“They’re LIARS!” Steve Hamilton Exposes Fake Influencers, Ferrari Fraud, & Getting Sued
2h 1m 13s
Steve Hamilton, a car enthusiast and entrepreneur, reflects on the current state of the automotive market, particularly hypercars, which he believes are overvalued due to speculative bidding, inflated production numbers, and a bubble effect. He notes that cars like the LaFerrari have seen value surge from $2 million to $7–8 million despite claims of limited production, and suspects Italian manufacturers like Ferrari and Pagani are misleading buyers with exaggerated output figures. His personal collection, now valued at $30–40 million, includes rare and high-performance vehicles such as Porsches, Bugattis, and a Koenigsegg, though he has faced significant financial losses with the Regera due to chronic mechanical issues. While he initially bought cars for emotional and experiential value, he now prioritizes new vehicles at MSRP and plans to build a car community in Florida, offering storage, green spaces, and shared experiences. He remains cautious about the market's sustainability, warning of a looming correction as overpayment and poor buyer behavior signal instability. Despite this, Hamilton maintains a "yes" mentality—actively lending cars to others for joy and experience—while emphasizing that true value lies in ownership for enjoyment rather than financial gain. He also highlights undervalued classics like the Bugatti Veyron and recommends them as strong long-term investments, especially for non-drivers. Ultimately, his approach blends passion, risk awareness, and a focus on community, positioning him as a unique figure in both automotive culture and entrepreneurial innovation.
How about it? 16 million, $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 on Bring a Trailer and other stuff.
What's a car that you can't believe how expensive it's gotten?
75% of all of the hypercars right now,
but the LaFerrari, 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.
This is Steve Hamilton and welcome back to the Iced Coffee Hour podcast, y'all.
I am excited to be here.
Steve, I've heard you've been up for three days straight.
What's up with that?
Let's just say a lot of coffee and a lot of. High on life, huh?
Yeah, I mean life, yes.
Okay, we need to know what was going on in that video.
There were so many comments saying you look like you've been doing some. Yeah.
Or drugs or something.
People were genuinely concerned.
They were like, whatever you're going through, I hope you're okay.
And it's one of those where you're looking at the comments and you're like,
this is helping feed the view machine.
So you just don't hide it.
And we really don't hide comments either.
But yeah, you're right.
I looked at myself in that video and I'm like, first of all, I've lost some weight.
I've been really focused on portion control and eating better and getting my body fit.
So it doesn't help that my face is 10 pounds thinner.
Second of all, I was using a teleprompter.
So that was like the really bad thing.
And the teleprompter was set way too fast.
Like I talk fast and the teleprompter was going like 40 words a minute.
So I'm like, if I blinked once.
You would miss the seconds.
I lost the word.
I was out of track.
I had to start over again.
So, and then whatever else, I don't know.
Maybe I just, maybe I was really energetic that day or something.
But of course, like I'm like literally the most Charlie Church, like pure guy.
Like I don't even drink alcohol.
I don't do drugs, but like, but a drug addict would probably say the same thing.
Like, no, I don't do.
So there's, there's no way to defend that.
Other than to just acknowledge that.
Yeah, I did look up, but absolutely not the case.
It was hilarious, dude.
We were talking with the Strive Man about it and like, I could not stop laughing.
Like, oh my God, it looked, I mean, it looked very real, but you look healthy.
Like seeing you in person.
Yeah.
In person, you're much calmer.
Yeah.
And you blink in person.
But it definitely was a high energy video.
And the problem is we don't usually use a teleprompter.
Like it's, it's rare unless I'm doing an ad because I don't know if you guys use teleprompters for ads,
but it's tough to remember a minute long script.
Yeah.
And.
Uh, but that was a, a very like legalese video where we're suing the association who happens to be 20 feet down from me.
And I had to like, I had to be very particular about the way that I worded things.
So I've definitely was using a teleprompter.
It's like the combination of being like a very like eccentric, like wealthy person.
Sure.
I don't know.
It was, it just got me.
Yeah.
We have to know though.
Yeah.
Are you on GLP ones?
Yes, I am.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So let me, let me tell you.
Okay.
It's funny.
Cause I was like, I was like, is this going to get brought up and you guys bring it up four minutes.
That was not quite intended.
So, so I did really well with like managing my diet.
I was on this yo-yo diet for the course of my entire life.
Basically I would get up to 225 pounds because I loved eating.
Like that was the goal.
I'm like, all right, I'm light again.
I'm going to get up to 225.
I'm going to eat whatever I want.
And then when I got up to 225, I'm going to diet again and get down to one 90.
And I did that for 15 years.
I could diet.
I have no problem with it.
I would be super excited when I got to one 90 because that meant I got to eat again.
Problem was it would take me a one month to diet.
And then I could feed.
I could feast for six months and then it started being three months to diet.
Then I could feast for three months and it kind of inverted where it was taking me six
months to diet.
And then I'd get a month of feasting.
So I'm like, how can I, I mean, I have the discipline to do this.
So I actually spoke with my doctor and I'm like, this is what it is.
Like, I love to eat.
And like, I eat a lot when I eat.
And he's like, that's actually what GLP ones are for.
He's like, they're not necessarily a diet drug.
They just control the binge eating portion of it.
Like they cut that binge out.
And he's like, he's like, you're actually a good candidate.
And I'm like, I thought he was going to talk me out of it.
And I would just had to keep doing this yo-yo diet.
So like what the GLP one allows me to do is I go eat whatever the hell I want.
I just eat less.
I eat 40% of what I would eat and I eat whatever I want.
You know, I had like four cookies last night at dinner, but, but like that filled me like
maybe before it would have been 10.
See, that sounds something that I need.
It sounds exactly.
I feel like everyone needs that though.
I, I have the exact same thing where like, like if I really try, like I can diet.
The problem is like on a random occasion.
Yeah.
Binge like crazy.
Like if there are cookies in front of me, chips are like my, my biggest nightmare because
I'll just keep going, going, going, going.
And it was, it was becoming like, I was, I was basically dieting on when I was home.
So I probably have like a five or six to one home to vacation ratio.
So I would come home and I would just have to diet and eat and then I would go on vacation
and eat whatever I want and it would make home dreaded.
It would make it horrible.
I was just ketoing nonstop here and it was just horrible.
And like, it's almost like it wasn't for me to lose weight.
It was just so that I could eat whatever I want.
Yeah.
And maintain where I was at.
Wow.
So yeah, I started taking it when I was at like 190.
I, when you get used to it, it's a little tough at first.
Like there's some heartburn.
There is some queasiness that where you just innately will eat less.
So I dropped like another 10 pounds and that's why I look a little bit lighter than I did.
But I've just kind of stayed there for a year.
I've stayed at like 180 pounds.
Wow.
And so what, what is it?
Zep bound is the only one that's actually a FDA approved at the time.
And I think they approved like the pill now.
So that's the only one that's, that one's been around for about 10 years.
Who knows?
Like, hopefully I don't die.
I don't have crazy cancer in 10 years because of this, but like 20% of the population is
on a GLP one.
So 20% of the population, that's what they said.
If you Google it, like it's, it's because there's, I don't know, because I also heard
20% of women are on only fans that are college aged.
And it seems like 20% is just across 20% of adults are doing something.
When I talk to like the small populace of people that, that are like, it's shocking
how many people just don't admit to doing it.
And there's so many like basement pharmacies that provide it really cheap.
Where there's probably a large percentage of the people of that 20% that are just getting
it online and don't have a prescription.
So for those unfamiliar with who you are, how do you describe what you do?
Cause we're in a warehouse right now.
It's probably $30 million for the cars.
Yeah.
So I started, started something out of my mom's apartment, basically like it's all about
identifying opportunities or, or differentiating somehow.
Right.
So in 2003, when I was 19, I basically realized that there was a, a bridge that needed to
be created between wheel manufacturers and the internet.
So drop shipping was in its infancy and didn't really exist amongst a lot of different like
categories of product.
So I filled that gap in at the time and I know drop shipping is stupid prevalent now
and everyone tries to do it, but back then it wasn't.
So I would go in and talk wheel manufacturers into selling to me this 19 year old kid.
And then I would go list them on the internet and then drop ship them.
And eventually really quickly, I started stocking them because I can get better deals from there.
It was like, I'm going to add tires into the mix.
So we were the first people to ever mountain balance tires on eBay.
Double wheel and tire packages.
And then I realized I needed to get off of eBay and create my own brand.
So we went and created a Mr. Wheel Deal.
That was our first like e-commerce platform.
From then it was just creating other brands that like segment other portions of the market.
With partners, we launched Custom Offsets, which is like truck heavy, Fitment Industries,
which is JDM Euro.
Then we started selling suspension, performance, and then we started acquiring other companies
like MA Performance in 2020, Vivid Racing in 2025.
So fast forward to today, it's about a half a billion in sales each year.
We've got around 500 employees and we pretty much sell everything, but we're still very
much a wheel and tire company.
Wheels are dominantly what we do.
And obviously you have a very strong passion for cars.
Last time we spoke, you said that your cars were costing you about $135,000 per month.
I'm curious, how has that changed?
It depends on the month.
I would say that 135 included like modifications that we would make and those are pretty heavy.
I think it's probably a little bit better than that.
We've gotten rid of some of the lemons of the collection and I hired a mechanic actually
here that works about 20 hours a week.
He is an amazing human actually, and he just fixes stuff rapidly and really amazingly.
So he's cheaper, he gets my stuff done faster.
I think I'm probably at, I don't know, 20 to 50K a month at this point.
That's not bad.
No, it's very, and a lot of them are newer cars now, so they're under warranty.
What's the most difficult car to maintain?
Let's look around.
That is a great question.
I mean, it's like the lump sum of everything is the classics.
Anytime we take, we like to roll deep.
You guys saw that last night, right?
Like six classics out and two to three of them will be broken.
So it's like, and especially the Mopar stuff, like my Daytona and the Superbird are just
notorious for oil leaks and breaking and being problems.
Of the super and hypercars, like your Porsches, your Bugattis are ironclad.
I would say that, God, we have a good assortment of vehicles.
Like my Ramac has been a little bit problematic.
Like it's still really good compared to what I had, but that one's probably, of what I
have left, that one's probably a little bit more serviced than other cars, but it's still
pretty reliable.
Yeah.
It's got a lot of value.
I heard you recently say it's valued at about $30 million.
How much has that gone up in the last year?
It'd be hard to quantify, but like, it's very possible that it's 35 to $40 million.
Like my Yesko, I paid $3.5 million for those are going for six.
Even my Superbird that was a $600,000 car a year ago.
Those I've seen those roll for 900 to a million plus.
If there was a time to sell, it's probably now, but like these, I have such a great spread
of cars right now that it's just, I got to roll with it.
Like I don't buy them for investments.
I buy these cars for half a million.
