatever, right? That is not normal bidding. The one thing I know about rich guys, rich guys are sometimes the most frugal, careful with their money guys ever. The last thing they ever want to do is overpay. And I could see doing a, you know, game over bid of like $50K maybe, right?

You bid from $500 to $500 to $500. But $700 to $700, there's no way. There's no way. You'd think, though, that they would just make like two accounts, though, and kind of bid back. Well, that's part of that. Or that's that. So a lot of what happens, let's say, let's say, and I would never do this, let's say I'm selling my mercy log on Bring a Trailer.

So I hit it Bring a Trailer. I send all the information. I take photos. They hit me up and they're like, what do you want to set the reserve at? Okay. Let's say Bring a trailer has to agree. Let's say we agree at a million dollars, right? The bidding starts off.

You know, you get two, three, four, five hundred thousand pretty quickly. And then what you do is you have your buddy who has another account. You tell them what the reserve is. He knows what the reserve is. reserve is. You know what the reserve is. You bid that thing up to 990,000, right? So that alone, you're guaranteed if the car no sales, at least you have a decent comp, right? Because if you have a merceola like that, let's say it no sale, no reserve at 500 grand, I just cook the value of that car, right? So you obviously get these phantom bidders to come in and they bid up the car close

to reserve. And then once they get up to 990, you get some other dude on the hook, you're bidding back and forth and then you disappear right before you get to reserve right so that's one way to sort of guarantee that at least your car gets gets to like that reserve minimum so you don't have a garbage sale wow so that's a that's a huge part of it um another big part of it is let's say you own a bunch of mercy of logos right let's say you own 340th anniversaries right what's the fee on an auction on bring a trailer five five percent five percent but isn't isn't it above 100 thousand it like kept at $5,000. Right, exactly. So let's say you own a couple of mercilagas. Let's say you're a dealer. Let's say you have a bunch of mercies or you have a bunch of Pistas or a bunch of 812 comps, right?

you have 10 of these things, right? You just bid a car up back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You know, let's say I had a couple of mercies and I bid that car up to 1.5. And let's say my buddy ends up winning the car, right? You just pay the bring a trailer fee. The car never transacts, right? You just keep the car. But then all the other mercies you own all just shot up in value.

So then you put the other mercies on bring a trailer. You don't bid and then you make the money that way. So what's unique is that I just saw the other day. I was watching it along with five other people that I knew because I sent this out in decks including you Jack for GT silver one on bring a trailer. So for over

$700,000. Right. And it wasn't that unique of a car. I mean, it was a standard silver car, I think 2,200 miles, whatever, over $700,000. I'm like, how on earth? But it seemed like there were three bidders at the same time. Right. And then there's another one that just came up, already at a million dollars for a

heritage for GT. with only a few miles on that. So maybe that's a legitimate one. But I'm shocked. Do you think that this is sustainable? Now really quick, I got to say that everyone has a business idea that they've been sitting on. And what stops most people really isn't the idea itself.

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One more time that Shopify.com slash ICH with the link down below in the description to get started. Do you think that this is sustainable? Absolutely not. I mean, at some point you reach a ceiling, right? But can it stay there? Like, here's the thing with a scuderias. I can't see the scootareas falling much further. Like if they're trading at 700 grand,

I could maybe see, you know, 600, 550, but I think they'll stay there. So the people who buy those cars, they're not flipping them. They're not selling them. They're just going to hold them. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think it's obviously a car-by-car basis. I think a limited edition Ferrari is about the safest investment car ever because guys who own scootarias or challenge stradallies or 458 specialis,

they're like kind of old money guys, right? They're not going to have to fire sale cars. You look at a car like, I don't know, an Eventador SVJ, right? That's a social media car. That's young money. You know, a lot of these guys maybe are financing the cars, blah, blah, blah, blah. At some point, you're going to get to a point where these cars, they put them up on the market and nobody's going to buy them, right? And then that's when the value start to plummet.

I think a lot of these cars will hold, you know, the Ferraris and the Porsches of the world. But we've never really seen anything like this, right? It's kind of uncharted territory. There's more money in the market than ever before. But that's a scary world out there. If you were to buy a single car that you think would make the most amount of money in terms of percentage return, which car would it be right now? So I have discovered that I am the worst ever at doing this. But the one thing I have learned, you have to either go Ferrari or Porsche, no matter what, in life, if you ever want to invest in cars, you have to go Ferrari or Porsche.

There's some other cars out there that maybe you could win the car. the lottery on, but the absolute guarantees are Ferraris and Porsches. Ferraris I kind of understand a little bit more. Porsches are just the most fascinating investment cars to me ever. You could have a car that is air-cooled and because of that, it's worth way more money. You could have a car that has a certain paint scheme or an interior and it's worth way more money if it's a Porsche. So to answer your question, I would lean toward Ferrari. I like Ferrari. It'd have to be a limited edition. Ideally, a V12 or a V8, naturally aspirated. The car would have to have not gone up a ton in value yet.

F12 is a nice car. It's got an NAV12. I like the F12. Production's pretty low. It's a beautiful car. It's iconic Ferrari. F12 is pretty good. Those things are probably 300 grand right now, a 599.

I think that's a pretty good car. Those haven't gone up a ton yet. The limited edition stuff is still going to go up, but you're kind of cooked because, you know, you're a million and a half, two million to even get into those cars. But yeah, I would say, I would say an A V12 Ferrari would be where I'd go. I'm going to say the 550 barcetta. Oh, I like that numbered car.

They only built 448 of those. I liked convertible. Yeah. V12. What's crazy, I was very close to trading my 4GT straight up for a 550 barcetta. 4GT is a sick car though. I mean. But the car that I would be trading for had a modification to it.

Oh. And it was for the roof. They made an automatic roof. Oh, an automatic. Yes, so it was an improvement. The guy spent like $50,000 dollars. It wasn't a super America? No.

Oh. He spent like $50,000 to $100,000 doing the roof because he lived in Florida. Interesting. And it rained so often that he wanted to be able to put up the roof really quickly. I get it. But just that one modification meant it was no longer stock. Exactly. And I drove the car.

I didn't like it. Now, I'm too short for the car, too. It was very difficult for me to put the seat forward and then, like, see, have enough distance because it's a very long car too. So I didn't do it. And I'm glad I didn't do it. But I would say that car and then I would say a very unique spec, 458. For sure, for sure. It seems like that's important now.

It used to be like, oh, you got a red tan car or Ferrari. Like that's it. But now it's like color combo is super important. Like the cars at Meekam in January, the yellow, all the yellow cars. The blue. Yeah, I can't think of the guy's name. But they were the ugliest specs ever. But they're like one of one.

And they were the last of blah, blah, blah. And they had no miles. And like that GT2RS that's online is a super crazy spec. Like it's all spec dependent now. And some of the F12s that have traded in the $5,000, $700,000 range is like, oh, it's a brown car with a brown interior or whatever. And so yeah, spec is super, super important. Almost like the rare and the more unique, the better. You know what I think is going to hit a million dollars very soon is the no stripe Ford GT.

Yes. I think those are massively undervalued. And they're selling about the same. price as just like a well taken care of normal one. Right. Yeah. I'd rather than no stripe. So if anyone's watching with the no stripe,

I would trade my car for a no stripe. My buddy Alex, he lives in Arizona. He just bought a stripless white 4GT with the exact same thought you just said. Really? Yeah. I think there'll be a million dollars. Because they're so, like the stripes, like I actually love,

I'm, well, they both look insane, right? Stripless GT is so wide, so low. But then the stripes are super iconic. But the stripless are so rare. Yeah. You never see them.

Yeah. I prefer the look. of this strike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the striped list are like single digits. Like his car's a white stripless one. And don't quote me on this, but there's like seven of them. Yeah. You know, it's like single digit. And that's what collectors want to. Yeah. What's a car that you can't believe

has gotten so expensive? I mean, 458 specialia perta. Bro, it's like two two and a half million dollars. It's a 458 with a body kit. Like I bought a 458 spider in 2020 for $165,000. It is 95%

of a specialia aperta. And this car's trading at two and a half million dollars. It's like this doesn't make any sense at all. And, uh, I mean, it's a beautiful car. Don't get me wrong. It's limited edition. It's Ferrari. It's one of four hundred ninety-nine. Like I get it. It's in a. It looks insane. But you can get the same car for a tenth of the price, you know, maybe, maybe an eighth of the price now. So let's assume we just dropped five million dollars on you. What would you do with the money? Would you invest it or buy cars? Uh, five million dollars, I would finish my backyard. First and foremost, I would definitely finish my backyard.

The second most, what would you do? Because I don't think that costs $5 million. No, no, no, no. But that's the first thing I would do. That would be like $5,000, $700,000. I would do that. That's a lot of money. Well, I want to build a detached garage.

I want to build a sports court. Landscaping's expensive. Bro, houses are so expensive. It's crazy. Everything is going up and up and up. The price of lumber, steel after COVID. Everything is super expensive. So I would do that first and foremost.

Sports court for what? For basketball? Basketball, pickleball, tennis. Like, it's kind of an all-in-in-one. The thing I like, about it is it reduces your landscaping, which is really nice, less to take care of. And it'd be a great way to exercise. That's still fun. Like, I love shooting hoops. Like, it's a ton of fun. So that's the first thing I would do. Um, I just want to finish the property. I got all these

weeds. It's kind of nasty. It doesn't look good. And after that, I would pay off tomorrow Estorado. So let's say that's a million bucks. So that's, that's first and foremost, I'm left with $4 million. The mortgage on my house, I'm sitting at $1.4, $1.5 million. So I would take the rest of that and I would just pay it off.

So I'd have literally no debt. That would be the greatest thing ever. What's your interest rate? Five and a quarter, five and a half somewhere in there. That's not terrible. No, it's not. It's not.

It's not. I think I've reached the point in my life where freedom is like my main goal, not absolute maximum financial, you know, decision making. I just want to be free. I like the idea of having no debt. I think the Konex egg having that debt and all those payments and thinking like, I'm going to make $60,000 every single month was so much.

And I've reduced that, obviously, a ton to now where it's like, you know, $15,000 a month is like my break even. But it would be so awesome if that was zero. I'm slowly coming around to it. I would make fun of Dave Ramsey so much because I look at your mortgage mathematically. For sure. You're able to write off the first $750,000 against your ordinary income. For sure.

Huge. That takes your five and a quarter down to like two something percent. That's basically inflation. So you basically got free money for $750. I recently paid off three mortgages. Okay. On rental properties in California, all three were between 2.8 to 3.3 percent, fixed for 30 years. on rental properties.

I never thought we'd see what to be. It was crazy. Yeah. I paid them off because I sold the properties. For sure. I get that. But getting rid of the debt, even though it was cash flow positive and the debt was so cheap, felt good.

Yeah. It's just like I have rocket money and I'm able to see like the debt category and like the asset category. Just having that like go down significantly. I don't know. I just felt better. Sleep better at night. Dude, good sleep. Very, very underrated.

Good night sleep is amazing. No debt is amazing. You know, I've reached the point with YouTube and with my life. Like, I never imagined I would be at this point, right? Like, my goal when I was younger was to maybe have a Gallardo, but have to sell the guy or right. And so I've reached the point now where I'm like, man, this is so much more than I ever imagined, so much more than I ever could expected, you know, and we're getting older.

We're not young. We're not in our 20s anymore, right? Like, Jack is. Well, Jack, you lucky guy. You enjoy it. You enjoy your 20s. I am. Oh, yeah, good.

