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

20:46There's a vehicle upstairs, my dad's truck, that truck. Oh my gosh, that is such a, such a cool experience driving that thing. It's so nostalgic. Think about all the memories that I had with my dad, with my brothers, with my friends driving it to high school. You know, obviously I love the car market. I think looking at the 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 eight, 800 ,000, maybe more here soon. I think that's fun. So, I mean, I love, I love, I love my next project. Uh, 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.

21:30That's maybe a little bit out there. I love the experimentation. process. So yeah, I mean, there's kind of like, there's just a lot of different reasons for why I love cars and different reasons I love certain cars.

21:40Graham Stephan:Is there a rule of thumb that you look at in terms of net worth versus what car you could afford? Not at all. It's just you look at the - Net worth is exactly the kind of car you can afford. Exactly. It's a one-to-one. Yeah, exactly. How much money do I have? Yep. That's a car I can buy. Yep, exactly. No, I mean, like my approach to buying cars is the polar opposite to yours, Graham. No, I shouldn't say the polar opposite. I should backtrack. YouTube is a big part of my life, right? When I buy a car, I'm always thinking YouTube, right? So in one year, I have YouTube. In the other year, there's obviously, there's the finances behind it, right?

22:15Like it's got to make sense. Then there's the heart. I want a car that I love. Even if there was a car that was going to be the best YouTube car ever, but I didn't like it, I probably wouldn't buy it, right? It has to be something that I am passionate about to an extent. What is the most financially irresponsible car purchase you've ever made? I mean, the Koenigsegg, for sure. For sure. But it doesn't sound like when all is said and done, it was actually that bad. That's the only car I've ever lost money on. Like a significant amount of money. That's the only one I've ever lost money on. But you still got to produce all of those videos.

22:44Yeah. Yeah. So you got to be net positive. On everything. Everything. Maybe like...

22:50Graham Stephan:I lost money, but I'm net positive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There might be some car that I lost like$1 ,000 or$2 ,000 on, maybe. but even with the content, I've always been in the positive. Now, what about for the average person that's watching and they want to afford a supercar? Do you have a rule of thumb in terms of what you could afford? I mean, I think so much of it comes down to is how bad do you want it? What sacrifices are you willing to make? You know, because when I bought my Gallardo, yeah, I wouldn't have recommended that to anybody else, but I know myself, right? I know how I think. I know how I operate.

23:21I 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 a i don't know i don't know what the probability or what that percentage would be right um so i yeah i mean i think i think a big part of it depends on what are you going to do with the car that is like the biggest factor and that's what i tell people because i bought my gallardo not because i just wanted the car i had a plan i had an idea and then once i got the car i went and executed it and that was building my YouTube channel.

23:56And 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.

24:28So I think that everything's shifted so much.

24:31Graham Stephan:Speaking of the Gallardo, I just saw what happened to it. Yes. It burned. Yes, it did. And then you bought it back from the insurance company. I did. What caused the fire? 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.

25:02So I went to a charity car show that morning that was in a park and I rolled the car onto the grass and it sat there for about two hours. Thank goodness the car did not catch on fire there because there was a bunch of other supercars all around me. It was this grass field. the car was sitting in direct sunlight. We were at the charity event for two hours, got in the car, took it to lunch about 10 minutes away. It was one of the hottest days. It was middle of June. It had to be 100, 105 degrees. Like it was hot, not a cloud in the sky. And we drove it to lunch and I parked it in a spot with zero shade in the direct sun.

25:40And, you know, went inside, had a burger, hung out with the boys for a couple hours and the car just baked, just baked. And then I got in the car and it was, you know, 10, 15 minute drive home. And, you know, I was, 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. 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?

26:22In hindsight, obviously I should have pulled over, but you know, so I think what happened though, is that the EVAP system, there's, there's all these fumes, right? From the fuel system. And at some point that ruptured and the fumes started, started going out and it's a very tight little chamber and it was super, super hot. And it's not a common way for cars to catch on fire, but based on what I read online, It can happen. It does happen. And when I tore apart the car, I could see that the fire happened where the EVAP canister is. It's right above the fuel tank. All the power steering lines are totally fine.

26:58Fuel lines were good. Coolant lines were good. And the fire was right there for the EVAP system. And that's what caught her on fire. So what did the insurance company end up paying? so i had never filed a claim before ever and i was unsure you know i've 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 um my insurance agent actually saw the video because it happened the fire happened on a Saturday and there were so many people around.

27:35Everybody was filming it. You know, the social media person in me was like, I got to get this video up. So I posted on Sunday. So I wake up Monday morning, getting ready to hit up my insurance. I have an email from my insurance agent. And they're like, James, we obviously saw the car caught on fire. Here's your policy number. Here's the phone number. Like reach out. Like if you need anything, let us know. And it ended up being one of the most seamless processes ever. It was super smooth. Um, They ended up giving me$160 ,000 for the car, which was pretty incredible. It's a 06 Gallardo, 50 ,000 miles.

28:09It's a gated manual. So that's everything, right? These cars are impossible to find. It's impossible to replace. one of the things that I did during you know the negotiation process if you will is I went on bring a trailer I went on you know auto tempest car gurus auto trader I tried to find comps and it was impossible to find comps there was a manual guy auto spider that sold for 260 there is a manual guy auto 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.

28:46Like I want to keep this car. I don't want the car to go to Copart. Like, can I buy the car back from you guys? And they sold it back to me for 31,$32 ,000. Whoa. So they, they just sent me a lump sum check for like$129 ,000. Can you fix the car for less than a hundred? Oh, all day. Oh, like all day. So is this a lucrative way to make a little bit of money? So first off, there was no insurance fraud. Jack, Jack. No, I'm not saying that there was. I'm just saying, is it lucrative? No, for sure. For sure. So obviously right now there's a lot of unknowns, right? I haven't fixed the car yet. There's a lot of things that are undetermined.

29:28The biggest part about it is that the car now has a salvage title. So a huge percentage is just that loss in value. 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.

30:02It'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 body work, finding the parts is difficult, the time, the energy, the fact that I'm doing a lot of the work myself saves me a ton of money. Also, um, 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 a hundred.

31:00But five or six people came out of nowhere with the fire extinguisher, saved the car. If it would have burned for a minute, two minutes more, the car would have been gone, like just gone. It would have been unfixable. So I do feel very lucky from that standpoint.

31:14Graham Stephan:Why fix everything yourself? Because I even noticed that to pick up the other Gallardo, you know, the extra body, you drove like 11 hours. Yeah. Like you're doing it all yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think 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 an adventure, right? It's a cooler experience. The guy I ended up buying the shell from, the donor car from, dude, legend. The nicest guy.

31:51He 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, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to sit here and tell you guys I'm a, I'm a award-winning mechanic, but you know, I like getting my hands dirty over the last couple of years. 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.

32:46I mean, I found that shell on a Thursday night, Friday morning, I was loading up the truck to go get it. Right. Like I didn't even wait. I just went and did it. I control my destiny. And you know, with the YouTube game, 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.

33:15Graham Stephan:It gives me credibility. 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 got to stick around. What Not is the number one live stream shopping app. You can score Pokemon cards, sports cards, toys, Legos, Funko Pops, electronics, tools, coins, and even snacks, candy, meat, and seafood.

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36:18Graham Stephan:Again, that's evenrealities.bio slash icedcoffee. You could scan the QR code on the screen or just click the link down below in the description and use the code iced coffee. Is it safe to buy and drive salvage cars? 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. 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.

36:57Graham Stephan:Right. But it looks awesome and it's half the price. Yeah. If I'm just looking to mob around the city like that, that's cool. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that's why salvage cars are so cheap is because there's that unknown. There's that risk. I think the big thing with a salvage title car is if you can find photos of the accident, right? If you can find what happened and then also when did it happen? If you're buying a car and the accident happened three months ago and it just got repaired, you have no idea. Whereas like my 430 Scud, that was a salvage. This was a salvage, this Aventador Roadster.

37:31Now those cars, the accident had happened four, five, six years ago. You could see it on the Carfax. Let's say, for example, it had 10 ,000 miles on it. And now the car has 17 ,000 miles on it. You know, there's that history, right? You can look back, you can see like, oh, this car has been driven a lot. It happened a number of years ago. Here's photos of the accident. So it's really a case by case basis. And there's never a guarantee. obviously an inspection right you can get a ppi somebody who knows what to look for you know frame damage is obviously the most important thing that you're looking for not always easy to to know for sure but uh that's why they're that's why they're cheap you know in terms of selling cars you sold

38:10Graham Stephan:the kountosh i did and values have skyrocketed what did you sell the kountosh for and why so i sold the kountosh for 565 uh i bought that car for 450 475 somewhere in there so you know i probably pocketed around 100 grand drove it across the country filmed a lot of cool videos but the main reason i sold it though is it was incredible to look at it was just the coolest car it was triple white big old wing i mean every single lamborghini that exists now looks the way it does because of the 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.

38:54I felt like that might happen to the Countach. Didn't want to drive it in the wintertime. Didn't want to drive it in the snow. It was an investment grade car. So I felt like, you know, the spring and the fall, I could drive it. And then even when I did drive it, you know, I wasn't going to take it on a road trip. I had all this money tied up in it. And it just felt like, you know, YouTube is not only my business, but it's also my passion and being able to take that money and do other things felt like the better option. I also had a Koenigsegg at the time and I had payments and I wanted to finish the Batcave.

39:25And 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. You know, and it's something I really wanted to finish. It's enhanced the value of this house significantly. And then I took the rest of the money and I was able to kind of give me some room, you know, to make Koenigsegg payments while also investing in the channel, other projects, etc., etc. What's the car worth today? You know, it's crazy. Countaches, they've definitely gone up, but they have not gone up like the Mercy.

40:05They'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 wasn't the car, right? The Countach is one of the most confusing cars because they started building them in 1974 up to 1991-ish, give or take. And there's so many different iterations. There's fuel injected, there's carbureted, there's fender flares, there's side skirts. There's just so many different factors. and like the carbureted round body, like 1985 cars are the cars to have. And they're worth way more than my car, which was an 87 quattro valve.

40:47So 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? Yeah, I mean, I think a big part of it is how much money I have in my bank account, right? 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?

41:34You know, something like the M4. I think I paid 65 for that car. Sometimes it's just easier to not finance a car. It's just easier to just send the wire, get the title, register it, move on with life, right? Whereas other times it's like, you know, like the Temerario, that car's financed, right? That car, including tax, was$500 ,000. I think I put down 250 because I'm like, you know, I'll put down 250. I'll use that other 250 to invest in other projects. You know, so a lot of it just comes down to timing.

