Doug DeMuro: How A YouTube Car Reviewer Sold His Company For $40M

Episode 456: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk to Doug DeMuro (@DougDeMuro) founder and creator of the popular YouTube channel Cars and Bids, about selling the majority of his company for $40 Milllion, competitors, and more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: * Cars and Bids * Cars and Bids YouTube * Exotic Car Hacks * DrDisRespect * WhistlinDiesel * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (00:18) - Intro to Doug (03:28) - The key to building trust (08:50) - When was the turning point for your channel? (16:03) - Why did you think you could beat Bring A Trailer? (16:55) - How creator business partnerships work (31:25) - How does your brand change as you gain wealth? (49:20) - How does it feel to be wealthy? (54:30) - Doug's feud with Car Dealer Guy (01:09:30) - Will Doug ever fly private? (01:11:45) - Sam gets flustered by Doug ------ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  Well, how's it feel to be wealthy now? After grinding out this for so long?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  It's better than before. It is definitely nice.

• 0:18Sam Parr?

  Doug, I want to give you an intro because I've been a fan of yours forever. And I, in 2019 or 2020, when our podcast was much smaller, I told Sean about you. I go, this guy Doug is very fascinating. I think he should launch like some type of like car website. I'm not sure. Then you did, and then we talked about it. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure this is going to be huge. And so I want to take a little bit, I want to take like 1%, you know, I helped you succeed. I get a little bit of credit because I picked you. You're my, you're my horse that I bet on.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  There's something real, I'm sure we'll discuss this, but there's something real about that. Like I tell all my friends now in this space, like you need to start businesses. Like this will not last forever. You need to start businesses. And I think smart people who are in the business world kind of realize that.

• 1:01Sam Parr?

  And you are my, you are my guy. And so for the audience who don't know, um, so Doug DeMuro has a, uh, it started as a, you're just a YouTuber, I guess. I mean, you're originally a journalist for a bunch of different websites where you would write these funny quirky blogs. Then you parlayed that into a YouTube channel that I think now has like four million subscribers. But the reason why you're huge and lovable is for a few different reasons. One, you dress really funny. So like you'll wear like khaki shorts, like from the early 2000s with like a red polo shirt. And then your white undershirt will be longer than the sleeves of your polo shirt. So it's like hanging out with those sleeves and like, you're just dressed like horribly, even though your videos each get like two or three million views.

• 1:46Sam Parr?

  Like you're on Jay Leno's, um, pod, uh, or you're on Jay Leno's YouTube, like a few days ago, and you're wearing Sakoni like running shoes. I'm like, what are you doing, dude?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Well, Jay, Jay is not like Jay's dressing up, you know, so I feel like I there's not a high bar there.

• 2:02Sam Parr?

  Anyway, you're just like, you're very likeable because of the way you dress. You're very funny. You're very quirky. Cause that's one of your things is talk about the quirks of cars. You're very quirky. You're very relatable. And so you've grown this YouTube channel to like four million subscribers. You launched this company called Cars and Bids, which is like, almost like eBay, but for different types of cars, cars enthusiasts, so cars from the eighties, nineties and early two thousands. And then recently you sold the majority of the business to Churning Group for around forty million dollars, I believe, when it was only like two or three years old. And I've, I've bought cars from the website. So anyway, I'm a big fan.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me on.

• 2:37Shaan Puri?

  I, I just listened to, so I just bought a car a couple of months ago, three, three, four months ago. And it was your YouTube video that put me over the edge. So I bought a Cadillac, I bought an Escalade and I was looking for a review. Your review has 1.7 million views. I was like, okay, this got to be the best one. Like Sam said, I was surprised because I'm not a car guy at all. And also I had never seen your stuff. I had only heard Sam talk about you on the podcast. So I actually didn't put two and two together that, oh, that's the same guy that Sam's been talking about until I watched the video and I was like, I don't know why I trust this guy. What's the, what's the key to, to being the sort of likeable, trustworthy guy? Is that just who you are?

• 3:19Shaan Puri?

  Did you, did you play anything up in your YouTube videos? Is there, is there any strategy here? Or is it all just, that's just who you were?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  No, that's a good question. And the answer is there is remarkably little strategy. I just, in fact, if you go and watch the videos from before, I had a lot of subscribers, they're pretty much the same. So it's not like, you know, it's not like I knew what the hell I was doing when I had 200,000 subscribers. It's not like I knew where this was gonna go. But I really think, I think one of the reasons though, that I kind of did it this way is that a lot of people come to me and they're like, I'm gonna make the best car videos with 4K drones and high quality sound and music and all this stuff. And I just wanted to like, kind of show people like, you actually can do this. As long as the content is good, you can just do this. Like you can just do it in your garage.

• 4:08Sam Parr?

  You're just using an iPhone, right?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Basically, the shots where I'm like in them, there's a, it's a cam, it's a Sony 4K camcorder, which isn't cheap, but it's also not like a crazy camera. And then an iPhone is, yeah, half the video is done on an iPhone.

• 4:20Sam Parr?

  And like you're editing, if I remember correctly, up until recently, like until the startup cars and biz, you're editing them and like, they're not like good editing, but in a way that makes it awesome. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a very, it's, it's really funny. It's, it's, it's quirky.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  It was just simple. My goal was just always to like overload people with info and like cool stuff about the cars. And they could decide, if they decided that, hey, this, this quality's not good enough, then they could go find somebody else. But like, I always felt that I had the most info, like the most like, it like, when you bought that Escalade, like seeing how all that stuff works, how it's, how it's gonna fit together, sitting inside it. So many other people focus so much on like driving experience. They're, they do forty five, forty, like, like twenty minute video and, and, and eighteen of the minutes are, oh, and here's how it goes through the corners. And I was just like, you know, like, let's show people the little ins and outs of the car they are actually gonna buy. And I think that that's like proved to be quite useful.

• 5:12Sam Parr?

  And you also have this thing at the end, I don't know if you saw this, Sean, but like I watch every, every single one of his videos. And he has this thing at the end called the Doug score. And if, and Doug, you kind of like, by the way, it seems like I'm like insulting you constantly. But in reality, I'm in like love with you, but like, I'm like.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just, I don't, I get what you're saying. Like, yeah, the, the quality was never the goal. The goal was always like the quality of content, you know?

• 5:40Sam Parr?

  Well, what I'm saying is.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  I agree with you.

• 5:41Sam Parr?

  You have this thing called the Doug score, which like I base my buying decisions off of. Like I've bought a bunch of cars, probably three or four cars off your, like you've driven, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of value, like to whoever, who I bought my car from. And you have this thing called the Doug score at the end of every video. And I went and Googled and tried to find it and you could barely find it. It's like on a Google sheet and you have to click file, make a copy so I could sort it. Cause I'm trying to sort it. I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm like, I want, cause you have two categories. You have the weekend category, which is, uh, you know, like a dad who wants to have fun. It's like McLaren's and shit like that. And then you have, um, a family or a daily category, which is just like what's good for daily, whatever. And some days I'm like, you know, maybe I'm in the mood to buy like a, a, a fast car.

• 6:26Sam Parr?

  Like, let's go, let's sort by speed in the category of.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Weekend. Yeah.

• 6:33Sam Parr?

  And but I gotta like go to Excel and I've got to like do like a like a like a like a row freeze and I it's so complicated. Why don't you make this more like robust? It's a really this database could be a business in itself.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I know. I agree. I should do more with it. To be fair, the Doug score came out in like mid 17 and for the first two years, it wasn't really all that valuable because it didn't really have that many cars in it. And so like late 19, it starts to become pretty valuable. And now there's got to be like a thousand data points in there. But what happened was I launched cars and bids. I just priorities had to kind of take shape. And yeah, I probably should do more with that because I think it's valuable also. And I think the really valuable thing would be able to be to sort by like type of car. Like if you want a fast wagon, put up all the fast wagons and then you can just have that. But that's something that that you could do at home. I've decided I've decided I'm going to just do the videos and I'm a big fan of specialization. And so I decided I'm going to do the videos and we're going to let other people and sometimes

• 7:29Speaker 01

  people email me. They're like, I just did this great data project with all the Doug score data. Here it is. And I look at it and it's really cool. And it's like, I should be doing that. But I'm not.

• 7:37Sam Parr?

  At what point did you so the the show, I mean, your channel, has it been growing very steadily? And was it making enough income to live off of throughout its existence?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I launched the channel late 13. But the really big kind of turning point for the channel was in late 16, I flipped to two videos a week. And I don't know that necessarily that is the turning point anymore for a YouTube channel, but in 16, it had a big effect. And and almost right away after doing that, yes, it became enough money to live on that. I did that. I made that switch in August of 16. And in December of 16, I made 20 grand. And I was like, Oh, my God, like, this is a thing. I didn't know what I didn't know was Christmas, the ad revenue is way higher at Christmas time. And so in January, I made like eight grand. And I was like, Oh, well, I guess maybe this isn't a thing. I don't know what's going on.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  But that was one of the things I learned throughout. And so, yeah, like, pretty quickly, it it kind of grew at that point to become something I could live on.

• 8:36Shaan Puri?

  And so when you were made that switch, you're like, All right, I'm going to start doing two videos a week. Is it because you had heard of the algorithm likes that? Or you just happened to do it and saw a bump? What was the what was the reason? Because I always wonder with people who get started with content.

• 8:51Shaan Puri?

