From Welfare to a BILLION Dollar Empire (What I do for a Living!)

at the end of the day they're they're like my children i love them he cares more about the cars than steve does audible's 100 hands down there's no question there's no i know steve didn't care yeah david [Music] all right folks we are here at sd wheel this is the business i started in 2003 at the age of 19. and we are going to answer your questions today on business related things hold up manny today is one of the two days of the week that we cook for the team tuesdays and fridays we have a chef prepared meal it's literally like a three to five course meal with dessert and popcorn and we've got a we've got an ice cream machine over there full fountain drink machine i picked out the barks red cream soda i'm gonna get a drink of that because it's so good this was my one requirement barks red cream soda and i let the team pick out the rest of them um there's chef phil like looking about making some making sure we're not screwing anything up he's he's proud of his tres leches cake he's everyone's saying we gotta try it i'm just gonna eat a salad gets here immediately goes to dessert i went to the gym this morning so it's okay that's what i was trying to tell her like go to the gym you get to eat all right so we're leaving the cafe now heading into the warehouse this is nothing like what i had when i started we started in just really my mom's apartment actually it was just me and then i brought my brother joel on and we were in there fulfilling stuff out of her apartment foyer having deliveries done right to the apartment from ups this is actually our smaller warehouse we have a brand new facility up in wrightstown wisconsin that's like more than double this size it's super new super tech savvy it still feels like home to me and it's still awesome and we've got a lot of awesome team members too all right so back in 03 when i started again it was just two employees after a month or two in business my brother and i got a small office and that's where him and i literally did customer service order fulfillment absolutely everything we only dealt with one brand at the time we only sold on ebay fast forward to today we've got over a thousand employees we have several locations up in wisconsin an operation in california an operation here and employees all throughout the states and really all throughout the globe back then we were selling maybe three to ten sets of wheels a week now we are mount balancing and assembling three to four thousand wheels a day out of both of our facilities we stock and sell over 350 brands we now manufacture three of our own brands anthem archon offroad and artisa when i was 19 i really never thought it would become what it's become today at the same time i'm also never content i never i never just sit back and embellish in what has happened it's always what is the next thing what is the next way that i can make this company grow so we asked everybody to ask some business related questions and that is what i am here to do and the first one is from kenny thomas he said what do you do for a living because to be able to get any hyper mega car you want is insane it makes sense at first at first it sounded off but i think it actually does make sense english is not as strong i'm going to fast forward to today's state i am an owner at sd wheel custom offsets fitment industries mr wheel deal arcon off-road anthem off-road artisan trail built and m.a performance out of minnesota and a couple more companies all of these are in the automotive realm mostly wheels tire suspension and performance parts i didn't necessarily found all of them i've had some awesome partners along the way we've actually got six owners in our company me sean ben joel ryan david so i've largely used these as a cash cow i think it's important that everyone has a cash cow to fund their other businesses a lot of people think that they can just go start something make money and just keep starting other things buy properties you really need to invest yourself in a position or job create a cash cost so that you can fund other investment opportunities so to be able to afford these cars i also have around 20 properties that i own and lease out i own seven different pet supplies plus franchises i have a stake in an arby's franchise and i have investments in swift solar which is a solar company and i also own a portion of a local micro greens company called urban micro gardens okay so connor brown wanted to know best stock to invest into the best stack to invest so stocks hmm uh i'm not i'm not huge into stocks i have a 401k a set by ra plan but i let other people manage that so overall i like to invest my money in real estate the stock market has returned an average of around eight percent over the course of i think it's existence where i typically am able to get around 20 off of real estate investments with appreciation depreciation from tax write-offs and other stuff [Music] all right what's the next question incredible collection and truly inspirational story quick question for you if you don't mind did you go to college great question i didn't get the best grades i had a's b's c's d's f's i went to a community college called college of dupage beginning of my second year is when i started the business right away the business took up a lot of my time later in life i must have had some inadequacy and i felt like i needed to go get my bachelor's degree so i applied actually at depaul got accepted and then in the midst of it i went and took a lean management class and spent seven different days in class and realized that i hated school but i'm also older and i'm also in my profession so that that helped me that lean management class helped me decide that no i don't need to go get some bachelor's degree to prove something that i've already been successful at do you think that people should go to college to be successful i'm glad you asked that because the way that i i said it made it sound like not but it's because i already earned this wealth and i've already achieved success and that's why i feel that way it's important to do one of two things going into the trades is an awesome thing if you have a knack for doing trades you can earn a lot of money doing that right out of high school so i certainly don't advise against that i think that's i think that's a great path to go but if you're not going to do that then you should absolutely go get a four-year degree at college when i looked through a bunch of resumes i wanted to i need i needed them to be relevant for the position right some positions a certain trade could be really good for but a lot of my leadership positions required i just wanted to see that they had the commitment and the know-how to go through college and get a four-year degree so just to be candid i would pass over a lot of applications with people that didn't