Good. But, you know, you start thinking toward the future. And, you know, at some point, you're like, you know, freedom. Freedom is nice. Not having stress is nice. You know, taking your foot off the gas can be nice as well and not having any debt. So this is going to sound stupid. Why not just sell off three cars, pay off the mortgage, finish the backyard and you're down to zero. Well, you told me that you were just going to give me $5 million. Jack. Jack did. Thank you, Jack, by the way. So that, that's why because all of a sudden I have, I mean, five. million dollars it's like well yeah get rid of this right now sure i could do that i could sell the mercy i mean i could sell the mercy right right now i could finish the backyard uh i could take some of that money i could pay off i could sell the temerario i mean certainly absolutely i'm not looking to actually like do that right now i like the challenge i still like you know i don't want to sell that car i love that car i think that car is going to be worth two million someday as well and so i want to hold on to it and i still enjoy owning the car. So that's why it's like I don't really want to add on more debt. And I am making it a mission of mine to figure out a way to film content that maybe doesn't take as much money

so that the ROI is higher. So I can use the profit to finish some of these things to finish paying off some of these cars. That's kind of like my new goal versus expansion. You know, I've been on YouTube for 15 years. That's crazy. I'm not in that growth stage anymore, right? Like, I'm not looking to become, you know, the Nick's big automotive YouTuber. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to do new things or reinvent the wheel. Like I'm, I'm not saying I'm in the retirement years or anything, but like, you know, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at. And, and I still want to keep doing what I'm doing. I love YouTube, but I'm not looking to expand, right? I'm not looking to turn 19 cars into 30 cars or I'm not looking to build an empire of employees and, you know,

turn this YouTube thing into something bigger than that because I'm very happy with where I'm at in life. How's your business doing? How is it broken down today? Last time we spoke, you said every year it's exactly the same. Two million bucks, two million bucks, two million bucks. You guys, it's literally the same. It's still exactly two million bucks. Yeah. I mean, it fluctuates. Yeah, it fluctuates from 1.8 to 2.2. Right. Like, it's just back and forth, back and forth. I have to say that's the best thing that you could possibly, I think, you know, since you're not going for like trying to like grow as big as possible, the consistency. No, for sure. And I mean, I think my channel has always been. been like consistency. Like when I look at my views, right? Like my views have started to drop, right? But they've still stayed very close overall to like the recent videos, right? Like if you look at a section of 10 of my videos, they're all very close in views, no matter where you go. How does that feel? Because when we filmed our first podcast, you would say every video is a million views. Yeah. Yeah. And it'll, you know, if you get like 900, if you get like 1.3, but it's always about a million. Right. How does it feel seeing the views go down from like a motivation standpoint?

As like some of your audience just kind of like ages out and they find like other content. Yeah. I mean, I think I think for me, I always knew in the back of my mind it was going to happen. It was always inevitable, right? Like I'm in the entertainment industry. You look at actors, musicians, one hit wonders, right? Like it's hard to maintain longevity in the entertainment industry. YouTube is unproven. Social media is unproven. But, But, I mean, I've been around for 15 years, and when I think about the automotive YouTubers they were around when I started compared to now,

it's changed a lot, right? Like, there's a lot of people that... Almost no one from back then is still making content. What was that? Almost no one from back then is still making content. Vehicle versions, I think, was the only other person who's still posting consistently. DDE as well, yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, a lot of the big guys... Well, Shmeet, he's around, too. There's a those guys... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, you also look at, like, the mainstream YouTubers back then, they're all gone, right? So I've always known it was going to... to happen. The biggest thing for me is, I'm amazed how long it lasted. To be honest,

like, I averaged a million views for something like five, six years maybe, give or take. I mean, that was longer than I ever expected. And so I was new in the back of my mind it would happen. You know, views obviously have dropped. The cool thing is I found other ways to make money. There's so many more social media platforms now. I don't know if we could talk about it. You told me you're doing only fans. AI is going to transform your business. Look, we've all heard this, but If you've actually rolled it out in your company, you know how this usually goes. You make the investment, everyone gets onboarded, and a few months later, no one's using it, including you. Well, thankfully, today's sponsor, Superhuman Go, is actually built the stick.

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We weren't supposed to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the one thing, Graham. I told you we weren't going to talk about. We'll talk about it for the members. Members only. For the members' content, we'll talk about that. There we go.

We'll save that. We'll talk about that later. Okay. So what are the other ways you're making money then? Because I imagine if the, And if the YouTube channel you're averaging fewer views per video, that maybe you're making a little bit less on AdSense revenue, maybe a little bit less in general, on average for sponsors.

So where is the supplemental income coming from? Snapchat is huge. How does that do? Snapchat is amazing. Dude, I love Snapchat. What? Yeah, Snapchat's incredible. Yeah.

How much are you making on Snapchat? So I post on Snapchat almost like an Instagram story, right? It's basically the same thing. Just take photos out of caption, my day-to-day life, whatever nonsense I'm up to. You know, it obviously has an automotive theme generally. I'll put other random stuff out there. And yeah, you get paid based on views, just like you would or anything.

But it's just Snapchat stories. How much are you getting paid from? So, you know, it fluctuates. Obviously, it depends on what I'm up to, how much I post. It's kind of a volume thing. The more you post, you make a lot more. $10,000, $15,000 a month? No, it's a lot.

Like, it's a ton. Yeah, and it's so easy. It takes no time at all, right? It takes no time. And, you know, I'll shout out my YouTube videos. It'll drive some traffic here and there to YouTube, I'm guessing. and vice versa. How did you grow on Snapchat?

Just posting, you know? The cool thing about cars, cars are so clickable. Yes. Right? Cars are so clickable. The thing, oh my gosh, these flies. People wouldn't click on us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, cars are so perfectly clickable.

They would hate to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not really a, let's be honest. Snapchat is not really a finance platform. Snapchat, yeah. We've tried growing on Snapchat. I used to have a snap show. Right.

They did well, and then they discontinued that recently for a lot of creators. Now it's just like, you have to treat it like reels. And now it's like stories. Which is interesting that. Instagram doesn't employ the same thing. Like, I don't know why they... I think because Instagram is just beaten everybody. People post on Instagram because they want to post there.

They want to get famous. They don't need to pay people. They don't need the motivation. I mean, I post on Instagram. I make nothing on Instagram. And yet I still see it as being valuable because most of the connections that I make is on Instagram. So that's why I post on Instagram.

But I make no money on Instagram. So outside of Snapchat, then, what other streams of income do you have? TikTok, Facebook. those are kind of the other big three, if you will. Strad pizza. Strad pizza. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about strad pizza.

I kind of see strad pizza as like a, it is. It is a completely separate entity, obviously, compared to my YouTube channel. And so everything that we make, it just gets reinvested back into the business. Is it making money? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so summer months, no, but the rest of year, yes.

Because the summer in Arizona is so incredibly hot. Everybody leaves for the summer. So the summer is kind of like survive and then the fall you thrive. a personal thing that I love watching. Like, I will, Dave Portnoy, his pizza reviews. Yes. Yes. I have watched him for years. I love his pizza reviews.

I love New York style slices. I love New Haven style slices. Like, I geek out on that stuff. He reviewed your pizza. 7-7. Not bad. How nervous were you? Because Dave is a harsh critic.

Like, he will give places like a four, a five, a six. But a pizza that gets a 6.5 in a Dave score is actually a really good. good slice. So 7-7, while it may seem like it's average or slightly above average, actually suggests to me that it's a phenomenal pizza. He also said it was better than David Doberick. He did. That video was hilarious. I mean, as far as like, so Portnoy, obviously he showed up at Strad Pizza. The employees, everyone knows who he is, right? He showed up about a month before the video dropped. So for four weeks, we were waiting for him to drop the video and one of the customers outside overheard him and told us that it was a 7-7-8.

But until you see the video go live in the back of your mind, it's like, well, what if it was, you know, six, seven or whatever. But like, you never know, right? Until the video drops, you don't know. And then also, like, what else did he say? Because with Portnoy, like, his reviews, like, it's so funny because he's so unhinged at moments, right? And he says whatever's on his mind.

So when that video dropped, it was literally like, we could not have. asked for a better video. David Dobrook. I haven't met him before. I haven't been to his pizza place, but I know he's obviously very big in the pizza world. So for us to be compared to him and for Dave to like say our pizzas way better was just incredible, right? You know, Dave had no idea who I was. He didn't pronounce Stradman correct. He said like Stradman or something like that, right? Straw man. Yeah, yeah. So it was like a very genuine review, right? And that's the thing we love about Portnoy. He don't care who you are. He's always very genuine. And so yeah, it was, it was, was amazing. When he came to Strad Pizza, we had been opened for three weeks also. So you think

the pizza could be more refined today? Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, like, we were three weeks into it. And so yeah, it was pretty nerve-wracking. It was on a Monday, too, and Mondays are the slowest days. So, you know, pizza, just like anything in life, is like, it's way better when it's fresh, right? And Mondays are the slow days. So the pizza is sometimes not as fresh. Now, I guess with his, he always orders a full pie. So he ends up with a fresh pie, which is nice. But, um, Yeah, I mean, it was incredible. He was hilarious. He was funny.

Great score. I'll say this. A lot of people may disagree with me, but I actually don't think a fresh pizza tastes the best. I think if you go to New York and you get the slices that are reheated, by the slice, it always tastes better than a fresh pie. In my humble opinion. However, 7-7 phenomenal score. Did you see more customers convert to the store because of that review? I had no idea the effect that it would have positively.

We were so busy we couldn't keep up. for a month. I mean, he, he turned our sales. I want to say, I mean, I don't know off the top of my head. It was insane, though. It was, it was something like, uh, the week before we were at like $25,000 for the week. And then the next week was like 45,000. Like, I mean, we're talking about like astronomical effect. And it wasn't just like that week. It, it lingered for, for four, five weeks. I mean, we did, I want to say that month, we did like a hundred and thirty thousand, 140,000 that month. So what's the plan with Strad Pizza? So the, the, plan is obviously to expand, right? Like, that's the goal. You know, Strad pizza, it's a, it's a,

it's a, it's a twofold endeavor. I love pizza. I, I literally could eat it every single meal my entire life and be very happy. So I love pizza. That was a big motivator. My dad and I, we would go out and get pizza all the time. And it was, it was, it was just, it was kind of like the perfect storm for it to come to fruition. So Houston crosta, he's a good buddy of mine. Houston had Houston's hot chicken. and, you know, there was a lot that went into that, right? But Houston was like, dude, if you did this with your social media following, you would absolutely crush. And he told me that years ago, right?

Like this was, man, I don't know, 2022, right? He told me that years ago. But in the back of my mind, it was like, oh, that's cool. And then on the other side of my mind, I was like, you know, I love doing YouTube. I love the content game, but it would be fun to do something else and challenge myself. So there's that aspect. And then my business partner, Freddie, he has done my merchandise for, man, I don't know, five, six, seven years. And he's also worked in the food business. And he's been

a part of some major restaurants in Arizona, uh, with some of the big chefs down there. He sold some of those restaurants. And so he's doing my merch. He does restaurants. Houston's a good buddy of mine. He did restaurants. Use social media to leverage it. I wanted to do something different. I love pizza. And so it kind of just like all sort of came together and became strad pizza. You know, my ultimate goal of Strad pizza is to is to kind of challenge myself, have a place to do car meets, to meet people, you know, try something new. And then of course, obviously financially, it'd be cool to expand it from a legacy standpoint and a financial standpoint. So we'd love to grow it. That would be, that would be the goal for sure. What's the profit margin on a pizza? How much does it cost to make

and what do you sell? Let's see. Food margins are going to be about 35 to 40 percent. and then your labor is going to be about 35 to 40%. So you have about 20 to 30% margins. What about rent? Yeah, I mean, we're in Scottsdale. Rent, we kind of got really lucky with our situation. So Freddie, his business is like four doors down from Strad Pizza. The place that we got is an old subway.