  Like in retrospect, in hindsight, it always makes sense. It's like, oh, of course people are gonna wanna see a car before they kind of buy it or just like sit from the comfort of their home, like get to see a review of a car. That makes sense. YouTube's the biggest video platform, so whoever does it on YouTube's gonna benefit. There's gonna be lots of search volume, so they'll probably get views just by a search, by the search of the name of the car. And yeah, that video's probably gonna charge a premium or be worth a premium or maybe make money on affiliate or something. I don't know exactly what it is, but I could see how it'll make money. It all makes sense in hindsight. At the time in 2013, when you start doing this, did you think there's a business here? And how did you get those initial views? How did you get the initial momentum? Was it because of your following as a writer or was it separate?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And I actually got really lucky. You know, I never ever tell people to like work for like promotional value. Like a lot of times businesses will be like, oh, instead of paying you in money, I'll pay you in, you know, like exposure. And I think that's BS, but it actually worked for me. I wrote for Jalopnik, which at the time was a Gawker blog and was an incredibly popular one. It was the most popular car blog on the internet by far. And I started inserting my videos into those articles and that drove, the articles drove people to the videos, which then started to put me in the algorithm, which then started to get me subscribers. And Jalopnik was paying me, I swear to God, $25 an article, which was not real money, but like the value was in the number of people coming over to my YouTube.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I didn't know that at the time, but in the years, in the later years, as 2013 became 2015, it became clear to me like, I think I'm actually a YouTuber and not a writer anymore. Like I think this is a reality now. And so when I decided to move to two a week, what happened was I left Jalopnik to start a blog with Autotrader, with Cox Automotive and Autotrader. And in order to promote that blog, I decided I would be shooting more videos. And within eight weeks, I was, the video content was suddenly earning, getting way more views and way more revenue than the, than the writing content.

• 10:52Shaan Puri?

  And thankfully, the video channel was your own, right? The video channel was your own, even though these were guest blogs on other people's platforms.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the agreement with Autotrader was that I would, you know, promote on my YouTube channel, this blog that we had started.

• 11:06Sam Parr?

  And so I didn't realize that you've been doing this since 2013. I thought that I was like an OG by like watching since like 17. Um, like, so I mean, you've been grinding at this for

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you pretty much are because initially I I made videos with my my own cars and those just never got as much traction. And what the big switch in 17 was I switched to doing reviews of cars. And suddenly it was a lot less work because I didn't have to buy cars and then take on that personal financial risk. I would just like show up at a dude's house, film his car and then peace out. And that was a video. And there was like, no, that didn't cost me anything except like the gas to get there. And so that was, that was a big change. It also allowed me to do more videos because you can just do more videos that way as opposed to your own cars. You have to kind of think up a new topic every week, which isn't always easy. And so in 17, I think that's when things really started to like, really take off when I started to do like car reviews and especially new

• 12:03Speaker 01

  car reviews. That's what I realized, like, okay, that's where the money is. And that's where the audience is.

• 12:08Sam Parr?

  But you make jokes sometimes where you're like, um, like, for example, I watched your, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about buying a Defender, a new one. And I like, watched your video on it. And you might make little jokes. You're like, one day, what I'm able to afford blank, I'll get it. And I'm like, seeing your videos, I'm like, man, I think you could, I bet you're making like, you know, at least low digit millions per year without cars and bids. I have to imagine this was significantly more lucrative than you like, the vibe that you would joke about

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Sort of, but

• 12:36Sam Parr?

  On the videos.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  But the thing that's I think important for people to understand, there's, there's, there's two components. Number one is you never know when it's gonna end. And so like, I, yeah, I was making a lot of money, but you never know when suddenly a competitor shows up and it can happen in a couple of months. And suddenly you're now third, fourth, fifth in search and things are slowing down. And so you never really know like what that day is. And so unlike maybe an attorney or a doctor where you have this jobs, you make a lot of money, less than I was, but you have a lot more job security over long term. For me, it was like, yeah, I have a lot of money, but I saved so much of it because I was always just terrified that, you know, I never knew exactly what was gonna, what was gonna happen.

• 13:14Sam Parr?

  What amount of money did you feel like you kind of like, you made it or you looked at the number and you were like? I can't believe this is mine. I have this. Where was the milestone for you that it was kind of like your holy shit moment?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Not until we closed the deal with with Turner, believe it or not. I just never earning on an annual or a monthly or a weekly basis like is just never to me like that's just there's always of some some fear in that, you know, like you're always just a little worried that the tap is going to turn off. And so there was never a moment where I felt comfortable like spending or splurging on something, which Sam goes back to your point like, yeah, there were times when I said, if I could afford this, I would buy it. But like, I probably could have afforded it. But could I have afforded it? And then my business and then YouTube slows down and then I have to deal with the depreciation of it. Like a new Lambo would be cool, right? But if that loses 200 grand in the first two years, I couldn't mentally

• 14:07Speaker 01

  justify that. Same with the new AMG wagon. I've always wanted one, but they were $150,000 when they were new. Well, was I comfortable losing 50 grand in a year? Mentally, no, because I was always afraid the tap might turn off, you know, the YouTube channel.

• 14:22Sam Parr?

  Did you and when originally, when you launched Cars and Bids, I was a big fan of Bring a Trailer. Bring a Trailer is similar to you, different, different audience. But I think I heard rumors that when they sold, it was like $300 million. And when you go to bringatrailer.com, it looks just like a blog. Like, it's a very like, it doesn't look like a sophisticated business when in reality, it is. And when you launched, I was like, yeah, this is awesome. But of course, well, a lot of like, critics were like, well, but this this thing already exists. And so like, what insight did you have to go down this path? And also, who did you partner with early on? Because I don't think that you're a tech person, right?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. As you can see from my video editing and you have the usage of iMovie. Um, no. Uh, yeah, Bring a Trailer is it does exist and they're huge and they were huge then and they're even huger now. Um, and That was the hurdle. What insight did we have? None. What were we thinking? In retrospect, I honestly wonder like, what was going through our minds thinking we could compete with them? The only insight we had was that we had heard, I love Bring a Trailer and I think they run a great business and they have some great cars and I have sold cars on there, whatever. But we had heard from, that there was some dissatisfaction. I think at the end of the day, Bring a Trailer had gotten so massive that like,

• 15:42Speaker 01

  stuff was taking a long time to get listed. There were, like you said, the quality of the, it's a WordPress blog ultimately. It had caused people some issues, you know, and sellers and buyers and the functionality of it, everything. And we kind of thought to ourselves, hey, we can do this in our minds better and we can make it modern. And so, one of the big things that was our focus was doing cars just from the 1980s and up, like more modern era cars. We thought, hey, if we come with a modern website and focus on a modern audience, maybe we can kind of exist in a sort of a different space than Bring a Trailer where it's like more millennial, younger people focused on these types of cars. And I think that that has largely teased out, although now we're starting to kind of eat some of the Bring a Trailer cars.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  We just posted a Lamborghini Countach on the site today. Like, we're going down that road a little bit more.

• 16:31Sam Parr?

  And who did you partner with early on? I mean, when I was doing research for the original pod, I remember I went to the person's LinkedIn. I was like, I gotta figure out who he's working with.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Like.

• 16:39Sam Parr?

  So yeah, what was that relationship? And you know, how did it come about?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  You know, it's an interesting thing. I get, my email address is in all my videos.

• 16:48Sam Parr?

  It's like a Yahoo. It's just Doug DeMuro at Yahoo, right?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  And to be clear, like my personal email address is not on Yahoo, but that's the email address for all the people who are gonna send me emails. Cause as you can imagine, I get, when you post your email address that publicly, you get some weird stuff going on, you know?

• 17:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, people think they know you. What's it called? People, you know, we get that, Sean and I get that all the time. What's it called? A parasocial relationship?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Right, that's exactly. People email me and be like, hey man, I'm making 84 grand a year. I got two kids. One of them's in private school. Thinking about leaving my wife. What car you think I should get? And I'm like, what?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  But so I got it. So I get random emails. And so a viewer emailed me named Blake. And he said, Hey, I know. I know. We live close by in San Diego. I have this car. You ever, you know, if you ever want to get dinner. And this was before I had a kid and I, I would, I would meet up with random. I did this many, many times, probably 100 times. I met up with just random people on the internet. Just, it was how I made friends when we moved to new cities. And so I met up with him and I learned that he did something in tech, which is how non tech people view all tech people. You know, and so, and so it hit me that I kind of wanted to do this only a couple of months after our meeting and I called him and I was like, Hey, I know you do something in tech. Can we do this? And what do you think of this? And he had actually just sold the car and bring a trailer and kind

• 18:04Speaker 01

  of recognize some of the deficiencies. And he said, Yeah, this is a great idea. And so we used some seed money from his company to kind of just get, get off the ground and get started. And then we launched and, and right away we were quickly earning revenue and quickly profitable.

• 18:17Shaan Puri?

  Was any of the, what was the split? So I always wanted this about creator kind of businesses where it's like, are you just promotion? Or do you have to do anything with operations? Are you, do you have to put in money? What's the equity split? How did you guys decide kind of roles? And then the, the ownership split?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  It was tough to decide. And there was a lot of back and forth and it kind of almost killed the thing. But I ended up with, with sort of a substantial majority because I was, even though they had put down the money, I was coming with the audience. And one of the interesting things I think about these businesses, you mentioned bring a trailer and how could you compete with it? You would be shocked at how many other auction sites have shown up and failed since we launched. Most of them never even make it on anybody's radar. Of course, we watch them like a hawk because it's like our business. But you'd be stunned at how many of these have shown up. And we learned that like, you can make a great product and that's important. And we did that. But like, having an audience, showing up with an audience is so crucial for the success of this.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  And that's what caused all the other ones to fail. And so that as a result of that, I think they understood that a large portion of the value, at least initially was me. And so even though there was sort of a tangling in it, I ended up with. With the majority. And yes, I ended up doing an enormous amount of operations work. Like I was personally, the first few weeks, I was approving or denying all the cars that got submitted. We didn't know it would blow up so much right away is what happened.

• 19:43Sam Parr?

  I think you got a thousand in one day, right?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  It was like the craziest day of my life. We got a thousand.

• 19:47Sam Parr?

