Doug DeMuro’s Wild Ride: How Car Reviews Became A $37 Million Business

23:57I think you probably have a lot of fans who are, like you said, reading your articles who still to this day are like, I've been with Doug since 2013. And that sense of ownership and core community is really, really important. I think the third thing is that if people were trying to start today on YouTube, they're absolutely going to overthink it. Yeah. It's just not even a question. You need to have a long period of time with nothing to lose and nothing to gain. You need to be in this unique area where you are a hobbyist. That is exactly right. And that's such an interesting component of it that I think people don't quite...

24:35I got lucky because I was writing about cars for, at the time, autotrader.com. So I had a steady paycheck, but that didn't take that much of my time. And so it was enough to bankroll my life, but I could spend that time making YouTube videos. And it's tough to devote a year of your life to something that is not making money. Like that's not realistic for virtually anybody. But I was able to do it because I had another career. And I think a lot of the other YouTube creators probably have some sort of similar backstory that I got started because I had this windfall or because I had rich parents, honestly, or whatever it is.

25:11And they're kind of able to do that. And I think that that's surprisingly important. Because I've had friends try to do it. they do three videos. They're like, screw this. I'm totally, it takes up too much work on my weekends. I also think the, it's too understood now what could potentially happen if you succeed, which then makes the process of trying to succeed more anxiety inducing. Because I remember in 2011, when I started uploading YouTube videos, I met with someone from YouTube. That's actually how I got introduced to YouTube. I thought YouTube was like a random place. You uploaded cat videos and home videos.

25:43And he was like, no, I think he's like, YouTube's moving into this direction where people are making money. And I was like, how much money? He was like, it's kind of undetermined right now, but people are making some money on YouTube. And I didn't know how much money you could make on YouTube, which I actually think was helpful because I was just like, okay, so I'll just slowly grow this thing until like. And so now your point is that now people realize the stakes are higher. The stakes are higher. You're too often falling short of expectations now. Whereas before there were no expectations. Okay, so that's one of my biggest things.

26:13I started my channel and my first hook, right? I had a 2004 Ferrari 360. I bought that car with like all of my life savings and then I still had to get like a significant bank loan. But at the time, owning a 2004 Ferrari 360 was like a big deal on YouTube. Right. Because there was no one on YouTube. now youtubers have bugattis and cars that cost millions of dollars that the people would laugh at you if you showed up but back at that time yeah like the the barrier to enter is lower the stakes were lower you can just kind of do stuff and no one knew where it could go there was no like you know you can make millions of dollars on youtube never occurred to me when when i started doing it i only started making videos to be a companion piece to the articles i was writing it was that was my entire goal was like hey i'm writing an article why not also have a video that people can watch you know a similar topic and i passed a hundred thousand subscribers on youtube without even realizing i was not even paying attention to my subscriber count because i was so focused on being a writer that was my only goal and at some point about two years in i realized like i just showed i went on youtube and i was looking at my analytics and i was like oh my god like a lot of people are watching these videos maybe i should start thinking about videos Did you enjoy the process of making videos when you first started?

27:29No. Does anyone? Yeah. It was hell. It was hell. I mean, I had, I'm not like the most tech forward guy. I like hated it. But like I figured it out, you know, over time and don't write. Yeah. So you don't know what you're doing now. It's so funny. I pull up, I set up my camera. I'm like shooting. I pull up to a parking lot location. I can, I'm shooting in four minutes, but like back then, oh my. There was stuff like I would shoot something and then I would drive home to like watch it.

28:03It took me a whole day to shoot a video, like a four minute video back then. That's so good. But, and at that time, like when you were shooting, what were you shooting on? Just like a camera? I had a stupid camcorder and I had these microphones that are kind of famous that, that they were like these like plastic clip on Bluetooth microphones and they worked cause you didn't have to have like a wire or anything and I couldn't afford lav mics. So like I had those and everybody's going back and watch those videos. Everybody laughs at me about it. But just had like cheap stuff and iMovie, which I used to edit my videos up until a couple of years ago.

28:36Your aesthetic has not changed that much. Yeah. No. Simplicity is nice on YouTube. I have watched other creators leave YouTube like Motor Trend kind of pieced out of YouTube because they weren't making enough money. And so they put everything behind like a native thing on their own website because they just felt that there wasn't, that was an easier way to monetize it. And they basically abandoned like a three, four million subscriber YouTube channel because it just didn't make money for them. And I've talked to other creators who are just burnt out because they've spent a lot of their effort making really high quality videos.

29:14And you like have, once you do that, you do that. Like, I was just at a car launch with another creator who told me like, I wish I hadn't ever committed to making videos so high quality because it's so much work and it's just too difficult. It's too hard to do this. I also think new people root for you more if the production value is low. I think about, we used to film in our car all the time and still we get comments of people who love and miss the car. And we've now up-leveled clearly to a point that is nowhere near shooting in your car. Now we have a million-dollar car behind us. I do think that's exactly right.

29:51And I think one of the interesting things about YouTube is it's so democratized in the sense that this is why when you watch Jerry Seinfeld talk about comedy, he says a similar thing, which is like you go up there, you do your bit. If you're funny, you get less, you succeed. If not, you don't. And I feel like that about YouTube to an extent. It's certainly when I started. If your stuff was good, people watched and then they watched more and then they watched more. And it like democratized it in this crazy way. If I had worked for one of the car magazines as a 22-year-old, I would have been getting coffee for people for the first three years.

30:20and then the next three years they maybe would give me a Toyota Corolla to drive and then eventually you work your way up. But on YouTube, if you're good, boom, you're successful pretty quick and you can just start doing it. And that's a very special aspect of the way you create content. I think because of your setup too, you were able to put out more content than other people. If it takes you a month to make a video and that's when you get feedback, it takes you a long time to change what you're doing and try again. It's similar to stand-up where Jerry was like, you get more feedback more often than anybody.

30:50Yeah. And you put yourself in a position to get more feedback. I think, you know, it's interesting that the production value that I have, I've like come and gone on it. When I first started, I was like, I have to do this because it's all I know how and it's all I can afford and it's easy. And then over the like four, three, four years ago, some people started showing up with like really better quality. And I would look at their stuff and be like, I really wish that I could be like them. And in the last six months talking to some of my creator friends, I've like switched back. And I think to myself, I'm actually glad I did this because it's just easy.

31:22Like I can travel to go film with a backpack and that is my whole thing and a tripod and that is it. And I don't have to worry about anything. And that is so nice and so freeing. And it allows me just a level of flexibility that is crazy, crazy, crazy. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I feel like jealous of the format, both from a like friction perspective of like literally you said you can travel with a backpack and go do that. You also have a format that's like, I can close my eyes and imagine one of your videos, which is really great, right? Like then the expectation is there and the bingeability is there.

31:58I can, I'm, if I enjoy the experience of watching one of your videos, I'm probably going to enjoy the other 900, which is incredible, right? Right. And if you're into that one, it's like, okay, well, what other cars do I want to see? Yeah. The other thing though, is that one of the most beautiful things of the business of YouTube is if you start with a production expense of near zero and you maintain that. Yeah. And there's exponential growth in revenue. Yep. The margin gets astronomical. That's right. Like it is, you know, you keep your production expense here and your revenue goes beyond a television show.

