From Broke To Bugatti | How Steve Hamilton Made $500 Million

so you might know Steve Hamilton from his 30 million dollar car collection that he showcases on YouTube but you might not know about his billion dollar business that actually funds everything that he started when he was just 18 years old and today he breaks down exactly how he did it and the unbelievable secrets of how to run a billion dollar business on this episode of smash the like button and subscribe because we're closing in on 400 000 subscribers and it's one click away it would mean the world to us and it's free with that said let's get on with the episode enjoy welcome back to the iced coffee hour I am Steve Hamilton and I am super pumped to be here today hold that thought Steve before you go into that I want to thank today's sponsor rocket money formerly known as true bill are we not addressing the fact we just changed clothes uh we don't need to all right because we're in a sponsorship bit and listen for anyone who knows me knows that I love saving money which is exactly why something like rocket money is absolutely perfect with rocket money you could cancel unwanted subscriptions lower your bills set up budgets monitor your credit score and get a clear picture of your finances all in one place what they do is they basically find recurring charges that keep showing up in the same amount from the same vendor and then they let you know in their portal so that if you're no longer interested in them you just click cancel it's really easy and in addition to that I've actually been using rocket money for a while now and I absolutely love how I can monitor my credit score and also set up automatic savings on the same very simple UI it's also incredibly easy to sign up for and there's so many other features that we can't go fully into because we have Steve uh waiting for us over here but anyway check it out with the link in the description it would help out our Channel tremendously because we gotta get our conversions please please I'm being honest so if you guys want to try it out literally for free check out rocketmoney.com ich or use the link in the description down below it would mean the world to us it's a great app I seriously I've been using them for years and uh I think you will like them too the link is down below now let's get back to the podcast thank you so much for making it thank you give headache we've both had a crazy trip this last day we just came back from New York minutes ago we set up and we're here at like 10 pm at night so it's 1am New York time and you told us that you just traveled from Hawaii yeah I got home from Hawaii yesterday um was in Chicago for 20 hours and then flew right back out here at 3 A.M Chicago time to what is that 1am Vegas time and then my body's still on 11 p.m Hawaii time so I don't even understand what's happening right now and what brings you to Vegas uh we are here shooting a show for uh Amazon Prime it's called banging gears and so we're racing JDM vehicles with European vehicles in the same horsepower and trying to see who has the best time trial along with drag racing it's like racing around basically the Las Vegas Motor Speedway that place is Fast by the way there's a isn't I mean you know this area right and there's a military Air Force Base right there so we're sitting there yeah and all day long there are these crazy jets flying all over us it was really surreal to be there today did you already do the races um so it's it's it was a pretty messy uh we're the first they're shooting the first two episodes of like 14 and they got a lot of organizational stuff that they got to get together at this point so I would say that in two days I've only been here today but Tommy and the other crew were there yesterday as well and two days they may have got five minutes worth of footage shot so tomorrow is the day that they got a lot of makeup to do it's a lot different than YouTube because on YouTube it's like every moment is content you just turn the camera on with something like Amazon I'd imagine there's so much that goes in behind the scenes yeah and I can and I can do one Spiel um I can talk for 10 minutes and they can cut that 27 times where this one's a little it needs to be a little less aggressive on the cuts and I think there's 20 crew members there it's it's kind of insane how many people are needed to make that type of production but yeah are you driving your cars are those the three yeah we've got the gt3s the 765lt and the 918 out here today and what cars are you racing I'm racing somehow I got uh they said they wanted me to do the GT3 us which is the cheapest of the three but also the Workhorse on the track that thing does not break no matter how hard you drive it I love it so I'm looking at these cars that you just parked out front of the house they look so absolutely incredible for me I guess I'm not very like cultured when it comes to you know luxury cars and everything so I'm looking at this car I'm like okay a couple hundred grand a pop something like that yeah is that about in the Box um the GT3 RS is about 250 the orange one the McLaren 765lt those are going for about 600 and then the gray the Porsche 918 those are with the I have the wysock package so it's about 2 million that's it yes yes and and Natalia's driving it on the track um so and we're like literally racing these things full speed so and there's no insurance on the track and how much does that worry you when you're driving just like because here's the thing I was driving a car just recently and uh there was a semi in front of me and it ran into a cardboard box and the cardboard box Flew Over the semi and it hit my car and it did a little bit of scuff like does that scare you something like that could happen way less than it should like I I have a a weird lack of fear about it um so like at the Hamilton Collection we're all about sharing our cars with the community so it's not uncommon for me to have eight ten friends over um we've had followers come over and and drive all the cars at dinner we did a homecoming thing where I let 16 students take all my hyper cars actually to homecoming un chaperoned so I just have an irrational lack of fear about it and I should but I don't know and then the Cena wrecked too like you probably don't know about it particularly but I I had a 1.2 million dollar car get T-boned about two weeks ago three weeks ago and uh that changed it for a few weeks and now I'm now I'm back to the irrational lack of fear how did it get wrecked and how did it feel yes like how to make you feel what was the initial gut reaction uh uh we were we were with James stradman and uh it wasn't him by the way we had 10 cars getting ready to go out to dinner we were celebrating and we got out of my neighborhood 10 seconds out of my neighborhood and I'm like the lead car and uh the last car is the one that got hit so I get a call and it's um nobody that we we put on camera um but he says uh I just got hit and I'm like you'd think that I would say are you okay but but he was talking to me and he sounded okay so my first gut reaction was and I'm not a horrible human I swear um my gut reaction was is it like is the car okay again he's talking to me he's like yeah all right Steve I'm like dude's talking to me clearly he's okay um and then he goes no it's it's pretty bad I'm like oh my god um and so I made a u-turn and I get well right after I make the U-turn I I call my our videographer I'm like dude you got to get rolling right like you gotta roll this like I'm not saying this is a great Vlog but we need to document this and like people want to know what happened um so Aiden is our videographer and he starts rolling right away and then when we get there um again Aiden was not the driver but we get there and I I realized that Aiden was the passenger and I'm like telling him to like he got he just got hit at 40 miles an hour and I'm telling the poor guy to video this and I'm like oh my gosh Aiden I'm so sorry I didn't know you were in the car but dude had the camera ready and he was filming um so Props to him but yeah so that uh he just pulled right out into traffic basically like I have the subdivision he pulled out onto a busy street didn't see the lady so it's his fault it was his fault yeah and just a special thank you to Country Financial Insurance which camera am I looking at because I want to just that one right there a special thank you to Country Financial for keeping me insured and not dropping me as a result they have actually really fantastic rates and I'm not just saying this for them like fantastic coverage they're still keeping me insured we're being extra careful with the vehicles are they covering it yeah they're rather going to be mailing me a check in a week or so how does it how does that work is that a stated value this is all new for me when I had to ensure the Ford GT it's not a normal process like you would call up guy killing me I don't want to ensure they actually dropped the Tesla Roadster they said it was uninsurable after a year of insuring it that's really weird Parts they insured 100 of my cars and there's almost 30 of them in the fleet and I have funky ones like the Countach hysterosa I've had an old Porsche Safari like there's nothing that they haven't insured some of them took a week to get back with rates but my insurance is incredibly cheap I pay less than thirty thousand dollars a year for all cars I know I know but it's because you have so many of them that like well you can't drive what is it yes uh mine all in is probably 3 300 a year for just four four cars I think a lot of it has to do with it a lot of it does have to do with the area and we're in a very conservative Town that's very mine's miles mine is like oh yeah I'll put a 200 miles a year in the GT I'll put uh 300 on the Tesla like that's you know I just get everything down with really high deductibles by the way all of mine are like Max deductibles yeah uh what happened with the Senna though was that just a stated value yeah so right so they call it a they call it a cash value I think but I ended up they were extremely reasonable like I ended up getting those are going for about 1.25 million right now I got that plus registration plus tax so I'm getting about a 1.4 million dollar check from them wow yes yeah and then is the plan to do they take the car then yeah so they take it I tried fiercely to get the car back Houston Costa really wanted the car so I was trying to negotiate something for him and they wouldn't do it they had to send it to Copart there's actually an only law that prohibits anything nine years or or less yeah if it's wrecked yeah they can't give it or sell it back to the person and you you crashed your Bugatti right no um all right all right yes um I have a habit of scraping cars as I pull in the driveway like I did your your GT3 my gt3s pulling into your driveway um I scraped the crap out of that and that's a low driveway too and you just gotta think I'm gonna bear like any like any semblance of an angle will not scrape you just can't I like head on yeah or just put the front lift on too oh yeah which I did not do I just didn't realize it was that and then it scraped bad but yeah Bugatti was going the David dobrik's driveway and his drive like Beverly Hills is really hilly it's called Beverly Hills right but I didn't realize that so I like get in there and it just I'm like oh my gosh but did you see the driveway going up and thought that like you would think I could do it or you just weren't thinking I think that I was hitting it at an angle and that's what she said but I was hitting it at an angle and uh it wasn't a good enough angle yeah and yeah a lesson learned I just won't Park in the strap like it's really steep I shouldn't have I should have pulled it in what was your thought when you first heard that crunch was it like almost good content or like what did I just do yeah whenever I mess up and I mess up plenty um I'm always like yeah you guys can roll it yeah you can film it like it's fine I'm human um and so yeah it's both and then David dobrik whips at his phone right away and he's like oh my God I'm like all right well if he's doing it it's going public like and he did he was a good guy like he checked with us to make sure it was okay and I'm like of course and uh it's almost like and you can't even really see me in it and the guy that was my passenger he's getting texts everybody assumed it was him and like he's clearly the passenger but he's the only guy you can see so to other people that meant he was driving so he took most of the Heat and but like we were heading