  And you give like a, you give like a three sentence description of each car.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was another thing. What the hell was I thinking? Marrying myself to that idea? But um, what happened was when we first launched, we had this, we had this idea that in order to attract sellers, we would offer a thousand dollars for the first 50 cars on the site and $500 for the next 50 cars on the site. It was a brilliant idea. It was, it was spending whatever that works out to be 75 grand or whatever. But it was the greatest 75 grand we ever spent because we got so many submissions right away. However, um, then we had to deal with them and boy was that a day. And it was all me doing it. Basically, it's a nightmare.

• 20:23Sam Parr?

  And what's the, what's the business model? The business model is you, uh, probably if I, I don't remember exactly, but is it that buyers, buyers of cars have to give you like three or four or 5% of the total purchase price?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  That's right. Sellers pay nothing. Buyers pay four and a half percent. And now we've got a few other kind of drivers of revenue as well. There's a shipping component. We just launched inspections, which is really cool. Sellers can get their cars inspected, um, which we have already seen increases the number of bids and the number of sale price. That's I think going to be a big, um, benefit going forward. But mainly it's that, yes, that the, we get this buyer's fee. And then of course, we've now rolled up the businesses into one business, that the YouTube channel and the auction site. And so obviously my content revenue is a, is a part of the business too.

• 21:09Sam Parr?

  And you did, I, I believe in 2021, you did like something like 75 million in gross sales.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that feels right. I should have looked at the numbers.

• 21:19Shaan Puri?

  What was like the first month? So you get this immediate surge of, of listings, but you know, getting a marketplace off the ground could be hard. But I, I suspect with your audience, it kind of just took off probably fairly quickly. What, what, do you remember anything about that first month? What were the numbers?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I'll never forget.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  The first car was your car, right?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  The first car was my car. That's right. The first car was my car. And I've since sold four or five. Although I haven't bought yet, I gotta do that.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  The first month was chaos. I mean, it's like you hear from any startup founder who's successful, right? Which is that, that, that it was absolute chaos. We had, we had the good problem of not having planned for what would come, the success that came. But the bad problem of then having to do it on the fly. And we were hiring people, like, talking to them on a, we didn't even have an office. It was COVID and we'd launched in June of 20. There were no offices. We did this, we launched the whole business from my back patio. And so we're like talking to people in the pool. I mean, this was, the whole situation was a complete disaster. And that month was definitely the most chaotic and most ridiculous of my entire life. The first two months, really. And we started to build more of an infrastructure and more of a team. And that kind of started to make things easier.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  But I was still like in the ground, on the trip, in the, on the ground, in the trenches, doing everything. Until the churn and investment came and we got a little more cash and we could finally start like putting people in their roles. And I could go back to my biggest asset to the business, which is of course, you know, doing the.

• 22:47Shaan Puri?

  Talk a little bit about the sale. How'd that come about? How, that's a high stakes negotiation, probably the biggest hand of poker you've ever played. Tell us some fun stories about the, the process and then the, the ultimate sale. What, what went down?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  You know, I was really lucky that I had Blake, who, who has been in the, kind of the business world, the startup world before and sort of held my hand through the process. Cause I was just a clueless. I mean, at the end of the day, I make YouTube videos for a living. Like, I shouldn't be involved in any sort of high eight-figure private equity deal. Like, that's not where I live, you know? I hate people. So they came to us and.

• 23:25Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, we hear your fidget spinner or whatever you got there on the mic. There you go. Your, your G-Wagon.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  This is a Toyota Megacruiser. We, um, they came to us and, you know, we had gotten, as you can imagine, we had a lot of people reach out to us, um, because we had kind of grown and it became clear quickly. And then the car market started to blow up and all these P E V C type firms were like, we gotta get in on this, we gotta get on this today. And here's this business is actually succeeding doing it. And Bring a Trailer had just sold to Hearst. And so all these other companies were like, are we missing something? We gotta go again. And then, you know, what's, what's out there? We could start it ourselves or this exists. So we were getting a lot of reach outs, but we viewed it as like kind of BS. We were like, we're too small to make this make sense to anybody. Um, and so we kind of ignored them all, but the churn in group was really persistent.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And finally they kind of got intro to us through a friend. And I thought to myself, well, I can't say no to this call if it came through a friend. I'll just take it and it'll be 10 minutes and I'll hang out. I took it in the car and, um, but they told me the most interesting thing, I wasn't familiar with the churn in group, but they told me that they specifically work with creator-led businesses. And that was a huge like light bulb moment for me because my big fear of working with any P E or V C companies, they're going to come in and they're going to say, we gotta change this, this and this on your YouTube channel and it's going to look like this now. And this is how it's going to work. And even if it was a big payday for me, I feel like I didn't want to have to explain to someone how YouTube works, you know? Like I just wanted, I felt like I could do it better myself, but these guys knew already how it worked and they were going to be like, your, your audience, it's already working. This isn't how, we don't want to screw with anything.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  And that was a big moment, hearing that they like specialize in this. And so going forward, that, that just sort of began the conversation and one thing led to another, they kind of went through, here's how we might do it. You know, we kind of gave them some basics, they gave us a term sheet and it, it, it came to fruition.

• 25:18Sam Parr?

  Were you able to take money off the table or did it go to the, uh, go to the business?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I took, I took money off. I bought that career GT and, and, uh, so it was a nice, it was a nice situation for me to be able to do that, especially after a lot, a lot of hard work. And actually in the end, I feel like this is the best time because I got enough money that I can kind of chill a little bit. And I swear there's something nice about that in terms of running and operating a business like this.

• 25:42Sam Parr?

  You make way more money when you have that. When you could chill a little bit, you know, like the less you want it, the more you get it.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  I feel like that's true. Like, I feel like I'm I'm more relaxed. I by focusing on like myself a little bit more. And then I'm in a better mental state to like make better decisions and do more things. And in the end, it's actually been beneficial, even though you would think it would be the opposite. If you're chasing money, you'd you'd work harder and maybe I did work harder, but I think I'm working better now.

• 26:06Sam Parr?

  Have you ever heard the phrase, uh, treat them mean, keep them keen? So like, I remember when I was, when I was like 16, I was like, I was telling someone, I was like, I want to meet. I I was telling my a friend, a girlfriend, uh, who was like this really pretty girl. I was like, man, I want to meet more girls. And she goes, you gotta treat them mean to keep them keen, you know, the less you want it, the more you're gonna get it. And I was like, oh, thank you. Like, it's a, I tried way less hard and I got way more girls. The same is true with money. I treat them, I treat it mean and I keep it keen, you know, that the money comes to me the more that I don't want it.

• 26:37Shaan Puri?

  That sounds like something an aunt would say. Uh, no 14 year old is is hitting you with that quote when you say, I want to meet more girls.

• 26:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, she was like a, like a, someone like a neighbor, you know, she was in like college at the time and, uh, yeah. And I was like, man, I'm trying to try to meet these girls. I'm I read the book, The Game. I'm doing all this stuff. I'm trying to, I'm trying hard. And she was like, you gotta treat them mean to keep them keen. She's like, you just gotta care less, you know, do nothing.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  We're still using that phrase all these years later. It's still relevant.

• 27:07Shaan Puri?

  It's a, how does this work though? Like if I'm, uh, this may be a question for for Mike and those guys at Turner. But like, you buy a creator led business, creator wants to go chill on the beach now. You gave him, give him millions and millions of dollars, but you need their face still. It's tied to their face. Is there like a long transition plan where you you, it's like Blippi, where they just changed out the guy? A different guy came in and started wearing the stuff on YouTube and everyone in the comments is like, hey, uh, that's not Blippi. What's the plan here?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  You know, I've been on, I've done a few podcasts and interviews and all sorts of things with after this deal is closed and you're, I think about your question constantly. And you're the first person on one of these who's actually asked it to me because yeah, I think they're nuts. I truly think they're crazy. Like if you really think about it.

• 27:55Shaan Puri?

  Best answer.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  If you really think about it, like the whole, it's a great idea when it works. And for them, it's worked wonderfully. And I suspect that relates to the diligence they do on the creator. Like they, they know that I'm not going to do that. Right? Because they know me. They got to know me through this process. It took like six, eight months and we really got to know each other and they realized I wasn't about to just bail and go sit on the beach or do something insane, like start saying crazy stuff on Twitter and get canceled, whatever. They knew that. But like it could, like I still, if I were them, I'd be terrified. Like they're making massive investments into businesses that have dudes like me who could just go off the rails one day. And I think that is a crazy business model, but they would retort by saying, A, we do the diligence,

• 28:39Speaker 01

  but also like this is how businesses are going to be. Like creators have these audiences. This is where people want to get their stuff, whatever it is, kitchen products, cars, doesn't matter. They want to get it from people who they love and who they care about. Mr. Beast Burger, all that stuff. And so if you're going to do it, you got to take that risk. And but the benefit is you don't have to spend a lot in like paid marketing because the audience is there and they want to be there. And so there's like a huge benefit to that, but also a very scary potential drug.

• 29:11Shaan Puri?

  We've had, we've had Mr. Beast on the pod. We recently did an episode with Danny Austin, who created a hair, hair, hair care brand, basically a scalp brand, also doing really, really well. What creator brands are awesome to you that you think have done a good job? Is there any that stand out or you took inspiration from?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  That's a good question. You know, when we, when we launched this, when we came up with the idea and launched this in the summer of 19, it wasn't as common. Like it's having a creator kind of pivot into a brand was like less of a thing. A lot of guys were doing, a lot of guys, I say guys because it was car people, but just generally people were doing merge. That was a big thing and some of them even had lines of products, whatever, but they, the pivoting of doing this has become more of a thing since then. And so I wouldn't say any of them were necessarily an inspiration. It was more that I was just terrified that I had this giant audience. And if I didn't do something with them, they were going to start to go away eventually. And I had to do something. And so it was more based out of fear and anxiety than like, than like being inspired by someone, which is great.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  But obviously since then, a lot of others have come and I give this advice to everybody I know, everybody in this space, all of my car creator friends. I tell them like, start a business, start a business, start a business. You never know when your audience is going to go away. Please like take your audience right now and start a business, do something. And they, they look at me like I'm nuts some of the time because they're like, what do you mean? I'm already traveling five days a week, filming and doing all this stuff and editing late at night, doing, I, you know, writing scripts. How can I start a business on top of that? And my answer is like, I don't know, but you gotta, you gotta figure it out because that's the, that's the next way to take what you're doing.