42:04Graham Stephan:What's the cost to own so many supercars? Like with insurance, gas, maintenance. It's crazy. I mean, I have 19 cars in my car collection. The insurance is not bad. It really isn't. Now that the Koningsweg is gone, I want to say every month I'm paying 22 to$2 ,400 for 19 cars. That's not bad at all. For 19 cars. Yeah. How much is your insurance going to go up after the claim on the Gallardo. So here's what's cool about the Gallardo. It was not a collision. It was a comprehensive claim. So it was a no fault. So it was a no fault claim. So my rates don't go up. So all this time, the insurance has been the goat.

42:42The goat, literally. Now I've been paying insurance for 20 years. And when I add up all the money I've paid, it clearly exceeds$130 ,000. But no, I mean, that's why you have insurance, right? And that's why you pay it. How much debt do you have on your collection? So the Temerario, there's a loan on that. And then the Storato, there's a loan on. Temerario, I've had this car for a couple months. Like I said, I financed 250 of it. So I probably have, I don't know, 245, right? The Storato, I've had that car for a couple of years. I got maybe a$100 ,000 loan on that. I'm pretty close to just writing a check and paying that off here soon.

43:17So I probably owe 50, 70, 50 to 70, give or take.

43:21Graham Stephan:So, and then everything else is paid out, right? that's actually really not that bad we were talking to uh to varish and he's he's like loaned on everyone yeah and i'm adding this up i mean obviously he's doing incredibly well on his videos yeah 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 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 no no no you're wrong jack He said the opposite. It was what the financials are, but I have to assume it's me.

43:56Who's the best with money? Stradman. The best with money? Yeah. More than Doug DeMuro? Doug DeMuro. Doug DeMuro. Yes. No, no, no. I'm pretty sure that someone said that you were the worst. And it may have been Doug. I wouldn't be surprised. But every time that we talk to you, you are like meaningfully in better finances. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Like every time. So here's the thing that I will say. every single automotive YouTuber that we are talking about from let's say 500 ,000 subs up to 10 million right every single one of them every single one of them is incredibly intelligent every single one of them has gotten to where they're at because of a ton of hard work they've all made fantastic financial decisions the paths have been very different and the narrative has also been very different the thing about my YouTube channel that's very different than Doug's YouTube channel.

44:49My YouTube channel is about my life. I don't know anything about Doug. I don't know nothing about Doug. I know Doug has a career GT, right? But I don't know anything about his life. And that's because his content style is car reviews, right? And podcasts talking about cars, but I don't know anything about them. Whereas my channel is all about my life. And so you see the ups and the downs, the ebbs and the flows. I'm also an open book. I'm not embarrassed to say anything. I'm not willing to have people laugh at me, make fun of me. I'll tell people I'm leasing the Koenigsegg. I'll tell people about my monthly payments.

45:21I'll tell people about mistakes that I've made. And so what's different about that is that there's this narrative that is put out there. And depending on who the audience is, they're going to pick up the narrative differently than other people. And also clips are going to set a different narrative for some people than other people. The people who watch every single one of my videos, they get it. They understand what I do. They understand the decisions I make. They understand the financial, um, acumen that I have. Right. But if you're only seeing a couple clips here and there, you have no idea what's going on.

45:56You just see me run around with a camera. You don't get it. Right. But then a guy like Doug, right. A guy like Doug, you don't see anything, right. You just see that he sold cars and bids for$20 million. Dude, this fly, dude, bro, This fly is going to kill me. It's going to go in my mouth. I'm going to choke and die.

46:13Graham Stephan:It's just speaking so seriously. I know. Oh, my gosh. This is adequate. I can see it in your guys' eyes, too. Yeah. He's going to edit the fly to go in my mouth. I'm going to swallow it and pass out with AI, right? There was a point, though, where I was watching. Hold on. So just so if we cut back into here, I'm not like going from a laugh. Yeah. There was a point, though, where I was watching your videos where I worried that you seem very stressed out because you had the 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.

46:48Graham Stephan:And I'm adding this up and thinking, oh my gosh, like that would stress me out. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think stress is real, right? Like there is true stress, right? And, uh, 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 I wanted the audience to understand why I was selling it rather than just, oh, I sold the Koenigsegg.

47:38Like I wanted to explain why I sold it, right? And I wanted 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, I was, bro, what are we going to do?

48:02Graham Stephan:Has this ever happened before? You know what? I was initially thinking - I'm like really trying to hold it in. I was initially thinking we could edit around this and just cut around. I don't think so. No. We're just going to keep this probably in the podcast because it makes it - If someone's watching this, I mean, they're getting the real deal with the flies. Can they even see it though? Can they see the flies? I don't know. Are your cameras that good? I think so. Can you guys see it? Yeah, I hope they can see it. I hope please let us know if you see the flies. If you can. If I swallow a fly, I'm done.

48:30Like that's going to be a meme forever. They will perform the Heimlich. Yeah, you guys know how to perform that, right? Yeah. You're CPR trained on some level, yeah? Yeah, he'll be the CPR. I'll do all the other stuff.

48:40Graham Stephan:Do you regret showing so much of your life? Yes and no. Yes and no. I think sometimes in the short term, I can regret it, right? You know, people, lots of times people just don't understand the business. They don't understand the philosophy. They see a clip. They'll say something on Instagram. I'm like, oh, this is so annoying. Why do I tell people? Because then people just make these assumptions, right? But I think that the long game that I've played on YouTube is a big part of my success is that I'm an open book, is that I tell people how it is, right? I tell people. I'm not ashamed of who I am or the decisions that I make.

49:18I could control the narrative so easy on YouTube, right? I could make people think that I'm worth four times as much as I am, that I am the richest guy ever, that I just know how to print cash. I could do that all day, baby all day. I could do that, but it's just, that's not who I am. That's not who I want to be. And I think it makes it a lot more relatable because so many people on the internet are like that, especially nowadays on Instagram. And you think about the Miami bros that are the richest people you've ever met in your entire life that six months later disappear and you never see or hear from them again.

49:49Right? Like there's so much of that on out there online. Whereas for me, it's like, no, I'm a car guy. I love cars. I have a degree in accounting and finance. I'm making decisions with my heart, with my head. I'm building my YouTube channel. Content's important, but passion is important as well. I'm going to make these decisions. Some are good decisions. Some are bad decisions. And I'm going to tell you when I make a bad decision, I'm not going to lie about it. I'm going to tell you the truth. And once again, I think for the long term, I think that's the play, especially on YouTube where you're doing this long format, right?

50:20Short format is just the death of social media, right? Because you can do or say or be whoever you want to be, but the truth will always come out in long format. And it's so much easier to tell the truth. Could you imagine being a liar, having to keep up with all these lies day after day, week after week? It'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. So tell us the truth. Which car has been the most difficult to own? Uh, the Koenigsegg by far, for sure. Not even close. Koenigsegg all day. Not even close. Koenigsegg is a very rare car.

50:54Just 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 uh 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 sure make sense yeah what's the best bang for the buck m4 like in my collection m4 in my collection for sure i mean i paid 65 grand for this car.

51:48It had 5 ,000 miles on it. It's got all the tech imaginable. It's got insane power. You add a couple turbos, you make it E85 compliant. You're at seven, eight, 900 wheel horsepower. You can drive it every single day. It's a new car. It doesn't break. The S58 motor in that thing is bulletproof. In my collection, for sure, something like that.

52:08Graham Stephan:Now, the car market lately has been going crazy. What is the biggest misconception people have about what's happening? Oh, that's tough. I think 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 happen.

52:45So 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? 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 because of social media. There's so much out there, right? I mean, curated John Tamarian, love John Tamarian. He's so passionate.

53:18He's one of my favorite human beings. He's out there telling people like these cars are going up in value. And when you listen to him, you watch him. He's so passionate. He's so knowledgeable. You're just like immediately after watching a John Tamarian video, you go on, bring a trailer and you're like, what can I buy? I need to buy something right now. Like there's such urgency to it. So you have that, you have guys like Doug DeMuro, right? You have these podcasts talking about the car market. Cars are so much fun as an investment too, right? Owning a stock is boring unless it goes up in value.

53:46You own a car, like think about my Marcielago. I paid$2.75 for that car. The doors go up. It's worth 800 grand now. It's a manual V12. I get to drive it. I get to take it to car shows. I get to meet people. I get to post it on the internet, right? Like it just checks all these box, you own a stock, like, ho-hum. I mean, if it goes up, right? If it goes up, incredible. But if it just stays flatline, you gain nothing. If that car was still worth$275, I've still had a great experience. So I think that's a factor. I think another factor is the Luce, the stupid Ferrari Luce, literally the downfall of Ferrari.

54:21And like I said earlier, all these dealerships, immediately their phone is off the hook, right? Off the hook, like, I got to get anything that's good right now because EVs are taking over the world. Manufacturers aren't cool anymore. They're building a bunch of nonsense. I want an NAV 12 manual or an NAV 10. Like that's what I want. I want the cars of my youth that are special cars. So that's another factor. And you know, the other factor is the conspiracy theories, right?

54:48Graham Stephan:The dealers. 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 Mecham. Absolutely. Sold for crazy numbers. And then everything else bumped up by like 15%. And then there were two sales on Bring a Trailer, which kind of raised a few eyebrows. There was an SLS AMG. Yes. That sold for like$700 ,000,$800 ,000. Yep. Now, granted, that was a really unique car. It was a bit of a unicorn. I haven't seen another one like it. So maybe you could justify that.

55:25Graham Stephan:and they said that was a real transaction. It went through the buyer page. You saw the bidding on it though, right? I did. You saw how it went up? Yep. And even bring a trailer. I saw it made a little post. They made a statement, said this was a legit, appears to be a legitimate transaction. How much of that do you think is just manufactured to make it look like? Oh, it's all made, yeah. Oh, these auction platforms are a huge part of what's going on. And a lot of it is the phantom bidders. But you believe that maybe some of it's fake. Oh, absolutely. I know it is. with 100 how do you how do you know because i'm in the car world i talk i talk to people i know how but how what are okay so are you just like some guy says like oh yeah i know that like you're just taking this guy for his word no for sure i mean so yeah there's a lot of different factors i mean the sls i don't know if the audience knows what happened there right the car was the car was bidding at what three four five hundred grand you know going up in increments of five thousand dollars and then all of a sudden somebody dropped a two hundred thousand dollar increase.

56:21So 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.

56:42Graham Stephan:There's no way. You'd think though that they would just make like two accounts though and kind of bid back. Well, that's, 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 mercy logo on bring a trailer. So I hit it, bring a trailer. I send all the information. I take photos. They hit me up and they're like, what do you want to set the reserve at? Okay. Let's say bring a trailer has to agree. Let's say we agree at a million dollars, right? The bidding starts off, you know, you get two, three, four, 500 ,000 pretty quickly.

57:12And 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? 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?

57:50So that's one way to sort of guarantee that at least your car gets, gets to like that reserve minimum so you don't have a garbage sale. Wow. So that's a huge part of it. 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? Five? 5 % give or take 6 % but isn't it above$100 ,000 it's kept at$5 ,000 right exactly 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?