to Monterey Days Later so it made that car super like famous well-known because their Tic Tac are Tic Tac blew up so it was I think it was a good thing it raised our awareness what damage did it do to the car not bad it was far less than we expected there was like a two foot long scrape on the very under part of the car but you know what Steve before you question why we change clothes again we got to tell you about something that we do feel would actually help your business quite a bit and that would be our sponsor streamer Steve I know you've been wanting to start a podcast just like us but if you wanted to do so you don't need to build out such an expensive Studio like this Steve I know you have a lot of questions right now but just bite your tongue for a quick second because stream yard is a live streaming Studio platform that's great for Content creators who want to create high quality content on a budget now Steve and anybody else watching I know you in particular do a lot of content creation on YouTube and you create really high quality videos but with this you'd be able to get high quality content right from your browser and stream it directly to all the social media sites all in one place I think I will download stream yard now exclamation mark hold on Steve don't get stream yard right now wait for the end of the pitch man I'm sorry whether you just want to start live streaming or easily create new content stream yard makes it simple to get professional and Polished concrete every single time I think you meant to say content not concrete but regardless guys just check out stream yard with the link Down Below in the description it helps us out a ton thank you so much stream yard and back to the podcast we got to tell them okay just sign up please it's crazy how listen guys if you're on the fence about signing up and you're not quite sure about it I'll make you a deal actually we will make you a deal comment down below and let us know what it will take to get you to sign up for stream yard whether it's like you know what I Derek Ram to eat 10 hard-boiled eggs and then I'll do it and then uh guess what I'll do it on the next podcast so uh if we make that deal just comment down below and include Jack don't make this I could eat 10 bucks we get to drive all these cars every day and it feels it's like normalized now like it's like oh well I gotta take the 7650t all right like it's just normalized for us and you have people that come into our headquarters and they're like so thrilled they never see the like they don't see a lot Ferrari they don't see a 918 a P1 and like we don't really we just forget how like significant it can be to someone like I'm getting letters about how it changed people's lives it motivated them and like you probably get the same all the time and uh it's neat to see that and we always have to remember that that it's significant to people so um we always want to make sure that we're I know I'm pivoting here but giving people like it's so important to give people access to these and you'd be amazed at how many people have driven that Bugatti probably probably 200 different people have driven that thing um it's I'm a little bit insane so how many miles how many how much are you selling it for I'm hoping to get around 2.8 to 3 million dollars it's going up for auction at Sotheby's Amelia Island in Florida um we determined that would probably be the best way to to sell it off um why Sotheby's not like bring a trailer or like uh it's hard because we were trying to go a dealer out and the Dealer's like well I have to be honest about this history and I'm like it's always good to be honest the problem is that on YouTube you see the one percent of the time that I'm hooning that car and like going crazy we're 99 of the time like I'm just driving and cruising in the car I mean I like to have fun with it but um the dealers that I've talked to like they have a specific clientele that they need to be very forthright and they got to say yes this car was abused for but really the car was meticulous I maintain all my cars really well there's a lot of influences out there that don't but I mean maintain them really well and we really do take care of them so that we can go beast them for that one to five percent and so the dealer can't really tell that story according to them like this clientele they need to disclose everything at auction it's kind of at other people's discretion so um it's at their discretion to do the diligence so we're not trying to hide anything like I could have painted the blue part black and nobody would have ever known that it was my Bugatti but we we want to fix up the blue and it's it's just just gives people their own opportunity to make their own assumptions versus the dealer steering them into it or uh bring a trailer is bring a trailer is amazing I love that set I'm addicted to it every day I am just scrolling I've bought several cars I've bid on 10 different cars on there um bring a trailer actually has really high standards for you to be able to listen I didn't even realize it um I bought a Testarossa that had like nothing was disclosed flood damage frame damage when I got it and I'm like I reported to them and they they like forced the seller to take this thing back um and they banned that car from being listed again so I that transaction alone I'm like okay if I'm buying and bring a trailer like your reputation is so important yeah you're buying a pretty good car and I listed a car my Porsche Safari and like really thorough picky process to get it on there um so I'm I'm impressed and it built my confidence about really buying anything that's how I got the GT oh yeah bring it down there yeah we got an M5 from there and I actually got that same Porsche Safari from there I think that's all I've gotten from there okay yes that's cool yeah how do you get an allocation for the new Bugatti uh so what's the process and what's the process like for buying one yeah how does that work uh so up until the last like three to five years it act like Bugatti did not sell out of anything like you you could call a dealer and get an allocation for something and and now there's a lot of like Young Money young people that that can become influencers and that can afford these Bugattis like the hypercar market is is Shifting drastically um you have a lot more youth buying hypers and then you have a lot more people modifying and doing crazy things to them without hurting the value actually like it's amazing in the last two years how you can go modify and do stupid stuff and you're probably not going to hurt the value where two years ago like there goes 500 Grand if you do an exhaust system on your Bugatti what was the question again how do you get an allocation of buying a Bugatti so so back then easy now allocations are all politics and like I don't like just candidly like their politics and it's it's knowing someone unfortunately the Bugatti one's kind of a funky story so I offended Bugatti directly they had their I was told by their old um I think he was their number one dude in the USA but he's like your video where you're pulling around Natalia on like a snowboard and you pushing the car and then you dynoing and doing all the stuff he's like that offended our Factory workers he's like we had a company-wide meeting top down here at Bugatti for an hour about your video and he's like at the end of the day like we just went like I had to explain to them like we just want you to have fun in your car like it's your car and I need to tell them to that so I had at that time when I'm having that call with him I had an allocation with them well I had a I had a like first spot on the waiting list and they said I was sure to get that allocation and then like and then I get that call from him and then all of a sudden like they're telling me I'm not gonna get that allocation so I'm like something's fishy here like are they are they playing games because of my channel and I still don't have an answer on that but then I met a great dude that had a customer cancel named Tim out of uh at o'gara coach in Beverly Hills and he's like I actually have an allocation for an SS uh confirmed allocation uh customer canceled so I bet Bugatti was very happy to hear that I secured another one that was guaranteed and a lot of times you have to pay like there's a whole Middle Market to that thing where where people are like marking up allocations it's it's really obnoxious and like I kind of can't stand it that that there's middle men that that are like hey I know this allocation I can't tell you who it is or where you're going to get it I need 200 000 on top and I'm like I just that just I get it it's business like I'm a businessman um people are in in it to make money but it just drives me crazy that that there has to be a fee paid like that to get an allocation but Tim was a great dude no fee on top of it just had to wire him six hundred thousand dollars right away another 1.5 million dollars like I don't know three months later um that's the other thing oh so now so that's how like I got an allocation for my Pagani Utopia much lower production count on that um just having a really good that there's another story behind that that I'm not going to get into there was a lot of drama there too there's a lot of drama and politics behind a lot of this and like I don't play that that's what schmee was telling us of just how intricate it is especially I think with Ferrari is one of those companies where you really have to get in there show appreciation for the brand by certain number of cars they won't tell you what it is it's a black box but when you get in then they'll give you these allocations and I won't play that game like I'll be honest like if there's a problem with the Bugatti I've expressed it like I've I've unfortunately thrown Bugatti of Chicago under the bus because there's been some issues with them servicing my car um I I've been public about what it is like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna play that game I'm gonna give honest input always on our Channel and that will hurt me in some cases and I'll modify my Ferrari I'm not going to specify which one but for I really doesn't like especially when it's hyper level cars I'm probably never going to be on that list for Ferrari because they have such a deep bench of people that and they're only touching you know five percent of people that it's that's never going to happen Lamborghini yeah I've made it to the lounge a few times but um but um right now good favor with Bugatti Pagani Utopia was a challenging one to get ramac Nevada not not difficult because they're not sold out it depends on on the exclusivity like how well they're selling I'm trying to think what else we have in order um the new Lamborghini replacement that's replacing the Aventador we saw that at the lounge it's very very pretty how many horsepower is that I can't say I don't think my guess is eight hundred it's got to be eight I was under and I was under NDA so I didn't want to shoot myself in the foot on that one could you give us a hint of anything like um without getting sued I can let me let me think how I would say that it's it seems very different looking like it's it's really it's it looks really nice I'm really excited for it it may or may not have a pretty significant horsepower jump and uh it may or may not um have solved the rough shifting problem in the event tour that I really hate yeah and that's why I sold my Aventador um but it may or may not I don't know okay so tell us a bit of your background how you got started and everything yeah so when I was 19 years old I um basically had this Epiphany let's go back even further I hate to interrupt you but I think your story uh just being younger not doing well in school but yeah taking on like side businesses like always being an entrepreneur you're always hustling yes so yeah it came from nothing like five different elementary schools zero money um Family on welfare back then food stamps then it turned into the Link Card in Illinois um we had nothing like four kids were sharing one like we had two bunk beds in a bedroom and so you have to like you just learn how to be frugal you learn how to like fight for everything that you get and uh so like early on I was I had that entrepreneurial Spirit like I set up a bike shop in sixth grade where I was repairing local bikes um I started working as a caddy at age 13 so I've actually been working since I was 13 years old 15 plus hours a week well it got a lot more as as I started my business but then I worked at McDonald's because it paid a little better