How Doug DeMuro Makes / Spends His Money In San Diego CA | Uncut Interview

so i already filmed an intro i'll show you the intro later you're gonna like it great but um so tell us first of all have you always been interested in cars yeah pretty much from day one and my parents aren't at all and so it was kind of a weird thing and so when i was a kid it was kind of it wasn't i didn't really fit in quite as much in terms of my interest but as an adult i've been able to kind of expand it and now here we are was there a car as a kid that you saw that like first sparked that interest that's a good question um not really it was just a general sense of i really loved cars i really loved being in motion and like driving and riding but then once i got my driver's license driving i just loved to just go and drive around it was a thing i did and but there was never like one specific car it was just sort of a general cars what was your first car my first car was a 1996 volvo 850 turbo which was really a piece of crap but it was you know it was it was great as a kid it was great years later i drove one i'm not in different persons and i realized i thought this was a good car what was i thinking that's terrible but it was great when i was 16. you know that's cool how how did you buy that car though do you have a part-time job no my my first car my parents bought for me it was 6 500 um which the time for me was an insurmountable insurmountable amount of money but i think they were sick of driving me around everywhere and so they bought that car um but yeah and that was the beginning that that i put tens of thousands of miles in that car just drive and i loved it so much and that's how it all started basically and then what about after high school you went to college i went to college yes and uh i had a an audi a4 when i was in college that was also really cheap um i used one and then once i got out of college i started working for porsche at their corporate headquarters in atlanta and i got a company car which was the coolest thing in the world for 21 year old to have a brand new company car porsche 911 and so that was a pretty good pretty good situation it was like a thousand dollars a month and i you know i was making that much money i was 22 with my first job it was worth it to me at the time how did you get that job um so porsche's corporate headquarters in atlanta and i went to emory university which is in atlanta and you know they were recruiting locally i just generally to try to find people and it was right after the recession and so they had laid a bunch of people off during the recession like everyone did like a lot of the automakers did and so i got lucky and happened to be graduating just as things were sort of starting to be on the upswing again and they were looking to fill some positions again and it worked out so there were a few emory people there and a few people from georgia tech and some of the other universities in atlanta what did you do there exactly um it was an interesting job it was actually maybe the most interesting time i've ever had which is funny i was responsible for allocating the cars to the dealership so making sure you know the 911 gt3s went to the right places and the cayenne's went to the right places and that sort of thing and you can imagine that especially porsche this is a pretty legit job because um everybody wants you know it wasn't you know 809 it was a different story nobody wanted any of these cars but i was there 10 11 12 13. it was really starting to heat up and it was a very competitive environment for the dealerships and it was an interesting thing to kind of get that was that you're the touch point of the entire business there because the cars flow through you and so that was like a really interesting i got to learn about how dealers work how automakers worked how the production process works the whole logistics process so i got to learn about basically every aspect of the car business including like i got to learn the logistics process how the cars are distributed across the world and the manufacturing process how they come out of the factory where they go and and the dealerships and the way an automaker worked and incentives it really informed my understanding of the car business which has been really useful in my job now did you always know you wanted to be in a car industry in one way i i um i always knew that i really wanted to work with cars but i always kind of figured that that wasn't a realistic thing you couldn't really make a lot of money doing that you couldn't really like those jobs are hard to get and as a kid who grew up in colorado there wasn't like a car industry i didn't know anybody who like worked for gm or you know something like people in michigan have that in so i just kind of assumed it wasn't really a realistic possibility but it it worked out yeah why did you leave your job so it's a that's a good question it was a that's a crazy decision when you're 20 i left my job in 2013 of 2013 so i was 24 and when you're 24 and you're getting porsche 911 company cars and you're working for porsche it's a pretty cool gig and you'd think that you wouldn't want to leave but at some point you pick up the sixth rental leased porsche from the manufacturer that use your company car and you're just like i want to be in a position where i can do more than this and like own one of these and like have a try something and i'm 24 and i'm sitting in a cubicle and i'm like i think i don't have any mortgage i don't have any responsibilities i don't have kids i don't have my dog i can just try something and so i decided i would try writing about cars which was an odd decision because i hadn't really done that much but it kind of worked out it really was just a i could always go back to an office i want to try to see if something else might happen what was the first written piece that you did um so when i was working for porsche i was writing about cars on the side um uh but it was it was simple stuff like should you buy your car at the end of the lease or which features are important to families you know something like that i when i left porsche i started writing like more humorous like editorial columns so i was writing for jalopnik and the truth about cars and um the first piece i did was like a humorous wrap-up of the detroit auto show in 2013 i guess it must have been which is now crazy nine years ago um and i remember i was i wasn't paid for that piece but it was published on the truth about cars which was at the time sort of like a like a snarky car blog and it was very well received so i did another one the next day and another one then a couple days later and here we are yeah how did you know what to write about or how did you interject your humor in this i i um i don't know it just sort of happened and i early on i just took a lot of it was like like throwing stuff and seeing what worked some articles people really liked and some they didn't get that much traction then i realized okay that sort of thing is what people want to hear about so i'm going to try this more and it just sort of informed all my content and that's the same with the youtube channel i learned early on you know this stuff isn't getting as much views this stuff is getting views so i'm going to go do more of this and that's sort of just how it how it went and i think smart creators do that how did the youtube channel start so the youtube channel is the funniest thing of all i was writing for jalopnik and i had i was writing these like humor columns which was different from what most people on jalopnik were doing they were more just writing like car news and reviews and the humor columns were getting something of a following i was getting people who were interested and thought they were funny i thought it was a good write or whatever and some guy emailed me one day and said look you're great at writing have you thought about video and i i hadn't which is insane to think about now because of course everybody has pivoted to video and writing has kind of become a secondary thing and so i thought uh huh that's that's a that's an interesting idea i'll give that a shot and so i went out with my wife and a camera and a tripod and and filmed a video with my nissan cube which i had at the time um and that was a disaster that video did terribly creating it was terrible it was a horrible process and i never uploaded it or edited it but it it was the beginning of okay here's how this works and i went on a second time with a different car and tried it again and i did upload that video as my first one and then it just kind of went from there is it still up there yeah it's my first my original review of a cadillac cts-v station which