58:43You just keep the car, but then all the other Mercys you own all just shot up in value. So then you put the other Mercys on bring a trailer, you don't bid, and then you make the money that way.

58:52Graham 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 decks, including you, Jack, Ford GT, the silver one on bring a trailer. So for over$700 ,000. Right. And it wasn't that unique of a car. I mean, it was a standard silver car, I think 2 ,200 miles, whatever, over$700 ,000. I'm like, how on earth? But it seemed like there were three bidders at the same time. Right. And then there's another one that just came up, already at a million dollars for a Heritage for GT with only a few miles on the car. So maybe that's a legitimate one, but I'm shocked.

59:32Graham Stephan: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 a store, taking payments, the checkout page. But it's actually very straightforward when our partner Shopify handles it for you. 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. Plus when they come back, their details are already saved.

1:00:02It's one tap and they're done. 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.

1:00:20Graham Stephan:Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to small everyday businesses just getting started. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business, so go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash ICH. Once again, that is Shopify.com slash ICH. One more time at Shopify.com slash ICH with the link down below in the description to get started. Do you think that this is sustainable? Absolutely not. I mean, at some point you reach a ceiling, right? But can it stay there? Like, here's the thing with the Scuderias. Yeah. I can't see the Scuderias falling much further.

1:00:59Graham Stephan:Right. Like if they're trading at 700 grand, I could maybe see, you know, 600, 550, but I think they'll stay there. So the people who buy those cars, they're not flipping them. They're not selling them. They're just going to hold them. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's obviously a car by car basis. I think a limited edition Ferrari is about the safest investment car ever because guys who own Scuderias or Challenge Stradallis or 458 Specialis, they're like kind of old money guys, right? They're not going to have to fire sale cars. You look at a car like, I don't know, an Aventador SVJ, right? That's a social media car.

1:01:31That's young money. You know, a lot of these guys maybe are financing the cars, blah, blah, blah, blah. At some point, you're going to get to a point where these cars, they put them up on the market and nobody's going to buy them, right? And then that's when the values start to plummet. I think a lot of these cars will hold the Ferraris and the Porsches of the world. But we've never really seen anything like this, right? It's kind of uncharted territory. There's more money in the market than ever before. But that's a scary world out there. If you were to buy a single car that you think would make the most amount of money in terms of percentage return, which car would it be right now?

1:02:06So 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 an interior and it's worth way more money if it's a Porsche so to answer your question I would lean toward Ferrari I like Ferrari it'd have to be a limited edition ideally a V12 or a V8 naturally aspirated the car would have to have not gone up a ton in value yet F12 is a nice car it's got an NAV12 I like the F12 production's pretty low it's a beautiful car it's iconic Ferrari F12 is pretty good those things are probably 300 grand right now.

1:03:09A 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're a million and a half, two million to even get into those cars. But yeah, I would say NAV12 Ferrari would be where I'd go.

1:03:26Graham Stephan:I'm going to say the 550 Barchetta. Oh, I like that numbered car. They only built 448 of those. I like the convertible V12. What's crazy, I was very close to trading my Ford GT straight up for a 550 Barquetta. Ford GT is a sick car though, I mean. But the car that I would be trading for had a modification to it. Oh. And it was for the roof. They made an automatic roof. Oh, an automatic. Yes, it was an improvement. The guy spent like$50 ,000. It wasn't a Super America? No. Oh. He spent like$50 ,000 to$100 ,000 doing the roof because he lived in Florida. Interesting. And it rained so often that he wanted to be able to put up the roof really quick.

1:04:03Graham Stephan:I get it. But just that one modification meant it was no longer stock. Exactly. And I drove the car. I didn't like it. Now, I'm too short for the car, too. It was very difficult for me to put the seat forward and then have enough distance because it's a very long car, too. So I didn't do it. And I'm glad I didn't do it. But I would say that car. And then I would say a very unique spec, 458. For sure. For sure. It seems like that's important now. It used to be like, oh, you got a red tan car, Ferrari, like that's it. but now it's like color combo is super important like the cars at me come in january the yellow yellow yellow yellow the blues 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 seven hundred thousand dollar range it's like oh it's a brown car with a brown interior whatever and so yeah spec is super super important almost like the rarer and the more unique the better you know what i think is going to hit a million dollars very soon is the no stripe ford gt yes i think those are massively undervalued and they're selling about the same price as just like a well taken care of normal one right yeah i'd rather than a stripe so if anyone's watching with the no stripe i would trade my car for a no stripe my buddy Alex, he lives in Arizona.

1:05:28He just bought a stripless white Ford GT with the exact same thought you just said. You just bought it. Yeah. I think there'll be a million dollars. Cause they're so like the stripes, like I actually love, well, they both look insane, right? A stripless GT is so wide, so low, but then the stripes are super iconic, but the stripless are so rare. You never see them. I prefer the look of this stripe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the stripless are like single digits. Like his car is a white stripless one. And don't quote me on this, but there's like seven of them. You know, it's like single digit. And that's what collectors want to.

1:05:58Graham Stephan:Yeah. What's a car that you can't believe has gotten so expensive? I mean, 458 Speciale Aperta. Bro, it's like two and a half million dollars. It's a 458 with a body kit. Like I bought a 458 Spyder in 2020 for$165 ,000. It is 95 % of a Speciale Aperta. And this car is trading at two and a half million dollars. It's like, this doesn't make any sense at all. And, uh, I mean, it's a beautiful car. Don't get me wrong. It's limited edition. It's Ferrari. It's one of 499. Like I get it. It's in a, it looks insane, but you can get the same car for a 10th of the price, you know, maybe, maybe an eighth of the price now.

1:06:36Graham 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? Uh,$5 million. I would finish my backyard. First and foremost, I would definitely finish my backyard. The second most, what would you do? Cause I don't think that costs 5 million. No, no, no, no, no. But that's like, that's the first thing I would do. That would be like five, six,$700 ,000. I would do that. That's a lot of money. Well, I want to build a detached garage. I want to build a sports court. Landscaping's expensive. Bro, houses are so expensive. It's crazy. Everything is going up and up and up.

1:07:06The price of lumber, steel after COVID, everything's super expensive. So I would do that first and foremost. Sports court for what? For basketball? Basketball, pickleball, tennis. Like it's kind of an all-in-one. The thing I like about it is it reduces your landscaping, which is really nice. Less to take care of. and it'd be a great way to exercise that's still fun. Like I love shooting hoops, like it's a ton of fun. So that's the first thing I would do. 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 Timurano's Dorado.

1:07:37So let's say that's a million bucks. So that's first and foremost, I'm left with$4 million. The mortgage on my house, I'm sitting at$1.4,$1.5 million. So I would take the rest of that and I would just pay it off. So I'd have literally no debt. That would be the greatest thing ever. What's your interest rate? Five and a quarter, five and a half, somewhere in there. That's not terrible. No, it's not. It's not. It's not. I think I've reached the point in my life where freedom is like my main goal, not absolute maximum financial, you know, decision making. I just want to be free. I like the idea of having no debt.

1:08:16I think the Koenigsegg having that debt and all those payments and thinking like, I'm going to make$60 ,000 every single month was so much. And I've reduced that obviously a ton to now where it's like$15 ,000 a month is my breakeven. But it'd be so awesome if that was zero.

1:08:32Graham 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 against your ordinary income. For sure. Huge. That takes your five and a quarter down to like two something percent. That's basically inflation. So you basically got free money for$7.50. I recently paid off three mortgages on rental properties in California. All three were between 2.8 % to 3.3 % fixed for 30 years on rental properties. I never thought we'd see them three. Yeah. I paid them off because I sold the properties. For sure.

1:09:11Graham Stephan:I get that. But getting rid of the debt, even though it was cash flow positive and the debt was so cheap, felt good. Yeah. It's just like I have rocket money and I'm able to see like the debt category and like the asset category. Just having that like go down significantly. I don't know. I just felt better. Sleep better at night. It's weird. 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. 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.

1:09:46Right. 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 Jack is well, Jack, you lucky guy. You enjoy it. You enjoy your twenties. I am. Oh yeah. Good. Good. But you know, you start thinking toward the future and, uh, 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

1:10:16Graham Stephan:any debt so it's really nice this is gonna sound stupid why not just sell off three cars pay off the mortgage finish the backyard and you're down to zero well you told me that you were just going to give me five million dollars jack jack jack did thank you jack by the way so that that that's why because all of a sudden i have i mean five million dollars it's like well yeah get rid of this right now. Sure. I could do that. I could sell the mercy. I mean, I could sell the mercy, right? Right now I could finish the backyard. Uh, I could take some of that money. I could pay off. I could sell the Temerario.

1:10:47I mean, certainly, absolutely. I'm not looking to actually like do that right now. I like the challenge. I still like, you know, I don't want to sell that car. I love that car. I think that car is going to be worth 2 million someday as well. And so I want to hold onto 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.

1:11:18That's kind of like my new goal versus expansion. You know, I've been on YouTube for 15 years. That's crazy. Um, 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.

1:11:59Graham Stephan:How's your business doing? How's it broken down today? Last time we spoke, you said every year it's exactly the same. Two million bucks, two million bucks, two million bucks. You guys, it's literally the same. It's still exactly two million bucks. Yeah. I mean, it fluctuates. Yeah. It fluctuates from 1.8 to 2.2, right? Like it's just back and forth, back and forth. I have to say that's the best thing that you could possibly, I think, you know, since you're not going for like trying to like grow as big as possible the consistency no for sure and i 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 views no matter where you go how does that feel because when we filmed our first podcast you had said every video is a million views yeah yeah and it'll you know if you get like 900 if you get like 1.3 but it's always about a million right how does it feel seeing the views go down from like a motivation standpoint as like some of your audience just kind of like ages out and they find like other content yeah i mean i think i think for me i always knew in the back of my mind it was going to happen it was always inevitable right like i'm in the entertainment industry you look at actors musicians one hit wonders right like it's hard to maintain longevity in the entertainment industry youtube is unproven social media is unproven but 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's still making content what was that almost no one from back then is still making content vehicle virgins i think was the only other person who's still posting dde as well yeah but yeah i mean a lot of the big guys well shmeet he's around too there's Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:13:48But 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 was new in the back of my mind it would happen. You know, views obviously have dropped. the cool thing is I found other ways to make money there's so many more social media platforms

1:14:18Graham Stephan:now I don't know if we could talk about it you told me you're doing OnlyFans

1:14:27Graham you know it we weren't supposed to talk about it that was the one thing Graham I told you we weren't going to talk about it we'll talk about it for the members

1:14:37Graham Stephan:members only for the members content we'll talk about that we'll save that Yeah, we'll talk about that later. 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, that 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? Snapchat is huge. How does that do? Snapchat is amazing. Dude, I love Snapchat. What? Yeah, Snapchat's incredible. Yeah. How much are you making on Snapchat? So I post on Snapchat, almost like an Instagram story, right?

