Speaker 1: Vis is Masters in Business with very Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: You guys know, I sometimes wank out with cars and
Speaker 1: order reviews, and I've spoken to a number of people
Speaker 1: in that industry. Today, I have pretty much the mac
Speaker 1: Daddy of YouTube car reviewers. That would be Doug Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: His stats are kind of insane. He's got about three
Speaker 1: point seven million subscribers and just billions of views. I'm
Speaker 1: not using that as hyperbole. Billions of views. He's pretty
Speaker 1: much driven every car under the sun, new cars, old cars,
Speaker 1: exotic cars, and has created a really fascinating business around
Speaker 1: filming himself doing car reviews. He's got a very charming
Speaker 1: sense of humor, especially in writing. It's quirky, kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of Dave Barry. And he
Speaker 1: also is really really insightful with automobiles. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's by the end of each review he's convinced
Speaker 1: me or we just start in the same place, but
Speaker 1: I find him to be enormously insightful when it comes
Speaker 1: to the value of cars, what their strengths and weaknesses are. Hey,
Speaker 1: is this something you might want to pick up as
Speaker 1: a weekend driver, or is this a car you could
Speaker 1: take the kids back and forth with. It's just really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a whole universe of YouTube car folks, and some
Speaker 1: of them just deal with the craziest, most exotic stuff.
Speaker 1: Doug is very down to earth and he gets as
Speaker 1: excited about a Ferrari as the next guy. But he
Speaker 1: also can take you through, you know, something like the
Speaker 1: Ford Bronco or range Rover Volar and explain the advantages
Speaker 1: of him. If you're a car person, or if you're
Speaker 1: actually shopping for a car, go to his YouTube site,
Speaker 1: Doug Demorrow and just search for the car you're looking for.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty positive you're gonna find something either identical to
Speaker 1: or similar to what you're looking for, and he could
Speaker 1: really share some insights as to that specific car. I
Speaker 1: could babble about this forever rather than do that with
Speaker 1: no further ado. My conversation with Doug Demurrow. This is
Speaker 1: Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My
Speaker 1: special guest this week is Doug Tomorrow. He is a
Speaker 1: car reviewer, but not just any car reviewer. His YouTube
Speaker 1: channel has three point seven million subscribers. His videos have
Speaker 1: been seen over one point one billion times. Each one
Speaker 1: averages about a two million view count per video. He
Speaker 1: has won numerous awards from YouTube and others, including the
Speaker 1: Gold Creator Award. He is the author of two books,
Speaker 1: Plays with Cars and Bumper to Bumper. Doug DeMuro, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So let's get a little overview of of your career.
Speaker 1: You begin at Porsche as sort of a cubical drone
Speaker 1: working spreadsheets. But but at least you've got a really
Speaker 1: nice company car, didn't you. Yeah, So I worked at Porsche.
Speaker 1: I was twenty one that I just graduated from college,
Speaker 1: and I had a nine eleven series of them. Actually,
Speaker 1: I had four nine eleven company cars during the time
Speaker 1: I worked during in a Panamara, and I only crashed
Speaker 1: two of those five cars. So it really it all
Speaker 1: worked out pretty well. I think that's a great percentage
Speaker 1: of Oh wait, you had four cars, so fifty throughout
Speaker 1: two out of five two out. I crashed one of
Speaker 1: the nine elevens in one of the end u Panama.
Speaker 1: Now the nine eleven I read about was a rainstorm.
Speaker 1: You come around a turn and there's a tree down
Speaker 1: on the street. How did you how did you crash
Speaker 1: the Panama? Oh? That one, the Panamera was was not
Speaker 1: my fault. The guy pulled out in front of me,
Speaker 1: he like ran to stop sign. I also considered the
Speaker 1: nine eleven not to be my fault, you know, with
Speaker 1: a tree in the road. But my bosses didn't see
Speaker 1: it that way. They were not in agreement with me.
Speaker 1: Was the tree falling just as you came around the
Speaker 1: corner or the road? But it was a dark road
Speaker 1: and it was a it was a sharp corner, and
Speaker 1: you just you couldn't avoid it, in my opinion, unless
Speaker 1: you were driving more slowly, which is what the officer
Speaker 1: would have said to me. I think, I think right,
Speaker 1: too fast for for road conditions. I we've all been there.
Speaker 1: So you begin writing not long after your Porsche. You
Speaker 1: wrote for The Truth about Cars, which is a great blog.
Speaker 1: Way early that blog was telling people that GM was
Speaker 1: going to go bankrupt years in advance. They were dead right,
Speaker 1: you write, you wrote for gelot Nick what what led
Speaker 1: to this side gig? Well, you know it's interesting. I
Speaker 1: mean it was twenty one and I was working Porsche,
Speaker 1: and then it was twenty two and twenty three, and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I was just at that age.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to sit next cubicle, you know. I
Speaker 1: just was thinking to myself, am I really going to
Speaker 1: do this forever? And it was cool having those cars,
Speaker 1: but they weren't mine, you know, they were rental cars,
Speaker 1: essential from the company that you had for six months,
Speaker 1: and then you get another one and I just remember
Speaker 1: after the you know, the third or fourth one, you
Speaker 1: pick it up and it's kind of lost its magic,
Speaker 1: and you think to yourself, is this really gonna be
Speaker 1: my whole life? You know? Am I going to be
Speaker 1: driving other people's cars? And that's kind of the highlight
Speaker 1: of my life is picking up a new rented And
Speaker 1: so I started to kind of think about what do
Speaker 1: I want to do really? And I was actually writing
Speaker 1: already for auto traitor dot com, writing like just boring
Speaker 1: you generic car articles, you know, should you buy your
Speaker 1: car at the end of the leaves or whatever? And
Speaker 1: I just decided my wife and I were like, let's
Speaker 1: just take this jump. So one day I quit and started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, she started writing a two cars about two
Speaker 1: weeks after I quit, and that began the That was
Speaker 1: the seed that throughout it. Now, I recall reading something
Speaker 1: of yours about the Chicago Auto Show that was surprisingly
Speaker 1: funny in a very Dave Barry like way. It had
Speaker 1: a sense of humor. It wasn't your straight here's the
Speaker 1: latest and greatest from hund right right. Yeah, I started
Speaker 1: I started going after kind of the more humorous slant
Speaker 1: on it. You know, I had quit my job on
Speaker 1: the theory that I could make a living being funny
Speaker 1: with cars, even though no one had. That wasn't really
Speaker 1: a thing that existed. I have when I look back
Speaker 1: on it, it sounds like the craziest thing I've ever
Speaker 1: done in my life. But you know, I was twenty three,
Speaker 1: and it didn't really there were stakes were low, basically,
Speaker 1: and so I gave that a shot and then it
Speaker 1: you know that that kind of grew an audience around me.
Speaker 1: Was that paying the bills? I mean writing profession correct? No.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was making all of my money
Speaker 1: from writing for Auto Trader. They were doing well and
Speaker 1: they needed a ton of content to sort of help
Speaker 1: drive traffic, search traffic and things to their car listing.
Speaker 1: And so I was writing the stuff that most people saw.
Speaker 1: I was getting paid basically nothing for. But the stuff
Speaker 1: that I was getting paid for, you know, people weren't
Speaker 1: really seeing unless they were in market consumers, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to decide between like a RAP four and a
Speaker 1: CRV was that kind of stuff. So then you end
Speaker 1: up picking up a two sounds and in four ferrari
Speaker 1: three sixdina for about eighty thou dollars half down, half
Speaker 1: financed um with your parents co signing the loan. Tell
Speaker 1: us you're thinking behind that purchase. But that was also
Speaker 1: one of the craziest things I ever done. I have
Speaker 1: no idea why I thought that was a good idea,
Speaker 1: but it turned out to me. My thinking was, you know,
Speaker 1: now if you go on YouTube, now there's an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of people who have really crazy cars and do
Speaker 1: videos about them. But back when I bought that car
Speaker 1: at the beginning of thirteen or not was the end
Speaker 1: of third But either way, people weren't doing that. YouTube
Speaker 1: was primarily confined to a bunch of teenagers kind of
Speaker 1: screwing around, and they were very very very few. Like
Speaker 1: exotic car owners like that was out of the realm
Speaker 1: of a lot of what YouTube had, and so my
Speaker 1: thinking was at the time I was writing for Gelotnick,
Speaker 1: the popular you know, car block, it became clear to
Speaker 1: me that video was maybe something I should try. And
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, it would be a really good
Speaker 1: idea to have of something like this that would really
Speaker 1: really attract people. And so my gamble was, if I
Speaker 1: buy this car, maybe I can get a lot of
Speaker 1: people you know, interested and excited and watching or reading
Speaker 1: my columns. Um and so that was the That was
Speaker 1: the theory. And yes, I had never financed a car before,
Speaker 1: so my parents had to cosign, even though I put
Speaker 1: half down, and my parents had to cosign the loan.
Speaker 1: So the first video of yours, I think that caught
Speaker 1: my attention was you basically letting twenty friends and strangers
Speaker 1: drive the Ferrari and film it and basically capture their reactions.
Speaker 1: I suspect that video went pretty viral. I saw it
Speaker 1: on Business Insider. But in prepping for this, when I
Speaker 1: googled that video, a ton of places talked about that,
Speaker 1: was that your first really big video? Yeah, yeah it was,
Speaker 1: and like you said, it got kind of picked up everywhere.