from 14 to 60 and then a local grocery store um for about two or three years in the deli so I I worked like I had to sacrifice Sports in high school to go work because I wanted stuff like I needed Nice Clothing I need a car and so that I think just that that work ethic or just like drive as a kid and like I didn't want to repeat the mistakes of my parents to be honest with you like there's there's a I don't know I would say that I was the most rebellious like um and I've said it in my videos and I don't want to beat a dead horse but like I've never actually drank I've never had a sip of alcohol because there was abuse like growing up like my parents abused alcohol and you see that and I'm like At first I just I made a decision not to do it because um it was like rebellious it's like I'm gonna show them that I can't do this like that like it's so frustrating that I have to deal with this like I'm going to show them that you can live life without alcohol and then I I was fine until 18 I didn't do it at 21 I didn't do it at 25 and I'm like well if I made it that far I'll just there's no need to really ever drink um same with work like you know there's there's certain aspects of my parents life that trickled into their their work life that made it really hard for them to to rise above and uh and be better you know my parents did work hard like they provided for us and I appreciate them for doing that um but ultimately they just they didn't have this skill set or maybe the drive to to get out of that rut um so I bought some wheels for my car um I had a 94 Z28 that I worked hard to buy at the time bought some wheels for that wanted bigger Wheels later don't know why the don't know why I didn't click earlier but when I started looking for the 18s to replace the 16s that I had bought looking on eBay I'm seeing the price of them and I'm like huh I wonder that's where the Frugal part came in I'm like I wonder if I can find these cheaper like directly from the manufacturer versus having to go to a firestone or somewhere and then of course you call the manufacturer and they say no you like you have to buy this through a dealer like you can't buy this one so then I called the next day and I'm like hey this is Steve from Firestone what's my price on those Eagle 077 18 inch and like the vendor's like well they're you know 88 on sale a wheel right now like they didn't even check like that was just fine that I said that wow that that like that one thing with that uh I was 19. okay so that that's the only vendor like like a lot of things happen I mean yeah I hate when people say that that it's all about luck it's it's more about timing and taking advantage of it because everyone else had that same opportunity that I did that year um they just didn't take advantage of it right but that was the if I called any other place they probably would have shut me down or they would have said okay what's your name like they would have checked a list this one manufacturer was just very like Podunk um didn't really care about that stuff so I looked on eBay and I'm like huh 88 bucks a wheel that's you know roughly 360 bucks a set these are selling for 550 a set on eBay and this guy's selling them I'm like well damn that's 200 bucks profit and that that's that's a week or two uh what was I working maybe 30 hours a week at nine bucks an hour so yeah that was like that was a week week it's about a weeks of labor and I could make that like just listing an auction um so like I couldn't sleep that night I knew it was going to be I just knew it was going to be successful I'd never felt that way before in my life and uh so rolled up to the manufacturer and uh the next day and started talking to them I gave them a little business card that I had from installing radios on the side I didn't have it set up was it legal LLC or anything it was just a side gig and like again this was the right manufacturer right time only guys that would take a business card and start selling me Product like everyone else needs a resale tax ID they need like they need a lot of information um and not personal checks which I had I was using personal checks they gave me pricing they set me up question it didn't question it so I got on eBay that evening and I started listing product that they had in stock right away I'm like I'm selling seven eight sets the first week so really I'm all of a sudden making two thousand dollars or a thousand call it you know a thousand dollars my first week and like that that changed my life and my perspective so from then on it was all about listing as much product and Brands as possible under pricing the other people just to undercut them a little bit get the volume yeah we were listing a lot of product that wasn't listed so it wasn't just hey I'm gonna go find a guy like it was I'm gonna list as much as humanly possible because there was not there were not many people on eBay selling Wheels in 2003 um so a lot of it was undercutting because my overhead was was nothing like I was working out of my parents apartment um so that made it a little bit easier to beat the guy that's in the shop uh and you're storing all these wheels in the apartment they would sit in the foyer uh so most of it the other beautiful thing about this is I would get paid before I'd go buy the products like I would list 20 sets of Wheels I get paid the 550 I go pay the 360. I instantly have that profit and then I use it to ship as well so like we got paid for everything ahead of time um you know fast forward to now we have 30 million dollars worth of stock we learned that along the way pretty quickly I'll end that if you stock it in quantity you get better deals you get more margin of course there's more risk right um but yeah like I would go pick up maybe 16 wheels and and they'd be sitting in the foyer from the delivery and then I'd have to prep them and strap them together and go ship them and then eventually there started being like three months into it that's when I figured out the bulk thing so I rented a little office space like I don't know block down the road and so that's where we start so I'm this 19 year old kid that has his own office I don't know it's pretty it was pretty surreal it was pretty cool how much were you making back then I think in my first full year so I started June of 03. um I think that I probably I let's say that even that seven months that I had that I probably maybe made 50 to 60k so almost almost 10 grand month and then like uh the the full year after that it might have been 150 200k pretty pretty amazing um you know when I was in college I was like I want to make fifty thousand dollars a year like I want to do a sales I want to make 50 Grand like that was the Pinnacle for me um and back then adjusted for inflation that's probably closer to 80k maybe right now 90k so I don't want to artificially make people think that that's like that's like a logo like that was that was my goal yeah and that was you made it and like I did that while in college in seven months when did you decide or did you decide to drop out of college I did not but I I only I was in a two-year College called College of DuPage okay and so I started this like um what would have been after my I was kind of just finishing my first year and so it took me two more years to finish it two years so three total years to finish a two-year program but I wanted to get that done and I've even like I've even thought about going back and getting a bachelor of Masters like I actually signed up and enrolled at DePaul then they closed down the campus by me like right after I signed up and then I would have had to try like but then I'm like you know what do I need this piece of paper like I I wanted that because I felt inadequate or something like I don't know what it was and I'm like do I really need that at the end of the day like am I gonna go waste I should I only mean this as it relates to me because I think that for many people that it's important to go go to college right and unfortunately when people make hiring decisions I think that even though someone may be qualified without it just decided against it because I'm like you know what I've done pretty well for myself like I don't need I don't need to go get that piece of paper and and I've I've felt at peace with that decision ever since then how did you grow the business though do you ever have any problems being taken seriously being like 19 or 20 and like try to figure it out on your own I would say like I've I've always had so I've always had the mindset like I've never been content even like I don't feel much different now than I did when I was 19. um and part of that drive is like never never being content and never feeling like you've achieved Peak success and so it's always about like cool I've done this and immediately get working on what else can grow the business um so it's like it's having that attitude in that drive so we started off with wheels in O3 um by 08 we started doing tires we were one of if not the first guy to offer assemblies on eBay so like in 2008 you could buy a full wheel and tire package from us on eBay I went and figured like everything I figured out myself I went to a shop and figured out how to mount and balance uh made sure that we were profitable checked shipping on it and it was good and then once that was okay I went and hired a few people actually we had my whole family work if we had my brother Joel my brother Mike my sister Jackie that was like our team and then my cousin it was a five-man team um super cool working with all your siblings too um and uh and then it was okay well we've we've done eBay we've done room and tire packages how can we build our own brand like eBay there's no real value in having an eBay store like anybody can come in knock you out unless the product you're selling is your own um then there's uniqueness to it but we went and launched Mr wheel deal with her partner and a friend of mine that was her own brand um and then uh that was kind of a website that didn't have a shopping cart like you'd go there you'd get a quote request and there'd be a lot of interaction back and forth and then in 2013 I was approached by a guy named Sean who had built like this awesome brand called custom offsets and what they did was they were just a femic gallery you'd go there and you'd upload a picture of your truck so it was a big showcase for what vehicles and then what modifications and what Wheels you put on your vehicle and he had like 20 000 trucks uploaded a strong communal Gathering and and he bought wheels and tires from us and he's like how can I monetize this like I have this engaged audience I'm like well we have a database we have a very healthy and robust database we have customer service mounting balancing vendor relationships like we have all this stuff figured out so we we worked with him to do some logic around bundling package we helped him with some of the developing and the back end stuff their job was was primarily to maintain the website and then to Market it and then they got a cut so that that and then same arrangement with the company we we now run called fitment Industries and custom offsets and fitment industries are the two biggest brands that we have same kind of partnership that happened where we were doing a lot of the stuff in the background they were doing the marketing and then some other Ventures launched along the way including our own Brands Anthem arcan anovia and and then we we had all these funky things I had a partner in Mr wheel deal I had them doing this there were like six different people involved kind of competing against each other and so in 2019 early in the year we merged all the companies together created like an ownership structure around it and it added like like from December 31st 2018 to January 1st one day changed my value by giving up some of the company and merging my value increased dramatically because now you have all this complex goofy Partnerships and Arrangements all bundled up into one common entity with one set of books so that was one of the best moves that I made and we've grown we've grown 35 to 50 every single year we've been in business besides last year last year was a little challenging but once we merged it was like 50 70 so it really helped for us all to be on the kind of the same page how did you decide to bring in all the cars and start the Hamilton Collection so partner Sean in 2018 I was stepping out of a massage place all right legitimate that's not actually it was yeah I know I heard that actually there's a there's a story about that but oh no no no no no sorry come on all right