• 30:51Sam Parr?

  Have you seen, I want to ask you about two ideas. Have you seen, have you guys seen, um, what's it called? Uh, exotic car hacks, I think it's called.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:01Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's the, the guy, I, I think that he's like playing a douche on TV. I think he's like trying to be an asshole, like his, so his whole, he's definitely, this guy's like a total jerk. But he, uh, he's got this course. I think it's a course. I don't know if it's a community or it's a course. But you pay a little bit of money and he teaches you how to hack exotic cars, which I have not taken it. I think what it means is like, you buy a car that's like four or five years old, usually around the $20,000 or 20,000 mile range, and then you drive it for one year and you could sell it and you have hopefully only, you know, you, you've mostly broke even. I think he also has a thing where you can like become a licensed dealer, which I don't understand how that works.

• 31:43Sam Parr?

  But I heard a rumor that he sold the course to PE. Is that true or totally made up?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I don't know. I, I haven't heard that.

• 31:51Sam Parr?

  Have you seen that Sean? Yeah, you looking at this guy now?

• 31:53Shaan Puri?

  But his YouTube banner is like, uh, it's him as a Grand Theft Auto character. So that's, that's solid to start. And then I think you're right. It's basically like how it says, learn how to buy, sell and trade exotic cars for fun and profit, uh, which honestly, it's a good, good niche. Um, in fact, my only criticism of this guy is, uh, he doesn't look douchey enough. Like, once you go into the video, he's just like a guy wearing like a v-neck. He's doesn't look like, yeah, he's just kind of like.

• 32:22Sam Parr?

  No, dude, he's like, uh, I watched the video of his.

• 32:25Shaan Puri?

  Like 10 times more jewelry than he's wearing. Like this guy, like he needs to piss me off, but also make me want him, right? Like, that's the trick.

• 32:33Sam Parr?

  Well, he was driving a Land Rover Defender and he goes, see, the problem with the Land Rover Defender is my watch is worth five times this Defender.

• 32:42Shaan Puri?

  So I need the audio. He's a verbal douche.

• 32:45Sam Parr?

  He goes, even though it looks cool, I can't decide if I'm poor because five of these still wouldn't equal the price of my watch.

• 32:52Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think more people should do this. I so, so Doug, our, uh, one of the companies I built, we got bought by Twitch. When I was at Twitch, uh, you know, you spend a bunch of time on Twitch and you see what people are doing. And it was like, everybody's kind of doing a very similar thing. It's like, um, you know, there's like two classes of people. There's like, you know, really good at the game, or three classes, say really good at the game. People watch them because they're so awesome at the game. And they guys have no personality. People just like them because their aim is good. And then you have people that are super cute, right? Hot girls, they do well too. And then you have, uh, like the third group, which is like super likable, like kind of the group you're in, I would, I would say where it's like, they're not, they're not like the most technically good at the game, but they're likable, they're fun. They play, they're called a variety

• 33:36Shaan Puri?

  streamer. They, they stream a bunch of different games. They keep it interesting. Good, good fan interaction. And then there was one guy that just took it a whole different direction. This guy, Dr. Disrespect. Have you seen him? Yeah, I've heard of him. So he created a whole character. He comes on and he, he himself was like a college basketball player. So he's like 6'8". So he's this huge guy, but he wears this like mullet wig. He wears like a bulletproof vest, like a red bulletproof vest. He looks like a character from the eighties and he created his name. He created his thing, Dr. Disrespect. And then he has like his catchphrases. He was basically a wrestling character. So he basically was like The Rock where he would, um, he had this persona and he had these catchphrases and then everybody in his life became a character. His wife became a character like. If she would come on the screen, like you would never see her, only her hand and she would

• 34:20Shaan Puri?

  feed him while he was playing, like feeding him grapes, basically. And he would do everything ridiculous. And then to add to that, he would like go sit courtside at an NBA game, but dressed fully as Dr. Disrespect. And that investment of like that $5,000 courtside seat was actually really valuable to building this persona, this brand of like, and he always called himself the 1994, 1995, two-time blockbuster NBA Jam, whatever, like champion. Like he's got these like phrases that he would always go to, just purposely trying to be hateable. Yeah, just trying to be like, exactly. He created a whole character and he just stayed. Like when Floyd Mayweather, when Floyd Mayweather became Money Mayweather. Exactly. Like, I'm going full heel. Exactly. But even more like, it was more like wrestling, because he's got a costume also, like on top of the whole thing. And I actually think that for content creators,

• 35:05Shaan Puri?

  it's surprising you don't see more of this.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's such a good point.

• 35:10Shaan Puri?

  There are these archetypes, like in wrestling, you have the faces, the good guys, you got the heels, the guys that are intentionally bad guys that are gonna get a big following because you'll love to hate them. Floyd Mayweather did this in boxing. He was not making any money. And he, he became Floyd Money Mayweather, this obnoxious, arrogant, you know, money in your face guy. Then he started getting really, really popular because people wanted to see him lose. And there's this guy in the UFC that did the same thing. He is basically about to get cut. The UFC told him, you're too boring, we're gonna cut you. And so that night, he went on and he just started saying all this offensive stuff on the microphone against Brazilians and this one fighter, whatever. And they were like, well, now we gotta keep him to fight that guy. Cause he just created a feud. And he's like, this guy just took

• 35:53Shaan Puri?

  it to the, like to the, you know, to level 10 of being this heel. I'm surprised there's not more of this on YouTube.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  You know, the best car guy who's doing that right now is this guy, Whistling Diesel. Have you ever seen his?

• 36:04Shaan Puri?

  I love Whistling Diesel. I heard that he's a sweetheart, by the way.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  There is no car content creator who I like more than Whistling Diesel. I've never met him.

• 36:13Shaan Puri?

  Tell Sean, tell Sean what he does.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  It's like Mr. Beast, but like for cars and he just does things that make people hate him. So he buys a Ferrari to destroy it and he put it, you know, you can buy those as an example, you know, you can buy those garage bubbles like boomers have the, you know, they put their old Corvette in them inside their garage. It's like a, it's like an inflatable bubble that makes sure nobody ever touches the car. He bought one of those for his Ferrari and just started throwing stuff at it, ladders and shovels and anything. Sledgehammers, saw, just see if it worked. It would off-road the Ferrari. He put giant 20 foot tall wagon wheels on his Tesla. I mean, all sorts of just dumb stuff and I just am obsessed with it. I'm like, this is the kind of content I wish I was making.

• 36:59Sam Parr?

  How does he, how does this guy afford it?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  I assume, I assume he's doing the same thing that Mr. Beast is doing where he's taking basically all of the money that he's pulling in from revenue and from, you know, placement, ad placements, and just putting it right back into doing more dumb crap. Like he dropped the G-Wagon into a house when he was in the G-Wagon. I mean, everything, it's just incredible. It's incredible content.

• 37:22Sam Parr?

  What are some of the titles?

• 37:23Shaan Puri?

  Using $35,000 Nike Air Mags as work boots. So he bought extremely rare, extremely expensive shoes.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  That's a great.

• 37:30Shaan Puri?

  Walked around in the mud with them doing work. There's extreme school bus off-roading. It takes a bus and he's just like flying around, but it's also number one. So I guess that's a series. I guess there's going to be a lot more of those to come. Driving a Tesla upside down, parentheses 10 foot tall wheels. Okay. I don't know what that is. That's, that's amazing, but each of these has like five to 10 million views. So.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  They're incredible. It's incredible content and he's just this kid from like Indiana or like rural Pennsylvania. He just, if he wasn't doing this, he'd be like driving a truck, you know? But instead he like decided to become hateful on YouTube and he's killing it. And I love, and I love to see people hate him. There is nothing more fun than these people, ah, that guy's so irresponsible. And it's like, yeah, that's fun.

• 38:18Shaan Puri?

  It's YouTube. Yeah. You're supposed to be responsible. It's supposed to be a little.

• 38:20Sam Parr?

  He took like a $250,000 G-Wagon and which is like, everyone says it's an off-road vehicle, but like no one drives a G-Wagon off-road and he like, you know, destroys it. Like to the point where it's smoking and he just annihilates this G-Wagon. How much revenue do you think that this guy's channel makes? So I want to know if he is, if he is putting all of it back into the videos. I want to know how much that budget is.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  He's getting 20 million views a month, so I suspect he's probably pulling in, you know, yeah, one to two million a month. And then he does ad placements and they must get tons of money because his views get so, uh, his videos get so many views.

• 38:59Sam Parr?

  Wait, at 20 million views a month, you think he's making upwards of 2 million?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  It's in, I don't know, in, in his, in his world, I don't know, because his audience is good, as I suspect is very different from mine. My audience doing car reviews is really high dollar content because you're in-market car shoppers. And that is a very desirable demographic for advertisers. Whistling Diesel's probably, there's probably a lot of kids, there's probably more foreign audience than mine. So probably doesn't make as much, but he's, he's probably doing all right. And plus he lives in the middle of nowhere in like rural Pennsylvania. So his cost of living is like, it's, he's good. Except for the sorries he's damaging.

• 39:34Sam Parr?

  What would a good CPM be from AdSense for your YouTube video?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I don't remember anymore. I actually calculated CPM in this completely different way. Cause I never understood why it was views, like dollars per thousand views. It never really made sense to me. So I started calculating the number of views I had to get to earn a dollar. And so good for me was a video that broke a hundred with the hundred mark. So less than a hundred views to earn a dollar. Um, and there were, there were a lot of videos, especially in December, when ad rates were strong, that were, that were pulling in that.

