TheStradman Breaks Silence on Burned Lamborghini, $1M IRS Audit, & Car Market Bubble

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:26Speaker 01

  2.7 million is what I paid for the car.

• 0:28Graham Stephan?

  And what do you sell it for?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  I sold it for...

• 0:32Graham Stephan?

  No.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  And I will drive this car more than anyone's ever driven a Koenigsegg.

• 0:39Graham Stephan?

  What's the craziest thing you've seen in the car market?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Where to begin?

• 0:45Speaker 01

  There's more money in the market than ever before.

• 0:47Graham Stephan?

  You believe that maybe some of it's fake.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I know it is. Anyone who's in the business know that there's some fishy stuff that happens at those auctions. I had a plan. I had an idea. I turned a $600 video camera into $10 million.

• 0:59Graham Stephan?

  What triggered the audit?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  I owe like a million dollars.

• 1:02Graham Stephan?

  Holy crap.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  I was in a dark place. It was tough. Then I just have to turn it on for the camera.

• 1:08Graham Stephan?

  Is marriage on the horizon?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Soon.

• 1:12Graham Stephan?

  When are Strad Kids gonna happen?

• 1:20Graham Stephan?

  James, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:23Graham Stephan?

  So you just did this video where you went through the entire value of your car collection. It's almost $4 million worth of cars. I'm so curious, how much has your collection gone up in value over the last year?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It's crazy because a year ago, I had the Koenigsegg, and I don't have the Koenigsegg anymore, but I never owned the Koenigsegg outright. If I owned the Koenigsegg outright, or if we include that in the total value of my car collection, then it was actually way more a year ago. Probably would've been like 5, 6 million.

• 1:49Graham Stephan?

  5, 6 million. See, the fact that there's such a variance.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53Graham Stephan?

  It could be 5 or 6.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  It's off by a million. For sure. A car like that, though, it's like, how do you value that car? I didn't own that car outright also. But yeah, there's a huge variance. The car market right now, guys, crazy. Every day it's different.

• 2:04Graham Stephan?

  What's the craziest thing you've seen in the car market right now?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Where to begin? Like, seriously, I saw a GT2 RS. Paint a sample, nonsense, whatever. $2.4 million asking price for a 2RS, a 911 for 2 million.

• 2:18Graham Stephan?

  Okay, but that's asking.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  No, I know, I know, but still, like, I saw that this morning. $2.4 million for a 2RS. I mean, 458 Speciali, those are like $2 million. I mean, everything is just out of control right now.

• 2:31Graham Stephan?

  The one thing that shocked me, I blinked, and the price of a 430 Scuderia, $700,000. I remember when those were like low 200s for a solid car.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yep, I had one.

• 2:44Graham Stephan?

  What happened?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  And I paid low hundreds. It was a salvage title. But I paid low hundreds. I think people are starting to realize, after Ferrari dropped the Luce, it's awful.

• 2:52Graham Stephan?

  Oh, I've seen that.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  It's like the Apple car with the Ferrari logo. It looks like a Prius. A Prius actually looks better. Like, the worst thing, I think Ferrari has ever done in their history was this car. And immediately, I've talked to every dealership, Ferrari drops the Luce, and instantaneously, their phone is off the hook, and everybody wants the good stuff.

• 3:11Graham Stephan?

  So you know what's crazy is I learned today, they actually sold 500 units of that car. $300 million of revenue for Ferrari. And they said that they did all of this in two months, when they were expecting five or six months.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  You can say whatever you want, right? You can control the narrative. Like, that's the internet nowadays. You can say whatever you want. Ferrari can say whatever they want. Ferrari is one of the most powerful brands of all time. They have so many clients that will just buy whatever, right? Because they need to maintain their resume. They gotta stay at the top of the list. And I don't know if you guys saw, but the new F80, their new like halo car, an Aperta convertible version was just spotted in Italy. And they're gonna build like 300, 400 of those. So these Ferrari guys are like, oh, we gotta get a Luce. We don't want a Luce. We want nothing to do with it. But if it helps us get an F80 Aperta, they're gonna do it. So when you say 500, it's like, there's so many Ferrari collectors around the world that are just gonna buy anything. I mean, look at the peril they sell. They sell everything, and everybody eats it up that wants the cars.

• 4:12Graham Stephan?

  That was my thought, is that maybe people are buying that car as like the ticket to basically be entered in the lottery to get some of the other cars. They don't actually want that car.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Nobody wants that car. At $650,000, too. Six, that thing is gonna set a record for the biggest depreciation curve of any car ever.

• 4:31Graham Stephan?

  Is there any chance that you are wrong?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  No. There's literally, there's literally no chance.

• 4:37Graham Stephan?

  But if everyone were to sell that Ferrari, wouldn't it destroy their relationships with the dealers that would then sell them? The halo car, whatever the more desirable.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  They'll keep the car for a year or two. You know, these guys, these upper echelon Ferrari guys are so wealthy. $650,000 is not that big of a deal, right? If they take a 2, 3, $400,000 loss, like, whatever. Because if they're able to get an F80 Aperta, that's instantly a million, 2, 3, 4 million dollars more than they paid, they're totally fine, right? So that's why these guys are so wealthy, they're able to eat it. How many people are actually gonna buy a Luce that that's their only Ferrari? Or they have one or two Ferraris? I don't see it happening. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

• 5:14Graham Stephan?

  It's kind of like the guys with the Ferrari Roma, where they go and get that car to be able to be offered the car above that, to be able to be offered the car above that. It's kind of like Rolex, almost.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 5:26Graham Stephan?

  You have to like work your way up the system.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:29Graham Stephan?

  And then go to Ferrari events.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:31Graham Stephan?

  Rack days.

• 5:32Speaker 01

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

• 5:52Graham Stephan?

  I was about to ask, because you have quite the Lamborghini collection. Do they play those games?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Not yet. Not yet. Now, I do know that Lamborghini has like, kind of like a scoring program for their clients. I've seen it. I've seen my personal score. I've seen like the stars that I have. You know, they have like a note section, and it'll tell, like, you know, YouTuber, et cetera, et cetera.

• 6:13Graham Stephan?

  Really?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  But I just think that the Lamborghini brand isn't strong enough to command, you know, any value out of that, right? Like, the Temerario, the Revuelto, there's just not enough demand. Like, they need to sell so many that anyone can walk off the street and pretty much buy one.

• 6:29Graham Stephan?

  So how do you get points at Lamborghini?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  So it's the same thing as Ferrari. Buying cars is obviously critical. Going to events, being a part of the Lamborghini race series, just like the Ferrari series. You know, social media, if you're a, you know, an actor, an actress, or, you know, anything famous, that helps as well. So it's kind of like Lamborghini's trying to emulate Ferrari, but it hasn't mattered yet because the brand's just not as strong. I think a big part of it is Ferrari produces so many different models of cars, whereas Lamborghini just doesn't produce the same number of special editions, right?

• 7:01Graham Stephan?

  How long did you own your Koenigsegg for?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  So I had it for two and a half years.

• 7:06Graham Stephan?

  So what were all of the finances behind owning a Koenigsegg for two and a half years?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  The Koenigsegg, I was leasing it. I got the car from Houston, Crosta, in Las Vegas. You guys know Houston. Basically, we transferred his lease over to me. So I took over his lease. But also, there was an exchange, a lump sum exchange to Houston. So I gave Houston cash. I gave Houston my Hummer EV, my 430 Scuderia, and my Lamborghini Gardo STS. And then I took over his lease payments. And then I proceeded, basically, just make his payments for the next 24, 25, 26 months, whatever it ended up being. And the payments were $35,000 a month.

• 7:48Graham Stephan?

  How does that feel every day to spend $1,100 owning a Koenigsegg? Because you wake up in the morning, and you sleep for 12 hours, and that's $600, basically, that you are in the red, that you have to make that day.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:04Graham Stephan?

  Just to pay for the time that you were sleeping.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  So thankfully, it was structured as a lease to own. So every single lease payment that I made, a high percentage of it went toward equity. And don't quote me on the exact numbers, but I want to say every payment was around $20,000 to $23,000 went toward equity, and then the remainder went toward interest.

• 8:26Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  So that is huge, right? Like, I mean, that is everything. Because a lot of leases, like, you literally eat the cost, right?

• 8:31Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  At the end of the lease, you just return the car, and it's a sunk cost, and the money's gone. On the Koenigsegg, the way it was structured, and that really helped. The other big part was the tax advantages, right? So I have a YouTube channel. I film cars for a living. The Koenigsegg was a business expense. So I was able to write off that payment. So let's say hypothetically, I'm in the 50% tax, you know, range or so, let's say. So roughly, you know, it was reducing my tax liability by 50%. So it was, every single month, it was reducing my tax liability by like $17,000-ish per month. So that helped as well. So you have these different factors. And then also, the car was so incredibly rare that I thought, which I was wrong about, I thought that it was going to appreciate in value. I also never planned on selling the car.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  So I figured long-term, eventually, it might be worth 3, 4, 5 million dollars, and that that would end up offsetting all those lease payments, too.

• 9:25Graham Stephan?

  Okay, so what did you buy the car for in terms of a dollar amount? What did you sell it for?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:30Graham Stephan?

  And what was really surprising is I read the comments, and people were begging you to sell the car.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:35Graham Stephan?

  And then were congratulating you and happy for you that you sold the dream car.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, the thing I love about my audience, my audience is my number one fan, obviously, right? And they saw the change in my demeanor. They saw the change in my ability to produce content. They could understand the financial stress that I was going through making these payments. And I had, you know, I had explained this to them. I've always been a very open book in every single one of my videos. Like, people know what cars I own, what cars I finance. The Koenigsegg lease, the payment, like, all that information was out there. And so they knew the stress I was going through. And they also knew how special the car was to me. Because it was a very special car. I mean, it was, it was a car that I had a unique history with 10 years ago, a dream car. And so they understood both sides of the equation.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  And then when I sold it, you know, it was really sad. I do miss the car. But it was the right choice. It's allowed me so much more financial flexibility. Things that, you know, I didn't factor fully into the equation when I bought the car. You know, I was, I was using my heart, let's be honest. I wasn't using my brain. You know, I was justifying the tax advantages. I was justifying with the equity because I felt like getting this car was such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get. Because I had such a unique history with the car, and the idea of owning a Koenigsegg was like an impossibility. So when the opportunity came, and my buddy Houston had the car, and, you know, he was willing to work with me on the financial structure of the deal

• 11:05Speaker 01

  because I gave him the cars, and then I made $100,000 payments to him for a couple, you know, probably like a year, not every month. It was like every three months, I made a $100,000 payment. But he was willing to do that for me, right? And there was no interest on those payments. So it was kind of like, you know, the perfect storm, if you will, to make it happen. And, you know, at the time...

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Thirty five thousand dollars, it was a lot, but I was like, I can, I can do this. I can make this happen. Like this car is going to unlock opportunities that I wouldn't have had before, which it did. It's going to get me into the Koenigsegg family. You know, Christian von Koenigsegg is one of the most inspiring individuals I've ever met in my entire life. And to own one of his products while he's still like alive is incredible. Like, think about owning a Ferrari Daytona when Enzo Ferrari was alive. Like, how cool would that be? Going to Monterey, you know, going on the drives with him. So all these justifications that I made is kind of what led me to end up with the car. Now, as far as the dollar figure that I paid for the car, it's kind of a little hit or miss because of the deal with Houston, right? What was the Hummer EV worth?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  You could say a hundred grand, you could say a hundred and fifty grand, right? Same with the SDS, same with the Scud. I would say around two and a half to 2.7 million is what I paid for the car.

• 12:24Jack Selby?

  And what'd you sell it for?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I sold it for

• 12:29Speaker 01

  two million, six hundred and nineteen thousand dollars.

• 12:33Jack Selby?

  You broke even.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Paid a lot of interest over two years, though. Let's say I made 25 payments and the interest was, let's make it easy, 10,000. That's what, 250,000 dollars right there? That was interest. I filmed a lot of content, though. I put 5,000 miles on the car. I serviced the car a couple of times. We'll call it even.

• 12:51Jack Selby?

  That actually doesn't, that doesn't sound like that bad of it. And it's such a part of your legacy, I feel like.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  For sure. And when I think about my life and how special the memories were that I had with the car, it was the right choice. Like, no regrets, right? No regrets.

• 13:05Jack Selby?

  Did it unlock any other opportunities for you?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  It didn't unlock maybe the opportunities I was hoping it would. You know, I met a lot of people. I was hoping to go to the Koenigsegg factory and, you know.

• 13:18Jack Selby?

  Do that now?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could do that, that's the thing. The one thing I was hoping, I was hoping to film a video with Christian driving the car. I think that would have been insane. That didn't end up happening, um, which is totally fine. But, yeah, I mean, I had a ton of experiences. I took it up to Jackson Hole with Curated on a rally. My friends all rode in it. Yeah, I mean, I got a picture with Christian with the car. That was super cool. So, I mean, I had a ton of cool memories. I took it to Florida and I went 227 miles an hour at the Kennedy Space Center. That was insane. So the experiences were incredible.

• 13:52Jack Selby?

  Who bought it?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  So a guy out of Florida bought it. I'm not going to say his name, but it's currently living in Miami.

• 13:58Jack Selby?

  Are you friends with the guy?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked, yeah, we talked. At some point, I might film a video with him.

• 14:02Jack Selby?

  Kieran, what does he do for a living? Could you give us like a hint?

• 14:05Speaker 01

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

• 14:41Jack Selby?

  Do you add value to the cars that you own?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  So some cars, yes. I would say any car that's under 100,000, absolutely. Like this M4.

• 14:50Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  When it comes time to sell that car, I probably will be able to sell it in a couple of days. Because there's a lot of people that see an opportunity, a lot of social media creators, maybe YouTubers that, you know, kind of want to come here and have an experience of buying a car from me. Maybe they're starting a YouTube channel. Maybe they're doing a car giveaway. I sold my 458 to 8080. They did a giveaway on the car. So I'd say on those cars, absolutely. Once you get above, you know, 100 to 200,000, kind of, kind of the same thing. It's just a smaller market. Once you get above a quarter million dollars, you have a very small market. There's not that many people looking to buy those cars. One thing with the hypercars too, a hypercar purchase is kind of, it's kind of an ego purchase, right?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  A lot of guys don't want their car to be Stradman's car if you're buying a million dollar car, right? You know, like these guys, these guys, well, these guys are some of the most successful people in the world, right? Like, they want to roll into a car show in their Koenigsegg, right? They don't want a bunch of people running up and be like, is that Stradman's Koenigsegg? And the dude just dropped two and a half million dollars, right?

• 15:55Jack Selby?

  It's kind of like if you're dating, you don't want to date someone who's like, oh yeah, she dated, you know, this guy over here. And everyone's like, yo, that's.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, exactly. So that's not the case necessarily. But I think a lot of these guys, you know, YouTube is, a YouTuber to some people is cool. But I think the older generation looks down at a YouTuber and be like, I don't want some YouTuber's car. He's probably abused that car, right? And a lot of people look at my channel and my filming style and they're just like, oh, he abuses his cars, right? He doesn't, he doesn't take care of his cars. Even though every car I own is regularly maintained. You know, I always warm them up, I drive them, I don't hit the rev limit. Or, I mean, every once in a while, sure. But like, overall, the cars are pretty well taken care of. And a car like the Koenigsegg, I'm not doing donuts in that. And the M4, yeah, I'd probably do donuts in that one. But like the Koenigsegg, I do understand the car, the value of the car, the pedigree of the car. And I treat it as such.

• 16:49Jack Selby?

  Obviously, for you, it's a little bit different because it's an asset to you. You use it to produce income. But for someone else who isn't necessarily in the business of buying cars, how much money should they have in order to afford a two and a half million dollar car? We've been running this podcast for almost seven years now. And if there's one thing that I have learned about YouTube strategy, it's not that volume is important, it's that it's essential. But hiring editors isn't just expensive, it is a hassle. And that is exactly why we are so excited to partner with today's sponsor, Opus Clip, on their new AI producer product. For those unaware, AI Producer takes raw footage and turns it into a professionally edited, publish-ready video. All you got to do is upload your footage, tell it the editing style that you want, and AI Producer hands you back a finished product with transitions, captions, and on-screen graphics already done.

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• 18:18Jack Selby?

  Obviously, for you, it's a little bit different because it's an asset to you. You use it to produce income. But for someone else who isn't necessarily in the business of buying cars, how much money should they have in order to afford a two and a half million dollar car?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  That one's tough. I mean, honestly, I would, I would ask Graham. Like, you're the guy, Graham, you would know that.

• 18:36Jack Selby?

  I would say minimum. And we're talking like you're kind of broke buying this car.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:40Jack Selby?

  10 times the cost of the car in cash. And I would say you probably are stretching. Could technically do it if that's your passion.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 18:50Jack Selby?

  But like, you're going to be the brokest person driving that car. So I would say for your guy who bought the car, minimum 25 million net worth.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 18:58Jack Selby?

  It should probably be closer to 50. To be able to drop two and a half million dollars on a car. And I would hope it would be higher.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And I, and I think, like you said, it depends on the person. What do they want in life? Like, what's their passion? You know, for me, like, I love cars, right? Like, based on the net worth that I have, I shouldn't own all these cars. Now, it helps that I do YouTube as well. But also, like, this is, this is what I think about when I go to bed. When I wake up, I think about cars. Like, I love cars. Like, this is what motivates me to work. And so if you have a guy that, yeah, has a net worth of 10 million dollars and, you know, he just loves Koenigsegg and that's his motivation, you could kind of get away with it. I mean, you know, you get it, you get to pick and choose what path you want in life. And if you're a car guy, like, for me, like, if I didn't love cars, I'd be living in a van hiking, you know? But I love cars and that's what, that's what gets me working.

• 19:51Jack Selby?

  Of all of your cars, which car makes you the happiest?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Man.

• 19:56Jack Selby?

  Like you say, you know, you wake up, you go to bed, you think about cars. I imagine it's thoughts that are very peaceful and happy.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure.

• 20:02Jack Selby?

  Which one provides the most happy thoughts?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  I think the thing I love about cars the most is the freedom. I love the freedom that a car provides. The ability to get in a car and go wherever you want. And, uh, you know, any, any car can do that. I mean, obviously, I love Lamborghini, but I love getting in my truck and I love driving. I love road trips. I love, I love seeing, seeing the world. I love, I love sitting behind the steering wheel and, you know, turning the music off and just thinking about life and, and where I want to take it. So I truly just love the automobile. It's not even that it has to have a V12, you know? Now, taking that out of the equation, I mean, this Aventador Roadster is super special to me. There's a vehicle upstairs, my dad's truck.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  That truck, oh my gosh, that is such a, such a cool experience driving that thing. It's so nostalgic, thinking about all the memories that I had with my dad, with my brothers, with my friends driving it to high school. You know, obviously, I love the car market. I think, looking at the Murcielago behind Graham and, you know, I paid 275 for that car. And, you know, I knew it was a rare car and, you know, the car's worth 800,000, maybe more here soon. I think that's fun. So, I mean, I love, I love, I love my next project. I love the Revolto, the Temerario, thinking about the creation, what I can turn this into. You know, the M4 has been kind of a fun, kind of new look that I've been going for, trying to, you know, do something different that's maybe a little bit out there. I love the experimentation process.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, there's kind of like, um, there's just a lot of different reasons for why I love cars and, and different reasons I love certain cars.

• 21:40Jack Selby?

  Is there a rule of thumb that you look at in terms of net worth versus what car you could afford?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 21:48Jack Selby?