Speaker 1: And before that, you know, I was posting the videos
Speaker 1: on Gelotnik, and so they were doing pretty well because
Speaker 1: there's a pretty good traffic there. There wasn't the time,
Speaker 1: and then it kind of started that video. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: video was like, oh my god, this this can happen.
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize, but people seem to think that
Speaker 1: was pretty crazy. And now that's another troke on YouTube.
Speaker 1: A lot of people do that, letting their friends drive
Speaker 1: there or whatever. It's not you know, you couldn't do
Speaker 1: go viral with that content anymore. So after about a
Speaker 1: year with the Ferrari, you say, I know what's even
Speaker 1: less reliable and you go out and pick up Was
Speaker 1: it the Eston Martin after that? No? I think it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to remember now, which is funny because
Speaker 1: at the time it was so important to me. But
Speaker 1: I think right after the Ferrari, I had a Hummer.
Speaker 1: I had Hummer Hummer, which was just the biggest disaster
Speaker 1: automobile that has ever existed. And I had a Nissan
Speaker 1: Skyline that I had imported some Japan, which was those
Speaker 1: two cars. That was all the audience, right. You had
Speaker 1: like the Japanese sports car crowd and then you had
Speaker 1: the old American truck crowd, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: is this is perfect. I can split the I can
Speaker 1: split the audience, and then somewhere in the middle there
Speaker 1: was a lotus Elites which you drove cross country. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually did that before I started even doing any
Speaker 1: of this. I did that just for fun, and it
Speaker 1: was the most miserable experience I've ever had. I wish
Speaker 1: I had done it when I was writing about it
Speaker 1: and making videos, because because it really wasn't worth it
Speaker 1: to just do it. And for listeners. Doug is about
Speaker 1: six three, maybe even taller, and the Lotus is just tiny.
Speaker 1: The worst drives of my life. It also I discovered
Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert it didn't have air conditioning.
Speaker 1: I did this in July and I didn't find out
Speaker 1: it didn't have air conditioning until day two when I
Speaker 1: was in the Mohabi desert. And I remember at one
Speaker 1: point I pulled over simply to get a bottle of
Speaker 1: water so I could pour it on myself. It was
Speaker 1: that level of comfort drenched. Now, if I recall also
Speaker 1: Aston Martin went back and forth across country. What was
Speaker 1: that experience life? Yeah, you know, I wanted. I kept
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, well, I've done this, I've done that,
Speaker 1: how do I get even more reach, even more people
Speaker 1: make even more of an entertaining thing with these cars
Speaker 1: I'm buying. And so this Aston Martin at the time
Speaker 1: and probably still Aston Martin offered a one year warranty
Speaker 1: with unlimited mileage on their used car. And you know,
Speaker 1: Aston Martin and British as they don't have the greatest
Speaker 1: reputation for reliability. So I thought, well, I'm gonna exploit
Speaker 1: the hell out of this. So I bought one. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I drove it to thirty fourth States, to
Speaker 1: Canada twice DC and then sold it. But I'm almost
Speaker 1: twenty thousand miles in that car in a year. I
Speaker 1: have a picture of that car next to a Bison
Speaker 1: in North Dakota, which most Aston Martin owners don't have.
Speaker 1: And but it was pretty good. Actually, it was reasonably reliable.
Speaker 1: There were some hiccups at the beginning, but after that
Speaker 1: it was cool. But I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: were interested in saying, hey, here's a used, you know,
Speaker 1: forty dollar exotic car. How bad really is it? And
Speaker 1: so I wanted to find out, and I guess they did.
Speaker 1: It turned out not to be that bad. It turned
Speaker 1: out not to be that bad. Yeah, So now you
Speaker 1: start buying other cars to do reviews. You had a
Speaker 1: Dodge Viper, you have the Ranger over, the Defender ninety,
Speaker 1: the sixty three Wagon. When did you come to the
Speaker 1: realization that people really wanted to hear from an intelligent
Speaker 1: but fun car reviewer. You know, it's interesting. Initially I
Speaker 1: was buying all those cars just to make videos with.
Speaker 1: And since I have now kind of morphed into buying
Speaker 1: cars for myself and making videos of other cars for
Speaker 1: exactly the reason that you stayed, it became clear to
Speaker 1: me people really wanted to see the reviews, and obviously
Speaker 1: I couldn't buy cars fast enough. And what became clear
Speaker 1: to me was that people wanted to see, you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of different variety of interesting cars, and I
Speaker 1: could start to provide that, and yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I it just sort of started to take off.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where when you do YouTube,
Speaker 1: you just make a ton of different types of content
Speaker 1: and whatever gets the most popular you make more of that.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly how I did it, you know. I
Speaker 1: I started making silly stuff with my own cars and
Speaker 1: reviewing other people's cars. Well, the reviews of the other
Speaker 1: people's cars. They got a little more popular, and so
Speaker 1: you know, started doing more of those and more of those,
Speaker 1: and the next thing, you know, you know, a billion views.
Speaker 1: Like you said, so you're armed with an Emory University
Speaker 1: degree in economics, you get a two thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of equipment, and you launch a YouTube channel that you
Speaker 1: don't really think is the future of your career. It's
Speaker 1: just let me throw some some videos up here. How
Speaker 1: long before it became wildly successful, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: My initial intent was, I I felt then and kind
Speaker 1: of still feel, that I was a better writer than
Speaker 1: a video person, and so the initial plan was that
Speaker 1: the videos would simply be a companion to my writing.
Speaker 1: And I remember, in the summer of fifteen, um so
Speaker 1: that was about a year and a half after I
Speaker 1: started videos, I was I was looking at my articles,
Speaker 1: and my numbers on the articles were not that strong,
Speaker 1: and I happened to glance at my YouTube numbers at
Speaker 1: that time, and they were really strong, and I started
Speaker 1: to realize, oh, I'm getting more views on YouTube than
Speaker 1: in the article. This hadn't even occurred to me because
Speaker 1: I was so laser focused on writing. And then the
Speaker 1: following summer sixteen, I started doing two videos per week,
Speaker 1: and that's really when things started taking off. When I
Speaker 1: started the consistent schedule and started to really focus on YouTube,
Speaker 1: that's when things really started to blow up. And in
Speaker 1: those were reviews as opposed to one of your early
Speaker 1: reviews back when you had the Ferrari cracked me up
Speaker 1: was Ferrari's don't attract women. You you would put put
Speaker 1: parts the Ferrari in film people walking by women could
Speaker 1: not possibly care less. But when you reversed it and
Speaker 1: put a woman in a Ferrari, guys flocked to it
Speaker 1: like like like the strongest magnet in the world. And
Speaker 1: you know, guys always flock to these cars, you know,
Speaker 1: it's so funny. Men always think, I'll buy this car,
Speaker 1: women I'll be all over me whatever. You know, who's
Speaker 1: actually all over you when you have a Ferrari is
Speaker 1: like teenage boys there point actually they take picture, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the ones that are and you know, guys just generally,
Speaker 1: but women generally don't really care that much on Its
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've learned. If you're buying
Speaker 1: a car to impress someone else, you're probably in the
Speaker 1: wrong you're barking up the wrong tree, to say the
Speaker 1: very least. So let's talk about some of the reviews
Speaker 1: that you do. How do you go about selecting cars? What?
Speaker 1: What is it just a function of what's available, or
Speaker 1: are you thinking about a checklist and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I really haven't test dro you know A four eight
Speaker 1: recently and it's been upgraded. Let me let me give
Speaker 1: that a shot. It's an interesting question. So when I
Speaker 1: first started, it was a function of what was available,
Speaker 1: and I remember people would reach out to me with
Speaker 1: like a Lamborghini, and I'd like, oh my gosh, a Lamborghini.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta go in film Matt, And I would.
Speaker 1: Now because the channel is so big, I still do
Speaker 1: it the same way, solicit people to get in touch
Speaker 1: with me, rather than me getting in touch with people,
Speaker 1: because I just think it's kind of entitled to call
Speaker 1: up someone or send an e those one and say hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a guy on YouTube. Can I review your
Speaker 1: expensive car? It's easier to contact me. The channel is
Speaker 1: now so big that I get contacted about pretty much
Speaker 1: every car that you could imagine. And so now yes,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a checklist, like I know that X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z cars performed well, so I make videos with
Speaker 1: those cars. New cars performed tremendously well, so I worked
Speaker 1: very closely with dealers and to an extent with automakers.
Speaker 1: I don't like doing it, but somewhat in order to
Speaker 1: make sure that you know, I have new cars right
Speaker 1: when they first come out, and then still some private owners,
Speaker 1: you know, I fill the last week I filed them.
Speaker 1: I hasn't gone up yet, but I filmed the six
Speaker 1: Nissan Maxima. Occasionally, there are cars that I just personally
Speaker 1: have an interest in, and you know, I filmed three
Speaker 1: new models that week, and I'm kind of I just
Speaker 1: want to do something weird and solve these things like that.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's less and less common. The new
Speaker 1: cars is what people mostly want to see. In prepping
Speaker 1: for this, like normally I watched your videos of the
Speaker 1: cars I wanna learn about or see, but in prepping
Speaker 1: for this, I looked at just some horrific cars that
Speaker 1: you reviewed, whether it was the what was the name
Speaker 1: of the Cadillac Convertible before the SLR, the the the Alante.