32:35If you can do it. If you can do it. And I think one of the things we're starting to see with YouTube, it's harder to do that now. Yeah. Which is sad. Which is sad. Because that was one of the coolest things about YouTube for so long. that like you could do it without all that much money and you could succeed. Well, now you get the Mr. Beast, which his videos are incredible, the coolest things in the world, but obviously not replicatable by people. Yeah. Right? Like you couldn't just do that. You can't just pop on YouTube anymore and just do. No. So when I talk about the democratization of content, I'm really more thinking about like maybe an era that is kind of gone.

33:06I think we might be swinging back though because I find myself craving more just real. I've always felt about YouTube. I've always felt one of the reasons I was successful is you're not seeing this polished content of this guy you're not really sure if you can trust you know because he sees everything's music and did they pay for this and how did all this work you see me there's no question about it this is a dude this is just a guy this could be my name this may be his first video there is no doubt to anybody what's going on and i think that that that like relatability and also just like truth and that's one of the reasons why i've never really done like ad integrations until I started cars and bids which I still feel isn't really an ad integration the same way because it's literally mine and so like but I never really pushed and I always felt like I don't want to push t-shirts I don't want to push video game companies that I don't believe in I really want to like maintain this honesty and I think that's one of my the reasons that my channel has had such a long tail which is like we know we can trust this dude he's just like doing this and saying stuff and he's like a guy and I really think that's important now the drawback to that is every, that's a relatability, like people have no problem interrupting me at restaurants where it's like, Hey, yeah, yeah.

34:21Parasolial relationship is strong because you're never done. Yeah. It's like wild. Colin and I used to work with, um, athletes on their YouTube channels. And we used to think about, there's two ways you can go in the athlete. You can either, um, sensationalize them and be like, they are LeBron James. They're, you know, superhuman, right or you can fully humanize them and i think that's starting to happen on youtube now too where the sensationalism is going you know no one's like mr beast no one's pulling stuff off like him right and there's people going in that direction where it's like you can't do this right you just can't right and then there's the radically human which is like you and even with you know mark marquez to talk about him again like starting his autofocus channel it's incredibly human for a guy who also does sensational things.

35:08He has a quarter million dollar robot in his office that does like crazy tech shots. Everybody's got their own thing and some people have made it work like Mr. Beast and many other people doing high quality, high production stuff. But I've really felt like the next door person next door aspect is kind of what I like crave about YouTube. I think that's the coolest part. If I wanted to watch super high quality, slick production stuff, I'd watch TV. And people come up to me and they say, I'm going to make a car channel that has 4K drones and all this music It's going to be the best high-quality car videos on YouTube.

35:39And I'm thinking, A, it's going to be expensive. You're not going to make money. And B, I don't know that that's what the audience is really looking for. They say they are, but when you actually look at the views of the videos where people do that versus my views, it tells a different story. And even if the audience wants it for a little bit, if they stop wanting it, you're stuck. Yeah, right. Then you get back to the problem we were actually earlier where you're like, those are your videos. That's what you're making. You can't go from that to what I do. Right. People be like, what? I think the average creator should prepare for the ups and downs of, you know, like the career, right?

36:11It's, it's up and down. You're it's, it's also you as a human on camera. Like you could also fall out of love with it. Like that you have to prepare for that. Did you have any moments like that? Cause I put myself in your shoes just in the fact that you're a soul solo creator. But I think Samir and I always say this, I don't know if I would do this career if I wasn't doing it with Samir and with team and with people around me, but you're doing it by yourself. Was that ever something that was difficult for you? Believe it or not. No, I just love poking around cars. It's insane. But like to this day, I show up at a shoot in a quiet parking lot early in the morning with my backpack and nothing else.

36:52And I'd like I'm pumped. I'm like so into it. And I've done a thousand of these videos. And I'm like, wow, that button does that. I'm like, I'm going to show that. And I like to this day, there's never been a time. Truly never. that occasionally scheduling can get in the summer. I like go away and I don't really shoot. And so I, in the spring it's like hell and I shoot a lot. And there are times when I get a little burnt out there, but that's purely because I'm stacking them. It's not because I don't actually enjoy it. Right. And the fall comes and I go back to it and I'm like, yeah, I still love this.

37:20And you shoot by yourself. You added it by yourself. I think there's some, there might be something to that too. I enjoy working by myself and I think you add people and it adds like friction. There's complication. You add a, you added someone else's schedule. old they're having a baby they're getting married they're got a girlfriend who wants to move to north carolina you know i had all this stuff yeah right and it's like i don't have to deal with any of that it's like i'm i wake up go shoot yeah yeah and i think also like if you're if you didn't put out like if you show up and there's a car you're excited about and you're there and you poke around it and you film on your iphone i think now right mostly mostly on your iphone i have a 4k cam quarter for the shots that you can, that I'm in.

38:01Yeah. And then the rest is on the iPhone. And if you didn't put out that YouTube video, you would still be pumped, right? Yeah. And so the car, the cars where the answer is no, are the ones that I shoot. If I, if you, because I have to, and I often think about, it's funny because I often think about like, what if I were to sell, you know, what if I, what if I suddenly had a hundred million dollars, what would I do? And the answer is probably the same thing that I do now, actually. I'm curious about your relationship with money growing up and then also, you know, coming into starting a YouTube channel, which obviously then turned into a positive financial outcome.

38:39Like what was that journey with revenue and like recognizing like, okay, I'm writing and I'm making these videos. Wait, I have a hundred thousand subscribers. Like when did revenue from YouTube videos come into play? So that's an interesting question. So when I worked at Porsche, I was just making, I was earning$48 ,000 a year. That was my salary. Um, and it's funny that number was when I first started YouTube in my head, I said, if I can make$48 ,000 a year, I've made it on YouTube. Yeah. Um, took a while. Yeah. It took a very long time. For me too. Honestly, I didn't make that much again on YouTube for three and a half years probably, but that's cause I wasn't really taking it seriously.

39:16The writing was my focus. So, so I started earning up. I, then I was, then I was writing on the side. and I was actually earning more writing than with my day job. The YouTube thing didn't really take off until late 2016. So what happened was I left Jalopnik to write an enthusiast car blog for autotrader.com and at the same time I started making two videos a week. And just by chance we chose to launch this thing in September which meant that like the fall was coming and the ad rates tend to be higher around the holidays. is Christmas came and Christmas came in the Doug household. And I made a lot of money that month, that December.

39:58And it was like, oh my God. What was a lot of money? I think it was like$18 ,000 that month. Now you got to think, you remember like for me, I mean, that was like, I never thought you could make that much money doing anything, but like YouTube. And so then January came and I made half that. And I was like, oh, I guess it was a flu. I didn't know. I didn't have anybody, I didn't know anybody who's doing YouTube. And I didn't realize that ad rates fluctuated like that. That was like a thing. But it wasn't kind of until then that it became enough to like, hey, I can make this, make a career out of this.

40:33Yeah. And I can like really do this. Because even half of that is more than$48 ,000 a year. Yeah. It was crazy. I couldn't, and I couldn't believe like, really? This is a thing you can do and make that? It's like blown away. And then it just kind of grew from there. But I think switching to two videos a week at that time was a surprisingly impactful decision. Especially because probably you were building out a deeper library. Yeah. That if one hit, then people could watch. And soon after that, I also switched to doing the car reviews. In the past, I had done videos of my own cars. But doing car reviews that were new cars people could buy, that's a whole different thing.