The kind of sort of perfect storm again, like I said, like everything just kind of fell into place. But it was an old subway. The rent initially, like it was a, it was a. tiered structure. So we started off at like 1,700 a month. I think we're at 30, well, we're at 34, 42 a month now. So I mean, it's, you know, we're 18 months into business. So initially, right, like it was very cheap and then it's, it's jumped up. We're locked in at that for like a couple years now. So yeah, I mean, rent, rent is not cheap. The crazy thing, though, is we've been looking in Salt Lake trying to find a location and rent prices have gone up so much just in the last like

two, three years. They've gotten, I mean, we're at six, seven thousand. thousand dollars now for an equivalent space. Are you happy with the name? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Are you worried about tying it to your brand? No, no, not really. Because, yeah, I mean, like, let's be honest. At the end of the day, like, I'm a YouTuber, right?

Like, my brand's not. Like, yeah, it's important to me. But the brand itself is, is, uh, it's, it's not like Nike, right? Like, I'm just a silly YouTuber. See, the problem I worry about and see in the future, there's that key man risk. For sure. Of it being so tied to you. and then I would think if you eventually expand

or you eventually franchise that they would say, what happens if you stop making content? What happens if you don't continue marketing the business? For sure. What happens if you say something and then the customer is now all of a sudden start like picketing in front?

Whereas having like a generic name maybe doesn't have those risks. I think at the end of the day for a restaurant, if the pizza's not good, nobody cares. Nobody cares who you are. It don't matter.

It don't matter. The pizza is what matters. If the pizza is good, people will go back. If they've seen some YouTuber that they like, he's got cool cars, they'll go try it. They'll walk in the door. But if they have a bad experience or the pizza's bad, they're not going to go back. They'll still watch my videos, though. I think, hopefully.

But they're not going to go back. So the pizza is what's most critical. I'm going to say, I think you need a little bit of a gimmick. Okay. You got to do some sort of a challenge where they get like a free pizza they're able to finish like some massive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

We've talked, I love that. I agree. I think that would be fun. You know, like a challenge or like you make it. Really, yeah. And what if there's a YouTube channel where like you have like a camera in the store and anyone who wants to try the challenge like they also have to consent to being filmed? I like that.

And you get to post it on the YouTube channel. So you get all these crazy people and you could like mic them up and you have like weird people just chowling down with a bunch of pizza and talking at the same time. Oh, this is hard. This is, that would be, I would like it. It markets itself, which is the great part. I'd also like to see a really hot pizza. Like, on the Scoble units, like, just off the charts, they had to sign a waiver. They have to be, like, you know, 18 and over.

For sure. But you give them this pizza, and they have to be filmed. And if you finish the pizza, it's free. And then they get maybe, like, you get, like, a discount on future pizzas. So you get the next, like, five pizzas free. You get a personalized video from Stradman. I can't wait to talk to my business partners on Tuesday. We got to do these pods more.

I agree. I think those are fantastic ideas. We've talked about the food challenge. We didn't talk about live streaming it though. I think that's... Maybe not live streaming, but just having like a camera in the store and then like it's just set up a little tripod and film it. And film it. Just because I think like having just unique people for sure.

While they're talking while they're doing it, that would be so funny. Yeah. I would watch that. The other thing that I think you should do is vlogging a little bit of the inside of the store. If there's a fun dynamic between some of the employees. Like upon stars where there's some banter back and forth. There's like some emergency of like, oh my gosh, the pizzas didn't get the levered. What do we do?

It's like some drama throughout the day. That seems logistically very difficult because you have to edit. Like editing that, that requires like a full editor. I'm just thinking it's a one person who just hangs out at the shop all day, eight hours a day, post once a week. Do people that go into a store like want to be filmed? That's the balance. It's a balancing act. And like when it's really busy because, you know, just like in a restaurant, it ebbs and flows, right?

And it's a small location. It's 1,200 square feet. So it is pretty small. And, and, you know, on a Friday or Saturday night, it's popping in there. Obviously, on a Monday or Tuesday, sure, it's, it's pretty slow. But yeah, you got to find the right characters, obviously, that are be willing. And, you know, some people don't want to be on camera. But I certainly think we should do it.

And it could be done, definitely. I think filming the challenge would be, would be, I think filming the challenge would be fantastic. It just markets itself. For sure, for sure. I did a challenge where I did a pizza eating contest. There's a football player, Will Hernandez. He plays for the Arizona Cardinals.

and he's, you know, 300 and whatever pounds and he's huge, right? He's a lineman. And we did a pizza challenge where it was 1V1, me or Sam, who could eat the pizza faster. And that was super fun. That was kind of a fun little marketing gimmick

that we did and we filmed it and, you know, it did really well on Instagram and whatnot. So, yeah, I mean, I think more stuff like that, definitely. But I think, once again, the pizza, if the pizza is really good, because think about all the restaurants,

think about your favorite restaurants that you go to, right? Yeah, we don't ask what their opinions about certain things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the owners, we just go there. If the food's good, right. If the food's good, you'll keep coming back. Obviously, to grow it, though, right? So it's kind of two phase, right? On one end, it's like, well, the pizza's got to be really good. The price point's got to be really good. The operations could got be really good. And then once you figure that out, then you can have all the fun with all the gimmicks or media, the marketing side of it, which is, you know, we're pretty young. We've been, like I said, our one year anniversary was April 12th. So we've been open, you know, 15 months or so. Operations were getting dialed. We're getting, you know, we're getting, you know, we're getting there for sure. And we're doing some marketing here and there. So it's, it's been a fun new

challenge. We sold a lot of pizza. You know, it's kind of crazy to think we sold a million dollars of pizza. Pretty, pretty cool. So outside of that, do you have any other investments? Any stock, any crypto, any gold? I knew this was common. I knew this question. It was good. It's funny. Like, I don't know, when we were talking like a week ago, whenever we set this up, I was like, man, maybe we should dump some money to the stock market real quick. So that when you guys ask this question, I'm like, oh, yeah, I got stock here. I got money there. Is that ever going to change? Yes and no. I think I think that the YouTube channel, I mean, obviously, Strapped Pizza's new. I mean, I have, that's an investment that's changed since our last

podcast. Will it change? Absolutely. I think, I think the YouTube channel will kind of dictate everything, right? You know, the YouTube channel, yes, views have fallen, but I'm still getting six, seven hundred thousand views of video. I'm still making fantastic money. Like, it's still very much a part of my life. I still love doing it. And I'm good at it, right? I think it's so important to do what you're good at. Like, what do you know? What do you understand? Like, I understand the car market. I'm in love with it. You know, we have a conversation. You bring up an SLS on bring a trailer. I know exactly what you're talking about, right? You bring up the stock market. I don't even know because I'm just like, I'm not into that. I don't have time. I don't,

I don't want to have time for that, right? Like, I want to have time for this. And so right now, this is kind of what I know. This is what I'm really good at. I think I could learn how to be good at other things, but, you know, it's a balancing act. Doesn't it feel. like a little bit of a hamster wheel, though. Like, I know you really love what you do, but if you don't have other investments to fall back on, you really don't have any active income coming in to supplement just all the other expenses. Yeah, life is kind of hamster wheel. That's sort of like the beauty of life, right? No matter what it is in life, you're always on a hamster wheel in some way or the other, right? Whether it's financial or physical or relationships or anything in life, right? Mental health,

right? Like, everything is a hamster wheel. I love the hamster wheel of it. I am happiest when I'm busy, when I'm working, when I'm on the hamster wheel. When I get off the hamster wheel, you know, if I don't post for like, I don't know, 10 days or I can't figure out what to post, that's actually when I'm like most agitated. When I'm working, when I'm doing it, I actually kind of enjoy it. That adds to the stress, though, right? But I think a certain level of stress is actually really good and really healthy, especially for, I think men, I think it's really important to kind of have a mission, have like a challenge,

something that you're doing every single day. obviously diversity is or you know diversification is super important i totally agree with that i just like i just and maybe it's ego driven i just feel like i'm so good at this that i just want to invest all my time into this what's really interesting to me is you know earlier in this podcast you said when life gives you lemons make lemonade yeah and then you also kind of did that exact same thing with visiting your mom right you like drove all the way to oregon and you ended up spending time with her and then you ended up getting a good deal and then when graham says is, oh yeah, but it's a hamster wheel.

There's sort of a negative connotation to that, but to you, even though it's the exact same thing, it still is a hamster wheel. It's a hamster wheel to you, and it's a hamster wheel to you. But for you, that's a positive thing. And so what I think is really remarkable is your ability to spin literally anything into something positive. I'm curious if that's something that you've had to engineer

or, like, condition your brain to be able to see life in that way, or if this is just the way you've always been? Yeah, I mean, obviously, I can tell you, that I always turn a negative into a positive right here on the podcast. That's very easy for me to say. There are certainly moments in my life where I don't do that, right? People don't see that, right? Like, I'm a human being just like, just like everybody.

There are moments of weakness and negativity where I'm in my head, where I'm mad, where I'm upset, where I'm like, oh, the world is against me. You know, like, it's very easy to sit here on a pod and just say, you know, what needs to be said. In this exact moment. For sure. No, for sure. Yeah, yeah. but there's lots of moments that, you know, initially I'm very negative and then I have a way of turning it into positive. And then there are other moments that, no, it's like immediately, you know, it's like, no, I'm going to spin this into a positive.

The cool thing about what I do, and I'm very aware of it, is like, I get the coolest job in the world, right? Like, I get to do the coolest stuff. Like what my 10-year-old self didn't know existed because social media wasn't a thing. I get to do that. I get to, I get to drive the most amazing cars. I get to share my life. I get to meet cool people. I get to travel the world.

And what I realized very, very early on on social media is when something bad happens, it makes for the best situations on camera. It makes for the best videos, right? Like, that's just how it works. And what's so cool about YouTube is it's literally, if you can have that mindset, you understand that when something bad happens, you just got to immediately be like, no, I'm going to turn this into a good thing. And you can because of all the blessings you have because of what you do for a living, right?

Like when I get a flat tire in a car, for most people, that's the worst thing ever. For me, I'm like, oh, this is going to make my video funnier. It's annoying, but it's like, I'm just going to get out and film this and laugh on the side of the highway, right? Now, when the guy already caught fire, I was devastated because that car means so much to me. And I was on the verge of tears when that happened. And then it was literally angels from heaven spawning with fire extinguishers. I remember distinctly in my head, I'm looking at the car. I'm like, the car is gone.

And then I was like, I need to film a walk-around video of this car because I'm never going to see it again. And as I pan from the back, I walk toward the front of the car. And as I pan to the front of the car, I see a guy running full speed with a fire extinguisher. And it was just like, like, literally, boom. It's like, oh, we might save the car. And he comes running over, saves the car. And in that moment, it's like, as soon as the car was out and I looked at it in my head, I was like, I'm pretty sure I can save this car. I can turn this into the coolest thing ever.