• 40:03Shaan Puri?

  That's so funny. That's how you calculated. That makes, actually makes a lot of sense.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  It makes more sense to me.

• 40:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Like, I feel like everything you've told me so far is like, um, yeah, just a guy like sort of using his intuition. Like, like you're just like, well, like, uh, like I had a friend that was like, I had a friend that would do this. He'd be like, um, you know, it, like, he would keep like his money, like instead of like going to a bank, setting a bank account and like, oh, you should invest it. He's like, no, I have three shoeboxes and like shoebox one is spend money and shoebox two is save money. And he like created his own bank account in my dorm room. And he was just like, yeah, like, you know, but you, if you're going to move one to this box, you gotta put two in the other box. And he's just like, I'm like, dude, I think you're actually just using the normal like personal finance rules, but you just are.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  But you backed into them.

• 40:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you backed into them like a guy, like, you know, like a cave.

• 40:53Sam Parr?

  Man, like just sort of discovering fire here.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  That's probably true for me, but I, I will say like in my, in my view, that's kind of how YouTube was it from like 13 to 19. The before, like a lot of big businesses started showing up and really maximizing the hell out of everything. I think it was a lot of people just kind of randomly using intuition to like make decisions. And it was like, okay, that video did well. So I'm going to try this video instead of like really thinking through, okay, the thumbnail should say this at this pixel and all that, which is how we, a lot of creators do it now. It was a lot of just like, yeah, let's give this a shot. And for some people it worked out and those are the people that you end up talking to. And for some people it didn't, and those are the ones who fizzled out.

• 41:33Sam Parr?

  Did, did you and do you now have a video team? I read somewhere that you were editing up, you were editing them up until Cars and Bids and then now you just have an editor. But like, is that true or do you have like a booker? Cause I know you're on the road or at least you said one annual wrap up. You're like, I traveled like, you know, most weeks.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, when I lived in Philly, I was traveling a ton because of the weather, but now I'm in California and it's gotten a lot easier. Um, yeah, so it was just me. So I launched the channel in 13. We went to two videos a week in 16. It was just me up until we launched.

• 42:03Sam Parr?

  The royal we, the royal we, you're saying we.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, well, we, I, my fam, I, I think of my wife as part of this because boy, has that been a journey for her. But, um, so, so I launched the channel in 13 and there've always been kind of people around friends who helped shoot things, that kind of thing. So there's a we component to that too, but mostly it was just me. And then in March of 20, when we all launched Cars and Bids, I realized like that week that I was never going to be able to edit another video again. And so I called a guy who had emailed me like a year before, like, hey, do you need an editor? And I will just kind of ignore those emails. And I was like, are you still available and can you start today? And his answer was yeah, and he's still my editor. It's been now over three years. He just had a baby and, um,

• 42:48Speaker 01

  But now we have more people also because we're going to start doing more content. And so we hired like a video kind of content manager who's going to oversee. I think it's going to be multiple channels, mine, like Cars and Bids channel. And then like new creators come in and stuff, and I just don't have the wherewithal, the bandwidth, especially because I'm want to continue doing what I'm doing. And I just don't really have the ability to like also manage a whole thing in addition.

• 43:10Sam Parr?

  Have you guys heard of more plates, more dates? Have you know who that is? All right, so his name is Derek. He's probably maybe as famous as you, but in like the fitness genre. He's like on Joe Rogan and stuff, whatever.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:22Sam Parr?

  And he has a great video, but his video, A, you don't know his last name. You just know it's Derek at more plates, more dates. And B, his videos, it's just him like on a camera, kind of like you are right now. But it's just a plain white background. Like it looks like you're just at like, like he's in like a college dorm or he's just like in his house, just goofing around. But his videos get millions and millions of views. And I heard a rumor that now his businesses are making many, many tens of millions a year in revenue. But the room that he originally started this YouTube video or this YouTube channel, it was just like a shitty old apartment when he didn't have a lot of money. And they took the wall out of the apartment and he has since moved to a significantly larger, very nice home.

• 44:06Sam Parr?

  But they try to transpose it so it looks exactly like the old one. And that's kind of like what you have to do. So like, they don't want people to think like, oh, Derek is like killing it now. He's unrelatable. And that's sort of like, I imagine you've kind of lucked into this situation where it's like, oh, my whole shtick is that like I'm quirky and the videos aren't well edited. Therefore I could keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger without like doing anything that sophisticated.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  There is a component of that also that it's worked. So like in a sense, I don't really want to change it that much because as much as that is kind of like the shtick, it's like also been successful. But yeah, it's one drawback of this, and I think about Jerry Seinfeld a lot when I think about this. Seinfeld's humor is all based on a normal guy doing stuff. He's no longer and hasn't been for decades, a normal guy. And I bet it's gotten harder for him to make jokes like, hey, you ever get to the F The private plane, you know, and it's late and you're like, damn, like, how do you do that? And so for me, I'm like, it's, it, it hasn't gotten harder, but I do feel sad that like, I'm no longer like your neighbor who's like, here's how you should think of this car, because here's how I think of this car.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Now I'm a guy who's got, you know, a Carrera GT or a Ford, and it's like, okay, well, maybe he's not quite as, you know, when he talks about supercars being slow, it's like, well, screw this guy, you know, because it's a little bit less relatable. But I still like to think that I'm, you know, Chris, in Chris Rock's most recent comedy special, he says, I'm rich, but I identify as poor. And I kind of like feel that way to an extent because like this didn't, I didn't start this way. Like I still, I still wear these stupid clothes because like, that's what I wear. It's not like I've like, I'm not like wearing like high end stuff and then when the camera turns off, like that's just who I am. And so I think to an extent, it's still, it's still pretty genuine.

• 45:51Sam Parr?

  By the way, Sean, a Carrera GT, it's like a one point something million dollar car. It's like a car enthusiasts love it. It's like a lot of people's dream car. Doug, but you're the type of guy who like, uh, I imagine shows up in a million and a half dollar car wearing cargo shorts.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 46:06Sam Parr?

  A white T-shirt that's dirty and old New Balance.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  He's got like an average of over three and a half pockets per, uh, per leg. That's exactly right. Driving everywhere I go, I wear my stupid shorts and T-shirt and like, you can think what you want. I'm driving Carrera GT.

• 46:24Sam Parr?

  And I don't know if you've seen this, Sean, but on his videos, the true fans, they'll put stuff at the top of video like, Doug's the type of guy who licks his finger before he turns the page on his iPad.

• 46:36Sam Parr?

  Like he's got, he's got.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  People think I'm like this geeky, like cautious person, which is probably accurate, to be honest. I just love, at the end of the day, people are like, the quirks and features thing, what a great idea. Like this wasn't an idea. I really just love like seeing how buttons work in cars. Like that is genuinely, and you know what's funny? Like I shoot all these videos now for the site. You know, we're selling cars on the site and they're new cars that are have gonna have big audiences and like I show up to film and I like still have this feeling in me every single time, shooting an Accura NSX right after this. And I still have this feeling like I'm really excited to see the quirks of this car. Like it's still in my mind after all these years. And so I feel like I'm probably doing the right, the right job.

• 47:20Sam Parr?

  Does it, uh, well, how's it feel to be wealthy now? After, after grinding out to this for so long?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  It's better than before. It is, it is definitely nice.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Aside from that car, I didn't like splurge on anything. I kind of like live a certain life and that's sort of how it's gonna be. But, um, but it is nice to have a little, I think I am a little bit more anxious about money than a lot of people. And it's nice to not have any of that anxiety anymore. And I'll tell you, it came at the perfect time because I just had a boy. And like, it's amazing to be able to like, detach and just like be with him without having to worry about like grinding for the next video, every little dollar, you know, that I placed this thing perfectly in this video. Um, it's, it's like an amazing sequence of events.

• 48:03Sam Parr?

  Do you think, um, how big is this business gonna get? I mean, I think, I, I, by the way, Sean, have you seen Brigger Trailer? It's basically like,

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Sam Parr?

  A blog. I think it is actually in fact WordPress blog.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  It's a WordPress, yeah.

• 48:14Shaan Puri?

  By the way, the whole time we've been doing this interview, I've also just been shopping cars and bids. So I'm like currently like, my finger is hovering over this 1994 Toyota Hi-A super custom wagon. This, I can just buy this van for $5,000 and I'm very, very tempted to do this. This is a pretty sweet looking van. I don't know why I want this, but I really, really want it.

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  It's awesome. The site's awesome. I'm looking at, uh, you have this like three wheeler of Vanderhall because I was looking at a more, a Morgan three wheeler.

• 48:42Shaan Puri?

  Should I buy this car or do I need to close this tab? It's buy or close the tab. Those are my two options.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Right, right. Exactly. That's kind of the fun of it.

• 48:51Sam Parr?

  Well, you, you, Brigger Trailer, which was before you guys, it was basically just a blog. I don't know if you know the show, but the guy who started it, his name is, one guy's name is Randy, but the other partner was Gentry Underwood, who started Mailbox. That's that company that sold, I think for a hundred million dollars pre-launch to Dropbox. And I emailed him because he used to have Throttle Yard, which was that for motorcycles. They had all this stuff. And I was like, tell me about this business. Bring a trailer. And he says, it's the hardest slog. Like it was the hardest thing ever to get going. It took years and years and years. And then I heard a rumor that it sold for many hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you know what it sold for Doug?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  I have an idea, but I don't, I'm not gonna speculate on Randy's business.

• 49:29Shaan Puri?

  Was it to private equity or who bought it?

• 49:31Sam Parr?

  Hearst.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Hearst Media bought like half of it is our understanding.

• 49:35Sam Parr?

  Am I off in saying that I, that like it's probably,

• 49:37Speaker 01

  I think the valuation was in the hundreds of millions, but I don't, I, I don't know exactly how much anybody ended up with or whatever, but, but they did well. Randy killed it.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  They're killing it now. The sale was, was, um, by the car business standards, the sale was relatively early, um, in the sense that they sold kind of right before things went crazy in 21 and they've ramped, they and us, I mean, as a function of this market that's been so crazy, have ramped like crazy since then. And so I think the business is worth quite a lot more now, I suspect.