for happiness investments, not for financial investments, and that drives
tommy who manages my collection crazy overall have you net made money or lost money buying cars
probably really close to break even if i had to guess and what's caused these values to go up so
much who knows uh they say that there are like some dealer to dealer things happening that
seem suspicious like potential fake bids and bring a trailer and other stuff uh who i know
that auto manufacturers like help at auction if they see that the value of their car is going too
low they will suddenly throw in like a warranty last minute and then if that doesn't work
they will have one of their minions go and bid like this is this is i don't want to even say
unsubstantiated because like i i feel like i've verified a lot of this before and i've seen it
i've seen it all happen in the real world but like i'm talking to this guy that has a hundred
plus million dollar collection and he's like i'm reassessing my collection like i'm seeing how high
these cars are going for and that makes me want to start selling and profiting and i'm like if
he's thinking that if i'm if i'm struggling to be like i i want to i don't even know if i want
to bring another hyper car into the collection like that that feels like the the very
epitome and the very definition of a bubble like when does it pop when do when does everyone start
selling and and uh overload the market with inventory and then and then is there is it
ripe for buyers that are willing like me where they start seeing the price go down to i don't
know it it feels very suspicious what's happening right now what some people are saying is that the
people buying these cars spending a million dollars are not the type to need to sell it
and so if they overpay they might just keep it and it's forever off the market and the people
sell it and they're not the type to need to sell it and so if they overpay they might just keep it
selling are really the ones who bought it cheap years ago not the people buying today i hear that
but there's there's still a very limited pool of buyers like there's there's a lot of these hyper
and super cars nothing like you know there's probably more ford mustangs in one model year
than there are all hyper cars combined but like there's still not that big of a buyer pool with
this like i just don't i don't believe that because i've seen it through covid like we've
seen available buyers and and i can't it just doesn't make sense like
it something something's off i don't know how else to explain it but i feel like if you're watching
this now watch it back in a year and let's see where the market's at and something strong tells
me that there's going to be a big correction so what's your plan moving forward are you going to
be buying or selling any of your cars you said you don't want to sell yeah but what is what's your
plan so the great thing is like everything in our channel like there's been a lot of luck like
oftentimes i realize that i'm playing chess without even knowing i'm playing chess like i i just do
things and then i realize well i'm like really glad that i did that six months or a year ago
we've started shifting to buying new cars and ordering a lot more new cars over the last three
years and so the benefit of that is i'm getting these cars at sticker msrp and the moment that
i get them they're worth two to three million dollars worth but more but we've already
established this relationship with manufacturers so they're continuing to allow us to buy them in
msrp and by and large i keep the cars for at least two years so like the hennessey you buy
it sticker and that specific model i know would go over what i paid for it mclaren i'm not going to
corporate was kind enough to give me the 788 hs that's coming out and i heard that those are
selling for double sticker the problem is again they're all happiness investments so like i buy
them because they look cool they perform cool and so i don't get to utilize that oftentimes
do you think that part of that abundance and like yes mentality that you've had
as an approach to life has actually made you more money or like how does that express itself
in like real world terms because my experience of you and knowing your story also i mean last night
you know graham's group the index they came out here and you were like oh yeah everyone hop in a
car we're going to take a dozen of these 15 of these all to go to a place and like just hop in
the car it doesn't matter we're driving like 20 million dollars probably worth of cars and you
don't care you're just i was in a model three yeah i drove you say yes to everything like the
youtube channel was like yeah let's do it like you want to collab yes let's do it it's just like a yes
to everything yeah even for us you gave jack and i the bugatti chiron keys all right jack has the
bugatti the best
the best by so much i i didn't i didn't want to say it was the best just because it's worth
five times more more than five times more than anything else that we've driven
but it truly is the best by miles and you said here you go you could just take it out
yeah be safe it's it's the net positive like for everything like i just i don't want to say for you
guys maybe not change because your group are guys that are a little bit more wealthy like they could
probably afford a lot of money and they're not going to be able to afford a lot of money and
super hyper car maybe not a hyper car maybe some of them i don't know i don't know them all enough
but like probably all of them but i but i just gave perfect i just gave all of them experience
that they may not be able to have they they maybe they're not the greatest example first times ever
driving super oh there we go there we go let's so so we got to have what 12 15 people go experience
a brand new super hyper car for the first time and the risk for me was maybe something gets
broken which will happen in the course of everyday driving really the big risk is an accident or
spinning out or but like the probability of that happening i think is is really low and even though
one of your friends was really speeding you got a ticket but but that's allegedly yeah allegedly
speeding so it's it's just like it impacted these people so positively and my risk i think was
relatively low for what everyone else got in return so that's that's kind of the mentality
there i guess have you ever had an accident like that yes we had someone pulled right out of my
neighborhood when we were going to do a celebratory dinner for hitting a million subs on the channel and
just pulled right into traffic and some lady t-boned um him and wrecked my mclaren senna
insurance covered it but they dropped me later so that was a whole battle trying to find out how to
find new insurance and getting that resolved a bunch of little things have happened um rarely
it's negligence usually it's just like chance and so as long as it's not negligent it's totally
fine and i'll keep lending the cars out and letting people enjoy them so do you think what
makes you different and uniquely successful is the yes mentality and just overall action it seems like
there's very little time between like deciding you're going to do something and actually doing
it six years in we finally got the domain iced coffee our podcast.com and the only reason it's
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and website offer so do you think what makes you different and uniquely successful is the yes
mentality and just overall action it seems like there's very little time between like deciding
you're going to do something and actually doing it well that's that's what makes an entrepreneur a
great entrepreneur is is the ability to make a snap decision like that i've that i've read a bunch
um is that snap decision always yes like yes you can do it and that may not be what makes a great
entrepreneur but i think that i'm just able to make that calculation like quick like i that's kind of
my heart is like i grew up with nothing and i always tell the story about how my we were at a
car show and my wife wanted to sit in a corvette and she was 15 i was 16 and the guy wouldn't let
her sit in and i'm like this is crazy like what is she going to do by sitting in your corvette
so that kind of birthed the idea like if i'm if i'm ever successful and able to have something
like this in abundance like i'm going to share it with people so it's it's more just like
it's less about it is about the net positive decision but it's more just like what what does
it cost me why not why not let someone sit in the car why not set someone let someone drive in the
car like it's it's fun and exciting for them
um i just i just don't care i guess it's fine like if something gets hurt or damaged what what
does it matter yeah but what's what's odd to me is you've grown your wealth i mean relatively
slowly you've been working on this business like you said since you were 19 and a lot of the times
the people that acquire their wealth slowly are very protective of their wealth because they know
how hard it is to to grow a dollar yeah for the first 15 years i was very i lived very conservatively
like relative to other income that people have in their homes and their cars i was very conservative
it wasn't until i bought my first lamborghini aventador in 2018 so i was 15 years in business
and uh and i realized how well it kind of uh how much people loved it like how much they enjoyed
it and i'm like this is kind of cool like people love this event or they're they want to sit in it
and i'm like go drive it go experience it like if this is something you won't experience in your
life like you should what is it what harm is it to me if you go drive this thing for two miles
and so that kind of started the mission then i bought a mclaren 720s then i bought a porsche gt3s
and then i kind of stepped away from work for a little bit and started the youtube channel because
i had time and that really allowed me to like loudspeaker amplify the mission buy more cars
and so like the whole mission behind the channel is to do just that it's go to charitable shows
share the cars with the community every cent that this channel has made to date has been donated
we've donated almost a million dollars to charity at this point like that's that's just the way that
i'm wired and i think it has helped it's certainly helped along the way in business but like i'm not
always just a yes man like i know people tend to take advantage of you when you do that right
but like and that has happened to me plenty in my life but i also know when to pull back
as well what are some of the downsides to owning so many cars like this
it drives me crazy that there's always three to five in service like i can't stand
how often we have to maintain and fix them um people constantly ask to to drive them which
again is part of our mission but like every day like i got i got a kid from california saying hey
could I borrow a car for prom?
And like, he's serious.
And I'm like, I can't ship you
a Bugatti to California for you to go to prom. Like there's, there's weirdly unrealistic
expectations. And in my heart, like I want to help these people, but like there's 20 of those a day,
especially around dance season. So it kind of puts you on this podium for everyone to see you.
And then I think more people kind of come to you as a source for, for money.
What's the most generous thing you've done with your cars?
The first thing that came to mind is when that lady T-boned the McLaren Senna,
she had a really lousy car. It was sub $5,000 car. And like, I knew that her insurance would
probably give her, or my insurance would probably give her a $2,000 check for whatever the value
was. So I just went and bought her a car. Um, I went and bought her like a brand new $40,000 Hyundai.
Wow.
That's my thing is, and I'm not going to go into like specifics, but my thing is kind of
buying people cars. I've bought probably 20 plus cars for people in my family and my friend group.
And, um, that's since that's what we do. Like I love cars. I think that's the way that I like to
show my car.
And while we're on the topic of taking care of yourself,
it's also really important to think about the people who depend on you. I think a lot about
how much goes into building financial security and making sure the people I care about are
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Need it. What's your favorite car to buy for somebody?
The Lexus NX. I've bought several of those. It's just like this perfect size SUV and Lexus has such
good UIX, such good driving experience. I don't have one now, but I've always loved Lexus and I
think that's such a great car. And they were, they used to be like five years ago, they were like
37 grand. So it's like this SUV Lexus that was almost fully loaded just from factory for sub 40.
What's your least favorite car you've ever owned? There's a few, but I mean,
definitely my Koenigsegg Regera. Christian and I, we had a meeting at car week. It was just me,
Tommy, Christian and his son. And I think we went from 0% to like 10%, which we're certainly not
where we were before. We're definitely not where we were before. We're certainly not where we were
before, but I just, that car, I, if I could go back and we made a really funny short form about
it and me doing like an interstellar thing, like if I could go back, I was warned by everybody not
to buy that car. And I'm like, I'm like, how bad could this, how bad could a car be? Like I've,
I've had everything at this point, but it was in the shop almost. It's the entirety of my ownership.
So what were the cover to cover ownership costs, financials, and just general like
experience owning a Koenigsegg? So Koenigsegg did help me along the way, but like, I don't care how
much you help me if my car's bricked 22 out of 24 months. Like I appreciate it, but it doesn't matter
if you're paying for my car to be serviced for three months and then I get it back for three
days and it has to go back in the shop. Like thanks, but no thanks. But I probably came out
of pocket another 200 grand on top of that. And then I took a $500,000 loss selling it. So 700
grand. The current owner of the Koenigsegg, what's their experience like? I saw it in California. I
don't know who owns it, but I know that it sat in the dealer for a while, I think getting serviced
and fixed, whatever. And, and I guess it did fine on a rally out there and maybe they put a few
hundred miles on it, which I was shocked because I didn't, I didn't even abuse
that thing. I drove it gently. Cause I'm like, I want to get 50 miles out of this.
So it doesn't break. I've talked about the Koenigsegg a lot and I'm trying not to like
crap on the guys. I had a good productive conversation with Christian, but I think
the first maybe 25% of them just were very prototype. Like, like they released essentially
a prototype to the public and they had wiring demons. They had just all kinds of issues and
one little fray and like a wire can, can be impossible for them to detect. They can keep
think cause it, but they're not the root cause. So it just keeps shorting out other things. And,
and that was kind of the problem with mine was there were things like window motors that just
kept breaking. And I don't know if that was because of some freight or issue, but like
there were also other constant things that just broke and broke and broke and broke.
But I think at the core of the issue, I think was like the wiring harness, the general wiring I
I'm told was very sloppy and bad early on. And that's like the, that's like the vertebrae,
the nervous system of the car. So if that's bad, like,
what can you expect from a vehicle? Which car do you drive the least out of all of your cars?
Uh, I always have to like, look at them. I mean the NSX there, I, I, I haven't driven it once,
but you've never, you haven't driven it once. Not since the, we, we rebuilt it. I drove it when I
bought it, but it was like not wide bodied twin turboed air ride. So I have, I have yet to drive
it. Like, I just don't like JDM cars. They're not my thing. How come you haven't driven it now though?
How long has it been like operational? Um, six months. You're not curious. It's one of those
like, I was talking with Matt Armstrong and he said that he said it perfectly. Like don't buy a
car because you think it'll perform well. Like just buy something that you enjoy and it'll show
your passion will show through it and it should perform well for you on the channel. Like that
was, that was a, a channel investment. And like, it's not our, it's not like what our demographic
wants to see. And I thought it would be, and it was just a mistake and I just don't want to drive
it. How much have you put into it? We had some help, but probably like 50 grand. It wasn't
horrible. What are you going to do with it? It's been up for sale for like four months. That's a
120 right now. What's the lowest you would take? Maybe one 10. It has a lot. I mean, it has,
it's, it's worth every penny of that. Like there's none of these that exist with a Liberty walk
slammed. Does that add value? I feel like people right now just want stock cars. By and large,
when you do stuff like that, I don't think it adds value. I think you typically spend
50 to a hundred and you get 80% of that if you're lucky. Right. So not really. No,
it probably hurt me. I just can't believe you haven't driven it once. It's been here for six
months. No desire.
Zero desire. And that's when I sell stuff. Like when I'm looking at a car and I'm like,
I haven't driven that for a month and I have no desire to drive it, then it's time for it to go.
That's also interesting. I just noticed you have no Ferraris in here.
I have one.
You have the one FF.
Yeah. Yeah. Actually it's the GTC, which replaced the GTC for Lusso. I think Ferrari is like a
different culture of people. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just think that like a Ferrari
owner is different from everything else. Like they're very like distinguished people. This is
not every Ferrari owner, but like typically,
when I think of it and what I see out there is they're distinguished. They'll play that game
with Ferrari and go buy 20 cars so they can get Ferrari's next hyper series. They will attend all
the rallies. And it's just like not very counter my personality. We used to have, I had a Bugatti
Chiron SS that I sold. I'm selling my Rimac. Like we're getting rid of boring cars. And it's crazy
to say that like a Rimac, the quickest car in the world is boring or the Bugatti, the highest top
speed in the world. But they are, they're like, they're too refined. They're too comfortable.
They're too quiet.
Um, I like, I like loud cars like the Hennessey Venom. It's just, it sounds like a sixties muscle
car. It's loud, insane, fast, bold, colored, huge spoiler. It's so aggressive, bro. This thing
does not defrost. Oh, there's fire. Like that's the future of the collection. I mean, it wasn't
even two years ago last time we spoke. And I asked you if you could keep one single car aside from
drivers, which one would it be? And you're like, eh, probably the Bugatti Chiron SS. And now here
we are and you've sold the car. Why did you sell the car? It was boring, but I also needed cash to
build a big project that we're doing. So we're building a big car kind of community in Florida,
right in central Florida, near Windermere. And that's going to be where I live in the future for
the majority of the year. And I'm looking around at trying to find somewhere for my cars to be
stored. And there's nothing I'm like, I'm trying to find this crappy 5,000 square foot industrial
building. I don't care how old it is. I'm like, I'm trying to find this crappy 5,000 square foot
building. I don't care how old it is, how dingy it is. And there's nothing. And I'm like, man,
if I could just find land and build something, I could probably make some pretty good money on this
and solve a big problem within the community. And I think that's how a lot of my other business
ideas and ventures came along was just solving a problem for myself. And so we were lucky and
blessed enough to find some land. One of the parcels wasn't even for sale. We just went and
met with some very eccentric sellers, talked them into it, had a bunch of come to God meetings with
the attorney when it almost fell apart last minute, ended up closing in Denmark because we got
a clear to close. And I'm like, I'm not going to let this deal slip out of my hands. Like I will
go find some followers that will help me meet. They met me at the embassy, helped me sign and
notarize documents and we got it done. So I have the land. I have the whole project that I'm going
to present to the city. They seemed very warm about the idea. I just need to get their thumbs
up and then we break ground and build this community. So what exactly is the idea? Well,
the first problem was that there just is no place to store cars down there, right? That's the
biggest problem. The second problem is that the vast majority of car condos in the world are like,
are ugly. Like this community, I actually think is actually one of the top
tier ones, but it's, there's no real greenery. When you get behind that gate,
there's no vegetation, no plants. It's all just asphalt. The buildings are tan. They look like,
they look like storage units. They don't look like car condos. So, and then they don't have
a great club element. Like they built some goofy five o'clock tower. That's like 1930s theme.
That's very fancy and bougie and nobody ever uses it. So I'm like, I want to build something that
has nature trails, a boardwalk, a lot of vegetation. That's beautiful. I want to build a clubhouse.
That's private, welcoming though, and has a pool and, uh, and then have a strong sense of
community and, and make the car condos, like the exteriors look
amazing.
Like I took inspiration from Coda.
It's the Circuit of the Americas in Austin.
They have beautiful exterior on their car condos.
And so taking a lot of inspiration from that, but trying to make it even better than that.
So just elevating the experience.
We're kind of calling it a country club for cars, basically.
Do you have to apply to like buy one of the places?
Like do you have to match the demographic?
Yeah, I mean, you have to have enough income.
Like these will be probably around a million dollars a unit.
And it's windermerereserve.com is where you can go sign up.
And I have, this is the only, the second time I've really publicly talked about it other than our video.