But five minutes earlier, I was literally devastated because that car means so much to me. But then after the fire was put out, it's like, no, I can make something out of this. Like, this is, I'm not going to say this is a blessing, but I'm going to turn this into a blessing. Like, I'm going to force, I'm going to force this into a blessing. And that's because I have a YouTube channel. And I'm so blessed to have a YouTube channel that has the success that it has. And I understand that not everybody has that. And so I think, I think with that, you know, part of like,

the reason I've been so blessed is that there's an expectation to be a positive light in the world. You know, I think a lot of people watch my YouTube videos because, you know, they're going through stressful situations and maybe this is a little bit of a reprieve or a break that they can take away from the stress of their life. And so I feel like there's a bit of a responsibility, you know, to be positive, you know, to turn negative into positive. There's a lot of kids that watch my channel. And I hope a lot of them see that, right? And they're like, oh, man, James Stradman, he does this. He, he looks for the best in things, right? And not that I always do that, you know, like, I'm a human, right? There are times in my life when I don't do that. But I think

it's really important to show people to do that because life's hard, right? Life's hard. But if you have good people around you and you have the right mindset, you can take anything and turn it into a positive. I will say you're like that even off camera. Like, you won't even swear. We've tried to get you to say bad words and you won't do it. Yeah. Because it's, It's weird hearing it come from you. You almost like literally negatively or never speak negatively on anybody either. Like you're just like a positive and forgiving person. Yeah, I mean, fuck you, but that's not true.

I have moments. No, I know, I know I do. Like, I mean, I'm certainly, I, I have weak moments. I have moments of stress. I have moments of anguish. I mean, I got audited. You guys got to ask me about the audits. Oh.

But bro, when I was going through that audit, That was the hard part too is that I didn't that wasn't something that I put on YouTube until after the fact, right? Because I just wasn't sure of how to narrate that. I just didn't know. But during that, I was, I was, I was in a dark place. It was tough. And then I'd have to, then I'd just have to turn it on for the camera. Let's talk about the audit. What triggered the audit? The audit was 22, 2023. I was having a great day. I went to the mailbox. I opened a with the mailbox and I have a letter from the IRS. And I'm thinking like, oh, it's some, whatever. Like, we get, randomly you get notices from the IRS, like, whatever. I get home, I open it up.

And they don't even really call it an audit. I think it's like a financial review. It's like a nice way of saying it's an audit. And all of a sudden, it was, I mean, it was just like, oh my gosh. Like, I don't even know what to do, right? Like, this is the scariest thing ever. Reached out to my CPA. You know, we had to reach out to the IRS and we scheduled like a phone call with

them, right? And initially the audit was for 2020. It was for my 2020 financials, right? So I have this phone call with the auditor and, you know, they just started asking me all these questions and half of them, I don't even know the answer to. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Like, right? Like, it's, some of these questions were so obscure. It was like, you know, tell us about this or what do you do? How much money do you make? How much did you pay in taxes? Like, who's doing your, you know, who's doing your tax return, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, eventually what it ended up leading to was how I was treating my cars. That's what triggered the audit. So obviously these cars, they're a big part of what I do on

YouTube. And before the audit, I was treating the cars as props, as equipment, as the same way a farmer might use a tractor, right? These cars are everything without my YouTube channel, there's no revenue, they're not passenger vehicles. I don't use these vehicles to get from point A to point B. Yes, I do in a sense, but the main point of these, these generate the revenue. There's no revenue without the car. Whereas you think about like a realtor, right? A realtor might have a Mercedes. Maybe they take clients, go look at homes, right? They make money selling the house, not because of the car that they took, right? Like, but for me, it's like, no, I generate the revenue because of the car in the same way that maybe a farmer's not the best metaphor.

But you get what I'm saying, right? It's a piece of equipment. It's a piece of equipment. And that's how he treated it, right? Now, with a passenger vehicle that weighs under 6,000 pounds, the IRS has a very strict way you can expense them. Correct. It's limited. It doesn't matter.

Like, this is the dollar amount. This is what you do. Especially for luxury cars. For luxury cars. And it's a very, very small percentage of the car. and that's the absolute most you can do. But then, you know, for a vehicle that weighs over 6,000 pounds, like a truck, that's treated a little bit different.

Generally, you can write that off in the first year. The tax law changes every year, right? So it's hard to like pinpoint it. But it changes. But then something like a tractor, a piece of equipment, right? You can depreciate it, blah, blah, blah, blah. Depending on the value of it, maybe you do, there's different methods you can choose based on the equipment.

And, you know, I have a degree in accounting, a degree in finance. I'm not a CPA, though. like when I went to college, like when you do accounting, you really don't learn much about tax, right? But I had a basic understanding and I understood how I used my cars. And the big thing for me is like, when I bought this Timorario, right, I go to the dealership, I buy the car, I film the video. Let's say it does a million views. Let's say I make $10,000. That $10,000 does not exist if I don't have that car. It literally does not exist. The channel, the YouTube channel, does not exist. I don't have a YouTube channel. I do not have an automotive YouTube channel without cars.

So that was the framework for why I chose to do what I did. And I knew that I had audit risk. And my dad, he was a CPA. My accountant here, he's a CPA, right? I know a bunch of other people that are CPAs. And they understood the logic that I took. And they agreed with it. They also warned me that I had audit risk.

So I was new in the back of my mind that there was audit. risk. I also knew that everything was a timing thing, right? Because when you buy a car, let's say the Timorari, you buy that car for 500 grand. And let's say theoretically to make things very easy for this podcast, you write it off for 500 grand the first year. Right? You just write off the whole thing the first year. So your basis is zero dollars. But then the next year, you sell the car and you sell the car for $450,000, let's say. You're going to have a taxable gain of $450,000. So you're still going to end up paying taxes on these cars. You're just delaying taxation. Correct. It's just a timing thing, right? It's not tax evasion. It's just tax avoidance.

It's timing. That's literally all you're doing, right? And I had done that for years, right? Because, I mean, I started my YouTube channel in 2012. You know, I filed returns for five, six, seven, eight years up until 2020. And I'd been doing that. And you could see on my tax returns that when I sold cars, I was paying a gain on said taxation. So that's what triggered the audit, though, to answer the question. The depreciation recapture trigger the idea. Was it just the amounts? Like, they're seeing a high income and it's very high deductions. So with the audit, they obviously don't tell you what triggers it. All you can go is based off of that. And that would be obviously. So why would you paying more tax trigger an audit? Because if it was the recapture,

right that you know that you would have it was it was the ebbs and flows it was the ebbs and flows because because initially right because the channel was growing and the revenue was growing the ebbs and flows were i was writing off more right like i was writing off more every single year it kept getting bigger and bigger because i was making more money i was buying more cars and yes i would sell some cars but i was going from two cars to four cars to eight cars to ten cars to twelve cars to 15 cars, right? Now that I've reached this point where I've stayed between, you know, 15 to 19 cars, there's a lot more ebbs and flows. But back then it was just ebbs, right? Because I was just growing, growing, growing, growing. So the write-offs were getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so I

think that's absolutely what triggered it. How long did it take to come to a resolution? And how did that work? Did they just say, hey, based on what we've looked at, this is just the amount you owe us. Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content just like this as well as early access, and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments. So if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board.

Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. How long did it take to come to a resolution? And how did that work? Did they just say, hey, based on what we? we've looked at. This is just the amount you owe us. It was a year-long process, the audit. And it was, like I said, the worst experience of my entire life. It was awful. It was, it was terrible. The biggest thing that I've learned, if you ever get audited, get a tax attorney, ASAP,

ASAP. My CPA was incredible. He's a great guy. He still does my taxes. He didn't have the experience with audits that a tax attorney would have. But as soon as as I got a tax attorney involved, he was foot on the gas, foot on the gas. He's calling the otters every other day, hey, what do you need? What do you need? Schedule a meeting. When can we get this done? When can we get this taken care of? There was a lot of arguing back and forth, right? Because I was stayed in my case. I was like, no, these cars are props. These cars are equipment because there are certain things in the tax code that does allow for what I was doing. If you're like a taxi driver or you have like, there's a lot of ambulance companies, right? Or like, like, her stuff.

renter or something. Yeah, like ubers and stuff. Like there's, there are certain things. And so we tried to argue that I should be treated the same way. The issue we ran into is that I was the first social media influencer that they had ever audited, the Salt Lake office, the Utah office. They didn't know what to do. I mean, these were older ladies in their 50s that, I don't know, they didn't even know what YouTube was, right? Like, they didn't even know what social media was.

This is a whole new world. And there's no tax code for an automotive YouTuber, right? It's such a niche. There's nothing out there and they have to go buy the book. So the first little while I'm trying to explain my case, right? Because this affects my business so much. I mean, not being able to expense the cars in the way that I was doing affected my business significantly, right?

Because all of a sudden my tax bills way up, all of a sudden I don't have money to invest in cars to grow my business, right? And so there was a lot of back and forth arguing, not arguing, but like debating, right? Because they understood my logic. And that's always the key thing between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Because they could see that what I was doing was not evasion. It was simply avoidance. I was just interpreting the tax code in a way that they didn't feel like I could interpret it.

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is the IRS agents are so slow. They are so slow. Like they hit you up with an email or a phone call or whatever. And they're like, yeah, we need this document, this one, this one, this one, this one, and we need these by this date, right? So I'm just like, man, I got to film a YouTube video today. I got to do this. I got to set this aside. So you get on your financials, you work with your CPA, you get them all the information. And then I'm thinking you want the, you want them to like you, right? You want them to be, be nice. And so I send them the information and crickets. You don't hear anything for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. All of a sudden, it's been three months and you haven't heard anything. And then they finally get back to you and they ask for more

information. So then you send it to them. And then once again, crickets, crickets. But I'm just once again thinking like, well, I don't want to hassle them. I don't want to annoy him. Right. and I want them to like me. I'm trying to play super safe. But then all of a sudden, we're nine months into this and I don't have an answer. And all this interest is adding up like crazy. So then they get back to me and they tell me like,

no, you owe all this money. You know? And I'm just like, I'm like, and it was, it was crazy. So you could have theoretically in that moment said, all right, there's the money. I could have. But initially when they came back, it was like, I owed like a million dollars.

No. Yeah, a million dollars. And then I'm going through line item by line item, there are so many mistakes on this thing. So one critical part was my Euris, right, and my gladiator. Those two vehicles do weigh over 6,000 pounds. So I was able to write those off 100%. And I think the Euris wasn't written. Like, they just kind of blank slate, just like deleted everything and then did like the passenger vehicle deduction, right? But the Euris was like 260 grand. So I like hit them up. It's like, Well, no, that's wrong. Like, that's, I can write that thing off.

That's over 6,000 pounds. And then they're like, oh, we need documentation. So then I went and took a photo of like the VIN and like the plate where it has the gross vehicle weight rating, like the 6,000 pounds. It's kind of like a trial and you're guilty and you have to prove your innocence and you have to prove documentation. Then it was like my laptop. My laptop, they deemed as not being able to write off because for whatever reason I hadn't sent them the documentation, but they hadn't asked for the documentation. So anyways, long story short, they send me this huge bill. And I'm like, this is insane.

And then so then I get a tax attorney involved. I start, you know, being like, no, I'm fighting you on this, this, this and this. We'd have these meetings in person where it's like the three of us on one side, the three of them on one side. And the crazy thing about all this, these are IRS auditors, right? They're just employees of the government. And they get to dictate your fate. Like this is like a court. this is just like some random employee, right? And so we're like kind of going back and forth,

back and forth. And we end up reducing it down to like the 500 grand. Then there's the interest. And then there's the 20% penalty. And the reason they wanted to give me this penalty, there was a handful of reasons just because they're a revenue service. They want to make money. Right. And then one of the things they used against me is that I have a degree in accounting and finance. and they're like, you should have known better, you have a degree. I'm like, you don't even know what grades I got. Like, we didn't even talk about tax in school. This has nothing to do with anything.