  It's just, you look at. Net worth is exactly the kind of car you can afford.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:51Jack Selby?

  It's a one-to-one.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 21:53Jack Selby?

  How much money I have?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:54Jack Selby?

  That's the car I can buy.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly. No, I mean, like, my approach to buying cars is the polar opposite to yours, Graham. It's, well, no, I shouldn't say the polar opposite. I should backtrack. YouTube is a big part of my life, right?

• 22:05Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  When I buy a car, I'm always, I'm always thinking YouTube, right? So on, in, in one ear, I have YouTube. In the other ear, there's obviously, there's the finances behind it, right? Like, it's got to make sense. You know, there's, then there's the heart. You know, I want a car that I love. Even if there was a car that was going to be the best YouTube car ever, but I didn't like it, I probably wouldn't buy it, right? It has to be something that I am passionate about, um, to an extent.

• 22:29Jack Selby?

  What is the most?

• 22:30Graham Stephan?

  Financially irresponsible car purchase you've ever made.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  I mean, the cone exec for sure, for sure.

• 22:35Graham Stephan?

  But it doesn't sound like when all is said and done, it was actually that bad.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  That's the only car I've ever lost money on, like a significant amount of money. That's the only one I've ever lost money on.

• 22:43Graham Stephan?

  But you still got to produce all of those videos.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  On everything, everything. Maybe like.

• 22:51Graham Stephan?

  I lost money, but I'm net positive.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, there might be some car that I lost like one or $2,000 on maybe, but even with the content, I've always been on the positive.

• 23:00Graham Stephan?

  Now, what about for the average person that watching and they want to afford a supercar? Do you have a rule of thumb in terms of what you could afford?

• 23:07Speaker 01

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

• 23:51Speaker 01

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

• 24:31Graham Stephan?

  Speaking of the Gallardo, I just saw what happened to it.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:35Graham Stephan?

  It burned.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yes, it did.

• 24:36Graham Stephan?

  And then you bought it back from the insurance company.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Yep, I did.

• 24:39Graham Stephan?

  What caused the fire?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  So initially I thought it was power steering. I thought that power steering line ruptured, dumped fluid on the headers. Because based on where the fire was coming out of the driver's side intake and based on what I had read online, that was a probable cause for the fire. Tore apart the car and I discovered that it was the EVAP system, which is a part of the emission system. And I feel like it was kind of the perfect storm. So I went to a charity car show that morning that was in a park. And I rolled the car onto the grass and it sat there for about two hours. Thank goodness, the car did not catch on fire there because there was a bunch of other supercars all around me. It was this grass field, the car was sitting in direct sunlight.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  We were at the charity event for two hours, got in the car, took it to lunch about 10 minutes away. It was one of the hottest days. It was middle of June. It had to be 100, 105 degrees. Like it was hot, not a cloud in the sky. And we drove it to lunch and I parked it in a, in a spot with zero shade in the direct sun. And, uh, you know, went inside, had a burger, hung out with the boys for a couple of hours and the car just baked, just baked. And then I got in the car and it was, you know, 10, 15 minute drive home. And, you know, I was, I was two, three minutes from the house and all of a sudden I started to smell fuel. Now, the Gallardo, all the Lamborghinis, they run pretty rich. You know, the car's 21 years old. I'm two minutes from the house.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  And like, man, that is pretty strong, but I'm so close to home. Like, you know, I'm going to get home. I need to take a look at this. Like something seems amiss, right? Like there's something going on here. But, uh, you know, I was literally one turn away from the house. In retrospect, right? In hindsight, obviously I should have pulled over, but you know. So I think what happened though, is that the EVAP system, there's, there's all these fumes, right? From the fuel system and at some point that ruptured and the fumes started, started going out. And it's a very tight little chamber and it was super, super hot. And it's not a common way for cars to catch on fire, but based on what I read online, it can happen, it does happen.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And when I tore apart the car, I could see that the fire happened where the EVAP canister is. It's right above the fuel tank. All the power steering lines were totally fine. Fuel lines were good, coolant lines were good. And the fire was right there for the EVAP system. And that's what caught her on fire.

• 27:05Graham Stephan?

  So what did the insurance company end up paying?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  So I had never filed a claim before ever and I was unsure. You know, I've, I've obviously had a lot of cars. I've had a driver's license for 20 odd years or whatever. And thankfully I've never filed a claim. So I wasn't sure what to expect. And, uh, you know, first thing first, you know, I submitted all the paperwork. My insurance agent actually saw the video because it happened, the fire happened on a Saturday. And there were so many people around, everybody was filming it. You know, the social media person in me was like, I gotta get this video up. So I posted on Sunday. So I wake up Monday morning, getting ready to hit up my insurance and I have an email from my insurance agent.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And they're like, James, we obviously saw the car caught on fire. Here's your policy number. Here's the phone number, like reach out, like if you need anything, let us know. And it ended up being one of the most seamless processes ever. It was super smooth. They ended up giving me 160 odd thousand dollars for the car, which was pretty incredible. It's a 06 Gallardo, 50,000 miles. It's a gated manual. Uh, so that's, that's everything, right? These cars are impossible to find. It's impossible to replace. One of the things that I did during, you know, the negotiation process, if you will, is I went on Bring a Trailer, I went on, you know, AutoTempest, Car Gurus, AutoTrader, I tried to find comps and it was impossible to find comps.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  There was a manual Gallardo Spyder that sold for 260. Uh, there is a manual Gallardo Coupe that sold for 170. So there's some comps out there. So they gave me 160 for the car. And the best part though, was the buyback. So I was like, hey, I don't want to sell this car though. Like I want to keep this car. I don't want the car to go to Copart. Like can I buy the car back from you guys? And they sold it back to me for 31, 32,000 dollars.

• 28:57Graham Stephan?

  Whoa.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  So they, they just sent me a lump sum check for like 129,000 dollars.

• 29:03Graham Stephan?

  Can you fix the car for less than 100?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Oh, all day. Oh, like all day.

• 29:08Graham Stephan?

  So is this a lucrative way to make a little bit of money?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  So first off, there was no insurance fraud. Jack, Jack.

• 29:16Graham Stephan?

  No, I'm not saying that there was, I'm just saying.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure, for sure. So obviously right now there's a lot of unknowns, right? I haven't fixed the car yet. There's a lot of things that are undetermined. The biggest part about it is that the car now has a salvage title. So a huge percentage is just that loss in value.

• 29:34Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Because all of a sudden, this car is not a collector car anymore, right? It's a salvage title. And when I think about like the 40th anniversary, sitting behind you, clean title car. If that was a salvage car, that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars less just for that reason alone. Because immediately the collectors want nothing to do with it. No matter what the history, no matter what the condition is, no matter what the mileage. So that's like a huge factor. Now for me, the Gallardo, it's the car that I started the channel with. It's super sentimental. I'm never going to sell it. So it doesn't even matter, right? Like the fact that it's a salvage title does not matter because the value of the car doesn't matter. So in that sense, sure, once the car is fixed, we'll kind of sort of see. There's a lot of unknowns, like the bodywork, finding the parts is difficult, the time, the energy.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  The fact that I'm doing a lot of the work myself saves me a ton of money also. You know, the YouTube content is great too. You know, that's obviously going to offset a lot of the cost too. So for me, yes, it's, it's the classic example of turning lemons into lemonade, right? So for me, I think it will work out. I am so incredibly lucky because I want to say five or six people came out of nowhere and saved the car with fire extinguishers. That fire happens so fast and I've gotten judged so much for how I reacted to it. But I promise you, if anybody watching this is ever in a car fire, you'll understand how fast it goes from zero to 100.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  But five or six people came out of nowhere with a fire extinguisher, saved the car. If it would have burned for a minute, two minutes more, the car would have been gone, like just gone. It would have been unfixable. So I do feel very lucky from that standpoint.

• 31:14Graham Stephan?

  Why fix everything yourself? Cause I even noticed that to pick up the other Gallardo, lonely, you know, the extra body, like you drove like 11 hours.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:25Graham Stephan?

  Like you're doing it all yourself.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's, there's a multitude of reasons. So that specific one, my mom lives in Oregon and that was in Portland. It was three hours from her house and I don't see my mom enough. So like this is the perfect time. Go get this, save the money on transport. It's kind of fun. It's a, it's an adventure, right? It's a, it's a cooler experience. The guy I ended up buying the shell from, the donor car from, dude, legend, the nicest guy. He had a ton of other parts laying around too, that I ended up buying all these other parts that I needed. So if I would have just paid somebody to go get that and bring it back, I never would have met him, never would have gotten those parts. And then also I wanted to see my mom. That was like the main motivating factor. But yeah, I mean, doing it myself.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you guys, I'm a, I'm a award winning mechanic. But, uh, you know, I like getting my hands dirty. Over the last couple of years, um, you know, I've gotten better at working on cars. I enjoy it a little bit more. I think it makes for more engaging content as well with me doing it. It saves me some money too. It saves me a lot of money. And the thing I love the most about it, I control my destiny. I'm not relying on other people, right? I'm not relying on a shop to get the car, wait for their schedule to open up. This is my priority. I can spend 10 hours a day working on this car. I can spend the evenings finding parts. I can go to Oregon. I mean, I found that shell on a Thursday night. Friday morning, I was loading up the truck to go get it, right?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Like I didn't even wait. I just went and did it. I control my destiny. And you know, with the YouTube game, uh, time is everything, right? And the faster I can fix that car, the better. And also I'm going to learn more about the car, which I love. Like I love learning more about these cars. I didn't grow up with extensive mechanical knowledge of cars. I've learned a lot about the cars. And, uh, you know, I think, I think the content is honestly way more, way more fun, way more engaging. It gives me credibility too.

• 33:17Graham Stephan?

  Is it safe to buy and drive salvage cars? Now really quick, I just got to say, I'm going to admit it. I get more excited about a good deal than just about anything else in my life. There's just something about paying less than you should that just gets me going. That of course is probably why I'm so excited about today's sponsor, Whatnot, because it's that same feeling live on your phone. And we're giving away $500 of Whatnot credit very shortly. So you gotta stick around.

• 33:42Speaker 01

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• 33:54Graham Stephan?

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• 34:08Speaker 01

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• 34:20Graham Stephan?

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• 34:38Speaker 01

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• 34:51Graham Stephan?

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• 35:16Speaker 01

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• 35:27Graham Stephan?

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• 35:33Speaker 01

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• 35:38Graham Stephan?

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• 35:45Speaker 01

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• 35:54Graham Stephan?

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• 36:08Speaker 01

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• 36:18Graham Stephan?

  Again, that's evenrealitiesbio/icedcoffee. You could scan the QR code on the screen or just click the link down below in the description and use the code IcedCoffee. Is it safe to buy and drive salvage cars?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Uh, can be. The crazy thing I've learned by doing this, there are so many corners you can cut. So when you buy a salvage title car, you could get a car better than factory. You get a car that somebody cut a gazillion corners on that is absolutely not safe to drive. Absolutely not.

• 36:51Graham Stephan?

  How do you know? Because I'm on Facebook Marketplace and I'm like, well, that's a really good deal. And then I see salvage.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:57Graham Stephan?

  But it looks awesome and it's half the price.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Graham Stephan?

  You know what? If I'm just looking to mob around in the city, like that, that's cool.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that's why salvage cars are so cheap is because there's that unknown, there's that risk. I think the big thing with a salvage title car is if you can find photos of the accident, right? If you can find what happened and then also when did it happen? If you're buying a car and the accident happened three months ago and it just got repaired, you have no idea. Whereas like my 430 Scud, that was in, that was a salvage, this was a salvage. This event's a roadster. Now those cars, the accident had happened four, five, six years ago. You could see it on the Carfax. Let's say for example, it had 10,000 miles on it and now the car has 17,000 miles on it. You know, there's that history, right? You can look back, you can see like, oh, this car's been driven a lot. It happened a number of years ago. Here's photos of the accident.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  So it's really a case by case basis and there's never, there's never a guarantee. Obviously an inspection, right? You could get a PPI, somebody who knows what to look for. You know, frame damage is obviously the most important thing that you're looking for. Not always easy to, to know for sure, but that's why they're, that's why they're cheap, you know?

• 38:08Graham Stephan?

  In terms of selling cars, you sold the Countach.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  I did.

• 38:12Graham Stephan?

  And values have skyrocketed. What did you sell the Countach for and why?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  So I sold the Countach for 565. Uh, I bought that car for 450, 475, somewhere in there. So, you know, I probably pocketed around a hundred grand, drove it across the country, filmed a lot of cool videos. But the main reason I sold it though, is it was incredible to look at. It was just the coolest car. It was triple white, big old wing. I mean, every single Lamborghini that exists now looks the way it does because of the Countach. But it was very hard to use. It was very hard to drive. I didn't want to drive it in extreme heat because kind of what happened to the Gallardo, felt like that might happen to the Countach. Didn't want to drive it in the winter time, didn't want to drive it in the snow. It was an investment grade car. So I felt like, you know, the spring and the fall, I could drive it.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  And then even when I did drive it, you know, I wasn't going to take it on a road trip. I had all this money tied up in it and it just felt like, you know, YouTube is not only my business, but it's also my passion. And being able to take that money and do other things felt like the better option. I also had a coning seg at the time and I had payments and I wanted to finish the Batcave. And so I actually sold the Countach for 565. I took 300,000 ish of that and I finished the Batcave, which I think is the coolest thing in this entire house. Things that I'm known for, I mean, the videos did amazing on it, like there was a fantastic ROI.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  You know, and it's something I really wanted to finish. It's enhanced the value of this house significantly. And then I took the rest of the money and, and I was able to kind of give me some, some room, uh, you know, to, to make coning seg payments while also investing in the channel, other projects, et cetera, et cetera.

• 39:57Graham Stephan?

  What's the car worth today?

• 39:59Speaker 01

  You know, it's crazy, Countach's, they've definitely gone up, but they have not gone up like the Mercy. They've not gone up like the 2RS we were talking about. They've not gone up like the 458s. They haven't gone up like that. I would say 650, 700 for my car. My car was a nice car, but it was not, it wasn't the car, right? The Countach is one of the most confusing cars because they started building them in like 1974, up to like 1991 ish, give or take. So, and there's so many different iterations. There's fuel injected, there's carbureted, there's fender flares or side skirts. Like there's just so many different factors and like the carbureted round body, like 1985 cars are the cars to have.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And they're worth way more than my car, which was an 87 Quattro Vaux. So yeah, my car's probably, I'm guessing around 650, 700 is what it would be worth now.

• 40:51Graham Stephan?

  And how do you know when you pay cash for a car versus finance it?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think a big part of it is, is how much money I have in my bank account, right? What, what do I want to do? Other projects coming up in the future, uh, you know, kind of the content schedule, really content kind of drives everything. You know, right now, for example, I have the Temerario, I have the Revuelto, I'm rebuilding the Gallardo. My 812 rebuild is almost done. I have the M4, like I have a ton of different projects, right? So financially, you know, the next car I get, I might end up paying cash for it because I have so many projects in the pipeline that are kind of ready to go, that I know there's a lot of revenue coming down the stream here soon. A lot of it would depend on the car, right? You know, something like the M4, I think I paid 65 for that car.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's just easier to not finance a car. It's just easier to just send the wire, get the title, register it, move on with life, right? Whereas other times it's like, you know, like the Temerario, that car's financed, right? That car, including tax, was $500,000. I think I put down 250 because I'm like, you know, I'll put down 250, I'll use that other 250 to invest in other projects. You know, so a lot of it just comes down to timing.

• 42:03Graham Stephan?

  What's the cost to own so many supercars? Like with insurance, gas, maintenance?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  It's crazy. I mean, I have 19 cars in my car collection. The insurance is not bad. It really isn't. Now that the coning seg is gone, I want to say every month I'm paying 22 to 2400 for 19 cars.

• 42:23Graham Stephan?

  That's not bad at all.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  For 19 cars, yeah.

• 42:25Graham Stephan?

  How much is your insurance going to go up after the claim on the Gallardo?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  So here's what's cool about the Gallardo. It was not a collision, it was a comprehensive claim. So it was a no fault. So it was a no fault claim, so my rates don't go up.

• 42:38Graham Stephan?

  So all this time, the insurance has been the GOAT.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  The GOAT, literally. Now I've been paying insurance for 20 years and when I add up all the money I've paid, it clearly exceeds $130,000. But no, I mean, that's why you have insurance, right? And that's why you pay it.

• 42:55Graham Stephan?

  How much debt do you have on your collection?

• 42:57Speaker 01

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

• 43:25Graham Stephan?

  That's actually really not that bad. We were talking to, to Varish and he's, he's like loaned on every one.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:32Graham Stephan?

  And I'm adding this up. I mean, obviously he's doing incredibly well and his videos do insane, but that would stress me out. It's like every single one, I see this like, as though it's a rental property with a mortgage.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  We asked, didn't we ask him like, who's the worst with money? He's like, uh, Stradman? I'm like, dude, throwing stones from a glass house.

• 43:50Graham Stephan?

  No, you're wrong, Jack. He said the opposite.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  But I have to assume it's me.

• 43:56Graham Stephan?

  Who's the best with money?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Stradman.

• 43:59Graham Stephan?

  The best with money?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:01Graham Stephan?

  More than Doug Demiro?

• 44:02Jack Selby?

  Doug Demiro.

• 44:03Graham Stephan?

  Doug Demiro, yes.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 44:05Jack Selby?

  I'm pretty sure that someone said that you were the worst and it may have been Doug.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be surprised.

• 44:10Jack Selby?

  But every time that we talk to you,

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:13Jack Selby?

  you are like meaningfully in better finances.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. Yeah.

• 44:17Jack Selby?

  Like every time.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  So here's the thing that I will say. Every single automotive YouTuber that we are talking about from, let's say, 500,000 subs up to 10 million, right? Every single one of them. Every single one of them is incredibly intelligent. Every single one of them has gotten to where they're at because of a ton of hard work. They've all made fantastic financial decisions. The paths have been very different and the narrative has also been very different. The thing about my YouTube channel that's very different than Doug's YouTube channel. My YouTube channel is about my life. I don't know anything about Doug. I, I don't know nothing about Doug. I know Doug has a Carrera GT, right? But I don't know anything about his life and that's because his content style is car reviews, right? And podcasts talking about cars, but I don't know anything about them.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Whereas my channel is all about my life. And so you see the ups and the downs, the ebbs and the flows. I'm also an open book. I'm not embarrassed to say anything. I'm, I'm, I'm not willing to have, I'm, I'm willing to have people laugh at me, make fun of me. I'll tell people I'm leasing the Koenigsegg. I'll tell people about my monthly payments. I'll tell people about mistakes that I've made. And so what's different about that is that there's this narrative that is, that is put out there. And depending on who the audience is, they're going to pick up the narrative differently than other people. And also clips are going to set a different narrative for some people than other people. The people who watch every single one of my videos, they get it.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  They understand what I do. They understand the decisions I make. They understand the financial.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Acumen that I have, right? But if you're only seeing a couple of clips here and there, you have no idea what's going on. You just see me run around with a camera. You don't get it, right? But then a guy like Doug, right? A guy like Doug, you don't see anything, right? You just see that he sold cars in bids for $20 million. Dude, this fly, dude, bro, this fly is gonna kill me. It's gonna go in my mouth. I'm gonna choke and die.

• 46:39Graham Stephan?

  It's just speaking so seriously and it's like flies.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, this is adequate. I can see it in your guys' eyes too.

• 46:46Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Dude, he's gonna edit the fly to go in my mouth. I'm gonna swallow it and pass out with AI, right?