Speaker 1: I just did the all just just such the worst
Speaker 1: GM garbage and you you did a Buick Riata with
Speaker 1: that crazy touch screen. Even when GM got was ahead
Speaker 1: of the curve with the technology, they found a way
Speaker 1: to mess it up. But you also do, like, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty new stuff. You did the g Gladiator, You did,
Speaker 1: you know, anytime you did the most recent Hie output
Speaker 1: version of the range of Avlar, like you do pretty
Speaker 1: mainstream cars, not just exotists. Yeah. No, It's got to
Speaker 1: the point where now I tried to film if there's
Speaker 1: any new car that has even a little bit littlest
Speaker 1: bit of buzz around it, I do try to make
Speaker 1: sure I have a video on it. It's just important
Speaker 1: to do. And and honestly, my channel is kind of
Speaker 1: a weird one because I'm I'm split between enthusiasts and
Speaker 1: in market shoppers, And so I'll review. I'll put up
Speaker 1: a review of like a Toyota Venza, and people are
Speaker 1: the Highlander and people will be like, why are you
Speaker 1: reviewing this pizza crap? But actually that video end up
Speaker 1: getting a million views or a million and a half
Speaker 1: because people are still buying it. Well, then the next
Speaker 1: day I have to put up a video of you know,
Speaker 1: an old whatever, of course, and then the enthusiasts come
Speaker 1: back and I lose the in market stoppers and it's
Speaker 1: kind of a it's a thin line to walk, and
Speaker 1: you know, you get criticism on YouTube no matter what
Speaker 1: you do. So let's talk about those new cars. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about the exotics later. What sort of prep where
Speaker 1: do you do when you're getting ready to go out
Speaker 1: and shoot a car for the day. Take us through
Speaker 1: your process. What do you do to get to prepare
Speaker 1: so you know at the start of it, I I
Speaker 1: write a script, and I don't script the whole video.
Speaker 1: You know, most of my video I go through kind
Speaker 1: of the little quirks of the car. I don't script
Speaker 1: script that because it's difficult to know what those things
Speaker 1: will be until I kind of get to the car.
Speaker 1: But I script the intro. In the outro and you
Speaker 1: can see me standing next to the car talking, that's
Speaker 1: all been scripted. The actual quirks and features of the car.
Speaker 1: I just have to kind of figure out what I'm
Speaker 1: there because it's just too difficult to figure that stuff
Speaker 1: out until you're really up close with the car. And
Speaker 1: as a result, filming a car can take six seven
Speaker 1: hours because you spend two three hours just kind of
Speaker 1: pouring over every button, every feature, the owner's manual, all
Speaker 1: that stuff to figure out where everything is and how
Speaker 1: it all works. And so that's pretty much the process.
Speaker 1: There's not that much prep at the beginning, but when
Speaker 1: you're actually there, it's really kind of intense. And I
Speaker 1: don't think, you know, if people see it on the screen,
Speaker 1: and I kind of kind of a goofy. I was
Speaker 1: these stupid clothes and people just think it's easy, and
Speaker 1: it's a little bit harder than you might realize. How
Speaker 1: did the Doug score come about? I assume you throw
Speaker 1: that in afterwards. You take notes, and you do that
Speaker 1: in prep. You're not doing it on the fly while
Speaker 1: you're recording. So Doug score quirks and features, and of
Speaker 1: course this is a how did these hallmarks of your
Speaker 1: videos come about? The Dug score came about because I
Speaker 1: was realizing that people weren't watching the end of the videos.
Speaker 1: It's interesting the way my videos worked. I spent twenty
Speaker 1: minutes talking about the little quirks of the car and
Speaker 1: only about five minutes driving the car. And the reason
Speaker 1: I started doing that was because usually by the time
Speaker 1: I had gotten a car, other people who were better
Speaker 1: than the reviewing cars had driven it already, and so
Speaker 1: people weren't didn't care what I had to say about
Speaker 1: the drive. They only cared about the quirks. And so
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I got to get people finished watching
Speaker 1: these videos somehow, and so I put in the Doug
Speaker 1: Score and and that has really blown up the you know,
Speaker 1: the rate to people. People sometimes people hip stuff just
Speaker 1: to go to that and see, like where I put
Speaker 1: it against other car. You don't have the Doug score
Speaker 1: online anywhere like every now and then. I'm I don't
Speaker 1: want to have to pull up a video search to
Speaker 1: the end if I'm just looking for something specific. In
Speaker 1: the prep for this, I was surprised that the Doug
Speaker 1: Score does not seem to exist anywhere other than mentioned
Speaker 1: in the video. Unless I'm missed. It is on my website.
Speaker 1: I have to do better about making this clear because
Speaker 1: I get this question off. It is on my website.
Speaker 1: If you go to doug euro dot com, you can
Speaker 1: put on Doug Score and the whole sheet is there.
Speaker 1: It's like a Google dot It's actually kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: You can copy and paste it into an Excel and
Speaker 1: manipulate it. And I get people every couple of weeks
Speaker 1: emailing me and saying, hey, here's some weird, you know,
Speaker 1: cool metrics I just did with the Doug score and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And it's always interesting kind of
Speaker 1: to see how it's shaking down because I don't do
Speaker 1: that much analytics with it. Well you should, because that's
Speaker 1: a lot of data across a lot of cars. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing it has really become. Initially it was just
Speaker 1: kind of this interesting way to get people to watch
Speaker 1: the videos. Now it's become actually useful information because in
Speaker 1: a lot of car segments, I've reviewed all of the vehicles,
Speaker 1: and so it's like, here's something you can actually use
Speaker 1: to maybe, you know, compare stuff and to be fair
Speaker 1: to you. Normally, when I look at rating systems, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty critical and you know, waving them off. I don't
Speaker 1: disagree with you all that often. Every now and then
Speaker 1: I think I would be a little more generous in
Speaker 1: the utility usefulness of certain exotic cars, because if you're
Speaker 1: going out and buying a four hundred thousand dollar car,
Speaker 1: you're not bringing stuff home from walmartin It's not so
Speaker 1: so saying the car has a small trunk. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: but this is not their only car. They're not taking
Speaker 1: it home from the supermarket. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: I usually don't disagree with you, other than a point
Speaker 1: or two this way or that. Yeah, well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I think it's it took a lot of time to
Speaker 1: kind of refine it them. We've gone through several refinements,
Speaker 1: but now I think it's kind of dialed in. When
Speaker 1: when did you come to the realization that YouTube video
Speaker 1: reviews of automobiles could be a full time job. I
Speaker 1: remember the day it was. I was driving that Aston
Speaker 1: Martin across the country and on the way back. At
Speaker 1: the time, I lived in Philadelphia and my my wife
Speaker 1: had a family reunion in California, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I have this unlimited malage warty, I might as well
Speaker 1: just drive this thing out there and back. And on
Speaker 1: the way back, she flew by the way. She was
Speaker 1: not involved. She hadn't wanted me to do it. But
Speaker 1: on the way back I did meet up with my fans,
Speaker 1: and I did one in in. I had never been
Speaker 1: to North Dakota, so I went like the northern route
Speaker 1: back and I went to Boise and then Fargo and
Speaker 1: then Chicago and then Minneapolis and Cleveland, and I assumed
Speaker 1: at the time that maybe a few dozen people would
Speaker 1: show k to these things, and I still to this day,
Speaker 1: remember it was Minneapolis. I pulled in, there were hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of people. The Oscar meyer Weener mobile showed up,
Speaker 1: and it was unbelievable, but it was just an incredible
Speaker 1: It's of course with COVID, he can't even imagine such
Speaker 1: an event now, but it was this unbelievable thing that
Speaker 1: all these people, all these fans, were so excited, and
Speaker 1: it poured that night and everyone still came out. And
Speaker 1: I called my wife on the way home from that
Speaker 1: and said, I think this may actually be a career.
Speaker 1: Like I think I might actually be able to do
Speaker 1: something out of this and not have to go to
Speaker 1: law school or whatever the prevailing thought was the time, like,
Speaker 1: this may actually work. It was only when I finally
Speaker 1: saw that display of people that night that I kind
Speaker 1: of realized this was maybe the future. Let's put these
Speaker 1: numbers into a little perspective, put a little flesh on
Speaker 1: the bones. The numbers I'm gonna throw out are are
Speaker 1: pretty general. They're available online from all sorts of other
Speaker 1: sites that tell you how to be a YouTuber. But
Speaker 1: typically if you're up to one to two million page
Speaker 1: views for per month or video views per month, that
Speaker 1: should throw off somewhere between a quarter million and half
Speaker 1: a million per year. Are these sites bullpark right or
Speaker 1: are they Is that too broader range? Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: is these sites often they do offer really broad ranges.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting the way that YouTube works.
Speaker 1: I've been very surprised to learn that some channels make
Speaker 1: a ton more money because of the type of content
Speaker 1: they do, and some make a ton less because of
Speaker 1: the type of content they do. It all depends on
Speaker 1: who your viewers off. And then there's a lot of
Speaker 1: YouTubers in addition, who do a lot of paid advertisements,
Speaker 1: which I've generally avoided. I do like endorsements, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really really have to. I feel that my ethics as
Speaker 1: a journalist, it's important to very much minimalize this. Occasionally
Speaker 1: I get an offer I can't refuse, and I've done
Speaker 1: maybe three, but most guys do want every video, and
Speaker 1: so you can make a lot more money that way.