1:15:09It'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 how much are you getting paid from uh 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 uh it takes no time and you know i'll shout out my youtube videos it'll drive some traffic here and there to youtube i'm guessing and and vice versa how did you grow on snapchat just posting you know the cool thing about cars cars are so clickable yes right cars are so clickable the thing oh my gosh these people wouldn't click on us yeah yeah no i mean cars are so they would hate yeah yeah it's not really a let's be honest Snapchat is not really a finance platform.

1:16:06Graham Stephan:Snapchat, yeah. We've tried growing on Snapchat. I used to have a Snap show. Right. That did well, and then they discontinued that recently for a lot of creators. Now it's just like you have to treat it like reels. And now it's like stories. Which is interesting that Instagram doesn't employ the same thing. Like, I don't know why they wouldn't. I think because Instagram has just beaten everybody. People post on Instagram because they want to post there. They want to get famous. They don't need to pay people. They don't need the motivation. I mean, I post on Instagram. I don't get paid. I make nothing on Instagram.

1:16:31And yet I still see it as being valuable because most of the connections that I make is on Instagram. So that's why I post on Instagram, but I make no money on Instagram. So outside of Snapchat, then what other streams of income do you have? TikTok, Facebook. Those are kind of the other big three, if you will. Strad Pizza. Strad Pizza. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about Strad Pizza. I kind of see Strad Pizza as like a, it is, it is a completely separate entity, obviously, compared to my YouTube channel. and so everything that we make it just gets reinvested back into the business is it making money a little bit yeah yeah 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 is kind of like survive and then the fall you thrive a personal thing that i love watching like i i will dave portnoy yeah yes yes i have watched him for years i love his pizza reviews i love new York style slices.

1:17:27I love New Haven style slices. Like I geek out on that stuff. He reviewed your pizza. Seven, seven, 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 seven, seven, while it may seem like it's average or slightly above average, actually suggests to me that it's a phenomenal pizza. He also said it was better than David Dillbrick. 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?

1:18:07He 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 seven, seven, eight. But until you see the video go live in the back of your mind, I was like, well, what if it was a, you know, six, seven or whatever. But like, you never know. Right. Until the video drops, you don't know. And then also like, what else did he say? Because with Portnoy, like his reviews, like it's so funny because he's so unhinged at moments. Right. And he says whatever's on his mind. So when that video dropped, it was literally like we could not have asked for a better video.

1:18:46David Dobrik. 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 Strawman 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 so you think the pizza could be more refined today oh for sure yeah I mean like we were three weeks into it.

1:19:25And so, yeah, it was pretty nerve wracking. It was on a Monday too. And Mondays are the slowest days. So, you know, pizza, just like anything in life is like, it's way better when it's fresh. Right. And Mondays are the slow days. So the pizza is sometimes not as fresh. Now I guess with his, he always orders a full pie. So he ends up with a fresh pie, which is nice. But, um, yeah, I mean, it was, it was, it was incredible. He was hilarious. He was funny. Great score. I'll say this. A lot of people may disagree with me, but I actually don't think a fresh pizza tastes the best. I think if you go to New York and you get the slices that are reheated by the slice, it always tastes better than a fresh pie in my humble opinion.

1:20:00However, seven, seven phenomenal score. Did you see more customers convert to the store because of that review? I had no idea the effect that it would have positively. We were so busy. We couldn't keep up for a month. I mean, he, he turned our sales. I want to say, I mean, I don't know off the top of my head. It was insane though. It was, it was something like, uh, the week before we were at like$25 ,000 for the week. And then the next week was like 45 ,000. Like, I mean, we're talking about like astronomical effect and it wasn't just like that week. It, it lingered for, for four or five weeks.

1:20:36I mean, we did, I want to say that month we did like a hundred and already thousand, 140 ,000 that month. So what's the plan with Strad pizza? So the plan is obviously to expand, right? Like that's the goal. Uh, 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, uh, 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.

1:21:09Houston had Houston's hot chicken. And, uh, You know, there was a lot that went into that, right? But Houston was like, dude, if you did this with your social media following, you would absolutely crush. And he told me that years ago, right? Like this was, man, I don't know, 2022, right? He told me that years ago. But in the back of my mind, 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 that aspect. And then my business partner, Freddie, he has done my merchandise for, man, I don't know, five, six, seven years.

1:21:43And 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, use social media to leverage it. I wanted to do something different. I love pizza. And so it kind of just like all sort of came together and became Strad Pizza. You know, my ultimate goal of Strad pizza is to kind of challenge myself, have a place to do car meets, to meet people, try something new. And then of course, obviously financially, it'd be cool to expand it from a legacy standpoint and a financial standpoint.

1:22:23So we'd love to grow it. That would be the goal for sure. What's the profit margin on a pizza? How much does it cost to make and what do you sell? Let's see. Food margins are going to be about 35 to 40%. And then your labor is going to be about 35 to 40%. So you have about 20 to 30 % margins. What about rent? Yeah. I mean, we're in Scottsdale rent. We had, we kind of got really lucky with our situation. So Freddie, his business is like four doors down from Strad Pizza. The place that we got is an old subway. 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.

1:23:03The rent initially, like it was, it was a tiered structure. So we started off at like 1700 a month. I think we're at 30, well, we're at 34, 42 a month now. So I mean, it's, you know, we're, 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 is not cheap. The crazy thing though, is we've been looking in salt lake, trying to find a location and rent prices have gone up so much just in the last like two, three years they've gotten i mean we're at six seven thousand dollars now for an equivalent

1:23:37Graham Stephan:space are you happy with the name yeah oh yeah are you worried about tying it to your brand no no not really because yeah i mean like let's 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 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 expand or you eventually franchise that they would say, what happens if you stop making content? What happens if you don't continue marketing the business?

1:24:17Graham 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. I think at the end of the day for a restaurant, if the pizza is 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 is bad, they're not going to go back. They'll still watch my videos though.

1:24:53I think, hopefully. But they're not going to go back.

1:24:55Graham Stephan:So the pizza is what's most critical. I'm going to say, I think you need a little bit of a gimmick. Okay. You got to do some sort of a challenge where they get like a free pizza if they're able to finish like some massive - We've talked about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. We've talked. I love that. I agree. I think that would be fun. You know, like a challenge or like you make it - That's a good idea and - Really, yeah. And what if there's a YouTube channel where like you have like a camera in the store and anyone who wants to try the challenge like they also have to consent to being filmed i like that you get to post it on the youtube channel so you get all these crazy people and you could like mic them up and you have like weird people just chowing down on a bunch of pizza and talking at the same time oh this is hard this is that would be i would also markets itself which is the great part i'd also like to see a really hot pizza like on the scoble units like just off the charts they have to sign a waiver they have to be right you know 18 and over for sure but you give them this pizza and they have to be filmed and if you finish the pizza it's free and then they get maybe like you get like uh you know a discount on future pizzas or that you get the next like five pizzas free you get a personalized video from stradman i can't wait to talk to my business partners on tuesday we got to do these pods more i agree i think those are fantastic ideas we've talked about the food challenge we didn't talk about live streaming it though i think that's maybe not live streaming but just just having like a camera in the store and then like just set up a little tripod and film it and just because i think like having just unique people for sure while they're talking while they're doing it that would be so yeah i would watch 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 a pawn 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 what do we do is like some drama throughout the day that seems logistically very difficult because you have to edit like editing that that requires like a full editor i'm just 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 people that go into a store like want to be filmed that's that's always the balance it's a balancing act and like when it's really busy because you know just like in a restaurant it ebbs and flows right and it's a small location it's 1200 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 i think filming the challenge would be would be i think filming the challenge would be fantastic it just markets itself for sure for sure i did a challenge uh where i did a pizza eating contest there's a football player will hernandez he plays for the arizona cardinals and he's you know 300 and whatever pounds and he's huge, right?

1:27:36He's a, he's a lineman. And we did a pizza challenge where it was one V one me or Sam who could eat the pizza faster. And that was super fun. That was kind of a fun little marketing gimmick that we did and we filmed it and you know, it did really well on Instagram and whatnot. So yeah, I mean, I think, I think more stuff like that definitely, but I think once again, the pizza, if the pizza is really good, cause think about all the restaurants, think about your favorite restaurants. Yeah. We don't ask what their opinions about certain things yeah yeah yeah like the owners we just we just go there if the food's good right if the food's good you'll keep coming back obviously to grow it though right so it's kind of two phase right 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 copy 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 which is you know we're we're pretty young we've been like i said we our one year anniversary was April 12th.

1:28:28So 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 outside of that, do you have any other investments, any stock, any crypto, any gold? I knew this was common. I knew this question was good. 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 in the stock market real quick so that when you guys ask this question i think oh yeah i got stock here i got money there i got money there is that ever going to change yes and no i think i think that the youtube channel i mean obviously strad pizza is 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 uh will kind of dictate everything right you know the youtube channel yes views have fallen but i'm still getting six seven hundred thousand views a video i'm still making fantastic money Like it's still very much a part of my life.

1:29:27I 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'm just like, I'm not into that. I don't have time. I don't, I don't want to have time for that. Right. Like I want to have time for this. And so right now, this is kind of what I know. this is what I'm really good at.

1:29:55I think I could learn how to be good at other things,

1:29:58Graham Stephan:but it's a balancing act. Doesn't it feel like a little bit of a hamster wheel though? I know you really love what you do, but if you don't have other investments to fall back on, you really don't have any active income coming in to supplement just all the other expenses. Yeah, life is kind of 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 health, right? Everything is a hamster wheel. I love the hamster wheel of it.

1:30:30I am happiest when I'm busy, when I'm working, when I'm on the hamster wheel. When I get off the hamster wheel, 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 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 obviously diversity is or you know diversification is super important i totally agree with that i just like i just and maybe it's ego driven i just feel like i'm so good at this that i just want to invest all my time into this what's really interesting to me is you know earlier in this podcast you said when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

1:31:17And then you also kind of did that exact same thing with visiting your mom. 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.

1:31:55Yeah. I mean, obviously I can tell you that I always turn a negative into a positive right here on the podcast. That's very easy for me to say. There are certainly moments in my life where I don't do that. Right. People don't see that. Right. Like I'm a human being, just like, just like everybody, there are moments of weakness and negativity where I'm in my head, where I'm mad, where I'm upset, where I'm like, oh, the world is against me. You know, like it's very easy to sit here on a pod and just say, you know, what needs to be said in this exact moment. For sure. No, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But there's, there's lots of moments that, you know, initially I'm very negative and then I have a way of turning into positive.

1:32:31And 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 in social media is when something bad happens it makes for the best situations on camera.

