hey guys I'm Cletus McFarland and this is my story hey imagine yourself rolling to a meet in your very own C6 ZR1 this jet stream blue ZR1 along with $20,000 cash is up for grabs to one lucky fan all you got to do is go to 1320 video.com links in the description below and every dollar you spend this week is three entries to win this car in the cash comes with a 6.2 L V8 launch control no lift shift and it's a blast to [Music] drive so I got in cars oh man I don't know I guess probably from the first time I could even realize what they were my dad was a car Enthusiast not on the side of racing but more so on the side of car detailing he had a car detailing business when I was growing up he was doing mobile car detailing as well as working at McDonald's so we had a pretty cool setup you know there was couple cool cars coming in and going when I was growing up and it just kind of sparked my interest for being around Vehicles plus we had power wheels you know and obviously power wheels are freaking insane when you're a kid so it just sparked my love for driving and then I wanted to be a race car driver since I can even remember so obviously got older and started really getting into cars cuz I could drive them and my dad had a taxi cab business so we had a lot of crown vix and when I was young you know I'd go to work with them on the weekends move the crown vix around the parking lot that was basically my favorite thing to do looked forward to it so much and in Nebraska you can drive when you're 14 so I think I was about to turn 15 when I got my first car which was a Trailblazer with like 245,000 Mi on it so fast forward a couple years you know I kind of went through a few different cars I had a 4Runner I had a Ram 1500 and then I ended up getting into the Subaru game you know Subaru STI which I know the guys that you guys can't see behind these cameras know about that's when I met the 1320 video crew so it's the middle of the summer I'm cruising down the streets of Omaha in my Subaru and I come up on a Mazda speed three at a stoplight and the guy rolls down his window he's like hey what's up man you want to race or you know something along those lines we ended up racing that guy was Chase from the OG Evo 3DX Evo videos that went viral on 1320 video so if you haven't looked at those those videos you should go check those out well chase at the next stop light was like Hey dude I like your car you should come to one of our car meets we do at Sonic every was it Wednesday every Wednesday so I'm like hell yeah that sounds really cool I had never been to a car meet in my life when this happened besides maybe with my dad when I was younger so that upcoming Wednesdays maybe 2 days later I show up at the car meet and that's when I met chase forly chase that same day introduced me to Kyle lus owner of 1320 video which are telling me about at the time and I'm like YouTube channel you know this is 2011 when this is all happening and I'm kind of like you know that's pretty interesting so you know that night I go home pull up the family computer I'm checking out 1320 video I'm like dude this is crazy I'm like this guy is filming free race and I can't believe this the next week I go back to the meet and now I'm like I got to be friends with these guys these are like the coolest guys I've ever seen you know I'm young and just excited to be there and I'm watching them with their big cameras and I'm like this is just insane you know and they all have modified cars my car was bone stock cuz I was really kind of scared to modify I didn't really know what to do and you know they're like downpipes turbos they got all this stuff going on which was just mindblowing to me so I started easing my way into the friend group even though I was uh younger than the crew they were pretty welcoming to me and then maybe 6 months later we're at the Sonic Meet and I hear word that we're about to go street racing and I'm like holy crap I'm definitely following this so they all pull out I follow the group and it's the beater bomb Mustang the fox body driven by Joey and he's going to race some street bikes you remember this Fred we have that video we have the video yeah the video is exists so it's on 1320 video right now so we turn down the road right out Sonic and I see the beater bomb line up and the street bikes line up and I'm on the opposite side of the road so I just pull over at basically what would be the 60 foot of a drag strip and I whip my phone out and I film out the window of my Subaru and Joey races these dudes and I'm just like holy crap that was the most insane thing I've seen in my life but I got a sick video of it so we get back to Sonic I go up to Kyle you know I'm like hey dude check out this video and he's like oh man that's a really good video you got to send that to me and I'm like hell yeah I'll send it to you so I send it to him and he's like you know puts it in a video and I'm just showing every single person I know this video I'm like I filmed that that 4C scene right there that was was me so it's probably now a year or maybe 6 months after it's all blurry this is crazy this is like 2011 so long ago now I was kind of hanging out with some friends and they were telling me about Instagram and I'm checking it out and you know I kind of made one and you know we kind of all made him at the same time all the guys and I hit up Kyle from 1320 and I'm like hey dude like we should get on Instagram I know your Facebook page is huge like let me uh run an Instagram page for you so he created it gave me the password whatever I logged in and just started posting stuff and before we knew it we had like 10,000 