Speaker 1: But I've also always tried to play the long game here,
Speaker 1: and I think that by doing ads like that, you
Speaker 1: kind of people don't want to watch your content as
Speaker 1: much of every time they turn it on. There's a minute,
Speaker 1: you know, ad for a shaving thing. But anyway, you
Speaker 1: can make pretty good money. It's gone pretty well, quite
Speaker 1: quite interesting. So let's talk a little bit about buying
Speaker 1: and selling cars online. I just sold an SL this
Speaker 1: summer on eBay. Coincidentally what I paid for it seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago, six s L. I got my R A
Speaker 1: on Bring a Trailer. I found my wife's M three
Speaker 1: convertible on car Gurus. I don't remember how I found
Speaker 1: the M six. It might have been car Gurus, but
Speaker 1: um that also was in Indianapolis. Had a flight in
Speaker 1: Indianapolis and drive at home. But it's not just car
Speaker 1: guys buying cars online, it's everybody. How has the Internet
Speaker 1: changed how we buy cars these days? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just that's just it, right, Like no one is
Speaker 1: not using the internet pretty much to find cars. The
Speaker 1: days of leafing through Auto Trader magazine or the back
Speaker 1: of the newspaper. That's how I bought cars when I was,
Speaker 1: you know, just just graduating from high school and often
Speaker 1: and that's what you do, if you remember, you'd have
Speaker 1: to try to fit like they charge you by the letter,
Speaker 1: so you have to try to fit like PW for
Speaker 1: power windows and pl That was how it was back then,
Speaker 1: but now the Internet is everything. It's so much easier
Speaker 1: to get a ton of high resolution photos and is
Speaker 1: a lot more information available to the buyer to what
Speaker 1: they're actually buying. I couldn't agree with you more. I
Speaker 1: had the same experience you had on Craigslist with every
Speaker 1: crazy SOB story coming out. Could you hold the note
Speaker 1: on this car? Will will take it from you? Like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that right, It's pretty hilarious. So there's
Speaker 1: a ton of transactions taking place, both auctions and just
Speaker 1: regular sales. What motivated you to launch cars and Bits?
Speaker 1: You know? One of the things that I started to
Speaker 1: realize is that there's a large segment of the car
Speaker 1: enthusiast community, especially in terms of selling and buying, that
Speaker 1: is devoted to what I consider to be sort of
Speaker 1: vintage cars, which include stuff going into the seventies, sixties, seventies, fifties.
Speaker 1: That's where it is perceived, especially in the cars world,
Speaker 1: that all the money is and I am very well
Speaker 1: aware being my age, but also because I know a
Speaker 1: lot of other people who are enthusiasts that there are,
Speaker 1: and it's an underserved community of people who are interested
Speaker 1: in cars from the eighties and up. Those people are
Speaker 1: kind of ignored in the cool car space, and I decided,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be cool to have a site
Speaker 1: that just sold cars two you know, from that era,
Speaker 1: basically the nineteen eighties and up, and so that's kind
Speaker 1: of that was what we wanted to do, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we executed it, and it's done reasonably well
Speaker 1: so far, I hope. Well, it's certainly an interesting site.
Speaker 1: I think that you've made some improvements over many of
Speaker 1: the other auction sites. I mean, eBay is kind of
Speaker 1: a mess, but even compare to something like Bring Bring
Speaker 1: a Trailer, you have a lot of really interesting I
Speaker 1: would call them upgrades, some innovations that that are pretty intriguing.
Speaker 1: Tell us what you think is the most distinguishing characteristic
Speaker 1: about cars and bids beyond just the fact that it's
Speaker 1: eighties to present. Yeah, I think I think there's a few.
Speaker 1: That's obviously, the biggest one to me is that the
Speaker 1: specific focus which I think attracts generally like younger people
Speaker 1: are people who are morested in that world But the
Speaker 1: other stuff is I think the site is really clean
Speaker 1: and easy to use like a modern website. Is some
Speaker 1: of them editors eBay like you mentioned Bring to Taylor,
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's quite as easy to navigate
Speaker 1: on as and as clean and simple. And my team,
Speaker 1: the designers and the engineers who created it, the developers,
Speaker 1: did an incredibly good job of making it like a
Speaker 1: modern website since we knew we would probably have a
Speaker 1: younger audience, And to me, that's probably the easiest thing
Speaker 1: just there the biggest differentiator, just the simplicity and ease
Speaker 1: of navigation on the site and using it and seeing
Speaker 1: the cars and being able to kind of see everything
Speaker 1: displayed and it's not it's just very simple to use.
Speaker 1: And there's more stuff that's going to come out as
Speaker 1: we grow that's going to make it even easier to navigate.
Speaker 1: So it's important, I think, to make something like that,
Speaker 1: and especially when you take a look at the competitors
Speaker 1: and just geared for not really kind of the modern
Speaker 1: the modern auction buyer. I would say, so, what's your
Speaker 1: role on the site presently you were the founder or
Speaker 1: a co founder? Are you just marketing and strategy or
Speaker 1: or how involved in the day to day are you? Well,
Speaker 1: actually it's finishing, I uh, incredibly involved. So we've launched
Speaker 1: the site, we didn't realize how successful it would be,
Speaker 1: and so we just weren't ready with with employees. I
Speaker 1: think we finally have the team in place. Now it's
Speaker 1: been two months since we launched. I think we're finally
Speaker 1: read a three months rather, I think we're finally ready
Speaker 1: to take on the volume and and sort of start
Speaker 1: ramping things up. But if initially I was doing everything,
Speaker 1: it was a disaster. I still am doing most of
Speaker 1: the reserve setting of the cars that come in, since
Speaker 1: that's such a giant driver of revenue, you know, making
Speaker 1: sure the cars have the right reserve prices so they'll
Speaker 1: actually sell. And then I add a little Doug's take
Speaker 1: to every listing that goes up, and I personally write
Speaker 1: each one sort of my thoughts on that particular car
Speaker 1: and that car's placed in the market. And then yes,
Speaker 1: marketing and strategy is sort of my big contribution to
Speaker 1: the site, since that's run best at So what are
Speaker 1: the goals for the site? How many cars do you
Speaker 1: hope to auction each week? And what sort of dollar
Speaker 1: volume do you think you can move It's a good question.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not sure. We hope and we believe
Speaker 1: that there's a market for i don't know, fifty auctions
Speaker 1: a week something like that. Yeah, I really want to
Speaker 1: be the premier place for cars from this era. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for an eighties enough car cars and did
Speaker 1: go there, you'll find a wide variety. We've done a
Speaker 1: good job with that, but I think I really want
Speaker 1: to kind of ramp it up and make sure that
Speaker 1: basically anything you might want is available on the side
Speaker 1: of any time, and if it isn't, well, checked back
Speaker 1: next week. So I'm hoping to be able to really
Speaker 1: kind of scale it and get it to a point
Speaker 1: where it is the default for people looking for a
Speaker 1: car from this There so two nuts and bolts questions
Speaker 1: about the operations of the site. One is the reserve price.
Speaker 1: You point out that cars without reserve have a tendency
Speaker 1: to attract a lot of interest. I was always curious
Speaker 1: why the option doesn't exist for a seller to allow
Speaker 1: the reserve number to drop mid auction. Not not necessarily
Speaker 1: that reserve has been met, but if an auction is
Speaker 1: attracting a lot of attention, to just say we're making
Speaker 1: this now a reserve US auction to see see what
Speaker 1: that does to the bidding. It's interesting. So if if
Speaker 1: a seller reaches out to us during the auction says
Speaker 1: they want to simply remove their reserve, we have honored
Speaker 1: those requests. So a few cars have actually flipped to
Speaker 1: no reserve during the auction, and but we generally tell
Speaker 1: sellers not to reveal their reserve during the auction because
Speaker 1: one of the things that we've found is when someone says, oh,
Speaker 1: the reserve is X amount, it makes the bidders feel
Speaker 1: that the car is only worth X amount, and so
Speaker 1: they get kind of disappointed or sort of slow down
Speaker 1: their bidding or just stop bidding all together once it
Speaker 1: gets close or hits that number because they no longer
Speaker 1: think they're getting any form of a deal. Whereas if
Speaker 1: the reserve is sort of sitting there in the background,
Speaker 1: you don't know it. People just bid what they think
Speaker 1: the cars work, which, frankly, objectively, is how a marketplace
Speaker 1: like that out of work. People pay what they're willing
Speaker 1: to pay, and whoever pays them, you know, pays the most.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the person who wins. And so when
Speaker 1: you say, oh, the reserve thirties, didns start taking a Well,
Speaker 1: thirty is gonna pay thirty three. But now that I
Speaker 1: know that the seller only thinks it's worth thirty, I'm
Speaker 1: not going a bit. And so we try to would
Speaker 1: try to really coach the sellers. Don't reveal your reserve,
Speaker 1: but if they're willing to pull the reserve completely off,
Speaker 1: then yes, we generally honored those requests. In our opinions,
Speaker 1: those auctions probably should have been no reserve from the beginning,
Speaker 1: but it's very difficult to explain to sellers, hey, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get more money if you got no reserve cars.