When you get audited, you can challenge the audit and you can take it to a new board or you can take it to tax court, right? And so at the end of this last meeting, I was like, no, I'm not, I'm not paying this 20% penalty. Like, I'm not doing it. Like, you guys know why I did what I did. You guys see it. You know there was no... There was no evasion involved.

There was no malicious intent. Like you guys understand the framework for what I did. You can see I've given you guys every single information imaginable. I poured out my entire life story to you. I don't believe that I deserve this penalty. I have no prior. I've never been audited before. And so my attorney, my CP and I got up and we walked out.

We walked out. And man, that walk out was awful. I'm like, man, I'm hoes. Like we now got to do this all over again. How much longer is this going to take? because it's a balancing act, right? You're like, do I just pay this, be done with it? Do I pay the interest?

Do I pay the penalties? Life moves on. You know, do I go all the way to tax court? How much am I going to pay my attorney? How much am I going to pay my CPA? Like, there's all these different things going on in your head. And then we're like standing out there having a conversation. And then one of the auditors walks out.

And they're like, if you'll sign right now, today, we will waive the 20% penalty, which was like, you know, I don't know, 100 grand. Wow. So they ended up getting. getting rid of the 20% penalty. I still had to pay the interest. I still had to pay all the back tax, which was once again just a timing thing. And the thing about the back tax is the 500. The reason I wasn't worried about it is because in the back of my mind, I always knew I was going to have to pay that when I sold some of the cars. Like I was the same thing. Yeah, I was new that I had all

these cars that were had a, had a basis that was very low. Like I knew when I was selling these that I, so that wasn't the big deal. It was that it was that 20% penalty that I was able to get rid of. How do you approach your taxes differently, having been through what you've been through? Yeah, I mean, obviously very conservatively. I mean, the big thing about my business is everything is passenger vehicles. And I just, it is what it is. You take, I think it's called straight line depreciation. It's just whatever the deduction is.

Yeah. Whatever. You have to depreciate it over a certain amount of years. So with passenger vehicles, yeah, there's a guideline. Like with luxury vehicles, there's a guideline. and there's an amount the first year you can write off. And it's a stated figure. There's no, it's just easy in that sense.

Like there's no rhyme or reason, no debating. So I just do that, which is a bummer. So what I'm curious about is why it seems like these like IRS audit agents or whatever they are, like why they are so serious? Like, is there an incentive? Why did they want to take this 20% penalty? But it was almost like a negotiation tactic. because apparently when you walked out, you won because they ended up coming back and saying,

oh, we're sorry. So it's like, it's almost like they have the decision making ability. And yet in a situation where they also knew they didn't necessarily have the right answer, they still pursued more money. And then when they realized in the pursuit of more money that it wasn't going to work out and it was going to be all annoying, something would happen. They ended up actually forgiving that. That's the thing that I'm a little bit curious about like, why was almost like their own money was on the line. That's what was the craziest thing about it. Like, I promise you, it felt like a trial.

I was being interrogated by these, like, employees that had no motivation. It's not their company. They don't get, they don't have any incentive. So why did that, but do you have any idea? There's no incentive? There's not. It is illegal to tie a person's salary to the amount of money collected because it would skew the outcome of something if they're personally tied to it.

So my understanding is they're not. Right. I don't know because to me there has to be some sort of incentive or motivation to pursue certain audits. Like I could see the argument you could make to tie like the number of audits or the outcome. But you're not supposed to do that. But I see it as being somewhat reasonable in that line of work. Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. I think that's what it is. I think that to be an IRS auditor, you feel like you're a, uh, you're catching fraud. How much was this that you're a young guy with all these cars and that maybe that kind of skews into it of like, yeah, I mean,

oh yeah, dude, you have 20 cars. I try not to think about that. But obviously that crossed my mind. You know, I mean, I'm a social media influencer. I drive a bunch of bright colored Lamborghinis.

I make fantastic money, right? If you're an IRS auditor, why would you like me? And, and, you know, you're probably not into cars.

You're a female. You're older. Right. Like, I mean, why would they like me? I didn't feel like they liked me. That's for sure. They definitely didn't like me. That's for sure.

I mean, like I said, it was an interrogation. It was crazy. And I was guilty until proven innocent. My thought, the first thing, is that you talked to them. My understanding is that if they ever reach out for anything, immediately you get an attorney. Oh, absolutely. And you never say anything. You never speak.

And it's one of those things where it's like, uh, the attorney does the work for you. They do it for you. You're not supposed to really get involved. If they ask something from you, your attorney gets it from you. And that's what I learned through the process. And that's why anybody watching this, if you ever get audited, get a tax attorney. The crazy thing about it is I do think that there was a bit of trust gained with me being involved.

Like I do think the auditors did believe me, you know? Like they took what I said throughout the course of that year and they did start to gain a bit of trust in what I said. Because initially early on, when they asked for documentation, they asked for a lot more. And then as it progressed, they started like, you know, when they asked a question, like there was one item that I, it was like, I just made a mistake on the taxes, right? Like it was like, and I just was like, yeah, I don't know. Like there was, it was like a $5,000 check or something like that, which I know it sounds like a lot, but when you have, you know, two million dollars or three million dollars in gross revenue, right? Like, it's easy to miss five thousand somehow, right? And so like, I remember that happened. And I remember sitting on my computer and I was just like, oh my gosh, how did I miss this? Like, I'm going to get in so much trouble. And I just emailed her. And I was like, I completely missed it. Like, yes, 100% this should have been included. So I think over the course of the audit, you, I did gain some. That being said, I still. I still. I still. wholeheartedly agree with you. If I ever got audited again, I call my tax attorney immediately, let him deal with it, almost just like you would if you're on trial with a lawyer, right? Same

concept. So that would be my number one recommendation. How do you combat burnout? Because I imagine throughout that entire process, it's hard to flip a switch and just like put on a good mood when you've been through that all day. Your mind's racing. You're not mentally there. I remember I was in New York at a hotel and I got a call for my tax attorney. And this was when I got like one of the big bad news moments. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was like, yeah, you're hosed type of, type of moment. Like it was, it was like, yeah, you owe a million dollars.

It was one of those moments. And I remember I was in a hotel. It was early in the morning. And I was getting ready to get in an Uber to go to the Lamborghini lounge to film the Lamborghini Ravualto that had just been unveiled to the world. And this was a big video. Stefan Winkleman, the CEO of Lamborghini was there. I wasn't filming with him, but he was.

was there. This was like a big opportunity. And I remember sitting in the hotel, getting this phone call and just like, I don't want to say, I don't want to say I cried, but my eyes got watery. You know what I'm saying? And like, Sophia was with me and I was like, she could tell on the phone that I was like, something happened, right? And then I got off and I was just like, I'm screwed. Like, I'm hosed. Like this, I don't, I don't know how I'm going to, what am I going to do? Like, this is, this is really bad. And then all of a sudden it's like I got to get at an Uber and go to the Lamborghini lounge and film the Lamborghini Ravento, you know, like a big video for my channel and I got to turn it on and be positive, even though nobody knows what's going on in the back of my mind this entire time. But I've been doing

YouTube a long time. I've gotten good at blocking out the noise in my life. You know, every single time I'm filming a YouTube video, there's other things going on in my life that I'm thinking about. And I also knew that the best way to get out of this bad situation was to film YouTube videos make money keep my foot on the gas like that was the ultimate motivator right it's like no I got to I got to make this happen I got to keep filming because you know if I got this a looming bill to the IRS that's a million dollars is like well I don't have a million dollars so I better I better start making some money and there's nothing there's no motivation like desperation if you could go back and tell yourself anything would you just tell yourself hey don't be as stressed

out about this like if you get audited again right would Would you just say like it's really not worth stressing out over? Oh, for sure, for sure. But that's because I have the knowledge of being audited, right? I mean, it was such an educational opportunity in that sense. Like, I feel like I gained a degree in tax accounting during this audit. Like, I just learned so much about the business, about the tax laws. And I think it's made me better moving forward as far as tax planning.

So I think it actually helped me a lot. And like I said, I always knew I was going to pay the tax. I just knew it was a timing thing. Obviously, the interest would be the sunk cost that you weren't expecting. The crazy thing about it, I wouldn't do anything different. Because from 2012 to when I got audited in 21, 22 or whatever, that 10 years, because of the way that I was treating these cars and as long as I got away with it, that helped me grow my business so much.

I grew my business so much faster because of the way that I was treating the cars. And some people are probably going to hear that and be like, yeah, that's tax evasion. But like, I got audited, it wasn't tax evasion. But like, because I was able to take that money and reinvest it into my channel You got a higher return reinvesting.

I was able to grow my channel so much faster because I had all these resources because I wasn't paying money to the government, which is why the IRS has a tax code to get business expenses so you can grow your business. What do you wish would change about the tax code? Because even for myself,

I spend, it sounds stupid, probably an hour a day on Claude asking like nuanced tax questions, trying to get to the bottom of like, why is this the way it is? Right. And like, why is margin interest only deductible against like net investment income and not capital gain? Like, what's the reason for this? Because some rich dude paid some politician and got it done. So what would you change about the tax? Oh, I mean, I'd change a gazette.

billion things, right? I mean, there's, there's so many things. It's just like how you can get a jet, right? And there's huge tax advantages to getting a jet because all these rich dudes wanted jets and they won the tax advantages. So they, you know, lobbied for it with politicians. You want the crazy one? Yes. You could write off a sports team. They get mega deductions. And that's why you have a lot of these really wealthy people buying sports teams because you could finance a sports team. And the depreciation you get upfront is massive. It's like buying a big people. And it's like buying a big piece of real estate and doing cost segregation, bringing your cost down, all of a sudden now you get a bigger ride off than what you spent. It's wild. It's wild. But they were the ones that

were lobbying for that. Exactly. It's really interesting how the tax code is structured like that. It is. And I think that's obviously the most annoying part, right? I mean, obviously, in a very, very small way, how I'd love to adjust the tax code is for automotive YouTubers. Because the way I was treating these cars before the audit, I will go to my grave that that's the right way to do it. I will go to my grave that I was doing it the right way because of how my business generates revenue. Like, the business doesn't exist about the cars. This is, these are not passenger vehicles. These are, this is equipment.

Absolutely. I would change it. I'll push back because I agree with you. I would like to see that happen. The pushback is simply what constitutes a prop versus someone just buying one of these cars as a, you know, and it's really a hobby. No, I understand. post on Instagram. They're like, but I've grown my Instagram following.

It's a slippery slope. Like, then everyone... I wonder if you could just assign an amount of time, like a real estate professional, you basically have to prove that you're working a certain amount of hours per year in real estate. And you could probably say the same thing with... Odometer logs. Yeah, the... Either that or just like amount of time spent on the YouTube channel. The thing is that it, when something works, then everyone will find a way to take advantage of it

a nth degree. That's what I think... Simplify. No, and the chippy... That's what I was going to get to later. As far as like an overhaul, oh, the tax code needs a complete overhaul. I mean, in so many ways. I mean, the fact that, you know, I could live two hours west of here in the state of

Nevada and have no state income tax, right? Like, that's annoying. The fact that if my cars were six hours north of here, I'd have another 300 grand because they'd all be registered in Montana. I would have saved seven and a quarter sales tax, right? Like, I hate that, right? Because there's, and the tax code really does allow for wealthier people to use the loopholes.

because, you know, I have the money where I could move cars to Montana if I wanted and save the sales tax. But it's annoying. Like, just the fact that there's so many loopholes, it's so complicated. Every time I file my tax return, I'm like, what am I missing? What could I have done to save me tons of money that I just don't know about? And the fact that you just submit a tax return, you don't even know. You don't even know if you did it right, you know? Like, you don't get any feedback. You don't know if you overpaid. You don't know if you underpaid. You don't know if you misded unless you get audited. That's like the only way. that you really know.