And I have 250 like emails of interest.
And I have maybe 70 to 80 condos that we're going to do.
So I'm really pumped about how much interest has come through.
I love the idea.
But you know what, they're building them now in Vegas.
What?
In Henderson, these car condos.
And they're selling for anywhere from 600 grand on the low end to about one and a half on the high, depending on the square footage.
They're just like this.
It's like open.
You're at the bottom with a little loft and you can like spec it out.
I think it's a huge opportunity and people love them because you're not building a house with like multiple bathrooms, a full-blown kitchen, all these appliances, bedrooms.
It's like, it's a warehouse with a loft.
It's really easy to construct and car people just are so excited for it.
And the loft can have, like we'll have kitchenettes in our loft.
We'll actually put ovens and, but it's not full-blown crazy kitchen.
It's, it's the light version, right?
And then a little seating area.
And we're hoping to do third stories.
We're hoping to do a third story bedrooms so that people can stay overnight.
And then the designer even suggested like above the third story to have a balcony or like a seating area up top, like a rooftop patio.
And I'm like, that would be phenomenal.
That's a pretty minimum cost option.
So we're, we're trying to make these as big and amazing as possible.
And you know, that's, that's something that when I moved down there, that's a community I want to be a part of.
That's, that's the goal.
It's something that I'm excited to go to and, and enjoy with other people.
So what changed with the Charon.
It's been a year and a half and now.
There's a point where like, you also just get all the content.
Like a lot of these cars are bought because a, I enjoy it, but B, we need to create a content machine out of them.
And we kind of did everything that we could with that.
Same with the Rimac, the Rimac just beats everything.
So like those two cars, it's just, there's not much more you can do.
And then, and then I just stopped driving it because there's more fun, loud, raw cars in here to drive.
So it just sat here.
And then I realized, gee, it's been a month since I've driven the Bugatti.
I should probably go drive it.
Like, that's why I'm, I'm going to drive it.
It's because it's sat for a month.
I haven't done that because I want to drive it.
So it's just the psyche of my brain.
Like I, there, there are some things that like I'm a lifer with like my wife, of course, my kids, like I will always be endeared, love be with them, but then some things I can just lose interest in immediately and move on to the next thing.
Is there a single car that you have been a lifelong, like, endear of it?
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Is there a single car that you want to work on?
Is there a single car that you have been a lifelong, like, endearer of it?
Yeah, my Chevelle.
I've had that since my kids were tiny, and it's been through four engines.
I just, I love my '67 Chevelle.
I think I'll, my McLaren 765LT and my Hennessey Venom, I think those are cars that I will
have forever because they're so special to me.
I have such special relationships with either ownership or with local dealers, and they're
just such thrilling and exciting cars.
75% of all of the hypercars right now.
But I would say the 918 is 5 to 6 million for the Wysock.
Like I sold mine for two a year and a half ago, the LaFerrari.
That one's insane to me.
So they alleged that they produced 900 of these cars.
But realistically, if you go to certain websites, there's 1100 to 1200 production.
Like I haven't verified this.
I've only just went and seen, well, I mean, I've visually verified it, but I can't go
and physically verify the VINs on the cars, but like, in my opinion, the website tells
a story that the Italians lie about production numbers on.
Really Ferrari was one.
Pagani was one.
And, uh, and there are probably others, but those were two big ones and they're producing
1200 LaFerrari.
They were like around 2 million, I think to start.
And those are, those are seven or $8 million now for LaFerrari.
And it's just crazy to me when there's over a thousand of these, how, how is that even
possible?
Like, it's a fun car, but it's just insane to me that they're going for that much money.
What about the new Ferrari EV that just sold for $40 million?
Yeah.
That, that I, my gut says that.
Yeah.
It was like a guy that had $40 million that he was going to donate anyway, and it helped
him get some positive news and some, some clout.
And he was going to do it.
Whatever that car was that was going through, he was going to bid $40 million.
I hate the, the new EV though.
Like I already didn't really like Ferrari and seeing that thing, that's, that's ugly.
And I had the SF 90 recently and it's, it's like the most soulless.
That was probably top three for least favorite cars.
Yeah.
Like I hated it.
It too many gadgets and gizmos in it.
Isn't that what Jeremy just bought?
Jeremy just bought that.
Like a day ago he posted the video, we'll put it up here.
Him pulling the thing off the car, showing it.
When you look at the numbers of like zero to 60, it's really fast.
It's got a lot of, it looks cool.
So as a model S you can go get a model S plaid used for $45,000 and it'll smoke that.
Like if, if that's, if you want fast, like just go get a Tesla.
If you want, like, I think the, the, uh, the dynamic of the, the hypernet.
Supercar is turning very much analog now because they're getting beat.
Like the Corvette just be every car that exists and it's $250,000.
Like in America, we just built this hybrid car that nothing can compete with.
Like why even go for speed records at this point?
Why, why be Bugatti white?
What matters if you can get beat by a car, a 10th or a 15th of your price now, now they're
figuring out, okay, we have to be, we have to be different.
How can we, how can we get that like ultra rich segment and it's becoming analog.
Yeah.
just came out and it's 800 horsepower naturally aspirated motor nothing digital in it gated six
speed transmission that's i think that's the wave of the future with cars so don't you think that's
one of the reasons why some of the older cars have spiked so much in value is purely because
the new ones are kind of yeah like the ventador went crazy because the revolto is hybrid yeah but
the problem is what happens when they all start saying okay we're not going to do hybrid anymore
we're going to do got what happens to all those cars that spiked because manufacturers started
shifting to hybrid like lamborghini is going to potentially revert back to i was talking more
about hypercar manufacturers when i said analog but like the supercar manufacturers are going to
follow they have to differentiate themselves again they're going to get beat by every other car out
there too so i think that they they may revert back to naturally aspirated wouldn't they just
do what porsche is doing and just offer both like if you want the six speed gated it's going to be
x amount more like you overpay now and they could upsell that and even the hennessey blackbird does
offer like an automatic they offer a slightly
less analog experience with their automatic transmission but like john was he's like well
if you want to order that he's like well we don't expect a lot of them like if you want
to be that guy you can order it so i think even some of the new real analog
ones are going to be. Even the Pagani Utopia was like, I was shocked that one was announced like
three years ago, four years ago. And they offered the six speed manual transmission and a hypercar
at that time too. So maybe that was kind of the beginning of that happening and Pagani got on it
super early. So what cars do you think are undervalued? Bugatti Veyron by far. There's
still one five to one $7 million for the 06 to 08. And I don't see how that car is like that
car did break top speed record, held it for a long time. And it's a, I think it cost them $4
million to build each of those cars. And they were selling them for two at the time.
They are a little bit to maintain, but there's enough of them out there where I think people
have figured out how to, how to get it done. Bugatti offers it, offers an extended warranty
for, I think, 250. That'll cover it for four years. I'd have to check the numbers on that,
but it's a criminally underrated car that they built. I mean, I told you they built 1200 of
those LaFerrari's. They built, I think 350 or 400 of the Veyrons and they're 1.5 million. It's
shocking to me that they're that cheap. What should they be selling for? Five. If everything
else is where they're at, the Veyron,
starting price should be $5 million. I think it's criminally underrated. And then you have
the SVJs that are another criminally overrated car where those are a million and a half and
they built a thousand plus of those. It's just, I don't understand the market.
Let's say someone has one and a half million dollars to invest and they have a choice between
the S&P 500 or it's the top notch Bugatti. Yeah. What would you recommend?
It depends. Are they strictly looking for a financial investment or haven where they're
going to park that Veyron?
They're not going to drive it. They don't care about the enjoyment of it. Then I might say
actually Veyron is the move. Like legit go buy, if you have $15 million, go buy 10 Veyrons,
let them sit in your garage. I think you're going to come out far more ahead in three to five years
with that. If you're going to drive it, then there's mileage that's going to hurt value a
little bit. You're going to have to maintain it. If you buy it to drive it, you're also maybe going
to get bored of it. There's more thrilling cars for that much money. So strictly as an investment,
yeah, that might be your best.
How many miles?
Walk us through, in your opinion, what would be the best investment Bugatti?
You have to get into like their convertible model or like their Veyron SS. Those have already kind
of went up in value there. I think they're north of three, but just like with any other car,
the most special variants seem to be the one that increased the most. The 918 Y Sox seem to go
a lot higher. If there's some goofy Enzo, that's a yellow instead of the super common red,
that one garners 50% more. So I would have to say some of their later, later models,
if you're willing to spend a little bit more.
I think the Veyron Supercar Ron had a beautiful spec and I forget which one is, I even drove his,
but like that one was, in my opinion, the most beautiful spec. And I think he paid around two.
It's probably already worth three now. And in five years, that one might be worth eight.
It seems like whatever Ed Bolian buys, give it five years and he's always right.
Yeah. Oh, nice. It's largely the case with me too. I just sell them before I,
before like I had the LaFerrari, I had the 918. Like I've had a lot of cars
that have really gone up in value and I sell them like,
right around what I paid for them. And maybe I make a little bit of money,
but again, it's not, they're not financial investments for me.
So what else besides the Bugatti that you think is underrated?
Would have said the Senna a year ago, but that one went from 1 million to $3 million over the
course of a year. Everything is overvalued right now, man. Like there's, there's five cars for every
95 that 95 are overvalued. Five are probably undervalued. I McLaren 720, 750. People always
ask me if I have like 250 K, what, what car, uh, should I get? And I'm like, if you want to rely,
and, and a very fun driving experience, get a Porsche GT3 RS. If you want relative reliability
and you want the most fun possible experience, in my opinion, it's the McLaren 720 or the 750.
Like they're highly tunable, extremely good UI driving experiences. They're just such fun cars.
So do you think any EV supercars have any collectability right now?
No, no. The Ramac is the prime example. Like I can't sell that. Like in order to sell that,
I'd have to be about half of what I paid. I paid like two seven all in with taxes,
the highest offer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'd very hard as like one three on that car right now. Those are, and that's a car where I think
when the market has gone broadly EV, like that is a car that might, that might be the, the F1 of the
nineties. That's worth 20 million. Like maybe that Ramac is the five, $10 million car in the future
because it broke all these records. Like it was the very first electric broadly built hyper car,
but I, I don't, I'm not going to sit around for five or 10 years on that car to get that value
out of it.
I would argue that that is going to be the future.
Future collectible because you are selling it. And it seems like you get these cars early,
but then you sell them early. As soon as you sell them two, three years later, they spike.
Yeah. And, but I, but I don't want to hold onto them for two more years and not drive them.
I don't know. It's just, it just doesn't make sense. I got, they gotta be fun.
I got to drive them. I have to utilize them. And we put a lot of miles on these cars. Like,
I mean, every, when I sell these cars, my average holding period for these cars is probably two
years. And the average mileage, when I sell them as probably 10 to 12,000 miles, which is insane for
a hyper car, like 5,000 miles a year, when you have 20 cars in your collection is insane.
Which car manufacturer have you completely lost respect for?
I think everyone thinks the answer is Koenigsegg, but I actually respect them because like,
if, let me just talk about that. Like the Yesco they delivered had some very big problems early
on. We put a video out like leak brakes, uh, the, the gyro was not working, but like they took
really good care of it in that first month. They flew techs out multiple times. They did a lot of
work on it and it's actually been surprisingly iron clad in the last three or four months. There's
some small issues with it now, but like I can still drive it. As long as I can drive a car,
I'm super happy with it. Like the Regera would brick and it would shut off. Like you can't drive
it. The Yesco has some small issues, but I can drive it. I can wait until the big service to
get that stuff addressed. I'm happy as a camper with that stuff. Um, but like there is, there's
one manufacturer that came to mind and I can't, I can't actually even publicly, uh, publicly
bash them because there was like a deal that we worked out, but which sounds crazy, but it's a
small one and it's, it's irrelevant at this point. Or which manufacturers are you surprised that they
even still exist? That would be Koenigsegg. Like it's, it's with all the problems that they had,
they just have such great branding and a loyal following base that like they're, they're amazing
marketing branding and innovative tech is really helping lead them. But usually if you, if you
build a product that, that breaks a lot and is notoriously unreliable, like for consistently for
a long period of time, that's the end. But, but they've, they've gotten better. They've built really cool
cars and they've gotten better and they've turned it into more reliable companies. So somehow they
rode that, that long wave. And, and like, I want them to succeed. I've always said like, build me a
great car and I will be your biggest advocate. And, and my, my tone is already very different
than it was nine months ago when I crashed out on them. And, uh, and so like, I want to be their
advocate. I want this Jesco to continue to perform well. Cause then I will, I will be a positive
vocal advocate for them. If there was one car manufacturer that you could only ever drive for
the rest of your life, what would it be? I love, I love my Hennessy. It's my favorite car in the
but McLaren is, they just build the, the, like the broad profile of all their cars is just that
they're the most fun cars. They're the best cars in my opinion. How does someone know they have
enough money to be able to buy a McLaren? Like, is there a net worth or income? I mean, net worth
is one thing, right? Like, cause a lot of my money's tied up in my company, like, but, but like
disposable, let's say, let's talk about like income annually. I mean, you can get that McLaren
for probably, you're probably like 75, five grand to $7,500 a month. And so
you need to, I mean, if you're taking a five, six year loan on a 250 K car,
even if it's five grand a month, that's, that's a pretty steep payment. So you really need to be
making at least two to two 50 a month, but not have not be crazy over leveraged with house and
other stuff. Like probably the value of the car is, is what your annual income should be.
So you need to be making like $3 million a year.
No.
He meant to say a month.
For hyper, for a hyper car, maybe.
Well, he just, no, he said 250,000 a year.
Well, 250, 250, yeah, yeah.
That's per year.
Yeah. Maybe, maybe it's one-to-one is where you should be a one-to-one ratio. If you're going to
have a Bugatti Chiron at $3 million, you probably should make around the same of what that car is
worth. You should, but the, that's a good bridge into the leasing thing. Like there's guys out
there that are, that are like, I just learned a lot of this and it's crazy to me. And I think,
I think this might be what's manipulating market values too, where they can just go list cars
really, really, really high and set the market. Or a lot of them are even buying all of the
inventory. So it's like.