• 46:52Graham Stephan?

  There was a point though where I was watching, hold on. So just so if we cut back into here and not like going from a laugh.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:59Graham Stephan?

  There was a point though where I was watching your videos where I worried that you seem very stressed out because you had the Koenigsegg, you had the house, you had all these projects, you had a huge collection. I think you did a video talking about like your overhead or there was something like that. And then I'm thinking, oh my gosh, like that would stress me out.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think stress is real, right? Like there is true stress, right? And you know, the, the stress, sometimes there's short-term stress, stress, there's long-term stress. In that moment, yes, certainly there was short-term stress. But I knew, I knew I was totally fine financially, right? Like, I mean, I have a million dollar car sitting behind me that I own outright, that I could sell in, in a day if I had to, right? I didn't want to sell it because I love the car. Doesn't mean I'm not stressed in the short term because I'm doing what I can to keep the car. But long-term, I've always been totally fine, right? And also, you know, a part of it is, is, you know, when you sell a car like the Koenigsegg, right?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  I wanted the audience to understand why I was selling it rather than just, oh, I sold the Koenigsegg. Like I wanted to explain why I sold it, right? And I want to, I want people to understand, like, there's financial reasons for selling this because, you know, the audience gets very attached to cars. They understand what cars mean to me. And if I don't convey why I'm selling a car, they're not going to understand it and they're going to be upset like, oh, you just get a car and you just sell a car. Whereas the Koenigsegg, it was such a special car. I really wanted to explain to people what I was. Bro, what are we gonna, has this ever happened before?

• 48:29Graham Stephan?

  You know what? I was initially thinking.

• 48:31Jack Selby?

  I'm like really trying to hold it in.

• 48:33Graham Stephan?

  I was initially thinking we could edit around this and just cut around. I don't think so. We're just gonna keep this probably in the podcast because if someone's watching this, I mean, they're getting a real deal with this flies.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Can they even see it though? Can they see the flies?

• 48:46Jack Selby?

  I don't know.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Are your cameras that good?

• 48:47Jack Selby?

  I think so.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Can you guys see it?

• 48:49Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I hope they can see it.

• 48:50Graham Stephan?

  I hope, please let us know if you see the flies.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Bro, if I swallow a fly, I'm done. Like that's gonna be a meme forever.

• 48:57Jack Selby?

  The Heimlich.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You, you guys, you guys know how to perform that, right?

• 49:01Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 49:01Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  You're CPR trained on some level? Yeah?

• 49:03Jack Selby?

  Yeah. He'll do the CPR. I'll do all the other stuff.

• 49:07Graham Stephan?

  Do you regret showing so much of your life?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yes and no. Yes and no. I think sometimes in the short term, I can regret it, right? You know, people, lots of times people just don't understand the business. They don't understand the philosophy. They see a clip. They'll say something on Instagram. I'm like, oh, this is so annoying. Why do I tell people? Because then people just make these assumptions, right? But I think that the long game that I've played on YouTube is a big part of my success is that I'm an open book. Is that I tell people how it is, right? I tell people, I'm not, I'm not ashamed of who I am or the decisions that I make. I could control the narrative so easy on YouTube, right? I could, I could make people think that I'm worth four times as much as I am, that I am the richest guy ever,

• 49:53Speaker 01

  that I just know how to print cash. I could do that all day, baby. All day I could do that. But it's just, that's not who I am. That's not who I want to be. And I think it makes it a lot more relatable because so many people on the internet are like that. Especially nowadays on Instagram and you think about the Miami bros. They're the richest people you've ever met in your entire life that six months later disappear and you never see or hear from them again, right? Like there's so much of that on, out there online. Whereas for me, it's like, no, I'm a car guy. I love cars. I have a degree in accounting and finance. I'm making decisions with my heart, with my head. I'm building my YouTube channel. Content's important, but passion is important as well. I'm gonna make these decisions. Some are good decisions, some are bad decisions, and I'm gonna tell you when I make a bad decision. I'm not gonna lie about it. I'm gonna tell you the truth.

• 50:38Speaker 01

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

• 51:09Graham Stephan?

  So tell us the truth. Which car has been the most difficult to own?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Uh, the Koenigsegg by far, for sure. Not even close. Koenigsegg all day. Not even close. Koenigsegg is a very rare car. Just the fact that I have to ship the car to California to get it serviced. That alone makes it difficult to own. The financial, the payments, right? That made it incredibly difficult. The one thing that I learned about that car, I mean, I love, I definitely loved it. But I also, it made me realize that it's just another car, right? You know, the first day of ownership was the most incredible day of my entire life. The first drive was amazing. Two days later, the drive was 95% of it. One week later, it was 90%, right? A month later, it was 80%. Six months later was 50%, right? Like there's diminishing returns very quickly. It ends up being just another car in the car collection.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Doesn't mean that it wasn't an incredible car. You know, that car, that car was, when I say the most difficult, it doesn't mean that it was that difficult though. Does that make sense?

• 52:06Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Graham Stephan?

  What's the best bang for the buck?

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Dude, M4. Like in my collection, M4. In my collection, for sure. I mean, I paid 65 grand for this car. It had 5,000 miles on it. It's got all the tech imaginable. It's got insane power. You add a couple of turbos, you make it E85 compliant, you're at 7, 8, 900 wheel horsepower. You could drive it every single day. It's a new car. It doesn't break. The S58 motor in that thing is bulletproof. Like in my collection, for sure, something like that.

• 52:34Graham Stephan?

  Now, the car market lately has been going crazy. What is the biggest misconception? People have about what's happening.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Oh, that's tough. I think I think the hard part is nobody really knows what's happening. Right? Like, I think everybody has so many different ideas of what is happening. I think on one end, you have the social media aspect, right? There's more demand for these cars than there's ever been because you can leverage a car into fame, into finances, into wealth, into whatever you want, right? Into a name. That didn't really happen pre-social media, right? Like, you had to buy a car like this and yeah, you're you're going to become famous by owning a car. But now that can't happen, so there's more demand. So I think that's one factor. Uh, I think that there's a lot of like private equity money coming into cars. You know, cars are not regulated like the stock market, like real estate. Cars are like art, right?

• 53:24Speaker 01

  It's easy to move a car, right? You can move a car from Utah to California in a day. You can't move a house, right? A house is is stuck. Um, so I think that's a big part of it. I think people are starting to realize the investment potential uh because of social media. There's so much out there, right? I mean, curated John Tamarin, love John Tamarin. He's so passionate. He's one of my favorite human beings. He's out there telling people like, these cars are going up in value. And when you listen to him, you watch him, he's so passionate, he's so knowledgeable. You're just like, immediately after watching a John Tamarin video, you go and bring a trailer and you're like, what can I buy? I need to buy something right now. Like, there's such urgency to it. So you have that. You have guys like Doug Demuro, right? You have these podcasts talking about the car market. Uh, cars are so much fun as an investment too, right?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Owning a stock is boring unless it goes up in value. You own a car like, like, think about my Murcielago. I paid 275 for that car. Uh, the doors go up. It's worth 800 grand now. It's a manual V12. I get to drive it. I get to take it to car shows. I get to meet people. I get to post it on the internet, right? Like, it just checks all these boxes. You own a stock like, ho hum. I mean, if it goes up, right? If it goes up, incredible. But if it just stays flatline, you gain nothing. If that car was still worth 275, I've still had a great experience. So I think that's a factor. Uh, I think another factor is the Luce, the stupid Ferrari Luce. Literally the downfall of Ferrari. And like I said earlier, all these dealerships, immediately their phone is off the hook, right?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Off the hook, like, I gotta get anything that's good right now because EVs are taking over the world. Manufacturers aren't cool anymore. They're building a bunch of nonsense. I want an NAV 12 manual or an NAV 10, like, that's what I want. I want the cars of my youth that are special cars. Uh, so that's another factor. And, you know, the other factor is the conspiracy theories, right? The dealers.

• 55:15Graham Stephan?

  So this is what I wanted to get into. I saw this video that said that these auction houses allegedly might be pumping the market a little bit with some fake buyers. Started off with the Ferrari auction at Mecum.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 55:29Graham Stephan?

  Sold for crazy numbers and then everything else bumped up by like 15%. And then there were two sales on Bring a Trailer, which kind of raised a few eyebrows. There is an SLS AMG.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:39Graham Stephan?

  That sold for like 700, 800,000 dollars.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:43Graham Stephan?

  Now, granted, that was a really unique car. It was a bit of a unicorn. I haven't seen another one like it. So maybe you could justify that and they said that was a real transaction and went through the buyer.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  You saw the bidding on it though, right?

• 55:54Graham Stephan?

  I did.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  You saw how it went up?

• 55:56Graham Stephan?

  Yep. And even Bring a Trailer, I saw, made a little post, they made a statement, said this is, you know, this was a legit, appears to be a legitimate transaction. How much of that do you think is just manufactured to make it look like?

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Oh, it's all made, yeah. Oh, these, these auction platforms are a huge part of what's going on. And a lot of it is the phantom bidders.

• 56:16Graham Stephan?

  But you believe that maybe some of it's fake?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I know it is with 100%.

• 56:21Graham Stephan?

  How do you, how do you know?

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Because I'm in the car world. I talk. I talk to people. I know.

• 56:25Graham Stephan?

  How, but how? What are, okay, so are you just like, some guy says like, oh yeah, I know that. Like, you're just taking this guy for his word?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  No, for sure. I mean, so, yeah, there's a lot of different factors. I mean, the SLS, I don't know if the audience knows what happened there, right? The car was, the car was bidding at what, 300, 400, 500 grand? You know, going up increments of $5,000. And then all of a sudden, somebody dropped a $200,000 increase. So it went up from 500 to 700, whatever, right? That is not normal bidding. The one thing I know about rich guys, rich guys are sometimes the most frugal, careful with their money guys ever. The last thing they ever want to do is overpay. And I could see doing a, you know, game over bid of like 50K, maybe, right? You bid from 500 to 550, but 500 to 700, there's no way, there's no way.

• 57:10Graham Stephan?

  You'd think though, that they would just make like two accounts though and kind of bid back.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's part of what happens. So a lot of what happens, let's say, let's say, and I would never do this. Let's say I'm selling my Murcielago on Bring a Trailer. So I hit it, Bring a Trailer. I send all the information. I take photos. They hit me up and they're like, what do you want to set the reserve at? Okay, let's say Bring a Trailer has to agree. Let's say we agree at a million dollars, right? The bidding starts off, you know, you get 2, 3, 4, 500,000 pretty quickly. And then what you do is you have your buddy who has another account. You tell him what the reserve is. He knows what the reserve is. You know what the reserve is. You bid that thing up to 990,000, right? So that alone, you're guaranteed if the car no sales, at least you have a decent comp, right?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Because if you have a Murcielago like that, let's say it no sale, no reserve at 500 grand. I just cooked the value of that car, right? So you obviously get these phantom bidders to come in and they bid up the car close to reserve. And then, once they get up to 990, you get some other dude on the hook, you're bidding back and forth. And then you disappear right before you get to reserve, right? So that's one way to sort of guarantee that at least your car gets, gets to like that reserve minimum. So you don't have a garbage sale.

• 58:24Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  So that's a, that's a huge part of it. Um, another big part of it is, let's say you own a bunch of Murcielagos, right? Let's say you own three 40th anniversaries, right? What's the fee on an auction on Bring a Trailer?

• 58:36Graham Stephan?

  Five?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Five percent.

• 58:37Graham Stephan?

  Five percent.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Take six. But isn't, isn't it above 100,000, it like?

• 58:41Graham Stephan?

  It's capped at $5,000.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 58:43Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  So let's say you own a couple of Murcielagos. Let's say you're a dealer. Let's say you have a bunch of Mercies or you have a bunch of Pistas or a bunch of 812 comps, right? You can enhance, you have 10 of these things, right? You just bid a car up, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You know, let's say I had a couple of Mercies and I bid that car up to 1.5. And let's say my buddy ends up winning the car, right? You just pay the Bring a Trailer fee, the car never transacts, right? You just keep the car, but then all the other Mercies you own all just shot up in value. So then you put the other Mercies on Bring a Trailer, you don't bid, and then you make the money that way.

• 59:18Graham Stephan?

  So what's unique is that I just saw the other day, I was watching it along with five other people that I knew because I sent this out in texts, including you, Jack, for GT.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 59:29Graham Stephan?

  Silver one on Bring a Trailer, sold for over $700,000.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:32Graham Stephan?

  And it wasn't that unique of, of a car. I mean, it was a standard silver car, I think 2,200 miles, whatever, over $700,000. I'm like, how on earth? But it seemed like there were three bidders.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:43Graham Stephan?

  At the same time.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:45Graham Stephan?

  And then there's another one that just came up, already at a million dollars for a Heritage Ford GT.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:51Graham Stephan?

  With only a few miles on the clock. So maybe that's a, you know, legitimate one, but.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 59:57Graham Stephan?

  I'm shocked. Do you think that this is sustainable? Now, really quick, I gotta say that everyone has a business idea that they've been sitting on. And what stops most people really isn't the idea itself. It's everything that comes after it. We're talking building the store, taking payments, the checkout page. But it's actually very straightforward when our partner Shopify handles it for you.

• 1:00:17Jack Selby?

  Everything that you need to start selling is included and ready from day one. That includes the moment your first customer is ready to pay. Shopify checkout helps more of them actually finish their purchase.

• 1:00:26Graham Stephan?

  Plus, when they come back, their details are already saved. It's one tap and they're done.

• 1:00:30Jack Selby?

  I've personally used Shopify several times because before I was working with Graham, I set up probably five or six different Shopify stores. And even me actually saw some sales and I knew absolutely nothing. Shopify is genuinely the easiest way to start an online brand and see real sales coming in.

• 1:00:46Graham Stephan?

  Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide. From household names like Mattel and Jimm Shark to small, everyday businesses just getting started.

• 1:00:54Jack Selby?

  With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business, so go make it one. Search a free trial at Shopify.com slash ICH. Once again, that is Shopify.com slash ICH.

• 1:01:04Graham Stephan?

  One more time, that's Shopify.com slash ICH with the link down below in the description to get started. Do you think that this is sustainable?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. I mean, at some point you reach a ceiling, right?

• 1:01:17Graham Stephan?

  But can it stay there? Like, here's the thing with the scootereas.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Graham Stephan?

  I can't see the scootereas falling much further.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:25Graham Stephan?

  Like, if they're trading at 700 grand, I could maybe see, you know, 600, 550, but I think they'll stay there. So the people who buy those cars, they're not flipping them, they're not selling them, they're just gonna hold them.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I mean, I think it's obviously a car by car basis. I think a limited edition Ferrari is about the safest investment car ever. Because guys who own scootereas or Challenger Stradals or 458 Specialis, they're like kind of old money guys, right? They're not gonna have to fire sale cars. You look at a car like, I don't know, an Aventador SVJ, right? That's a social media car, that's young money. You know, a lot of these guys maybe are financing the cars, blah, blah, blah, blah. At some point, you're gonna get to a point where these cars, they put them up on the market and nobody's gonna buy them, right? And then that's when the values start to plummet. I think a lot of these cars will, will hold. Uh, you know, the Ferraris and the Porsches of the world. But we've never really seen anything like this, right? It's kind of uncharted territory.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Uh, there's more, there's more money in the market than ever before. But uh, that's a scary world out there.

• 1:02:26Jack Selby?

  If you were to buy a single car that you think would make the most amount of money in terms of percentage return, which car would it be right now?

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  So I have discovered that I am the worst ever at doing this. But the one thing I have learned. You have to either go Ferrari or Porsche, no matter what in life. If you ever want to invest in cars, you have to go Ferrari or Porsche. There's some other cars out there that maybe you could win the lottery on, but the absolute guarantees are Ferraris and Porsches. Ferraris, I kind of understand a little bit more. Porsches are just the most fascinating investment cars to me ever. You could have a car that is air-cooled and because of that, it's worth way more money. You could have a car that has a certain paint scheme or interior and it's worth way more money if it's a Porsche. So to answer your question, I would lean toward Ferrari. I like Ferrari. It'd

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  have to be a limited edition, ideally a V12 or a V8, naturally aspirated. The car would have to have not gone up a ton in value yet. F12 is a nice car. It's got a NAV 12. I like the F12. Production's pretty low. It's a beautiful car. It's iconic Ferrari. F12 is pretty good. Those things are probably 300 grand right now. A 599, I think that's a pretty good car. Those haven't gone up a ton yet. The limited edition stuff is still going to go up, but you're kind of cooked because you know, you're a million and a half, two million to even get into those cars. But yeah, I would say, I would say NAV 12 Ferrari would be, would be where I'd go.

• 1:03:52Graham Stephan?

  I'm going to say the 550 Barca.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I like that numbered car. They only built 448 of those. I liked it convertible.

• 1:03:59Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  V12.

• 1:04:00Graham Stephan?

  What's crazy, I was very close to trading my Ford GT straight up for a 550 Barca.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Ford GT is a sick car though. I mean.

• 1:04:07Graham Stephan?

  But the car that I would be trading for had a modification to it.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:04:13Graham Stephan?

  And it was for the roof. They made an automatic roof.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Oh, an automatic?

• 1:04:17Graham Stephan?

  Yes. It was an improvement. The guy spent like 50,000.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  It wasn't a super America?

• 1:04:20Graham Stephan?

  No.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:04:21Graham Stephan?

  He spent like 50 to a hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:04:24Graham Stephan?

  Doing the roof because he lived in Florida.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:04:26Graham Stephan?

  And it rained so often that he wanted to be able to put up the roof really quick.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 1:04:29Graham Stephan?

  But just that one modification meant it was no longer stock.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:04:33Graham Stephan?

  And I drove the car. I didn't like it. Now, I'm too short for the car too. It was very difficult.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:39Graham Stephan?

  For me to put the seat forward and then like see, have enough distance because it's a very long car too. So I didn't do it and I'm glad I didn't do it. But I would say that car and then I'd say a very unique spec 458.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  For sure. For sure. It seems like that's important now. It used to be like, oh, you got a red tan car Ferrari, like that's it. But now it's like color combo is super important. Like the cars at Mecum in January, the yellow, all the yellow cars.

• 1:05:05Graham Stephan?

  The blues.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't think of the guy's name, but they were the ugliest specs ever. But they're like one of one and they were the last of blah, blah, blah. And they had no miles. And like that GT2 RS that's online is a super crazy spec. Like it's all spec dependent now. And some of the F12s that have traded in the five, six, 700,000 dollar range is like, oh, it's a brown car with a brown interior or whatever. And so yeah, spec is super, super important. Almost like the rarer and the more unique, the better.

• 1:05:32Graham Stephan?

  You know what I think is going to hit a million dollars very soon is the no stripe Ford GT.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:38Graham Stephan?

  I think those are massively undervalued and they're selling about the same price as just like a well taken care of normal one.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:05:48Graham Stephan?

  I'd rather the no stripe. So if anyone's watching with the no stripe, I would trade my car for a no stripe.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  My buddy Alex, he lives in Arizona. He just bought a stripeless white Ford GT with the exact same thought you just said. He just bought it. Yeah.

• 1:05:59Graham Stephan?

  I think there'll be a million dollars.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Cause they're so, like the stripes, like I actually love. I'm, well, they both look insane, right? A stripeless GT is so wide, so low, but then the stripes are super iconic, but the stripeless are so rare.

• 1:06:11Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  You never see them.

• 1:06:12Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. I prefer the look of the stripe.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the stripeless are like single digits. Like his car's a white stripeless one. And don't quote me on this, but there's like seven of them.