followers which is insane at the time 10,000 Foggers was huge and the Facebook page has like I don't know 1.5 million at this time so the Facebook page is like one of the biggest on Facebook so I'm starting to do the Instagram thing a lot now I'm like pushing it cuz I'm so excited Kyle's not paying me anything I'm just like dude I'll do anything you want to be a part of this deal and then came up tx2k 2013 which is a big street race event or well it's a it's a drag race but a lot of Street Racing that's why 1320 video would go as to film the street racing and Fred and I that was our first event ever we both kind of hit up Kyle and we're like hey you know we just want to to come and be a part of it and I remember we drove ourselves you know we didn't go with the crew we just kind of followed the pack and I think we were just excited to get T-shirts instead 1320 video staff on it absolutely and we showed up and Fred filmed and I was just running around you know taking pictures for the Instagram and then that same weekend Kyle was like Hey I'm super slammed like why don't you post some stuff on the Facebook too so then I got access to that so then from that point on we were in the crew like we were officially part of the team it's kind of like we were just there to support before that and then TX 2K13 we got our jobs so from that point on you know I graduated high school that same year and I went off to college in Florida and I would just kind of travel to the big events like tx2k or the street car takeovers and do my Instagram and Facebook posts and that grew into a a more formal job where I was actually getting paid because I was doing these articles on Kyle's website called racecar things.com and I would post you know a cool YouTube video with a title and a description and then we put it on Facebook and if people clicked on that link we would generate ad revenue on Kyle's website so that was how I made my money and for Kyle and then he would pay me man it was it was a hundred bucks a week I remember at the time which is you know it's nothing but I was just so happy to be doing it and it it gave me at least something to pay for you know food and gas and whatever I had another job at Jimmy John's at the time so it was it was all good then fast forward the website starts popping off you know I'm Kling I'm writing these good articles we started making some money he started paying me more and then if you fast forward two years now it's July of 2015 we all fly out to Colorado for Rocky Mountain race week and this is a new event we've never been to we show up and it's a drag and drive event where the race cars have to drive from track to track around Colorado and set their best time for the best average of the week we show up doing the same social media thing we had some other extracurricular social media things going on but every day you know have to write these articles I have to schedule out posts on the 1320 video Facebook page it came out to about 10 posts a day on that and then maybe five posts a day on Instagram and it's like day four right day three or four we're in peblo Colorado and Kyle and I are walking in the hotel with like Alec and maybe Matt maybe Fred it's a little blurry I don't remember but Tom Bailey's car is sitting outside of the hotel and I'm looking at it and I'm just kind of joking around like Kyle let's make a funny video because I had never been in front of Kyle's cameras but for funny random stuff that never made the videos and I just was always a goofball I was like I'll film this we'll make something funny to send to our buddies in the group chat whatever it's no no big deal so I had this shirt that I just bought from Walmart like 5 minutes prior stopped at Walmart just to get some random stuff I bought this Chevy t-shirt and I ripped the sleeves off in the store and I'm wearing it and I'm like yeah this is my 3,000 horsepower Camaro I'm out here and and Kyle says what should I call you and I'm like call me Dale McFarland or something and Kyle goes all right we're staying here with Cletus McFarland and he just like rattles off the name and uh I remember thinking like that's hilarious we are here with Cletus m Carland and you're 1969 yep it's a big block Chevrolet engine a big Chevy fan God damn I love America and I do this whole little skit and Kyle's like dying laughing he thinks it's the funniest thing and I'm like all right that was that was funny you know whatever send it to the guys and he was like no way I'm putting this on the internet and I was like all right whatever so I I literally go in my other hotel room or whatever go to sleep and I wake up my phone's just blowing up and Kyle had edited together this first Cletus video it's titled Cletus mcfr is 3,000 horsepower Camaro and on Facebook it had like close to a million views overnight and then on YouTube it was like nothing it was like you know 30,000 views so it's just getting going there but people are blowing me up like what is this CLE video I my mom called me she's like what is that CLE video and she's like remember what you put on the internet stays on there forever you know cuz I'm just like being an idiot you know and and she knows at the time that my my goal is to go to law school so she's like you know don't make a fool of yourself for no reason is basically what she's saying which it made sense and uh I remember going to the track and someone was like Oh Cletus like I saw your video last night and I was like oh man yeah that's cool and and all my friends from home are texting me and it was just a exciting day I remember it being like really weird because everyone's calling me