You're going to hate this. My prediction in the future is that we're going to have a digital currency. And everyone, like a Social Security number, is going to have a wallet, a digital wallet. And it's going to know every single dollar that's going to come into your account and then where it goes.

Everything is going to be able to be traced. And so if a dollar comes in and then I send the jack for like, you know, I'm reimbursing him for dinner or something like that, it's going to know. And it's going to come up with A, a transaction log that you're going to have to clarify, and it'll spit out a bill for you.

Maybe it's good because they tell you exactly what you owe. Like, that doesn't sound bad at all. But you will put more faith in them to do a better job than you, which so far doesn't have the best track record. That's the only thing that you could say is that... I trust AI more than I would trust the judgment of an auditor. But do you trust the government's version of... AI. And maybe it's so, yeah, but maybe it's so good that it knows like, hey, Graham, this year

you made this, here's where all the money went. And you could go log by log by log and it just asks you questions for a day. You want to increase your deductions. But you could, yeah, but what it could do is just ask like, hey, on this date, this amount, what was this for? And you could, you could type it in. And it just knows. And then at the end of it, it's like, okay, well, based on this, this is this. Do you agree or disagree? Like, yes or no. And it's just like, you can, you select a button. I have a feeling it's going to get to that. It's something. It has to. It's certainly going to work that direction for sure. For sure. It will. To me, I hate that. I hate the government being involved in my life, you know? Like, the fact that cash isn't going

to exist soon means that every single transaction, right? Yeah. Like, it's, yeah, I mean, and the thing I learned in the audit, though, is you have to, you are guilty until you prove your innocence. So let's say, for example, we go get food, right? Okay, we go get a burger. And you guys, Venmo me $10, and you vinmo me $10, they're going to charge that as revenue and I'm going to pay tax on that. Unless I can prove that, no, I paid for the meal, they Venmoed me back, I got the receipt. They wanted to pass that law recently for the Venmo transactions. Right. I think it was over $600, which, you know, we're reimbursing everybody for everything.

And it's like tracking every meal and everything is a lot. Yeah, it is a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and the government, they want to collect as much as possible. And the thing that makes me upset over your situation is that they come down so hard on you. And meanwhile, oh my gosh, the stuff that Nick Shirley has exposed. Oh, my gosh. And a lot of those people, by the way, have either pled guilty or they've, like, found them guilty of these things that he was accusing them of.

Right. And the amount of money that's out there that just gets wasted. For sure. And it's, and it's, when you look at how much income taxes take compared to every other expense of the government, it's like, I don't want to say it's insignificant, but it's a small chunk compared to like all these other things that when you look at dollar for dollar would probably make a bigger difference. Absolutely. I mean, I think most people agree that the government is very wasteful. I used to have a internship out of high school for the Oregon Department of Transportation. It was so wasteful seeing everything. Like the amount of, of just employees that are unnecessary, nobody's motivated. There's no incentive. So the government is always going to be so wasteful. And the problem is that when you or me, and we have to write a check, a six-figure check at the end of the year, or seven-figure, like, you know that money's not going to

be used wisely. But if you had that money, you could use that to support your local economy. Because the one thing about my business, I support the local economy. All the shops that I take all these cars to, you know, all the tires I buy, all the oil changes, the maintenance, the insurance company. I mean, I'm spending so much money like in the local economy to grow this economy, right? And then I have to write this massive check to the government where there's all this corruption. It's not being spent wisely. That's what's so frustrating. I think people would be more likely to be on board if they saw the money being put to things that they could visually see. They're like, oh, well, we fixed all these potholes. Right. And, you know, we've clearly.

cleaned up, you know, these streets. We removed the graffiti from this. And we were able to, like, do this and this and this. And speaking of waste, it was on the treadmill the other day. And in front of the treadmill is the HOA, like the community pool. And they were fixing a sign that was there. And what was so funny is that the handyman was there. And then there was someone else who was just like sitting there watching the person.

What I put up the sign. And like, he's just taking down a little metal sign and then putting a new one on. And there's just someone there the entire time just like watching. Like, why is this two people doing this? It's a one person job paying double for this. Why? And that's the problem between private enterprise and government. With private enterprise, there's incentive.

There's motivation. With government there's not. And that's the difference. And that's just human nature. And if human nature wasn't that way and the government could be just as efficient as private enterprise, dude, I'd be all for it. I'd be all for it. You know what this reminds me of?

I'll just say allegedly. Allegedly, when I was in high school, we put a Christmas tree on the roof because we allegedly thought it would be very funny. And over the weekend, they found out, the school found out, they have the cameras,

they found out who allegedly did it, and then they got a quote to remove the Christmas tree from the roof. The quote came back that they needed three workers that only do jobs of a minimum of three hours per worker. And their rate was like, $50 per hour.

And so they're going to charge the people who allegedly put the Christmas tree on the roof, like $3,400 for removing a Christmas tree. And so someone, uh, after hours that day at school got a trash can, put it on the ground, and then threw the Christmas tree off the roof and landed it beside the trash can and then picked up all the broken everything. And not a word from the administration. The thing is that. They acted like nothing happened. You need insurance on that. Imagine that tree falls on someone. There's a hospital bill.

It's $50,000. That's why you need three people with insurance who are properly licensed. For three hours. Yes, because they're also going up on the roof. What if someone slips? And that's the difference between private enterprise and government.

If there's private enterprise, the owner of the company, walk up there and just do it. That's the difference, right? Whereas the government, yeah, they have to, right? Maybe there is a reason they have to, but that's the problem is that the government has to.

Yeah, if someone put it on top of our warefew, our house, we would just send you up there or me up there. We would just throw the Christmas. You don't have the insurance from me, Jack. I would do it. You don't have the limits. You don't have high enough limits for me to get up on your roof. It would be okay. The main issue is, yeah, it's like they're not going to go around searching for a bunch of different bids. Right. They're going to get the first bid and they're going to charge, oh, it's just passing along to someone else for $500. Well, because it's not their money, right? It's not their money. They just work for the government and they just sign off on it, right? So it doesn't matter. It doesn't come out of their wallet. And that's

just that's just is what it is and like i get it honestly if i was in their position i wouldn't care either right like it's not my money i wouldn't care is there anything you miss about life before youtube yeah i miss i miss the simplicity of it i miss the weekends i miss the clear head you know when i worked before youtube you know i'd have my monday through friday nine to five let's say and you know i'd go home at the end of the work i wouldn't think about work at all the weekends were completely mine and that just like that freedom of having a clear mind i miss that because now it's just like it's just like that like I can't turn it off. It's on all the time. Even I was just in Mexico City with Sophia, seeing her family. We were down there for four days and, you know, I didn't film. I didn't even

take my camera with me, but I feel like every other second I was thinking about YouTube, like, oh, what I got to do for this car? What I got to do for that? What could I do right now that's going to help me here in the future? You know, if I do it now, if I order this part here, what could I film? What I got to do and I get back? I need to edit this. I need to do that. What future project seam is coming up? Monterey Car Week's coming up. Like, what do I got to do? So I'd say that's the biggest thing I miss is just that like that free weekend where you literally don't think about work at all and you just enjoy it. When do you think you're going to retire? That's so tough because I could retire right now. I could literally, I mean, I would sell some cars

obviously, right? I could retire right now. I feel like I'd be so bored. I don't know what I would do with my time. And that's why like we were talking about the hamster wheel. There's something beautiful about the hamster wheel. When I retire, I don't know if I ever retire. I think YouTube, I will certainly taper back, and I have tapered back. You know, I think two years ago, I was probably filming seven, eight videos a month, and now I'm closer to like five, six, maybe four or five. But I still love it. I'm still like married to the, not married to the game, but like, yeah, I still enjoy it.

When you get that one out of ten. Yeah, yeah. I love the creativity. I still love the cars. How'd your video today do, driving my son to school? Yes, my son to school. I clicked on it because of the title. You see, I feel like that title was within the framework.

of not being clickbait because in the video I took over Steve Hamilton's life and his son Jack, we were joking about how Jack was my son the entire video. So I think that was not clickbait. I think that counts. But no, I mean, that was a ton of fun. I got to drive an Apollo I.E., the Ocean Dragon.

Like, if I quit YouTube, those experiences aren't going to happen anymore. So that being said, I mean, eventually, certainly it'll come to an end. I would say I definitely have another good five years. I would say, almost for certain another good five years. Probably 10 years. But honestly, in 20 years, I might still be doing it.

If people still watch. I'm curious, is marriage on the horizon? Oh, absolutely. Marriage is on horizon. For sure. What are you waiting for? You know, everything in life is timing, right? It's all about finding the right opportunity, the right moment.

I believe firmly that I kind of want a proposal to be not perfect, but not unexpected, but special. It has to be at the right time, you know? So soon. What advice do you have to Jack? Finding a special someone. Enjoy being single in the sense that this is the time where you can work on who you are so that you're a better person for when you meet the right person. Does that make sense?

It does. It sounds a profound in my head. I don't know if that makes sense. What are the best ways to work on yourself? You know, not that I'm the best at this, but, you know, taking care of your health, obviously. You know, your finances, getting that. getting your ducks in a row. This is a time when you can take risks. I always look back at my 20s and I think a big part of the success that I've had is that I was single. I didn't have any kids.

I had financial freedom. I had the chance to take a risk and do something at the time that was kind of scary and kind of sort of dumb, right? I mean, like early on, like I went to live in my car to grow my YouTube channel. If I was married, even if I was dating a girl, I couldn't have done that. If I had kids, absolutely not. You know? So I think that while you're, you're single, this is an opportunity to maybe take a risk that you can't take when you're married. That would be too risky when, you know, you have a significant other that, you know, you rely on and they rely on you. So I think, I think that's, you know, an opportunity while you're single to take advantage of that. You know, to really strengthen who you are as a person. Find what it is that you do believe in, right?

Like, what is your foundation? Build that foundation. Make it strong. Because, you know, I think, I think, uh, it's really important when you, I've never been married, so I should not be offering advice. But I think when you get married, I think it's very important that you know who you are and you know what you care about

and what you want in a significant other. It seems like you have a great relationship. And again, all I kind of see is like limited time hanging out and then on the videos. It seems incredible. Yeah, I mean, like I said, the videos are a very edited,

non-fictional reality. What is it? What is it? Fake. It's not real. YouTube is not real, right? It's edited. It is real, but it's not real, right?

Like, Sophie and I do have a great relationship. But what I'm getting at is like, you know, we're on camera. It's edited. You know, there are moments in relationships that are tough. Like, we have disagreements. We love each other. We have tons of amazing moments. You know, we fight.