finish high school or didn't finish college or never went to college so i do think it's important all right so nick ken said how many different business ventures did you go through until you finally had something kind of a weird question because well not a weird question but an interesting question because i started this business in my teens so like there's not a whole lot you can do before that sd wheel when i first started it it was successful right from the get-go i i had enough drive and excitement to put my all into it and even in that first week with with all the hard work i kind of put into building the foundation we were making money right away okidaki guys next question s l y r rs3 said how long did it take you to make a profit after opening up your business so that kind of ties into what i was just saying and the cool thing about what i was doing on ebay is i found a manufacturer that that made wheels and so i went and listed product that they stocked sold it and received money and then went and bought it from their warehouse so i was making money instantly it didn't require me any money to list product on ebay i didn't have to pay them their fee until it sold and then i would use their money to go buy the product from the manufacturer fulfill it and then keep whatever was left so week one felix cumengi wants to know what trades do you need to be a good entrepreneur uh you need to be willing to sacrifice your time and enjoyment with a lot of things and you need to really really believe in what it is that you do you need to find a product service or software that you can create from scratch or differentiate from another that's kind of the important building block and that's the question that i get asked a lot is they ask for advice on how to start a business but they want guidance on like okay well what can i do and i'm like i can't give you the keys to the kingdom you need to come up with that product that service that software whatever it is that you're you're creating a new idea from or you're creating um you know a modification or improvement to an existing thing i want to be clear that once you have that idea this system is set up so well for you to be able to to create branding um on instagram facebook to build your product or service using outsourced labor or if you're a coder or if you want to use alibaba to source a product in china like there's there are really awesome tools available that were not available to me to do that website to find that product to build a supply chain if you were to start over having the knowledge that you have now what would you do differently if anything uh so i would have grown a mustache earlier i actually love that question the easy answer is i wouldn't change anything however there's a lot of knowledge that i know now um that could have made me grow and scale a lot faster i should have spent some money early on building a marketing team and really really building a strong brand around sd wheel so we are walking into the office it's separate from the warehouse it just happened to work out this way but it's a good thing because the building reeks of rubbery tires so they don't have to deal with that here robert rubber i don't even know her that was a good one actually how do you balance work and social life fun i think that i put in my hours excessive hours early while doing my best to make sure that i got time with wife and kids and it's kind of paying its dividends here where i'm able to spend excessive amounts of time with everybody now now granted if something if the train was to fall off the tracks and i was needed then i would literally clear my schedule and work 100 hour weeks to make sure that stuff got back on track when i first stepped away i'm like i'm just going to relax and so like day four um of not working or really doing anything i'm sitting in bed with my wife hey speak of the devil he's an angel uh hold on so my wife and i are just like sitting relaxing and i start braiding her hair and like three minutes into braiding her hair i'm like what the flip am i doing like i'm so bored and that's when i went and stacked my schedule up with the flight related stuff lean management and some other stuff i always have to be doing something like and it has to be productive i can't just be sitting on my butt i have to be on my laptop doing some sort of productive work out and about filming media mustang countach bora i basically have all of these or some variant of them other than this and i've never heard of abora have you bora bora form more more like more form more like borophil what do you value more than employees skill or attitude okay so skill and attitude i would say that both are extremely important however honestly attitude is probably trumps the other now don't get me wrong it's still extremely important that that person is skilled but if i've got someone that's that's a 9 out of 10 on the skill level and someone that's an eight out of ten or a seven out of ten and that nine out of ten has a bad attitude then i'll take that seven or eight out of ten all day long so ju asked how do you maintain a good culture while also setting expectations for people we have a very robust metric system i love that we that the goal is for every single employee to be able to leave here and know if they if they were successful that day so um everybody has a metric to hit it's you know did i did i answer this many emails um was my quality at a certain percentage and so ultimately what builds the culture is the way that your leadership treats people and um i see i see our people on facebook all the time and you can just just what makes it back to me is that we have a very positive culture here and there is no doubt in my mind that that a lot of that has come from awesome leadership so um we uh we do a lot for our team members in my opinion we have essentially an unlimited overtime policy um for a lot of our team members um we try to do as many things and it's not just about doing things for people but it's also letting them know they're valued so we do movie nights we'll cut out in the middle of a wednesday and go play soccer ping pong basketball six flags we do six flags every year a holiday dinner apj1021 asked how do you find a strong team that you can trust that's a that's a great question there are so many brother-sister friend groups here and uh and that that is a great way we lean on we lean on good employees to to bring other good employees um we also have a robust team that that just has a great system for hiring people going through resumes and and uh ultimately finding good talent for organizations so combination of of word of mouth from our awesome team and we also have an awesome leadership and hr team that goes and seeks out the best talent what are you doing oh shoot dude oh i stepped on my piece because you're still here man what's your name yes we