i own and that video was actually really important to me because i was writing on jalopnik and those those jalopnik you know was a gawker blog gawker that was during docker's heyday it was getting a lot of views and so i knew that that first video wouldn't be not seen people were gonna watch that and so it had to be acceptable like it couldn't a lot of people's early videos if you look back are just trash but they only got 500 views it doesn't matter but i knew that was going to get tens of thousands of views and so i had to put a lot of effort into that video so if you go back and watch it it does still look amateurish and crappy but by 2013 youtube standards right it looked okay so where i first found you is with the ferrari videos that's right ferrari 360. and i remember watching your video i think it was 2014 where you saw it did it get attention from women yeah and you'd stand there and be like hey ladies and they'd be like hey and just keep walking by i thought it was hilarious because at the time i think i had a lotus exige before that i had the lotus elise and it was only like you know 16 to 20 year old guys that was it that video we faked that whole video everyone in there is a friend of mine but it conveyed the truth i mean you couldn't really film random women why that's some you don't want to get involved in anything but it did convey with the accurate truth about that car which like you said the only people who ever came up to me were 16 to 20 year old guys that was the extent of you know that car ownership and i think a lot of people buy those cars thinking that it's going to be women and it doesn't doesn't necessarily work out that way how did you buy a ferrari how old were you in the wind oh my god i think about this now yeah something like that 25 26. i think about this now and i think to myself it was the stupidest thing i ever did but basically the car cost 83 000 or something and i didn't have eighty three thousand dollars and just as a pro tip if you don't have the money like even if it's tied up somewhere else or whatever i would suggest not buying the car like i didn't even possess the amount of money in order you know so i had to take out a loan obviously as people do and my credit was such that my parents i wasn't bad but i had just never really bought anything my parents had to co-sign alone they did that which i think is insane but they believed in me and um then i started making the content and the channel kind of took off that i had bought the car really just to write about um on jalopnik and i thought that that would continue to excel and it did really well the content on jalopnik in 14 did really really really well um and the videos were almost like a secondary thing that i was doing as a kind of a companion piece to the written stuff but i was scared every day i drove that card because i could not afford to fix it that's pretty much the situation i registered in montana so i didn't pay sales tax i did everything that sketchy people do when they don't have money right well the people that do money also do the montana so true yeah that is true but yeah that was that was a scary year but you still had to save up the down payment yes and that was a substantial amount of money probably i mean i i can't remember how much it was i feel like i put maybe half down they made them bankrupt yeah which was probably half of all the money i had at the time um but i had saved it from you working at porsche and writing i lived in atlanta at the time and back then atlanta was it still is but it especially then was a pretty cheap place to live and and i lived cheaply i had a studio apartment and that kind of thing um so yeah that's how much were you saving back then though because to be able to save up 40 000 after school right how do you it was a good it was a good situation i got lucky there were also a couple of other lucky things about like living there at the time so i was working at porsche during the day and then at night i was writing these articles it was for auto trader um like these you know should you buy your car lease or what safety features whatever and so between those two jobs i was doing i was doing pretty well um well enough to have saved up this down payment but not well enough to actually buy a ferrari yeah which i should never have done it's a horrible decision but in the end it worked out although i don't tell people to do this now you know back then on youtube you could buy a ferrari and it was a big deal nobody in 13 like had exotic cars on youtube people with exotic cars were thinking that youtube like everybody was thinking back then that youtube's for teenagers and so a guy on youtube has a ferrari was like a thing now there's fragments got a veyron like that's not anything anymore that that wouldn't be enough now and so it wouldn't be worth stretching your budget but at the time i really thought if i could just do this it might make something and it did so in the end i guess it was the right this is probably the best investment i ever made even though it seems like a really stupid one it's so funny i remember do you remember robert hill uh omar robert hilmer i think was his name he's one of the first guys 2010 he got a uh verde ithaca lamborghini and his channel blew up right like zero to a hundred thousand subscribers because he was one of the first ones with that with that green lamborghini right and that was that was all enough back then you could just have a lambo yeah that was enough to be a youtube star it's funny even when i first started i really thought i needed a gallardo to be taken seriously i thought no one would listen to me unless i had a gallardo and i was embarrassed even with the lotus exige because i'd be like people wouldn't take it seriously i don't know a lotus but if i had a guy hurt out yeah and and i seriously i considered buying a gallardo just to be taken seriously because there's a there is a legitimacy factor in that because other guys are starting to get them and whatever and i i now feel bad that i may have contributed to some of that by having this resetting the baseline at the ferrari 360 back in 2014 but now it's far beyond anything i could afford or pursue anyways i think it was alejandro that day with his pagani and then everybody that set the base yeah when his channel blew up i had the 360 and at the same time he was starting to acquire stuff like that and he was really like holy crap i can't believe this dude has these cars but he was the only guy at the time who had that kind of stuff and now a lot of people have channels with cool cars and my friends and i were just talking the other night there's no car pretty much you can get at this point that is enough you also have to actually be like a charismatic personality or have an interesting story to tell or whatever because just showing up with a bugatti is not enough yeah at this point yeah you got to be like a manny coachman yeah at this point to start getting attention 13 mclaren's how much that'll do with 13 slrs right if you're just going to pursue it with money that's what you did so after the ferrari then what what evolved afterwards so the ferrari kind of launched i i really that year in 14 i was really successful on jalopnik and it really proved to me that buying these cars and writing about them was kind of a fun and interesting thing and so for in 15 i bought a hummer an original hummer h1 hummer and a nissan skyline which i had imported from japan it was in the spring of 15 and i'll never forget this i was sitting and i lived in philadelphia and i was sitting on my couch and i was looking at my article numbers like the as you we look at analytics youtube analytics i was looking at the numbers for the articles and i was thinking these just aren't doing that well and how these spreadsheets tracking and at some point it hit me that i should check the youtube channels analytics which i had not done until that point and i looked and i realized that the videos were actually getting more views than the articles were and i was like oh like there's something else here that i've been missing for the last two years um and that is when it kind of started to snowball in my mind like maybe i'm a video creator and not a writer without realizing it and that throughout that spring and summer the videos kind of started to take the forefront in my mind um and it became clear to me that that was kind of what i was going to be focusing on going forward were you making money back then did you monetize your videos yeah i did monetize but back in 15 i mean the videos were only about once a week and they were only supposed to be companion pieces for the article so some of them were pretty like like specific in their