We resolve, you know, just like any relationship. But yeah, we have a fantastic relationship. But what you see on cameras, it's, yeah, it's a edited reality. life is not perfect. You don't want life to be perfect either. Honestly, a perfect life sounds awful. And I think that sometimes you gain the most in a relationship when you do struggle, when you do have issues. And I think that it's important to, yeah, to learn how to communicate and compromise, you know, being in a relationship compromise is super important on both sides. And yeah, I mean, we have a fantastic relationship. I love Sophia. She is the biggest blessing in my life. She is unbelievable. She is, you know,

they always say better half. I mean, oh my gosh, that could not be more true. Like when you talk about better half, she is such a better person in me. And what we're talking about, turning a negative into a positive, lemons into lemonade. Sophia is that to a tea. There are so many moments. When we first started dating, that's when I got audited. And they were dark moments. And she stuck by my side. and when I got audited, you know, I get this bill for a million dollars. I'm like, everything I know financially is host. Like, I'm thinking like, this is apocalypse type thing.

Like, I'm, I'm done. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, and, you know, in a sense, looking back, I probably was exaggerating how bad it was. But Sophia was there hearing all this, you know, and, uh, there was always part of me, that was like blown away that she's stuck by my side because i think about if the roles were reversed and like i heard what sophia was saying and how you know the financial ruin that she was about to go through and how this was going to ruin her life and i was very negative during this process like you wouldn't notice it on camera but like behind the scenes like i was it was awful like i was

i was i wasn't a terrible person i didn't do anything but like you know i was in my head i was a mental basket case. I was down and out. Woe is me. You know, the world is out to get me. Like, I'm screwed. I was just, I was a bad energy to be around. And she stuck by my side. And she was a big part of that driving force to keep me going, that positive light. And, you know, lots of times, you know, I still get frustrated. I'm human. She's still there always looking for the positive and everything. And so I think she's a big part of that mindset is that, you know, she's been there to support me, to help in those tougher situations. It's really interesting that,

you know, I was just thinking that a lot of people say marriage is hard. And maybe I've not been married long enough, but we've, Macy and I have been together. I think it's just over seven years. Time flies. Yeah.

But so far it's not been hard. It's not been one of those things around like, oh, man, this is hard. Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's a huge blessing, you know? Like I said, I mean, I'm not married. Sophie and I've been,

dating for, you know, four years almost. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, uh, I think, I think as life, as you go through challenges in life, you know, obviously I, I hope that it continues as is, right? But there will, there will be struggles in life. You know, I think, I think that's what's so important about having a significant other is helping you get through those hard times. You know, my dad passed away. That was a very hard moment in my life. Getting audited, that was a very hard moment in my life. And, you know, there's going to be hard moments in life. Life is not all easy. You know, I do think that we're both very blessed. You know, we're very blessed. We live in the United States of America, right? Like, how lucky are we? One of the richest countries on earth. I had,

I had great parents. I did well in school. And so I think, you know, and then now, like, look what we get to do, right? Like, we're so lucky. So I think, I think that's a huge blessing as well. And, you know, the fact that the fact that marriage has been amazing for you is incredible when are strad kids going happen marriage first okay been strad kids i'll step at a time yeah stride kids we're about ram kids and jack kids you know but yeah i would love to be a father absolutely i would love to be a father um you know i have three older brothers i love kids i love i love i love siblings i love i love the relationship that i have with my mother relationship i had with my father those are all things that are very important to me certainly during my 20s i was very very very very very

very like focused on YouTube business, business, business. And you know that I've gone to my 30s. That's part of the reason my foot's not on the gas as much. That's part of the reason I'm not as worried about financial maximization, if you will. So definitely, definitely Strad Babies coming soon. That's always been one of the big things with YouTube that I don't know is whether I'd want to put kids on YouTube. It seems like a tough, it just seems tough dealing with that, you know?

I don't know if I want their, I don't want to. I think it depends on the content. It really depends on the kid, the content, the family. For sure. I think it can be done. Absolutely. I think PewDie Pye was like one of the best ways to do it. It just seems so wholesome.

I love watching some of these videos. It's just calming. Yeah. And it's not like the focus is like the kid versus like, all right, we're going to do a slime challenge today. For sure. I think when the kid is the focus, when the kid is the title, the kid is the thumbnail, when the kid has to film a video to pay the mortgage like some of these family channels,

obviously that's a. very slippery slope. I think for me, a lot of it will come down to, does the kid think it's fun? Is it like quality time with dad? The problem is probably before the age of five, they're going to find anything fun. For sure. No, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. But then as it get older, you know, I think, I think as they get older, that's where it gets tougher is when you have a six, seven, eight year old, and let's say they go to school. And let's say I'm still relevant then. And their classmates know the channel, they know the kid, and the kid's like famous all of a sudden. Because I think about myself. I mean, I started YouTube. I was 23, 24. I had no success until

I was like 26, 27, right? So I had built that foundation of who I was and who I wanted to be before any kind of fame. And the fame that we have, I mean, I always refer to it as fake fame. Like it's a very, when I think about real fame, this is so, so incredibly small and it's very niche. But I do think that it is hard to handle. but for me I've grown into it right I started with no subscribers 5,000 100,000 you know you you work your way into it but with a kid I would worry about a kid being really young going to school and immediately being like popular and then also their classmates knowing that you know their dad has maybe a bunch of Lamborghinis that could be a tough balancing act slip and falls you got to worry about that that's also true come over you know I hurt my ankle yeah well the way I'd designed this house, the garage is kind of a bit separate, so there will be locks certainly between the garage and the house

when kids are that age. Because it's easy for my foot to get stuck in this elevator, you know? Yes, it is, it is. We do not want four-year-old Stradbaby getting his foot stuck in a monitor. Or mine. Or yours. Like I said, like I wouldn't be able to work. No, no. No. And I, yeah. Loss of income.

Loss of income. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to flip this then, and you said you would love just to talk to us. Yes. Let's do it. Now you're in the driver's seat. I need answer from both of you. Who is the most financially responsible automotive YouTuber? Doug DeMereau.

Probably. I mean, financially responsible, he makes a lot of money. Responsible or successful? Big difference. Big difference. Big difference. But big difference. You agree. There's a big difference. He like buys ETFs and stuff, right? Yeah, it's all index funds. Yeah. Right. I don't know if he has a mortgage on his house or not. But it seems like he's properly diversified.

Right. He has a high allocation to very. specific cars, but I think in combination with the rest of his portfolio, it's just diversified. And he runs a great team. I have to say, I remember the first time we filmed with Doug DeMiro, he was, I don't want to say stressed, I could tell he had a lot going on. And he was running everything himself. And he's like chucking in a podcast in the middle of like all these other things. And he's like, oh yeah, tomorrow I'm going off and doing this. I have to do this. He'd a lot going on. Then when we filmed

after he sold cars and bids, he's a different person. He came in and was calmer. Joking around. You could just tell his energy was infectious. It was like, oh my gosh, I want whatever he's having. He was just calm and fun to be

around and just cracking jokes and having fun with his team. And AI is going to transform your business. Look, we've all heard this. But if you've actually rolled it out in your company, you know how this usually goes. You make the investment, everyone gets onboarded, and a few months later, no one's using it, including you. Well, thankfully, today's sponsor, Superhuman Go, is actually built the stick.

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On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Making a lot of money doing it. You got to name somebody else, though. You have to, just because I think it's a different thing because I don't know how everyone's investing.

Like, that's one thing. I know who's the least. Like, I would probably say, you know, Hoovie or Tfarish. Like, really? Yeah, like, I... Hoovie, to me, is so smart. But his whole stance is that he's the dumbest automotive YouTube. He is smart.

He's not dumb. He's so smart. I don't think he's dumb. No, yeah, yeah. Like, being financially responsible and being smart, are two separate things. Right. And so like when I know that like he can't physically help himself to buy another car,

when he like like without even knowing where the money is coming from. That's what makes his channel. Okay. But here's the thing. I'm not saying it's a bad. I'm just saying you asked the most financially responsible and I'm trying to answer. Here's the thing about all the automotive YouTubers. We all tried doing what Doug did first, right?

We all tried doing car reviews. And then we slowly evolved into what we do now, right? For Doug, it worked. it worked. The car reviews took off and he ended up, I'm not going to say by luck because obviously we know Doug is not luck. Doug, I love Doug. But Doug ended up doing the thing that ended up being the most, the highest ROI field of automotive YouTube. The dude doesn't have to buy any cars. He doesn't have to spend any money. His operational expenses, his overhead is literally nothing by design of how he figured out how to get. reviews on YouTube. Whereas how I figured it out, how Hoovey figured it out, how Tavares figured it out, ended up being way more expensive. But that's their thing. So like, Hovey has to buy these ridiculous cars because that's his thing. It's not that he's financially irresponsible. It's because that's his thing. Tavarish buys rebuilt cars because that's his thing that works on YouTube.

If Tavarge started filming car reviews, it wouldn't work. So like, I love Doug, but Doug ended up getting the holy grail of automotive YouTube. Just like if I was a video game, YouTuber, bro, you just sit in an office, play video games, there's no overhead. But I, I buy expensive cars and modify them. Like, by design of how I get views, I have to spend a lot of money. My other two answers, I think Schmey. Of course, absolutely. And then I would say Steve Hamilton. Okay, Steve doesn't count, though. Okay, fair. Shmi. I mean, obviously, Steve is the most successful of everybody combined plus, right? But not with YouTube, right? Like, YouTube's like, because it can. Yes. But Shmi, I agree. Shmi is, I feel like Shmi is almost like a Dark Horse

candidate because I feel like there's so much unknown about Schmee. But man when I spend time with Schmee that guy is he's got so many things outside of YouTube but I don't even know. And he posts daily. He posts so much. And like his car collection is like the cars he buys like he's got so much money. He's the hard work. He's so

smart. Like I loved him. He's awesome. All right now who's the least? I feel like it has to either be Freddie or Hoovey. I was hoping my I was hoping my thought my thesis was going to change you. So I don't understand like what's your argument though? Because I'm not saying who has or doesn't have the most like amount of money.

What I'm saying is like who is the most financially responsible. Yes. I agree that like that's sort of the content that he makes. And so he needs to be doing that. He has to do that. Yes. He makes a ton of money doing it. Yeah.

That being said. Right. I don't think he has any stocks. I don't think he has any say like I don't know how much money he saves. Yeah. If you look at it from that and if you, on top of that like he went to Barrett Jackson to go, you know, speak at this event and they're paying him money. he ends up leaving, spending more money than they paid him.

And I think a lot of the purchases he does, he doesn't film. And so that's the kicker. If he filmed it and it was all a part of like this chaotic persona that he monetized in a way of like, okay, putting it into more assets, building a net worth. I don't know if his net worth is necessarily growing over time. But it's all narrative. That's what I'm saying. I can say whatever I want.

It's all the narratives. That's what I'm getting at. It's the narrative. Like Hoovey's narrative is that he's this kind of like, crazy lunatic dude, kind of like a Steve will do it in the car world. I think it's accurate though. I think it is too. No, but like, I'm not saying it's not accurate, but I also think...

We're not saying it's not ineffective. Right. I think it is very effective. Right. All I'm saying is like, Hoovey turned a video camera into a net worth of probably, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight million dollars. What? You think that's accurate?

I think it's... Hmm. That seems a little aggressive. I think it's a little... I think it's less. Yeah. Tyler. No, dude.