• 1:06:20Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  You know, it's like single digit and that's what collectors want too.

• 1:06:24Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. What's a car that you can't believe has gotten so expensive?

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  I mean, 458 Speciale Aperta. Bro, it's like two, two and a half million dollars. It's a 458 with a body kit. Like I bought a 458 Spider in 2020 for a hundred and 65,000 dollars. It is 95% of a Speciale Aperta. And this car's trading at two and a half million dollars. It's like, this doesn't make any sense at all. And I mean, it's a beautiful car. Don't get me wrong. It's limited edition. It's Ferrari. It's one of 499. Like I get it. It's NA. It looks insane, but you can get the same car for a tenth of the price, you know, maybe, maybe an eighth of the price now.

• 1:07:03Graham Stephan?

  So let's assume we just dropped $5 million on you. What would you do with the money? Would you invest it or buy cars?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Uh, $5 million, I would finish my backyard first and foremost. I would definitely finish my backyard.

• 1:07:14Graham Stephan?

  The second most, what would you do? Cause I don't think that costs five million bucks.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, but that's like, that's the first thing I would do. That would be like five, six, 700,000 dollars. I would do that.

• 1:07:22Graham Stephan?

  That's a lot of money.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

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

• 1:07:36Graham Stephan?

  Sports court for what? For basketball?

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Basketball, pickleball, tennis. Like it's kind of an all in one. The thing I like about it is it reduces your landscaping, which is really nice. Less, less to take care of. And it'd be a great way to exercise. That's still fun. Like I love shooting hoops. Like it's a ton of fun. Uh, so that's the first thing I would do. Um, I just want to finish the property. I got all these weeds. It's kind of nasty. It doesn't look good. And after that, I would pay off Timor Osterato. So let's say that's a million bucks. So that's, that's first and foremost, I'm left with $4 million. The mortgage on my house, I'm sitting at 1.4, 1.5 million dollars. So I would take the rest of that and I would, I would just pay it off. So I'd have literally no debt. That would be the greatest thing ever.

• 1:08:20Graham Stephan?

  What's your interest rate?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Five and a quarter, five and a half, somewhere in there.

• 1:08:25Graham Stephan?

  That's not terrible.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  No, it's not. It's not. It's not. I think I've reached the point in my life where freedom is like my main goal, not absolute maximum financial, you know, uh, decision-making. I just want to be free. I like the idea of having no debt. I think the Koenigsegg, having that debt and all those payments and thinking like, I gotta make 60,000 every single month was so much. And I've reduced that obviously a ton to now where it's like, you know, 15,000 a month is like my, my break even. Um, but it'd be so awesome if that was zero.

• 1:08:59Graham Stephan?

  I'm slowly coming around to it. I would make fun of Dave Ramsey so much because I look at your mortgage mathematically, you're able to write off the first 750,000 dollars against your ordinary income.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:09:11Graham Stephan?

  Huge. That takes your five and a quarter, down to like two something percent. That's basically inflation. So you basically got free money.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:09:17Graham Stephan?

  For 750. I recently paid off three mortgages.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:22Graham Stephan?

  Uh, on rental properties in California, all three were between 2.8 to 3.3% fixed for 30 years.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:09:31Graham Stephan?

  Rental properties.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Graham, I never thought we'd see that.

• 1:09:33Graham Stephan?

  It was crazy. Yeah. I paid them off because I sold the properties.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  For sure. I get that.

• 1:09:38Graham Stephan?

  Getting rid of the debt, even though it was cash flow positive and the debt was so cheap, felt good.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:44Graham Stephan?

  It's just like, I have rocket money and I'm able to see like the debt category and like the asset category. Just having that like go down significantly. I don't know. I just felt better.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Sleep better at night. Dude, good sleep. Very, very underrated. Good night's sleep is amazing. No debt is amazing. You know, I've reached the point with YouTube and with my life. Like I never imagined I would be at this point, right? Like my goal when I was younger was to maybe have a Gallardo, but have to sell the Gallardo, right? And so I've reached the point now where I'm like, man, this is so much more than I ever imagined, so much more than I ever could expected. You know, and we're getting older. We're not young. We're not in our twenties anymore, right? Like.

• 1:10:23Graham Stephan?

  Jack is.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Well, Jack, you lucky guy. You enjoy it. You enjoy your twenties.

• 1:10:29Graham Stephan?

  I am.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Good. Good. But you know, you start thinking toward the future and you know, at some point you're like, you know, freedom, freedom is nice. Not having stress is nice. Um, you know, taking your foot off the gas can be nice as well and not having any debt.

• 1:10:43Graham Stephan?

  So this, this is going to sound stupid. Why not just sell off three cars, pay off the mortgage, finish the backyard and go down to zero?

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Well, you told me that you were just going to give me $5 million.

• 1:10:55Graham Stephan?

  Jack, Jack.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Jack did. Thank you, Jack, by the way. So that, that, that's why, because all of a sudden I have, I mean, $5 million. It's like, well, yeah, get rid of this. Right now, sure, I could do that. I could sell the Mercy. I mean, I could sell the Mercy, right? Right now. I could finish the backyard. Uh, I could take some of that money. I could pay off. I could sell the Timorario. I mean, certainly, absolutely.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  I'm not looking to actually like do that right now. I like the challenge. I still like, you know, I don't want to sell that car. I love that car. I think that car is going to be worth two million someday as well. And so I want to hold on to it. And I still enjoy owning the car. So that's, that's why it's like, I don't really want to add on more debt and I am making it a mission of mine to figure out a way to film content that maybe doesn't take as much money. So that the ROI is higher. So I can use the profit to finish some of these things to finish paying off some of these cars. That's kind of like my new goal versus expansion. You know, I've been on YouTube for 15 years.

• 1:11:49Graham Stephan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  I'm not in that growth stage anymore. Right? Like, I'm not looking to become, you know, the next big automotive YouTuber. I'm not, I'm not trying to do new things or reinvent the wheel. Like I'm, I'm not saying I'm in the retirement years or anything, but like, you know, I'm, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at and, and I still want to keep doing what I'm doing. I love YouTube, but I'm not looking to expand, right? I'm not looking to turn 19 cars into 30 cars, or I'm not looking to build an empire of employees and, you know, turn this YouTube thing into, into something bigger than that because I'm very happy with where I'm at in life.

• 1:12:25Graham Stephan?

  How's your business doing? How's it broken down today?

• 1:12:27Jack Selby?

  Last time we spoke, you said every year it's exactly the same. Two million bucks, two million bucks, two million bucks.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  You guys, it's literally the same.

• 1:12:34Jack Selby?

  It's still exactly two million bucks.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it fluctuates. Yeah. It fluctuates from 1.8 to 2.2, right? Like it's, it's just back and forth, back and forth.

• 1:12:43Graham Stephan?

  I have to say that's, that's the best thing that you could possibly, I think, you know, since you're not going for like, trying to like grow as big as possible, the consistency.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  No, for sure. And I, I mean, I think my channel has always been like consistency. Like when I look at my views, right? Like my views have started to drop, right? But they've still stayed very close overall to like the recent videos, right? Like if you look at a section of 10 of my videos, they're all very close in views, no matter where you go.

• 1:13:11Graham Stephan?

  How does that feel? Because when we filmed our first podcast, you had said every video is a million views.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:17Graham Stephan?

  And it'll, you know, a few get like 900, if you get like 1.3, but it's always about a million.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:23Graham Stephan?

  How does it feel seeing the views go down from like a motivation standpoint? It's like some of your audience just kind of like ages out and they find like other content.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think, I think for me, I always knew in the back of my mind it was going to happen. It was always inevitable, right? Like I'm in the entertainment industry. You look at actors, musicians, one hit wonders, right? Like it's hard to maintain longevity in the entertainment industry. YouTube is unproven. Social media is unproven. But I mean, I've been around for 15 years. And when I think about the automotive YouTubers that were around when I started compared to now, it's changed a lot, right? Like there's a lot of people that-

• 1:13:59Graham Stephan?

  Still making content.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  What was that?

• 1:14:01Graham Stephan?

  Almost no one from back then is still making content. Vehicle Virgin, so I think was the only other person who's still posting consistently.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  D D E, D A D E, as well. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, a lot of the big guys, well, Shmeat, he's around too. There's, there's guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you also look at like the mainstream on, or the mainstream YouTubers back then, they're all gone, right? So I've always known it was going to happen. The biggest thing for me is I'm amazed how long it lasted. To be honest, like I averaged a million views for something like five, six years, maybe give or take. I mean, that was longer than I, than I ever expected. And so I always knew in the back of my mind it would happen. You know, views obviously have dropped. The cool thing is I found other ways to make money. Other, there's so many more social media platforms now.

• 1:14:45Graham Stephan?

  I don't know if we could talk about, you told me you're doing OnlyFans.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  You know it.

• 1:15:22Jack Selby?

  We weren't supposed to talk.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, that was the one thing, Graham. I told you we weren't going to talk about.

• 1:15:28Graham Stephan?

  We'll cut that.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  We'll talk about it for the members. Members only.

• 1:15:30Graham Stephan?

  Members only. For the members content, we'll talk about that.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:15:34Graham Stephan?

  The secret.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll, we'll save that. We'll talk about that later.

• 1:15:36Jack Selby?

  Okay. So what are the other ways you're making money then? Because I imagine if the YouTube channel, you're averaging fewer views per video, then maybe you're making a little bit less on AdSense revenue, maybe a little bit less on, in general, on average for sponsors. So where's the supplemental income coming from?

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Snapchat is huge.

• 1:15:51Jack Selby?

  How does that do?

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Snapchat is amazing. Dude, I love Snapchat.

• 1:15:54Graham Stephan?

  What?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, Snapchat's incredible. Yeah.

• 1:15:56Graham Stephan?

  How much are you making on Snapchat?

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:16:17Graham Stephan?

  How much are you getting paid from Snapchat?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  So, you know, it fluctuates. Obviously it depends on what I'm up to, how much I post. It's kind of a volume thing. The more you post, you make a lot more. 10, $15,000 a month? No, it's a lot. Like it's a ton. Yeah. And it's so easy. It takes no time at all, right? It takes no time. And it, you know, I'll shout out my YouTube videos. It'll drive some traffic here and there to YouTube, I'm guessing, and, and vice versa.

• 1:16:40Graham Stephan?

  How did you grow on Snapchat?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Just posting, you know? The cool thing about cars, cars are so clickable.

• 1:16:45Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Right? Cars are so clickable. The thing, my gosh, these flies.

• 1:16:48Graham Stephan?

  People wouldn't click on us.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, cars are so incredibly clickable.

• 1:16:52Jack Selby?

  They would hate to.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not really a, let's be honest. Snapchat is not really a finance platform. Snapchat, yeah.

• 1:16:58Graham Stephan?

  We've tried growing on Snapchat. I used to have a Snapshow.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:02Graham Stephan?

  That did well, and then they discontinued that recently for a lot of creators.

• 1:17:05Jack Selby?

  Now it's just like, you have to treat it like reels.

• 1:17:07Graham Stephan?

  And now it's like stories.

• 1:17:08Jack Selby?

  Which is interesting that Instagram doesn't employ the same thing. Like, I don't know why they-

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  I think because Instagram is just beating everybody. Everybody, people post on Instagram because they want to post there. They want to get famous.

• 1:17:19Graham Stephan?

  They don't need to pay people.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  They don't need the motivation. I mean, I post on Instagram. I don't get paid. I, I make nothing on Instagram, and yet I still see it as being valuable because most of the connections that I make.

• 1:17:28Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Is on Instagram. So that's why I post on Instagram, but I make no money on Instagram.

• 1:17:32Jack Selby?

  So outside of Snapchat, then what other streams of income do you have?

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  TikTok, Facebook. Those are kind of the, the other big three, if you will.

• 1:17:41Jack Selby?

  Strad Pizza.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Strad Pizza.

• 1:17:43Jack Selby?

  Let's talk about it.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Let's talk about Strad Pizza. I kind of see Strad Pizza as like a, it is, it is a completely separate entity, obviously, compared to my YouTube channel. And so everything that we make, it just gets reinvested back into the business.

• 1:17:55Jack Selby?

  Is it making money?

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so summer months, no, but the rest of the year, yes. Because the summer in Arizona is so incredibly hot. Everybody leaves for the summer. So the summer's kind of like survive and then the fall you thrive.

• 1:18:08Jack Selby?

  A personal thing that I love watching, like I, I will, Dave Portnoy.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:18:14Jack Selby?

  I have watched him for years. I love his pizza reviews. I love New York style slices. I love New Haven style slices. Like I geek out on that stuff. He reviewed your pizza. 7-7. Not bad. How nervous were you? Because Dave is a harsh critic. Like he will give places like a four, a five, a six, but a pizza that gets a 6.5 in a Dave score is actually a really good slice. So 7-7, while it may seem like it's average or slightly above average, actually suggests to me that it's a phenomenal pizza.

• 1:18:45Graham Stephan?

  He also said it was better than David Dobrik.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  He did. That video was hilarious. I mean, as far as like, so, so Portnoy, obviously he showed up at Strad Pizza, the employees, everyone knows who he is, right? He showed up about a month before the video dropped. So for four weeks, we were waiting for him to drop the video. And one of the customers outside overheard him and told us that it was a 7-7-8. But until you see the video go live, in the back of your mind, it's like, well, what if it was a, you know, 6-7 or whatever? I mean, uh, but like, you never know, right? Until the video drops, you don't know. And then also like, what else did he say? Because with Portnoy, like his reviews, like, it's so funny because he's so unhinged at moments,

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  right? And he says whatever's on his mind. So when that video dropped, it was literally like, we could not have asked for a better video. David Dobrik, I, I haven't met him before. I haven't been to his pizza place, but I know he's obviously very big in the pizza world. So for us to be compared to him and for Dave to like say our pizza's way better was just incredible, right? Um, you know, Dave had no idea who I was. He didn't pronounce Stradman correct. He said like Stradman or something like that, right?

• 1:19:58Graham Stephan?

  Straw man.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So it was like a very genuine review, right? And that's the thing we love about Portnoy. He don't care who you are. He's always very genuine. And so, yeah, it was, it was amazing. When he came to Strad Pizza, we had been open for three weeks also.

• 1:20:11Jack Selby?

  So you think the pizza could be more refined today?

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

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

• 1:20:41Jack Selby?

  I'll say this, a lot of people may disagree with me, but I actually don't think a fresh pizza tastes the best. I think if you go to New York and you get the slices that are reheated, buy the slice, it always tastes better than a fresh pie, in my humble opinion. However, 7-7 phenomenal score. Did you see more customers convert to the store because of that review?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  I had no idea the effect that it would have positively. We were so busy, we couldn't keep up for a month. I mean, he, he turned our sales, I want to say, I mean, I don't off the top of my head. It was insane though. It was, it was something like, uh, the week before we- At like $25,000 for the week and then the next week was like 45,000 like, I mean, we're talking about like astronomical effect. And it wasn't just like that week, it lingered for, for four or five weeks. I mean, we did, I want to say that month, we did like a hundred and

• 1:21:31Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  30,000, 140,000 that month.

• 1:21:34Graham Stephan?

  So what's the plan with Strad Pizza?

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  So the, the plan is obviously to expand, right? Like that's the goal. You know, Strad Pizza, it's a, it's a, it's a twofold endeavor. I love pizza. I, I literally could eat it every single meal my entire life and be very happy. So I love pizza. That was a big motivator. My dad and I, we would go out and get pizza all the time. And it was, it was just, it was kind of like the perfect storm for it to come to fruition. So Houston Crosta, he's a good buddy of mine. Houston had Houston's hot chicken and you know, there's, there was, there was a lot that went into that, right? But Houston was like, dude, if you did this with your social media following, you would absolutely crush. And he told me that years ago, right? Like this was, man, I don't know, 2022, right?

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  He told me that years ago, but in the back of my mind is I was like, oh, that's cool. And then on the other side of my mind, I was like, you know, I love doing YouTube. I love the content game, but it would be fun to do something else and challenge myself. So there's, there's that aspect. And then my business partner, Freddie, he has done my merchandise for, man, I don't know, five, six, seven years. And he's also worked in the food business and he's been a part of some major restaurants in Arizona with some of the big chefs down there. He sold some of those restaurants and so he's doing my merch. He does restaurants. Houston's a good buddy of mine. He did restaurants, used social media to leverage it. I wanted to do something different. I love pizza. And so it kind of just like all sort of came together and became Strad Pizza.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  You know, my ultimate goal with Strad Pizza is to, is to kind of challenge myself, um, have a place to, to do car meets, to meet people. You know, try something new. And then of course, obviously financially, it'd be cool to expand it from a legacy standpoint and a financial standpoint. So we'd love to grow it. That would be, that would be the goal for sure.

• 1:23:18Graham Stephan?

  What's the profit margin on a pizza? How much does it cost to make? And what do you sell?

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Let's see, food margins are going to be about 35 to 40%. Uh, and then your labor is going to be about 35 to 40%. So you have about 20 to 30% margins.

• 1:23:35Graham Stephan?

  What about rent?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, we're in Scottsdale, uh, rent, we had, we kind of got really lucky with our situation. So Freddie, his business is like four doors down from Strad Pizza. Uh, the, the place that we got is an old subway. Uh, they kind of sort of, sort of perfect storm again. Like I said, like everything just kind of fell into place. But it was an old subway. The rent initially, like it was, it was a tiered structure. So we started off at like 1,700 a month. I think we're at 30, well, we're at 3442 a month now. So I mean, it's, you know, we're, we're 18 months into business. So initially, right? Like it was very cheap and then it's, it's jumped up. We're locked in at that for like a couple of years now. So yeah, I mean, rent, rent's not cheap.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  The crazy thing though, is we've been looking in Salt Lake, trying to find a location and rent prices have gone up so much. Just in the last like two, three years, they've gotten, I mean, we're, we're at six, $7,000 now for an equivalent space.

• 1:24:29Graham Stephan?

  Are you happy with the name?

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:33Graham Stephan?

  Are you worried about tying it to your brand?

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  No, no, not really. Because, yeah, I mean, like, let's, let's be honest. At the end of the day, like, I'm a YouTuber, right? Like my brand's not like, yeah, it's important to me, but the brand itself is, is, uh, it's, it's not like Nike, right? Like I'm just a silly YouTuber.

• 1:24:50Graham Stephan?

  See, the, the problem I, I worry about and see in the future, there's that key man risk of it being so tied to you. And then I would think if you eventually, uh, expand or you, you eventually franchise, that they would say, what happens if you stop making content? What happens if you don't continue marketing the business?

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:25:10Graham Stephan?

  What happens if you say something and then the customers now all of a sudden start like picketing in front? Whereas having like a generic name, maybe doesn't have those risks.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  I think at the end of the day, for a restaurant, if the pizza's not good, nobody cares. Nobody cares who you are. It don't matter. It don't matter. The pizza is what matters. If the pizza is good, people will go back. If they've seen some YouTuber that they like, he's got cool cars, they'll go try it. They'll walk in the door, but if they have a bad experience or the pizza's bad, they're not going to go back. They'll still watch my videos though. I think hopefully, but they're not going to go back. So the pizza is what's most critical.

• 1:25:50Graham Stephan?

  I'm going to say, I think you need a little bit of a gimmick.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:25:53Graham Stephan?

  You gotta do some sort of a challenge where they get like a free pizza if they're able to finish like some massive.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. We've talked, I, I love that. I agree. I think that would be fun.

• 1:26:02Graham Stephan?

  You know, like a, like a challenge or like you make it.