content they weren't really blowing up all some of them weren't really blowing up some of them really were but even then in 15 like once a week videos on one channel no i wasn't making enough to do anything and but i do remember i think it was that winter i like reviewed a tesla model x for the channel it just worked out perfectly timing the model x was coming out it was pretty new people didn't know anything about it i rented one on turo and i put up the video in december not realizing that what happens in december is that the ad rates shoot up and that video made a ton of money and that december uh i made a lot of money if what at the time i considered a lot of when i realized like oh wow this is real yeah and that was the beginning i think it was the end of 15 where i realized like okay i can actually maybe i can actually do stuff on youtube now january of 16 comes and the the of course i didn't know anything about ad rights and the whole thing was completely unbeknownst to me january of 16 comes the all the money goes away because the ad rates dropped right and i was like oh i think that was just a fluke i didn't realize for like another year what had happened there and so now i focus on december every year i really focus on really good content to take advantage did you share how much you made in that december no no i try to keep all income stuff like really really really okay all right but it was it was enough that it was enough it wasn't like an insane amount of money it was like what you would make if you were like a normal person doing well but it was way more than i'd ever made on youtube before and it was at that point i realized maybe i shouldn't write yeah it's just what am i doing writing is not a thing so was that the point then that you decided i'm gonna go full force on youtube sort of but it was it's actually crazier than that so that i i've always felt that i was a better writer and i still feel that i'm a better writer than i am a video person i like truly believe that i write well and i think i make kind of stupid videos but obviously the videos have evolved a lot and they're a lot better than they were um but in the summer of 16 i launched a blog with autotrader called oversteer and so even that and i did that up until the beginning of 20 i think and so even then i like had a companion on the side as a writing and once i've never only had one job in my entire life i had a compass i was writing even then and still doing the videos at that time and i only left the oversteer blog to start cars and bids and so even there was no point where i was doing one thing it'd be kind of nice though so how did it work with uh autotrader were they paying you per article for all right because you were driving a lot of traffic to autotrader.com every single one oversteering your videos um they were paying me i think it was a salary and then there were bonuses of target i don't honestly i don't really remember all that much um but um but yeah it was it was like a salary thing to and i was not only just writing but i was the managing editor of that that particular blog and so i was overseeing other writers submitting content and things like that wow that's incredible i know it was a lot of work i don't know what i was thinking increasingly i just want to relax right so when you're doing these cars how strategic were you and that if you knew that you reviewed a certain car that would do well and that would help grow the brand throughout 16 and 17 it was a lot of that it was a lot of like trying to figure out what people wanted to see and even then like throughout 15 uh throughout 16 i had an aston martin that i did i bought one and i did a lot of video content with that and then i had a viper that i bought and did a lot of video content with and it didn't really hit me what i really should be focusing on was car reviews until i think the middle of 17 when i noticed that the aston martin and the viper content my personal cars weren't as effective on video as my car reviews and so even then there was still pivoting going on even after the channel started to take off and i started to make money [Music] i didn't really realize the videos were the reviews were something that i should be focusing on until that there was still a lot of like what works what doesn't how did you figure out the equipment that you were going to be using because you've taken a very unique approach that's very different from everybody else that i've seen yeah um the key was for me was always to like streamline it to make it as easy as possible not necessarily on me but like in order to be able to do to go to some of these cars and do kind of what i wanted to i just wanted to make it as simple as possible and if you have a big setup and you have a big situation and you need several people with you and all that it just becomes challenging my theory has always been the more people you add the more drama the more schedule problems you run into all this stuff and i just kind of felt that um it made more sense to stay simple and so simple i did and it never the other thing was it never really was a problem i always have felt strongly that youtube viewers are looking for somewhat amateurish content like they want good information like you think about diy videos and something they want good information and a lot of information but they don't necessarily need to see drone shots and all this stuff like perfect music and i think that people watch tv or movies for that sort of thing and i think on youtube you're forgiven for sacrificing quality for content which is i think what i've tried to do yeah so what do you have just one camera an iphone yep that's it yeah what camera do you have uh some 4k sony and whenever it breaks i get another one exactly the same camcorder you don't film in 4k do you yeah 4k you do all the videos in 4k yeah i had no clue you got to you know select the 4k thing but i never do that you use too much data nobody does yeah but but i i realized that was one of the few things that i've done to improve my quality and i did that early i was one of the first auto people to do that because i kind of started to realize that people want to see and so i'm so glad i did because some of these cars that i do it's there's not a lot of content out there and so i think it's kind of cool to see some of these cars and some of the little quirks and stuff in 4k did it ever occur to you that maybe you should try to have more people on on with you or what about having a different angle like filming two cameras has it ever crossed your mind yeah um but the thing is the numbers just don't lie and so like i'm still number one in car reviews and i just think people want to see the like the details the they want to get the info they want to feel like they're there with the car or whatever but i don't necessarily think that adding a lot of that stuff would have a big effect now the one thing i wish i could add and i'd like to add is like drive-by shots of the car um as i'm like cruising along uh but that would require either another person or some other situation and people always say that i should shoot out like facing the road but you run into some legal issues if you do that and drive too fast you get people who are really really angry about that and so i have to think about i kind of have to balance that stuff when i'm yeah that is the one thing when i was watching a few of your videos uh i think the bugatti was one of them i wish there was a shot uh like even if you had two gopros or something one on either side where you could switch back and forth and kind of see the road i know i think about this all the time and i i'm not sure what the right move is because i have like link after link to like reddit threads and forum posts about how matt farah's a terrible person and irresponsible and he's a horrible because he drives too fast and or whoever there's a lot of youtubers who get a lot of complaints people have reported youtubers to the police to various agencies and so like i don't if i don't show that stuff you can't prove any of that but at the same time people like i don't just want to see you talking and it's like i don't know that's that's less about quality though and more about the thought that i have that i don't need to necessarily go down that road yeah how much work do you put into crafting an image because i've noticed you never do collaborations you almost never do interviews yeah and for the most part it's like you try searching doug demuro interview there's only a few of them that exist why i've never collabed with almost any other creator that i've seen my format doesn't lend well to collapse i think that's truthfully that's the primary reason for