Yeah. Yeah, he is. He is for sure. For sure. Look, we were totally speculating here. Yeah. I'm just from like the limited conversations that we've had with Tyler. We went out to dinner. We've like, read a couple podcast episodes with him. And this is not to slight his intelligence nor his financial literacy just from the way that he presents himself and from the information that I have. It does appear as though he like I feel like financial literacy is grounded in discipline. And I think that he may sometimes, and this is not only me.

saying this, he would 100% agree. Sometimes he may lack financial discipline. And maybe that's his schick that he then monetizes. For sure. For sure. But that doesn't necessarily make it like only a good thing. No, no, no, I agree. I agree. I, I, I, I, 100% agree. I mean, I've, who do you think then is the least financial discipline? Is the least? That's, I guess that's the whole point of this is like, yes, there is a least, but I, that's why I go back. I'm like, everybody. You can't ask us a question that you know. No, no, no, I know. I'm going to get good. I'm going to get to you. Every single one of the automotive guys between 500,000 to like 10 million

that's been around for a long time has basically turned nothing into millions of dollars. That's kind of what I'm getting at. Yes. Doug ended up starting cars and bids and selling it for a lot. So he is kind of like the golden child. But kind of what I'm getting at is like everybody has had to make fantastic financial decisions to get to where they're at. And that the narrative of having an automotive entertainment channel is such that we all take a different route in how we're going to communicate who we are online, right? Like, it's, it's all about the narrative. And, and that's kind of why I look at all these guys. I'm like, every single one of us is like, nobody's stupid. And I know you didn't say that. I know you didn't say that, obviously. But I'm just like, and realistically,

they've made a lot of money. No, no, that's what I'm saying. So everyone is financially in a pretty dang good spot. Right, right. But we're talking. about something that's different from like that. No, no, no, no, no, for sure. I guess I'm just getting at it's like, it's all how you present yourself and everybody takes a different form of that. And I feel like, you know, part of this, what I'm getting at is there are so many people that knock me.

And that's kind of why I'm leading this conversation to this direction because I'm like, that's because of the narrative that I present to myself online. I don't present my life as being perfect. I explain the mistakes. that I make just like Hoovie and Tavares do. And I think a lot of the other guys online don't do that, right? They don't talk about the cars they've lost a ton of money on. They don't talk about the negative things they've done.

It's all just like, oh, I did this, I did this. Like, this is amazing. I made this much money on this, this, this, this, and this. Whereas Tavarish, Hovey, and I are kind of being more an open book. We're like, yeah, this was a mistake, this was a mistake, this was a mistake, because we're actually being more honest in a sense with the audience. And that the narrative is so important. and that it's so easy to skew the narrative in your direction in the way that you want.

So what's your answer? Okay, I got one. Steve Hamilton. From an automotive YouTube standpoint, not from a business standpoint, not from a business standpoint. That counts. That counts. No, it doesn't. You're adding a caveat that you would not permit us to add.

I would. Oh, okay. I'm just saying like you got to answer. The thing is you're such a positive person. And this is not to, like, I love Hoovie. He's awesome. No, of course. Tyler's the man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We all agree with that. That being said, he agrees. I guess what I'm, I guess the main thing I'm getting at, it's not as wide of a margin as it's presented online. The difference between Doug Demero and Tyler Hoover is very small. I would figure it with that. It's very small. I would not agree.

I, no, but the reason it's, it's, no, you're thinking of dollar figures. That's the thing. You're thinking of dollar figures. You're not thinking about anything else. It's just because there's a net worth. If I sold strad pizza for $100 million, all of a sudden, you would say that I'm smarter than Doug. That's what he was saying.

That's not what I was saying. No, no, but that's what I'm getting it. That's what he said Steve Hamilton. I know about Steve Hamilton. Here's the thing, though. Here's the thing with Doug. He only bought some of those really crazy cars because of that. That's because his channel doesn't need to buy cars because of his filming style.

And that's why I'm saying Doug. Bro, if I could film videos like Doug and be successful like Doug, I would have done it. I don't know if you would. If I didn't need. No, no, no, no, no. That's why I stipulated like that. No, that's what I'm saying. If I didn't do YouTube, do you think with my network that I'd have 19 cars?

There's no way. You didn't do YouTube? No, if I didn't do YouTube in the style that I do YouTube, I wouldn't have all these cars. That's what I'm getting at is because of the video style that I film, I have to do this. Doug doesn't have to do this. because that's not how Doug makes his money. This is how I make my money. Hoovey makes his money by buying ridiculous cars.

Steve will do it. Makes his money by being completely crazy. With automotive YouTube, we all, when we first started, we were all trying to figure it out. And then when you got something to stick, you ran with it,

right? And you went down that path, and that's what you do. When you go back to my early videos, I tried filming reviews like Doug Demiro. It didn't work. So then I started doing more stuff like this. I think a strong pillar of being financially literate would be diversification.

And so if Hoovey makes all of his money from buying his like Hooptymobiles, then that is non-diversified portfolio. Right. He probably doesn't have any ETFs. He probably doesn't have any money stored elsewhere that like can grow independent of his realistically for him. YouTube is not a business. It's a job. It's a lifestyle for us. Like I don't know if we're necessarily building an asset.

Like, I think that what we do is we work and then it's like it's just a job. For sure. For a lot of people YouTube is a job. Sometimes people like build a business outside of it and then it's like marketing towards that thing. For most it's a job. And so would that then make him very financially literate to then have all of his eggs in one basket?

Yes and no. I think I think diversification sometimes is overrated. Two, diversification is not everything. Like I said, I'm good at this. I'm not good at eating. ETS. I'm not good at stocks. So if I, so if I had money in the stock market, would you guys think I was more financial literate? Probably, yeah. Even if I had a, even if I had a smaller net worth and it didn't allow me to grow my YouTube channel. Because five, 10 years ago, instead of buying these cars, I could have done that, right? I don't think that, like, it's a one to one.

Like, I think realistically, there's probably a couple of things that you could do. Right. To, like, move a couple cars around. Like, I don't know if you need this many cars. If there's certain cars that you haven't, like, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Does Hovie need four. cars, he probably could do the exact same thing. But that's why you watch Hoovie is because he has 40 cars. No, no. I watch him. I watch because he buys a hoopty and then it figure out everything wrong with it. Exactly. But he's selling.

Like if he sold half of his collection, I would not stop watching him. Right. Same with you. I feel like 80% of your viewerships comes from like the 20% of cars. And I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, beyond, you know, the first few months of a car, I'm thinking do you need the car? Does this serve you one to one versus these other things? And I could argue you would be best off with like seven cars, like seven top notch cars, or you get a car and you lease it for six months. And that way, you get 100% right off on the car. You put no money down. You're

just paying a high payment. That's 100% right off. You get to use the car, this and that and this. You trade it in. You get something else. I will say that you did the right thing. Like, you have have way more money now doing exactly what you did than if you listen to what we would suggest. No, and I know you, yeah. I mean, I turned a $600 video camera into $10 million. But it's also, it's also a little bit like, you know, counter to logic, counter to what big data would suggest. Like the law enforcement would not suggest that's applicable for most people.

Of course. I agree. I agree. Like financial discipline or literacy is knowing that like you're probably a statistic at the end of the day. So you should follow kind of like the same. For sure. Here's a way to put it is that what got you here won't get you there.

And I think you did really good from the zero to 10. For sure. Really good. But I think to get from 10 to 20, like that next level, is probably going to be some other investing. And it's true. Concentration builds wealth. Diversification protects it. Oh, no, no, I agree.

I totally agree. A couple things. I think, yeah, like some of the cars, maybe it's too much. but having cars for six months is not how you build a YouTube channel. People would lose interest really quick. Like, it's important to have cars like this that people have been watching for years and years and years and years. My last video was like doing the full tour.

That videos, those do really well. One of my, my biggest video ever was the full tour of my car collection has 27 million views. My TikTok doing the full car collection, you know, has a million views. When I built the Batcave, I filmed like three TikToks. I did 12 million views, YouTube video. Like, there's something about the, the wow factor nowadays where more does drive more eyes. It's so hard to calculate the ROI.

It is. What's this garage worth and what's the extra ROI of having that car there versus like putting in a market that makes 10%. We do think, though, for the record, that you are very good with money. And these are fun conversations. I'm highly bullish on the amount of money that you'll have in the future. Oh, yeah. I just think it's just going to keep going up.

It's going to expand it a fast rate in my income. It's going to expand it a fast rate. I'm not even worried. I don't even care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't even need any more. Like, I actually don't, I don't want to go from 10 to 20 and dedicate my life to do that. I don't actually care.

It's just fun conversation. You know, I think, I think that, yeah, I mean, the volume of cars is crazy. Social media, unfortunately, like, that's kind of, that's what I've built my channel on too, though, is like, you know, these, you know, crazy cars, a big group of them. You know, my videos will sometimes feature five, six, seven cars when I do collabs. Like, there's, there is value in the wow factor doing this podcast right now, like having the cars in the background. And I mean, every single one of these cars, it's amazing how much they continue to help me year after year after year after year. Yeah, I mean, diversification is interesting. I also, I maybe I have PTSD.

I just want to do what I'm good at, though, and what I know. And that's, that's Stred Pisa. Strat Pisa is my diversification. Doesn't Hoovey have a couple other things? He has his real estate and he has his house. Yeah. It sinks a lot of money in that house. Yeah.

It's a gorgeous house. Hoovey does well. It's, who he does very well. And I think, like, he's the most financially misunderstood. That's what I'm getting at. Right? Very much so. That being said, he's still the worst.

You know what I mean? Like, it's just... Yeah, the worst of the best. Like, people think that he's way, way dumber and way worse off than he is. He's actually doing incredibly well. He's probably making a lot of money. Probably has a good amount of money. Right.

That being said, still amongst all of the finance, like the car YouTubers, probably the worst. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you so much for watching. I would have loved to have filmed another hour or so. But our flight was like four plus hours delayed. And so we got here way too late.

But don't worry, guys. They gave us $12. Each. So Graham and I each got a $12 voucher from Delta. Thank you very much. From Delta that we have to use and half of it's unused. We have to get to the airport and we have to buy something. It expires at 1159 Eastern time.

The same day. Yeah. Insane. Eastern time. So like. Eastern time. Yeah. And so they even cut it short a little bit.

Eastern time. No, because we already lost it then. Oh, did we? Yeah. Well, that means you have until 959 PM. Because we're a mountain time. We got to spend some money then. So someone was saying, or as Chad GPT told us, that what we could do because it has like a code and it's coded for food that you could put that on like a Starbucks card or something like that or like a prepaid card and it'll take. So we could try that.

That's not a bad idea. I would do that. Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully you found this educational, entertaining all of the above. Thank you so much for having us here. Thank you, man. Thank you guys. We could film another one when you're in Vegas.

Absolutely. Just do a chat. Let's do it. 100%. I'm down. Let's go. Till next time. See you guys.

Thank you guys. How about it? $16,000, $250,000. I think this is a giant bubble that's about to burst. The American auto market has gone high end, making more profits by selling fewer, pricier cars. And what's caused these values to go up so much? Potential fake bids and bring a trailer and other stuff. Stop.

What's a car that you can't believe how expensive it's gotten? 75% of all of the hypercars right now. With a lot of Ferrari, they were around 2 million, I think, to start. And those are $7 or $8 million now. The Italians lie about production numbers. Really? Ferrari was one, Pagani was one, and there are probably others. People would come in here and then I'd see them, like, sitting in my Lamborghini talking about like,

here's how I invest money in Forex. No way. I invested in a... Wow. It failed after like one year. So I'm still paying $11,000 a month for that lease. How much have you explored selling the company recently? One of the things I have, I think, is could be the next billion-dollar idea.

Are you serious? We're going to get really close in the next one to two years.