• 1:26:05Jack Selby?

  Idea and

• 1:26:06Graham Stephan?

  Really, yeah.

• 1:26:06Jack Selby?

  And what if there's a YouTube channel where like you have like a camera in the store? And anyone who wants to try the challenge, like they also have to consent to being filmed.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:26:16Jack Selby?

  And you get to post it on the YouTube channel. So you get all these crazy people and you can like mic them up and you have like weird people just chowing down on a bunch of pizza and talking at the same time. Oh, this is hard. This is, that would be

• 1:26:28Graham Stephan?

  I would also.

• 1:26:29Jack Selby?

  Markets itself, which is the great part.

• 1:26:30Graham Stephan?

  I'd also like to see a really hot pizza, like on the Scoville units, like just off the charts, they had to sign a waiver. They have to be like,

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:39Graham Stephan?

  You know, 18 and over.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:26:41Graham Stephan?

  But you give them this pizza and they have to be filmed. And if you finish the pizza, it's free and then they get maybe like, you get like, uh, you know, a, a discount on future pizzas or that you get the next like five pizzas free.

• 1:26:53Jack Selby?

  You get a personalized video from Strad, man.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  I can't wait to talk to my business partners on Tuesday. We gotta do these pods more. I agree. I think those are fantastic ideas. We've talked about the food challenge. We didn't talk about live streaming it though. I think that's

• 1:27:05Jack Selby?

  Maybe not live streaming, but just, just having like a camera in the store and then like it's just, set up a little tripod and film it.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  And film it.

• 1:27:10Jack Selby?

  Just because I think like having just unique people.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:27:13Jack Selby?

  While they're talking, while they're doing it, that would be so funny. I would watch.

• 1:27:16Graham Stephan?

  The other thing that I think you should do is vlogging a little bit of the inside of the store. If there's a fun dynamic between some of the employees, like upon stars where there's some banter back and forth. There's like some emergency of like, oh my gosh, the pizzas didn't get delivered. And what do we do? It's like some drama throughout the day.

• 1:27:35Jack Selby?

  That seems logistically very difficult because you have to edit, like editing that, that requires like a full editor.

• 1:27:40Graham Stephan?

  I'm just, I'm thinking it's a one person who just hangs out at the shop all day, eight hours a day, post once a week.

• 1:27:46Jack Selby?

  People that go into a store like want to be filmed.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  That's, that's always the balance. It's a bouncing act. And like when it's really busy, cause you know, just like in a restaurant, it ebbs and flows, right? And it's a small location. It's 1,200 square feet. So it is pretty small. And, and you know, on a Friday or Saturday night, it's popping in there. Obviously on a Monday or Tuesday, sure, it's, it's pretty slow. But yeah, you gotta, you gotta find the right characters, obviously that'll be willing and you know, some people don't want to be on camera, but I, I certainly think we should do it and it can be, it could be done.

• 1:28:12Jack Selby?

  I think filming the challenge would be, would be.

• 1:28:14Graham Stephan?

  I think filming the challenge would be fantastic.

• 1:28:16Jack Selby?

  It just markets itself.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure. I did a challenge, uh, where I did a, a pizza eating contest. There's a football player, Will Hernandez. He plays for the Arizona Cardinals and he's, you know, 300 and whatever pounds and he's huge, right? He's a, he's a lineman and we did a pizza challenge where it was one V one, me versus him, who could eat the pizza faster? And that was super fun. That was kind of a fun little marketing gimmick that we did and we filmed it and you know, did really well on Instagram and whatnot. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think more stuff like that, definitely. But I think once again, the pizza, if the pizza's really good, because think about all the restaurants, think about your favorite restaurants that you go to.

• 1:28:51Jack Selby?

  We don't ask what their opinions about certain things.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:54Jack Selby?

  Like the owners, we just, we just go there.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  If the food's good, right? If the food's good, you'll keep coming back, obviously to grow it though, right? So it's kind of two phase, right? At, on one end, it's like, well, the pizza's got to be really good. The price point's got to be really good. The operations could got to be really good. And then once you figure that out, then you can have all the fun with all the, you know, gimmicks, social media, the marketing side of it. Uh, which is, you know, we're, we're, we're pretty young. We've been, like I said, we, our one year anniversary was April 12th. So we've been open, you know, 15 months or so. Operations were getting dialed. We're getting, you know, we're getting there for sure. Um, and we're doing some marketing here and there. So it's, it's been a fun new challenge. We sold a lot of pizza. You know, it's kind of crazy to think we sold a million dollars of pizza. Uh, pretty, pretty cool. So.

• 1:29:35Graham Stephan?

  Outside of that, do you have any other investments? Any stock, any crypto, any gold?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  I knew this was coming. I knew this question was gonna, I was, it's funny. Like, I don't know. When we were talking like a week ago, whenever we set this up, I was like, man, maybe we should dump some money into the stock, the stock market real quick. So that when you guys ask this question, I'm like, oh yeah, I got stock here. I got money there. I got money there.

• 1:29:54Graham Stephan?

  Is that ever going to change?

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Yes and no. I think, I think that the YouTube channel, I mean, obviously Strad Pizza's new. I mean, I have, I have, that's an investment that's changed since our last podcast. Um, will it change? Absolutely. I think, I think the YouTube channel will kind of dictate everything, right? You know, the YouTube channel, yes, views have fallen, but I'm still getting six, 700,000 views a video. I'm still making fantastic money. Like it's still very much a part of my life. I still love doing it and I'm good at it. Right? I think it's so important to do what you're good at. Like what do you know? What do you understand? Like I understand the car market. I'm in love with it. You know, we have a conversation. You bring up an SLS on Bring a Trailer. I know exactly what you're talking about, right? You bring up the stock market. I don't even know. Cause I, I'm just like, I'm not into that. I don't have time. I don't, I don't want to have time for that. Right?

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Like I want to have time for this. And so right now, this is kind of what I know. This is what I'm really good at. I think. I could learn how to be good at other things, but you know, it's a balancing act.

• 1:30:52Graham Stephan?

  Doesn't it feel like a little bit of a hamster wheel though? Like, I know you really love what you do, but if you don't have other investments to fall back on, you really don't have any active income coming in to supplement just all the other expenses.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, life is kind of a hamster wheel. That's sort of like the beauty of life, right? No matter what it is in life, you're always on a hamster wheel in some way or the other, right? Whether it's financial or physical or relationships or anything in life, right? Mental, mental health, right? Like, everything is a hamster wheel. I love the hamster wheel of it. I am happiest when I'm busy, when I'm working, when I'm on the hamster wheel. When I get off the hamster wheel, you know, if I don't post for like, I don't know, 10 days, or I can't figure out what to post, that's actually when I'm like most agitated. When I'm working, when I'm doing it, I actually kind of enjoy it. That adds to the stress though, right? But I think a certain level of stress is actually really good and really healthy, especially for, I think, men. I think it's really important to kind of have a mission, have like a challenge, something that you're, you're doing every single day.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Obviously, diversity is, or you know, diversification is super important. I totally agree with that. I just like, I just, and maybe it's ego driven. I just feel like I'm so good at this that I just want to invest all my time into this.

• 1:32:04Jack Selby?

  What's really interesting to me is, you know, earlier in this podcast, you said, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:09Jack Selby?

  And then you also kind of did that exact same thing with visiting your mom.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:14Jack Selby?

  You like drove all the way to Oregon and you ended up spending time with her and then you ended up getting a good deal. And then when Graham says, oh yeah, but it's a hamster wheel. There's sort of a negative connotation to that, but to you, even though it's the exact same thing, it still is a hamster wheel. It's a hamster wheel to you and it's a hamster wheel to you. But for you, that's a positive thing. And so what I think is really remarkable is your ability to spin literally anything into something positive. I'm curious if that's something that you've had to engineer or like condition your brain to be able to see life in that way, or if this is just the way you've always been.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, obviously I can tell you that I always turn a negative into a positive right here on the podcast. It's very easy for me to say, there are certainly moments in my life where I don't do that, right? People don't see that, right? Like, I'm a human being, just like, just like everybody. There are moments of weakness and negativity where I'm in my head, where I'm mad, where I'm upset, where I'm like, oh, the world is against me. You know, like, it's very easy to sit here on a pod and just say, you know,

• 1:33:15Jack Selby?

  Well, things are good in this, in this exact moment.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  For sure, no, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's, there's lots of moments that, you know, initially I'm very negative and then I have a way of turning it into positive. And then there are other moments that, no, it's like immediately, you know, it's like, no, I'm going to spin this into a positive. The cool thing about what I do, and I'm very aware of it, is like, I get the coolest job in the world. Right? Like, I get to do the coolest stuff, like what my 10-year-old self didn't know existed because social media wasn't a thing. I get to do that. I get to, I get to, to drive the most amazing cars. I get to share my life. I get to meet cool people. I get to travel the world. And what I realized very, very early on on social media is when something bad happens, it makes for the best situations on camera, makes for the best videos, right? Like, it, that's just how it works.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  And what's so cool about YouTube is it's literally, if you can have that mindset, you understand that when something bad happens, you just gotta immediately be like, no, I'm going to turn this into a good thing. And you can, because of all the blessings you have because of what you do for a living, right? Like, when I get a flat tire in a car, for most people, that's the worst thing ever. For me, I'm like, oh, this is gonna make my video funnier. It's annoying, but it's like, I'm just gonna get out and film this and laugh on the side of the highway, right? Now, when the guy order caught fire, I, I was devastated because that car means so much to me. And I was on the verge of tears when that happened. And then it was literally angels from heaven spawning with fire extinguishers. I remember distinctly in my head, I'm looking at the car.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  I'm like, the car is gone. And then I was like, I need to film a walk around video of this car because I'm never going to see it again. And as I pan from the back, I walked toward the front of the car. And as I pan to the front of the car, I see a guy running full speed with a fire extinguisher. And it was just like, like literally boom. It's like, oh, we might save the car. And he comes running over, saves the car. And in that moment, it's like, as soon as the car was out and I looked at it in my head, I was like, I'm pretty sure I can save this car. I can turn this into the coolest thing ever. But five minutes earlier, I was literally devastated because that car means so much to me. But then after the fire was put out, it's like, no, I can, I can make something out of this. Like, this is, I'm not going to say this is a blessing, but I'm going to turn this into a blessing.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  Like, I'm going to force, I'm going to force this into a blessing. And that's because I have a YouTube channel and I'm so blessed to have a YouTube channel that has the success that it has. And, and I understand that not everybody has that. And so I think, I think with that, you know, part of like, the reason I've been so blessed is that there's an expectation to be a positive light in the world. You know, I think a lot of people watch my YouTube videos because, you know, they're going through stressful situations and maybe this is a little bit of a reprieve or a break that they can take away from, from the stress of their life. And so I feel like there's a bit of a responsibility, you know, to, to be positive, you know, to turn negative into positive. There's a lot of kids that watch my channel and, and I hope a lot of them see that, right?

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  And they're like, oh, man, James Stradman, he does this. He, he looks for the best in things, right? And not that I always do that, you know, like, I'm a human, right? There are times in my life when I don't do that, but I think it's really important to show people to do that because life's hard, right? Life's hard, but if you have good people around you and you have the right mindset, you can take anything and turn it into a positive.

• 1:36:37Graham Stephan?

  I will say you're like that even off camera. Like, you won't even swear. We've tried to get you to say bad words and you won't do it.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:45Graham Stephan?

  Cause it's, it's, it's weird hearing it come from you.

• 1:36:47Jack Selby?

  You almost like literally negatively speak, or never speak negatively on anybody either. Like, you're, you're just like a positive and forgiving person.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you, but that's not true. I have moments. No, I know, I know, I do. Like, I mean, I'm, I'm certainly, I, I, I have weak moments. I have moments of, of stress. I have moments of anguish. I mean, I got audited. You guys gotta ask me about the audit.

• 1:37:11Jack Selby?

  Oh.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  But, bro, when I was going through that audit, that was, the hard part too, is that I didn't, that wasn't something that I put on YouTube until after the fact, right? Because I just wasn't sure of how to narrate that. I just didn't know. But during that, I was, I was, I was in a dark place. It was tough. And then I'd have to, then I'd just have to turn it on for the camera.

• 1:37:34Graham Stephan?

  Let's talk about the audit. What triggered the audit?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  The audit was 2022, 2023. I was having a great day. I went to the mailbox. I opened up the mailbox and I have a letter from the IRS. And I'm thinking like, oh, it's some, whatever. Like, we get, randomly you get notices from the IRS, like, whatever. I get home, I open it up and they don't even really call it an audit. I think it's like a financial review. It's like a nice way of saying it's an audit. And all of a sudden, it was, I mean, it was just like, oh my gosh, like, I don't even know what to do, right? Like, this is the scariest thing ever. Reached out to my CPA, you know, we had to reach out to the IRS and we scheduled like a phone call with them, right? And initially, the audit was for 2020. It was for my 2020 financials, right?

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

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

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

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

• 1:39:45Graham Stephan?

  It's a piece of equipment.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  It's a piece of equipment and that's how I treated it, right? Now with a passenger vehicle that weighs under 6,000 pounds, the IRS has a very strict way you can expense them.

• 1:39:56Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  It's, it's limited. It doesn't matter. Like, this is the dollar amount. This is what you do.

• 1:40:01Graham Stephan?

  Especially for luxury cars.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  For luxury cars. And it's, and it's a very, very small percentage of the car. And that's the absolute most you can do. But then, you know, for a vehicle that weighs over 6,000 pounds, like a truck, that's treated a little bit different. Generally, you can write that off in the first year. The tax law changes every year, right? So it's, it's hard to like pinpoint it, but it changes. But then something like a tractor, a piece of equipment, right? You can depreciate it, blah, blah, blah, blah. Depending on the value of it, maybe you do, you, there's different methods you can choose based on the equipment. And, you know, I have a degree in accounting, a degree in finance. I'm not a CPA though. Like, when I went to college, like, when you do accounting, you really don't learn much about tax, right? But I had a basic understanding and I understood how I use my cars.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  And the big thing for me is like, when I bought this Timmerario, right? I go to the dealership, I buy the car, I film the video. Let's say it does a million views. Let's say I make $10,000. That $10,000 does not exist if I don't have that car. It literally does not exist. The channel, the YouTube channel does not exist. I don't have a YouTube channel. I do not have an automotive YouTube channel without cars. So that was the framework for why I chose to do what I did. And I knew that I had audit risk. And my dad, he was a CPA, uh, my attorney, or my, my accountant here, he's a CPA, right? I know a bunch of other people that are CPAs and they understood the logic that I took and they agreed with it.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  They also warned me that I had audit risk. So I always knew in the back of my mind that there was audit risk. I also knew that everything was a timing thing, right? Because When you buy a car, let's say the Timmer are you buy that car for 500 grand? And let's say theoretically, to make things very easy for this podcast, you write it off for 500 grand the first year, right? You just write off the whole thing the first year. So your basis is $0. But then the next year you sell the car and you sell the car for $450,000. Let's say you're going to have a taxable gain of $450,000. So you're still going to end up paying taxes on these cars. You're just delaying taxation.

• 1:42:11Jack Selby?

  Correct.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  It's just a timing thing, right? It's not tax evasion. It's just tax avoidance. It's timing. That's, that's literally all you're doing, right? And I had done that for years, right? Cause I mean, I started my YouTube channel in 2012. You know, I filed returns for five, six, seven, eight years up until 2020. And I'd been doing that and you could see on my tax returns that when I sold cars, I was paying a gain on said taxation. So that's what triggered the audit though, to answer the question.

• 1:42:37Jack Selby?

  The depreciation recapture.

• 1:42:39Graham Stephan?

  Was it, was it just the amounts? Like they're, they're seeing a high income and it's very high deductions.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  So with the audit, they obviously don't tell you what triggers it. All you can go is based off of that. And that would be obviously.

• 1:42:55Jack Selby?

  So why would, why would you paying more tax trigger an audit? Because if it was the recapture, right? That you.

• 1:43:01Graham Stephan?

  No, no, no. Well. It was, it was the ebbs and flows.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  It was the ebbs and flows. Because, because initially, right? Because the channel was growing and the revenue was growing. The ebbs and flows were, I was writing off more, right? Like I was writing off more every single year. It kept getting bigger and bigger because I was making more money. I was buying more cars. And yes, I would sell some cars, but I was going from two cars to four cars to eight cars, 10 cars to 12 cars to 15 cars, right? Now that I've reached this point where I've stayed between, you know, 15 to 19 cars, there's a lot more ebbs and flows. But back then it was just ebbs, right? Cause I was just growing, growing, growing, growing. So the write offs were getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so I think that's absolutely what triggered it.

• 1:43:43Graham Stephan?

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

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  It was a year long process, the audit. And it was, like I said, the worst experience of my entire life. It was awful.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  It was, it was terrible. The biggest thing that I've learned, if you ever get audited, get a tax attorney ASAP. ASAP. My CPA was incredible. He's a great guy. He still does my taxes. He didn't have the experience with audits that a tax attorney would have. But as soon as I got a tax attorney involved, he was foot on the gas, foot on the gas. He's calling the auditors every other day. Hey, what do you need? What do you need? Schedule a meeting. When can we get this done? When can we get this taken care of? There was a lot of arguing back and forth, right? Because I was stating my case. I was like, no, these cars are props. These cars are equipment because there are certain things in the tax code that does allow for what I was doing.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  If you're like a taxi driver or you have like, there's a lot of ambulance companies, right? Or like.

• 1:45:21Jack Selby?

  Turo renter or something.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Ubers and stuff like there's, there's, there are certain things. And so we tried to argue that I should be treated the same way. The issue we ran into is that I was the first social media influencer that they had ever audited, the Salt Lake office, the Utah office. They didn't know what to do. I mean, these were older ladies in their 50s that, I don't know. They didn't even know what YouTube was, right? Like they didn't even know what social media was. This is a whole new world and there's no tax code for an automotive YouTuber, right? It's such a niche. There's nothing out there and they have to go by the book. So the first little while I'm trying to explain my case, right? Because this affects my business so much. I mean, not being able to expense the cars in the way that I was doing affected my business significantly, right?

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

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

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• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  Thing in all of this is that because I owed so much money to the IRS, it was like, I don't know, 500,000. But because I owed so much, they charge you a 20% penalty on anything owed. But then they also charge you interest. And the interest is, I don't know.

• 1:47:47Jack Selby?

  Seven percent.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  Seven, right? Yeah, 7%. So when I get audited at the start of 2022 and the audit doesn't end until 2023, and it's gone on for a year, the amount of interest has not doubled, but like it's a ton more. Like we're talking 50, $60,000, whatever more in interest because the audit took so long. And what was annoying before I got the tax attorney is the IRS agents are so slow. They're so slow. Like they hit you up with an email or a phone call or whatever. And they're like, yeah, we need this document, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and we need these by this date, right? So I'm just like, man, I gotta film a YouTube video today. I gotta do this. I gotta set this aside. So you get on your financials, you work with your CPA, you get them all the information.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  And then I'm thinking you want the, you want them to like you, right? You want them to be, be nice. And so I send them the information and crickets. You don't hear anything for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. All of a sudden it's been three months and you haven't heard anything. And then they finally get back to you and they ask for more information. So then you send it to them. And then once again, crickets, crickets. But I'm just once again, thinking like, well, I don't want to hassle them. I don't want to annoy them, right? And I want them to like me. I'm trying to play super safe. But then all of a sudden we're nine months into this and I don't have an answer. And all this interest is adding up like crazy. So then they get back to me and they tell me like, no, you owe all this money.