so it's weird how it all ties together because it was all on the same night I'm like I'm with my brother Mike and I'm like yeah I'm like my wife and I go to these like 25 like foot feel spot or like Asian uh spot and like I know they're legit because there's usually like four people in the same room together so you're like there's not they're not going to give you a happy ending with three other people around you right so we found this one that's still open uh Right By Us in Winfield very reputable like nice nice Town um and I'm like oh they're still open so we get in there and the first thing we realize is okay well there's separate rooms at this one but it's still called Asian spa I think is what it was called so we get in there and uh I step into the room and the lady's like I'm getting in my boxers and she's like no no like you have to get naked I'm like she's like holding up she's like just can't see it somehow she knows in my boxer so I'm like okay all right like I've done naked massages before like all right I was all covered up so I get in the bed covered up and it was just a very different kind of like very different massage uh she was just like throw some grazes happening but I'm like all right like and then at the end like 45 minutes later again nothing nothing full physical had happened but at the end she pulls the towel off of me and she goes you she grabs she grabs and she goes you want and this was a test of of my faithfulness to my wife yeah actually because you're in like a trans right you're like you're like fully asleep like at peace calm and then like someone just grabs you and like it took They're laughing I hear a lot it took like it took everything I had but it also took but it also was a quick and I'm just like no no no no no no like that that I was put to the test because there's no emotional connection with this lady like nobody could have ever known but I'm like nah and I came home and I told my wife about it yeah um what was her reaction would she just want to call this place up and like ring him she's like you should report him I'm like I'm not gonna end up in the newspaper like like what if they have like yes yes so there are some other things along the way you go back in hindsight and you're like okay well like she was on top of me like rubbing my shoulder but like gyrating her hips by my head and I'm like all right well some of the Asian massages are weird where they do get on top of you but she was a little like her her privates were a little closer to my head but like you don't think you don't it doesn't add up until she pulls off the tongue and grabs your junk um now where the story ends is I want I'm walking out of the spa I look at my brother Mike and uh he looks he looked like he was sleeping and I'm like like like you know did they offer you something he's like no I was sleeping he's like wait they offered you something runs back in I'm like no no no Mike get out here and then I get a call like right around that timer I'm texting Sean and he's like uh and and I only remember that it was that day because of what happened yeah he's like bro just get the event he sent me a link for an Aventador at uh Dallas Lamborghini and it's it's part of the same group I got my Utopia from later and that's how I forged that relationship he's like just get it like I had been kind of toying around with the idea and he pushed me over the edge to get my very first Supercar the Lamborghini Aventador and uh fell in love with that and then rapidly bought a Porsche GT3 RS I think months later and then I got my McLaren 720s and and then I realized that and I mean this sincerely but I realized how how much people love these cars and like I I genuinely love sharing my cars like I told you about the irrational lack of fear it's because the the joy that I get from seeing other people having access to these is so great that I just don't worry I don't worry about the liability and maybe I should but like just seeing just seeing other people interact with it getting access to them like I'm like you know and I just really love cars I'm like there's there's nothing stopping me from growing this Fleet and so it was just a systematic purchasing of more and more cars well it seems like a bit of a spur of the moment decision to go and buy an Aventador all of my cars have been like a Spur like 90 how much how much were you making to justify that you could just like all right you know what I think that's a good decision I want to do that at that time um probably I've always been actually pretty conservative like like even though I'm saying I bought an Aventador like I I typically live well below my I have a nice home I have nice cars but I'm typically well below my means um and so I would say that I was probably making one and a half to two million bucks a year at that time okay so definitely could afford right now well I don't know well that's definitely two million dollars yeah what was the event there four hundred thousand uh it was uh it was 312 000. oh yeah did you finance it or did you just buy it oh that one that one I find out so I do like I have I have 28 vehicles I probably Finance nine of them and then I own I have a stack of you know almost 20 titles in my safe but like if I can get if I can get money and and I'm sure you've talked about this if I can get a a note at two and a half to like four percent I'm not gonna go spend two million dollars of my money um when money was that cheap yes um I'm gonna go just put it somewhere else that's gonna earn me eight plus percent a year are you comfortable to talk about your income over time because I'm wildly curious when I see these types of cars I think so I think so um so I'm definitely not cash poor but like you look at guys that launch software companies and they uh they may have a company that's not profitable but they're but their company is wildly valuable right so you have people that have this billion dollar company but they can't take dividends because their company's not making money um I think Elon Musk had that problem a while ago where he's like yeah my buddy's couch yeah yeah he's like well I am worth all this money but like I can't sell my stock like blah blah blah so I'm not quite in that position but like a lot of My Equity is tied up in the company last year when when uh and by last year I think I mean late 21 we had a billion dollar valuation put on my company um and so I don't own the full company I have six Partners but today I own 40 of it so that's that's a pretty significant amount of like net worth right um that's we'll call it 350 to 400 million dollars with the net worth however last year we had our first year of basically we were flat and growth and like PE firms that knocks a lot of PE firms out of the equation like they want high growth companies and we had always been one so we should have sold in 2021 um we didn't and um so uh I don't know what the value looks like today but it's probably half of that um and then my percentage time that so a lot of my value is tied up in that company but um but and I don't just have like I have a lot of properties and I sold a lot of them because I knew that market was at Peak I timed it perfectly I I buy when it's very clearly cheap and I sell when it's very clearly High I rarely play kind of in between so I bought a lot of my properties from like 09 to 13 and then I sold most of them in the last two years maybe the last year really so I've timed it really well and so I have income coming in from 20 plus properties I have seven Pet Supplies Plus stores I have an Arby's I have other Investments elsewhere so north of 10 million dollars a year now at this point so but but that's that's probably less than maybe that's less than you guys would have assumed but I think it probably is less than most it's about I'm so curious let's start on the properties yeah what did you buy what did you look for um which ones did you sell I'm I'm there's two reasons that I'm selling them one was because the market is at Peak value and then the other one is because I'm trying to simplify my life it's the amount of stuff I'm as I sell stuff and I still have to deal with it I'm like gosh how did I handle this one when I had exponentially more stuff to deal with first thing I bought were single family homes and they were always like it was less about investing it was more about Nostalgia like my grandma's house came up for sale that that had not like she had moved out of 30 years prior it was the how she raised all of all of her children is that by coincidence it just you saw it online or was it in the family they had to sell it I'm like a big nostalgic guy so I'm like I put like Zillow follow reports on all the homes that I've owned like on the Home Alone house uh 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka I'm like I'm gonna buy that house when it becomes available and I'm gonna turn it into a big attraction and replicate what they did you're trying to do that at The Brady Bunch house oh I love it yeah I love it the neighbors will hate me um but I'm gonna do it um so it was it was two things it was that like Nostalgia so I bought that and then what did I do when I bought it oh I think it uh my sister I let my sister live in it for a little while and then I started turning it into an income property and then I also started buying the buildings that my business was out of and that that was where a lot of the equity happens um so I realized quickly that single-family homes aren't really a great in my opinion unless you're dealing with really low income like at that time called a six like a hundred thousand dollar eighty to a hundred thousand dollar house I just don't think single family homes are near like you only have one tenant they're not generating the cap rate that I need they're three to four percent out by me um so quickly learned that apartment buildings are the way to go like multi multi-flats or if you get an industrial that has six different condos or but I was focused on apartment building so I bought a bunch of apartment buildings most of them were six to eight flats and uh and so now you have you know six different tenants paying so if one person vacates you're still doing okay um and then your cap rate's a lot higher like you just make more from an apartment building like a 600 000 apartment building is going to generate me 50K plus out there where a 600 000 home was getting me like 30 35k that's just the way that it is out there so I I think I had I don't know 70 80 tenants at one point um across all the buildings and then was uh our company grew so fast that you know we were in 7 000 square feet 20 000 square feet 100 000 square feet did you just keep the building and then rent out the last one I would always so I would I would list them at a stupid high price and then I would try to lease them I wanted to lease them because if I can get someone to lease it then I could sell it for even more um money right if you have a long-term lease tenant um there's really good money that can be had I think a lot of developers try to do that they build new buildings they will sell it yeah they want to get a guy in it so they can do I I'm seeing so many listed right now in Vegas where the completion is over the next few months but they have a tenant already signed in locked in for 20 years and it's based on that cap rate and then they're going to sell that right away oh yeah they don't want that a lot of them have offers it's shocking even right now they're in escrow and they'll get 50 higher than what they would have sold that empty like it's crazy um it's crazy how that how that works so we just happened to get the stupid High offer where where there wouldn't be a lease offer that would come in but someone would be like I'd get an offer within two weeks of my high selling price I'm like all right well I'm just going to sell so that would pretty much happen every single time I sold my 7 000 square foot I sold my twenty thousand um sold my hundred thousand one but most of the stuff I had was residential um up to the last few years and then we still own the building that we're in a 330 000 square foot facility up in Wisconsin we have a 200 000 square foot facility in Batavia and then we have another office building up there that's about 20 000 square feet so um on those three as far as industrial properties go uh and then and then I had a bunch of residential like I said and then just just sold them all and most of it was to do it just trying to simplify my life like like I'm I'm ready to sell a Porsche I I always want to be a part of my company that that I helped build