41:10That gets you a wider audience at the end of the day because people are Googling that. People are like, hey, what do people think about this car? as opposed to like, hey, I drove my Aston Martin, you know, in the snow. That's a funny video, but you're only going to appeal to your audience. For you, as the channel was picking up two videos a week, did you get really connected to the numbers on the screen, whether it was the viewership of videos, the AdSense number going up? Like it's a bit of an intoxicating thing as a YouTube creator when it finally hits and you're like, wait, this is working.

41:43These numbers are going up. and these numbers are going up? Yeah, no, I was obsessive. I have spreadsheets on top of spreadsheets, on top of spreadsheets, paying attention to, you know, I would look at everything. First hour, first five hours, all sorts of crazy stuff. And I've often said that one of the reasons that I've become so successful is because my colleagues were kind of insane. All my other car YouTuber colleagues are just insane people who just blow up cars. And I was like, if I could just be, bring like an analytical approach to this, that will be a differentiator. And so I would look at videos and yeah, if they were performing worse, don't do a video like that again.

42:19Don't do a video on a car like that again. And it really helped me kind of like hone, okay, this is the type of thing that I want to shoot. And I think I did that in a way that a lot of other creators at that time weren't really doing. Interesting. Like really paying attention to the exact, okay, what was it about this video that didn't do well? Where does the hook need to be? Where was it this type of car? Was it this age of car? and I think that really, really, really had a huge effect in making the videos blow up. Is there anything you learned about the very beginning of a video of what makes it potentially succeed?

42:50The first little bit has never been as important to me as I hear a lot of creators tell me. I think people are kind of in my videos for maybe a little bit more of an in-depth tour and they don't necessarily quite need that hook as much as I hear from some other people. Was it intentional that you don't drive the car until the very end? Yeah. That that's the payoff? You know, it's the opposite. Everyone else drives the car. I've actually counseled people who come to me for advice and I said, just don't drive the car at all. People don't care about that as much as you think. And especially that's becoming true in the electric car era where a lot of them drive pretty similarly.

43:27People care about the tour of the car. Most people are not, most human beings driving cars are not really sophisticated enough to understand the differences that some of these car reviewers swear they can feel, you know, going around certain corners. I don't buy anything. I put the quirks and features at the start because honestly, that's what people come to my videos for. And there are some videos where it's a high-performance car and a driver who's very famous for that. And those videos focus more on driving. And I think that people tell me, you need to drive more, you're a terrible driver, you don't drive enough.

43:59I'm like, go watch. Chris Harris is the guy. Go watch his videos. He's the guy who does all the driving. He'll give you that info. I'll give you different info. I think both of our videos can coexist. They're both useful. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back.

44:33Save up to 40 % your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. Yeah, that's, it's really good. It's like, what is the human part of this? You know, like the human experience is getting in the car and turning on the AC and turning up the music. I mean, you're telling me this, right? Like the AC and Bluetooth is the way you want. Like, aren't you, and you're, say you're my audience, and I think in some sense you are, especially if you're trying to buy a car. What are you interested in? It's not like, oh, the steering feel around this corner. Sure, yeah. yeah you're interested in like how does the tech work is it good what features can i show a friend what features that's really what it comes down to is like i remember i got a car in high school that my parents gave me that had um seat heaters yeah every huge huge people come to my car i'd be like dude are you ready for this it's like a jacuzzi in a car yeah you know believe it or not And our backs would just be sweating, you know, just like profusely.

45:32We'd be like, this is so cool. This is so great. I went to school in the Valley. It's just super hot. And all of these cars are telling a story about like the identity that someone may want. Yeah. Right. I've gotten hooked lately on the Subaru Outback Wilderness because potentially I see myself as someone who will spend some time in the wilderness. Don't you find that car a little weird looking? Well, you called it weird. you said that the edges were weird and it was too muscular with the plastic on the outside kind of like you it's a little too muscular i guess right you know yeah someone down the block bought one of those like last week and i'm like i'm gonna have to see this thing so i always i always want a car and then i'll go watch your video and i'll go okay doug thinks this is a little weird i don't know if i'm that guy you know it's actually interesting because for years doing this the automakers didn't take it seriously i was kind of the first to really do like new car reviews in a grand scale on YouTube.

46:26And the automakers wouldn't invite me to stuff. They wouldn't send me cars. I had to go to dealers or private owners for basically everything. And over time, they started to realize that there are people like you out there who are like, it became a thing where it was like, all of your customers are using YouTube to like, they're not reading the magazines anymore. You got to get with this. And I was at a press launch the other day and a guy came up to me and said, I'm a big fan of yours. I'm a TikToker. And I'm like the tiktokers are getting invited to these things holy crap i mean do you know how hard i had to work to get these invite invitations it's kind of funny when we when we were working in sports media i remember someone said this to me as as we were starting to like bring sports media to youtube i remember someone said to me that during the sports illustrated era like someone pitched sports illustrated on tv channel and they're like why would we ever do that people like reading and then ESPN came about right and like from ESPN then I'm sure ESPN also was sitting as they had established their thing and they were like why would we turn these into short clips on and highlights on Instagram like these are rights deals that you know like it doesn't make DVDs in the mail to people they come right yeah I remember thinking that was the craziest idea every step of the way it's kind of like you know okay wait no people want to see the car for five minutes why would they only want to see it for 60 seconds right you know and you're kind of like disrupting constantly your videos disrupted the car review industry because people were writing auto trader was writing and all those guys hated it i mean every car reviewer sure hated the fact that there's a guy in youtube and now many guys on youtube who have like come and you know what i'm hearing the same stuff from my youtube colleagues by tiktok now right it's gonna disrupt again those videos are so short there's not even a thing i'm like i'm like this was us yeah and we're not talking about 20 years ago.

48:14It was like us, like four years. Right. Right. Yeah. It's happening way quicker. Um, one thing I wanted to acknowledge too, is like your thumbnails thumbnails bring me more anxiety than anything else in the world probably right now, but your thumbnails are like so incredibly beautifully lo-fi and focused on the car, the car, it's the car, right? Which then shows you that the intention of the click is the car, the car, which is so fantastic because then when you click through immediately you get this you know voice yeah of doug which is quirky and interesting and like unexpected because i clicked on a two million dollar car and if it's my entry point into your world i click on it immediately i'm like who's that guy in the back you know behind this with the three million dollar bugatti that was a conscious decision that nobody was doing at the time but i thought the main reason i started doing it truthfully i've never mentioned this before but truthfully it's because i was like oh i always wear shorts i hate wearing pants and i was embarrassed that i was and i was like i stand behind the car but it became clear quickly that like this is the the car is the whole point of this that's so funny that it was about shorts because i was looking at it and i was like wow doug this brilliant idea it was incredibly strategic i was gonna bring up i was like visual prioritization it goes car then doug but it's Actually, just you didn't want to show your legs.

49:38Eventually, it was like, okay, he wears shorts. I couldn't come out in front, but I realized I'm not the thing. The car is what people want to click on, and that should be the star of this. The thumbnails are ridiculously lo-fi. So good, though. But they work. I don't know. I don't have giant text. But then the expectation is mad. I click, and it's exactly what I clicked on. That's always been another thing that I've been really laser-focused on my entire YouTube career is just like give them as much as you can. I never, ever, ever want to provide any sort of clickbait stuff. And so like my view is you're going to see a 24 minute tour of this car and you're going to see everything that's important.