I'm going to go and buy all of the Bugatti Chirons that exist. I'm going to list them stupid high.
So I'm the only one in the country selling them because inventory is scarce right now.
And so I'm going to, I'm going to be the guy that has all four of these. I'm going to set the market
at whatever it is. And I'm going to continue actually getting these people in on three to
four month leases. So I'm going to charge them $60,000 a month for their car. So they can go
use it for their course program or whatever it is. There's stupid.
Amount of this happening right now. And then they go and they go and make it look like
these cars are very affordable. They help go push their courses. And those course people get a lot
of followers, a lot of influence from what happens. And then the car disappears like four months
later. Have you had people that sell courses approach you to try to rent your cars? It's not
anybody well-known, but all the time 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. And I'm like, no way that
I hate that. I will not allow.
So like I will, I will kick them out of my, you know, I'm like, don't use my, don't use my 20
year plus years of earnings to, to flex and fake what you're doing. There's nothing more that drives
me crazy than people trying to use my collection for their own LARPing essentially. Right. They're
using my collection for their clout. I'm more than happy to share the cars with anybody that
wants a fun experience, but there's plenty of people that come in here and do that. And I'm
like, you got to get out. And some of them try to get close with my, my team. And then you'll
realize, like, I don't realize it right away. And then I'm like, why is this guy frequently,
asking you to go out in the Aventador, Henry,
like why is he hanging out with you a little bit more
than usual. Like, why am I starting to see videos of him like flex and stuff on his page with my
cars? And that's a problem. So in terms of the leasing, how exactly does that work in the back
end? What I heard is they put a lot of money up front. Like they're basically not putting an
investment in the car. They're getting nothing out of the car. It's I'm willing to go spend a
half a million dollars over the course of three to six months because it's going to double my
sub count and it's going to drive significantly more volume in people that sign up for the course.
So it's, it's, I think some of these people are putting up 250 to $500,000 down, then they're
paying 60 grand. I heard it's some absurd amount of money. And then they get it for six months
and they just get as much usage and content as they can out of it. So what that does is it
allows these guys to keep listing the cars really high because they know that they're just going to
lease the cars and perceptually to the public, wow, Bugattis are $5 million or $4 million.
And they're going to be like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be
Wow. This, this guy that sells classes can afford one of these. Uh, and, and then they just keep
like doing leases in the background and then you just turn the car in after six months.
So my understanding was that these leases were actually kind of sales structured as leases. So
you'd be able to write off all the payment, but building equity in the car. And then because they
technically do own the car, they are responsible for the diminished value at the time they go and
give that to someone else. So if the car goes from 2 million to 1.8, they have to come out of pocket
the 1.8 or they continue making payments. I wish I knew how these were structured. I've done leases
like that myself. I don't have any, actually I do have a lease. I have a lease on my, uh, my Yesco.
I basically went and I, the other $1.5 million of it ebbs and flows of cash. I had to go take a
lease out on that, but I, I pretty much own all of these in cash with the exception of that 1.5
lease. I don't think I have any other lease on anything that's here right now, but I had a lot
of money output for cars on order. I have five to $7 million that manufacturers have been sitting on
for years. So I don't have any other lease on anything that's here right now, but I had a lot
up to years and years and years, the Jumeirah, they've had my, I think 300 K deposit for six
years now. And so sometimes, yeah, I'll be like, okay, there's, there's not infinite money. I need
to go bridge the gap. And so I know those, those are structured that way. I don't know how these
other guys are structuring it because it sounds very different to me, but yeah, these other ones,
uh, are, are structured intelligently where it's essentially a lease to own. And, and because it
says it's a lease, you're allowed to write it off for tax purposes because it's harder to write off
an actual finance car, I guess. Yes.
The government scrutinizes that a lot more and people don't usually pass that sniff test.
If you have a deposit to purchase a car for six years, that's $300,000. What do you think
of the chances of you actually getting that car?
Hi, hi. But like the roadster I've had on deposit for like, what, when did they do those
deposits? 2018 or 19? I've had that one. I've had, they've had 50 K of my money forever. I think
they're going to deliver it. Right. And, but I think the real question is what if they don't,
do they pay you interest on your money? And they probably don't, right? Like that 50 should be
a hundred after eight or nine years, that should be a hundred K of my money. If they give me just
my 50 K back, that's a problem. But I think it's high probability. I've never had an auto
manufacturer not deliver the Yesco I waited five years for, but they got it to me. Most car
manufacturers are actually probably a two to three year window. It's, it's not short.
Which car manufacturer are you most bullish on? Like you think that they're going to
continually stay on the cutting edge and put out better and better and better cars?
I think, I think McLaren is like, I, I'm, I'm not trying to like,
I'm not trying to put them on this pedestal, but like they are releasing a lot of really cool cars.
They have a big color palette that they offer. They're fun and exciting cars. They're quick.
I put money down on my W1 a year and a half ago, I think, and it'll get it delivered in sub two
years. Uh, my seven, eight HS that they just launched a month ago. I think I'm going to have
that six, seven months after stupid six, seven, um, six, seven months after I put the money down
and my spec is insane. It's the most bold, crazy spec we've ever done,
but I think it's the coolest spec I have ever done in my life. And like, I hate to say it,
but, but I hate to like sound like a broken record, but McLaren is doing it right right now.
What would you recommend for someone who wants as little depreciation as possible?
Porsche GT3 RS. Everyone since like 07 has maintained whatever their MSRP is or above it.
And they're highly reliable. That is the best car. If you want something that's reliable,
that's going to hold its value. And that's going to deliver a fun experience.
Is there a certain year that's going to be better than others?
Um, I think the newest year, if you can get one,
it's sticker. Of course, that's it. Cause those are still going like a hundred plus above sticker,
but I really liked the, the 2019, the 9912. Uh, it's one I've had two of, I had the lizard green
and I have a Miami blue Y suck now. And it's one that's just stuck to its value. Like it's just
hell. Actually it's a little higher than it was, but they're still affordable. Like the,
the newest model are like three 50 to 400. The older model from 19 are like two 50,
but they drive near the same. Like they're 90% the same car. The newer one just has somewhere
arrow and looks different. But like, if you blindfolded me and put me in the other car,
it'd be hard for me to differentiate the driving experience.
Is it ever worth it to buy the extended warranty?
In some cases, the law Ferrari, they offered me a two year full drive chain warranty for $30,000.
This was on a $3 million car at the time. So 1%, I think that you would do it. You know,
if you have a hundred thousand dollar car and they say for a thousand dollars,
we'll give you a piece of full peace of mind for two years. Of course you would do that.
That I was the most shocked by the cut that shows how much they must believe in that car. Uh,
maybe that car has been very reliable and mine was too. So did you ever use the 30,000?
I don't think I had to, I think I sold it before I could, before I could do it,
but by and large extended warranties, I think, I think it really depends on the price,
but I feel like they're usually a little bit too overinflated. And, but like,
if you're that supercar guy, that's, that's buying a car beyond your means. And if that thing breaks
and it's going to sit in your garage for six months because you can't fix it, then yeah,
you should probably find a way to work that into financing.
What other cars do you believe are going to be going up in value a lot over the
next 10 years? I mean, everything's already gone up. I think it's more about what's going
to figure out what car he should buy. He's really want to buy. What do you think about
Graham's current collection? If you were to rate it one to 10, what would you rate it?
I mean, it's phenomenal. I'd, I'd give it a, a seven. Like it's, it's great.
What could take it to a nine? Uh, $30 million. Really? It would take 30 million to go from
the seven to a nine. Yeah. It's the battle between like, well, how do you value your collection? Is
it clout? Is it drivability or is it strictly just what's going to increase the most in value?
And for me, it's like, candidly, it's, it's clout and drivability are the two most important things
that you have to have for a YouTube channel. Uh, because you think his collection is a little
boring. Maybe. I think it's fun. You still have the Ford GT, right? I do. Yeah. That's,
that's a phenomenal Tesla Roadster 2010, which may or may not be for sale. I'm still debating
that. And those haven't really popped either. They're still going for 40 to 60, right? Uh,
mine is one of 26 that was ever made in yellow. So it's the rarest color. Those overall have sold
more just because of the color itself. So I'm guessing it's a little more than that, but yeah,
I was, I was hoping that car would be a $200,000 car and it has not reached that.
It's got to get there. It has to get there. There's, there's so few of those built relative
to the S the X, especially the three and the Y like that's, that's a car with, that's a car
I've been following and bring a trailer for a year now. I'm waiting for the right one to go
through and buy one. It's funny that maybe we should talk about after, uh, I would, I would 100%
I just, I just spent 15 grand shipping this thing to Seattle. They did a new, like, you know,
internals of the, uh, the battery shipped it back. So I just spent money on this.
Ah, ah. So you're like, I still want to sell it.
It is pristine. It's just, I never drive it. I was talking to a lot of these guys. I'm like,
I never drive the cars cause they work from home. If I do drive, it's usually for like a podcast
or a podcast guest or Jack and I are driving to LA and like sometimes Jack will drive a few times.
So it's not often. And then I sit there and I have to shuffle cars to like get one out of the
garage. Like, like imagine you have to get that car out in the corner. You have to shuffle the
whole thing. It's a pain in the butt. And like, eh, I may as well just not drive it. It's a total
pain. It depends. Like clout is important. If you're, if you're on YouTube, there's a certain
level of clout and recognition that you want to have, right? Like there's, there's always an
element of, I want to, I want to be known. I want to be public, but you hope that you can spread a
good message and connect people and deliver something awesome to people. Like if you can do
well, then, then it's a win-win. So like you got to bring like a Lamborghini to the collection.
Like that's, that is the, that is the pinnacle clout car for someone that's, I did mention a
McLaren and then a Porsche GT3S if I had 250, but if you have 250K and clout is your most important
thing, which I know you didn't say that was, but like, that's the car when you throw a Huracan in
the mix, or you can get a, an Aventador maybe around, I don't know what the Aventadors have
popped to, but 300. Oh, they're still okay. Good. Cause pre-COVID they got sub 300. During COVID
they went up to 350, even up to 400.
And then I think they corrected themselves. So it's really an Aventador, a Huracan. That's,
that's kind of the best clout. Yeah. I don't like, I don't like the clout cars. Cause as soon
as a lot of people have them or like, Oh, you have this car. I don't like it. Too many people
have something. I just, I'm not into it. I like the cars that no one else has it. No one else
on YouTube really besides like a few car guys have the Ford GT. Almost no one has a Tesla
Roadster. I think I'm the only one. And then almost no one has the Lotus
Evora GTC. Like no one. So I liked it. The odd balls.
And like the TWR super cat that I have in order is, is one of those. It's a Jaguar XJS that has a
naturally aspirated V12 in it. You can get one of those cars. The XJS is for 15 to $20,000,
which is it's because they're so terribly unreliable, but then TWR takes them and wide
bodies them and makes them into this like supercharged beast machine. And, and for me,
they're, they're still like 500,000 plus dollars, but it's such a cool and unique looking car.
I would say that for me, I think that's my car of the one that nobody has on social media. That
really is just going to be thrilling and fun. I get to spec myself. And then the BAC Mano that
I bought that from Houston Crosstown right there in Vegas.
And that's a car that's upper 100s for the non-Type R.
The Type R is upper 200s.
And that's a really fun and unique car.
You just can't have a passenger in it.
I noticed on a lot of these cars, too, you have really incredible license plates.
And I'm so curious how you're able to get these plates.
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I noticed on a lot of these cars, too.
You have really incredible license plates, and I'm so curious how you're able to get these plates.
I know that the lady's name at the Illinois Secretary of State is Caroline Shirley.
I only know this because I always get a letter from her or a call on.
What does this mean?
What?
What?
What does THC BBC mean?
And I'm like, oh, it's the Hamilton Collection.
And BBC means Big Black Cadillac.
I'm like, what else would it mean?
And she's like, nope.
And I had to turn it.
That was one that slipped through and I had to turn it in.
I think that we try to use like modern lingo where the one that I think a lot of people that make the decisions are like 30, 40 something people like myself.
We did BBC on the Rivalto BB.
We must have some obsession with BBC.
We told you about our mascot here.
And it's BBSEE.
And that one slipped.
It slipped through even though when you say it, it's BBC.
So I think it's just being creative and sneaky.
Huge wang on the McLaren Senna.
They probably didn't even know what that meant.
But like a wang means a wiener.
And then everything is wiener related, isn't it?
What's the obsession with wieners?
I don't know.
I think it's because everyone always assumes you have like a small wiener.
So we're like, we're either saying, no, we have a big wiener or we're saying we're affirming.
Yes, it is.
So we did small PP on my Razvani.
We did small D on my.
That's my crew car.
So I put the small.
I remember we were in our crew car.
Isn't it funny that Ferrari GTC4 Lusso is our crew car, but that's what they drive to run errands.
And like, I remember seeing these girls behind us just like snickering and laughing.
And I felt like so humbled because they're laughing because my license plate says we all have a small.
I can't believe that you're able to get away with that.
Me neither.
There's the wall of license plates over there.
Like I'm, I'm looking at all of these cop lover.
Yeah, that one, that one was, that one makes sense.
The box one backwards.
Like.
They didn't catch that.
I don't know if you saw that one.
The third from the right on the top one.
Oh, no, I didn't see that.
Was it cracked?
Yeah.
Cracked.
That was for the.
Yeah.
There's a small PP one.
Small D is up there.
Aura.
Aura makes sense.
That one's not that bad.
There's been some interesting ones that are still on the vehicles.
What's the one you wished you could have gotten that they denied?
Oh, GTA IRL.
I'm like Grand Theft Auto in real life.
I'm like, cause everyone always says bros live in like Grand Theft Auto garage in real life or Forza.
So we're like, oh, that would be.
That would be a great license plate.
GTA IRL.