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  You know, and I'm just like, I'm like, and it was, it was, it was crazy.

• 1:49:19Graham Stephan?

  So you could have theoretically in that moment said, all right, there's the money.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  I could have, but initially when they came back, it was like, I owed like a million dollars.

• 1:49:27Graham Stephan?

  No.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, a million dollars. And then I'm, I'm going through.

• 1:49:31Graham Stephan?

  Grab.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Line item by line item. There are so many mistakes on this thing. So one critical part was my Urus, right? And my Gladiator, those two vehicles do weigh over 6,000 pounds. So I was able to write those off 100%. And I think the Urus wasn't written, like they just kind of blank slate, just like deleted everything and then did like the passenger vehicle deduction, right? But the Urus was like 260 grand. So I like hit them up. It's like, well, no, that's, that's wrong. Like that's, I can write that thing off. That's over 6,000 pounds. And then they're like, oh, we need documentation. So then I went and took a photo of like the VIN and like the plate where it has the gross vehicle weight rating, like the 6,000 pounds. It's kind of like a trial and you're guilty and you have to prove your innocence and you have to prove documentation.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Then it was like my laptop. My laptop, they deemed as not being able to write off because for whatever reason, I hadn't sent them the documentation, but they hadn't asked for the documentation. So anyways, long story short, they sent me this huge bill and like, this is insane. And then, so then I get a tax attorney involved. I start, you know, being like, no, I'm fighting you on this, this, this, and this. We'd have these meetings in person where it's like the three of us on one side, the three of them on one side. And the crazy thing about all this, these are IRS auditors, right? They're just employees of, of the government and they get to dictate your fate. Like this is like a court. This is just like some random employee, right? And so we're like, kind of going back and forth, back and forth.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  And we end up reducing it down to like the 500 grand. Then there's the interest and then there's the 20% penalty. And the reason they wanted to give me this penalty, there was a handful of reasons. Just because they're a revenue service. They want to make money, right? And then one of the things they used against me is that I have a degree in accounting and finance. And they're like, you should have known better. You have a degree. I'm like, you don't even know what grades I got. Like we didn't even talk about tax in school. This has nothing to do with anything. When you get audited, you can challenge the audit and you can take it to a new board or you can take it to tax court, right? And so at the end of this last meeting, I was like, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not paying

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  this 20% penalty. Like I'm not doing it. Like you guys know why I did what I did. You guys see it. You know, there was no, uh, there was no evasion involved. There was no malicious intent. Like you guys understand the framework for what I did. You can see I've given you guys every single information imaginable. I've, I poured out my entire life story to you. I don't, I don't believe that I deserve this, this penalty. I have no prior, I've never been audited before. And so my attorney, my CPA and I got up and we walked out. We walked out. And man, that walkout was awful. I'm like, man, I'm hosed. Like, we now gotta do this all over again. How much longer is this gonna take? Because it's a balancing act, right? You're like, do I just pay this, be done with it? Do I pay the interest? Do I pay the penalties? Life moves on.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  You know, do I, do I go all the way to tax court? How much am I gonna pay my attorney? How much am I gonna pay my CPA? Like, there's all these different things going on in your head. And then we're like standing out there having a conversation. And then one of the auditors walks out. And they're like, if you'll sign right now, today, we will waive the 20% penalty. Which was like, you know, I don't know, a hundred grand. So they ended up getting rid of the 20% penalty. I still had to pay the interest. I still had to pay all the back tax, which was once again, just a timing thing.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  And the thing about the back tax is the 500. The reason I wasn't worried about it is because in the back of my mind, I always knew I was gonna have to pay that when I sold some of the cars. Like, I always knew.

• 1:53:12Graham Stephan?

  Same thing.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always knew that I had all these cars that were, had a, had a basis that was very low. Like, I knew when I was selling these that I, so that wasn't the big deal. It was that, it was that 20% penalty that I was able to get rid of.

• 1:53:24Graham Stephan?

  How do you approach your taxes differently, having been through what you've been through?

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, obviously very conservatively. I mean, the big thing about my business is everything is passenger vehicles. And I, I, I just, it is what it is.

• 1:53:39Graham Stephan?

  You take, I think it's called straight line depreciation.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  It's just whatever the deduction is.

• 1:53:43Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:43Jack Selby?

  You have to depreciate it over a certain amount of years.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  So with passenger vehicles, yeah, there's, there's a guideline. Like, like with luxury vehicles, there's a guideline. And there's an amount the first year you can write off. And it's, it's a stated figure. There's no, it's just easy in that sense. Like, there's no rhyme or reason, no debating, so I just do that, which is a bummer, but.

• 1:54:03Jack Selby?

  So what I'm curious about is why it seems like these, like IRS audit agents or whatever they are, like, why they are so seri-, like, is there an incentive? Why did they want to take this 20% penalty? But it, it was almost like a negotiation tactic. Because apparently when you walked out, you won because they ended up coming back and saying, oh, we're sorry. So it's like, it's almost like they have the decision-making ability. And yet, in a situation where they also knew they didn't necessarily have the right answer, they still pursued more money. And then when they realized in the pursuit of more money, that it wasn't gonna work out, and it was gonna be all annoying, something would happen, they ended up actually forgiving that.

• 1:54:47Jack Selby?

  That's the thing that I'm a little bit curious about. Like, why, why was it almost like their own money was on the line?

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  That's what was the craziest thing about it. Like, I promise you, it felt like a trial. I was in, being interrogated by these, like, employees that had no motivation. It's not their company. They don't get, they don't have any incentive.

• 1:55:06Jack Selby?

  So why did they, but do you have any idea? There, there's no incentive?

• 1:55:09Graham Stephan?

  There's not. It's, it is illegal to tie a person's salary to the amount of money collected because it would skew the outcome of something if they're personally tied to it. So my understanding is they're not.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:21Graham Stephan?

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

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think they believe in it. I think, I think that's what it is. I think that to be an IRS auditor, you feel like you're a, you're catching fraud.

• 1:55:52Graham Stephan?

  How much was this, that you're a young guy with all these cars? And that maybe that kind of skews into it of like, they see you as like, oh yeah, dude, you have 20 cars.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  I try not to think about that. But obviously that crossed my mind. You know, I mean, I'm a social media influencer. I drive a bunch of bright colored Lamborghinis. I make fantastic money, right? If you're an IRS auditor, why would you like me? And, and, you know, you're probably not into cars. You're a female, you're older, right? Like, I mean, why would they like me? I didn't feel like they liked me, that's for sure. They definitely didn't like me, that's for sure. I mean, like, like I said, it was an interrogation. It was crazy, and I was guilty until proven innocent.

• 1:56:37Graham Stephan?

  My, my thought, the first thing, is that you talk to them. My understanding is that if they ever reach out for anything, immediately you get an attorney.

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:56:46Graham Stephan?

  And you never say anything, you never speak. And it's one of those things where it's like, uh, the, the attorney does the work for you. They do it for you. You're not supposed to really get involved. If they ask something from you, your attorney gets it from you.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  And that's, that's what I learned through the process. And that's why anybody watching this, if you ever get audited, get a tax attorney. The, the crazy thing about it is I do think that there was a bit of trust gained with me being involved. Like, I do think the auditors did believe me. You know, like, they, they, they took what I said throughout the course of that year, and they did start to gain a bit of trust in what I said. Because initially, early on, when they asked for documentation, they asked for a lot more. And then as it progressed, they started, like, you know, when they'd ask a question, like, there, there was one item that I, it was like, I just made a mistake on the taxes, right?

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Like, it was like, and I just was like, yeah, I don't know. Like, there was, it was like a $5,000 check or something like that. Which I know sounds like a lot, but when you have, you know, $2 million or $3 million in gross revenue, right? Like, it's easy to miss 5,000 somehow, right? And so, like, I remember that happened. And I, I remember sitting on my computer and I was just like, oh my gosh, how did I miss this? Like, I'm gonna get in so much trouble. And I just emailed her and I was like, I completely missed it. Like, yes, 100%, this should have been included. So I think over the course of the audit, you, I did gain some. That being said, I still wholeheartedly agree with you. If I ever got audited again, I call my tax attorney immediately, let him deal with it, almost just like you would when you're, if you're on trial with a lawyer, right? Same concept.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  So that would be my number one recommendation.

• 1:58:28Graham Stephan?

  How do you combat burnout? Because I imagine throughout that entire process, it's hard to flip a switch and just like,

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Graham Stephan?

  Put on a good mood when you've been through that all day, your mind's racing, you're not mentally there.

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  I remember I was in New York at a hotel, and I got a call from my tax attorney. And this was when I got like, one of the big bad news moments. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was like, yeah, you're hosed. Type, type of moment. Like, it was, it was like, yeah, you owe a million dollars. It was one of those moments. And I remember I was in a hotel, it was early in the morning, and I was getting ready to get in an Uber to go to the Lamborghini lounge to film the Lamborghini Revuelto that had just been unveiled to the world. And this was a big video. Stefan Winkelman, the CEO of Lamborghini was there. I wasn't filming with him, but he was there. This was like a big opportunity. And I remember sitting in the hotel, getting this phone call, and just like,

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  I don't wanna say, I don't wanna say I cried, but my eyes got watery. You know what I'm saying? And like, Sophia was with me and I was like, she could tell on the phone that I was like, something happened, right? And then I got off and I was just like, I'm screwed. Like, I'm hosed. Like, this, I don't, I don't know how I'm gonna, what am I gonna do? Like, this is, this is really bad. And then all of a sudden, it's like, I gotta get in an Uber and go to the Lamborghini lounge and film the Lamborghini Revuelto. You know, like a big video for my channel, and I gotta turn it on and be positive, even though nobody knows what's going on in the back of my mind this entire time. But I've been doing YouTube a long time. I've, uh, I've gotten good at blocking out the noise in my life. You know, every single time I'm filming a YouTube video, there's other things going on in my life that I'm thinking about.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  And I also knew that the best way to get out of this bad situation was to film YouTube videos, make money, keep my foot on the gas. Like, that was the ultimate motivator, right? It's like, no, I gotta, I gotta make this happen. I gotta keep filming. Because, you know, if I got this looming bill to the IRS that's a million dollars, it's like, well, I don't have a million dollars, so I better, I better start making some money. And there's nothing, there's no motivation like desperation.

• 2:00:33Graham Stephan?

  If you could go back and tell yourself anything, would you just tell yourself, hey, don't be stressed out about this? Like, if you get audited again,

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:43Graham Stephan?

  Would you just say like, it's really not worth stressing out over?

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure, for sure. But that's because I have the knowledge of being audited, right? I mean, it was such an educational opportunity, uh, in that sense. Like, I feel like I gained a degree in tax accounting during this audit. Like, I just learned so much about, um, about the business, about the tax laws. And I think it's made me better moving forward as far as tax planning. So I think it actually helped me a lot. And like I said, I always knew I was gonna pay the tax. I just knew it was a timing thing. Obviously, the interest would be the sunk cost that you weren't expecting. The crazy thing about it, I wouldn't do anything different. Because from 2012 to when I got audited in 2122 or whatever, that 10 years.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  Because of the way that I was treating these cars and as long as I got away with it, that helped me grow my business so much. I grew my business so much faster because of the way that I was treating the cars. And some people are probably going to hear that and be like, yeah, you, that's tax evasion, but like, I got audited, it wasn't tax evasion. But like, because I was able to take that money and reinvest it into my channel.

• 2:01:55Graham Stephan?

  You got a higher return reinvest.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  I was able to grow my channel so much faster because I had all these resources, because I wasn't paying money to the government, which is why the IRS has a tax code to get business expenses, so you can grow your business.

• 2:02:07Graham Stephan?

  What do you wish would change about the tax code? Because even for myself, I spend, it sounds stupid, probably an hour a day on Claude, asking like nuanced tax questions, trying to get to the bottom of like, why is this the way it is?

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:02:23Graham Stephan?

  And like, why is, it sounds like, why is margin interest only deductible against like, net investment income and not capital gain? Like, what's the reason for this?

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  Because some rich dude paid some politician and got it done.

• 2:02:38Graham Stephan?

  So what would you change about the tax?

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I'd change a gazillion things, right? I mean, there's, there's so many things. It's just like how you can get a jet, right? And there's huge tax advantages to getting a jet, because all these rich dudes wanted jets and they wanted the tax advantages. So they, you know, lobbied for it with politicians.

• 2:02:54Graham Stephan?

  You want the crazy one?

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:02:56Graham Stephan?

  You could write off a sports team. They get mega deductions. And that's why you have a lot of these really wealthy people buying sports teams, because you could finance a sports team and the depreciation you get upfront is massive. It's like buying a big piece of real estate and doing cost segregation, bringing your costs down. All of a sudden, now you get a bigger write-off than what you spent. It's wild.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  It's wild.

• 2:03:19Graham Stephan?

  But they were the ones that were lobbying for that.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:03:22Graham Stephan?

  It's really interesting how the tax code is structured like that.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  It is. And I think that's obviously the most annoying part, right? I mean, obviously, in a very, very small way, how I'd love to adjust the tax code is for automotive YouTubers, because the way I was treating these cars before the audit, I will go to my grave that that's the right way to do it. I will go to my grave that I was doing it the right way, because of how my business generates revenue. Like, the, the business doesn't exist without the cars. This is, this, these are not passenger vehicles. These are, this is equipment. Absolutely. I would change it.

• 2:03:54Graham Stephan?

  I'll, I'll push back, because I, because I agree with you. I would like to see that happen. The pushback is simply what constitutes a prop versus someone just buying one of these cars as a, you know, and it's really a hobby. But then they post on Instagram, they're like, but I've grown my Instagram following.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  It's a slippery slope.

• 2:04:12Graham Stephan?

  Like, then everyone.

• 2:04:14Jack Selby?

  I wonder if you could just assign an amount of time, like a real estate professional, you basically have to prove that you're working a certain amount of hours per year.

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:04:22Jack Selby?

  In real estate. And you could probably say the same thing with.

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  odometer logs.

• 2:04:25Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  Mileage logs.

• 2:04:26Jack Selby?

  Either that or just like amount of time spent on a YouTube channel.

• 2:04:29Graham Stephan?

  The thing, the thing is that it, when something works, then everyone will find a way to take advantage of it to nth degree.

• 2:04:36Jack Selby?

  Simplify.

• 2:04:37Speaker 01

  No, and that should be simplified.

• 2:04:38Jack Selby?

  That's what I was gonna get to later. Like, as far as like an overhaul, oh, the tax code needs a complete overhaul. I mean, in so many ways. I mean, the fact that, you know, you, I could live two hours west of here in the state of Nevada and have no state income tax, right? Like, that's annoying. The fact that if my cars were six hours north of here, I'd have another 300 grand because it'd all be registered in Montana. I would have saved seven and a quarter sales tax, right? Like, I hate that, right? Because there's, and, and the tax code really does allow for wealthier people to use the loopholes, because, you know, I have the money where I could move cars to Montana if I wanted to save the sales tax. But it's annoying, like, just the fact that there's so many loopholes, it's so complicated. Every time I file my tax return, I'm like, what am I missing? What could I have done to

• 2:05:21Jack Selby?

  save me tons of money that I just don't know about? And the fact that you just submit a tax return, you don't even know. You don't even know if you did it right, you know? Like, you don't get any feedback. You don't know if you overpaid, you don't know if you underpaid, you don't know if you missed deductions, if you, unless you get audited, that's like the only way that you really know.

• 2:05:41Graham Stephan?

  You're gonna hate this. My prediction in the future is that we're gonna have a digital currency. And everyone, like a social security number, is gonna have a wallet, a digital wallet, and it's gonna know every single dollar that's gonna come into your account, and then where it goes. Everything is gonna be able to be traced. And so, if a dollar comes in, and then I send it to Jack for like, you know, I'm reimbursing him for dinner or something like that, it's gonna know. And it's gonna come up with AI, a transaction log that you're gonna have to clarify, and it'll spit out a bill for you. Maybe it's good because they tell you exactly what you owe.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Like, that doesn't sound bad at all.

• 2:06:19Graham Stephan?

  But, yeah, you will put more faith in them to do a better job than you, which so far doesn't have the best track record. That's the only thing that you could say is that.

• 2:06:32Jack Selby?

  I trust AI more than I would trust the judgment of an auditor.

• 2:06:35Graham Stephan?

  But do you trust the government's version of AI? And maybe it's so, but maybe it's so good that it knows, like, hey, Graham, this year you made this, here's where all the money went. And you could go log by log by log, and it just asks you questions.

• 2:06:50Jack Selby?

  Do you want to increase your deductions?

• 2:06:52Graham Stephan?

  But you could, but, but what it could do is just ask, like, hey, on this date, this amount, what was this for? And you could, you could type it in. And it just knows. And then at the end of it, it's like, okay, well, based on this, this is this. Do you agree or disagree? Like, yes or no? And it's just like, you could select a button. I have a feeling it's gonna get to that at some, it has to.

• 2:07:12Speaker 01

  It's certainly gonna work that direction, for sure. For sure. For sure. It will. To me, I hate that. I hate the government being involved in my life, you know? Like, the fact that cash isn't gonna exist soon means that every single transaction, right? Like, it's, yeah, I mean, and the, the thing I learned in the audit, though, is you have to, you are guilty until you prove your innocence. So let's say, for example, we go get food, right? Okay, we go get a burger, and you guys Venmo me $10, and you Venmo me $10. That's, they're gonna charge that as revenue, and I'm gonna have to pay tax on that, unless I can prove that, no, I paid for the meal, they Venmo'd me back, I got the receipt.

• 2:07:50Graham Stephan?

  Well, they wanted to, they wanted to pass that law recently for the Venmo transactions.

• 2:07:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:55Graham Stephan?

  I think it was over $600, which, you know, we're reimbursing everybody for everything, and it's like tracking every meal and everything is, is a lot.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And the government, they wanna collect as much as possible.

• 2:08:10Graham Stephan?

  And, and the thing that makes me upset over your situation is that they come down so hard on you. And meanwhile, oh my gosh, the stuff that Nick Shirley has exposed. Oh my gosh. And a lot of those people, by the way, have either pled guilty, or they've like, found them guilty of these things that he was accusing them of.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:08:33Graham Stephan?

  And the amount of money that's out there, that just, it gets wasted.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:08:37Graham Stephan?

  And it's, and it's, when you look at how much income taxes take compared to every other expense of the government, it's like, I don't wanna say it's insignificant, but it's a small chunk compared to like, all of these other things that when you look at dollar for dollar, would probably make a bigger difference.

• 2:08:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, I think most people agree that the government is very wasteful. I used to have an internship out of high school for the Oregon Department of Transportation. It was so wasteful, seeing everything, like, the amount of just employees that are unnecessary, nobody's motivated. There's no incentive, so the government is always gonna be so wasteful. And the problem is that when you or me, and we have to write a check, a six-figure check at the end of the year, or seven-figure, like, you know that money's not gonna be used wisely. But if you had that money, you could use that to support your local economy. Because the one thing about my business, I support the local economy. All the shops that I take

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  all these cars to, you know, all the tires I buy, all the oil changes, the maintenance, the insurance company. I mean, I'm spending so much money, like, in the local economy to grow this economy, right? And then I have to write this massive check to the government where there's all this corruption. It's not being spent wisely. That's what's so frustrating.

• 2:09:55Graham Stephan?

  I think people would be more likely to be on board if they saw the money being put to things that they could visually see. They're like, oh, well, we fixed all these potholes.

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:10:04Graham Stephan?

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

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  Supervising.

• 2:10:29Graham Stephan?