Speaker 1: Like we just had an Audi R eight. He pulled
Speaker 1: the reserve off in the last day, and it's like
Speaker 1: that guy should have gone no reserve from the beginning.
Speaker 1: It was a really nice car. It was because they
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of us. But people say to me, well,
Speaker 1: what if it only gets into a thousand dollars And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you know that hasn't happened yet, even
Speaker 1: for no reserve or reserve car. It hasn't. It hasn't
Speaker 1: occurred yet. We have a lot of traffic of the sides, well,
Speaker 1: as possible, but it's very, very unlikely that people have
Speaker 1: a hard time taking that point. And I understand, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that, right. Was one of the first years
Speaker 1: with the dual clutch. If I remember not a manual,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't remember. I think the one that
Speaker 1: the reserve was pulled off was a seventeen. It was
Speaker 1: a it was a second gender. Okay. The way I
Speaker 1: end up bidding on cars typically is I'll try and
Speaker 1: ballpark what fair value is, and then I'll bid up
Speaker 1: to below. And then you'd be surprised how often you're
Speaker 1: either the winner of the auction or high bid reserve
Speaker 1: not met. And then you speak to the uh the
Speaker 1: sellar and there you know, two above high price, and
Speaker 1: even if I'm on the low end, they're just not realistic.
Speaker 1: But most of the time it looks like so this
Speaker 1: is a good math question. What percentage of reserved bidding
Speaker 1: auctions actually go through through to a sale. It's something
Speaker 1: like sixty about two thirds, And obviously it's the no reserve, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So our still rate is just the But then a
Speaker 1: good portion of those reserve auctions are deals are made
Speaker 1: after the fact. You just didn't have maybe the bidder
Speaker 1: in the room at that time to you know, get
Speaker 1: the number up there, or maybe the seller just besides
Speaker 1: the okay, I'll go a little lower. I just want
Speaker 1: to think on But that's that's maybe once a day
Speaker 1: we do one of those are once a couple of days.
Speaker 1: Typically they're they're they're hitting their numbers and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I We're doing our We do our
Speaker 1: best with the sellers to try to get them into
Speaker 1: a reasonable ballpark. It's amazing to me how many sellers
Speaker 1: ask for high retail as their reserve price, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's not how this works, you know. And then they
Speaker 1: get upset and they're like, well you won't give me
Speaker 1: you know, the car car is worth you know, the
Speaker 1: nicest one on auto trators listed for forty This guy
Speaker 1: wants to forty one reserves right, and he says, you
Speaker 1: won't let me sell the car at the price I want. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sight you can do that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm standing your way here. It's just kind of but
Speaker 1: a lot of sellers are realistic and they understand that, hey,
Speaker 1: the reserve is kind of the bottom I'm willing to
Speaker 1: accept bibs could go a lot higher, and we've had
Speaker 1: a lot of very happy sellers where they put a
Speaker 1: certain reserve on the bids went thousands over and it
Speaker 1: just worked out for him. And I try to explain
Speaker 1: that to people, but again it's it's it's hard. Every
Speaker 1: seller is different. Yeah, the the endowment effect is everybody
Speaker 1: believes that because they own it, it's got a bigger value.
Speaker 1: Imagine trying to sell a house where somebody lived for
Speaker 1: thirty years, brought their kids up, have all their memories.
Speaker 1: They're good luck getting those people to be rational terms
Speaker 1: and it's similar to that in a lot of ways exactly.
Speaker 1: So probably the most similar site to yours is Bring
Speaker 1: a Trailer, which has been around for a good couple
Speaker 1: of years. They were recently sold. What what are the
Speaker 1: long term plans with cars and bids? You know, my
Speaker 1: partner and I discussed this a lot. Um. I don't know. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if the right offer comes during the right time, you know,
Speaker 1: that's something we would consider. UM. But also it's a
Speaker 1: it's a good business, you know, we don't hold the cars.
Speaker 1: We've already done a lot of the really heavy lifting
Speaker 1: creating the website. UM. In the marketplace and the terms
Speaker 1: and and you know, kind of figuring out a lot
Speaker 1: of the problems that have come up, and now we
Speaker 1: have playbooks for them. And I'm not really sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: our goal was to first see if it would work,
Speaker 1: and it did, and now the next question is like
Speaker 1: what can we do to innovate and throw it? And
Speaker 1: I think once we've gotten to the point where we've
Speaker 1: made some cool new features come out that even enhance
Speaker 1: the experience, but further and we grow it to a
Speaker 1: point that we're really happy with, I think then we
Speaker 1: start thinking, Okay, what's next. Do we expand to you know,
Speaker 1: beyond cars? Do we expand to older cars? Do we
Speaker 1: expand to whatever? Or do we look for a buyer
Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know, but I think that's a
Speaker 1: long way off. I think we have a long way
Speaker 1: to go before we feel comfortable that we're where we
Speaker 1: really want to be with it. Um. I think there's
Speaker 1: a long, long term play in there. Quite fascinating. So
Speaker 1: I know you cover a lot of exotic cars, but
Speaker 1: you also cover a lot of new cars that have
Speaker 1: come out. Tell us some of your favorite regular cars,
Speaker 1: if if Uncle Fred or your sisters, you know, husband says, hey,
Speaker 1: I just need a regular hauler for going back and
Speaker 1: forth to work to the train station to target. What
Speaker 1: sort of cars do you recommend for those people? You
Speaker 1: know what's funny when people come to me with that
Speaker 1: kind of request, I try to steer them in whichever
Speaker 1: direction they're already thinking, because I don't want to get blamed.
Speaker 1: So they're thinking Honda c RV. I'm like, yes, that
Speaker 1: is it. That's the one you want to put that up.
Speaker 1: You can fit two baby seats and a ton of
Speaker 1: of packages in the back of that, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a little tiny for a family. People come to
Speaker 1: me and they're very distressed and they say, what do
Speaker 1: I get the Highlander or the Pilot or the Explorer?
Speaker 1: And the truth is, when you're looking at a car
Speaker 1: like that that you're just gonna abuse and uses a
Speaker 1: family car, it doesn't really matter all that much. They're
Speaker 1: all good. You know, there was a day not that
Speaker 1: long ago where cars there were some really bad cars,
Speaker 1: and that's not really the case anymore. And I always
Speaker 1: tell people, look, go to the dealer, you play with
Speaker 1: the screen thing. That's a big component of cars now,
Speaker 1: you know, drive them, see how they feel and my
Speaker 1: views are I can generally point them in a certain direction,
Speaker 1: but I also don't want to be I don't want
Speaker 1: to get upset and and and also there's all the
Speaker 1: studies out that say that's some large portion of consumers
Speaker 1: will change their entire automotive purchase if if a different
Speaker 1: cars available in the color they want. And it's like,
Speaker 1: well that that kind of goes to show you this people.
Speaker 1: People don't really care, maybe as much as we might
Speaker 1: think for for cars like that. But there are a
Speaker 1: lot of good cars out right now. I've been really
Speaker 1: surprised with modern Ford models, the new Ford Explorers, really great,
Speaker 1: really impressive car. It's just really amazing to me how
Speaker 1: good modern cars are in general. This the technology that
Speaker 1: they now include, the features of the conveniences, it's really
Speaker 1: quite something. And which is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I kind of tell people it's hard to really go wrong.
Speaker 1: If someone is going in kind of a wrong direction,
Speaker 1: there may be thinking that's a b C. That's when
Speaker 1: you start to step in and give them some better
Speaker 1: guid but you really get that and full disclosure. Many
Speaker 1: years ago, many many years ago, I had the Eagle
Speaker 1: Talent t S. I o Will drive, which was effectively
Speaker 1: mister product. I saw one on your site in red
Speaker 1: and black that other than the interior color identical to
Speaker 1: the one I had, And to be fair, it was
Speaker 1: a pretty decent car for years. Yeah no, hey Tavis,
Speaker 1: she was a great automaker at one point. But things
Speaker 1: have changed. But that car, I mean, they're so hard
Speaker 1: in that particular one that you're talking about sold for
Speaker 1: like four dollars, and it's so hard to find a
Speaker 1: nice condition anymore. There's such a cool cars those those yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and they're impossible to find, man, because as you know,
Speaker 1: they were all modified, either the first owner modified it
Speaker 1: or resold it to some kid who was the second
Speaker 1: owner who modified it and then blew up the engine.
Speaker 1: And so finding one of those in nice shape is impossible. Now,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about fun weekend cars. If someone said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for something used that I could toss around,
Speaker 1: take on drives out into the country or a long weekend,
Speaker 1: but I want to stick shift and I want to
Speaker 1: have a little fun, what sort of car would you
Speaker 1: send that person looking at? Well, I generally courses are
Speaker 1: popular in that segment for a reason. It kind of
Speaker 1: depends on their budget. Obviously, in Miata, if you if
Speaker 1: your budget, you know, under twenty, Theatas are great. They're
Speaker 1: just there's so much fun, and they're very underrated even
Speaker 1: by modern by by by a general public, they're very underrated.