And they denied it.
Like she asked me, she's like, what is GTA?
And I had to find a website that didn't show that it meant Grand Theft Auto.
I tried to, I had to go to a website that just showed the acronym.
And I'm like, here, it's, it's a video game called GTA.
And she must've done more diligence.
And she's like, nope, not happening.
I didn't think that would be like bad.
Yeah.
Of all of the ones.
I know.
That's the one that gets rejected.
I know.
And that one would have been so cool to have in here, but.
You're going to have everyone now going to their state's websites.
To try to get GTA IRL.
They should.
And hopefully they can get it.
Hopefully their state passes.
Because I think it's reasonable.
If it's in Nevada, I think you should get it.
Why me?
What about you?
I mean, I could.
Six cars.
I don't want to put that on like a Tesla model three.
It'd be even funnier on model three.
What am I putting it on?
My 2000, like $3,000 Mazda.
I'm going to look for it.
Okay.
If it's available, I'll get it.
It's funny you say Tesla.
Cause like my daily is a Cybertruck.
And if I had to keep one car, it's, it's that out of all of the cars.
I love my, it's very drivable.
Right.
And then my son has a model three.
My other son, Jack, who's about to be driving as a model X.
My wife has a lucid gravity.
Like I have this whole collection of loud, wild cars.
And every one of us that drive in the house have an electric car.
Why is that?
Because they're just so much more convenient.
The tech is so good, especially in a tech.
I mean, you have.
Yeah.
I love it.
It's just so reliable.
And the autopilot has gotten crazy good in the last year.
If you have the new hardware from 22 on up, it's I'm leaving my driveway,
clicking it on going an hour into the city and stop and go.
Traffic all the way to my destination.
And it's parking me in a parking lot.
Like insane.
It's also really nice for me not to have the maintenance on it.
Even when you, there's so much less parts for them to have to fix.
And even when you do, you just go drop it off and they get it done.
No, they come to your house now.
Oh yeah.
Sometimes.
Yeah.
It's incredible.
We, we had some bigger jobs that they had to do, but you drop it off.
You don't have to see a human, which is kind of what Tesla's very anti.
Personal communication.
It's like, cool.
You want to buy a car, order it online.
Oh, you're ready to pick it up.
We're going to have it parked in a spot for you.
Click your screen for a video.
If you need to learn anything, that's like very impersonal, but I guess if you're that
good of a company, you don't need to be personal.
So I saw recently one of your videos, you're doing a flip.
Yeah.
The guy flipped over one of the cars and the HOA was upset.
And you made this whole response to the HOA.
What happened?
What's the current status of that?
So Frankie LaPena, he's the guy on TikTok that has the big booty and does every stunt
known to man.
And he just came here and he practiced for, he actually imported snow from Michigan because
there was no snow left here.
Right outside of my window, he built the snow ramp.
He was testing it safely for like five to six hours, test runs, test runs, test runs.
And then he finally took the Koenigsegg pulling the snowboard and he jumped it.
Low speed, very, very like two out of 10 in terms of what he's done.
Like he's a very talented stuntman.
He says he's never injured himself in any stunt, which I find crazy because some of
the stuff he does is a 10 out of 10, like an insanity.
And the HOA didn't like it.
Nobody came out to say anything during that six hour period.
Uh, but somehow they caught wind of it, even though people come in and out of this community
all the time, the HOA is feet away from my door after they're like, we don't want him
to post a video of it.
And I'm like, I'll let him know, but he's his own channel.
Like he spent a lot of time and resources doing that.
He drove out of here from Michigan.
He had to, he had to spend the night prior, like shoveling snow into his truck.
I'm like, I'll let him know, but I can't promise anything.
And then I conveyed that to him, but I'm, but he still posted it, which I told him like
at the end of the day.
Like, it's your decision.
Like, I can't tell you not to post it.
And like, I still love Frankie.
He's a good dude.
And he's been an advocate for me as I battle with the HOA, but they really didn't like that.
And so they, they're worried that it was going to increase their insurance costs or their
insurance was going to drop them.
And like, it's still been six months and no word from insurance, like nothing's happened.
And they, so they find me $25,000 and like, according to the stipulation of the HOA
agreements, like they can't really find me above and beyond two 50 and they're trying to pull some
cavities.
Yeah.
In the language there that they're able to go claim this $25,000 and then, but it was
all, it was all total BS.
So I said, there's no way I'm going to pay that fine.
Like, I'm just not going to pay it.
I'll sue you guys.
And I just didn't agree with it.
And so they, they then reduced it to 5k, which I thought was cool.
But then they're like, but if our insurance does drop us, you're responsible for all of
our lost car show revenue for in perpetuity, like, and they said they make $185,000 a year
from that.
From their car shows, which I think is crazy that they're profiting off of car shows.
Cause that's, it's very counter Hamilton.
How do they profit from the car shows?
Well, they charge a lot of money and they do bring a lot of people into here.
Okay.
Uh, that's, that's really the gist of it.
Right.
So, so I'm like, I'm not going to, what am I going to be on the hook for 10 years of
lost car show revenue?
Like that's insane.
You took it from $25,000 to one to 2 million potential dollars.
And who's to say that you lost insurance because you're holding car shows.
You have cars weaving in and out of hordes of children and people, you have golf carts that
crashed into electrical junction boxes that were driven by kids.
Like the amount of exposure you have guys fixing cars in your parking lot.
You got a guy sitting under a truck, uh, fixing cars, be more threatening to their insurance.
That's what I'm saying.
Well, it depends who's filming it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't want the insurance coming.
Yeah.
Great point about that.
Don't let me forget about it.
So one of the stipulations was I also can't film something nobody else has a stipulation
to.
So I'm like, that sounds kind of damaging to me because that's my business.
Like we film here all the time.
We intro videos, we're doing stuff.
And they said, you can't film.
I think it was outside of the premises, but like we drive our cars out of here.
Like that's, that is a primary, uh, traffic and, uh, cash driver to the business.
And it's crazy.
Like why, why, why can't I film me driving in a car out of your community?
What harm is that doing?
Really?
They just have a personal vendetta against me.
That's what I genuinely think it is.
I think these are tiny wiener guys that, uh, just don't like that.
We have a social media channel that it's done really well because of our awesome followers.
And.
Uh, they just have a chip on their shoulder about us.
I don't know.
I don't know what it is.
How many people are in this HOA?
It's, I think the board has like eight people.
And so these.
guys all just agreed most likely that they just want to come after you basically i think there's
like two or three that are really anti-hamilton collection and and they're the guys with the
tiniest wieners was the wiener tiny because of the jump or was it always tiny i think it was
always tiny i'm pretty sure it was always really really that's what caused to be exposed as tiny
i suppose yeah there's something they're trying to overcompensate for but but aren't we all trying
to overcompensate for something as i sit behind a 30 million dollar collection you should be
brothers in arms with them i should yeah the tiny the tiny wiener brethren yeah do they know
your wiener is just as tiny i'll have to show them one day and we'll find out all of a sudden
all the fees dropped we're fine we had no idea you're one of us oh the small wiener dab up it's
a special one that i'll have to maybe i'll have to show you guys you'll have to we'll have to see
first that's incredible so are you how are you going to solve the situation uh i mean they just
got served with well not served i just sent them the complaint so
it's like this this phase of you send them the full legal complaint but i haven't filed it yet
i let them review it for two weeks they can they can see how much work and effort we put into the
complaint and they can make a decision if they want me to go ahead and officially sue them
um they just won't respond or they won't agree or they can reduce and either drop the fine or
reduce it to something that's like of this earth and that will close the matter so i think they
have days left to reply to me and then i'll just sue them i don't care i've already spent 25
thousand dollars sounds great like i'm like a guy that will if i feel like i've been wronged i will
spend it sounds stupid and i don't mean it to sound arrogant but like i will spend a hundred
thousand dollars to to remedy a five thousand dollar um issue if i think i've been extremely
wronged just to prove a point to people it's rare that i have to do it but isn't your peace of mind
and just going about your day worth more than like the this is his peace of mind yeah this is yeah
yeah i'm just saying but like you're fortunate enough to have like so many great things going on
where it's like if it's a little inconvenience today it's like not the end of the world and
life goes on and sure they might have gotten one up on you but like in the big picture yeah i would
agree if i got a ticket in some city in california and i was doing this but i have to deal with this
community and these people every day so like i don't want to set a precedent by being the guy
that that just bowed down to them and paid the fine because what are they what are they going to
do if something else small happens like if i mistakenly chirped the wheels taking a corner
out of here are they gonna find me fifty thousand dollars uh because i skidded a little bit turning
like i think it sets a dangerous precedent by succumbing to them and i also think they genuinely
there's malice and they genuinely have it out for me so it'd be different if the situation was
different if i if i genuinely if i crashed into a building and they wanted to find me and i had to
pay for the damage that's fine but no no harm was caused to any people any property it was cleaned
up nobody came out here during the six hour period we've done stunts like this
in my unit outside of the unit frankie has filmed before no verbal anything so like we've we've
already set a precedent that we do stuff like this also i think to defend the people that may have
access to less resources because i'm kind of thinking i'm a member of an hoa where i live in
vegas yeah and let's just say the hoa started being really aggressive with fees or doing some
things that i kind of disagree with maybe i didn't necessarily have the resources to fight it but
someone else in the community did i feel like okay wow like now i feel a little bit more protected or
i'm some sort of like governor around me trying to like exercise control or like you know i would
say too much power agreed yeah so maybe we'll help other people within the community and maybe
some people are advocating for us to win this because it means they'll be better protected
in the future for sure would it ever get to a point where you'd have to move i'm i'm listing
this unit up for sale anyway like i don't i don't want to be i don't want to be part of
a community where i feel unwelcome there's plenty of good people in here but like there's
also a lot of back talk that happens like i don't i think by and large we do very good for the
community like it's kind of what we do is counter to what a lot of people in there do now a lot of
people do share the garages they're kind but like not everybody we share them we let people sit in
the cars um we let people use this unit for various events we've even let the hoa use this for a
christmas party like two years ago like i didn't charge them anything like that's just what we do
and a lot of these people are condescending to people that are less fortunate and they talk about
those people behind their backs and they talk about those people behind their backs and they talk about
them as it's just it's it's toxic and and i don't want to be part of a culture like that i think
as i'm building this in florida like my message is like unity be open like people can do what
they want with their cars and their units but like at the end of the day they should be willing
to share be open be kind to people and so i'm hoping that that's a fresh start but i can very
much see me pulling away from this community at what point do you think your detachment from
money started because it seems like you don't make a lot of decisions based solely off of like
roi like you were saying you'd spend a hundred thousand dollars in order to fight a five thousand
dollar thing just based off of principle sure was it a financial thing was it a mentality thing
there's there's multiple layers to that i would say like i always flew regular class up until like
2020 and i'm just like why what benefit does it give me sitting in the big seats and then now i'll
kind of it's probably two to one ratio first class to regular class and that's more relative to income
that's not going to hurt me going to spending this money on i think about it and i'm like
god this lawyer is kind of he's kind of charged me like 25 grand up to this point just to file
a legal complaint feels expensive so i am i am scrutinizing that and there is a point where
if i'm 300 grand into this i'm like yeah i kind of messed up i shouldn't have done this i don't
think it's going to get there at all i think we've done most of the work up front but but like there
is a very different mindset that i have than i did five years ago where where i'm like i have
20 a list of 20 things to do on my house right now um we've been in it for five years and i realize
there's a lot of maintenance that i need to do i've kind of shuttered and back in the day it'd
be a couple things at a time and i'd get three quotes for everything i'd be bargaining and
i'm just going to like i'm just going to one guy that i've used in the past i'm not even really
scrutinizing the guy and i'm just at the point where i'm like this guy's not making as much
money as i am he wants three thousand dollars to epoxy the foundation of my house like i'm not
going to nickel and dime him for another five hundred dollars i just don't care like i'll just
give him the three thousand dollars it'll make him it'll make him a better person it'll give him more
i'm not really scrutinizing a lot of things there is some stuff i scrutinize where i'm very close and
i know like shipping carriers i have an abundance of shipping carriers that we have accessible to
us i know what it costs me to ship a car to california if someone comes in at four thousand
dollars i'm gonna be like that's too expensive like i can use 10 other carriers and and get
this for two grand but the mindset has definitely changed over the last five years on i just don't
care as much i do care i just don't care as much was it an intentional thing or was it more of a
changing and then you observed it later and and like i said was it like a number thing or
how did you know you were there i don't know i think it was i think it was gradual
but i remember my wife we were at a restaurant she's like she's tipping like i always tip 20
percent and i'm like that's i still think that that's a that's slightly above it i don't think
everyone tips 20 but that's probably in in the realm of the average it's toward the high end
of average so it's still i would say average is probably 15 to 18 percent got it so so yeah so
exactly it's on the high end of of the average right and then there's 25 30 and then she's
like 40 percent tips and i'm like kirlan like it feels like but then i'm like well this this
server is probably making 20 to 30 an hour all in if they're lucky and they're really doing the
majority of the work like we should be compensating these people better so so like that was kind of
one of the triggers that changed the mindset and so now the tip is 50 to 100 percent no matter
where i go unless the service if the lowest i'll leave is 20 and the service has to be
atrocious for me to leave 20 uh but everywhere else it's it's 50 percent that i go and if
it's if it's like a cheap place like a waffle house i always leave 100 bucks so if it's a
50 check i love waffle house i love the people there are just a different breed of people and
i love like i'm like a blue collar person type of guy i i will i'd rather hang out with a bunch
of blue collar folk than than white collar folk all day long um i don't know why i just feel like
they're far more relatable to me and so if my check's 50 bucks at waffle house they're getting
100 bucks no matter what and so that it's just there's just been little things that i've been
that i've made realizations along the way that it's it's my way of kind of giving back the best
that i can what's been your biggest financial mistake that most people don't know about i
invested in a an arby's and i'm like why the fudge did i invest in an arby's i don't even
really care for arby's like who says i want to go to arby's tonight nobody nobody says
all of the fast food restaurants yes like arby's why arby's they had this good like it was like a
beef something or other when's the last time you ate it i know it's it's been over 10 years like
1990 i don't mind arby's but like i need to make sure that i'm not necessarily passionate but that
like i i really like what it is that that i'm doing and i had two partners that basically had
this deal all lined up and they just needed like a financial arm they were going to operate and
run it and i'm like cool like they pitched the world to me and they're like you just gotta and
so the problem with that is that it's like a 12-year lease that i signed up for and the arby's
failed very quickly uh and they it failed after like one year so i'm still paying eleven thousand
dollars a month for that lease for the next like seven years are you serious can you sublease it
i did i did sublease it now i i was paying that forever and i finally found a sublease about six
months ago but there's no even and that's the other thing but you're basically the guarantor
yeah of that lease so if they leave now you're responsible again for the payments yeah exactly
until they find someone else unless i want to sue the sub because they're they're also tied to me but
I almost don't have the heart.