50:16And that is that. And I'm going to talk fast for 24 minutes. Here's this, here's this, here's this, here's this. And that's just how it's going to be. And, you know, yeah, the expectation as opposed to trying to bait people. And I've watched some of those channels that do that kind of take a nosedive. because people after the 8th, 10th, 12th time. You become numb to it. Yeah, you become numb to it. And they have to write not clickbait on the title. Back to the financial side of it.

50:44A car buyer has high purchase intent. If someone's watching a review, I think the assumption is they can spend a lot of money. Yeah. $50 ,000. These are big purchases. Do the CPMs match that? They do. CPMs are always higher, and I think that's the reason. And that was one of the things that I eventually was able to convince the automakers are. I was like, I was like, dude, either like, oh, YouTube's for kids. I mean, I would get emails from PR companies, from PR departments at automakers saying YouTube is for kids. We don't want to go on YouTube. And I'd be like, I got 2 million views on the RAV4.

51:15There weren't like, I had that guy. There wasn't like a 17 year old going, oh, I wonder what the RAV4 is doing. These are in market shoppers. Like the Kia Tellurai got four or the, the, the, the, the Hyundai Palos and the Kia Tellurai got 4 million views. That wasn't like, those are moms. Yeah. These are moms watching those videos. It's not a nine-year-old going from like a Blippi video to like, okay, let's watch the RAV4 review now. But even your titles sometimes will be like, this minivan is a mom's dream or something. It's not like you're trying to get it past anybody. And so, yes, the benefit of that is that they are true in-market shoppers.

51:48And so, yeah, a lot of them are kind of... Now, sometimes on the videos, Lamborghinis, they actually see them because it was kids. Yeah. It probably goes to mass at that point. Yeah. The thing is, the more niche it can be, the more like you actually are targeting the potential buyer of it. Now I'm literally targeting, now that I'm reviewing it for the site, I'm literally targeting an individual potential buyer. Right, right. But you're able to doubly monetize. So what do some of those car CPMs look like? You know, that's an interesting question. I measure, I have like, I never understood why CPM is measured in dollars per thousand.

52:23Yeah. It never made sense to me. So I have like my own measurement. what's that formula it's like how many um views do i have to get to make a dollar that's how i measured okay but but i'll tell you the answer to on a general level good videos would make 15 or 20 000 individually got it and that helped me justify you know traveling or whatever and i have always had a big thing about how i don't take money from the automaker so a lot of my colleagues all of them um you know the automaker is doing a press launch they the automaker pays to fly them there and then puts them up in a hotel. I don't do any of that.

52:58I, I find myself there. I put myself up in a hotel and I've always kind of taken a holier than thou position about this. Um, but the truth is that I've been allowed to do that because some of these videos you could, you could just easily justify it because they're making it up money. So obviously this varies, but how much, how many views does it take to make a dollar? Uh, it, it varies to a level that is like almost impossible to describe. It's the same fluctuations you see in CPM, but it is based on, time of year, type of car, type of person, how long the video is, how long on average they're watching.

53:30It's like wild. The numbers can be 300 % off. Wow. Is there a low and a high you could tell the good ones? If I remember correctly now, the good ones were like under, okay, I don't remember. I'm trying to think if the good ones were under like a hundred dollars, a hundred views would make a dollar. The really good ones. Wow. A hundred views would make a dollar. That's really good. Yeah. And so that was like Christmas time with a great car. And I always used to do, um, Doug December where I would actually save up the really good cars to really milk the hell out of them, which I still, I actually still did last year.

54:07I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it again. It's enormous amount of work to like get all these great, and you kind of end up sandbagging October, November too, because you take all the good stuff. But it really made a lot of money for a long time. so i feel like now you're pretty set in your belief system for the format that why you do it how long it'll be putting it on youtube but like you said uh like tiktokers are showing up at some of these events they are finding viewership and now that you have cars and bids yeah do you think about yeah converting to tiktok and and and shorts and making sure that people can find you that you can't not yeah at the end of the day the greatest thing there were a lot of great things this investment brought me including encourage you t um but i actually think the greatest is like the ability to be a little more creative like my whole cars and bids had been doing well but obviously we were taking money that we were making and putting it back into the business try to grow it further so i hadn't i hadn't seen people like doug doug makes five percent on every car they sell well no we had employees and i was i literally did not see a dime from cars and bids until we sold until we took the investment but um the greatest thing that it's given me is i can finally like be free like this there's this feeling of freedom that i haven't had on youtube in like forever And so, yeah, I'm going to try it.

55:15We're already starting to try TikTok and shorts and let's screw around because the individual revenue doesn't quite matter as much anymore. In the past, it was my entire income. And now it's like, hmm, you know. So wait, when did you go from, it's just me and, you know, I'm going to hire my best friend, Melissa to check my email. Right. Right. To I'm comfortable building a business, cars and beds. Like, I don't know. I, I, it was okay. Here's what happened. I met this guy named Blake and, um, he had, he had sent me a random email. He was one of the people. Melissa sent me the email and said, Hey, you might want to meet this guy.

55:53And I used to meet viewers for dinner three times a week really really yeah i was i especially when i because when i started my channel was in atlanta yeah where i still wish i lived and then i moved to philly where i'm glad i don't live anymore and what happened was i didn't know anybody so people be like hey i'm in philly you want to get dinner i'd be like yeah so i would meet straight up and this time i met some of my best friends in fact our director of operations for cars and bids is also one of my closest friends met him that way no there's a guy at my wedding who i met that way wow um so so So this guy Blake sends me an email and he's like, hey, we both have dogs.

56:28We both live in San Diego. Sure. Let's hang out. So I was like, all right. And he said he had an M2 competition, which now in recent years I would kind of filter by car. I was like, I'll go see a guy with an M2 competition. That's a nice car. So we met and he did something with computers. I don't know anything about any of that. I was like, all right. We hung out. It was a good time. And then a couple months later, I started really feeling, I was always feeling I have to do something, but I was like, I really think this like auction set idea is a good one. So I called up Blake and I was like, I have an idea.

56:58And when you do things on the internet as a job, everybody comes to you. I have an idea. And then universally those ideas are the worst ideas you've ever heard in your life. So he was like, all right, I'll have dinner. So we did it and I was like, I think we should create this auction website. And initially it was a little difficult. We needed some funding and there were some questions about who would own what percentage. And I was like, screw this. I'm going to learn to code. No. What? And I'm going to make it myself. And Blake was like, no, you're not. That's the stupidest thing. Because, but I had spent, I was like, I started a YouTube channel myself and brought that to this level.

57:38I can do anything. Yeah. And thankfully I had a great partner in this guy, Blake, and he like talked me out of that. and we settled all the numbers and agreements and he had like actual people who have done this as a career. And that was kind of how it happened. And I was lucky enough to meet somebody who knew what I didn't about what we needed to actually create this business. I had the audience and I had the knowledge that I thought the business would work, the understanding of the car market and the marketplace market and how that would go. And he had the knowledge of like how a business runs and how a website is built.