1:33:05Makes for the best videos, right? Like it, that's just how it works. And what's so cool about YouTube is it's literally, if you can have that mindset, you understand that when something bad happens, you just got to immediately be like, no, I'm going to turn this into a good thing. And you can, because of all the blessings you have because of what you do for a living, right? Like when I get a flat tire in a car, for most people, that's the worst thing ever. For me, I'm like, oh, this is gonna make my video funnier. It's annoying, but it's like, I'm just going to get out and film this and laugh on the side of the highway, right?

1:33:37Now, when the Gallardo caught fire, I was devastated because that car means so much to me. And I was on the verge of tears when that happened. And then it was literally angels from heaven spawning with fire extinguishers. I remember distinctly in my head, I'm looking at the car. I'm like, the car is gone. And then I was like, I need to film a walk around video of this car because I'm never going to see it again. and as I pan from the back, I 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.

1:34:12It's like, Oh, we might save the car. And he comes running over, saves the car. And, uh, in that moment is 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 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 uh 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.

1:35:00You know, I think a lot of people watch my YouTube videos because, you know, they're going through stressful situations and maybe this is a little bit of a reprieve or a break that they can take away from the stress of their life. And so I feel like there's a bit of a responsibility, you know, to be positive, you know, to turn negative into positive. There's a lot of kids that watch my channel and I hope a lot of them see that, right? And they're like, oh man, James Stradman, he does this. He looks for the best in things, right? And not that I always do that. I'm a human, right? There are times in my life when I don't do that.

1:35:33But 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.

1:35:44Graham Stephan:I will say you're like that even off camera. You won't even swear. We've tried to get you to say bad words and you won't do it. Yeah. Because it's weird hearing it come from you. You almost like literally You wouldn't do it. or never speak negatively on anybody either. Like you're just like a positive and forgiving person. Yeah, I mean, f*** you, but that's not true. I have moments. No, I know I do. Like, I mean, I'm certainly, I have weak moments. I have moments of stress. I have moments of anguish. I mean, I got audited. You guys got to ask me about the audits. 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?

1:36:29Because I just wasn't sure of how to narrate that. I just didn't know. But during that, I was, I was, I was in a dark place. It was tough. And then I'd have to, then I'd just have to turn it on for the camera. Let's talk about the audit. What triggered the audit? The audit was 2022, 2023. I was having a great day. I went to the mailbox, I opened up the mailbox and 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.

1:37:05It's like a nice way of saying it's an audit. And all of a sudden it was, I mean, it was just like, Oh my gosh, like I don't even know what to do. Right. Like this is the scariest thing ever reached out to my CPA. You know, we had to reach out to the IRS and we scheduled like a phone call with them. Right. And initially the audit was for 2020. It was for my 2020 financials. Right. So I have this phone call with the auditor and, uh, you know, they just started asking me all these questions and half of them, I don't even know the answer to. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Like, right. Like it's some of these questions were so obscure.

1:37:40It was like, you know, tell us about this or what do you do? How much money do you make? How much did you pay in taxes? Like who's doing your, you know, who's doing your tax return, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, eventually what it ended up leading to was how I was treating my cars. That's what triggered the audit. So obviously these cars, they're a big part of what I do on YouTube. and before the audit, I was treating the cars as props, as equipment, as the same way a farmer might use a tractor, right? These cars are everything. Without my YouTube channel, there's no revenue. They're not passenger vehicles.

1:38:22I don't use these vehicles to get from point A to point B. Yes, I do in a sense, but the main point of these, these generate the revenue. There's no revenue without the car. Whereas you think about like a realtor, right? A realtor might have a Mercedes. Maybe they take clients, go look at homes, right? They make money selling the house, not because of the car that they took, right? 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 you get what I'm saying, right? It's a piece of equipment. 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.

1:39:04Correct. It's, it's limited. It doesn't matter. Like this is the dollar amount. This is what you do. Especially for luxury cars. For luxury cars. And it's, 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 there's different methods you can choose based on the equipment and you know i have a degree in accounting you're gonna 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 and the big thing for me is like when I bought this Temerario, right?

1:39:57I go to the dealership. I buy the car. I film the video. Let's say it does a million views. Let's say I make$10 ,000. That$10 ,000 does not exist. If I don't have that car, it literally does not exist. The channel, the YouTube channel does not exist. I don't have a YouTube channel. I do not have an automotive YouTube channel without cars. So that was the framework for why I chose to do what I did. And I knew that I had audit risk. and my dad, he was a CPA. My accountant here, he's a CPA, right? I know a bunch of other people that are CPAs and they understood the logic that I took and they agreed with it.

1:40:37They also warned me that I had audit risk. So I just 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 Temerari, 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.

1:41:18You're just delaying taxation. Correct. It's just a timing thing, right? It's not tax evasion. It's just tax avoidance. It's timing. That's literally all you're doing, right? And I had done that for years, right? Because I mean, I started my YouTube channel in 2012. I filed returns for five, six, seven, eight years up until 2020. And I'd been doing that. And you could see on my tax returns that when I sold cars, I was paying a gain on said taxation. So that's what triggered the audit though, to answer the question. The depreciation recapture triggered the audit.

1:41:47Graham Stephan:Was it just the amounts? Like they're seeing a high income and then very high deductions. So with the audit, they obviously don't tell you what triggers it. All you can go is based off of that. And that would be obviously. So why would you paying more tax trigger an audit? Because it was the recapture, right? No, no, no. It was the ebbs and flows. It was the ebbs and flows. Understood. 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.

1:42:27I was buying more cars. And yes, I would sell some cars, but I was going from two cars to four cars to eight cars to 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? Because I was just growing, growing, growing, growing. So the write-offs were getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so I think that's absolutely what triggered it.

1:42:51Graham 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.

1:43:23Graham 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? It was a year-long process, the audit. And it was, like I said, the worst experience of my entire life. It was awful. it was 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.

1:44:04He'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. If you're like a taxi driver or you have like, there's a lot of ambulance companies, right? Or like curses or something. 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.

1:44:37The 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 fifties that I don't know. They didn't even know what YouTube was, right? Like they didn't even know what social media was. This is a whole new world and there's no tax code for an automotive YouTuber, right? It's such a niche. There's nothing out there and they have to go buy the book. So the first little while I'm trying to explain my case, right? Because this affects my business so much. I mean, not being able to expense the cars in the way that I was doing affected my business significantly, right?

1:45:15Because 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? Because they understood my logic. And that's always the key thing between tax evasion and tax avoidance, because they could see that what I was doing was not evasion. It was simply avoidance. I was just interpreting the tax code in a way that they didn't feel like I could interpret it. But the key 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.

1:45:56And the interest is, I don't know, 7%, 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 are so slow. Like they hit you up with an email or a phone call or whatever. And they're like, yeah, we need this document, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one. And we need these by this date.

1:46:36Right? So I'm just like, man, I got to film a YouTube video today. I got to do this. I got to set this aside. So you get on your financials, you work with your CPA, you get them all the information. And then I'm thinking you want them to like you, right? You want them to 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.

1:47:05But 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 you know and i'm just like i'm like and it was it was it was crazy so you could have theoretically in that moment said all right there's the money i could have but initially when they came back it was like i owed like a million dollars no yeah a million dollars and then i'm going through line item by line item.

1:47:46There 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 van and like the plate where it has the gross vehicle weight rating, like the 6 ,000 pounds.

1:48:23It's kind of like a trial and you're guilty and you have to prove your innocence and you have to prove documentation. Then it was like my laptop, my laptop, they deemed as not being able to write off because for whatever reason, I hadn't sent them the documentation, but they hadn't asked for the documentation. organization so anyways long story short they send me this huge bill and i'm like this is insane and then so then i get a tax attorney involved i start you know being like no i'm fighting you on this this this and this we'd have these meetings in person where it's like the three of us on one side the three of them on one side and the crazy thing about all this these are irs auditors right they're just employees of of the government and they get to dictate your fate like this isn't like a court.

1:49:08This is just like some random employee. Right. And so we're like kind of going back and forth, back and forth. And, um, we ended 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. Um, 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.

1:49:42Like 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 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. Um, you can see I've given you guys every single information imaginable.

1:50:17I'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 got to do this all over again. How much longer is this going to take? Because it's a balancing act, right? You're like, do I just pay this, be done with it? Do I pay the interest? Do I pay the penalties? Life moves on. You know, do I, do I go all the way to tax court? How much am I going to pay my attorney?

1:50:48How much am I going to pay my CPA? Like there's all these different things going on in your head. And then we're like standing out there having a conversation. and then one of the auditors walks out and they're like if you'll sign right now today we will waive the 20 penalty which was like you know i don't know 100 grand 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 um and the thing about the back taxes the 500 the reason i wasn't worried about it is because in the back of my mind i always knew i was going to have to pay that when I sold some of the cars.

1:51:23Like I was new. It's the same thing. 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

1:51:34Graham Stephan:get rid of. How do you approach your taxes differently having been through what you've been through? Yeah. I mean, obviously very conservatively. I mean, the big thing about my business is everything is passenger vehicles. And I, I, I just, it is what it is. You take, I think it's called straight line depreciation. It's just whatever the deduction is. Yeah. You have to depreciate it over a certain amount of years. So with passenger vehicles, yeah, there's a guideline. Like with luxury vehicles, there's a guideline and there's an amount the first year you can ride off. And it's a stated figure.

1:52:08There's no, it's just easy in that sense. Like there's no rhyme or reason, no debating. So I just do that, which is a bummer. So what I'm curious about is why it seems like these IRS audit agents or whatever they are, why they are so serious. Is there an incentive? Why did they want to take this 20 % penalty? But it was almost like a negotiation tactic because apparently when you walked out, you won because they ended up coming back and saying, oh, we're sorry. So it's like, it's almost like they have the decision making ability. And yet in a situation where they also knew they didn't necessarily have the right answer, they still pursued more money.

1:52:51And then when they realized in the pursuit of more money that it wasn't going to work out and it was going to be all annoying, something would happen. They ended up actually forgiving that. That's the thing that I'm a little bit curious about. Like why, why was it almost like their own money was on the line? That's what was the craziest thing about it. Like, I promise you, it felt like a trial. I was being interrogated by these, like, employees that had no motivation. It's not their company. They don't get, they don't have any incentive. So why did they, but do you have any idea? There's no incentive?

1:53:21Graham Stephan:There's not. It is illegal to tie a person's salary to the amount of money collected because it would skew the outcome of something if they're personally tied to it. So my understanding is they're not. Right. I don't know because to me there has to be some sort of incentive or motivation to pursue certain audits. Like I could see the argument you could make to tie like the number of audits or the outcome, but you're not supposed to do that. But I see it as being somewhat reasonable in that line of work. Yeah. I mean, I don't believe in it. I think I think that's what it is. I think that to be an Iris auditor, you feel like you're catching fraud.