I don't, like, it's crazy to say this,
But like, I hate my landlords because of that. Like I asked them for a buyout. I'm like, let me give you $200,000. It's almost two years of lease. And they, they realize that I'm such a cash cow and that I can afford and ride this out for 10 years that there's like, there's nothing they refuse to offer a buyout, which is just such so crappy of people to do that. In my opinion, I don't even think I could sue these guys that are leasing for me now if they decided to, I hope they're not watching.
Cause like I'm saying, I'm creating a bad foundation here, but like, I just don't think, I don't think I could be like, I'm going to go after you because I, there's a good chance I have more than them and it just doesn't seem fair to do that.
I think I would just suck it back up.
I don't think so because like, just because you have more than them, does it like, they still probably have more than a lot of other people.
Yeah.
And so like, as long as you're past kind of that critical mass, like a lot of people will use their money to like exercise their power, you know, like in good ways and bad ways.
Sure.
And so it's a decision for you, you know, use it to exercise good or.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's tough.
It's tough with that, but that was probably it.
Cause think about that over the longterm, right?
$10,000 a month times at the time, 10 more years of payment sets and they escalate rent escalations too.
So I'm, I'm a million dollars plus in the whole.
What about the other people who did the Arby's with you?
Are, are they shipping in?
Bankruptcy?
Nothing.
No, not at all.
How's your relationship with them?
I don't hate them.
Like, I don't, I don't like them.
I don't really talk to them unless I need tax info from.
Four years ago that, uh, might've gotten misplaced or something, but like, I wish them the best.
I would never open a business with them again.
Um, but like, and that's another example.
Like I could sue them and go after them, but like, I know that they have significantly less than I do.
So like what, what, even though they were the driving force behind doing it, like what good.
It's not going to, this 10 grand sounds like a lot of money, but at the end of the day, it's not impacting me that bad.
So I'll just ride it out and I'll make their lives easier.
Even though they brought me into this mess.
See, my mindset has always been, because I've gone into business with people and lost and as much as I would want to blame, like, oh, it's because of them and they did this.
And at the end of the day, like I was also the one who like decided to like, I made the decision to do that and that's on me.
And I can't, you know, even though I think they might be more responsible, I was the one, the buck stops with me at the end of the day.
And like, I just got to live with that.
Yeah.
And I'll, I'll still be accountable.
Like I could have said no.
I could have said no.
And part of it might've been me being a yes man.
Uh, and that's why I got stuck in this mess.
Like would the Arby's have changed my life at the time?
Absolutely not.
It just felt like another leg to stand on when in fact it was a, a broken leg.
It wasn't a good leg, but I'm, but I'm with you.
Like I, I have accountability towards it as well.
And that's probably driving some of the reason why I'm just footing it and dealing with it.
Why did the Arby's fail?
Because it's Arby's.
Did you not think this in the beginning?
It's like, yo, it's an Arby's.
Like did Noah, did you have anyone you, you talked to and they just said, dude, this
is Arby's we're talking about.
I know, I know, I know.
I should have.
Did you like Arby's?
Like I like their roast beef sandwiches, just their plain beef and their curly fries are
delicious, but like it's number like 57 on the list of fast food that I'm going to go
to.
So when's the last time you had Arby's?
Five years ago.
I never even, I never even went to my Arby's after it opened.
You never went to it?
Not after it opened.
I went to the one they were like doing their grand opening, but like after that,
I'd never visited it.
Would you go to another Arby's or is it forever ruined?
If I was super hungry and there was like no exit for the next 10 miles and this exit only
had an Arby's and like a Subway and a Chipotle, cause I hate Chipotle and Subway.
If it was like those three, then I'd go to Arby's.
Why do you hate Chipotle and Subway?
They're disgusting.
Subway's disgusting.
Like it smells, I can't stand it.
I love Subway.
I get sick every time I go to Chipotle and it just.
You get E. coli when you go to Chipotle?
What's that?
E. coli?
I don't know.
I hope not.
I don't know.
I just feel like.
Oh, that's the new, that's the new thing.
Oh, oh, lettuce and other stuff.
The E. coli thing, yeah.
Yes.
I love Taco Bell, which makes no sense because Chipotle is better.
I actually think in terms of flavor, Taco Bell is much better than Chipotle and Subway.
I think people go to Subway because they think it's healthy and people go to
Chipotle because it is healthy.
Yeah, that's fair.
And Taco Bell will clean you out.
Yeah.
So that's awesome.
Flushes the system.
Yes.
It's like a cleanse.
It is good.
Yeah.
So what does your portfolio look like today?
You'd be surprised.
It's largely stock in my company and cars.
Like I'm an idiot where I bought depreciating assets.
I still have quite a bit of property that I own.
I probably have.
I mean, I sold at one point I had like, I don't know, 75 doors, but now I, I think I
own eight properties.
And so there's, there's still, I don't know, $40 million worth of property that I have.
But I have mortgages on some of that, but I do have a lot of equity.
I have my cars.
I have significant value in my business and then I have very limited amounts in stocks.
And like probably a million dollars in stocks and the kids stuff.
Why'd you sell your real estate?
Strat like de-stressing part of that was the Arby's closed.
I sold seven pet supplies, plus stores that I had.
I sold a lot of my properties.
I look back and I don't know how I managed all of that stuff.
Like mentally, I just don't want that much stress.
We've created enough value in the, in the wheel businesses where I don't, I don't need
all of those other legs to stand on.
Even if crap hits the fans now and everything went away, like I have enough to live comfortably
on for the rest of my life.
So I'm like, why am I still filling my life with all of these stressors when I'm okay
now?
So it was just sold it.
Did you end up making money in real estate when all of a sudden?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I made money on like, I've, I've been really good with real estate.
Like the opposite of cars where I broke even, I break even on cars.
I've done very well with real estate.
I want most so well in real estate, just timing.
Like I don't, I would, uh, do most of my purchases around a big market correction.
So I did a lot of purchases from like, Oh nine to 12.
Where I'm buying $135,000 houses that I later sold for like three 50.
There are old dingy apartments in nice areas.
So I essentially would wait until someone moved out.
I'd make the unit real nice and then rent it for significantly higher and apartment
apartment buildings, get their valuation out of the percent of income that you make.
Like sure.
Some people might be like, okay, that apartment building is a million dollars.
That doesn't make sense as to, I, but like really it's just most people look for a six
to 8% cap rate.
And if I can create significant more rent income, then it just increases the
value of the building.
Even if the building is in the same shape that it was theoretically.
Right.
So I would go, I had a team of actually three carpenters on staff that we would go
in and fix up properties full-time.
Uh, cause I, again, I had a bunch of properties at the time and then the, I
would sell the buildings for like two X of what I paid and I would only put, you
know, 10%.
If you could go back in time, do you think it would have been wiser to just focus all
of your efforts on the wheel business?
No, cause that, that didn't take away.
And, and, um, that stuff didn't really take away from it.
I, I always, my business gets all of my attention first.
And then everything else is secondary.
So I will, I will work to the bone on the primary business.
And then I will fill in the gaps of time with the other stuff.
You don't think that you could deliver higher returns though, using that extra
time to think of more ideas at the wheel business.
We have such a big and great and competent team.
I mean, a lot of guys are five to 10 to 12.
Like we have 500 people.
I have a full C-suite.
I have, I'm one of five owners.
Like we have a lot of really brilliant, great minds at our organization.
So like I can, I can brainstorm and come up with ideas.
And we have a fabulous team that can execute them.
And I'm not like putting myself on the same plane at all as Elon, because he is,
he is a brilliant guy, but like, that's, that's kind of his, his method, right?
Like he, he comes up with the idea.
He, he is intimately involved with the team in the early stages.
And from what everything, everything that I've read and I've heard, then it,
then he empowers the team to go and do it.
Like he's the idea guy he'll be boots on the ground and in the trenches when he
needs to be, but then he trusts his team to go and develop and create wacky, new
crazy ideas that change society.
I'm again, I'm not comparing myself.
I'm not comparing myself to that, but like in a small, yeah, I'm basically in a
small micro way where I'm 1 trillionth of his net worth, um, that would only put
me at a dollar, so maybe not, but, uh, in my, in my own micro way, I try to like
emulate that, like I help be one of the idea guys, we have a lot of really
phenomenal ideas rolling out, um, on our websites.
We just did a new UIX revamp that I think is brilliant and my team took a lot of
my advice and direction on a lot of the projects and they executed it very, very
easily.
How is your business doing now with tariffs?
Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content, just like this, as well as
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Would love to have you on board.
Thanks so much.
We'll get back to the podcast now.
There's so many headwinds in the automotive business.
This is like, we, you know, we, we grew 35 to 50% for almost 20 straight years.
There was a COVID correction when stimulus money ran out and just a lot where we shrunk.
It's crazy to go from 35 to 50, actually the, in 20, I think we grew 70%.
Uh, and then to, to go from that.
And then you have 2022 where you're down like 4%.
I'm like, it's so weird.
It was usually you think it'd be like, okay, you only grew 20% or 15, but you go down after that.
Just very strange correction period.
Yeah.
So that happened for a couple of years.
And then the last few years we've been up like mid single digits, which also is kind
of hard to, to deal with.
And I think that that's kind of like, I think that's been very large industry wide.
I think there are slightly less enthusiasts than there were.
So it's, you gotta fight harder to get some of that market share.
Um, I think there's less disposable income.
I think Walmart just reported their, they were still up 2%, but they just reported their
worst quarter in quite some time.
That just came out a few days ago, I think it seems like there's something like that,
that comes up.
I think it's like, oh, we're in the green.
We're in the clear.
We can expect some growth.
Oh, great.
Tariffs just hit.
That's a good thing.
I think that's a good thing.