obviously or that really that I started I'm OG employee number one at the place right I always want to be a part of it but I also want to take some chips off the table and and have that Comfort level that where I have enough money in the bank where I'm like okay well I could step away today and be fine for the rest of my life um and I've banked away enough money at that point where I can live I can live comfortably now but I can live really comfortably um by really helping continue to build this company and get the value way back up again what else do you want you mentioned what you listed off quite a few I started at the First with properties what else was there um I heard an Arby's in there seven seven Pet Supplies Plus okay pets pet supply stores yeah pet supplies there was some there were some partners that needed a financial arm and I was uh um I can't get into too much detail on that but like it ended up being where where I was in the financial I was told that I would need to put forth a certain amount I ended up putting forth 4X the amount after two years and I didn't think that they were being managed quite well so so I basically told them like guys I can't put any money like you have to start putting money forth like I can't continue to bleed um however if you guys give me 100 equity in all the stores um I will assume all responsibilities within the leases the loans that are outstanding like I I will be the guy that takes the fall for that and so I gave them that out and they took the out and uh at the end of the day I would have never invested in in these stores because I just didn't want the headache if I could go back I just wouldn't have put money forth but we have an awesome person that oversees the Story's name Kelly and she is like work to actually get them all profitable wow now I want to sell them and I have a lot of interested parties again this is about simplification of life like we've gotten them into where there's real value in the stores and so I just want to sell them and and I just want to have my wheel like I literally want to have my Wheel company and that's it and then over the next year or two prop that up enough to to sell some shares in that and just like I feel kind of burned out at this point I have other great ideas the team and I are trying to make a vlogger on launching business ideas and we all came up with a bunch of ideas and like there were some great ideas and and we were going to launch a few of them build the series wait six months to a year to launch it but I'm like gosh I just I just it's not that I don't have the drive it's just that it's so much work and I just I don't know I'm really kind of I've worked you need the focus what I didn't mention was I've worked 80 to 100 hour weeks and God bless my wife for for like just being there for the kids taking care of me but like for 20 something years that takes a toll on you when you're working that much and I think yeah I think I'm just ready to to chill like it's it's too much I want to talk about that yeah but I also want to talk about the Arby's yeah how did the Arby's come to be that's a same situation same price really uh and the Arby's is folded as of like two days ago so now I'm like trying to negotiate out of this lease yeah I didn't even run and operate that one uh they operated that fully is it just as a franchise yeah it's a franchise um so that one is gone and I'm just dealing with getting out of the lease right now on that so there's a 15-year Lease sign there's 13 years left in it it's going to be fun do you like the food Arby's house I do like Arby's it's not somewhere I go often but you know every once in a while I'll get myself the roast beef with some Arby sauce and some curly fries it's not what you think of when you think of fast food very few people think Arby's I think that's the problem is you just don't think about it right you don't Market they used to they used to Market a lot I used to see the commercials all the time I don't see them anymore yeah you know that does a really good job of marketing who's that Lexar actually oh my God they actually do a really good job because they you know they tell me to talk about them and then I sit here and I talk about them Alexa is actually fantastic they've sent us quite a few memory cards and I gotta say they are good they're very I don't I don't get anything from saying it but they're they're pretty good well if you're legit don't get anything then then good for you they send it they send us uh memory cards and uh hard drives hard drives so what I'm saying is ship them even more yeah hard drives yes also send to the Hamilton Collection Naperville Illinois uh got it uh yeah I'm sure we could we could record yeah I'm just kidding yeah what are some of the business ideas that you're thinking now and you got me wondering on that gosh I I feel like I feel like there's three and Tommy and Natalia I know you're in the other room listening but sorry to to throw you guys under the bus but I told them all to come up with three ideas each so we had 12 ideas and correct me from wrong guys but you'll have to yell um but I think my three ideas were voted the top out of all 12. we did an independent vote in the text and I was hoping these guys well you know Tommy had Tommy had a pretty good idea they all had good ideas they just weren't good enough to rise to the top all right and uh so I still May pursue them because they were my ideas they still could happen right like if if hits the fans at work which I really don't think it will like I think that like you look at companies that are failing right now our competitor car ID they had a 250 million dollar valuation and now their stock is trading under a dollar and like they've had negative profit for like I'm waiting for them to fall off so like that that should help our business if they inevitably fold but you never know what happens and I want to keep these in my back pocket but I'm I'm thinking of through all three of them are like gosh like I can't I can't like one of them is a kids car toy like a Power Wheels like I can sell that but but you but it's all about it's all about creating some kind of app and differentiating like you can take an existing one do a clever spin like um be real I don't know if you've heard it be real that's that's what yeah be real just took something very simple um and then uh and then liquid like liquid death is brilliant they canned water but they made it look like it's beer so like that that's that's their pitch is that it's okay great like I think they're around a year and they had a billion dollar like something stupid crazy so so you can you can take a product and and create something totally new that's never been done you can take something that already exists and tweak it which I think is easier to do create that app or you can create some kind of service I think service is the most difficult because you usually have to be kind of on the floor there dealing with customers that walk in so I think app is probably the fastest like something software related is the fastest way to get rich but it's also a lot of money required up front I think building a product requires slightly less Capital but still a lot that's more my wheelhouse um so one of them was software two of them were product related what are the most pivotal moments in your career the choices that are decisions that you made yeah that like completely change the trajectory of your business yeah so it's crazy how if several things didn't happen along the way we would cease to exist um one of them was Reliance on eBay like up until 08 100 eBay sales and eBay started to fall off quickly around 12 or 13 where where like their fee structure and everything just didn't get profitable the market was too hoard out and had I not pivoted and built um our own brand we would have we would have been gone in 2012 or 13. Ebay is like one percent less than of one percent of our sales now where it was 100 when I started right so um shifting to that adding tires to the mix that really differentiated us because not a lot of people have good websites built around bundling wheel and tire packages that was that was huge and clutch for us if we were wheel only I don't think the profit would maybe the profit would be strong enough I don't know um I would say that there were a few pivotal moments moments during covid where it got really scary for a month on sales where they tanked and we had a huge structure built around Staffing and we got really smart really quick on getting lean but then it went crazy when people got stimulus checks so here we are like telling everybody our reductions and everything blah blah blah and so the warehouse got out of control like after a month it looked like it was chaotic like orders were lost and and like I went out in the warehouse for a month and I was slinging tires and doing stuff like I couldn't even walk in my own Warehouse I'm like what happened guys um so like I hate to say it but like if that wasn't fixed like that could have crippled or crushed us um those are a few moments that that come up but there's there's quite a bit along the way I don't know that's there's it's it's crazy how intricate um and that's why so many businesses fail it's crazy how many of those moments happen and it's just having the right skill set or the right like gut that you need to be able to do that like I work with people that take three months to to make a decision and they say one of the best skills about a person that is a business owner is the ability to to just shoot from the hip and make an on the spot decision and like a lot of these decisions that were pivotal were just quick like this is what I need to do right now I don't have time to analyze this like this needs to be done immediately and what was the largest unexpected hurdle that you guys had to to mount I guess um I mean I hate to say it again the stimulus checks like that was just like are you expected it just like comes up it went like we went from having million dollar sales days to a four million dollar sales day so like you can't sustain Forex growth for a straight month like when you're staffed for so your staff got a bunch of money you just want to do five Wheels oh yeah with all the PPP too uh yeah yeah that might have been part of yeah everything trickled down the PPP uh and then throughout you know it just all sustained I forgot the unemployment benefits too they were getting 600 a week right 600 a week on top of the other did your employees did any of them quit or anything during this time too or were you properly a lot of people were scared to come into work and um I I haven't also have an irrational lack of fear about covet I respect people's decision to wear masks I get all that but I also just wasn't scared about it like I and they needed someone that that was that type of leader when the warehouse fell apart like we were a part of the reason we were getting crippled out there was because people were worried about working so I just got out there I got in there at 5am and I left at midnight I was working 100 hour weeks in the warehouse for that whole month and and that's um that yeah so like that helped keep people start getting people building confidence having them come in we didn't really lose like we didn't lose many people because we didn't choose to we could have chose to lay off and terminate when we had that very scary month but we we wrote it out for a little bit um and I'm kind of glad we did but like a month after it went crazy we hired a significant amount of people um we had to hire and uh when I worked in the warehouse for 100 hours weeks that's when I realized that I actually stepped away from the company for a year and a half and so did all the other owners and a lot of it was that month that month like completely killed me I'm like I cannot do this again like we just need to hire a c-suite like I I cannot be out in my warehouse juggling this I need to hire someone that's high paid there's a there's a very big difference between like a guy making six figures leading a big organization that's a smart guy right a guy making a hundred thousand dollars is still a good very good employee but there's a very very huge difference between a hundred thousand dollar and a 250 000 your employee like I hate to say it but the 250 000 your employee like that I can step away my Chief Operating Officer I have not had to go out in that warehouse in what almost three years now and I would actually have to go out there every year and rescue them during Peak just the the covid spike one was the worst by far like it looked like