Speaker 1: People think they're just cards for you know, people to
Speaker 1: drive around in their hair fly. It's they're actually funny,
Speaker 1: good sports cars. And then you know, then you can
Speaker 1: start getting into use Caymans and Boxers. I prefer convertibles,
Speaker 1: and so I always kind of tell people to go
Speaker 1: after that stuff. Then you get more expensive than that,
Speaker 1: you know, you use nine eleven that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But there's a reason that Porsches are so good, and
Speaker 1: people have always kind of idolized the idea of owning
Speaker 1: a Porsche, and so they're always tending into that, especially
Speaker 1: when they find out they can pick up used ones
Speaker 1: and they're pretty reliable. It makes sense. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what I generally tell people in that world. So let
Speaker 1: me push back a little bit on some of your
Speaker 1: reviews on some of the sort of fastback SUVs and crossovers.
Speaker 1: You don't like X four s or Xexes, or the
Speaker 1: Mercedes g L E s and even the Lambeau US
Speaker 1: you kinda mocked the way it looks, you know, I
Speaker 1: I saw your review of the most recent I think
Speaker 1: it was either the Denali or the Yukon and and
Speaker 1: I think GMC's new tagline should be we build rectangles.
Speaker 1: And if you're not interested in like a big, boring box,
Speaker 1: well something like forget the Lambeau, but something like the
Speaker 1: X four or there's a smaller version of the g
Speaker 1: l E that has a little style and a little pizzazz.
Speaker 1: And it's not quite a full blown suv, which you
Speaker 1: may not need, and it's not quite a full station wagon.
Speaker 1: It's somewhere in between. What what's your beef with those
Speaker 1: those cars? Well, don't you think there's a there's a
Speaker 1: medium between a box like a tahoe and a and
Speaker 1: an X four. I mean, what's wrong with the next three?
Speaker 1: I can get an Next three. They're great and they're
Speaker 1: more practical. They're prettier than they used to be. The
Speaker 1: first gen X three's were just got awful, although you
Speaker 1: could get them with a stick. When our mechanics went back,
Speaker 1: I replaced it with an X four because you know,
Speaker 1: I have to. I have two big dogs. We go
Speaker 1: out to the beach on the weekends, getting the older
Speaker 1: dog in and out of the back seat. It can't
Speaker 1: be too hot, so that kind of eliminated the X five.
Speaker 1: The X three was like and the g l E
Speaker 1: was a little over the top for my taste. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a bit much. This is about the
Speaker 1: same size as the station wagon, maybe a little touch bigger,
Speaker 1: but it drives, you know. The McCann drove like a
Speaker 1: sports car and and ate up tires and breaks like
Speaker 1: a sports car. Also, the X four seems to be
Speaker 1: like a reasonable compromise between I don't want a giant
Speaker 1: sport you, but I need occasionally to throw a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff in the back, and this sort of for
Speaker 1: me anyway, just split the difference. I don't mind, truthfully
Speaker 1: how they look as much because I don't really like
Speaker 1: to judge cars on styling. That's kind of a people
Speaker 1: can do what they want there. But to me, the
Speaker 1: problem is you could have an X three you get
Speaker 1: more cargo space from a cubic perspective the four. The
Speaker 1: floor is the same surface area, but it's taller in
Speaker 1: the back obviously, and it's cheaper and you're not robbing
Speaker 1: your self many rear feet room, and so to me,
Speaker 1: it's like obvious, I would just I wouldn't even consider
Speaker 1: an Explore. I would step right to the X three. Now,
Speaker 1: the market seems to agree with you, surely, surely, based
Speaker 1: on a number of X fours and g LC coops
Speaker 1: and all those things I'm starting to see around The
Speaker 1: automakers have done a good job creating demands of those cars,
Speaker 1: and people are interested in them. But I just find
Speaker 1: it to be so strange. Now. I think part of
Speaker 1: it is that people don't want like you kind of implied,
Speaker 1: people don't want the same boring STUV over and over again.
Speaker 1: So it was up to the automakers to think, how
Speaker 1: can we, you know, make it more interesting? And so
Speaker 1: that's how we got Explore X six vehicles like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we went to the dealer and the we got a
Speaker 1: quote on the M four point oh X four and
Speaker 1: then a pretty nicely optioned X three. And then I
Speaker 1: went to a broker and got a quote. Here here
Speaker 1: the options I must have, here, the options i'd like
Speaker 1: to have, here, the color combinations i'd like. And he
Speaker 1: came back with the lease price. And this is the
Speaker 1: only call. We lease everything else we own. That was
Speaker 1: the same as the dealer quote for the X three.
Speaker 1: It made it a very easy um decision. So when
Speaker 1: I see the car, and and I never loved the
Speaker 1: X six, I thought the X six was a goofy compromise.
Speaker 1: The new X six is kind of nice. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: the origin like six was quite a stretch. The newer
Speaker 1: one is a lot more of a rational looking car.
Speaker 1: I think I kind of dialed it back a little bit.
Speaker 1: I've always said that the new X six was like
Speaker 1: the old xix asking permission. It's it's like it's made
Speaker 1: a little bit, a little bit not it's not quite
Speaker 1: as as aggressive and as eager as the old one,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's a good thing. But also, the X
Speaker 1: six when it first came out, it was a really
Speaker 1: big departure, right it was the first of the coupe SUVs,
Speaker 1: and so it was everybody's like, what are they thinking? Well,
Speaker 1: now it's become a little more accepted, and so I
Speaker 1: think there's also a component of you know, our minds
Speaker 1: that has become a more reasonable car. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the crazier cars you've reviewed and enjoyed.
Speaker 1: La Ferrari Bugatti, viron McLaren Senna, Tona's Toni sag Gara
Speaker 1: what and that's just like the tip of the uh
Speaker 1: Iceberg tell us some of the most memorable million dollar
Speaker 1: cars you got to drive the Bugatti Chirone, which is
Speaker 1: Buggatti's current, you know, expensive sports car. That was probably
Speaker 1: the most memorable. I mean, that's I think three million plies.
Speaker 1: It's also just the coolest thing. The Coni cigs are cool,
Speaker 1: but I still can't shake the feeling that it's just
Speaker 1: an ultimate small volume manufacturer that just sort of build
Speaker 1: a few of these, you know, Buggatti is like a
Speaker 1: legit company that's pumping these things out. Not that not
Speaker 1: pumping them out, but they built a few hundred. And
Speaker 1: it's just so amazing what the engineering it was capable of,
Speaker 1: that it could go so fast and have so much
Speaker 1: power and also be luxurious. I mean he drives that car,
Speaker 1: it feels like you're sitting at a Bentley and then
Speaker 1: you accelerate and it feels like you're driving a race car.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really impressive that they were able to
Speaker 1: make all of that happen. And so that's just a
Speaker 1: really special car. And drive that around. I film that
Speaker 1: video in Toronto and driving that around, people just freak out.
Speaker 1: They get excited. They Bugatti, you know in that car.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, the Veyron and then now
Speaker 1: the Shearon was like the car, you know, the car
Speaker 1: you want. I just think emotionally, that's a really cool car.
Speaker 1: But I mean, they're all insane. Pagani. Pagani makes them
Speaker 1: like cars are essentially high quality jewelry. Every little button
Speaker 1: and feature and switches perfectly chiseled and aluminum and incredible weight.
Speaker 1: They think about ever, even when you put on the
Speaker 1: hazard lights, how does that feel? And blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: It's incredible craftsmanship and they're all incredible. It's a really
Speaker 1: amazing thing. Is just the sheer number of million dollar
Speaker 1: cars that exist, which is now quite a few. What
Speaker 1: is going on with the run of new Ferraris that
Speaker 1: we've seen coming out. Are they in danger of becoming
Speaker 1: a high volume retailer? How many Ferraris are they going
Speaker 1: to continue to crank out going forward? You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting questions. I mean that that is a big issue
Speaker 1: that they're going to contend with over the next few decades.
Speaker 1: You know, the end zo Era he died in about
Speaker 1: cars fon that are wherever uniformly considered to be special.
Speaker 1: The company has sort of ramped up ever since then,
Speaker 1: and in the last two years especially, they've really ramped up,
Speaker 1: and they're now going to be creating an suv, which
Speaker 1: is to a lot of their consumers it's sort of sacrilege.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 1: discontent among Ferrari people about the new you know, the
Speaker 1: new guard of Ferrari people. Um. And the cars are
Speaker 1: just a lot more accessible. It used to be that
Speaker 1: you had to know what you were doing in order
Speaker 1: to drive one, and that's not the case anymore. They
Speaker 1: have automatic transmissions, they're very easy to As long as
Speaker 1: you have the money, you can you can buy one
Speaker 1: and drive it. So yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see what happens to Ferrari long term. Does the
Speaker 1: brand start to become devalued due to their production. Well,
Speaker 1: it seemed to work for Porsche, didn't. The cay En
Speaker 1: kind of save the company. But you can't just live
Speaker 1: on nine elevens forever, can you. Yeah? There was a
Speaker 1: time in the nineties where Porsche was like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say, hours away from bankruptcy, but certainly months
Speaker 1: and they really had to kind of band together. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you create a diversify the lineup. You couldn't just exist
Speaker 1: on a couple of sports cars anymore. And so yeah, Kayane.
Speaker 1: You know, they did some special projects for Mercedes Bans
Speaker 1: and for Audi. They built some of their cars to
Speaker 1: make some money, and then you know, they said we
Speaker 1: needed we need a smaller sports car, which became the Boxer.