1:54:04Graham 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, I see you. It's like, oh yeah, dude, you have 20 cars. I try not to think about that, but obviously that crossed my mind. You know, I mean, I'm a social media influencer. I drive a bunch of bright colored Lamborghinis. I make fantastic money, right? If you're an IRS auditor, why would you like me? And you're probably not into cars. You're a female. You're older. 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.

1:54:41I mean, like I said, it was an interrogation. It was crazy. And I was guilty until proven innocent.

1:54:49Graham Stephan: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 oh absolutely you never say anything you never speak and it's one of those things where it's like uh the attorney does the work for you they do it for you you're not supposed to really get involved if they ask something from you your attorney gets it from you and that's that's what i learned through the process and that's why anybody watching this if you ever get audited get a tax attorney the crazy thing about it is I do think that there was a bit of trust gained with me being involved.

1:55:28Like 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 ask a question, like there, there was one item that I, it was like, I just made a mistake on the taxes. Right. Like it was like, and I just was like, yeah, I don't know. Like there was, it was like a$5 ,000 check or something like that, which I know it sounds like a lot, but when you have, you know, $2 million or$3 million in gross revenue, right?

1:56:05Like 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 like, oh my gosh, how did I miss this? Like, I'm going to get in so much trouble. And I just emailed her and I was like, I completely missed it. Like, yes, a hundred percent. This should have been included. So I think over the course of the audit, 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 on, if you're on trial with a lawyer, right?

1:56:36Same concept. So that would be my number one recommendation.

1:56:40Graham Stephan:How do you combat burnout? Because I imagine throughout that entire process, it's hard to flip a switch and just like put on a good mood when you've been through that all day. Your mind's racing. You're not mentally there. I remember I was in New York at a hotel and I got a call 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 of type of moment. Like it was, it was like, yeah, you owe a million dollars. It was one of those moments. And I remember I was in a hotel. It was early in the morning and I was getting ready to get an Uber to go to the Lamborghini lounge to film the Lamborghini Revolto that had just been unveiled to the world.

1:57:21And this was a big video. Stefan Winkleman, 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, I don't want to say, I don't want to say I cried, but my eyes got watery. You know what I'm saying? And like Sophia was with me and I was like, she could tell on the phone that I was like, something happened. right and then i got off and i was just like i'm screwed like i'm hosed like this i don't i don't know how i'm 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 revolto 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.

1:58:20And 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

1:58:43Graham Stephan:desperation. If you could go back and tell yourself anything, would you just tell yourself, hey, don't be as stressed out about this? Like if you get audited again, would you just say like, it's really not worth stressing out over? Oh, for sure. For sure. But that's because I have the knowledge of being audited. Right. I mean, it was such an educational opportunity in that sense. Like I feel like I gained a degree in tax accounting during this audit. Like I just learned so much about, um, about the business, about the tax laws. And I think it's made me better moving forward as far as tax planning.

1:59:20So I think it actually helped me a lot. And like I said, I always knew I was going to pay the tax. I just knew it was a timing thing. Obviously the interest would be the sunk cost that you weren't expecting. The crazy thing about it, I wouldn't do anything different because from 2012 to when I got audited in 21, 22 or whatever, that 10 years, because of the way that I was treating these cars. And as long as I got away with it, that helped me grow my business so much. I grew my business so much faster because of the way that I was treating the cars. And some people are probably going to hear that and be like, yeah, that's tax evasion.

1:59:59But I got audited. It wasn't tax evasion. But because I was able to take that money and reinvest it into my channel. You got a higher return reinvest. 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.

2:00:19Graham 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? Right. 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? Because some rich dude paid some politician and got it done. So what would you change about the tax? Oh, I mean, I'd change a gazillion things, right? I mean, there's there's so many things. It's just like how you can get a jet, right?

2:00:58And 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.

2:01:06Graham Stephan:You want the crazy one? Yes. You could write off a sports team. They get mega deductions. And that's why you have a lot of these really wealthy people buying sports teams because you could finance a sports team and the depreciation you get up front is massive. It's like buying a big piece of real estate and doing cost segregation, bringing your cost down. All of a sudden now you get a bigger write off than what you spent. It's wild. It's wild. But they were the ones that were lobbying for that. Exactly. It's really interesting how the tax code is structured like that. It is. And I think that's obviously the most annoying part, right?

2:01:39I mean, obviously in a very, very small way, how I'd love to adjust the tax code is for automotive YouTubers. Because the way I was treating these cars before the audit, I will go to my grave that that's the right way to do it. I will go to my grave that I was doing it the right way because of how my business generates revenue. Like the business doesn't exist without the cars. These are not passenger vehicles. These are, this is equipment. Absolutely.

2:02:05Graham Stephan:i would change it 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 no but then they post on instagram they're like but i've grown my instagram following it's a slippery slope like then everyone i wonder if you can 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 right in real estate and you could probably say the same thing with odometer logs yeah the mileage logs either that or just like amount of time spent on the youtube channel the thing the thing is that it when something works then everyone will find a way to take advantage of it to the nth degree simplify no and that's what i was going to get to later like as far as like an overhaul oh the tax code needs a complete overhaul i mean in so many ways.

2:02:57I mean, the fact that, you know, you could, 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 cause 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.

2:03:29Every time I file my tax return, I'm like, what am I missing? What could I have done to save me tons of money that I just don't know about? And the fact that you just submit a tax return, you don't even know. You don't even know if you did it right. You know, like you don't get any feedback. You don't know if you overpaid. You don't know if you underpaid. You don't know if you missed deductions. If you, unless you get audited, that's like the only way that you really

2:03:52Graham Stephan:no. You're going to hate this. My prediction in the future is that we're going to have a digital currency and everyone like a social security number is going to have a wallet, a digital wallet, and it's going to know every single dollar that's going to come into your account and then where it goes. Everything is going to be able to be traced. And so if a dollar comes in and then I said to Jack for like, you know, I'm reimbursing him for dinner or something like that, It's going to know. And it's going to come up with AI, a transaction log that you're going to have to clarify. And it'll spit out a bill for you.

2:04:26Graham Stephan:Maybe it's good because they tell you exactly what you owe. Like, that doesn't sound bad at all. But you will put more faith in them to do a better job than you, which so far doesn't have the best track record. That's the only thing that you could say is that. I trust AI more than I would trust the judgment of an auditor. But do you trust the government's version of AI? And maybe it's so good that it knows like, hey, Graham, this year you made this. Here's where all the money went. And you could go log by log by log. And it just asks you questions for a day. Do you want to increase your deductions?

2:05:04Graham Stephan:But what it could do is just ask like, hey, on this date, this amount, what was this for? 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 select a button. I have a feeling it's going to get to that. It has to. It's certainly going to 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 going to exist soon means that every single transaction, right?

2:05:37Yeah. Like it's, yeah. I mean, and the thing I learned in the audit though, is you have to, you are guilty until you prove your innocence. So let's say for example, we go get food, right? Okay. We go get a burger and you guys Venmo me$10 and you Venmo me$10. That's, they're going to charge that as revenue and I'm going to pay tax on that unless I can prove that, no, I paid for the meal. They Venmo'd me back.

2:06:01Graham Stephan:I got the receipt. They wanted to, they wanted to pass that law recently for the Venmo transactions. Right. I think it was over$600, which, you know, we're reimbursing everybody for everything. And it's like tracking every meal and every thing is a lot. Yeah, it is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And the government, they want to collect as much as possible. And the thing that makes me upset over your situation is that they come down so hard on you. And meanwhile, oh, my gosh, the stuff that Nick Shirley has exposed. Oh, my gosh. And a lot of those people, by the way, have either pled guilty or they've like found them guilty of these things that he was accusing them of.

2:06:45Graham Stephan:Right. And the amount of money that's out there that just gets wasted. For sure. And it's and it's when you look at how much income taxes take compared to every other expense of the government, it's like I don't want to say it's insignificant, but it's a small chunk compared to like all these other things that when you look at dollar for dollar would probably make a bigger difference. Absolutely. I mean, I think most people agree that the government is very wasteful. I used to have an internship at a high school for the Oregon Department of Transportation. organization 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 going to be so wasteful and the problem is that when you or me and we have to write a check a six-figure check at the end of the year or seven figure like you know that money's not going to be used wisely but if you had that money you could use that to support your local economy because the one thing about my business I support the local economy.

2:07:46All the shops that I take all these cars to, you know, all the tires I buy, all the oil changes, the maintenance, the insurance company. I mean, I'm spending so much money like in the local economy to grow this economy. Right. And then I have to write this massive check to the government where there's all this corruption. It's not being spent wisely.

2:08:06Graham Stephan:That's what's so frustrating. I think people would be more likely to be on board if they saw the money being put to things that they could visually see. They're like, oh, well, we fixed all these potholes. And we've cleaned up these streets. We removed the graffiti from this. And we were able to 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's just like sitting there watching the person rising put up the sign and like he's just taking down a little metal sign and then putting a new one on and there's just someone there the entire time just like watching like why is this two people doing this it's a one person job right paying double for this why and that's the problem between private enterprise and government with private enterprise, there's incentive.

2:09:03There's motivation. With government, there's not. And that's the difference. And that's just human nature. And if human nature wasn't that way, and the government could be just as efficient as private enterprise, dude, I'd be all for it. I'd be all for it. You know what this reminds me of? I'll just say allegedly. Allegedly, when I was in high school, we put a Christmas tree on the roof because we allegedly thought it would be very funny. And over the weekend, they found out, the school found out, they have the cameras, they found out who allegedly did it. And then they got a quote to remove the Christmas tree from the roof.

2:09:37The quote came back that they needed three workers that only do jobs of a minimum of three hours per worker. And their rate was like$50 per hour. And so they're going to charge the people who allegedly put the Christmas tree on the roof, like three or$400 for removing a Christmas tree. And so someone, after hours that day at school, got a trash can, put it on the ground, and then threw the Christmas tree off the roof and landed it beside the trash can, and then picked up all the broken everything and threw it in the trash can. And not a word from the administration. They acted like nothing happened.

2:10:14Graham 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. For three hours. Yes, because they're also going up on the roof. What if someone slips? And that's the difference between private enterprise and government. If there's private enterprise, the owner of the company walk up there and just do it. That's the difference, right? Whereas the government, yeah, they have to, right? Maybe there is a reason they have to, but that's the problem is that the government has to. Yeah. If someone put it on top of our warehouse, we would just send you up there or me up there.

2:10:49We just throw the Christmas.

2:10:50Graham Stephan:You don't have the insurance from me, Jack. I would do it. You don't have the limits. You don't have high enough limits for me to get up on your roof. It would be okay. The main issue is, yeah, it's like they're not going to go around searching for a bunch of different bids. Right. They're going to get the first bid and they're going to charge, oh, it's just passing along to someone else for$500. Because it's not their money, right? To remove a Christmas tree from a roof. It's not their money. They just work for the government and they just sign off on it, right? So it doesn't matter. It doesn't come out of their wallet.