we were gonna fall apart um and he has done a great job like you just see the difference in that type of person so we hired we hired that group and all the owners stepped away for you and a half but when 2022 was clearly challenging and we were flat growth we're like okay well owners are going to step back in and and give give their all um to try to turn the ship around and so can you explain why 2022 was flat for you yeah so it it killed the automotive Ecom industry in general um most of what I read on non-necessary items necessary item as being like on alternator if your alternator breaks you're going to buy one anyway but like ancillary items like Wheels tires are oftentimes ancillary but oftentimes not um the market was down 30 to 50 percent actually this year on the wheel end um it was it was closer to 30 we called almost all of our suppliers and that was on I'm like wow like and I'll tell you why in a sec but um so we finished I think down actually seven or eight I said we're about flat so about flat sounds better than down seven or eight because it's about flat right um so we outpaced the industry but I cannot stand shrinking like that's like that that drives me crazy and that's a big reason why I jumped back in the mix but there were a lot of things happening so right when the Ukraine war happened that day we saw sales go down 20 and it just kind of sustained like that it was weird but that also times with tax returns um so Ukraine war kind of shattered consumer confidence that spiked up oil prices oil prices are very closely tied to our truck sales and truck is our biggest division um supply chain issues our number one vehicle that people modify are 2023 the newest model it was weird because five years ago the average vehicle that they were by wheel for was six years old and now it's the brand new brand new vehicles people are throwing wheels on them um supply chain issues with the cars that were 20 less new vehicles produced so that's our biggest year right so that that's a problem supply chain issues on the wheel end aluminum prices skyrocketed much higher than inflation so when inflation was eight percent or something wheels went up like and and uh in the Trump era they slapped tariffs on aluminum exports so like each year for like three or four straight years Wheels went up like 25 like so a set of 20s was a thousand bucks is now 1800 bucks just for Wheels crazy inflation so people now can't afford wheel tires sell the same thing so that all kind of happened the stimulus check didn't hit in March so we track every single month we track year over year growth if people didn't have stimulus checks in March of 2022 but they had them in 21 we're going to see a drop and then people earned out their taxes earlier that earned child uh the child tax credit yeah was paid out all throughout 21 so tax refunds were a lot smaller there were a crazy amount of headwinds that I've never there's like three or four more than I'm forgetting but it's just crazy it would also be the fact that cars for the last two years have really gone up in value and people see their cars as an investment it's a lot easier maybe to spend money on something that that you believe is going up in value and you're increasing its value versus the car is declining and you're spending money that you might not get back in the car yeah that could that could certainly affect or or they just have less money that truck was 30 and now it's 45 like I'm not gonna go buy Wheels what's interesting to me is from my understanding it sounds like what you guys experienced to have that flat year was just a bunch of external factors all like pushing in all at once yeah how confident are you that because these things were out of your control how confident are you that in the future these external factors are something won't continue to push on you and the business but what are you gonna do internally to make sure that you can basically continue on this path even with all of those factors we um I forgot to mention Rising interest rates that's a big deal because a lot of people use credit cards and finance their purchases and that was a big deal and that also affected inflation in general affected people's pocketbooks with with property and whatever else it would be um we we got very we got very close like when the owners got back in we looked at the highest level of expenses immediately um we realized that there was a lot of stuff we didn't need to spend money on we also realized that we staffed for 50 growth and we were already overstaffed by 50 so um wages were I I love my c-suite don't get me wrong wages was we're just not managed well so we're like nearly 100 over staffed heading into 2022 and we realized it when by by almost the end of q1 that like okay guys we're gonna probably be flat this year um so we did a hiring freeze and then we had to do a few rounds of layoffs we we tried to keep as many people as humanly possible but we were able to just through attrition mostly through attrition just and the great thing is that there was such a strong there still is such a strong hiring Market that um I didn't feel bad because these people are leaving and they're finding other jobs and and I hope that they're happier so managing managing every bucket of expenses down to a t looking for any waste analyzing our pricing structure like just getting in and granular and every single facet of the company and we actually despite being down we increased our ebitda by almost two million dollars this year even though we started the first half of the Year ridiculously high on expenses so this year even if we're flat again should be really strong for us because we're just managing costs a lot better it's it's just keeping a close eye we have a daily daily report that we look at on a lot of different metrics like we're that we're that finite with what we do and if there's something that's that's a red metric for two days someone's looking into okay why was our gross margin X percent like why is it down two percent from what it is someone's looking into and figuring out making sure there's not something broken right away it's just managing everything really well trying to train people to like this is probably the most important thing is training your your leaders and above to think like an owner it's do you really need this like subscription like is this really going to add value like if you own this company would you go pay thirty thousand dollars a year for the subscription making them think like that is making them make smarter choices and it's making them manage their wages better um so it empowering them to be entrepreneurial like is another big segment of it as just a random could be a stupid question but why not just go public if if you're considering getting we looked back route we looked at public we looked at going to um a private Equity Firm and just from everything that we looked at it felt like it would be easiest to just go the PE firm route public require a significant amount of Regulation I have to be careful what I say what I do I just don't want to have that level of scrutiny and you have to keep significantly we do keep really good books but you have to keep like 2x what is required for you know any other private company in my opinion the P firm just seemed like the the best strategic route to get us the cash that we needed but so that that's where I I think we'll lean at the time but that Market's been decimated now too right are you also price conscious in your personal life as well it seems like yeah just besides the cars yeah you're naturally a Frugal person I would say I would say like I would say Frugal is the is the wrong word like in some ways but it's it's someone some people have looked at the way I spend money and they're like it is so complex like I don't understand how you and and for me it's does what I'm doing provide like enjoyment or value to my life so if I'm if I'm in a plane do I need to sit in first class like it does it really matter and so like I flew Southwest on the way here like I sat in you know the middle of the of the plane like it's more like it was con it was a more convenient time and I just don't really care where I sit there but like on vacation like am I going to go rent a big beautiful home versus a maybe a tiny candle yeah I will I will go splurge and do that and I will go travel and and enjoy that it because that adds a lot of value that we travel with people all the time and that that raises the the bar for that that raises their enjoyment experience um so it's it's all just about how much happiness it brings me and and so I'll I'll be I'll look at grocery expenses and I'll be like okay like we're not gonna order this candy on Amazon like it's three times the amount of what I can go get it in the store sure I don't know it's it's really funky but I try to be very conscious and and not waste money away but I'll also almost spare no expense when it comes to enjoyment got it um what are your thoughts right now in the car market like just the the car the car market has been hit pretty hard yeah uh if you're a like I'm amazed that dealerships haven't folded yet because our lawn is getting very close well they did get close and then I think their stock bumped up a few days ago or something who knows I don't know yeah but yeah decimated like the the car value has gone down you know 20 plus percent the hypercar market has stayed pretty stable if not it's actually gone up a little bit um I guess people in the top wealth bracket even though they've lost a lot of their income this year I think it was 500 billion or maybe it was more um they're still spending like they're still spending stupid like the Bugatti Mistral that just got released five months ago sold out completely um so they're they're spending behaviors aren't really changing but the the middle class and uh everyone below is definitely watching their their pocketbook not going and purchasing that vehicle that's driving down price in uh raising interest rates on vehicles is making it a lot less attractive to go buy them yeah so I think that the market still isn't fully corrected though because I know what I bought everything at and it's still a lot more than what it is on a lot of cars so I think it's got another 10 10 to maybe even 15 to 20 on some of the supercars yeah can we talk about your collection specifically or ask me this question I want to ask you too what's every car in your collection if you can oh God I'll go as fast as I can with what I got yeah Bugatti Chiron Ferrari LaFerrari Porsche 918 McLaren P1 the Senna is basically gone but they didn't give me a check yet so I still have to I still have to include that uh Pagani Huayra and then I got a Ferrari 48 GTB I have a Ferrari Testarossa Lamborghini Countach Lamborghini Urus Ford GT Audi R8 uh Jeep Rubicon 392 resvani Nissan GTR what else Porsche GT3 RS McLaren 765lt I'm missing some of them but we're getting close limos two uh Cadillac 83 Cadillac Fleetwood limo and an 89 Lincoln Town Car that I just love driving see what surprises me about that list is that it's lacking a um a Mazda Miata I think you could just probably if you add one of those it will just complete the collection right there we have a my friend's daughter's name is Ella and she she you are speaking her language she loves it very nice very nice lovely car a lot of superhero would be I think pretty cool yeah yeah or I think a Tesla Roadster version 1.0 would be very cool yeah let me know when you're gonna sell that thing I consider it really that's such a neat right so there's the right price I never drive he'd rip you off man so he would he would sell you a roadster yeah if you went to him uh but I really wanted a uh a signature 100 so this is the first 100 Teslas that they delivered and he said well if you want a car to hold on to for 10 years I got this car here it's one of 26 ever made in yellow Ah that's it and so when I saw the car I'm like I love it and see it's one of one yellow with the um oh gosh Alcantara interior oh nice yeah so there you go one of one of that so I figured wow yeah but I never drive it I take it out every I'm the opposite of you you just drive these cars you don't care yeah every mile that ticks up I just that's just anxiety man yeah or or if anything were to happen to the car that could get a scratch or like a you know I scrape on the driveway yeah it ruins it that's okay I'm surprised you don't have just like a normal daily driver if you're trying to go to the you know I didn't think about those when you're talking about your memory or something we have a Tesla Model X and