that people have reached out a lot of really good creators have reached out and i like think about it and i'm just like i don't know what i would do necessarily and also my schedule is insane so right now in addition to filming i post three videos a week now in addition to that i'm like running this car auction website cars and bids like i don't need i don't have a lot of room for experimenting collabs with people you know um and also i would just have to be the right kind of collab like from a format perspective i'm not really sure exactly how it would work and maybe i need to spend more time thinking about that but for now it seems like it's working how it is and so i'm sure that's kind of what i'm focused on is any of that image oriented in the sense that you you want to be very careful about how you're presented no no i because i i'm me and the way i am on camera is the way i am in real life and that's just sort of it i i don't i i don't worry that like some interview or some collab is going to make me seem a different way because it's just sort of this is it this is it i can attest to that by the way 100 um but i so no it's not necessarily that i just think it's really like i'm trying to stay focused on the things that i'm doing i have a real belief that people should specialize and this is kind of my specialty i got it so running this is a business can you tell us about your team who's involved why have you brought everybody on because my understanding is up until just recently you were doing all the work yourself yeah so that my team uh so basically what happened was i was i was writing the scripts filming the videos and editing all myself until june of 2020 which was 18 months ago basically um and then we launched cars and bids and i took a very active role and still have a very active role in the day-to-day operations of this and i just couldn't edit the videos anymore you know how long it takes to edit it's a process i actually love editing it's maybe my favorite part of the whole thing because it's like a puzzle that you're putting together and it's really cool to see the finished product but it just wasn't going to happen and so i hired part-time an editor named nick who's great and he does a fantastic job he was exactly what i needed in the moment i just called him and i was like frantic he had sent me an email like a year earlier and i was like are you still available i'm desperate like i'm so busy right now and you just hit the ground running and you'll if you watch the videos you will never notice a difference between when he started and when i was doing it and i still let it one or two if he's sick or on vacation or whatever every every few months but um but that's the team that's it me part-time nick who lives in arizona and then my best friend melissa she reads my emails so like people email with their car offers and she reads them and puts them in a spreadsheet and that's noodle that's the excitement wow how did you train him to edit in your style was he a subscriber who tweets out really yeah yeah i always thought that no one could edit in my style i don't know why i had this idea i thought that it would be impossible to trick somebody or to like train somebody into and i i uh in retrospect that was really stupid that was the reason i didn't do it for so long and so i was really really worried about that and then after like three videos he had it perfectly and they'll send me a video to watch and there'll be like two edits in 25 minutes and i'll send it back to him i don't know why i thought that no one was gonna it's not like i'm it's like i'm spielberg i'm not doing crazy stuff here but how was that i i have jack by the way right off the screen here and he's looking at me because jack took over editing my second channel the gram stefan show yeah and arguably did a fantastic a way better job than i was able to and uh funny nobody noticed in the beginning except they thought i was spending more time editing the videos yeah well that's the thing when you outsource and also it just frees up so much time that was the thing it was just a he i it almost didn't matter if the videos weren't quite as good if they ordered it slightly differently because i just didn't have time anymore but fortunately it worked out and they are they're the same yeah how much were you working back then uh as much as i am now but i was just instead of doing cars and bids i was doing video editing but doing this has allowed me to kind of take the channel a little further and i now post a review on sunday as well used to just be tuesday and thursday which has been good um and i've been able to film more and edit less and that's kind of the goal can you give us a breakdown in your schedule like what's an average day look like now it depends whether i'm filming or whether i'm not that's the big delineator but on days where i film i wake up if i have a car at the house is the press car i can just um go and film that i have a location i can just go locally and film that but usually i'm driving um i was up in palmdale the other day which from san diego is like four and a half hours often i'll drive up the night before stay over so i can get early and then get in be traffic on the way home but i spend a lot of time on the road around southern california shooting videos now this is a way better than it used to be when i lived in philadelphia which where there wasn't a big car culture and it was cold and i was on the plane all the time to go and find videos i was in the winter i was in texas i was in arizona i was in california florida all over the place because that was what i had to do at least now i could be relatively local and come home pretty much every night but that but on so on days when i'm shooting um there's a video i always shoot try to shoot first thing in the morning when i'm like freshest and and then in the afternoon i'll either work on cars and bids or pretty much that it's been pretty much just working on cars and bids and and trying so there's kind of two two masters in my life two jobs how many hours did you say a day um i think at this point because i hired nick as the editor and because we have a good team at cars and bids i think i'm down to a relatively normal work day um which is crazy because there was a seven-year span where it was out of control like we lived in my wife and i lived in philadelphia for four years and i didn't really leave the house i didn't meet friends it was those were four work years but it was it paid off because it was an investment in the future that i'm now reaping the rewards and i get to not live in philly anymore which is the greatest benefit when i get to and i get to have like a more normal life because my channel has kind of grown to this point was it like 12 hours a day at that time oh at least 12 yeah and weekends and it was tough yeah how did cars and bids come up why well i think that every youtuber who's smart is thinking to themselves this can't be my only revenue stream you know my channel is big i get a lot of views and i make good money but all of us in this space are thinking how long do we have does this last two years or does it last 20. if it lasts 20 cars and bids is probably gonna stay because it's a lot of work but it may not and i think of myself more as a pro athlete where you make a lot of money really fast and it could end i mean a lot of those guys careers are five years you know um and so i have always kind of thought to myself what can i do to extend this especially while i have a captive audience and some guys sell t-shirts and that kind of thing i do that too but i just get the sense that that's that's not the same that's not like a long-term pivot to like something that can grow and can last and you can sell potentially down the road and so cars and bids seemed like a pretty good idea to take this audience that i had and like do something with them that may be more sustainable and more long-term than youtube and off the platform of youtube where i'm sort of beholden to the algorithm and that sort of thing how much was it to start cars and bids you came up with the idea yourself yeah i came up with i mean you know there are car auction websites ebay motors was obviously the first one and bring a trailer came and so they came up with the idea i mean they existed but i came up with sort of a variation on the idea on a flight and i was like why am i not in this space and it took it took maybe a year and a team and some some outside investment but we got there and it i it was a process and then when we were going to launch it was covet and that was a whole other disaster but it all worked out obviously because the car market has blown up so right what's the back end look