2:11:14And that's just, that's just is what it is. And like, I get it. Honestly, if I was in their position, I wouldn't care either, right? Like it's not my money. I wouldn't care. Is there anything you miss about life before YouTube? Yeah, I miss 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.

2:11:45It'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 do I got to do for this car? What do I got to do for that? What can 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 can I film? What do I got to do? And I get back, I need to edit this. I need to do that. What future project seem is coming up. Monterey car week's coming up.

2:12:10Like, 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. When do you think you're going to retire? That's so tough because I could retire right now. I could literally, I mean, I would sell some cars obviously, right? 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.

2:12:43I think YouTube, I will certainly taper back and I have tapered back. You know, I think two years ago, I was probably filming seven, eight videos a month. And now I'm closer to like five, six, maybe four or five. But I still love it. I'm still like married to the, not married to the game, but like, I still enjoy it. I still get that one out of 10. Yeah.

2:13:00Graham Stephan:I love the creativity. I still love the cars. How'd your video today do? Driving my son to school. Yes. I clicked on it because of the title. You see, I feel like that title was within the framework of not being clickbait because in the video, I took over Steve Hamilton's life and his son, Jack, we were joking about how Jack was my son the entire video. So I think that was not clickbait. I think that counts. But no, I mean, that was a ton of fun. I got to drive an Apollo 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.

2:13:36I would say I definitely have another good five years. I would say almost for certain another good five years, probably 10 years. But honestly, in 20 years, I might still be doing it. If people still watch.

2:13:49Graham Stephan:I'm curious, is marriage on the horizon? Oh, absolutely. Marriage is on the horizon for sure. What are you waiting for? You know, everything in life is timing, right? It's all about finding the right opportunity, the right moment. I believe firmly that I kind of want a proposal to be not perfect, but not unexpected, but special. It has to be at the right time, you know? So, soon. What advice do you have to Jack? Finding a special someone. Enjoy being single in the sense that this is the time where you can work on who you are so that you're a better person for when you meet the right person. Does that make sense?

2:14:30It does. It sounded profound in my head. I don't know if that makes sense. What are the best ways to work on yourself? You know, not that I'm the best at this, but, you know, taking care of your health, obviously, you know, your finances, getting your ducks in a row. This is a time when you can take risks. I always look back at my 20s, and I think a big part of the success that I've had is that I was single. I didn't have any kids. I had financial freedom. I had the chance to take a risk and do something at the time that was kind of scary and kind of sort of dumb, right? I mean, like early on, like I went to live in my car to grow my YouTube channel.

2:15:06If 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. 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.

2:15:40Because, you know, I think, I think 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.

2:15:54Graham 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. Yeah. I mean, like I said, the videos are a very edited non-fictional reality. What is it? What is it? Fake. No, 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 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.

2:16:32You know, we fight, we resolve, you know, just like any relationship. But yeah, we have a fantastic relationship. But what you see on cameras, it's yeah, it's it's a edited reality. Life is not perfect. You don't want life to be perfect either. Honestly, a perfect life sounds awful. And I think that sometimes you gain the most in a relationship when you do struggle, when you do have issues. and I think that it's important to, yeah, to learn how to communicate and, 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.

2:17:06I 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 stuck by my side. And when I got audited, you know, I get this bill for a million dollars. I'm like, everything I know financially is hosed.

2:17:45Like I'm thinking like, this is apocalypse type thing. Like I'm, I'm, I'm done. Like I don't, 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 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. You wouldn't notice it on camera, but behind the scenes, it was awful.

2:18:27I wasn't a terrible person. I didn't do anything, but I was in my head. I was a mental basket case. I was down and out. Woe is me. The world is out to get me. I'm screwed. I was just, I was a bad energy to be around and she stuck by my side and she was a big part of that driving force to keep me going, that positive light. And, you know, lots of times, you know, I still get frustrated. I'm human. She's still there always looking for the positive 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, to help in those tougher situations.

2:19:03Graham Stephan:It's really interesting that, you know, I was just thinking that a lot of people say marriage is hard and maybe I've not been married long enough, but we've, Macy and I have been together, I think it's just over seven years. Time flies. 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. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, 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 yeah, I mean, it's, I think, I think as life as you go through challenges in life.

2:19:40You know, obviously I hope that it continues as is, right? But there will be struggles in life. You know, I think that's what's so important about having a significant other is helping you get through those hard times. You know, my dad passed away. That was a very hard moment in my life. Getting audited, that was a very hard moment in my life. And, you know, there's gonna be hard moments in life. Life is not all easy. You know, I do think that we're both very blessed. You know, we're very blessed. We live in the United States of America. right like how lucky are we one of the richest countries on earth i had i had great parents i i did well in school and uh so i think you know and then now like look what we get to do right like we're so lucky so i think i think that's a huge blessing as well and you know the fact that the fact that marriage has been amazing for you is incredible when are strad kids gonna happen marriage first okay then strad kids yeah strad kids what about ram kids and jack kids you know But yeah, I would love to be a father.

2:20:40Absolutely. 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 relationship. I had 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 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 um 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 what I whether I'd want to put kids on YouTube it seems like a tough it just seems tough dealing with that you know I don't know if I want their I don't think it

2:21:26Graham Stephan:depends on the I think it depends on the content it really depends on the kid the content the family For sure. I think it can be done. Absolutely. I think PewDiePie was like one of the best ways to do it. It just seems so wholesome. I love watching some of those videos. Yeah. It's just calming. Yeah. And it's not like the focus is like the kid versus like, all right, we're going to do a slime challenge today. For sure. I think when the kid is the focus, when the kid is the title, the kid is the thumbnail, when the kid has to film a video to pay the mortgage, like some of these family channels, obviously that's a very slippery slope.

2:21:57I think for me, a lot of it will come down to, does the kid think it's fun?

2:22:05Graham Stephan:Is it like quality time with dad? The problem is probably before the age of five, they're going to find anything fun. For sure. No, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. But then as they get older, you know, I think as they get older, that's where it gets tougher is when you have a six, seven, eight year old and let's say they go to school and let's say I'm still relevant then and their classmates know the channel. They know the kid. And the kid's like famous all of a sudden. Because I think about myself. I mean, I started YouTube, I was 23, 24. I had no success until I was like 26, 27, right? So I had built that foundation of who I was and who I wanted to be before any kind of fame.

2:22:43And the fame that we have, I mean, I always refer to it as fake fame. Like it's a very, when I think about real fame, this is so, so incredibly small and it's very niche. But I do think that it is hard to handle. But for me, I've grown into it, right? I started with no subscribers. 5 ,000, 100 ,000, 500 ,000. You know, you work your way into it. But with a kid, I would worry about a kid being really young, going to school and immediately being like popular. And then also their classmates knowing that, you know, their dad has maybe a bunch of Lamborghinis. That could be a tough balancing act.

2:23:17Graham Stephan:Slip and falls. You got to worry about that. That's also true. Parents come over, you know, I hurt my ankle. Yeah. Well, the way I designed this house, the garage is kind of a bit separate. so there will be locks certainly between the garage and the house when kids are that age. Because it's easy for my foot to get stuck in this elevator, you know? Yes, it is. It is. We do not want four-year-old Stradbaby getting his foot stuck in the elevator. Or mine. Or yours. Or Grant's. Like I said, I wouldn't be able to work. No, no, no. And I, yeah, it'd be pretty expensive. Loss of income. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

2:23:48Graham Stephan:So we're going to flip this then and you said you would love just to talk to us. Yes. Let's do it. Now you're in the driver's seat. I need an answer from both of you. Who is the most financially responsible automotive YouTuber? Doug DeMiro. Probably. I mean, financially responsible, he makes a lot of money. Responsible or successful? Big difference. Both. Oh, yeah. Big difference. But big difference. You agree. There's a big difference, right? He buys ETFs and stuff, right? Yeah, it's all index funds. Yeah, right. I don't know if he has a mortgage on his house or not, but it seems like he's properly diversified.

2:24:21Graham Stephan:Right. He has a high allocation to very specific cars, but I think in combination with the rest of his portfolio, it's just diversified. And he runs a great team. I have to say, I remember the first time we filmed with Doug DeMuro, he was, I don't want to say stressed. I could tell he had a lot going on. And he was running everything himself. And he's like chucking in a podcast in the middle of like all these other things. And he's like, oh, yeah, tomorrow I'm going off and doing this. I have to do this. he had a lot going on. Then when we filmed after he sold cars and bids, he's a different person.

2:24:57Graham Stephan:He came in and was calmer, joking around. 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 and making a lot of money doing it. You got to name somebody else though. You have to just because. I think it's a different thing because I don't know how everyone's investing. Like, that's one thing. I know who's the least. Like, I would probably say, you know, Whovi or Tavarish. Really? Yeah. Whovi, to me, is so smart. But his whole stance is that he's the dumbest automotive YouTuber.

2:25:32He is smart. But he's not dumb. He's so smart. I don't think he's dumb. But I think that, like, being financially responsible and being smart are two separate things. Right. And so, like, when I know that, like, he can't physically help himself to buy another car. without even knowing where the money's coming from? That's what makes his channel. Okay, but here's the thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. You asked the most financially responsible and I'm trying to answer head on. 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?

2:26:08For Doug, it worked. The car reviews took off and he ended up, I'm not going to say by luck because obviously we know Doug is not luck. Doug I love Doug but Doug ended up doing the thing that ended up being the most the highest ROI field of automotive YouTube the dude doesn't have to buy any cars he doesn't have to spend any money he his operational expenses his overhead is literally nothing by design of how he figured out how to get views on YouTube whereas how I figured it out how who he figured it out how Tavares figured it out, ended up being way more expensive. But that's their thing. So like, Whovie has to buy these ridiculous cars because that's his thing.

2:26:51It's not that he's financially irresponsible. It's because that's his thing. Tavares buys rebuilt cars because that's his thing that works on YouTube. If Tavares 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 buy expensive cars and modify them. Like, by design of how I get views, I have to spend a lot of money.

2:27:19Graham Stephan:My other two answers, I think Shmi. Of course. Absolutely. And then I would say Steve Hamilton. Okay, Steve doesn't count, though. Okay, fair. Shmi. I mean, obviously, Steve is the most successful of everybody combined plus, right? But not with YouTube, right? Like, YouTube's like, because it can. Yes. But Shmi, I agree. I would say Shmi. I feel like Shmi is almost like a dark horse candidate because I feel like there's so much unknown about shme but man when i'm spend time with shme that guy is he's got so many things outside of youtube i don't even know and he posts daily he posts so much in and like the car his car collection is like the cars he buys like he's got so much money he's the hard worker he's so smart like i loved him he's he's awesome all right now who's the least i feel like it has to either be freddie or hoovey i was hoping my i was hoping my thought my thesis was going to change you so i I don't understand.