Cletus but uh I just embraced it and and tried to make the most out of it but I didn't realize at the time that it had any substantial power over what we were doing we just were like oh this is a fun thing you know because Facebook you don't make any money right and it really only took off on Facebook so from that point forward I was publicly known as Cletus and then you know my friends still called me gar and it was just it was just kind of this thing so I don't know it might have been a month or two after I made couple more random funny Cletus videos and those took off too so it was it was working and Kyle's pretty amped up about him you know he made the decision to do a Cletus t-shirt which was cool and I made made a couple thousand off of that which is really exciting and I still at this time didn't realize any of this was worth something to my life you know more than just a fun little side gig so I didn't do anything with it just continued to make maybe one cetus video every 3 or 4 months and then I'm sitting in law school now it's been that long since we started right so I was only two or 3 years into college and then I went to law school and this is and then that whole time I just made some Facebook videos while I'm sitting in law school doing the same thing that I've been doing this whole time Instagram Facebook website articles it's and uh I'm watching these YouTube videos cuz my job on the website was to find interesting YouTube videos that people would click on so we get that ad revenue and I'm watching these guys videos and I'm like dude I could do this I remember watching uh several vloggers at the time Street speed rob fretti you know super spearers Rob and I just got some motivation after watching these really a couple cool videos one of them being a video of hurt from hoonigan and his RX7 on the street and I was like man I just want to make some videos maybe for my own thing so I hit up Kyle that evening and I was like hey buddy do you think that that I could post some cus videos on my own YouTube channel you know because we had just been doing the uh cletus's garage videos on his channel and he was like absolutely you know post whatever you want so he gave it his blessing and I just went home that night and made a video in my garage with my my pickup truck or my C7 it was I don't remember the first video but I just posted it up kind of put it on my Instagram feed and and I started getting some views and I can just remember the the first time I got over 500 views overnight it was uh it was awesome and then once I started kind of formulating my formulating my process I hit up Kyle when I would have like a really good video I was proud of and I'd be like hey like can we put this through the 1320 you know funnel and get it some views and and he would give his Blessing maybe every two weeks on doing that which was awesome because in this world you see more often than not a boss or you know the owner of a company if one of their main guys was starting to to take off on a path of basically the same exact business plan they would be like whoa dude like you're just you you need to stop like you're competing against my company Kyle like never for a second tried to stop what I was doing with the cevan fr brand he only helped me put it on the path that it's on today which like I am forever grateful for and I live my life the same way because of that reason I would never block any of my guys from starting their own thing because if Kyle did that to me I don't know where I'd be today and I'm so grateful for Kyle and his generosity in those times when he could have easily I mean easily put a stop to it if he asked me one time to stop posting videos I would have stopped and there were times when like say my work kind of took a hit because I was so distracted by the cetus stuff and he would be like hey dude like I know you want to do the CLE stuff you're excited about it you got to do your job and then I would focus up and do my job so the CLE stuff went from 500 views overnight to 1,000 views to 2,000 views 5,000 views and it just started really picking up and I it was such an exciting time I basically had a priority list of 1320 video Work c mcf frolin channel and then law school and I was just working through the grind every day doing all three every day I'd wake up get my 1320 video post all scheduled out go to school go home shoot my C's video uh edit it put it up and then maybe do some homework if I had time but I don't really care about that and that went on for two years you know I stayed in law school for for two years decided after racing home from tx2k all night to show up to con law Constitution law and the guy put on a movie and I was like dude I'm done with this you know I'm I'm I'm fed up with this law school thing I'm paying for it right so it's $36,000 a semester and uh I had student loans on it and I just decided it's time it's game time so I finally I saw this Gary ve video that day and he's like I mean straight up this video that Gary V posted he's like f your parents F what everyone thinks he's like you got to risk it for the biscuit like he didn't say those exact words I mean he said the f your parents thing but he's like quit listening to everybody else do what you want to do and I'm like yeah so I get out of class that day I called my parents I said look I hope you guys understand you know I'm starting to make some money I made $4,000 last month off the Cletus Channel like I'm I'm going to go for it I got to be done with school I'm done and they're like do it so I I drop out of law school it was crazy it was a it was a weird feeling cuz I just put in all