  Put up the sign. And like, he's just taking down a little metal sign and then putting a new one on. And there's just someone there the entire time, just like, watching. And like, why is this two people doing this? It's a one-person job.

• 2:10:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:10:42Graham Stephan?

  Paying double for this. Why?

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  And that's the problem between private enterprise and government. With private enterprise, there's incentive, there's motivation. With government, there's not. And that's the difference. And that's just human nature. And if human nature wasn't that way, and the government could be just as efficient as private enterprise, dude, I'd be all for it. I'd be all for it.

• 2:11:05Jack Selby?

  You know what this reminds me of? I'll just say allegedly. Allegedly, when I was in high school, we put a Christmas tree on the roof, because we allegedly thought it would be very funny. And over the weekend, they found out, the school found out, they have the cameras, they found out who allegedly did it. And then they got a quote to remove the Christmas tree from the roof. The quote came back that they needed three workers that only do jobs of a minimum of three hours per worker. And their rate was like $50 per hour. And so they're gonna charge the people who allegedly put the Christmas tree on the roof, like, $300, $400 for removing a Christmas tree. And so someone, after hours, that day

• 2:11:48Jack Selby?

  at school, got a trash can, put it on the ground, and then threw the Christmas tree off the roof, and landed it beside the trash can, and then picked up all the broken, everything.

• 2:11:57Graham Stephan?

  The thing is, though.

• 2:11:59Jack Selby?

  And not a word from the administration. They acted like nothing happened.

• 2:12:03Graham Stephan?

  You need insurance on that. Imagine that tree falls on someone. There's a hospital bill, it's $50,000. That's why you need three people with insurance who are properly licensed.

• 2:12:15Jack Selby?

  For three hours.

• 2:12:15Graham Stephan?

  Yes, because they're also going up on the roof. What if someone slips?

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

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

• 2:12:32Jack Selby?

  Yeah, if someone put it on top of our warehouse, we would just send you up there or me up there. We would just throw the Christmas.

• 2:12:38Graham Stephan?

  You don't have the insurance from me, Jack.

• 2:12:41Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I would do it.

• 2:12:41Graham Stephan?

  You don't have the limits. You don't have high enough limits for me to get up on your roof.

• 2:12:45Jack Selby?

  It would be okay. The main issue is, yeah, it's like they, they, they're not going to go around searching for a bunch of different bids.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:12:50Jack Selby?

  They're going to get the first bid and then they're going to charge, oh, it's just passing it along to someone else for $500.

• 2:12:54Speaker 01

  Well, because it's not their money, right?

• 2:12:55Jack Selby?

  From a roof.

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  It's not their money. They, they just work for the government and they just sign off on it, right? So it doesn't matter. It doesn't come out of their wallet. And that's just, that's just is what it is. And like, I get it. Honestly, if I was in their position, I wouldn't care either, right? Like it's not my money. I wouldn't care.

• 2:13:09Graham Stephan?

  Is there anything you miss about life before YouTube?

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I miss, I miss the simplicity of it. I miss the weekends. I miss the clear head. You know, when I worked before YouTube, you know, I'd have my Monday through Friday, nine to five, let's say. And, you know, I'd go home at the end of the work. I wouldn't think about work at all. The weekends were completely mine. And that, just like that freedom of having a clear mind, I miss that. Because now it's just like, I can't turn it off. It's on all the time. Even, I was just in Mexico City with Sophia, seeing her family. We were down there for four days and, you know, I didn't film. I didn't even take my camera with me, but I feel like every other second I was thinking about YouTube, like, oh, what did I got to do for this car? What did I got to do for that? What could I do right now that's going to help me here in the future? You know, if I do it now, if I order this part here, what could I film? What do I got to do when I get back? I need to edit this. I need to do that. What future project seem is coming up?

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Monterey Car Week's coming up. Like, what do I got to do? So you just can't turn it off. So I'd say that's the biggest thing I miss is just that, like, that free weekend where you literally don't think about work at all and you just enjoy it.

• 2:14:09Graham Stephan?

  When do you think you're going to retire?

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

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

• 2:14:47Graham Stephan?

  When you get that one out of 10.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I love the creativity. I still love the cars.

• 2:14:52Graham Stephan?

  How'd your video today do? Driving my son to school.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:14:55Graham Stephan?

  I clicked on it because of the title.

• 2:14:58Speaker 01

  You see, I feel like that title was within the framework of not being clickbait because in the video, I took over Steve Hamilton's life and his son, Jack. We were joking about how Jack was my son, the entire video. So I think that was not clickbait. I think that counts. But no, I mean, that was a ton of fun. I got to drive an Apollo IE, the Ocean Dragon. Like if I quit YouTube, those experiences aren't going to happen anymore. So that being said, I mean, eventually certainly it'll come to an end. I would say I, I definitely have another good five years. I would say almost for certain, another good five years, probably 10 years. But honestly, in 20 years, I might still be doing it. If, if people still watch.

• 2:15:37Graham Stephan?

  I'm curious, is marriage on the horizon?

• 2:15:40Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Marriage is on the horizon.

• 2:15:42Graham Stephan?

  For sure. What are you waiting for?

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  You know, everything in life is timing, right? It's all about finding the right opportunity, the right moment. I believe firmly that I kind of want a proposal to be not perfect, but not unexpected, but special. It has to be, it has to be at the right time, you know? So soon.

• 2:16:03Graham Stephan?

  What advice do you have to Jack? Finding a special someone.

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  Enjoy being single in the sense that this is the time where you can work on who you are. So that you're a better person for when you meet the right person. Does that make sense?

• 2:16:19Graham Stephan?

  It does.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  It sounded profound in my head. I don't know if that makes sense.

• 2:16:21Jack Selby?

  What are the best ways to work on yourself?

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  You know, uh, not that I'm, I'm the best at this, but you know, taking care of your health, obviously. Uh, you know, your finances, getting that, getting your ducks in a row. Uh, this is a time when you can take risks. I always look back at my twenties and I think a big part of the success that I've had is that I was single. I didn't have any kids. I had financial freedom. I had the chance to take a risk and do something at the time that was kind of scary and kind of sort of dumb, right? I mean, like early on, like I went to live in my car to grow my YouTube channel. If I was married, even if I was dating a girl, I couldn't have done that. If I had kids, absolutely not, you know? So I think that while you're single, this is an opportunity to maybe take a risk that you can't take when you're married.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  That would be too risky when, you know, you have a significant other that, you know, you rely on and they rely on you. So I think, I think that's, you know, an opportunity while you're single to take advantage of that. You know, to really strengthen who you are as a person. Find what it is that you do believe in, right? Like what is your foundation? Build that foundation, make it strong. Uh, because, you know, I think, I think, uh, it's really important when you, I've never been married, so I should not be offering advice. But I think when you get married, I think it's very important that you know who you are and you know what you care about and what you want in a significant other.

• 2:17:43Graham Stephan?

  It seems like you have a great relationship. And again, all I kind of see is like limited time hanging out and then on the videos, it seems incredible.

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like I said, the videos are a very edited.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  Non-fictional reality? What is it? What is it? Fake? No, it's, it's not real. YouTube is not real, right? It's edited. It is real, but it's not real, right? Like Sophie and I do have a great relationship, but what I'm getting at is like, you know, we're on camera. It's edited. You know, there are moments in relationships that are tough. Like we have disagreements. We love each other. We have tons of amazing moments, you know? We fight, we, we resolve, you know, just like any relationship. But yeah, we have a fantastic relationship. But what you see on cameras, it's, yeah, it's, it's a edited reality. Life is not perfect. You don't want life to be perfect either. Honestly, a perfect life sounds awful. And I think that sometimes you gain the most in a relationship when you do struggle, when you do have issues.

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  And I think that it's important to, yeah, to learn how to communicate and, and compromise, you know? Being, being in a relationship, compromise is super important on both sides. And, uh, yeah, I mean, we have a fantastic relationship. I love Sophia. She is the biggest blessing in my life. She is unbelievable. She is, you know, they always say better half. I mean, oh my gosh, that could not be more true. Like when you talk about better half, she is such a better person than me. And what we were talking about, turning a negative into a positive, lemons into lemonade. Sophia is that to a T. There are so many moments. When we first started dating, that's when I got audited and they were dark moments and she's stuck by my side.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  And when I got audited, you know, I get this bill for a million dollars. I'm like, everything I know financially is hosed. Like I'm thinking like, this is apocalypse type thing. Like I'm, I'm, I'm done. Like I'm, I'm, it's over, right? And, you know? In a sense, looking back, I probably was exaggerating how bad it was, but Sophia was there hearing all this, you know? And, uh, there was always part of me that was like blown away that she's stuck by my side. Because I think about if the roles were reversed and like, I heard what Sophia was saying and how, you know, the financial ruin that she was about to go through and how this was going to ruin her life. And I was very negative during this process.

• 2:20:09Speaker 01

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

• 2:20:52Graham Stephan?

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

• 2:21:05Graham Stephan?

  Time flies. Uh, but so far it's not been hard. It's not been one of those things where I'm like, oh man, this is hard.

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I think, I think that's a huge blessing, you know? Like I said, I mean, I'm not married. I, I, Sophie and I have been dating for, you know, four years almost. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, uh, I think, I think as life, as you go through challenges in life, you know, obviously I, I hope that it continues as is, right? But there will, there will be struggles in life. You know, I think, I think that's what's so important about having a significant other is helping you get through those hard times. You know, my dad passed away. That was a very hard moment in my life. Getting audited, that was a very hard moment in my life. And, you know, you're, there's going to be hard moments in life. Life is not all easy. You know, I, I do think that we're both very blessed. You know, we're very blessed.

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  We live in the United States of America, right? Like how lucky are we? One of the richest countries on earth. I had, I had great parents. I, I. Did well in school. And so I think, you know, and then now like, look what we get to do, right? Like, we're so lucky. So I think, I think that's a huge blessing as well. And, you know, the fact that, the fact that marriage has been amazing for you is incredible.

• 2:22:18Graham Stephan?

  When are strad kids gonna happen?

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Marriage first.

• 2:22:21Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 2:22:21Speaker 01

  Been strad kids.

• 2:22:22Graham Stephan?

  I'm step at a time.

• 2:22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, strad kids, what about ram kids and jack kids? You know? But yeah, I would love to be a father. Absolutely. I would love to be a father. You know, I have three older brothers. I love kids. I love, I love siblings. I love, I love the relationship that I have with my mother, the relationship I had with my father. Those are all things that are very important to me. Certainly during my twenties, I was very like focused on YouTube, business, business, business. And you know, now that I've gone to my thirties, that's part of the reason my foot's not on the gas as much. That's part of the reason I'm not as worried about financial maximization, if you will. So definitely, definitely strad baby's coming soon. That's always been one of the big things with YouTube that I don't know is whether I'd want to put kids on YouTube.

• 2:23:08Speaker 01

  It seems like a tough, it just seems tough dealing with that, you know? I don't know if I want their, I don't, I don't want them out there.

• 2:23:15Graham Stephan?

  I think it depends on the content. It really depends on the kid, the content, the family.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:23:20Graham Stephan?

  I think it can be done.

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:23:22Graham Stephan?

  I think PewDiePie was like one of the best ways to do it. It just seems so wholesome. I love watching some of those videos and it's just calming.

• 2:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:29Graham Stephan?

  And it's not like the focus is like the kid versus like, all right, we're gonna do a slime challenge today.

• 2:23:34Speaker 01

  For sure. I think when the kid is the focus, when the kid is the title, the kid is the thumbnail, when the kid has to film a video to pay the mortgage, like some of these family channels. Obviously, that's a very slippery slope. I think for me, a lot of it will come down to, does, does the kid think it's fun? Is it like quality time with dad?

• 2:23:54Graham Stephan?

  Well, the problem is probably before the age of five, they're gonna find anything fun.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  For sure. No, for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is cool. But then as they get older, you know, I think, I think as they get older, that's where it gets tougher. Is when you have a six, seven, eight year old, and let's say they go to school. And let's say I'm still relevant then, and their classmates know the channel, they know the kid, and the kid's like famous all of a sudden. Cause I think about myself, I mean, I started YouTube, I was twenty-three, twenty-four. I had no success until I was like twenty-six, twenty-seven, right? So I had built that foundation of who I was and who I wanted to be before any kind of fame. And the fame that we have, I mean, I always refer to it as fake fame. Like, it's a very, when I think about real fame, this is so, so incredibly small and it's very niche.

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  But I do think that it is hard to handle, but for me, I've grown into it, right? I started with no subscribers, five thousand, hundred thousand, five hundred thousand. You know, you, you, you work your way into it, but with a kid, I, I would worry about a kid being really young, going to school and immediately being like popular. And then also their classmates knowing that, you know, their dad has maybe a bunch of Lamborghinis, that could be a tough balancing act.

• 2:25:06Graham Stephan?

  Slip and falls, you gotta worry about that.

• 2:25:08Speaker 01

  That's also true.

• 2:25:09Graham Stephan?

  Parents come over, you know, I hurt my ankle.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the way I designed this house.

• 2:25:13Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:13Speaker 01

  The garage is kind of a bit separate, so there will be locks certainly between the garage and the house.

• 2:25:17Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 2:25:18Speaker 01

  When kids are that age.

• 2:25:19Graham Stephan?

  It's easy for my foot to get stuck in this elevator, you know?

• 2:25:21Speaker 01

  Yes, it is, it is. We do not want four-year-old strad baby getting his, his foot stuck in the elevator.

• 2:25:27Graham Stephan?

  Or mine, you know?

• 2:25:28Speaker 01

  Or yours, or grand's.

• 2:25:29Graham Stephan?

  Like I said, like I wouldn't be able to work or film.

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  No, no, no. And I, yeah.

• 2:25:32Graham Stephan?

  It'd be pretty expensive.

• 2:25:34Speaker 01

  Loss of income, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:25:37Graham Stephan?

  So we're gonna flip this then, and you said you would love just to talk to us.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:25:41Graham Stephan?

  Let's do it. Now you're in the driver's seat.

• 2:25:43Speaker 01

  I need answer from both of you. Who is the most financially responsible automotive YouTuber?

• 2:25:48Graham Stephan?

  Doug Demiro.

• 2:25:50Jack Selby?

  Probably, probably, I mean, financially responsible, he makes a lot of money.

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  Responsible or successful, big difference.

• 2:25:56Graham Stephan?

  Both. Oh, yeah.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  Big difference, but big difference. You agree. There's a big difference, right?

• 2:26:00Jack Selby?

  He like buys ETFs and stuff, right?

• 2:26:01Graham Stephan?

  He, yeah, it's all index funds.

• 2:26:03Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:03Graham Stephan?

  I don't, I don't know if he has a mortgage on his house or not, but it seems like he's properly diversified.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:10Graham Stephan?

  He has a high allocation to very specific cars, but I think in combination with the rest of his portfolio.

• 2:26:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:16Graham Stephan?

  It's just diversified. And he runs a great team. I have to say, I remember the first time we filmed with Doug Demiro. He was, I don't wanna say stressed, I could tell he had a lot going on and he was running everything himself. And he's like chucking in a podcast in the middle of like all these other things. And he's like, oh yeah, tomorrow I'm going off and doing this, I have to do this. He had a lot going on. Then when we filmed after he sold cars and bids, he's a different person. He came in.

• 2:26:47Jack Selby?

  Way calmer.

• 2:26:47Graham Stephan?

  Joking around, had, you could just tell his energy was infectious. There was like, oh my gosh, I want whatever he's having. He was just calm and fun to be around and just cracking jokes and having fun with his team.

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• 2:27:58Graham Stephan?

  And making a lot of money doing it.

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  You gotta, you gotta name somebody else, though. You have to, just because.

• 2:28:02Jack Selby?

  I think it's a different thing, cause I don't know how everyone's investing. Like, that's one thing. I know who's the least. Like, I would probably say, you know, Hoovy or Tavish, like.

• 2:28:09Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:28:10Jack Selby?

  Yeah, like I.

• 2:28:10Speaker 01

  Hoovy to me is so smart, but his whole stance is that he's the dumbest automotive YouTuber.

• 2:28:16Jack Selby?

  He's, he is smart.

• 2:28:17Speaker 01

  But he's not dumb. He's so smart.

• 2:28:19Jack Selby?

  I don't think he's dumb, but I think that like being financially responsible and being smart are two separate things.

• 2:28:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:28:25Jack Selby?

  And so like when I know that like he can't physically help himself to buy another car, when he like, like without even knowing where the money's coming from.

• 2:28:33Graham Stephan?

  That's what makes his channel.

• 2:28:35Speaker 01

  Okay, but here's the thing.

• 2:28:35Jack Selby?

  I'm not saying it's a bad, I'm just saying you asked the most financially responsible and I'm trying to answer head on.

• 2:28:39Speaker 01

  Here's the thing about all the automotive YouTubers. We all tried doing what Doug did first, right? We all tried doing car reviews and then we slowly evolved into what we do now, right? For Doug, it worked. The car reviews took off and he ended up, I'm not gonna say by luck, because obviously we know Doug is not luck. Doug, I love Doug. But Doug ended up doing the thing that ended up being the most, the highest ROI field of automotive YouTube. The dude doesn't have to buy any cars. He doesn't have to spend any money. He, his operational expenses, his overhead is literally nothing by design of how he figured out how to get views on YouTube.

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  Whereas how I figured it out, how Hoovy figured it out, how Tavish figured it out, ended up being way more expensive, but that's their thing. So like Hoovy has to buy these ridiculous cars because that's his thing. It's not that he's financially irresponsible, it's because that's his thing. Tavish buys rebuilt cars because that's his thing that works on YouTube. If Tavish started filming car reviews, it wouldn't work. So like, I love Doug, but Doug ended up getting the holy grail of automotive YouTube. Just like if I was a video game YouTuber, bro, you just sit in an office, play video games, there's no overhead. But I, I, I buy expensive cars and modify them. Like by design of how I get views, I have to spend a lot of money.

• 2:30:04Graham Stephan?

  My other two answers, I think Schme.

• 2:30:06Speaker 01

  Of course, absolutely.

• 2:30:07Graham Stephan?

  And then I would say Steve Hamilton.

• 2:30:08Speaker 01

  Okay, Steve doesn't count, though.

• 2:30:10Graham Stephan?

  Okay, fair. Schme.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously Steve is the most successful of everybody combined plus, right? But not with YouTube, right? Like YouTube's like, because it can.

• 2:30:19Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:30:19Speaker 01

  But Schme, I agree. Schme is, I feel like Schme is almost like a dark horse candidate because I feel like there's so much unknown about Schme. But man, when I'm spend time with Schme, that guy is, he's got so many things outside of YouTube that I don't even know.

• 2:30:32Graham Stephan?

  And he posts daily.

• 2:30:33Speaker 01

  He posts so much.

• 2:30:34Graham Stephan?

  Insane.

• 2:30:35Speaker 01

  And like the car, his car collection is like the cars he buys, like he's got so much money. He's a hard worker. He's so smart. Like, I loved him. He's, he's awesome. All right, now who's the least?

• 2:30:45Jack Selby?

  I feel like it has to either be Freddie or Hoovy.

• 2:30:51Speaker 01

  I was hoping my, I was hoping my thought, my thesis was gonna change you.

• 2:30:54Jack Selby?

  So I don't understand, like, what's your argument, though? Because I'm not saying who has or doesn't have the most, like, amount of money. What I'm saying is like, who is the most financially responsible? Yes, I agree that like, that's sort of the content that he makes and so he needs to be doing that.

• 2:31:07Speaker 01

  He has to do that.

• 2:31:08Jack Selby?