like on that how did you find a team for cars and bus you know i will say that's one of the lucky things there's pros and cons of living in california and i think one of the big pros is there's so much talent here and i've often lamented the fact that i don't live in some of the other places that i really love but there's it's it's relatively not easy but it's there's more people here that are able to do this kind of thing and so i found a partner who's a really good guy and knew the tech side what would become the tech side of this business and like the building itself and the designing its side and he hired he knew the type of people to hire and he had a network of who to hire and that was huge because i'm clueless you know i honestly thought i could do it myself which is idiotic but it's how my whole career had gone up until this point so i was like yeah give it a shot um and so having this these like really good talented group of people to build the site was a really really important thing and then since then the site as the site sort of started and started to blow up right away and take off right away obviously we've hired on a lot of other people since then and now in terms of the team i think we have like 14 full-time and then there's another maybe 10 who are like freelance writers who write our auction listings and stuff that's a lot of people and how do you make money from from cars and business so every car that sells on the site the buyer pays a fee to us which is four and a half percent and it's capped at 4 500 so um we obviously that's that's our entire revenue basically as the cars sell and then we get a commission a buyer's fee um and we thus take the buyer's fee and distribute that among the staff and and as salary obviously payroll and then you know whatever's left whether they put back into the business or repair ourselves um it's a business that relies entirely upon having special and interesting and cool cars nobody wants to pay a buyer's fee for like a toyota camry you can just buy one of those and so you have to kind of have these special cars come to the site and sell and do well and i think we've done a really good job of cultivating like special exciting and interesting cars that are enough to make people say yeah i can't find that anywhere else i will pay this this fee and you know it is what it is but obviously physical auctions also have buyers and sellers fees and they charge a lot more so it's kind of a good deal and it's a national audience for special cars basically yeah is it profitable yet yeah almost within maybe six eight months we were profiting no way yeah those first few months were terrifying but we're making money i was not expecting that a lot of these businesses take years if they've ever become especially a car business because when you think about it like in the car world you have to take time to build up trust people have horrible distrust of car dealers and car sellers and anything like that and so i thought it would honestly take years but it didn't it was a it was a good setup and it worked out well so the one thing i really like about uh bring a trailer which you're a little bit cheaper because they cap out at 5 000 right 4500 so a little bit cheaper some money but it's the community that they've cultivated there because any car i remember looking at a 300sl mercedes and it was the guy that worked on the car like in the 80s saw this is like i have proof that i've worked on the car i know everything about it the buyer can reach out to me and like people who like know of the car they knew the owner they all comment on it i thought that was interesting it's incredible and their community is really really special and i think that the hardest part of doing this is community um there since we launched our auction site competitor bringing trailer was around and there haven't been really any others then we launched and then like 50 of them have shown up and stuff that never even got on your radar you've never even heard of some of the ones that have already come and gone i'm telling you there were 25 that only we knew about because we're desperate in this space to figure out and the reason is the community is key and so bring a trailer has theirs because they've done a good job cultivating it over a period of probably 15 years i have it because it was coming from initially coming from my audience and so the community was already there starting one of these no matter how good you make the site if you don't have the community it's not going to succeed and we've seen that with a bunch of others that have tried and they look at me and they're like oh doug with the stupid shorts and a stupid t-shirt like if he can do it we can do it it's not that easy you have to have a following who's engaged who's actually willing to come here and creating a two-sided marketplace is not the easiest thing in the world i don't know if i know how much work would i do and i would have done it in retrospect but at least we're past the most difficult yeah do you worry that a lot of it right now is tied to the channel and then if for whatever reason the channel isn't getting as many views or you take a step back that cars and bids will suffer yeah i wonder um and there's no real way to know although i will say we had a guy we had a guy submit a car yeah i write like a little doug's take in every car like my opinion of that car we had a guy submit one a car the other day and we wrote it up and sent it to him for his approval before it went live and he said who is this doug and why is he writing an opinion about my car i was like that's great like that is proof that this has transcended just and we have that we we're getting more and more of that this kind of transcending like i'll tell people hey i'm doug i run carson's like you're not i don't know who you are um it's it's i i do think a lot of it is tied to the channel and especially a lot of the marketing right now but i hope that as it becomes a more obvious place to buy and sell cars then it kind of becomes irrelevant and that's one of the reasons why we kept me out of it it's not like called doug's auctions for a reason my face isn't all over the main page for a reason we want it to kind of be a separate entity that could live on its own in case you know the channel ever slows down i do like the fact that you've reviewed cars that are for sale yeah i thought that's always been very cool it was an interesting idea and it has given me a vast array of cars that i can like the car will come in and it's like interested in that and it's not always easy to find cool older cars to review and so that's been a really cool opportunity have you noticed that those cars sell for more yeah i don't want to like publicize that because but like yes they do they bring because obviously a lot of people i don't want people to think that i'm just going to review their car yeah i only am doing it when it makes sense for the channel truthfully um [Music] but yes those cars definitely so when you reach out saying can i review your car if it's for sale on cars and bids is it just like cha-ching eighty percent of people feel that way and the other twenty percent are like one guy the last one i did that i was like who i don't really know who you are i don't know what your channel is and he goes he goes can you keep the miles low because that's kind of like what i have going for with the car and i'm sitting here thinking like dude you don't understand but yes i will like i was super gracious about it i was like yes of course whatever um but really yeah if you were lucky one of the lucky few and i only do maybe like 20 a year then yes you can count on probably a pretty good and we've had some record sales from cars that i've reviewed so that's so cool uh it was funny i nearly well i didn't nearly buy but uh your the old spiker came up for sale yeah and it didn't hit reserve so it didn't happen but uh i thought that was quite cool and i did think it was a little bit special that you reviewed that car i think there's depending on the car i think there can be some slight value add that hey it's preserved immortally and like this is the one that doug chose because i don't generally review cars twice yeah and so if you've got this volvo s60r that was the voice xdr that's going to get a million views on youtube and that people are going to say it's one of my favorite videos by the way oh really with the orange interior because we i bought a volvo at 60. it was a thousand dollars i love the car and so when that came up i'm like i didn't even know this car existed yeah and i started looking them off online i thought it was so cool well that's one of my favorite videos you don't want to go down the