just raised prices 10 to 20 to 50 percent now we got to deal with that oh great we just bombed iran
oil prices are high what is the first demographic that stops buying when oil prices hit truck owners
what is our biggest source of revenue truck owners so it's like it's like you keep getting like hit
i'm thankful that we're growing given market constraints and conditions and wheel and tires
are like ants largely wheels are like ancillary spends their their luxury spends and so in i don't
think we have a down economy by by any means but it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel the same that
it did back in the day like people i don't i don't feel like people are as prone to customize
their vehicles yeah manufacturers are delivering much nicer wheels with vehicles like my escalade
v had 22 inch black chrome wheels on it i'm like i don't even want to change these these look nice
and there's a lot of cars that look like that so there's just constant headwinds and as a business
owner you have to learn how to adapt to that attack different market segments and i think we're
we've done a lot of that focus in the last year and that's going to start paying its dividends
in the coming year do you ever get knockoffs coming from china where they basically just
see your design and just say oh we could we could do the same thing and then they offer it like half
the price that's like the wheel industry in a nutshell like that's it's of our own proprietary
brands we have three anthem arcaninovia not really there's not really people like just copy pasting
them but there's it's so hard to differentiate a wheel when there are a million plus different skews
but there are plenty of brands that that are going to be able to do that so i think it's going to be
a lot of fun and i think it's going to be a lot of fun and i think it's going to be a lot of fun
what they call rep brands where they launch a whole new like line of five wheels and they're
basically just replicas of other wheels from other manufacturers and they just sell them a lot
cheaper and they do really well and so has your revenue basically probably stayed around the same
then since the last time we spoke i think you said it was at 350 we've acquired companies so we're
like i think we're going to be north of 400 this year and the crazy thing is like you know about
like multiple arbitrage where you buy companies and the more companies you buy if you can integrate
them well you get a bigger multiplier right a multiplier in a hundred million dollar company
at eight percent profit is lower than a multiplier at a 500 million dollar company at eight percent
profit because people are attracted to bigger companies that are profitable so we've done some
of that with a few of the acquisitions and that's helped us get north of i don't count when i say
single mid single digit growth i don't count that free bolt on growth if you count the free bolt on
growth it's double digit but to me that feels like cheating uh when you're like well we grew 10 but
we bought we bought uh some of that last year like that that feels like cheating but honestly in the
like they value that from all the conversations i've had it's valued about 80 as strongly as
organic natural growth like they actually see a lot of value in you acquiring and bolting it because
that's what p firms do they they try to buy a plethora of companies combine them in some cases
or encourage companies that they buy to buy other companies to create value so it's definitely a
strategy of ours to keep doing that what does your day-to-day look like like how much are you working
and what are you working on i put about 10 to 15 hours a week into my youtube channel and a lot of
travel and other stuff i my day is very much spent like meeting with people i do get in the trenches
on supply chain i enjoy talking to a lot of our suppliers especially our big ones and negotiating
with them and making sure that we have cogs reduction but also grow them as a result where
it's a good symbiotic relationship um i mean i kind of manage those projects throughout the day
where i check in on stuff um but it's it's a lot of like email project management like my my email
inbox is is my day-to-day and they're all kind of like my email inbox is my day-to-day and they're
great thing about that is i can be flexible and kind of cut it up throughout the day to get it
done but it's it's really like just getting tasks tasks done on email meeting with people in person
and video meetings so you work a lot yeah i probably still put 55 hours in a week which
it is not for me that's not a lot but that for the average person i think that's a lot but for
me that it feels balanced because i can integrate a lot of family time into that and time with my
wife do you think that you need to be putting in 55 plus hours and and go through very
aggressive work phases where you're putting in like you know 70 80 hours a week in order to be
this successful absolutely yeah and i actually do like i say that but actually right now i'm
probably in that 70 hour phase because i'm meeting with a lot of new suppliers and that's
a lot of work to meet with them to follow up with them to make sure we're doing the tactics that we
said would grow them um to implement price changes like my team does in the background
but i'm like quarterbacking a lot of this they like it really helps when the
owner of a 500 person company is on the phone with these suppliers like it carries a lot of weight
in in their perception and and what can get done to grow them so when i do that those are the 70
plus hour weeks but they they grow sales and they significantly reduce our cost of goods sold so
like absolutely but there are other times where um you're solving like production problems or
other issues like our warehouse almost fell apart in 2020 i think i was the only one that could
rescue it i hate to say it but i had to go out there i was working 100 hour weeks i worked my
mother's day uh all mother's day i'm like i'm sorry carolyn she understood it because she's the
greatest human alive but i had to work that entire day and like if i hadn't done that i don't think
we exist right now so there are times where you have to do it just because you're at a critical
crossroads uh make or break and then there are times where you see opportunity and you can sit
back and kind of not work that much and not utilize all the opportunity or you can be like if i work
80 hours i'm gonna get significant growth out of this and anytime there's that opportunity i will
take it how much have you explored
selling the company recently i would say like we we know what value we want and we don't think
we're there but we think we're close and i feel like i i legit have been saying that for two years
because we we're still getting that single digit growth all i need to do like we have a great
foundation all i need to do is i think that once we implement some of these huge projects that
we've worked we have a team of 30 different web developers ai people like we're unlike i think
most wheel companies like most wheel guys don't have 40 team 40 people in market like we are for
all intents and purposes a tech company and a marketing company that happened to sell a
and these guys have been hard at work on a lot of these big projects and i think as these launch
we're going to get really close in the next one to two years so but you can't say what these
what these projects are i really can't but the uix is was a huge we hadn't updated our uix in
like eight years which is insane and it's just such a cleaner flow that like offers guaranteed
fitment it just it's really a seamless flow to put for you to put wheels and tires on your
vehicle you feel very confident about what you bought you get a huge easy to read assortment
we have ai filtering which is really neat i got inspired by cars.com where you can just type in
2005 hummer h2 less than 30 000 miles black just type all that in free form and then it just filters
you right to that and i'm like this is i love that this is crazy it's so much otherwise you do drop
downs you'd have to do filtering beyond it like it'd be it'd be two minutes to get to those results
before and now it's instant so we implemented a lot of that that filtering and that tactics in our
wheel store and it's just some great tools like that that increase usability and some of the
stuff we have are going to vastly increase usability and some of the stuff we have are going to vastly
one of the things i have i think is could be the next billion dollar idea and i can't talk about it
now but we're just i'm really excited because during those shrinking years it was about
stability fixing the foundation turn off all growth projects the two years after that call
it 24 25 it was more like implement some growth projects but nothing too crazy late 25 26 has
been about okay cool 80 growth 20 stability like we're stable we're good so this is the
exciting time when everybody is working on growth projects and we've only that's 12 to 18
months of that where prior to that it was all stability and and conservatism just to make sure
that we were going to be good so this is this is the exciting time when we know that the fruits of
our labor will will be utilized soon and what would you do after you sell it i think that i'll
be locked up in an employment agreement like i'll always i'll always meet up with investment makers
and they've i get invited to conventions all the time and i'll go to some of them and i feel like
the the pe guys that talk to me make it very clear i'll need to stick around with the organization
for two to four years and i'm fine with that like i i love doing what i'm doing there's
there's genuinely not a day that i wake up where i dread it because like i think what we do is so
fun um it's it's enthusiast automotive parts like it's wheels people love wheels exhaust systems like
it's not i'm not selling like screws um or like gaskets like it's fun stuff i think no matter
what i'm still with the company call it four to six years totally fine with that but i think i
permanently moved to florida and just do more things that i'm excited about like the last time i said
i slipped away from the company a little bit i got my pilot's license i started my youtube channel
maybe it's focusing more on the youtube channel like i know that there's a one-to-one correlation
with youtube sub growth uh and consistent videos like maybe it's doing that it probably is doing
that uh focusing more on youtube which sounds crazy because that's not going to drive much
revenue but yeah just living life easier how much do you think your youtube channel has affected
your tire business i think it's been a really positive thing like there's
always risk where people see you're exposed like your wealth is exposed and and you might get a
an adverse reaction but i think people see the mission of the channel they know that like i'm
a good guy i'm i genuinely like i don't want to like toot my own horn but like i think i present
as a humble guy and i really try to be nice and kind to everybody and and i think people see like
what you see on youtube is who i am like i'm a goofy quirky guy that likes to fart
and i just like to communicate and level with people and share my stuff like that's just the
way that i am and i think people see the true me and that helps it's also connected us with a bunch
that we advertise on that we didn't we could not even touch before the whistling diesels of the
world the cletus mcfarland's we already had a relationship with the seaboys but it strengthens
that like there's a lot of the amelia hartford like there's a lot of people that are willing
to work with us because of of this connection and it's opened up a lot of doors for us and then i
can advertise whenever we don't have an ad partner on a video like i'm gonna i try to integrate hey
guys buy from fitmentindustries.com if you need some wheels and tires that's where i got my wheels
i'll try to plug that whenever i can what are you still frugal about like i'm an
experience, guys.
if it's, this is, it's kind of anything that's not travel experience or car, like I'm wearing
your pants. I showed up here in shorts and it was crotch shot, crotch shot city. So
like my shoes are just regular Nike's. My shirt is an Abercrombie shirt. That was $40. Like
my watch is a $60 watch. Like really it's, it's my clothing and the way that I present myself.
I'm very frugal about, like, I don't, I don't need to look like I hate people that just flex
the way that they look, even though I'm driving in cars, it feels like contradictory, but I just
want to walk around and look like I'm a normal guy, but also go enjoy time in hypercars. So
it's probably my clothing and how I present myself. At what point do you think you felt
financially secure? I mean, when you grew up with nothing, like my first month of doing this,
I made, I think $6,000 my first month. And that's what I'd made the
probably the prior year. So like, it just felt, I felt really good about what, even though there
were many points along the way where it's like, if I took this one path, we ceased to exist. And I,
and I always took the right path, but like, I felt really good right away. However, when we started
getting business valuations during the COVID timeframe, when all everyone was 20 X and one
of the companies valued us at a billion dollars at that time, I feel pretty financially secure
right now. Uh, when they're throwing out,
and one of them even offered us like a 20% stake. So they offered us a $200 million. They get a 20%
stake. However, the clawback, like they expected 35 to 50% growth. And we're like, in our minds,
we're like, well, we're going to do that. Like we can do that, but they would have owned a hundred
percent of my company at that $200 million. Cause they would have clawed back every bit of it.
We wouldn't have hit their growth targets over the next five years. So I'm glad we didn't do it
because we would have short sold ourselves. What car YouTuber is the worst with money?
Steve Hamilton. Honestly,
I don't think anybody yourself. Okay. Uh, but it really is me. Um,
why would you say you're bad with money? I think, I think you have a great collection.
That's gone up in value quite a bit. Like I would say you're actually pretty smart.
I'm modifying these. We're putting way too many miles on them. We're like,
we're doing stupid stuff. Like the channel hurts the values of the cars.
If it's a Steve Hamilton car like that, that inherently drops at 5%.
But I think you're good with money. Like I think of all of the car YouTubers, who am I
not necessarily who will have the most, because obviously you will have,
the most because of your business and all of that, but like, who's going to have a higher
growth rate. I think you're going to probably have the highest like net worth growth rate.
Maybe. I think that they're all, they all have to be most of them. This is their primary
business, right? Like the mad Armstrong's of the world. Houston does have a, like this,
his channel is very secondary to what he does, but I think he's really good about his cars.
He buys them cheap. He tries to buy stuff off. I'm like, no, bro, I'm not going to,
I'm not going to buy that car from you for that much money. That's insane. I'm not going to sell
this car to you for that little money, but he's like, finds the deals like Stradman does.
His best. I don't know that anyone's bad. I'm trying to think like Shmi is really focused on
his stuff. I mean, Stradman always talks about the Agera, his Koenigsegg. That was on the podcast
that we did with him. That was one of it. So I love James and Stradman, but I know he's made
some bad financial investments much like we have. And so he's the one that comes to mind because
most recently he is the one that, that stuck out the most in that Agera example. He couldn't sell
it. He lost a lot of money. He thought it would be a good thing for his channel, but he gets as
much views out of the Lamborghini. And that, that put him in a lot of, I think it was a $30,000 a month
payment on that thing. And so maybe James. Who's the best? I mean, probably, probably
Houston Costa. What makes him so good with money? Cause he's cheap. We're talking about just on
cars, right? Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I don't think we're talking just on cars. I think we're talking,
I thought we were talking about like car, who is the best investment in cars? Who is,
who is the most financial literacy in like, yeah, but they're all to do with cars at the end of the
day. Yeah. If we're talking about cars. Yeah. But if we're talking about financial literacy,
it'd have to be like a, it,
if I can't include myself, I'd have to be like a super car, Ron, who's, he's got a decent sized
channel, but he's, he's not as known as Stratman. Like, cause it'd have to be a business guy first.
Right. I know Shmi does his own thing with real estate, but he's very, I feel like he's very
private about what he does beyond the scenes. But I know that his channel, like I know what YouTube
pays and I know you can't afford his collection value with YouTube revenue alone. So like he must
be, it's really who has the bet, like Manny Coachman. It's, it's, it's really who is, who is
channel is secondary.
Like I literally did a Google search, not that I believe this Google search at all. And I was just
like, Oh, how much money do you think custom offsets makes? And it was like, ah, probably
like $15 million. And I was like, uh, it just said 15 million. And then I said like, what do you think
of the chances that this business makes $350 million in revenue? It said zero to 1%.
Custom offsets is, is about, that's one of the many brands. And I think that one drives about
$200 million of top line. So again, all of the channels combined do that.
The north of 400, but custom offsets is our biggest driver of traffic. But yeah,
it sounds like even if you had asked it 200 million, I probably would have told you one
to 2% would have been wrong. But I don't know why that, like why that shows up so incorrectly.
Well, the more I taught, like I'm talking about it now. So AI, I bet you, if you check,
could they, they read everything. They, they analyze every video, the more input that you
give to the AI machine, the better that it does. And they're probably going to scrape this video.
And in two months you'll probably look it up and it'll say, but even so we spoke about this in the
last podcast that we did. Yeah. Well, I mean, we threw around some numbers and stuff and, and for
me, it was just absurd that it was, it was that incorrect. And then I, I just did a simple Google
search. It's like a 300,000 square foot warehouse. I'm like, there's just no way that a business
makes like five, $10 million has a 300,000 square. No chance. Yeah. They would be absorbed. All of
that would be absorbed in just building costs. Right. So until just recently it was pulling
from Reddit chat, GBT actually just stopped doing that, which is crazy. Oh, did they,
that was their like primary source. They were pulling a lot from Reddit.
I read about that. I remember them touting that they're going to be doing that. And even Google,
I think does that as well, especially for reviews and other stuff. AI is getting stupid smart
though. Is there anything that you wanted to discuss? I think for YouTube, we're at a crossroads
right now. Like we are, I think it's worth talking about like YouTube changes every three to three
to six months. And we have to constantly have come to God meetings and we do that. And we're
a very business mindset. You can do really well on YouTube. There's a lot of people that channel
kind of fizzles out and we've always rode those storms and done really well. And it feels like
we're largely at a crossroads right now where we pivoted, um, took huge inspiration from Matt
Armstrong. He is the greatest storyteller on YouTube, probably the greatest automotive
influencer right now. And so we started telling stories on our YouTube videos and it's done
really, really well for us, but we feel like we've hit that ceiling of subscriber penetration where,
where we need to either shift the content that we're doing to be
more like, how do you like Matt Armstrong's are multi-part series. They, they bring people in
people, people hit the subscribe button because the journey is unfinished. We are giving people
something that took a year to do, to build spec, visit factory, do a car all in one video.
So we're not really giving them a reason to hit that subscribe button because we're giving them
too much. Why does the subscriber count matter? This is just my own, my own personal thing is
like, this is my YouTube channel is secondary to me. It's, it's a hobby, but I have to win at it
because I have to get good views and I have to have high sub count or I'll stop. And I've always
said that to them. Like I will. And I'm at a point right now where, where we, we've always turned
around views. If views get in the, in the trenches, which they'll do for two months, we'll sit down,
we'll revamp. And we always get the, we'll have banger videos come out.