then I have the Roadster in order to the Cyber truck on order um and then I have an Escalade I'm trying to get the V series uh that thing looks right up my alley and then the Rubicon 392 I mentioned this one we keep the dailies at my house so we keep all the and the two limos are kept in my house because like I'll I'll drive the like I love them so much and my kids like they're not embarrassed at all for me to roll up an 83 Fleetwood limo to pick them up from school like it's just such a Vibe car like I feel like I'm I'm in and we've kept them very original like I feel like I'm in the 80s when I'm dressing those things so I love it um I'm all about Vibe uh what else do I have at home I think that's that's really a basically the Jeep the two limos Urus and the Tesla yeah I was speaking to the strad man a little bit and he was going over the cost of his Bugatti just like the ownership where he's got to get an oil change he's got to replace the brakes he's got to replace the tires how expensive those are yes what's the maintenance or like the upkeep on your cars look like um we just did a video on that so uh you guys can check it out if you want to see it but it was actually I was around 800 000 a year now that included some upgrades that we did so I don't remember what they were but like upgrades and maintenance 800 Grand a year but what that didn't include was depreciation if you actually look at us putting 60 plus thousand miles on the fleet now that let's include some daily drivers that my wife and I drive so it's not a totally fair number but that might be 35 to 40 000 so we're still putting 20 to 25 000 miles on hypers and supercars um it was like a million dollars worth of depreciation so two million dollars a year that it's costing me uh to do this no this is a tax question but do you do you own the cars in the corporation no I I see a lot of Montana plates right when I go out there and um I don't I do personally own them but I am I am using them heavily for business like a lot of these miles are put on for Content so um we are we are actually going to try to make sure that we can utilize proper depreciation for them we're working on it now yeah yeah do you do all the simple fixes in-house like an oil change and like breaks and stuff like that or do you send it all to the I used to turn a wrench back in the day like I did engine swaps I I did breaks like I just don't have the desire to do that right now I should hire a full-time mechanic because it will be faster right um but no we we take them to different shops in the area so how much does the oil change cost on a Pagani a Pagani I don't even know what that one is do you drive it up to just like a Jiffy Lube no no no that one has to be shipped to Texas you're for an oil I have to ship like all these cars like the Bugatti goes into Chicago that's not a far ship that's an hour drive um what else goes crazy far like when I get the remark I'm gonna have to ship it to California I don't even know where Mac is it's it's an electric car it broke all the top speed records I got I was driving uh over 200 miles an hour on Croatian streets and I got on national news I'm like golfing with Tommy the next day we posted the video I'm like it's in Croatia like I wouldn't post something like that in the US but like in Croatia sure and then mate rematch like literally the CEO of Bugatti and the founder of ramazzi's messaging me on Whatsapp he's like sending me all these links he's like yeah you're all over the news um wow he's like I need you to send me your license and some other stuff I'm like uh can I come back into the country when the car is like gonna be almost done because my remark will be done end of this year he's like yeah yeah you'll be fine I'll need to take you to the police station I'm like uh I'm not going I'm not going back to Croatia not going back there oh my gosh yes so some have to be shipped um it's it's and Tommy manages all that stuff and he does a fantastic job um my whole team is great I want to make sure I give them props because Natalia Aiden Tommy could not ask for a better team of people they they are really loyal to the brand just really good people all around I'm thankful to have them and uh and they they help get everything done around the organization so that I can focus on growing my business and doing other stuff yeah so as simple as an oil change back to your original question I don't know I don't know my gut is my gut is that's probably a three to five thousand dollar job but I don't remember that one specifically I know the Bugatti um like the the annual services like around thirty thousand dollars and a lot of that is the oil change because there's like 16 different um drip pan bolts and like it's yeah they have to take the whole back apart and it's a multi-day job um but I don't know the Pagani I'm sorry I should this is stupid why don't they just make it easier to change the oil in the car why do they gotta make it so complicated couldn't it just be like one thing off to the side and they know they gotta change the oil and you would think like making a lot of money from you yeah that's the thing if they're doing their hair exactly yeah who knows it could be that it's just not feasible or possible um who knows at the end of the day I don't know I know that Houston Costa does a lot of his own stuff yeah he's a pretty smart guy and I feel like that irks manufactures when you post that but perhaps to him for getting it done right it's maybe a kind of a sad question but what's the most what's the biggest catastrophe that's happened with you and your cars McLaren Senna the center they got T-boned that was just the worst thing that has ever other than that it was all tiny stuff it's all just cars breaking down on the track where there was some small mini fires that went out really quick that everything else was less than 20 grand and I say that like oh yeah it's nothing it's just 20 grand but like that's a lot of money but relative to the McLaren Senna that's a 1.4 million dollar loss like everything else we've been very fortunate and people have respected the cars really well you have any idea how that's going to affect your monthly payment on the insurance um they haven't raised my rates yet and they haven't dropped me I've I've added my I added my Escalade today that I bought six months ago because I forgot about it um yeah so and they're like here's your rate 472 bucks for six months on an Escalade which to me is pretty easy yeah it's it's really really fascinating but I like my insurance company I I yeah do they do just in your state or are they like they're like Midwest they have a decent presence out there I don't know if they get out this far Country Financial yeah how do you balance the time between everything and having a wife and also kids there's the there's the old adage like family first right but like really it's really it's support the needs of the business but make sure that make sure that family is family is first in the way that like if it if it comes down to one or the other I'm always picking family like I will stop doing what I'm doing today whatever it may be if it's affecting my family um but my wife knows my goal is to to step back away and try to live a more peaceful life so it's yeah I know she I know you have to go back to the grind and work 80 hour weeks like I my life is work family and then managing the social media channel I get that those are the only like I don't I rarely hang out with friends um and again a lot of that's because I'm back at work like I when I was stepped away for a year and a half I had a very flexible and nice schedule um it's it's just like finding the best times to work so I work with the kids are at school I work when they're in bed and making sure I have that time in the morning after school with them and then weekends I try to work very little or I'll work when they're on their iPads it's working when they when I don't need to be present for them or when I can't be present for them because they're gone [Music] um that's how and then yeah and then carving out you know six to eight hours a week to shoot content and do fun stuff um with THC with such a demanding schedule is it worth it right now or do you do it because you believe it will be worth it at some point in the future yes I don't want to Pat myself on the back but like in in six weeks that I've been I've been working really heavy for the last six weeks and I probably will until there's a sale event the amount of stuff I've gotten accomplished is seismic like I've I've saved us four million dollars in six weeks heading into next year um and from vendors but we're also gonna we also have strategized a bunch of other plans to help move a lot more but like the the amount in the like when when you build a company from the start you I've worn every hat I've I've worked in the warehouse I've done email customer service I know the way every single thing works in the organization and so I can I can communicate and act more effectively in my opinion than 99.9 of our people in our organization because I see every aspect of everything like I walk in my warehouse and I'm like aren't we aren't we double boxing Wheels we used to do that like five years ago like what why are we shipping one wheel at a time when you can bundle two boxes together that saves damage and that's a lot cheaper and apparently some something just fell off or something got not communicated and you know that ends up being a couple hundred thousand dollar savings I see things like that in the last six weeks I've seen a significant amount of that um and some of it's not the way we used to do it's it's I just went and visited um another facility and I saw that they're doing something a certain way and then I have our team running analysis oh that's going to save a half million dollars okay well let's do that um it's just I have a really good eye for recognizing opportunity and taking advantage of it and uh yeah I think that only comes though from you building it from the ground up and doing everything yourself yeah and knowing how it works yeah yeah it's it yeah I agree I agree yeah right right now I'm working on supply chain largely it's stacking negotiating with vendors it's creating marketing plans and like so um my goal is to to visit every sector of the company and do that same kind of analysis and then and then just create a checkpoint so like we have good team members but but I can use my I can use my lens to go in and make these changes and then let them know what I did let them run it and create metrics around it to make sure that it's successful move on to the next department so that's what I'm gonna be doing over the next year and then what would you do afterwards let's just say uh you take some of those chips off the table what do you envision for yourself like eight years from now when our kids are all in college I think my wife and I will be traveling like half of the year uh we just want to go have a lot of fun traveling within the next like if there's a sale event in two years I think it's realistically probably two to three years um just getting back to how it was mid-20 to to late early to early 2022 where I just had flexibility in my day I always have to keep busy like when I stepped away in uh June of 2020 I got bored immediately and I went and got my pilot's license I wouldn't get my my lien certification for operating in the warehouse like I was bored like I need stuff to do but like I'd rather pick fun stuff that like educates me um then have to work 80 hours a week so just a more Balanced Life doing and I actually really like I less enjoyed when I first started kind of interjecting myself back into our Wheel Company a year ago it was very high level stuff it was like okay our wages are X percent like how can we get that down now it's like super tactical where I'm working with Frontline employees getting in the trenches and like I love this part like the most like I love getting in the transfers working with team members that I worked with you know eight years ago and uh and that's it's actually really fun for me to be back in the mix I love work um but I need to know that there's an end in sight so balance schedule I think I'm spending good time with the family right now because I'm I'm with them a lot other than when I travel um yeah really just a better balance schedule that's it yeah yeah so with the level of intensity that you have for work right now would you say that overall it's like a really happy relationship between you and work or would you say that you're still doing it mostly right now in order to ideally