58:15And it was the perfect marriage. Did you have a clear understanding that, or how did you have a clear understanding that your audience was willing to purchase cars? You know, like not just look at them or purchase them from you. I assumed because the videos that I would do about in-mark cars, in-market, you know, Kia Tellurides and such would get big views. So I kind of figured there were a lot of people out there who were watching me and who had money to buy a car. Yeah. but like the answer the the true answer to that question is i didn't i i just hoped which is a terrible way to start a business in in my mind like you should have a business plan and a good sense of okay this business makes x amount of money and so my business if i do this could do this but i was just like i think this will work and somehow we convinced someone to fund us and it did work um did you feel a level of of stress or anxiety going from again like you're probably making a good amount of money on YouTube, right?

59:12Like financially, I'm going to make an assumption, but you were okay. Oh yeah. I mean, and this is the conversation I'm having with all my friends who are on YouTube right now. I'm telling them, you need to get to, to take your audience and do something like what I did, take them somewhere that you can control. And they're sitting here like, I'm making seven figures. I'm busy. That was the, that's a big thing. It's like, what do you mean i need to start a business yeah like i have a business right now yeah i cannot have time to brush my teeth and and and yes i mean there was a year where it was tough really and then when we launched the business it was still tough but like there was a year where it was like i'm doing this thing why have i done this like i don't need to do this but this isn't gonna last forever and i i beg people that my my fellow youtubers to understand that like the audience would no matter how hot you think you are right now the audience will get tired of you you will wish that you had done this.

1:00:03And I don't think you want to be sitting there in five years when your videos are getting a quarter of the views they are saying, damn, I wish I had tried something. And so, yeah, I mean, that was the hardest part of the whole thing was like balancing both. And again, I had an amazing partner who was enormously effective at being able to kind of do all that while I continued to do what I had to do. And we both understood the value of what I had to do and that he could take over and do a lot of this because I wasn't there a lot, but I was still cultivating my audience. I think what's great also is that your production wasn't so intense.

1:00:39Like when you talk about YouTube creators not having time to brush their teeth, a lot of times it's because their videos are so hard to make and having videos that are easy to make that unlocks the entire thing. Yeah. Right. Like, and I'm not saying it's super easy. You sound like travel, but like it's, you could sit on a plane and probably edit one of your videos and it's done by the time you land that's exactly right you had more time yeah and so that was an enormously important component of it and so maybe i i kind of over when i when i'm heavy-handedly telling my youtube friends to do this maybe i'm not you know really giving them their deference that they probably are it's taking more of their time than it was for me but like i still feel that way it comes back to the start of just like when you're starting the channel start with very low friction like don't start Or do you think that that is a way to start a channel now?

1:01:28Like, do you think, and this is something that really hits me a lot when I look at the car space now. When I started, there weren't many. And now there are so many that I sit there and think to myself, if you did start low friction, would you even succeed? And I think to myself, probably not. Now, there are a couple of guys who did. There's a guy named Rady's Rides, and he's in Florida. And he just, like, his wife is his cameraman, and they just, like, show up and do a quick video, and that's that. and he's been able to succeed, and I've met him, and he's the coolest dude in the world, and I'm thrilled that someone else has been able to kind of take the lo-fi format and do it, but it's harder.

1:02:04I think you can succeed, but success may come in three to four to five years. Yeah, and it might look different. And it might look different. And is it on TikTok? Yeah. And if it is, there's no money there except if you do the ad integrations, which adds a whole other layer of, is that something you want to go into? Was that something, those were offered to you? Oh, yeah. And were they like, how much money did you turn down? I mean, I occasionally would do them and it was crazy numbers. It was tens of thousands of dollars for a minute. Right. I did maybe four or five ever, maybe six. But I always felt that that was cheap, easy money up front.

1:02:40Yeah. But if I stayed true to myself and didn't do any of that, then my like believability would end up benefiting me longer term. That's what I always thought. I was like, I could take 30 grand today, but I think I'll make more than 30 grand in three years if I just do not look like somebody who's getting paid. Yeah. You know? And I think that was the right decision. Even looking back on it, there was money I definitely left on the table. I think it was the right decision. It's easy to say I'd sit here with a career GT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm good. I'm good. No, but you have to have a relationship also with like why you want money.

1:03:12Yeah. You know, like at that time, if you were like, this is more money than I, this is more than$48 ,000. This is more than I anticipated. Right. Right. It's that if you get into a world of like. there's been times in my career where I've looked at the numbers on the screen and I'm just like how high can these go right not like no no relationship to like that's enough i'm fine right more like i wonder how high this can go yeah and when you get into that game it gets i think it gets a little dangerous because you're willing to trade a lot to watch that number go up yeah but if you get to a point where you can mature enough to say like i'm not willing to trade certain things i'm not willing to trade my believability right not willing to trade my authenticity.

1:03:55I'm not willing to trade this minute of my content. If you start becoming really unwilling to trade that time or those things, you actually build a long-lasting like, why has your brand lasted since 2013? There's a reason to that. I'm not one of these guys who just wants to do this like, just milk it for all the money forever. I see some of these guys who have 20, 30 million and still go after another win. And I'm like, just chill. Yeah. Just end it, you know? And I always wanted to like be able to have a big enough income and to be able to make this go long enough that I like had, like I was able to build like wealth and have a good life, you know, but I never thought about, um, I just want to make it crazy and just do insane stuff and just absolutely blow it out of the water.

1:04:42That was like never really an enormous thought in my mind. It was just like, if I could do this forever, then I'm happy. Have you managed to find a dynamic and a role within cars and bids that is still comfortable? Or is it a stressful thing to be running these two businesses or involved in both? You know, it's an interesting thing when you, when you found a business and then, and then like give up majority, you're not, it's your business. Yeah. Yeah. But not really. Yeah. And that's been a little weird, but like also so welcome. So we launched cars and bids in June of 20. I had a baby in the summer of 21.

1:05:15Did cars and bids work right away? Yeah. we were profitable almost right away that's what that's crazy yeah um i didn't realize how special it was until people later told me okay so you were like yeah obviously yeah obviously we're profitable yeah that's what you do what else were you gonna do but like what did that mean that it worked like your first auction went live the thing to me the thing that meant that it worked was yes that like it the site didn't have problems yeah and that it literally worked like cars were selling and i still remember like there are still moments that i the very first car we auctioned was mine um and watching those bids come in at the end it was like this is happening and then the second car was a buddy of mine his name is perry and we sold this porsche and it um had a reserve on it my car didn't and watching the bids come in and then watching it clear reserve we were sitting out here on my patio and we like oh we were like cheering like you know like like your team had just won the Super Bowl.

1:06:10Like, oh my God, this actually happened. And it was like that the next day too. And then the third day. And then eventually I had to like go back out and film. And then we didn't meet on my patio every single day like we had for weeks. And that, watching the site just sort of mature into like a business that worked was big. Also getting a lot of submissions. That was key because we knew we needed cars to come in for us to sell. And we had this brilliant idea the day we launched to offer everybody$1 ,000. The first 50 cars that got on the site to sell, we gave them$1 ,000. It's a$50 ,000 spend, and it was everything.