  Yes, I a hundred percent agree.

• 2:31:09Speaker 01

  Doing it, yeah.

• 2:31:10Jack Selby?

  That being said.

• 2:31:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:31:11Jack Selby?

  I don't think he has any stocks. I don't think he has any, like, I don't know how much money he saves.

• 2:31:15Graham Stephan?

  If you look at it from a.

• 2:31:16Jack Selby?

  On top of that, and if you, on top of that, like, he went to Barrett-Jackson to go, you know, speak at this event and they're paying him money. He ends up leaving, spending more money than they paid him. And I think a lot of this, like, a lot of the purchases he does, he doesn't film. And so that's the, that's the kicker. If he filmed it and it was all a part of like this chaotic, you know, persona that he monetized in a, in a way of like,

• 2:31:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:31:37Jack Selby?

  Okay, putting it into more assets, building a net worth. I don't know if his net worth is necessarily growing over time.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  But it's all narrative. That's what I'm saying. I can say whatever I want. It's all the narratives. That's what I'm getting at. It's the narrative. Like Hoovy's narrative is that he's this kinda like crazy lunatic dude, kinda like a Steve will do it in the car world.

• 2:31:55Jack Selby?

  I think it's accurate, though.

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  But, no, but like, no, but like. I'm not saying it's not accurate, but I also think-

• 2:32:02Jack Selby?

  We're not saying it's not, we're not saying it's ineffective.

• 2:32:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:32:04Jack Selby?

  Like, I think it is very effective.

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  Right. All I'm saying is like, Hoover turned a video camera into a net worth of probably, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight million dollars.

• 2:32:13Jack Selby?

  What? You think that's accurate?

• 2:32:15Graham Stephan?

  I think it's, hmm.

• 2:32:16Jack Selby?

  That seems a little aggressive.

• 2:32:17Graham Stephan?

  A little, I think it's less.

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:32:19Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  Tyler, no, dude, yeah, it's, he is, he is for sure.

• 2:32:23Jack Selby?

  Uh.

• 2:32:24Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:32:25Jack Selby?

  We, uh, look, we were totally speculating here.

• 2:32:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I'm-

• 2:32:28Jack Selby?

  This is just from like the, the limited conversations that we've had with Tyler. We went out to dinner. We've like-

• 2:32:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:32:32Jack Selby?

  A couple of podcast episodes with him.

• 2:32:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:32:34Jack Selby?

  And this is not to slight his intelligence, nor his financial literacy, just from the way that he presents himself and from the information that I have. It does appear as though he, like, I feel like financial literacy is grounded in discipline.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:32:47Jack Selby?

  And I think that he may sometimes, and this is not only me saying this, he would a hundred percent agree, sometimes he may lack financial discipline.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:32:57Jack Selby?

  Maybe that's his shtick, that he then monetizes-

• 2:32:59Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure, for sure.

• 2:33:00Jack Selby?

  But that doesn't necessarily make it, like, only a good thing.

• 2:33:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I, I agree, I agree. I, I hundred percent agree. I mean, I-

• 2:33:08Jack Selby?

  So who do you think then is the least financially literate?

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  Is the least? That's, I guess that's the whole point of this, is like, yes, there is a least, but I, that's why I go back. I'm like-

• 2:33:17Jack Selby?

  You can't ask us a question that you-

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I know, I'm gonna get to it, I'm gonna get to it. Every single one of the automotive guys between five hundred thousand to like ten million, that's been around for a long time, has basically turned nothing into millions of dollars. That's kind of what I'm getting at.

• 2:33:34Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 2:33:34Speaker 01

  Doug ended up starting Cars and Bids and selling it for a lot, so he is kind of like the golden child, but kind of what I'm getting at is like, everybody has had to make fantastic financial decisions to get to where they're at. And that the narrative of having an automotive entertainment channel is such that we all take a different route in how we're gonna communicate who we are online, right? Like, it's, it's, it's all about the narrative. And, and that's kind of why I look at all these guys. I'm like, every single one of us is like, nobody's stupid. And I know you didn't say that. I know you didn't say that, obviously, but I'm just like-

• 2:34:11Jack Selby?

  And realistically, they've made a lot of money.

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  No, no, that's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying.

• 2:34:15Jack Selby?

  Everyone is financially-

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:17Jack Selby?

  In a pretty dang good spot.

• 2:34:18Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:34:19Jack Selby?

  But we're talking about something that's different from like that.

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, for sure. I, I guess I'm just getting at, it's like, it's all how you present yourself and everybody takes a different form of that. And I feel like, um, you know, part of this, what I'm getting at, is there are so many people that knock me. And that's kind of why I'm leading this conversation to this direction, because I'm like, that's because of the narrative that I present to myself online. I don't present my life as being perfect. I explain the mistakes that I make, just like Hoover and Tavarrish do. And I think a lot of the other guys online don't do that, right? They don't talk about the cars they've lost a ton of money on. They don't talk about the negative things they've done. It's all just like, oh, I did this, I did this, like, this is amazing. I made this much money on this, this, this, and this.

• 2:35:07Speaker 01

  Whereas Tavarrish, Hoover and I are kind of being more an open book, or like, yeah, this was a mistake, this was a mistake, this was a mistake, because we're actually being more honest, in a sense, with the audience. And that the narrative is so important, and that it's so easy to skew the narrative in your direction, in the way that you want.

• 2:35:25Graham Stephan?

  So what's your answer?

• 2:35:26Speaker 01

  Okay, I got, I got one. Steve Hamilton. From an automotive YouTube standpoint, not from a business standpoint.

• 2:35:34Jack Selby?

  That's like dodging, we've cop out.

• 2:35:36Graham Stephan?

  Doesn't count.

• 2:35:37Speaker 01

  That counts, that counts.

• 2:35:38Graham Stephan?

  No, it doesn't.

• 2:35:39Jack Selby?

  You're adding a caveat that we, that you would not permit us to add.

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  I would, oh, okay.

• 2:35:43Jack Selby?

  I'm just saying, like, like, you gotta answer, the thing is, you're such a positive person.

• 2:35:47Speaker 01

  That's, well, that's not-

• 2:35:48Jack Selby?

  And this is not to, like, I love Hoover. He's awesome.

• 2:35:51Speaker 01

  No, of course, Tyler's the man.

• 2:35:53Jack Selby?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all, we all agree with that.

• 2:35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:55Jack Selby?

  That being said, he agrees.

• 2:35:57Speaker 01

  I guess what I'm, I guess the main thing I'm getting at, it's not as wide of a margin as it's presented online. The difference between Doug DiMiro and Tyler Hoover is very small.

• 2:36:08Jack Selby?

  I was fair with that.

• 2:36:09Speaker 01

  It's very small, it's very small.

• 2:36:11Graham Stephan?

  Agree.

• 2:36:12Speaker 01

  I, no, but the reason it's, it's, no, you're thinking of dollar figures, that's the thing.

• 2:36:16Graham Stephan?

  Yes.

• 2:36:16Speaker 01

  You're thinking of dollar figures. You're not thinking about anything else. It's just because there's a net worth. If I sold Strad Pizza for a hundred million dollars, all of a sudden, you would say that I'm smarter than Doug.

• 2:36:28Jack Selby?

  That's what he was saying. That's not what I was-

• 2:36:29Speaker 01

  No, no, no, but, but that's what I'm, that's what I'm getting at.

• 2:36:31Jack Selby?

  He said Steve Hamilton, I said, I don't know about Steve Hamilton.

• 2:36:33Graham Stephan?

  Here's the thing, though. Here's the thing with Doug. He only bought some of those really crazy cars because of that.

• 2:36:39Speaker 01

  That's because his channel didn't, doesn't need to buy cars because of his filming style. And that's why I'm saying Doug, bro, if I could film videos like Doug and be successful like Doug, I would have done it.

• 2:36:53Jack Selby?

  I don't know if you would.

• 2:36:54Speaker 01

  If I didn't need, no, no, no, no.

• 2:36:56Jack Selby?

  That's what I'm, that's why, that's why I stipulated like-

• 2:36:58Speaker 01

  That's what, no, that's what I'm saying.

• 2:36:59Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:00Speaker 01

  If I didn't do YouTube, do you think with my network, that I'd have nineteen cars? There's no way.

• 2:37:04Graham Stephan?

  You didn't do YouTube?

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  No, if I didn't do YouTube in the style that I do YouTube, I wouldn't have all these cars. That's what I'm getting at, is because of, is because of the video style that I film, I have to do this. Doug doesn't have to do this. Because that's not how Doug makes his money. This is how I make my money. Hoover makes his money by buying ridiculous cars. Steve Will Do It makes his money by being completely crazy. With automotive YouTube, we all, when we first started, we were all trying to figure it out. And then when you got something to stick, you ran with it, right? And you went down that path, and that's what you do. When you go back to my early videos, I tried filming reviews like Doug DiMiro. It didn't work. So then I started doing more stuff like this.

• 2:37:46Jack Selby?

  I think a found, like, a strong pillar of being financially literate would be diversification. And so if Hoover makes all of his money from buying his, like, Hoop De-mobils-

• 2:37:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:37:59Jack Selby?

  Then that is non-diversified portfolio.

• 2:38:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:38:02Jack Selby?

  He probably doesn't have any ETFs. He probably doesn't have any money stored elsewhere that like-

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:38:07Jack Selby?

  Can grow independent of his, realistically, for him, YouTube is not a business, it's a job.

• 2:38:12Graham Stephan?

  It's a lifestyle for him.

• 2:38:13Jack Selby?

  Like, I don't know if we're necessarily building an asset. Like, I think that what we do is we work and then are, it's like, it's just a job.

• 2:38:21Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:38:21Jack Selby?

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

• 2:38:33Speaker 01

  Yes and no. I think, I think diversification sometimes is overrated. Too. Diversification's not everything. Like I said, I'm good at this. I'm not good at ETFs. I'm not good at stocks. So if I, so if I had money in the stock market, would you guys think I was more financially literate?

• 2:38:53Graham Stephan?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 2:38:54Speaker 01

  Even if I had a, even if I had a smaller net worth and it didn't allow me to grow my YouTube channel? Because five, ten years ago, instead of buying these cars, I could have done that, right?

• 2:39:03Jack Selby?

  I don't think that, like, it's a one-to-one. Like, I think realistically, there's probably a couple of things that you could do-

• 2:39:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:39:09Jack Selby?

  To like, move a couple of cars around, like, I don't know if you need this many cars, if there's certain cars that you haven't like-

• 2:39:14Speaker 01

  For sure, yeah, for sure.

• 2:39:15Jack Selby?

  Does Hoover need forty cars? He probably could get, do the exact same thing.

• 2:39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's why you watch Hoover, is because he has forty cars, right?

• 2:39:23Jack Selby?

  No, no.

• 2:39:24Speaker 01

  That's why I watch him.

• 2:39:24Graham Stephan?

  I, I watch because he buys a Hoop De and then it, figure out everything's wrong with it.

• 2:39:28Jack Selby?

  Exactly.

• 2:39:29Graham Stephan?

  But he's selling, like, if he sold half of his collection, I would not stop watching him or watching less. Same with you. I feel like eighty percent of your viewership-

• 2:39:38Jack Selby?

  They want to see you do that.

• 2:39:38Graham Stephan?

  Comes from like the twenty percent of cars. And I'm thinking, okay, beyond, you know, the first few months of a car, I'm thinking, do you need the car? Does this serve you one-to-one versus these other things? And I could argue, you would be best off with like seven cars. Like, seven top-notch cars, or you get a car and you lease it for six months. And that way, you get a hundred percent write-off on the car, you put no money down, you're just paying a high payment that's a hundred percent write-off. You get to use the car, this and that and this. You trade it in, you get something else.

• 2:40:10Jack Selby?

  I will say that you did the right thing. Like, you have way more money now doing exactly what you did-

• 2:40:18Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:40:18Jack Selby?

  Than if you listened to what we would suggest.

• 2:40:20Speaker 01

  No, and I know you, yeah, I mean, I turned a, I turned a six hundred dollar video camera into ten million dollars.

• 2:40:24Jack Selby?

  But it's also-

• 2:40:25Speaker 01

  No stocks doing that.

• 2:40:26Jack Selby?

  It's also a little bit, like, you know, counter to logic, counter to what big data would suggest. Like, the law of large numbers would not suggest that's applicable for most people.

• 2:40:36Speaker 01

  Of course, I agree.

• 2:40:37Jack Selby?

  Is like, financial discipline or literacy-

• 2:40:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:39Jack Selby?

  Is knowing that, like, you're probably a statistic at the end of the day, so you should follow kind of like this.

• 2:40:44Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:40:44Graham Stephan?

  Here's, here's a way to put it, is that what got you here won't get you there. And I think you did really good from the zero-

• 2:40:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:40:51Graham Stephan?

  To ten.

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:40:52Graham Stephan?

  Really good. But I think to get from ten to twenty, like, that next level is probably gonna be some other investing.

• 2:41:00Jack Selby?

  And it's true, concentration builds wealth, diversification protects it.

• 2:41:05Speaker 01

  I, I, oh, no, no, I, I agree.

• 2:41:07Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:07Speaker 01

  Trust, I totally agree. Couple things, I think, yeah, like, some of the cars, maybe, maybe it's too much. But having cars for six months is not how you build a YouTube channel. People would lose interest really quick. Like, it's important to have cars like this that people have been watching for years and years and years and years. My last video was like doing the full tour. That videos, those do really well. One of my, my biggest video ever was a full tour of my car collection. It's twenty-seven million views. My TikTok doing the full car collection, uh, you know, on, has a million views. When I built the Batcave, I filmed like three TikToks, it did twelve million views, YouTube video. Like, there's something about the wow factor nowadays where more does drive more eyes.

• 2:41:47Graham Stephan?

  It's so hard to calculate the ROI.

• 2:41:49Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:41:49Graham Stephan?

  What's this garage worth? And what's the extra ROI of having that car there?

• 2:41:54Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:41:54Graham Stephan?

  Versus like, putting in a market that makes ten percent.

• 2:41:57Jack Selby?

  We do think, though, for the record, that you are very good with money.

• 2:42:00Speaker 01

  And- These are fun conversations.

• 2:42:02Jack Selby?

  I'm, I'm highly bullish on the amount of money that you'll have in the future.

• 2:42:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:42:06Jack Selby?

  I just think it's just gonna keep going up. It's gonna expand at a faster rate than my income. It's gonna expand at a faster-

• 2:42:10Speaker 01

  I'm not even worried, I don't even care.

• 2:42:11Jack Selby?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:12Speaker 01

  I don't even need anymore. Like, I'm actually don't, I don't want to go from ten to twenty and dedicate my life to do that. I don't actually care. Um, it's just fun conversation, you know? I think, I think that, yeah, I mean, the volume of cars is crazy. Social media, unfortunately, like, that's kind of, that's what I've built my channel on too, though, is like, you know, these, you know, crazy cars, a big group of them, you know, my videos will sometimes feature five, six, seven cars when I do collabs. Like, there's, there is value in the wow factor. Doing this podcast right now, like, having the cars in the background, I mean, every single one of these cars, it's amazing how much they continue to help me year after year after year after year. Yeah, I mean, diversification is interesting. I also, I, I-

• 2:42:54Jack Selby?

  Maybe I have PTSD. I just want to do what I'm good at, though, or what I know. And that's that's Strad Pizza. Strad Pizza is my diversification. Doesn't Whoopi have a couple of other things?

• 2:43:02Speaker 01

  He has his real estate and he has his house. He sinks a lot of money in that house. It's a gorgeous house.

• 2:43:07Jack Selby?

  Whoopi does well. Whoopi does very well. And I think like he's the most financially misunderstood.

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  That's what I'm getting at. Very much so.

• 2:43:14Jack Selby?

  That being said, he's still the worst. You know what I mean?

• 2:43:17Speaker 01

  The worst of the best. We'll put it that way.

• 2:43:20Jack Selby?

  Like, people think that he's way, way dumber and way worse off than he is. He's actually doing incredibly well. He's probably making a lot of money. Probably has a good amount of money. That being said, still amongst all of the like the car YouTubers, probably the worst.

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:43:33Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. So thank you so much for watching. I would have loved to have filmed another hour or so.

• 2:43:39Jack Selby?

  Oh, for sure. We could talk all night.

• 2:43:40Graham Stephan?

  Our flight was like four plus hours delayed. And so we got here way too late and

• 2:43:46Jack Selby?

  But don't worry, guys. They gave us $12.

• 2:43:49Graham Stephan?

  Each.

• 2:43:49Jack Selby?

  Graham and I each got a $12 voucher from Delta. Thank you very much.

• 2:43:53Graham Stephan?

  From Delta that we have to use and half of it's unused. So we have to get to the airport and we have to buy something.

• 2:44:00Jack Selby?

  It expires at 11:59 Eastern Time.

• 2:44:02Graham Stephan?

  The same day.

• 2:44:03Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:04Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 2:44:04Jack Selby?

  Eastern Time. So like

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  Eastern Time.

• 2:44:07Jack Selby?

  Yeah. And so they even cut it short a little bit.

• 2:44:09Graham Stephan?

  No, because we already lost it then.

• 2:44:11Jack Selby?

  Oh, did we?

• 2:44:12Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:12Speaker 01

  Well, that means you have to tell 9:59 PM because we're in mountain time.

• 2:44:16Jack Selby?

  We gotta spend some money then.

• 2:44:17Graham Stephan?

  So someone was saying, or as ChatGPT told us, that what we could do, because it has like a code, and it's coded for food, that you could put that on like a Starbucks card or something like that, or like a prepaid card, and it'll take. So we could try that.

• 2:44:30Speaker 01

  That's not a bad idea. I would do that.

• 2:44:32Jack Selby?

  Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully you found this educational, entertaining, all of the above. Thank you so much for having us here.

• 2:44:38Speaker 01

  Thank you, man. Thank you, guys.

• 2:44:39Graham Stephan?

  We could film another one when you're in Vegas. And we could just do a chat if you want to.

• 2:44:43Speaker 01

  100%. I'm down. Let's go.

• 2:44:45Jack Selby?

  Till next time.

• 2:44:46Graham Stephan?

  See you, guys.

• 2:44:47Jack Selby?

  Thank you, guys.

• 2:44:47Speaker 06

  How about it? $16,250,000?

• 2:44:54Speaker 01

  I think this is a giant bubble that's about to burst. The American auto market has gone high end, making more profits by selling fewer, pricier cars.

• 2:45:03Graham Stephan?

  And what's caused these values to go up so much?

• 2:45:06Speaker 01

  Potential fake bids and bring a trailer and other stuff.

• 2:45:11Graham Stephan?

  What's a car that you can't believe how expensive it's gotten?

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  75% of all of the hypercars right now with a LaFerrari, they were around $2 million, I think, to start. And those are $7 or $8 million now. The Italians lie about production numbers.

• 2:45:22Graham Stephan?

  Really?

• 2:45:23Speaker 01

  Ferrari was one, Pagani was one, and there are probably others. People would come in here and then I'd see them like sitting in my Lamborghini, talking about like, here's how I invest money in Forex.

• 2:45:31Graham Stephan?

  No way.

• 2:45:32Speaker 01

  I invested in an

• 2:45:35Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 2:45:36Speaker 01

  It failed after like one year. So I'm still paying $11,000 a month for that lease. How much have you explored selling the company recently? One of the things I have, I think, is could be the next billion dollar idea.

• 2:45:46Graham Stephan?

  Are you serious?

• 2:45:47Speaker 01

  We're gonna get really close in the next one to two years.

• 2:46:05Speaker 06

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