Speaker 1: That helped we needed suv and and so there's some
Speaker 1: benefits there. But Porsche was never quite the brand that
Speaker 1: Ferrari wasn't, So Ferrari is a little bit more specialness.
Speaker 1: A lot of the reason people pay those kind of
Speaker 1: prices is because they don't expect to see one every day.
Speaker 1: Well we'll see if that continued. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: number of multimillion dollar cars. And if money was no object,
Speaker 1: what would you put in your garage next to the
Speaker 1: for g T If money was no object, I would
Speaker 1: get a Ferrari F forty, which I think is a
Speaker 1: great car. But my all time favorite vehicle is the
Speaker 1: Porsche Career A GT, which is the car that Paul Walker,
Speaker 1: you know, was writing in when he died and that
Speaker 1: is I think the most special car ever made, the
Speaker 1: best car ever made, because we write a sports car
Speaker 1: of all time, and I would love to have one
Speaker 1: of those. But at the current going rate of seven
Speaker 1: hundred to eight hundred thousand, I think it'll be a
Speaker 1: while before that happened. Affordable reasonable and and I have
Speaker 1: to tell you as somebody, as someone who's not a
Speaker 1: Giant nine eleven fan, I find them to look a
Speaker 1: little froggy. The career GT is a beautiful car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very special car. So let's go through a few other
Speaker 1: beautiful cars. You basically talked me out of the Aston
Speaker 1: Martin repeated, which have become incredibly reasonable. Every now and
Speaker 1: then I'll throw a tweet up today in depreciation and
Speaker 1: show a two hundred thousand Allar car being sold for
Speaker 1: forty five dollars used. I can't get past that Gorman
Speaker 1: NAV system. It just kills the whole car for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know it was. You know, Aston Martin
Speaker 1: has always played the role of the small volume brother
Speaker 1: to the real automakers who are trying to sell you know, high,
Speaker 1: high expensive cars. And they have this amazing brand name
Speaker 1: and this amazing beautiful car. It's been very difficult for
Speaker 1: them to create technology that Bowld Mercedes Bands, Bentley, or
Speaker 1: or for even Ferrari with a big parent company, and
Speaker 1: so they always end up with stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: there's always these achilles heel. Even when Aston Martin started
Speaker 1: making reliable cars, the technology was still out on trash
Speaker 1: and that's a tough one. Yeah, you get in that
Speaker 1: car and you see that, and it's like, well, it
Speaker 1: looks like the kind of thing my grandma stuck on
Speaker 1: our dashboard, you know, so she wouldn't get lost, you know,
Speaker 1: in two thousand four that in that level. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of the older trucks.
Speaker 1: We We just saw the refresh of the Jeep Wrangler.
Speaker 1: Next I think it's June, the new Bronco will come out,
Speaker 1: which I think they did a spectacular job on. I've
Speaker 1: always been a fan of the Toyota FJ forties, which
Speaker 1: I'd love to replace the Rubicon with. But but you
Speaker 1: went full insanity and got a Defender ninety, a truck
Speaker 1: that I've always liked but been horrified to own. What
Speaker 1: has your experience with the Defender been, like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. The Defender is a very special car, and
Speaker 1: everywhere I go people come up to me and talk
Speaker 1: to me about it, and they always tell me they
Speaker 1: want one, and I always tell them, you don't actually
Speaker 1: want one. What you want is a range rover feeling
Speaker 1: car that looks like this, but in reality, this thing
Speaker 1: drives like a piece of crap, which is what it is.
Speaker 1: I always tell people, if the worlds, it's the worst
Speaker 1: like comfort and quality per dollar because Defenders North American
Speaker 1: spect Defenders, they only made about seven thousand of them,
Speaker 1: and the cost of them is now anywhere between maybe
Speaker 1: fifty and eighty thousand ballarts, and it's an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of money to pay for what is ultimately one of
Speaker 1: the great bad cars. I mean, it really is. Even
Speaker 1: the hard top ones. You're getting wet when you're driving
Speaker 1: into the rain. You know it's a disaster. And I
Speaker 1: explained this table. But I am an enthusiast of this car.
Speaker 1: I love this car. I grew up wanting one, and
Speaker 1: so it makes sense for someone who's really into it.
Speaker 1: But anybody who's even slightly less than really into it
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't get one because they're gonna get tired of
Speaker 1: it quickly. And this is what ultimately happens with these defenders.
Speaker 1: Rich guys by them, they think they're cool, they've always
Speaker 1: wanted one, and then after about a year they're like, boy,
Speaker 1: this is a piece of crap and they just move
Speaker 1: it on. And then you know, the next rich guy
Speaker 1: comes in and he brings it to his house in
Speaker 1: Vermont and and drives it for a summer and then Okay,
Speaker 1: it's piece of crap, and then he sells it, and
Speaker 1: then it's in the Outer Banks for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and then that guy's tires of it. It's very difficult
Speaker 1: to actually want to want to use and enjoy that
Speaker 1: car unless you're really into it. Your spare tire cover
Speaker 1: says Luke's Diner on it. And the first time I
Speaker 1: noticed that, I say, wait, Gilmore Girls, what's that about?
Speaker 1: And then I go to your Twitter description and you
Speaker 1: literally have fan of the Gilmore Girls in your Twitter description.
Speaker 1: You have to explain, what on earth is that doing that.
Speaker 1: I love Gilmore Girls. I think it is one of
Speaker 1: the I love Anything with Community and the television show
Speaker 1: both movie Anything with Community like a good And they
Speaker 1: lived in this cute little town that was just the
Speaker 1: best little community, and I think it's like the greatest
Speaker 1: thing on what every pree or four years, I watched
Speaker 1: the entire series. You know again. I started the first
Speaker 1: episode and watched all the way through. Now, one interesting
Speaker 1: Gilmore Girl's anecdote, I have tracked down the original jeep
Speaker 1: Wrangler that was used in that television show and it
Speaker 1: was purchased after the show ended at a charity auction,
Speaker 1: and that person still owns it and they own it
Speaker 1: in a small town in Connecticut, which is where the
Speaker 1: show takes place. And I have done everything I can
Speaker 1: to reach out to this person and try to buy
Speaker 1: it from him. I sent letters, and I've sent contacted
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and it doesn't get seen. And so I'm
Speaker 1: terrified that I won't end up with this car. But
Speaker 1: I really really wanted. I think it's the great of
Speaker 1: the ultimate Gilmore Girls fan accessory, and I think I'd
Speaker 1: be perfect, perfect to own it. So when this show
Speaker 1: first came out, I never saw it. I never heard
Speaker 1: of it. I never thought of it. And during lockdown
Speaker 1: when it first began, my wife and I just randomly
Speaker 1: because her sister loved the show, started watching it, and
Speaker 1: not only did we get into it, we watched one
Speaker 1: or two a night for the whole first just like
Speaker 1: eight seasons, for the first three or four months of lockdown.
Speaker 1: And I was really sad when it to see it
Speaker 1: end because it was just perfect escapism from the troubles
Speaker 1: of the world. It's a small town. Everybody is humorous,
Speaker 1: it it has flavors of other you know, the dialogue
Speaker 1: is kind of like West Wing. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're old enough to remember Northern Exposure, which is another
Speaker 1: quirky town only in Alaska. But it was perfect lockdown escapism,
Speaker 1: right exactly. That's a that's that's a good way to
Speaker 1: put it. I hadn't thought about that, but that is
Speaker 1: exactly what it is. People who are just yeah, they're friendly,
Speaker 1: they like each other, they care about each other. It
Speaker 1: is a good break from the current situation. So as
Speaker 1: long as we're talking trucks and and TV, what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on the f J forty from the seven
Speaker 1: news or eighties. I've always thought that was a solid
Speaker 1: reliable choice for terrorists and drug lords. Yeah, for a
Speaker 1: long time, those are great. You know, all these all
Speaker 1: these older SUVs have become so thought after now to
Speaker 1: really really really become a big, big thing everybody disposed
Speaker 1: of these vehicles during the seventies and eighties because they
Speaker 1: didn't they were just trucks. To use them. You drove
Speaker 1: on the beach, you drove him with the mountains, you
Speaker 1: went hunting in them. Well, now there's the ones that
Speaker 1: are left are so desirable, and the FJA forty has become,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the really cool ones. It being
Speaker 1: the original land cruiser. Those people get to sneer at
Speaker 1: people with newer ones and say, I don't need all
Speaker 1: that comfort. It's a special It's it's very, very exciting
Speaker 1: all of these things are there. It's just amazing to
Speaker 1: me what the old STUV market has become in the
Speaker 1: last ten year. I have a buddy who imports defenders
Speaker 1: from Spain because he's got family there, and I mentioned
Speaker 1: my interest in f j's and it turned out that
Speaker 1: he had a family member in Colombia, and so we
Speaker 1: looked online at a bunch of places. We had him
Speaker 1: is the local go over to the refurb shop in
Speaker 1: in Columbia, look at a bunch of cars, talked to
Speaker 1: the owner. They turned out to have mutual acquaintances, and
Speaker 1: we picked two cars to refurb in South American and
Speaker 1: bring to New York. He wanted a red one. I
Speaker 1: wanted the light blue one. The red one was refurbed
Speaker 1: and shipped, and when they were about to start on
Speaker 1: the light blue one, pandemic hit. So I was unable
Speaker 1: to bring my car in. But his car is here,
Speaker 1: and it drives and and he loves it. He got
Speaker 1: the soft top. He could not possibly be more thrilled
Speaker 1: with it. And it's about so much around. It's not fast,
Speaker 1: but it's so much fun. It's actually nicer driving than
Speaker 1: my jeep Rubicon, which incidentally is a salvage title, which
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about. So I bought a
Speaker 1: flood car and all in, replacing all the electricals, replacing
Speaker 1: the fuse, the three fuse box, the three wiring harnesses,
Speaker 1: pretty much anything that plugged in. All in. I bought
Speaker 1: a year old car for twenty grand when they were
Speaker 1: going for thirty five, and I've put thirty thousand miles
Speaker 1: on it. I ended up replacing the radio and parking break.