2:28:11Like, what's your argument, though? Because I'm not saying who has or doesn't have the most amount of money. What I'm saying is, like, who is the most financially responsible? Yes. I agree that, like, that's sort of the content that he makes. And so he needs to be doing that. He has to do that. Yes. I 100 % agree. And he makes a ton of money doing it. That being said, 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. Yeah, if you look at it from a... On top of that, like, he went to Barrett Jackson to go, you know, speak at this event, and they're paying him money.

2:28:38he 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 right okay putting it into more assets building a net worth i don't know if his net worth is necessarily growing over time but it's all narrative that's what i'm saying i can say whatever i want it's all the narratives that's what i'm getting at it's the narrative like like, Whovie's narrative is that he's this kind of, like, crazy lunatic dude, kind of like a Steve Will Do It in the car world.

2:29:11I think it's accurate, though. I think it is, too. No, but, like, I'm not saying it's not accurate, but I also think— We're not saying it's ineffective. Right. I think it is very effective. Right. All I'm saying is, like, Whovie turned a video camera into a net worth of probably, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight million dollars. What? You think that's accurate? I think it's— That seems a little aggressive. little i think it's really yeah tyler no dude oh yeah it's he is yes for sure uh for sure we i look we were totally speculating here yeah i'm this is just from like the the limited conversations that we've had with tyler we went out to dinner we've like right a couple podcast episodes with him right 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.

2:30:02And I think that he may sometimes, and this is not only me saying this, he would 100 % agree. Sometimes he may lack financial discipline. And maybe that's his shtick that he then monetizes. For sure. For sure. But that doesn't necessarily make it like only a good thing. No, no, no. I agree. I agree. I 100 % agree. I mean, I - So who do you think then is the least financial? Is the least? that's I guess that's the whole point of this is like yes there is a lease but I that's why I go back I'm like you can't ask us a question that no no no I know I'm gonna get good I'm gonna get every single one of the automotive guys between 500 ,000 to like 10 million that's been around for a long time has basically turned nothing into millions of dollars that's kind of what I'm getting at yes Doug ended up starting cars and bids and selling it for a lot so he is kind of like the golden child, but kind of what I'm getting at is like, everybody has had to make fantastic financial decisions to get to where they're at.

2:31:02And that the narrative of having an automotive entertainment channel is such that we all take a different route in how we're going to communicate who we are online. Right? Like it's, it's, 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 yeah obviously but i'm just like and realistically they've made a lot of money no no that's what i'm saying everyone is financially yeah in a pretty dang good spot right right right but we're talking about something that's different from like that no no no for sure i guess i'm just getting out 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.

2:31:51And 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 Whovie and Tavares do. And I think a lot of the other guys online don't do that, right? They don't talk about the cars they've lost a ton of money on. They don't talk about the negative things they've done. It's all just like, oh, I did this. I did this. Like, this is amazing. I made this much money on this, this, this, and this. Whereas Tavares, Whovi, and I are kind of being more an open book.

2:32:26We're like, yeah, this was a mistake. This was a mistake. This was a mistake because we're actually being more honest in a sense with the audience and that the narrative is so important and that it's so easy to skew the narrative in your direction in the way that you want. So what's your answer? Okay. I got one. Steve Hamilton. From an automotive YouTube standpoint. Not from a business standpoint. Not from a business standpoint. That doesn't count. That counts, that counts. No, it doesn't. You're adding a caveat that you would not permit us to add. I would, oh, okay. I'm just saying, like, you gotta answer.

2:33:01The thing is, you're such a positive person. And this is not to, like, I love Hoovy. He's awesome. No, of course, Tyler's the man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all agree with that. Yeah. That being said, he agrees. 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 DeMuro and Tyler Hoover is very small. I would agree with that. It's very small. I would not agree with that. No, but the reason it's, no, you're thinking of dollar figures. That's the thing. You're thinking of dollar figures. You're not thinking about anything else. It's just because there's a net worth.

2:33:38If I sold Strad Pizza for$100 million, all of a sudden you would say that I'm smarter than Doug. That's what he was saying. That's not what I was saying. No, no, no, but that's what I'm getting at. That's why he said Steve Hamlin. I said I don't know about Steve Hamlin.

2:33:49Graham Stephan:Here's the thing, though. Here's the thing. With Doug, he only bought some of those really crazy cars because of that. That's because his channel doesn't need to buy cars because of his filming style. And that's why I'm saying Doug, bro, if I could film videos like Doug and be successful like Doug, I would have done it. I don't know if you would. If I didn't need. No, no, no. That's true. No, no, no. That's why I stipulated like that. No, that's what I'm saying. If I didn't do YouTube, do you think with my network that I'd have 19 cars? There's no way. You didn't do YouTube? No, if I didn't do YouTube in the style that I do YouTube, I wouldn't have all these cars.

2:34:25That's what I'm getting at. It's 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. Whovie 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 DeMuro. It didn't work.

2:34:59So then I started doing more stuff like this. I think a strong pillar of being financially literate would be diversification. True, true. If Hoovey makes all of his money from buying his Hooptymobiles, then that is non-diversified portfolio. He probably doesn't have any ETFs. He probably doesn't have any money stored elsewhere that can grow independent of his realistically. For him, YouTube is not a business. It's a job. It's a lifestyle for him. I don't know if we're necessarily building an asset. I think that what we do is we work and then it's just a job. For a lot of people, YouTube is a job.

2:35:38Sometimes people build a business outside of it. And then it's like marketing towards that thing. For most, it's a job. And so would that then make him very financially literate to then have all of his eggs in one basket? Yes and no. I think diversification sometimes is overrated too. Diversification is 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 had money in the stock market, would you guys think I was more financially literate? Probably, yeah. 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.

2:36:18Right? I don't think that it's a one-to-one. I think realistically, there's probably a couple of things that you could do to move a couple cars around. I don't know if you need this many cars. If there are certain cars that you haven't driven in a while. For sure. Does Hoovy need 40 cars? He probably could do the exact same thing. But that's why you watch Hoovy. It's because he has 40 cars. No. That's why I watch him.

2:36:40Graham Stephan:I watch because he buys a Hooptie and then everything's wrong with it. Everything goes wrong. Exactly. But he's selling. If he sold half of his collection, I would not stop watching him or watch him live. Same with you. I feel like 80 % of your viewership comes from the 20 % of cars. And I'm thinking, beyond 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 seven cars. like seven top-notch cars, or you get a car and you lease it for six months. And that way you get 100 % write-off on the car.

2:37:18Graham Stephan:You put no money down. You're just paying a high payment. That's 100 % write-off. You get to use the car, this and that and this. You trade it in, you get something else. I will say that you did the right thing. Like you have way more money now doing exactly what you did than if you listened to what we would suggest. No, and I know you, yeah. I mean, I turned a$600 video camera into$10 million. But it's also a little bit like, you know, counter to logic, counter to what big data would suggest. Like the law for sure not suggest that's applicable for most people. I think part of the discipline is like financial discipline or literacy is knowing that like you're probably a statistic at the end of the day.

2:37:58So you should follow kind of like the same. For sure.

2:38:00Graham Stephan: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. right to 10 for sure really good but i think to get from 10 to 20 like that next level is probably gonna be some other investing and it's true concentration builds wealth diversification protects it i i oh no no i i agree yeah trust i totally agree a 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.

2:38:39My last video was like doing the full tour. That videos, those do really well. One of my biggest video ever was a full tour of my car collection has 27 million views. My TikTok doing the full car collection, you know, has a million views. When I built the Batcave, I filmed like three TikToks out of 12 million views. YouTube video, like there's something about the wow factor nowadays where

2:39:00Graham Stephan:more does drive more eyes it's so hard to calculate the roi it is what's this garage worth and what's the extra roi of having that car there versus like putting in a market that makes 10 we do think though for the record that you are very good with money and these are fun conversations i'm highly bullish on the amount of money that you'll have in the future oh yeah i just think it's just going to keep going up it's going to expand at a faster rate than my income it's going to expand at a faster i'm not even worried i don't even care yeah yeah i don't even need any more like i'm actually don't, I don't want to go from 10 to 20 and dedicate my life to do that.

2:39:34I 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 maybe have ptsd i just want to do what i'm good at though and what i know and that's that's stride pizza stride pizza is my diversification doesn't who we have a couple other things he has his real

2:40:19Graham Stephan:estate and he has his house yeah he sinks a lot of money in that house yeah it's a gorgeous house who he does very well and i think like he's the most financially misunderstood that's what i'm getting at right very much that being said it's just like still the worst like me you know what i mean like it's the worst of the best yeah the worst of that way like people think that he's way way dumber and way worse off than he is he's actually doing incredibly well he's probably making a lot of money probably has a good amount of money right that being said still um amongst all of the funny like the car youtubers probably the worst yeah yeah yeah so thank you so much watching i would have loved to have uh filmed another hour or so but our flight was like four plus hours delayed and so we got here way too late and but don't worry guys they gave us 12 dollars so graham and i each got a 12 voucher from delta thank you very much from delta that we have to use and half of it's unused so we have to get to the airport and we have to buy something at 11 59 eastern time same day yeah insane eastern so like eastern time yeah and so they they even cut it short a little bit i don't know it's eastern time no because we already lost it then oh did we time yeah that means well that means you have till 9 59 p.m because we're we're mountain we gotta spend some money then so someone was saying uh or as chat gpt told us that what we could do because they 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.

2:41:46Graham Stephan:That's not a bad idea I would do that. Thank you for tuning in hopefully you found this educational entertaining all of the above. Thank you so much for having us here. Thank you man. Thank you guys We could film another one when you're in Vegas Absolutely. Just do a chat Let's do it. 100%. I'm down. Let's go Till next time. See you guys. Thank you guys Bye How about it? $16 ,250 ,000 I think this is a giant bubble that's about to burst. The American auto market has gone high-end, making more profits by selling fewer, pricier cars. And what's caused these values to go up so much? Potential fake bids on Bring a Trailer and other stuff.

2:42:26Graham Stephan:What's a car that you can't believe how expensive it's gotten? 75 % of all of the hypercars right now. The LaFerrari, they were around$2 million, I think, to start, and those are$7 or$8 million now. The Italians lie about production numbers. Really? Ferrari was one, Pagani was one, and there are probably others. People would come in here and then I'd see them like sitting in my Lamborghini talking about like, here's how I invest money in Forex. No way. I invested in a... Wow. It failed after like one year. So I'm still paying$11 ,000 a month for that lease. How much have you explored selling the company recently?

2:42:58One of the things I have I think is could be the next billion dollar idea. Are you serious? We're going to get really close in the next one to two years.

2:43:09Thank you.