If you want to grow your subscribers, the best thing that you have to do is unfortunately play
the game, but playing the game is sometimes not very fun at all. Like that means you have to make
YouTube shorts that like, that like, and if you want any more than you subscribe and you have to
the entire purpose of the short is to get subscribers. Like people do that and they can
get over a million subscribers from one effective short, but then again, that's just like not very
fun, but they've throttled even that I think that shorts growth was tremendous for two years and we
still have high performing shorts. And I don't think that they're the sub machine that they used
to be. So like that was a pivot a year ago. It's or two years ago, it was okay. YouTube, YouTube is
really pushing shorts. They're really giving subs from that. So let's put a lot of focus on high
performing shorts. I think that they've really deep throttled that. And so now it's now, I think
I know what I need to do, but the reason why I'm at a crossroads is, and Matt Armstrong stayed with
us at Monterey for three days and he is a great inspiration. And it's like, I need to be, I've
always been told I need to be consistent, but consistency, I didn't realize how important it was
for sub count. I started looking up on AI talking to him. It's like the attention span is barely
more than a week. Some people have beat this, like the whistling diesels of the world still get five
to 10 million views a video. And sometimes
you won't drop one for a, for a month. Right. But there's still a significant importance in
being consistent weekly. The seaboys are pinnacle example of it. Matt Armstrong, pinnacle example,
where Cletus McFarland, great example where like they have this cult following and it's because
they're so consistent and they stay true to their viewers. So I have to be more involved in the
channel. I have to start posting every two, we do every three weeks, every two weeks and then
every week. So I'm actually at a crossroads where it's, am I going to stop my channel? Are we going
to go out where I feel like we're kind of at a peak on top. We've done really well over the course of
four and a half years to get to 2.2 million subs, right? Like I think that's great in the YouTube
world, especially in something that's overcrowded with automotive influencers. So it we're having a
come to God meeting tomorrow. It's, it's how do we get to this? How do we get to this increased
sub count? I'll tell you, sub count does not matter at all. I think you're fine. I think
you're focused on the wrong metric. It's like all these other things matter. And you're focused on
the one thing that does not matter. It's not going to move the needle. That's you're, you're putting
all your attention on the wrong place. I agree. Viewership is more important, right? But,
also YouTube is now starting to test in certain phones, removing the sub count entirely where you
just see the video a thumbnail title it doesn't matter how many subs you have they're moving away
from that they're really just pushing the best content possible which makes sense and i think
we're delivering much better content so the only way to do it in my opinion if you want to grow
the channel is making broader topics that appeal to more people doing more shorts and more
collaborations collabs i i agree with i agree with all that i think we continue nailing down
storytelling collabs are huge we went on cletus's channel and got 30 000 subs over the course of a
week it was insane so i think that also the the one moment that really sticks out to me is you
with david dobrik yes scraping your car i mean that was probably the best thing to happen to
the channel yes because i remember everyone was sharing that and talking about it so unfortunately
the more you like do that sort of stuff like shocking content but then it's a game of like
you just keep spiraling further and further down and people force it like
the
the more that i shoot though the more that that stuff's going to pop up the more that i'm out
creating content the more controversy other stuff like that i got i got a great car this is a banger
video for you you put people behind the wheel of these car for the first time but you screen them
ahead of time to make sure they're going to have a good reaction some people are just terrible on
camera but like imagine you get a 19 year old girl behind this car who's never driven stick before
yeah and it's just you get a reaction driving a two million dollar car yeah like stuff like that
stuff like that
stuff like that
stuff like that is so appealing to every because everyone would be curious like what's the reaction
putting a grandma like i'm talking she's 80 years old in the years old in the hennessy yeah it sounds
and she sits in there and you turn it on and she her eyes light up this is crazy like that sort of
stuff like wholesome stuff that just people would genuinely want to tune in and as a short i could
easily get five to ten million views easy oh yeah for sure as sure yeah that's a shorts machine but
it's also long form
of like we're gonna get a few people in these cars in the middle of like everything else that you're
doing well when matt matt had told me like it's less important about like when he stopped focusing
on cars that he thought would do good and just started focusing on cars that he wanted to get
it made me think like and i don't know if this is the right idea but like i'm wondering if we
if we go find a family in need or someone that is like stage four cancer and there's always a
car that they wanted to have it's a 69 mustang mach one it's something and then we tell the story
of us finding the people finding the car uh fixing up whatever needs to be done and then the second
portion of the video is us sharing it with them letting them experience that unfortunately that's
not going to do well for the algorithm unless that's something that you genuinely just want
to do anyway and it's spreading the message but i would not ever look at that as like that's good
for the channel yeah i don't think people want to see hyper and super what would do better is if you
go on facebook marketplace and you say we're gonna find the cheapest car yeah and see what happens
like the cheapest s-class mercedes is down the street it's six thousand dollars we have no idea
what's what's wrong let's just show up and see and you bring cash and you try to like haggle the deal
and then you see how far it goes until it breaks like that would do well for you or putting like
putting like a horrible engine in a hyper car or like vice versa like getting like the cheapest car
like a 1500 car and putting like the craziest and we were gonna work with matt on swapping out the
drivetrain on the regera he was warm to it and uh putting like an ls1 in my koenigsegg which would
have made it a very drivable car but i'm like that would probably have been really good for him
really good for us because he's always said the koenigsegg is the end all be all like he's like
i want to get a koenigsegg but you can't find them wrecked for whatever reason you just can't
get your so that would have been a good one oh another one these do well is uh let's just say
you have a real lamborghini diablo yeah you get a replica and you see just how good of a replica
that one is compared to the real thing
and you could frame it like these cars have been going up in value too much and now i don't want to
put miles so we're going to find a replica version of it and just piece that thing together people
are so fascinated by replicas that i've seen do well as well as like you people call an uber and
you pick them up as an actual uber driver in hyper cars we we looked at that too yeah it's been
overdone though i don't think it i don't know yes yeah every time i virgins just did one with the
pagani and you did one with howie mandel everything has to be extreme now on youtube yeah i think like
everything to the max to the extreme so it's so hard to do anything at this point i'm just trying
to find something that is relatable like the me going and buying a 69 mustang mach one is not
relatable to our viewers because they want to see hyper and supercars right and i and i agree with
that i'm trying to think like what is a series that i can do weekly where everything we do now
is like sub-channel stuff like taking a car delivery is our content's very inconsistent
like we're doing drag races and then we're taking car delivery like a lot of people don't find
success in being very inconsistent in the type of content they're putting out but we've been
lucky to find success yeah but yours is personality based i feel like i watch your channel more so for
you than like the car sure so i think you make it focused on you another concept would be putting a
really loud exhaust and seeing how long it takes you until you get pulled over and just you have
a timer at the bottom it's like all right we're 20 minutes 22 minutes it took us let's see if we
could beat that record people would love that like stupid stuff yes like oh and by the way for
youtube unfortunately the more mind-numbing it is yep the less people have to think the better it's
going to do agreed yeah yeah i agreed it's good good advice you guys should drop a comment below
if there's any series or recurring thing you guys would love to see on the channel just let me know
i'll read each and every one of these comments it could be specking graham and jack's new rolls
royce phantom let's go think of all the views you would get i already did that and we did it
on a mansory it did really well actually yeah i saw one video of an old couple recently specking
out this rolls royce or it was a bentley or it was something and they got it delivered and it was it
was because it was so out of touch though but it got millions of views when the wife's like oh i
don't know i kind of like the purple over the the blue and we want this headliner she's talking about
the the wood inserts on the thing it's like out of touch oh honey it's only seventy thousand dollars
that's really not that bad and he's like no it's not that unrelatable and out of touch yeah yes but
it was great but then they got it delivered and she talks about how much she loves her like rolls
royce or something like that she she closed a good story she did so stuff like that yeah we're
we just feel like we're at a crossroads and so we're gonna figure it out i'm sure that you will
the only thing that i would say is like i would hesitate to see what someone else is doing and
how they're finding success with like a specific thing and like trying to do that because i think
that you're also in a very unique position yeah of having access to the capital that you have access
to like the collection that you have like i do think it'd be great if you could come up with
your own unique thing yeah i'm like i could go buy a wreck to bugatti and build it but then yeah
then everyone's gonna say you're trying to be man armstrong and i'm not gonna i don't have the time
to go fix that so like it's it's not as even as genuine like he's good at what he does he's a
talented guy he's relatable and so yeah you're right i agree 100 on that it has to be something
new just like a business idea like if it is something that someone's doing do it way better
and otherwise find something new and unique that will engage viewers so that's that's the decision
right there could do something like a like a pimp my ride for like a high schooler or something like
that like they bring in their car you know that they're like a car fanatic or like you do it for
a subscriber and you like make it a really cool like the pimp my ride concept we would do even
the mustang mock idea i gave well they're like they're like they're like they're like they're
i just i don't know if if it doesn't test well with your initial viewers then it doesn't it
typically won't perform well at all right like your initial viewers are the loyal super hyper
car so i'm like pigeonholed in this it needs to be super hyper car related or it won't do well
with my first subset of viewers and then youtube is very unlikely to expand that's not necessarily
true you don't think so no the algorithm will test it originally with your viewers but a good
video generally will do well that's fair so but yeah it may just not perform with the the
type of people that you may want it to perform sure yeah which i'm okay with so thank you so
much for coming on the podcast and for all the channel members out there steve is going to be
giving us a full tour of his entire collection here showing you the ins and outs so for all of
the channel members out there that is now live it's fun you know what in fact we're going to
put a little teaser right here he's turned more heads than anything else in the collection there's
10 in the world maybe four of them in the usa we also tune this it pops whenever you shift and go
to the second gear it's just and shoots fire i haven't even made my delivery public yet so you
guys are actually the first to really see that and so these are the first cars to ever break the 200
mile an hour lap very at nascar one of the neatest cars in the collection the whole top pops up like
a jetson spaceship for anyone who's not subscribed to you by the way we'll link to all of your info
down below in the description go and say we got to get your subscriber count up it doesn't matter
but for everyone watching seriously go and subscribe it's really cool content and you were
so generous by the way with us last night with the index link down below in the description
but for allowing us to go and like drive these cars and experience it for a lot of these people
um they've never driven a car like this even close uh maybe one andy andy has but besides andy
it's such a cool experience and for me too to be able to like even be in a passenger seat or to
drive the gt3rs was insane so i really appreciate that appreciate you guys for coming out cool
thanks again until next time
i think gta is a magical moment for our culture so what's your biggest trade coming up like
it's gonna do phenomenal what about i'm not excited about i don't own any right now but i
still think the main trade is on take two what are your thoughts i love to see falling here
i don't know when i'm gonna make my big move to heavily lever back into it but it's probably
going to happen at some point in the next few months
elon musk the world's richest person has also become the world's first trillionaire
The system is rigged.
At what point, though, does the wealth gap get so big that all of a sudden something has to break?
And every civilization that has rose has fallen because of a growing wealth gap.
Over 40% of us are unfamiliar with Roth IRAs, money market accounts, and high-yield savings.
It is profitable to keep you financially stupid.
Most Americans today would rather look rich than be rich.
Do you have an investing belief that people would disagree with?
Yeah, I have. Warren Buffett would hate that.
So what do you think is the biggest risk for the economy that no one is going to see coming?
Right now, we have about $40 trillion of national debt.
We are spending about $2 trillion a year that we don't have right now.
Some people say that AI is going to boost productivity to the point where all of a sudden the national debt is not going to matter as much as it does today.
I can't predict the future. All I can do is look at history.
And while history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it does rhyme.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but that's what I think is going to happen in the future.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The auto market, especially hypercars, is experiencing a potential bubble driven by inflated prices and suspicious bidding practices on platforms like Bring a Trailer.
Production numbers from manufacturers like Ferrari and Pagani are suspected to be overstated, contributing to inflated car values.
Cars like the LaFerrari have skyrocketed in value—from around $2 million to $7–8 million—despite production claims of only 900 units.
Steve Hamilton manages a high-value car collection valued at $30 million, with some vehicles like the Superbird and Yesko seeing dramatic price increases.
He has shifted strategy by focusing on new, high-value cars at MSRP, prioritizing enjoyment over investment, and planning to build a car community in Florida.
A core principle driving his decisions is the "yes" mentality—actively sharing cars with others for joy and experience, even if it leads to wear and maintenance issues.
The collection includes vehicles with extreme value disparities, such as the Koenigsegg Regera, which faced repeated failures and significant financial loss, highlighting risks in ultra-luxury ownership.
Hamilton believes the market may correct soon, as overvaluation is fueled by speculative buyers who rarely plan to sell, and new analog hypercars may reverse the trend of hybrid dominance.
Summary:
Steve Hamilton, a car enthusiast and entrepreneur, reflects on the current state of the automotive market, particularly hypercars, which he believes are overvalued due to speculative bidding, inflated production numbers, and a bubble effect. He notes that cars like the LaFerrari have seen value surge from $2 million to $7–8 million despite claims of limited production, and suspects Italian manufacturers like Ferrari and Pagani are misleading buyers with exaggerated output figures. His personal collection, now valued at $30–40 million, includes rare and high-performance vehicles such as Porsches, Bugattis, and a Koenigsegg, though he has faced significant financial losses with the Regera due to chronic mechanical issues.
While he initially bought cars for emotional and experiential value, he now prioritizes new vehicles at MSRP and plans to build a car community in Florida, offering storage, green spaces, and shared experiences. He remains cautious about the market's sustainability, warning of a looming correction as overpayment and poor buyer behavior signal instability. Despite this, Hamilton maintains a "yes" mentality—actively lending cars to others for joy and experience—while emphasizing that true value lies in ownership for enjoyment rather than financial gain.
He also highlights undervalued classics like the Bugatti Veyron and recommends them as strong long-term investments, especially for non-drivers. Ultimately, his approach blends passion, risk awareness, and a focus on community, positioning him as a unique figure in both automotive culture and entrepreneurial innovation.
FAQs
The surge in hypercar values is partly due to potential fake bids on platforms like Bring a Trailer and manufacturer tactics to boost prices. Many believe the market is a bubble, with values rising too quickly, especially for cars like the LaFerrari, which have gone from $2 million to $7–$8 million.
Steve Hamilton's car collection is valued at around $30 million, possibly rising to $35–$40 million in the past year. The increase is driven by strong demand and rising prices, especially for rare supercars like his Superbird and Yesko.
The Bugatti Veyron is considered undervalued, with a potential starting price of $5 million despite being sold for as low as $1.5 million. The McLaren 720S and 750S are also seen as underappreciated for their driving experience and reliability.
He sold the Bugatti Chiron SS because it was boring and he needed the cash to fund a new car community project in Florida, which aligns with his goal of creating a car-focused country club environment.
He plans to shift focus from high-end, rare hypercars to more accessible, fun-to-drive vehicles and is building a car community in Florida with nature trails, green spaces, and a clubhouse to enhance the car ownership experience.
Yes, the Koenigsegg Regera had frequent issues, including bricking and constant breakdowns, with problems persisting for 22 out of 24 months. Despite these issues, Steve still appreciates the brand’s innovation and technology.
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