still got some more questions to take care of and it is a pleasure to answer them what you got to tell you steve david o'malley asked if steve didn't like cars what would he spend his money on drugs and hookers i'm just kidding uh cocaine i mean no easy answer is i would just put more money in real estate try to earn income off of that side note if you want an opportunity to ever drive these vehicles follow our instagram check out our tic tac continue um watching our youtube videos and subscribe and i promise you there will be opportunities for anyone that follows us to have uh to be able to whip one of these things around erin ddm asked how do you insure all the cars uh how do i insure them so i am i don't want to say i'm frugal but i'm very smart about the way that i shot my insurance so i'll get a quote and i'm not just going to say okay great let's get my car's insured i will i will shop many different insurance carriers in fact i use three different insurance carriers right now i have state farm for my bugatti i have allstate for our minivan down in florida and then i use country financial for all my cars here one of my friends that i went to school with is an agent that doesn't affect my rate at all but he introduced me to that company and they have been a phenomenal partner that has taken care of us and given me extremely competitive rates and if you want specific insurance costs on each of the vehicles you can go check out our tic tac we have one of the insurance videos pinned at the top and you can see my monthly costs thank you stevie boy another question for you by mr ziggs is the charity is for tax write-off right um not in the way that you think like it that that's a side benefit of doing it so really all the income that we make you know let's say i make three thousand dollars that month well i can take that get taxed on it or i can donate all of it so i'm avoiding taxes on the three thousand dollars but i'm also donating all of it so if i didn't make this income i wouldn't be paying any taxes anyway but i'm making it and i'm donating it all so that's it's not there is a tax benefit to it but not at all why do it we're doing it because we are trying to raise money for awesome charities um especially local ones we're gonna donate all the money that we've made so far we uh we have you know only recently have we really started to see some traction on youtube what else did we make some income from it was youtube oh and merch so it's around five dollars a shirt that we mark up so five bucks a shirt all of our youtube revenue and uh we're gonna donate that and so as steve was mentioning we are going to donate all the profits that we made from merch as well as our youtube revenue so with our merch we sold 72 shirts uh five dollars a shirt is being profited so that is a grand total of 360 dollars plus the 2920 that we made in youtube revenue which is a total of 3 280 a little bit about cows angels their mission is to um raise awareness and fun research for kids with pediatric cancer it's it's a charity that's really meaningful to um thc and uh we believe in their mission and i was lucky enough to spend some time with the kids um fighting cancer earlier this year and a little cruise that steven i did with them so i'm super excited about it it's an amazing cause um so let's uh let's go ahead and donate [Music] is the hamilton collection hiring uh we get that uh shiz time we have a really good team and right now we are doing a good job managing what we're doing i'm encouraging bailey to go hire someone to help him with editing and probably some some video content so there could be that role very soon that's the only real role that i see a a need for soon but we have a freaking kick butt team that is managing everything really really well most people want to do this for free i will never hire someone for free to be clear other than henry not speak any english anything when we found him where was i oh so yeah anyway thank you everybody for your interest fresherprince89 asked how do you know when you can afford a 100k plus car what's your rule hmm i waited 15 years before i got my first supercar i hate to say it but can you put can you put money down you're probably gonna want to put down 10 to 20 can you afford 10 to 20 000 down out of pocket and then can you afford the monthly payment is it gonna hinder your available spending money and if the answer to that is yes then no you absolutely should not do that now if you're also nurturing a business and the needs of the business financially are very important and you have ebbs and flows with cash flow then you also should be very cautious on how you spend your money but i hate to give a cliche answer but it's different for every person and i think that if you're good enough to manage your finances you'll know when that time is right so everyone thinks you're successful clearly but you don't think you're successful when did you know that you made it do you think that you made it uh one of the first times i did experience that and again it's very very seldom but that was in my home in florida so i bought my first vacation home and i remember kind of walking into it and we were going to stay there for the first time and and i actually felt like a sense of accomplishment right then and there that was the first time i really truly remember feeling that way and that was like 15 years into my business but it's been pretty rare that i get that feeling because it's always just about grinding and moving on to the next thing so this is a good one i know what i need to do but for some reason i lose motivation what would you say for people who lose motivation um catch no nah shoot a new flinch easy story is just just take a small commitment if you have a five hour project to do say that you're gonna knock 30 minutes of it out and commit to that and you'll find that you'll probably end up knocking two three all of it out at the same time because just by starting it is that is the biggest barrier getting over that barrier or hurdle is probably going to allow you to get through it will there be a course soon maybe there's a course but my commitment to you is that i will never profit or look to make money off of anybody that follows us or that's seeking advice boom you miss every shot that you don't take and in this case steve misses every shot and on that note please like comment and subscribe and we'll see you at the next one [Music] wait you speak english

Channel: The Hamilton Collection

Views: 739,573

Keywords: the hamilton collection, hamilton, collection, lewis hamilton, car collection, investor, fitment industries, custom offsets, chicago, billionaire, millionaire, real estate, money advice, bugatti, pagani, mclaren, ferrari, ford, lamborghini, porsche, mercedes benz, investing, success, wealthy

Id: nh3W1Y3gB0Y

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 17 2021