1:06:47We got 1 ,000 submissions that day. I mean, that's crazy. We still, to this day, have never gotten as many submissions as we did on the first day before. But that's like smart understanding of just how to move people on the internet. And I think that's probably what a lot of businesses who launch, they don't have a deep understanding of how people interact with the internet. I think that's exactly right. the other big one that I often see people screwing up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. We didn't announce anything until it was live. We turned it on and then we turned on my video. And then you could go there.

1:07:18It wasn't like, oh, in six months, Doug's gonna launch this. You could go there that day and bid on a car or submit your car for sale. And that was crucial. The first day you talked about it, you didn't say like, I'm gonna launch a car auction. Didn't say a thing to anybody at any time. We just announced it and it was already live. And that's the way, from what I've learned on the internet, that's the way you do it. Because I've watched all these car launches. These car companies all screw this up. They announce a car, the 2020 Toyota Tundra. They announce it in the spring of 2018. By the time it actually shows up, nobody cares anymore.

1:07:51If they were smart, honestly, they would announce it and it would kind of like be on trucks to dealers at that moment. I think you're totally right. Yeah, absolutely. I think they live in a world, an old world where you need lead time and magazines cover it and people wait at their dealers and that kind of thing. And it's not, that's not how I think it works on the internet. I got really excited about a Volkswagen electric car. And then I realized that they were still being built in Tennessee and I couldn't even, you couldn't even get it. Yeah. Like it was not even something I could buy. And then I just forgot about it and I moved on to the Subaru wilderness.

1:08:25And who knows where I'll go next. What do you drive now? I have a Volkswagen Taos. So I still went with the Volkswagen. Okay, got it. Move on from the Taos to the wilderness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was reasonable. Yeah, thanks. I actually like the Outback Wilderness. It's just, there's a lot of, why don't all those gold? What about the Taos? The Taos is - It's fine. It's transportation. It's fine. That's how I feel about it. And that's why I've gotten into the wilderness because I'm like, with the Taos, it's just, it's fine. That would be a good, for sure the Wilderness would be like cooler and more exciting.

1:08:54No question about that. Yeah, the Taos is just so regular. It's just - right it's it's trying i don't care about cars so i don't know what we're talking about but honestly there's nothing wrong with that either by the way so many people you know that there's nothing wrong with i have a lot of my friends don't like cars and i think one or at least don't care and i think one of the great things about life sometimes is that you can kind of disconnect from this world that we live in yeah and like be around people and talk about oh it's my favorite to talk to my high school friends who don't watch any youtube yeah it's fantastic yeah they have no idea what i'm talking about yeah yeah yeah so with with cars and bids being profitable when did you start hiring people what did you think do you think like an exit was something that you were going towards not this soon you know actually we got emails all the time from vc pe all the stuff you know can we invest and we just ignored them we just straight up to new reply because the business was so early stage at that point that we knew if we can hold out for a few years we can grow this to a point where it's really worth something.

1:09:54Especially because of the trajectory we saw. Launching in the summer of 20, we really, really thought it was going to fail because of COVID. And of course, it turned out that different stuff happened to the car market than anybody could have predicted and it actually took off. And that really spurred us to believe, this is a business. And an exit that wasn't really on our minds. Of course, you think about it when you start a business. But the only thing on our minds, truthfully, or at least mine, I don't know about Blake's, but it's what he told me, is like, we want to build the best business we can.

1:10:29We just want to build a great business. And that stuff can be figured out later. And as it turned out, later was sooner than we thought. The company that invested in us, the churning group, kind of specializes in these like creator-led businesses. And so I wasn't really considering an exit. Part of the reason was I didn't want to have to explain to whatever BS company showed up how this all works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I didn't want to be like, look, here's you. They're going to, you know, because what company would come in and say, you got this product. Forget about the YouTube. This is stupid.

1:10:59We're going to do this, this, and this. And the churning group was like, we get it. We work with these creator-led businesses. We know exactly how to do this. And we're just going to give you help to do what you're already doing. And that was like the reason we took this deal. because it just made, it made sense to work with somebody who got it. Yeah. I mean, the way that, the way that we met first was actually because churn and group, when, when the investment happened, hosted a dinner and I was there because I'm friends with some of the people there. But the way I became friends with them is because they watch our YouTube channel.

1:11:30Yeah. And like to, to find people, whether it's brands or business people, whoever you surround yourself with, one of the most, the greatest things for me is when someone actually watches the channel. Yeah. You know, when they actually are a consumer of what you do, then they have a depth of understanding that's different from just like, I see you get a lot of views. We could do something. That is exactly right. It's different from, okay, this person's big, like let's capitalize on that. It's I get what you're doing. And it's interesting because this business model that the training group has turns out to there's this like, there's this major benefit, this major drawback, right?

1:12:04Like the major benefit to me is you have this built audience for all of these creators that they support in all of their channels. So when they create a business, these people want to show up. It's not like you have to pay to get in there. You hear these businesses that rely so heavily on paid marketing, you pull that spend, is it still even a business? Are people even still there? The answer is no. There's not like a personality to it. Whereas all the businesses that the turning group invests in are like that and this is becoming kind of a strategy that other investors are starting to realize.

1:12:33It's the creator-led businesses, people want to show up. But the crazy drawback is you put an enormous amount of, of trust behind the creator and a single person. And so like, I don't own the majority of this business anymore, but like it relies on you. It's not like they can just be like, we're doing this. I'd be like, all right, I'm out. And they'd be like, wait a minute, wait a minute. So like, that's a weird business model. If you think about it, like they're first off there, they need me to kind of keep, but also what if I'm a terrible person, you know, like what if I murder a dude? Well, okay.

1:13:05All right, Doug. We will clip that. We'll send it straight to Chernin. Yeah. No, but we see what I'm saying. There are other car auction websites. Like there are other car auction websites. The competitive advantage is you. Yeah. That's a lot of pressure. Yeah. It's a lot of pressure. We refer to this as like an inverted pyramid. So like a typical company, you know, like has a CEO at the top and then there's like management and executives and you go all the way down to like, you know, entry level staff at the base of the pyramid, right? And if like, even if the CEO leaves, right, it's fine. You just replace the CEO.

1:13:37A creator led business is the opposite. Right. Where you're at the, you're at the bottom. You're the tip of that pyramid, but you're, it's all, all the weights on you. Right. So other people can leave. Entry level people can leave. The management can, the executives can leave. If Doug leaves, the whole thing falls. Right. Not to put so much pressure. That's the scary thing to me about, and so like they spent an enormous amount of time with me and like making sure that I was the kind of dude who was like going to stick with this. But like, that's a scary thing. Scary. Yeah. For them, the positive thing is you have a library of content now that probably can drive people through, you know, a link in the description.

1:14:13Yeah. And if you make enough content over the next year or two, that's evergreen enough that mentions cars and bids. Right. There's probably still, like, it's the one thing about YouTube that really shocks me. like we haven't uploaded a video in you know a few months right now as we're recording this and we've done millions of views every month yeah so it's kind of shocking to think about i've always wondered about that yeah i've always like if i just stopped how many months would like i mean this is the longest break we've ever taken and we're doing like a few million views a month and i was i was looking at that and i was like oh my god there's people discovering us for the first time right now and we aren't putting anything out and you know how hard it was to get a million views and now we can do nothing for months.