street those are those are some unreliable vehicles but they were really special and that in that color combo was the stupidest thing i've ever seen my entire life it's particular i loved it though yeah of course i was the only color combo that i would get yes but at the same time i would tell my passengers and friends this is the stupidest thing i've ever seen in my entire life yeah i'll put a picture of it here it's like seafoam green with orange leather and you know it's funny i post that video and i made a big deal on the video about how crazy that color come on and people are like it's not that crazy i've seen crazier though and i said like these colors don't go together those colors go together fine i've got emails i get emails from angry people like those colors go together and i'm like teal and orange people complain about anything any possible thing oh my gosh so what's your what's the end result for cars and bids what do you what do you want to take i'm not really sure i do i truly truly don't know um it's a fun business to run you're in there with the cars every day you're in there with car values every day which is one of my great passions like seeing where the market is i love it i like truly truly love running the business 89 percent of the time 92 percent maybe um and i mean obviously anybody who starts a business like this is thinking about selling it one day bring a trailer just recently sold to hearst media which was a huge deal how much is it um we don't know but i have some suspicions and it was a lot okay um but so i you know maybe that's one day down the line but for we have to prove ourselves for a long time before those conversations even are available but also it might just be a good business and it is a good business and if you establish yourself in this segment early enough and clearly enough i think it's a business that could just run and run and run and maybe you don't even need to think about selling it what's the eight percent you don't like well first off sometimes i'm just busy or tired i just i'm just like damn it i wish i hadn't started this website that's probably half of that but sometimes stuff happens you know sometimes seller doesn't want to sell his car after the auction finisher buyer doesn't want to buy that sort of thing happens it's really rare but it does and that gets annoying um and sometimes people are just jerks which is annoying and and i feel bad for my team and we have cut cars loose that were really good cars just because the seller was a jerk and i just was like you know what if this guy's gonna treat my staff this way forget it i don't want to be a part of this and he's not going to be a good seller anyway it's not the kind of person i want to have on the site and sometimes like reading those conversations it's like tough when the seller's just like or the buyer whoever is just kind of a bad person that happens in the comments too um but this honestly that stuff is rare honest truthfully and honestly the vast majority of the business is great and it's like a lot of fun to operate are you concerned that you launched during a time where shutdown happened and cars just exploded in value yeah because i've never seen a market like this yeah where so many people are excited about like where could i buy the car where could i buy it yeah yeah oh yeah and then there's no question yeah there's that's a that's a fear um which is one of the reasons why i want to try to make it as good as possible as big as possible and as well known as possible so that when the inevitable pullback comes you're already an established player to the point where you don't just get swallowed up because there are other car auction sites right now that have not popped up on your radar or most other people's that are when there is a pullback are gonna just be gone because it's not really desirable to sell you know sell a car in that way and so i think we have to get really strong and be on a really sure footing so that when that earthquake comes we still have a pretty solid foundation yeah so you told me originally that you watched the strad man video and uh you wanted a chance to talk about personal finance and investing yeah that's how all of this came up i love strad man me and him are buddies i text him but you have to invest your money so you interview the straight man right and and i just telling i was telling around that i my friends and i still watch and talk about this video and and you say to him hey you know you've made all this money what are you doing with it and he said i just have it sitting in a savings account right that was like the general basis okay just just and i try i try to impart financial advice occasionally in my channel and it is interesting because people really believe that their way is the right way and they can get mad when you want when you tell them like take this risk they think that something is a big risk but letting i don't know how much money he has but let's say he's got a million dollars sitting in a bank account okay inflation was seven percent last year so that just sit right there that's like 70 grand gone right and then the market was up 25 last year yeah so if you just had an index fund it would be another 250 000 so he's looking at 300 grand that he left on the table because he's just got that money in the same account i don't want anyone else to do that i invest i am a rational person and you all should invest as well don't eat stupid risky investments but for god's sake you obviously agree with me on this i do did it kill you to sit there as he's saying this and be like what are you yeah now he said that a lot of that was for the down payment on his house right but then i was worried well you have all this money in cars all this money in real estate but no money anywhere else right and for someone at his level it's worth a little diversification now he got the last laugh because it just so happened that those cars that he purchased are now up probably as much or if not more than this when was that interview uh that was over a year ago right it was it was a february it was during the winter yeah it was january february because november no one could have irrigated what was going to happen because it was it was about april may that the market started really changing for cars um of 21. and yeah you're right he got the last laugh but that's not a normal thing and that's not the right way to do it it's not the smart way to do it and especially at my age and it yeah james's age you really should be invested yes says the person who bought a ferrari with with i still believe that was the best investment i ever made because it got me to this point but i wouldn't i don't know if i've done it again i'm just looking back on it so what are your philosophies now how do you divvy up what you're going to invest where do you like to invest how do you see it i'm like a like dollar cost average vanguard like let it sit like i i'm part of the reason i think that stradman had chose to do what he did in terms of investment and and saving just cash when you are in our world and i think about this a lot when you're in our world your goal is you're so focused on the next video the next content the next whatever that it's difficult to think about anything else including like investment strategies the last thing that you want to have on your mind um and so it's easier to just you know you're making so much it doesn't really matter if you lose some money because it sits or whatever you just you've got so much coming in and you can probably make more by just continuing to stay focused but it's still smart to invest and so i've always done that and i've always made that a really clear point of what i do and i try not to make stupid decisions even when it comes to buying cars people will laugh at me and say i'll say oh i can't afford i really want a mercedes e63 station wagon a brand new one and i've said on my channel several times that i don't feel like i can afford it people ask me like you have a ford gt of course you can afford it well okay but an e63 amg wagon is gonna lose a hundred thousand in value in three years and i don't i'm not in a position where i feel like i'm comfortable with that and but depreciation is not something that normal people think about as often as they should and i just feel like there's a lot of financial things that people don't have the best ideas about yeah but so i try to be very safe the cars i've bought i feel like are either gaining value or holding which i think is the smart way to do it except for my normal daily driver car which i think is that's fine and otherwise if you're going to invest in the market i try to do a big an averaging thing and a index