like reap the rewards of two three years in the future when the sell event happens I think I would say if if if you told me there's no way that I could sell my company within the next five years I would be less happy but I'm really optimistic that we can we can get a portion of it up and for sale in a few years and again I always want to retain part of it I just want to take some chips off the table but because I know that the end is not the end but because I know that that's probably in the scope of reality within two years I'm I'm actually fine like I'll grab my laptop and find new projects to do like I could I could rest relax at night but I'm like that's that's wasted time I could be I could be growing adding more profit doing something so I enjoy it so you okay but what you just said was not something out of enjoyment but was more so out of like okay like I probably should be doing something right now because those are they're different you know they are they are um it's you I don't not enjoy it I don't not enjoy it right it's just uh I always have to be doing something I I've thought of a way oh crap like I can I can actually get started on that um I've thought of something to do so I'm just filling that time is it going and driving a Supercar 180 miles an hour that would be much more fun than that no but it's something to to fill my time that feels productive so there's there's some value that I get out of it because it feels really productive right so it does bring happiness but a lot of it is also out of necessity and a feeling like you do need to do it because like you said in two three years there is the that is the light at the end of the tunnel you're trying to get there yeah and I would say it's pretty rare right now in the last in the last few months that I've felt really stressed about it even when I'm working really long days like I'm actually I'm I'm okay with it again because I know I know there's a goal um so it's not really it's pretty okay right now and what's the goal with the Hamilton Collection uh to keep like to really get the collection to a it's it's funny that you interviewed Mr Beast right I did yeah that was yeah I think I watched it a few months you did that pretty recently too right um something like that okay three months four months I watched that one I think right when it came out cool um I watched his video on how he cured a thousand people from blindness yeah and like that got me thinking I'm like I would love to cross over like the car follower Community caps it right like four million like stradman is the most successful and there's a reason he is because he's a really good dude he's really fun to watch but like there's nobody there's a few guys like donut media dimiro 4.6 okay there is a top though when then you have other guys like Nathan from unspeakable David dobrik you have beast and like where they're just 10 million like way way above that so there's kind of sticks yeah yeah but it's not really like the type of like show but there's a lot of guys over over 10 that have nothing to do with like there is there seems to be a lower cap for car stuff than there is other stuff so I want to try to bridge that gap between how can I go do fun stuff like that but but use my collection in my cars and I don't know what the answer is but I've challenged my team with that it might mean doing slightly less content but doing higher quality content and I think that we do our engagement's really really good like I will say I would say it would be better to have 4 million because the automotive audience is so enthusiastic about the content like can you see when James posts a video yeah always a million views no matter what he posts really good engagement comment section is so positive and everyone is supporting each other and is encouraging him very true and so like that audience for me is way better than 10 million where it's like they'll kind of tune in and out here and there yeah so it's it's I think we're kind of at a pivotal pivotal moment for the good this is one of those moments where I recognize that I don't think we're anywhere near the end of the content line but I think that we can create even more fun engaging content crossover but still use cars so I've challenged them with that and uh and it's it's doing that but continuing to bring in higher quality Vehicles continuing to to pitch the message of sharing the cars with the community bringing the cars to charity events to drive people in there making sure that people can access and drive the cars um it's it's just continuing to really Build That Brand I definitely think that there's a way that you could do that with more like spectacle type content with cars I saw Mr Beast on something I don't know what it was but he got like a bunch of buses lined up and he got so it's like jump over he did like 10 things in that video I'm like dude like this that was pretty crazy I also I remember I was with the strad man and he was saying that he wanted to race like a plane in a super fast car stuff like that there's always ways that you could figure it out it's just I feel like it would be a little bit different than like I guess I'm talking more about the charitable aspect the problem with that is you you dance that fine line of like Beast got some Flack for it which I think is silly because he he cured he paid for thousands likes yeah but but then you have cynical people that say well he's doing an offer he's doing it all just for Content but they're still dude a thousand people like people wouldn't even know this is a surgery that that needs attention if it weren't for the video and he wouldn't be able to do that if it were not for the videos so so how can I help change people's lives right now we donate all we we don't um we donate all well we say we don't need all profit security we actually donate like almost all revenue to like top line revenue um so you know the channel makes twenty plus thousand dollars a month but it profits much less than that but we're still donating 20 plus thousand dollars a month right now I wanna maybe it's not just donating that but using that for stuff like what he did using that to find that doctor to find someone where I can help make a wish would be fantastic like kids who just want to be in a Porsche 918 and experience that the problem is that it's how you you have to maintain viewers so the channel stays relevant yeah and so you can continue to grow it and earn more income so that I can help more and more people um so I I have a lot to figure out but I think we have the right personalities and and collection and like I think we'll get there and I I have them on like we talk with a lot of influencers and it's like it's Fly by Night it's like I don't know what I'm gonna do tomorrow but I'm going to figure it out and I have them on like metrics I still keep it fun like we have a very laid back loose environment where actually our personalities are even more nuts in person than what people see on YouTube where it's usually the opposite usually people amp up for YouTube we have to like tone it down a little bit um but like we keep a strict metric we have our everything already filmed a month ahead of time you I think you said you don't you do similar or no that was me that I actually asked but you may you may yeah I'm always usually a few days to a week in advance the podcast could be anywhere from one to eight weeks in advance gotcha yeah shimmy was talking about how he plans things like months ahead of time and we don't go that far but we try to get a month with other stuff in the pipeline pick days it was Doug too Doug takes a three months off in the summer nice uh and he has three months of content done yeah in the pipeline they're all scheduled too smart which is so cool so it just automatically post without him even having that far ahead but we also rank the content and if it's going to be we call three that's our lower performer I have them look at a and maybe you do similar but I look at our total followers it's not just how many people view the video it's how many it is relative to your follower account right because you someone could get a 20 000 view video and have 20 000 Subs that's a really good performing video that's a hundred percent of your your sub count um so we try to make sure that at least a third of our sub count watches a video and if it's not going to be that it's not worth filming but we want to make sure that two-thirds of the sub count so right now we're at about 400 000 so I need I need two what is two thirds of that 66 times 4 2 65 okay people need to basically watch that video or it's not really worthwhile um so yeah we bringing metrics doing that and you'd be surprised how effective it is bringing my business aspect into the YouTube channel as well yeah for automotive I think that's absolutely doable and I hear that the automotive crowd I mean there's probably significant overlap with what you do it's probably the same demographic or very similar but when I talk to people that that make most of the money from Brand endorsements uh they mention how there's a premium on viewership that is looking at Automotive content those people are typically willing to spend more it's a different income bracket so they can get two to three x um what a channel that doesn't do Automotive interesting does I didn't I didn't know that it is a pretty targeted audience so it's not only just like what it is but it's also like I know this guy who does like ride share type videos and he can get like crazy brand deals because you know even if his his view count is like 10 20 000 views video it's like you know exactly who you're targeting to and yeah yeah very very uh specialized audience and and the awesome side effect of this channel is like fitment Industries and custom offsets or other companies like it's hard to get our foot in the door with big influencers like we're like hey you know how you get the message in Instagram like I've got this business like I'm I'd like to test out this this metric thing like nobody wants to hear that nobody wants to hear from a business but when I'm like hey I'm Steve from the Hamilton Collection like we're not for profit like you want to come drive a Supercar or hyper car sometime like get my foot in the door with these with these people and then uh and then you know they realize that hey we're a pretty okay group of people and then I'm like hey you know if you guys want to make some money and do some pitches for custom offsets fitment Industries um like honestly James strand I'm like this would be perfect for your channel um because he's doing he's doing other things right now that that clearly do well but like wheel and tires is his his Watcher base are probably more interested in seeing that him advertising showing them on his vehicle like that's actually good content um so I found this like network of we've made all these awesome connections with some really great influencers and now we have all these guys pushing our product for money um but it's it's just pretty neat how this has opened the door up for all that and it's and it's overflowing into my wheel business and helping me yeah I bet that would be a huge opportunity for influencer marketing for you because it fits so perfectly you're in it all ready you're a fellow Creator and you run the business yeah in the same field and then in the same field and demographic as so I also push our business for free obviously and I try to sneak something in into every video and there's a personal connection it won't drop off like there's always a drop off when people start pitching an ad but we don't really see that because it's just so seamless and people know I'm the owner so they know that I'm it's not as much an ad more just me talking about like right but I own what I do yeah I think it's a fantastic opportunity yeah is there anything else you want to talk about that's all I got really that's cool we would love to come visit you like ideally I want to go and see the whole collection and actually do like a sit down there as well yeah that would be uh that would be a fantastic year well certainly welcome the weather's warm in Chicago there's only a few months of that but yeah you should make it happen June June and Beyond yes great deal thank you so much it's late I'm sure with the time difference and everything it's uh hard on all of us I'm sure I'm just gonna fall over at some point but that's okay thanks for having me guys thanks so much thank you so much for watching a thousand dollars until next in the description what just happened with you about talking at the same time