• 50:09Sam Parr?

  What do you think's gonna happen with you guys? I mean, do you think like, are you thinking, you know, this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  I don't know. I honestly, I never thought it would get here.

• 50:20Sam Parr?

  Don't you have to make it that now? If you, if you, I think you sold, I don't know what you sold. You sold, it just said majority, majority for 40 million, which I, you know, that puts the valuation in the 60 to 80 million range, I imagine. I mean, you need like a, I imagine they're looking for like a 500 million plus outcome then.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I think, I think we'd all be happy at 500 million. Yeah. I don't, I, but, and I think that there's a pathway to get there. And frankly, I think Bring a Trailer has shown that. And I think that also the, um, reality of this space is that this is how it's going. Like, the internet made it easier to buy and sell cars. Obviously, it used to be in the newspaper and that was kind of a disaster with low information on both sides and everything. And now the internet shows up, Craigslist shows up, that's one thing. And now people are starting to realize that there is significant value in these auction sites because sellers can amplify, they can get, you know, to a much larger audience than they could on their own website or an auto trader. And buyers can get a larger selection, frankly, than having to visit every single dealer's website and every single whatever,

• 51:19Speaker 01

  or go to physical auctions like Mecum. And those are, you know, what are you gonna show up there? You know, like, that's not realistic for a lot of people. This is kind of becoming the new wave. So I honestly don't know. I think if you had asked Randy eight years ago, he never would have thought his business would have gotten this big. And, but this is, the market is growing along with these businesses.

• 51:39Sam Parr?

  Another interesting person in your space, who I think that you have a feud with, but I don't know why. But when Sean bought his car, I think he, he watched your video and then he DM'd this guy named, uh, Car Dealer Guy? Is that what it's called?

• 51:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Car Dealership Guy.

• 51:53Sam Parr?

  Car dealership guy. So basically, the story behind this is Sean and I have been obsessed with. So Sean and I are both popular on Twitter. We've been obsessed with this idea of like, look, there's gonna be a billionaire YouTuber. Mr. Beast at least is getting there. It might be around that. There, we've seen that happen on Facebook. We've seen billion dollar companies start on Facebook. We've seen that on Instagram. No one said it on Twitter, but it will happen. And in particular, we're interested in these like, there's like these guys called like the guys. So there's like the strip mall guy. He talks about investing in strip malls. There's the watch guy who talks about old watches. And we're like, what's gonna happen with these quote guys? Like, what are they, what are they gonna do? And then there's the anonymous car dealer guy. And I think Sean like DM'd him asking like, which car should I buy?

• 52:38Sam Parr?

  And he told him to get the Cadillac and then he watched your review and then he just wired some guy money and got the Cadillac. What do you think? First of all, I don't know why you need, I don't know what happened to you and that guy.

• 52:45Shaan Puri?

  I said, I wanna buy this car. I'm looking for this car. Can you find it for me and buy it for me and get it to my house? And I don't wanna do any work. And he did, he did exactly that.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Um, okay. Here's, here's the, they'll tell you the genesis of the feud and then I'll, I'll tell you what I think of that. Um, the, here's the thing about success on Twitter for, for one of those guys. And I love all those guy tweet Twitters. I think they're all really interesting, including car dealership guy. But the problem is, in order to be successful on Twitter, and I have a suspicion that this is even more true in the new age of Twitter. You gotta be really controversial and you gotta be pretty like, I wouldn't say blasphemous, but you gotta be like out there. With like your takes and your opinions because that amplifies more. And I think Facebook found out years ago that like, they can do that, but that doesn't necessarily lead to a great community.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  And a lot of times there was all this election misinformation or all this fear mongering. And so they like dialed back some of that. And it sounds to me like Twitter right now is actually magnifying it. Like it seems every crazy take is at the top with all these engagements. And that's what they're trying to maximize for. And the problem that I have with car dealership guy is that like his, if you read his posts, some of them are just like the most insane fear mongering stuff you'll ever read. Like the reason we got into the feud was I, he posted like Ford his. Done this crazy thing. They're gonna go out of business. It's gonna be the worst thing in the world. And I'm like, this is, this is so insane. And I went into the data of what he was talking about and Ford had to do some big write down on some investment this year. And so their profits were low and he didn't mention that. He only mentioned that the profits were off 80% compared to last year.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And it was like, maybe a little bit.

• 54:22Sam Parr?

  Or he'll say like, he'll say like, uh, uh, lease, lease, uh, I forget what it's called when you can't pay your lease. But, uh, link, least delinquency is like at this time, which is the highest it's ever been, which means in four months, something like.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Everything is gonna blow up. And I think the problem I have with all of those guy accounts is precisely that. And so I, I called him out on this Ford thing and we got into a little, a little tiff. And unfortunately for him, everyone who was replying agreed with me once they saw the data. And so he blocked me and so, and then, but, and then I realized though, I'm not the only person he has blocked. He, a lot of my car journalist friends who I suspect have also tried to add context at various times. He has blocked them also. And so what I suspect happens is he's like, kind of tried to create a little bit of an echo chamber around himself. Because that's what makes you popular on Twitter now. If you go into somebody's tweets and you see that they have a lot of like, whoa, that's amazing types of replies. They're gonna continue to get magnified and get blown out. And I think that people who have a lot of dissent, it starts to become a little bit cloudier.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And, but if you see somebody as like a real icon where everybody's agreeing with him, then it continues to make him seem more and more like elevated. And I, so I suspect he's blocking up the people who disagree. And so I, I, in an, in an idea, I like the idea of that Twitter account, but I think in order to be popular on, I don't, I don't even dislike him. I dislike the concept of in order to be popular on Twitter, you kind of have to just keep going controversial and these crazy takes. And that's really the only way to like, make it work. And I think that that's less true on the other platforms.

• 55:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, I think that's true. We have a friend named Nick who owns, uh, or part owns an agency that outsources a lot of like, uh, assistant, like executive assistant work to the Philippines. And he'll do these tweets where he brags about paying his workers $5 an hour and how that empowers them and, and everything like that. Which like is or is not true. I, I imagine it is true, but he says it in such a way where. He knows people are gonna get angry and share it. And at the bottom of the tweet, he'd be like, by the way, if this actually interests you, you could like sign up here. And so he'll like tweet something that gets like, it'll go, it goes viral every time, like it'll get like, you know, 50,000 likes and like, you know, three or four or 500 quotes of like people saying this guy is such a douche. Can you believe how tone deaf he is, whatever?

• 56:34Sam Parr?

  And then he'll like text us, he goes, made 50 grand today.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's the, that's the problem I have with Twitter, at least right now. I think it's definitely gone to more of a controversy sells kind of thing. You can't just be like a nice dude and do well on Twitter right now. You have to have like takes that are controversial and kind of ridiculous in order to get anywhere. And I'm just, I don't know. It's a shame.

• 56:56Sam Parr?

  I want to ask you one, one last inside baseball question, which was, Sean, you probably don't, this probably doesn't entirely interest you, but maybe I think it would for you, Doug. Have you noticed that a lot of car museums are nonprofits? So for example, there's like the Barber Museum in, I think Alabama.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:13Sam Parr?

  Where, so it's a nonprofit. You can go on and like see their financials and everything. And I have a feeling, and this is like an interesting tax hack, but I don't know if it's true. I have a feeling what they do is they sell a business, sort of like we've all done and what you've recently done, Doug. And they put their money, I think in some type of like donor advised fund, which is like you can give away a certain amount of money to certified nonprofits and then reduce your tax burden. And I have a feeling what they're doing is they're setting up their car museum as a nonprofit. And like the Barber guy, I believe he set up the Barber Museum after he sold, I think like a dairy company for like a billion dollars.

• 57:54Sam Parr?

  He had like a milk and dairy business. I have a feeling what they do is they make a big sale, a big equity sale on their business. And they put a certain amount of proceeds into a donor advised fund of which they then put into a nonprofit that they own. And that's where they go and buy all their cars and they let people come and see their cars and whatever. I have a feeling that's what's happening. I don't, I don't know. I've just been like looking around this. I think that's what's happening. There's another guy who I think you had on, his, his YouTube channel is like, here's my $20 million car collection. He's a young guy that has like a tire store. And he keeps saying in his YouTube videos, I buy these cars so everyone can enjoy it. And I have a feeling he's doing the same thing as well.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  You're talking about Hoovy, I think, Hoovy's Garage?

• 58:36Sam Parr?

  I can't remember. He's in San Diego and he has a tire store.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  It's an interesting idea. It's an interesting idea. I think I need a larger exit before I can make that happen, but that is a great place to, a great way to justify a vehicle collection.

• 58:50Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think it's not that you donate the money. I think you have to donate the asset or your shares to the DAF first.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  But if you, but if you control it and you work in the museum is yours, what do you care?

• 59:00Shaan Puri?

  So I just asked, um, I asked Bard, the new Google AI, I said, explain how rich people use nonprofit museums to avoid paying taxes. Here's what it says. It says that a way that rich people use nonprofit museums to avoid paying taxes to create a donor advised fund, DAF. A DAF is a charitable giving account. It allows donors to make a one-time or recurring distribution of cash or appreciated assets and receive an immediate tax deduction. But, um, so basically the donor donates art to like, for example, donor donates art to a museum, they receive an immediate tax deduction for the full appraised value of the art. However, the museum does not have to sell the art and they, it can instead display it as their own collection. They can avoid paying capital gains on the, on the appreciation of the art.

• 59:42Shaan Puri?

  And so I think I've seen this where people basically have like a quote unquote, public museum, like in their backyard. Uh, it's like.

• 59:49Sam Parr?