that work for years and now it's kind of like you can go back but after 5 years all that all your credits and stuff J and uh boom we went fulltime on the channel so that was like 2017 when I started getting after it and just doing the thing me and Cooper were were making videos in the driveway we had the uh first video go viral of the exhaust whistles in the C7 that video went viral and we were just getting hated on so bad because the videos were so bad but they had great titles and thumbnails so we were getting aot of views but we're getting almost no subscribers at that moment and the hate sucked it really was brutal I've had everything said about me that any person could possibly say about a human being during that rise to say 50,000 subscribers or 100,000 subscribers like I call it the gauntlet because people were so ruthless and so just they just wanted you to fail so badly when you're in that Grind from Z to 100,000 subscribers no one wants you to win besides maybe your girlfriend and your friends maybe some of your friends don't even want you to win and uh I did I just sometimes at night would you know it would it would definitely hit and I would wonder if this is all right you know if this is smart and then you know you'd have a really bad week of videos where your views sucked and you don't know if it's going to be enough money to to Really support the the upcoming plans you have and it sucked you know and and a few different times but I always just was so excited to work on my car and make it faster that that was that's what dragged me through to get to that over that Ridge of where I then had enough people supporting me and and positive comments that when someone would say like you know look at this ugly idiot you know just some hurtful thing like then I had enough people that would jump in there like hey I like this guy leave him alone and that's when things you know kind of started to take a positive turn in my comment section and I was like all right we're fired up and and that's I guess where I I caught that break mentally to just full send it I was nonstop from that moment on I mean there was no way for me to fail because my mindset was so so to the top like we just had to win so we just started making videos like crazy you know and and this is all still while I'm working for Kyle because I didn't want to leave what made me who I was behind right away you know so I still worked for Kyle for several years and then we had a meeting we we brought in another social media guy train him and then let him off you know to do his thing so and then I think we're at like 2018 or something something now somewhere in that area 2019 I don't know but it it all seems like a blur now but it was just so fast that we went from uh law school dragg down maybe this is a good idea maybe this is a bad idea to just full rip you know and then we started getting some credibility and then I went and did some car challenges with Rob Freddy meeting up with the boosted boys and man the the afterburners turned on and there we went we found our Niche pretty fast in Drag Racing specifically I loved it you know and street car takeover which was owned by Chase and Justin Keith I loved their events so you know naturally I just kind of started drag racing so that I could be at their events and then you know 1320 video I wanted to be at 1320 videos events to just be a part of it and race and all that so uh you know we started showing up to these races with Leroy and you know Leroy really put us on the map because that car was so unique and different you know I bought it for five grand off of eBay and Leroy was just u a joke almost in the car world because no one considered it you know a legitimate race car yet we were pushing really hard to make it a legitimate race car and uh we'd show up to these races and just do bad like I remember showing up to lsfest it's our first year there I did the burnout and uh Cooper accidentally pulled the parachute pin out walking by the car or something and like the parachutes laying in the water box and he's scrambling to put it on and I'm in the car kind of panicking on what's going on and someone took a picture of it and was just kind of roasting us on on the internet and I was like gosh we are such idiots like why can't we just get it together the throttle body on the car would just close every time I tried to make a quarter mile run it was a disaster at the time I felt bad cuz I just gotten Texas Speed to sponsor me and I just could not pull it together and it was so tough but then couple months down the road I started getting some help from Kevin Smith from ksr so finally we took the stock computer off the car and Holly helped me put a holly dominator in the car and honestly hly I can say that that was the changing point from when I went from a YouTuber to a race car driver because all of a sudden I had a race car I got to give a lot of credit to the Holly computer because it it totally changed Leroy I didn't realize the difference between a racing computer and a stock computer I just thought like oh whatever it's it's just a computer then we started showing up to races and we had the fastest stick car out and I'm like what is happening people are trying to kick us out of classes and all of a sudden we went from the guy that everyone thought was a clown to the guy that people were like oh you know he's got sponsors and whatever if he wins it's it was a shoe in anyway he's got every part on that car sponsored and we started winning and now it's like we go to World Cup and we leave with a trophy and I'm like I can't even believe it it it was uh a a pretty quick