fund thing and that's kind of my that's the world i live in yeah do you have a savings rate you try to hit every month or is it just don't spend frivolously it's tough in my world because i have big tax payments that come up at sort of random intervals as i'm sure you do and it's um and my wife and i still try to live and quite we love to travel and so sometimes some months you don't really save anything because you spend a lot of money traveling and and so no i don't have like specific goals like that um but i really try to save and invest a lot because you look at investment calculators when you're 30 and what's it gonna look like when you're 60 and especially going back to what i said before where you're not sure how youtube is gonna how long this lasts i think the smart thing to do is to plan like it isn't gonna yeah do you have a number goal in mind like one day if i hit 10 million i was just texting my friend one of my friends about this last night like he said he told me he's met some billionaires recently and they don't they don't seem any happier they don't so many better off and they're still pursuing more and he's like i would never and i feel the same way like i'm never going to be a billionaire because i would absolutely give up at i don't know what the number is but enough to get a a couple houses and an f40 and that's the end i don't have like look at me like i don't have lofty goals here i'm not sitting here looking for watches i don't care about clothes i only care about the cars that i like which happen to be increasing in value anyway so i don't know if i have a specific number in mind but it ain't a billion and it ain't even 500 million i ain't even 100 million i don't need that um i would just like to get enough that i can hang out with noodle and my family and just chill it seems like for an f40 though probably it's about 10. f40s are at 40s right now we're like 22 and a half yeah so i'm thinking 10 million yeah oh you know what 10 to 15 because then you buy the car cash you buy a house cash you invest the rest you live off three percent there you go so 10 to 15 minutes and one one nice car that's probably it i've told myself 20 but i think that that's probably you could the more i the more i think about it and the more i realize i'm probably not going to get to 20 i think to myself unless you sell cars and bids yeah i guess possibility but yeah the thing about carson business it is a really fun business drone and i do feel like i have an obligation to the employees to kind of last yes and so as long as it's making money and as long as it's not really annoying i feel like you might as well just keep going is there anything though that you splurge on besides vacations is there food any any particular experience no i really love to travel i like the big secret about me is that i like places more than i like cars and if i could do my videos about places instead of cars i would do that in a heartbeat um and so i really really love to travel but other than that now i don't i don't have i don't have i don't have a watch of any variety i don't have my entire wardrobe is t-shirts and shorts like i don't live in a world where i have splurges not really i thought what would be really cool we could talk about this on the podcast that you could expand so much further by reviewing things other than cars i loved your house tour that you did uh rv tours and i think i've never thought of this but place tours like touristy place stores that's the great yeah that's the great video and people are now starting to get into house tours i've noticed but that is the great business that no one has done on youtube is that taking my like quirks and feature style and applying it to places or specifically houses i think that would be great but the problem is it would require an enormous amount of travel because people don't want to see like a beach house in southern california another beach house in southern california like to do the channel right you'd have to have the same variety of cars that i have with except with houses so you'd have to do like a swiss chalet followed by uh you know some crazy condo in singapore followed by some giant horse farm in new jersey and that would have to be what you do and it would just i get a kid now like i'm good but i think that that is the great untapped youtube channel is going around to like 40 million houses all over the world people would kill to see that i think now how did you start the this where did this i don't know i don't know it just sort of started it just sort of it was originally i was just saying this is a whatever and i guess it just got bigger and bigger over time and now it's like a signature thing this is whatever and whenever people meet me that's what they want me to say in the street which is kind of funny really yeah um but i think that it started off really small because i like was kind of anxious about being on camera like i don't i was nervous and i didn't really know anything about how to act and if you watch my early videos i'm pretty stiff and tight and and so this is whatever you know but then after i got comfortable it's like well this is kind of the genesis could you say this is the like button and you should tap it really all right you ready yeah let's see let's see this is the like button and you should hit it maybe if i could just clip that i'll put it every video i know it became like a meme on tick tock me saying this over and over and over again how much research do you do before you go and see a car um it used to be not all that much but i've started to really really sort of diligently research and now i probably do it's a couple hours before i even see the car which involves reading i used to not like to read other people's reviews because i thought it would taint my opinion but now i feel like i'm good enough and i know enough about cars that my my opinion isn't really tainted by reading what other people think and i just need the background so i try to get as much background as possible if an automaker sends me a car and if they're willing to like a zoom call to explain the features whatever i'll do that um so it can be a lot yeah what's your favorite car on a bucket list to do that you haven't done yet um okay i'm no longer really looking for older cars to do like cars that aren't the answer is the car that i'm most excited to do is like any brand new hot car that's really coming out but in terms of like stuff that exists i've done like all of the lamborghini coup josh for a 40 f50 of the enzo like all the stuff that you would want to see but i'm really starting to get into like really weird like concept type cars and so there's this minivan that this company called ital design created called the ital design columbus which was like a two level minivan with a v12 bmw engine like i'm on the level where i want to review weird crap like that to it and the sultan of brunei has this insane car collection in the 90s he commissioned bentley to make him some suvs called the dominator and it's things like that that i want to review like one-off or like weird quirky concept card type things that's what i would really kill to do more than anything but like the thing that drives the channel is new cars and so like this that's the stuff that i'm most focused on right now do you ever worry about being repetitive or getting to a point where people are like oh it's another video or how do you how do you keep up with that that's a really good question that not that many people think a lot about but i think about it a lot and you have to my audience is a really really interesting one even in the car space on youtube because i have an audience that is half enthusiasts who watch every single video and half in-market shoppers who will only watch that one video and so that's tough because if you repeat stuff the enthusiasts get mad because they've seen me say it four times but if you don't mention it in that one video that the in-market shopper watches because i've said it three other times in other videos then it's like why did you leave this out i was you know i'm interested in buying this car you need to tell me everything and so like yeah i do worry about getting repetitive and it's hard and i just have to kind of have a balance in my mind of like okay i've said this in the last two videos about similar cars i'm gonna leave it out of this one and i'll put it in the next one and then leave it out of the next one um but it's tough and i get angry emails on both sides i get angry emails from people every day being like you've said this now about three different cars and you're this is you're repetitive you're just padding your videos for watch time but then if i leave stuff out