  And I wonder how, who, what, who dictates?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is the monitoring, the price, but also like, how, how many hours does the museum have to be open to justify that? Probably no one's checking on that. Yeah. Forty five minutes a year.

• 1:00:04Sam Parr?

  Like, like, could you say that, like, because this is Doug's Porsche, it is now worth an additional 20% increase? You know what I mean? Like, I wonder, I wonder like what the appraised value is, but I had a feeling that's what's happening, which seems like a wonderful hack for cardinals. Cause you can now, I get, would that mean that your, your purchase price is effectively like 37% or however, whatever your, your taxes, uh, 50%?

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  I've been to that Barber Museum and it is quite an operation. And so if that's true, there's probably such a massive spend at the beginning to get, if you do it legally.

• 1:00:40Sam Parr?

  Fifty million, I believe. I went and looked up his, all his numbers. I think he seed funded it with forty or something million and it makes around fifty million a year.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Man, that's crazy.

• 1:00:50Sam Parr?

  Nonprofits, you can go and look up all the information. There's like, I think there's the Peterson Museum in LA. There's a few other ones and you could actually go and look at all the, you can look at their financials and you could figure out, because that was my dream was, I was like, if I get, you know, a $500 million exit, I, like, it would be awesome to have this playground.

• 1:01:11Sam Parr?

  But yeah, I've already done all the math and like, looked into all of this. That's what we gotta do.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  That's an interesting thing. Never considered it, but will in the future.

• 1:01:19Sam Parr?

  Well, Doug, we appreciate you coming on. I, hopefully, you realize I'm legitimately a huge fan, so.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you.

• 1:01:27Sam Parr?

  Talk to you and maybe Sean's not exactly a car guy, but maybe he will become one now.

• 1:01:33Shaan Puri?

  Appreciate that I legitimately have only watched one of your videos, but it did lead me to buy a car. So, you know,

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  enjoy that Escalade. It's gonna be great.

• 1:01:41Shaan Puri?

  Oh, well. It's only got a 66 on the Doug score. Now I'm thinking, oh, maybe I should have.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Pretty good. The best car ever got like a 73.

• 1:01:50Shaan Puri?

  The sixth car is higher than it. And so I'm like, am I the kind of guy who just buys the seventh best car?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  No, but for like full-size luxury SUVs, I bet it's at the very, it is probably my favorite if you're gonna go down that route. It's a, that's a, that's a bit of a risky car to drive around the Bay Area where everybody else is in electric cars. You're getting like 12 miles per gallon, you know?

• 1:02:09Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah. I love it. It's fantastic.

• 1:02:11Sam Parr?

  I asked him, Doug, I go, so do you have like the self-driving stuff? And he's like, I don't know. Do I? And I was like, that's like the whole point of that.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  The whole point.

• 1:02:19Sam Parr?

  That's the whole point of that Escalade is that it has like.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Drive for you. Isn't that in the Bay? That's what you want.

• 1:02:25Shaan Puri?

  The point, the point of it is that it fits multiple car seats and has huge amount of trunk space. That's, that's the point, actually. My world.

• 1:02:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you didn't even know.

• 1:02:35Shaan Puri?

  I'm not trying to self-driving car my kids right now.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  No, it works well, Cadillacs. The system you have in that car is the best system of all, of all.

• 1:02:42Shaan Puri?

  It's better than Tesla's self-driving? How is that possible?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Unquestionable. Because Tesla's.

• 1:02:47Sam Parr?

  It came from Cruise.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  The Cadillac system lets you be totally hands off. Tesla's system is not even, I would say in the top four anymore. But Cadillac's system is especially good. It lets you be fully hands off as long as you want, provided that you're looking ahead. You can be hands off and, and you have to be on a mapped road, but that's like every highway. If you're, if you're on a mapped road, which like the five and you're looking ahead, you can just sit there and.

• 1:03:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but like.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  I won't give you ideas about stuff you can do, but you don't have to be driving.

• 1:03:13Shaan Puri?

  No, I know you're the car guy, so let me just, but I am the tech guy and I just don't understand how Cadillac could possibly have better self-driving car software.

• 1:03:22Sam Parr?

  They bought Cruise. They brought your buddy's company, uh, Cruise, you know, remember them? You see him in, they, they bought Cruise. GM bought Cruise. GM owns Cadillac.

• 1:03:32Shaan Puri?

  But Cruise is not, like Cruise was not the top of the top, right? Like that, that wasn't.

• 1:03:37Sam Parr?

  They, they are some of, I mean, you'll see Cruises in San Francisco now, you can rent a Cruise taxi.

• 1:03:43Shaan Puri?

  You've seen those Cruises at the intersection? They don't know what the hell to do at any intersection. Have you, have you driven around San Francisco?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Well, I wouldn't trust it. That's the thing about it. The, the Cadillac SuperCruise system works best on, and mostly only on freeways. I don't even use, cause I have a pretty good system. I have a new Mercedes that has a great system too, and I don't use it. Once I get off the freeway, I'm driving myself. And that's true of the Teslas also. They say full self-driving, but we've seen all those, seen those videos where the car. I wouldn't trust it. Off freeway, we're still in a kind of a Wild West situation.

• 1:04:11Sam Parr?

  You didn't look at the Defender, Sean? You weren't, you weren't, you weren't a Defender guy?

• 1:04:14Shaan Puri?

  Is that a Marvel movie? What do you, I don't know what you're talking about. The Defenders, what, what are we talking about here?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  That's the level we're at here with Sean.

• 1:04:24Shaan Puri?

  I DM'd a guy and told him to buy me a car. That's the level of research I did.

• 1:04:30Shaan Puri?

  I picked a car that I had heard of from rap videos, dude.

• 1:04:35Shaan Puri?

  That was my research.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  What about a minivan? Did you consider a minivan at all or did you?

• 1:04:39Shaan Puri?

  I wanted a minivan. My preference was a minivan. My wife vetoed it cause she was like, uh, cause I'm just like, cars stress me out. Nice cars stress me out. So I just wanted something I wouldn't be stressed about that was super functional. I was like, what if we just go the other way? What if we just zag here when everybody's zigging and we, we go get like the most functional, most spacious. Minivan that I'm not gonna worry about anywhere. I could park it anywhere and I'm just not gonna care what happens to this car. And it's just gonna be this like transport closet for me and my kids mess. And that's what I was interested in, but my wife was like, cool, we're not doing that.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  I recommend minivans to everybody now. Everybody with multiple kids. I got a buddy who has three kids and I was just like, you need a van. He's like, what SUV can I get? I was like, you need a van. He was like, oh, I could get three car seats in my car. There's, there's.

• 1:05:23Shaan Puri?

  What's a good minivan for me?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  The Sienna is the one you want. That's the one everybody gets right now. That's at the Toyota Sienna. That's the one you want. It is ugly and it is slow and it is lame, but it is, if you have, especially three and up children, three numbers, three kids or more, you, you just have to. Getting car seats into an SUV like it's just.

• 1:05:41Shaan Puri?

  I just want like the Crocs version of a car.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  That is exactly that.

• 1:05:46Sam Parr?

  But Crocs are cool.

• 1:05:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm betting that the, that the minivan will make the, make a Crocs like comeback.

• 1:05:52Sam Parr?

  No, you made the right choice with the Escalade, although that's like a hundred and thirty thousand dollar SUV, which kind of defeats the purpose of not worrying about it.

• 1:06:00Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, I get, I got overruled by my, I got vetoed by my wife and had to buy a good car that I do have to worry about a little bit.

• 1:06:07Sam Parr?

  And what, what do you own right now, Doug? I didn't know you owned a, another Mercedes. You have the Defender.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  I have my, my main normal car. I have a, a E-Class station wagon. Um, so.

• 1:06:17Sam Parr?

  AMG or not?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Not an AMG, no, just an E450.

• 1:06:21Sam Parr?

  Plebe.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Dude, we had this exit. We had this giant exit. We've got all this money and I went out and bought a used, non-AMG E-Class station wagon. That is who I am at heart. Um, no, the real reason I did that is because I love the AMG wagon, but ultimately I now have a Ford GT, a Carrera GT, and then two crazy convertible SUVs. And my view was, I don't need to be getting seven miles per gallon and doing zero to 60 in three seconds in my daily driver. It's just not, it's, I'm, I'm good. I've got cars that can do all that. And so I just bought a regular one. Also, the regular ones are just as fast now as the AMG ones were only a few years ago. So I'm, it's, it's fine. It's comfortable.

• 1:06:56Sam Parr?

  And.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  It's just, it's so nice.

• 1:06:58Sam Parr?

  Do you still drive? I mean, I, I, I watched one of your things and you're like, I drove this car across country six times in the last like two years. Why are you driving cross country versus flying?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  When the summer, we live in Massachusetts and so I drive all the way across the country every summer and all the way across at the beginning of the fall, every single year. I've done this now three times. This will be my fourth. I'm leaving in 30 days from today. And I, we just, it's a whole summer. So you need a car, you need your dog. We have a lot of stuff and it's just the easiest way to get everything there until, unless I can afford to fly private, which I cannot. This is that.

• 1:07:36Sam Parr?

  When, um, so by the way, I do the same thing. I, I spend my summers in New York and my wife flies and me and my dog drive.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  There you go. I've finally, I found another, I found another person who does this.

• 1:07:46Sam Parr?

  What, when will you be wealthy enough to fly private, you think? When are you going to feel comfortable?

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Do you know the cost? Let me tell you a story. This is-

• 1:07:52Sam Parr?

  Probably 30 grand from LA to SF or LA to-

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  So this is the thing. I, I, we go to Nantucket. So I, so that's like the, I'm at like the poles of the country. San Diego is the extreme southwest and Nantucket is basically the extreme northeast. So, um, I, I generally fly first class now. That is one of the splurges that I do. And so a first class ticket across the country is a thousand bucks or whatever. And I'm like, thousand bucks. This is great. And I thought to myself, fun flying first class for a thousand bucks. I bet I can fly private for like, you know, three, four thousand. I bet that's what it costs. This was me of, of, of naive Doug thinking, hey, it's probably only a few grand more. You know what? How much more could it be? And the answer is, I looked it up. $55,000 direct from San Diego to Nantucket. And so the answer to your question, when will I be able to fly private? Never. My dog and I will always pile into the car

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  and end up refueling at these sketchy gas stations in New Mexico and Oklahoma. That will be our lives for years.