1:14:56And it's the closest thing to recognizing. I used to, when I was starting out creating, I was talking to my brother and I was like, this is so hard because it's not like music where if I make a good song for the rest of my life, people will listen to that song. You know, like now I have to make a, I have to make a new video for people to continue to care. And, um, but maybe you don't feel like that quite as much, but I think now things are changing. Uh, that it also, I think it's also crucial the type of content you do that's true if it's ever you're doing like i went on graham stefan who's like one of the finest and like he's doing like kind of daily like right right there yeah yeah the market's down the market's up the market's down everything's on fire everything's great his world is insane but um but i think car reviews are similar to what you're talking about like obviously if i do new cars that i'm talking about that only lasts a few years but that's still yeah a few years is real on youtube that's like something yeah and older cars can last forever But I think that that, yeah, nonetheless, I just think it's like a wild business model.

1:15:56Like I wouldn't want to put all the trust in this dude. So now that they have put all the trust in you, what is the money going towards? Like how does it transform cards and bids if cards and bids was already working really well? First off, it gives us some cushion to like hire some people to try some things to maybe lose some money and be okay. Where we didn't really have that before and that's kind of nice. And also just like growth. I mean, I think any car situation, there's friction in a transaction. And so we want to try to make it easier. We just want shipping. And so that's one thing that people think about, right?

1:16:27Like, how am I going to get this car there? Are I going to fly out there and drive it? Well, now there's shipping integrated. You can get a shipping quote like that. There's all this other stuff coming that we're just going to try to make it easier and better. We want people who are on the sidelines, people who are sitting there saying, I'd rather just go to a dealer and maybe just buy. I want them to say, you know what? they got all this stuff that makes it super easy to buy a car. So that's, that's our plan. And obviously growth. We're hiring people to like to help us, you know, find more cars and that kind of thing.

1:16:55And that's going to be a component of it. There's going to be more content. Like are there more Doug's? Like, is that how you de-risk Doug? Is you add more Doug's? I think so. I think that we are, which probably I should have done a long time ago. I'm always, one of the things I'm always jealous of, although I'm not jealous of your massive production setup here, I'm always jealous of multiple people because like, You guys can riff on him. That, I wish I had. You watch Top Gear, right? Those guys chatting with each other was an enormous component of why people watched the show. They had this amazing relationship.

1:17:27And I've never been able to do that. And so we just recorded a few videos in my garage with my buddy, Kenan, just to chat. Instead of, on Sundays, I post videos that it's just me. And I think having a dude, that's like real meaningful something. And so I think that will be a strategy. There's also like challenges. You see groups on YouTube, like once you get beyond two, I think it's, it gets really challenging because then you're in like a band and a band, you know, a bunch of artists together or a bunch of creatives together is like, no, I can be a recipe for explosion. Yeah, that's true. Couldn't other channels review a car that is being auctioned at cars?

1:18:04Yeah. I think there's all, we're thinking about all sorts of that kind of stuff. Like what kind of, what kind of collaborations, what kind of integrations can we do with others? Like, couldn't you gift us a car, you know? And then, yeah, yeah maybe the end yeah that's the only that's the extent of the idea we gave um but no i think they could like a lot of channels like builds cars and you sell at the end of it that kind of thing like i think we want to do more stuff like that also one of the interesting things that's happened i haven't admitted this yet but i'm willing to right now i because this has been my thing and i've been so laser focused on all the numbers and everything about youtube i've been kind of competitive yeah with some of my other utors yeah of course and now we got some money yeah i don't feel that way anymore and now i just like embrace this like love everyone and i just when i meet creators now i'm like tell me how i can be on your channel tell me how i can help you succeed i even if we don't plug cars and bids i don't care i just want to like be buddies with everybody and that's been an amazing freeing feeling it's like i don't have to work so hard to compete with these guys and like really we shouldn't compete because we're all in this bizarrely small world and I meet them at car launches and I'm like, and now it's like, hey, you know, and that's how I want to be.

1:19:15That's cool. It's operating from a space of like abundance, right? You're like everything, like there's enough here for all of us. And if I look at them and say they got that whatever video before me and stole a million views, whatever, you get the next one. Yeah, you know, it really doesn't matter to me anymore. That's a peaceful place to be. And it's not one that I've been in. I've never been like overtly angry at anybody, but I've been sitting there competitive they got this these views and i got these views and i got to do this this this differently deep in the spreadsheets yeah yeah and it's nice to not have to like think what did you what was the experience of receiving the money i was in hawaii okay uh at a wedding uh and i as as one does this i've i've come to learn since then that this experience is basically the same for everybody but you just start refreshing the app your bank app the bank app all the time and then there was there and it was like wow okay i guess this is real like up until that point i had one of the problems that i had i like truly operated the entire summer we did the due diligence process last summer as if it was not going to happen right and i was just like making decisions for the channel and for the business as if this wasn't because i just figured you kind of have to yeah and so then it actually happened i was like oh crap i gotta figure out what the hell i'm doing i gotta like put the money somewhere and i gotta buy this car i really better actually figure this out because i really didn't believe it yeah until it was there was there a sense of thing to do like relief or was there a sense of like i made it what like was there a life relief and and i've always kind of felt that like if i hadn't like i i was born with an enormous amount of gifts just by being a tall white dude in america yeah not to get political i i don't really feel that way generally but like i had all these i was smart i was personable and and i i was obviously good relatable and so i can't and i always kind of felt if i didn't do something like this i'm kind of wasting and so finally i felt like i actually didn't really feel validated that i had done something until until that this deal closes and it's like okay i've now taken this business i've done the youtube thing and that's grown i've taken this use that to do this business and turn that into this giant business and that's grown and like that feels like yeah that's like wow, I can maybe be proud of myself for the first time ever.

1:21:32And I think, but I think that's a really, that's also plays into your comfort level of going out and not feeling competitive anymore. Yeah. Cause you've kind of gotten the validation. Like I think, you know, for anyone who puts themselves out on the internet, there's a level, we are, have a connection and a relationship with validation. Right. Yeah. And everyone knows it and plays into it. Right. YouTube ranks us on a, one out of 10 scale, right? Like we are, we are a very specific type of, you know, species that, that it has a connection to this level of external validation. Yeah. Um, like we read comments, we are in spreadsheets, we are comparing ourselves like we are.

1:22:10And so there's moments in time where you, you get to actually experience that value. And I think if you're lucky enough, you know, you get to experience this moment of like, Oh, some things never go out of style, like trust, reliability, and driving a Toyota. Take the legendary Camry and Corolla, designed for comfort, engineered for performance. Hurry in. Offers end September 30th. Toyota, let's go places. This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers. We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew.

1:22:47I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way. Okay. You know, it's interesting that you say that. You're exactly right. And the most recent one was when I bought the car and I announced it and the video where I announced it was great. Yeah. Everybody was, and I was getting, I mean, I went to bed.

1:23:19I have a point of like replying to everybody all the time emails text messages and i was going to i went to bed that night with like 50 unread text i just couldn't get to everybody who was congratulating me and it actually hit me during that experience like this might be the last time like we're gonna you know the the business is going to go in a direction that i'm not like the only dude anymore the the channel like the the focus obviously everybody view everybody at tcg and us view the business as having a much higher potential growth than the channel. And so like, that's where we're going to focus.