transition all of a sudden we went from the jok the the clown of the town to a guy that you had to watch out for and it it it was a damn good feeling because we were we were kind of clowns of the town for a while and I just hated posting these videos of going out like first round every race it's just a terrible feeling so that transition felt good and uh Libo I mean he's a dominant Force to this day just won World Cup finals in the S shift class so the major parts of the story there are starting Cletus becoming a successful racer and then now the channel is is making enough money that I have employees I have merchandise which everything's going well and I was actually able to buy the racetrack known as the freedom Factory today formerly known as the SoDo Speedway which was a really wild process it actually four years ago last week is when I released the first video on it it was December of 2019 I bought this old Circle Track that had been abandoned for years and since I was a drag racer I was always down here at Bradon Motorsports Park and I saw this place and I was always like dude who's who hole is that you know I was like what is that place over there it's just weeds everywhere it's always closed and I dumped every dollar that I had literally into this place to purchase it and at the time all I had was the least shop I had Ruby Leroy and neighbor and every every other dollar I had went into purchasing this track it was by far the most leverage I've ever been financially in debt I had barely enough income to cover the $177,000 mortgage I had barely enough money to pay my payroll which I don't know if James and our merch girl and Cooper even knew that at the time but uh I'll never forget the pressure of of those months before I was able to make a financial comeback and uh get through that time but the pressure was immense you know one of definitely one of those keep you up at night every night for weeks months type situation but it did work out and and I got lucky based on uh some really good mentorship from a good friend of mine Allen and my parents I was lucky enough to make the right decisions and get through all that but golly I don't know if i' ever risk it like that financially again because uh at the time I didn't have a lot to lose so we made it through that you know now our we have a very stable business over there and it helps pay for a lot of the stuff and you know now we have so many freaking cars because of the Crown Vic races and stuff it's it's just insane since the freedom Factory everything has blown up like Leroy kind of put us on a trajectory like this freedom Factory tilted that up even more and like we just have been on a a rip ever since and it's it's insane so at this point in time goals and ideas for the future we have several things on the plate right now we're getting into some Aviation stuff we have just the carbon Cub but I have a really really really cool project that's right on the the front you know you know I I can't get into it much but it's so cool that uh I just can't even can't even think about it straight and I think the goals that I have right now would be for the company to stabilize even more to a point where I can spend more time with my family and my son and wife and my soon to be here daughter so that you know I get that from time but also that these guys can keep the shop running at full speed so the videos are the same and just as awesome I'm just here a little bit less but when I get here I can do our thing make just as even better videos than before but also have that extra time with my family that's one of my goals I I want my guys I want all my employees to make more money you know so we're constantly doing raises I would say one of my goals would be for for all of these guys to make enough money to uh do their dreams too you know build the cars they want to have I think they they all can right now but I want that to just keep growing I mean I look at our payroll now and I'm like I just can't even believe these numbers are real and that we're able to afford them but I want to keep that whole side of the business growing so that these guys can do what they love CU their passion for racing exists out outside of the shop and what we do here so I love seeing that uh the freedom Factory already runs itself so that goals achieved that was one of my big ones but uh I don't know I would say I need a 5-second car bad I'm ready for that we've been sitting at the table talking several times lately about what our 5-second car is going to be and we have not landed on that just yet so our 5-sec car I would say is will be completed by the end of 2025 but I don't know what it's going to be yet so that's that's a big goal of mine is to have a 5-second car and go just knock some heads off with it so long those are long-term goals short-term goals win World Cup again this year get the trifecta you know we've won it the last two years with different cars but I'd I'd also like it to be double win dual class win so we'll see on that I want to take motion race works just up a whole another notch TVM brakes is like probably our fastest growing company right now and uh I want there to be TBM brakes on every race car I see at the track which is it's almost there like there's a ton of TBM brakes so we just have I don't know like I could talk about every single portion of what we're doing and say that I want to be bigger and better cuz I do and uh we just got to get back to work and make it happen I guess well I guess that's the short version of it but I'm C McFarland and that was my story oh my God this those look freaking epic this is so ridiculous