i'll get doug you didn't say like how big the backseat is and or you didn't say what this feature does and it's like it's tough and i think i manage it pretty well but i think a lot of channels wouldn't to be honest wow yeah no i get the exact same thing yeah because uh personal finance doesn't really change right so for people who have seen every video for three years it's repetitive right for the brand new person who's coming for the first time it's all now and so that's that's the hardest thing in the world to figure out and the audience doesn't think about it no because they're they're like i just watched six of these videos this guy's saying this crap again what an idiot and it's like but you don't understand not everybody watches six in a row like not everybody binge watches but some do and so like oh it's it's just tough and it's just it's part of what goes with the territory i've noticed it's about five to ten percent of the audience will watch every single video no matter what you post or like i'm watching it and they call you out on stuff and it's like i just have to try to reach my goal with every video is to reach the widest audience possible and so sometimes you lose enthusiasts who get upset that i don't get into these hyper-focused little tech details or that i've said stuff a couple times or whatever and i have to kind of be okay with that because i have a larger segment you know some of these other car channels like hoovey's garage where he talks about and stradman frankly where it's more enthusiast focused they don't have to talk about trunk space and things like that but like i kind of do like people are watching my videos for practical advice i got a video of the title rav4 that did a 1.2 million views that wasn't that wasn't like kids watching to see what the rav4 was like that was people who wanted to buy that car and so i have to give practical advice yeah one thing i don't think anybody thinks about is insurance yeah how do you structure your insurance when you're driving some of these cars that could be worth millions that's a good question nobody thinks about it i have an insurance policy through a commercial insurer who does production insurance so like hollywood movies and stuff although i'm sure that the guys i use probably aren't ensuring marvel movies but they're ensuring probably commercials and shoots like that and they insure me um and it's expensive and i have both a damage insurance for the cars i have a personal liability insurance if i hit someone while i'm driving the car and i have like libel and slanter insurance but the type of work i do it's not really necessary um [Music] everyone should have insurance you see some youtubers doing some crazy stuff with cars and i think to myself because i know i generally have an idea of who's insured and who's not and i have a i think to myself like that's going to be a bad day when it is a bad day you know what i'm saying um the legit channels really need to to be insured and it's a very big expense but i can write it off and it's worth it to know it's there yeah i think mine is now it's twenty thousand dollars a year for for liability insurance for for media yeah and i thought it was insane yeah but it's insane yeah but what do you what are you gonna do not have it because the day you need it i thought about it because i was like the chances of this versus 20k yeah how much is it going to pay that's what you have to weigh and honestly for what you do it may make sense but i think if you're driving a million dollar car i would not have it have you ever had a situation where something has happened never not once ever so i'm sitting here thinking damn i paid a lot of premiums over the years yeah but but um it's worth it to me it's worth it the peace of mind is worth it i drive some really crazy cars from some people who really trust me and frankly i honestly truly think that part of the reason some of these people have entrusted me with my with these cars i have made a big point in previous videos to talk about how i am one of the few who's insured and i think that if you're handing me the keys to a pagani as a guy did or his ferrari monza which is three million bucks you can know that hey it's he's not gonna crash it because he never does and he's really responsible but if he does there's someone paying for it what are your thoughts about the current state of the market both in terms of stocks in real estate or in terms of cars you know i think all of it and i don't pretend to be an expert portraying myself as an expert at that especially in stocks and real estate but even in cars it's hard i mean you know it's impossible to forecast this stuff and anybody who says they can is you're all working on the same basic information but i think that i think that we're certainly in a bubble with cars in as much as we have this chip shortage that has caused a massive shortage of new cars and thus that has also caused a shortage in used cars and that has raised prices however i am of the belief very sincerely that some of this stuff is not coming back down i think that you're you'll you'll not be in a situation again where 2017 camry is worth what you paid for it three years earlier that's going to stop you will probably be in a situation where the ford gt is never going to be a 200 000 car again i just think it isn't i don't think an f40 you know when i i wanted a porsche carrera gt that's my all-time favorite car over 700 grand three years ago i don't think we're going back to that i think that car prices will contract as far as daily driver normal rational cars because of course they will once the chip shortage is solved but i think some of these cars are gone now they may not be 4g rgts may not be found at two and a half million dollars forever they may come back to 1.8 but i don't think the days of them being 700 i think the really special stuff is in a different league now and i think people need to get their minds around that and if one of the viewers wants to buy a car as an investment i know you're never supposed to do that but if you were to guess a few examples and different price points like what's the best investment car under 50 under 100 and maybe under a million i think about it a lot it's tough especially in today's market because nothing seems like a good investment but i do think there are some cars that haven't gone up i always tell people if you want to know what car is going to be really valuable in the future look at cars look at performance cars that people don't like today um this car is like the plymouth super bird there's a lot of examples of cars that were kind of shunned in their time that became emblematic of the time later and it then became really really valuable um but i think i mean just thinking about a few bmws i don't think have quite had their moment yet porsches have gone totally insane and getting even normal 80s and 90s porsches is now incredibly expensive like a hundred thousand dollars i think bmws are gonna follow suit those cars also had that analog driving experience that's rare and special and i think those cars are still undervalued even in today's market a lot of them i think um so like m3s and m5s from the 90s and the 2000s i think will have more of a they're already going up and so people are like that's crazy to say they go higher they'll go up higher um i think the lamborghini gallardo is actually super undervalued all other lambos in the last two years have gone off the charts insane except for the gallardo and that doesn't make any sense to me i think that car is aging well um and i think at a hundred thousand dollars which is what they cost now and what they've cost for years i think that car is kind of a buy and there's some others here and there uh i don't know but there are still a few out there but mostly stuff's just really expensive anything else jack i think we've covered anything else that you want to talk about we can discuss jack's 2005 lexus rx 330. if you imagine if you reviewed that car it's a really my dad has that car he loves it he loves i do too it's so comfortable

Channel: The Graham Stephan Show

Views: 377,387

Keywords: investing, investing for beginners, how to invest, how to invest in your 20s, how to invest in stocks, how to invest in real estate, how to save money, how to save money fast, how to be a millionaire, best stock trading apps, stock market investing, stock market investing for beginners, investing 101, real estate investing, robinhood, how to build wealth, how to build wealth fast, passive income, millionaire reacts, what i spend in a week, millennial money, watching ads

Id: NgJqH84SS94

Length: 59min 10sec (3550 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2022