1:23:52And I'm like, I don't know that I'm going to have one of these days where like, I just get people like freaking out on my Instagram, 250 ,000 likes on Instagram posts. Like this might kind of be it. And I actually like really took the time to appreciate it for that reason. Like this may be the last like real crazy validation day that I ever get. And it's interesting also that you bring this up. This, this is getting really deep in my psyche, but But when the money came in and when this all happened, now we have a CEO who's running this business, who's taking over my business, but he's brilliant and he's doing a great job.

1:24:21But it's like someone's taking this away, essentially. And I've started to realize there may be a day when I'm not getting recognized in airports or in restaurants. And that could happen. And so I've started thinking through how do I want that to look. And there's been a lot of interesting concepts and thoughts in my mind about it. one is i've spent a lot of time on former rock stars instagram pages amazing okay um rob thomas yeah okay matchbox 20 they were the biggest band in the world give me your heart make it real yeah let's forget about i mean they were killers right and you know what he does now he's married he lives in bedford new york and he just chills with his pets and his and his wife And I was thinking to myself, like, would that be okay?

1:25:09And I think the answer is, yeah. Rob Thomas, he's probably not going to sell at stadiums anymore, but he's got, he can still sit and be like, I used to do this. And I kind of think I'll feel the same way. And if that ends up being how it goes, then that ends up being how it goes. Wow. I love that. I love the honesty of you looking for inspiration for the next phase through Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20. Johnny Resnick from the Goo Goo Dolls, same kind of thing. He's got a little girl and he's just chilling. And I'm like, you know, there's something to that. There's like something to that. Well, yeah, I think we're all in a sense, at least I feel this way, like trying to prove something to ourselves.

1:25:47Yeah. You know? And then once you kind of prove that, or if you just forget about it, at one point you're like, do I need to do that? Do I need to prove that? Then you're just actually in search of peace. Right. That's exactly right. And I think for some people, I bet it haunts them. it's like sure i did this thing and i want to replicate that feeling that i got when i announced the car and i got a million texts and emails and everything and but i think realistically it's hard to yeah i think you have to spend time thinking about or looking for inspiration of like what is peace right what is and i think what does that look like some of these people should come to terms with the fact that maybe my life used to be singing to a hundred thousand people in a stadium and now it's like playing with my dog in Bedford.

1:26:29But like, it's better to get to that point at this stage, I think, than to be 50 and be like, this is what I have to do because I have a choice. Yeah, totally. That's been an interesting journey. Yeah. So what are you going to do next? Like, you're the chief car enthusiast. The chief car enthusiast is my official title. I mean, you got to keep doing the thing, right? And I still love the thing, which is great. I think the answer is like, I'm going to keep doing this, not only because I'm contractually obligated to, but mainly because you're contractually but because like what the hell else would I do and that was actually one of the problems before like I was running this business with Blake but like I was like making hiring decisions and like I shouldn't I'm a YouTube content creator I shouldn't be making hiring I don't know what the hell I'm doing and so now I go back to more creating and less of that stuff which is great it's nice to be out of like a true startup feel and I think I'm just going to keep doing this.

1:27:27And so like the videos will keep supporting the platform and I hope the platform continues to grow. And like this is what I love. So I'm able to kind of go back to it. And I swear if we sold this business and I pulled in way more money, I swear what I would do is just make car videos on YouTube. But I would do maybe more specific stuff that I would want to do. We're road tripping my career GT as opposed to the Hyundai Tucson. yeah just straight to bedford right move in the next to rob to rob and just ride off into the sunset i think um that's like a great piece of advice is like look at what you're doing as a creator because if you don't enjoy it success is only the opportunity to do more of it and if that's exactly right if that feels like success to you that you get to make more car reviews you're on the right path that's exactly right and i think a lot of creators probably don't quite realize the gravity of what you just said.

1:28:22Success is only the opportunity to do more of it. In other words, if someone comes and wants to pay you for whatever it is that you're doing, they're not going to want you to do less. Or something different. They're going to say, you're the reason to succeed. Knock it up a notch. Do more and do it better. Do more and do it better. So, that's a great piece of advice for creators. Do you ever meet people who are like burned out? Yeah, of course. And we've been there. Sometimes we meet ourselves. Yeah, we've been there, you know, like, and I think then you have to take another step back and be like, okay, I'm not trying to build myself a jail, you know, like I'm not trying to build myself a box that I have to be in.

1:29:02Yeah. So I, you have to like take control of that moment and be like, what is it? Yeah. You know, what is it that's, that's not working here? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And it's also two of us. So we have to be on a similar page. Or respect each other's differences. It's the pros and cons of having two people. Right. This is one of the things I've started to learn. Like I really like, like I said earlier, like riffing off each other and being able to, you know, you ask a question, whatever it is, it's like useful. But the drawback is scheduling, but also if you're like depressed, lifestyle designs.

1:29:31Yeah, of course. If you're getting married, okay, we got to, we got to, that's, you know, having a baby or whatever. That's the problem with two is that you kind of are dealing with that situation. Time for us to launch an auction website. Dude, I don't know. Everybody asks me because I tell my other creator friends, like, you need to do something. And they're like, what should we do? And I'm like, listen, I don't know. This isn't for me to figure out. Do something. Just check your email inbox. See who's emailed you. Go to dinner with them and just agree on a business. Maybe it's that easy. That turned out to be a$37 million email.

1:30:06So good. So what it means that you took a minority stake or majority investment, right? So they own a majority of the company. You still own some of the companies. So I still own a good chunk of it, which is another reason why. Truthfully, I'm not actually contractually obligated to continue. I could leave at any time, but the obligation is I still want it to succeed because I still own a good portion of it. And there's now an opportunity for another exit. That's exactly right. Which, you know, with$37 million is not the full company, that means the valuation is pretty high. Higher than that. Right.

1:30:37Thus, the goal is we grow up further and there's a possibility that we could do this again. And so that's on my mind at the moment. Of course, yeah. Yeah. yeah you could buy rob thomas's house in that in that scenario rob if rob's a fan of the show you know rob you're just we'd love to come over and hang out he has a range rover and he's just like guys live in the dream we would all be so lucky yeah i can't wait to check out his instagram it's not that interesting it's not that's what's interesting yeah that's the benefit of his life and so i i sit here and think about like yeah like that's that's where i want to be i want to be the rob thomas where i'm 50 just like playing with my cars and my dog and my kids and just like chilling oh i gotta find i gotta find my rob thomas yeah i'm about to get on instagram if there's anything you take away from this episode it's find your own rob thomas all these guys i looked up all these guys and it's so interesting to see what all of them are doing and they're doing some variation of that whether it's by choice or because they like want to and i think mentally if you're in my world where like i was never a rock star but i got billions of views and so like that was a thing that was there's not that dissimilar when you think about it and so like you you could it's gonna happen to me yeah you can choose to either do it and want to do it or do it and have to do it but it's happen in one way or another.

1:31:59Cool. Well, thank you, Doug. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah. It's an awesome conversation. Yeah. I agree. I agree. I'm really excited to see what happens next. I appreciate that. Me too. And hopefully we'll buy another car. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. We'll keep going. We'll give you one. Yeah. Or you'll give us one. Who knows? Yeah. An outback wilderness. Yeah. Maybe. That sounds amazing. Cool. Well, thanks so much, Doug. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for coming down. I appreciate it.

1:32:26Thank you.