• 1:08:47Sam Parr?

  How often are, are people recognizing you on these road trips at gas stations? All the time, I imagine?

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  No, it's rare on the trips. Um, and I'm, and I'm like, I'm like obsessive about getting there quickly. Like I just go. I don't ever stop and like look at people or chat. But in life, like, yeah, all the time, obviously, and it's, it's always nice. It's always good interactions with people.

• 1:09:09Sam Parr?

  Well, dude, this is awesome. We appreciate you.

• 1:09:11Shaan Puri?

  You want to shout anything out where people should find you or where to reach you or whatever?

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Cars and bids. No, we've talked about every people can, people will figure it out.

• 1:09:20Sam Parr?

  Well, dude, thanks for doing this, man. We'll, we'll pimp out your Twitter, YouTube channel, Cars and Bids. And you're the best, man. I've been a fan for years. It's awesome to finally talk.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

• 1:09:32Sam Parr?

  And congrats on the, all the success, even though you've been at it for, you know.

• 1:09:35Shaan Puri?

  Doug, I've never seen Sam like this. He is just fawning. He can't stop. He's just like, listen, man. If you want a carpool across country sometime, I, I'd love, our dogs can sit in the back. We can sit in the front. It'll be amazing.

• 1:09:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You need a friend? I got a friend. I'll be your friend if you need one.

• 1:09:51Shaan Puri?

  Glad to have you on the pod. Glad that we're friends now, right? Would that be fair to say? Would that be a reach or would that be okay?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  I'm legitimately, I'm thrilled to find someone else who does this drive and we should be in contact about that at the very least. I have become like a student of this drive.

• 1:10:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. We could start there.

• 1:10:13Sam Parr?

  I'm happy to start there. We could do that.

• 1:10:16Shaan Puri?

  The funniest thing, by the way, Doug, we just did a live show in Austin and like, Sam is, Sam is like the opposite of this when someone's a big fan of Sam and they know everything about him. They've been a fan for years, been following them. They've, they're kind of fawning over him. Huge turn off to Sam, but when it's somebody that he does the exact same thing to other people, this is hilarious to me.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  I had this happen to me, I met Jerry Seinfeld like a year ago and Jerry tells me that he watches all my videos. And over at this point, I've had people coming up to me on the street for years. Like I've had some of the interaction go great, some of them don't, and I know exactly what to say, what, when I'm expecting someone to say, to have it go great, you know? And I meet Jared, he's like, I watch all your videos. And I'm like, uh, uh, uh.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Do you like horses?

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  I was like, I can't believe I screwed this up after having so much.

• 1:11:12Sam Parr?

  Well, and by the way, I know we keep like, we tried wrapping this up and then we kept going. So like, I just want to acknowledge that because I actually do kind of want to hear about this. Jay Leno, I don't know if you know about this, Sean, but Jay Leno is like-

• 1:11:22Shaan Puri?

  The car guy, yeah, I know that part.

• 1:11:24Sam Parr?

  Doesn't he have like four or five airplane hangars? Is that, what was that like?

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Oh, it's incredible. I've been there now three or four times. It is incredible. Um, yeah, he's got like four. One of them might be an airplane hangar, but it's mostly just like buildings. It's like in an office park. It's next to an airport, but they're, if they're not, um, but anyway, they're giant buildings. Yeah. I would say maybe six of them. One is just like a machine shop. It's incredible. I mean, his collection is truly unbelievable. One of the coolest things I'll ever see. Oh, yeah. Hundreds of millions.

• 1:11:55Sam Parr?

  You think so?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Well, he's got a McLaren F1. That in itself is probably worth 40. Um, maybe 50 at this point.

• 1:12:02Shaan Puri?

  A McLaren F1 is worth 40 or 50 million now? Wow.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Shaan Puri?

  That's pretty crazy.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And his, he's, it's like, his is like a one owner car. He's at 25 years. He told me he paid 800 for it or six, 700.

• 1:12:14Sam Parr?

  That's insane to me.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Shaan Puri?

  That is, yeah. Isn't that the car Elon had that he crashed?

• 1:12:20Sam Parr?

  Have you seen a, Sean, do you know what WeatherTech is? It's like, uh, it's like you buy a car and you like, get like the mats, which is like one of those businesses like Yeti, where you're like, there's no way a cooler company is going to be big. And turns out this thing's just massive. And the reason you know it's massive is I think it's privately owned, but they sponsor all the stuff, which you have to have a big budget for. But the owner bought a Ferrari 250, what's it called, a GTO-

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:43Sam Parr?

  For $80 million, which is like, I think the most expensive car sale ever.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:48Sam Parr?

  And that's how you know this company is killing it, that the owner of the privately held company has enough cash to spend on an $80 million car that's just going to sit, you know? It's, it's ridiculous. I mean, it, it's like a crazy thing. And so Jay has one that's worth 40 or 50. That's gotta be in the top 10 of like most valuable cars in the world.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And by far the most valuable like modern car. And, um, he told me the most unbelievable story about this car, that he bought it, he paid 600 and he told me he's driving through LA. There's only 64 of them. He's driving through LA and, um, he sees another-

• 1:13:19Sam Parr?

  What year was he driving in?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  This was when he, when he had bought it and he's driving through LA and he sees another one. So this is 97, 98. He sees another one just street parked in front of a house and he's like- What? And so he goes up and rings the doorbell and meets the guy and he says hi to the guy. They they exchange info. Yeah, we both got McLaren F1s in LA. And he told me that the guy calls him a year later and says, Jay, you'll never believe it. I sold mine and I made I got $800,000. I made 200 grand. And Jay's like, I think I'm gonna hang on to mine a little longer. And now it's worth 40 and that's a lesson in.

• 1:13:51Sam Parr?

  Who who's gonna buy a $40 million car? I mean, how many people in the world do you think would do that? Are there only like a thousand people?

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  I reviewed Jay's and and I asked him and I had to cut this out of the video because it was quite an interesting segment. But like I asked him, I was like, what do you think of the other owners of this car? And he thought for a long time and gave a very measured response. And I thought to myself like, what, reading between the lines, what he was trying to say is there are a bunch of jerks who have money. They're not car enthusiasts like that car has become the type of thing you buy if you just want like a trophy. Rather than if you actually care about cars, whereas when it was 600, 800 grand. There were enough car people who could afford it that maybe they'd get into the mechanics and do the work themselves, which Jay values very heavily. But now it's just a bunch of rich guys who want to brag and.

• 1:14:38Sam Parr?

  And that's why he doesn't own Ferrari because in order to buy the fancy Ferrari, you have to buy an entry level Ferrari. And you get on a waitlist and they like release them like a Rolex almost. And he's like, no, fuck that, even though I'm a rich guy, I'm a man of the people. I'm not getting on a waitlist to buy a million dollar car.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  There's got to be 75 cars in that, maybe 100 cars in that collection and not one Ferrari.

• 1:15:00Sam Parr?

  That's insane. How many people can afford a $40 million F1 or McLaren?

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Nobody. And the ones who can servicing it is a nightmare. It's done on some like MS DOS based. I mean, the whole thing is like a total mess. It's but it's the coolest thing in the world, you know? And if you're a rich guy and you have all the rich guy cars like the Carrera GT and the F40. You're not a really rich guy unless you got a McLaren F1. Then you then you don't even need the other car. You're just like, yeah, I win.

• 1:15:29Sam Parr?

  Where do you keep your? How much is your monthly insurance for a million dollar Porsche?

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Not as much as you'd think. I think it's only a thousand a month to insure that car.

• 1:15:39Sam Parr?

  Do you even drive it? Do you drive on a day like on a Friday night or once a month?

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  I take it to Cars and Coffee once a week, basically. But other than that, my like, my wife still hasn't even ridden in it. Like, it's just, it's not something I'm I I've driven it a thousand miles since I bought it four months ago, which is actually pretty good. But like, it's a terrifying thing to drive a car that's worth a million dollars. Like, anybody could hit you. And then it's like, OK, well, this is not going to be good for anybody. Like, that person bankrupt now because their insurance limit is way below this and my insurer's going to sue them. And like, the whole thing is just, it's just a scary. I love driving it. I truly believe it's the greatest driving car ever made.

• 1:16:15Shaan Puri?

  Are you happy you own that car? It sounds like might be not so fun to own that car.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  No, no, I I went when I take it out, which is very rare. But when I take it out on early mornings before people are up, when it's still cool and I can take it into the mountains and like really enjoy it, which I've done now three or four times, then it is so rewarding and so incredible. And I truly, truly believe that it is, and I've driven them all, the greatest driving car that has ever been made. And so like, to that extent, it's worth it for sure.

• 1:16:41Shaan Puri?

  OK.

• 1:16:42Sam Parr?

  And that's insane.

• 1:16:42Shaan Puri?

  This is actually the end of the podcast now.

• 1:16:47Shaan Puri?

  All right, that's it. Sam, Sam, you he's not not going to be your bestie. He's not going to be your best friend.

• 1:16:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. Give it time, bro. Give it time. It takes time. We'll build a relationship. I've already got this planned out.

• 1:17:00Shaan Puri?

  Sam's gonna happen to be in your town next week. Oh, hey, I'm just in town, just was hoping we could hang. I flew out here for this.

• 1:17:09Sam Parr?

  Oh, you're not in LA, you're in San Diego. That's weird. I'm gonna be here tomorrow, too.

• 1:17:16Sam Parr?

  Thanks, Doug. We appreciate it.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, guys.