Speaker 1: Kind of rusted I replaced that, But I know you
Speaker 1: hang with a lot of people that are big fans
Speaker 1: of salvage titles, including some exotic salvage titles. What sort
Speaker 1: of advice do you give to people who want to
Speaker 1: buy one of the crazier cars that might have been
Speaker 1: smashed up or stolen and driven off the road. What
Speaker 1: do you say to people say, hey, I could afford
Speaker 1: a Lambeau. I would generally tell people that that's fine
Speaker 1: if you know what you're doing. You're in the cars,
Speaker 1: you kind of have an idea of what to expect.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't just tell it to someone who's
Speaker 1: looking for a bargain Lambeau to go and get one
Speaker 1: with a salvage or a rebuilt title, because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, a lot of stuff could crop up.
Speaker 1: You really want to do a good job of figuring
Speaker 1: out before you buy the car, what's what's what's going
Speaker 1: on with it, what works, what doesn't, what to look for,
Speaker 1: especially if car it's been in a flood, because there's
Speaker 1: you know, lest come moments, was it a salt water flow?
Speaker 1: That's sort of thing You definitely don't want to do
Speaker 1: it unless you have a pretty good idea of what
Speaker 1: you're doing. People see some of these prices and they
Speaker 1: get all excited and then they don't really realize how
Speaker 1: bad it could be. If you don't take the right precaution.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's generally what I would probably say to people.
Speaker 1: And also it can be more difficult to get financed
Speaker 1: and insured on some of these cars, especially super high
Speaker 1: value stuff, if it has you know, prior flowed, tired,
Speaker 1: serious accident. That's sort of thing. So I know I
Speaker 1: only have you for a finite amount of time. Let's
Speaker 1: jump to our speed round. These are the questions we
Speaker 1: ask all of our guests, and let's start with what
Speaker 1: are you watching these days? What are you streaming? Give
Speaker 1: us your favorite Netflix or Amazon Prime shows? You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. For years, I never really watched TV, and
Speaker 1: so I Try'm trying to catch up on all the
Speaker 1: important shows. So right now I'm watching Desperate Housewives, which
Speaker 1: is like ages old. But I don't make I I
Speaker 1: only I only recently saw the Sopranos. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: trying to catch up. That's that's my goal. Really. I
Speaker 1: enjoy mostly just my The idea of an entertaining night
Speaker 1: for me is sitting in front of the computer on
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and reading about various learning about various things. And
Speaker 1: that's how I spend most of my time. That's pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1: Who Wikipedia for fun and entertainment? The other night I
Speaker 1: spent about three hours on the Titanic Wikipedia and all
Speaker 1: of this associated Wikipedia articles. That's my version of a
Speaker 1: fun evening, believe it or not. So one of the
Speaker 1: things I've been doing for the past I don't know
Speaker 1: how many years is just on the blog throwing up
Speaker 1: a car could be new, could be old, and I
Speaker 1: always just use it as an excuse to do some
Speaker 1: research into that car. And I have to tell you,
Speaker 1: I am shocked at the quality and depth of the
Speaker 1: information available on Wikipedia. And before people say, oh, all
Speaker 1: that stuff is wrong, you could go to the original source.
Speaker 1: Who were your early mentors, who helped influence your career,
Speaker 1: whether it was as a journalist or as a YouTuber,
Speaker 1: um you know. I think the guest early influence was
Speaker 1: you know, top Gear, which is true for almost all
Speaker 1: of us, um you know who are on YouTube right
Speaker 1: now watching those guys on that show. It was so
Speaker 1: special and so exciting, and I think we all kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to do that ourselves. And I think that
Speaker 1: was like the really really my foundational like this is
Speaker 1: the coolest thing. That was definitely the biggest influence and
Speaker 1: they were pretty hilarious. I know, you got to meet
Speaker 1: Brian May. What was that like, James May? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was amazing. It was like you know, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was like meeting your heroes. And he was great. He
Speaker 1: was super nice. He was a really really good guy.
Speaker 1: We ended up chetting for a long time and about
Speaker 1: cars and everything, and I mean, how you know, for
Speaker 1: a guy who grew up with that show and who's
Speaker 1: kind of life has been Okay, I'm gonna do fund
Speaker 1: stuff with cars too. That was one of the coolest
Speaker 1: things that could even imagine. And Jay Lenna also you
Speaker 1: got to play with Jay Lenos McLaren f one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was really something that was quite a car and
Speaker 1: Jays and not afraid of driving the hell out of it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty crazy when you think about it. What
Speaker 1: is that up to? That's a million or ten millions,
Speaker 1: some crazy number. So I think over that. I think
Speaker 1: the last one that's told was like twelve. But you know,
Speaker 1: Jay's is special because it's Jay's and he's it's basically
Speaker 1: a one owner car, and you know, I think Here's
Speaker 1: would be even more money than that. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: crazy thing to think about. So what are you reading
Speaker 1: these days. Tell us some of your favorite books. You've
Speaker 1: written two of them. What what do you like to
Speaker 1: do to keep your brain occupied? You know, interesting, I
Speaker 1: mentioned the Wikipedia article thing earlier. I also love reading
Speaker 1: long form articles. The website long form dot org has
Speaker 1: all these like long form journalism. It's like my favorite
Speaker 1: thing in the world, and I read pretty much every
Speaker 1: single long form on there. I'm obsessed with that. In
Speaker 1: terms of books, I don't read that many books. I'm
Speaker 1: usually into these longer articles where I can learn more
Speaker 1: in like an hour. But um, I just finished reading
Speaker 1: a book called Evicted by Matthew Desmond. I'm really into
Speaker 1: housing and housing policy and affordable how is and building
Speaker 1: stuff and hate all these anti building, an anti not
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood kind of people, and so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: into that sort of thing my one political stance. Um.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I'm not really that it's mostly
Speaker 1: long form journalism. Quite interesting. What sort of advice would
Speaker 1: you give to a recent college graduate who was interested
Speaker 1: in a career involving automobiles, whether it was journalism or
Speaker 1: YouTube or or anything like that. You know, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. I mean, people are asking me, Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: what can I do? How can I get started? What
Speaker 1: should I do? And and it's I got lucky because
Speaker 1: I started in thirteen and it was a lot easier then.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what I would do now, but
Speaker 1: I know it would be a lot more difficult. But
Speaker 1: the advice that I always give to people generally is,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, don't stop. You have to kind of
Speaker 1: persevere because early on it's difficult and it may seem
Speaker 1: like it's going to be a disaster. But if you
Speaker 1: can outlast people, that may help. And you know, people
Speaker 1: always asking well how can I get access to cars?
Speaker 1: That sort of thing? Just what you have? Try to
Speaker 1: find some interesting niche angle on what you have and
Speaker 1: make that you know you're saying, make it fun and
Speaker 1: maybe you'll start to attract an audience and go there.
Speaker 1: And and the other really important piece of advice I
Speaker 1: always trying to get to everybody is makes the kind
Speaker 1: of content that your audience wants, not what you want.
Speaker 1: That's the real goal. People will always get caught up
Speaker 1: and I want to drive this cool car or I
Speaker 1: want to check out this cool car. Well does your
Speaker 1: audience want you to do that? And if not, maybe
Speaker 1: that experience shouldn't be what you do, and maybe you
Speaker 1: should have staid, you know, go at a different angle
Speaker 1: or something like that. And our last speed round question,
Speaker 1: what do you know about the world of videos and
Speaker 1: automobiles and pretty much everything that you wish you knew
Speaker 1: a dozen years or so ago when you were first
Speaker 1: getting started out in terms of video production. I guess
Speaker 1: I wish I knew just that you that it's doable,
Speaker 1: that it's not that it's not something that you need
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of effort and equipment and professionals for that.
Speaker 1: You know you can do it. As people say, if
Speaker 1: I could do it, anyone can, Well, let's good to me.
Speaker 1: I had no clue what I was doing initially, but
Speaker 1: I made it work. And that's kind of the biggest
Speaker 1: piece of advice I would have is that it's you
Speaker 1: don't need a zillion dollar budget to go into this world.
Speaker 1: You just need to make good content. And that's the real,
Speaker 1: the real key, I think quite fascinating. We have been
Speaker 1: speaking with Doug Demorrow, who is the co founder of
Speaker 1: Cars and Bids and the host of the Doug Demorrow
Speaker 1: channel on YouTube. Doug, thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: so generous with your time. If you enjoy this conversation, well,
Speaker 1: check out all of our previous three hundred and forty
Speaker 1: such prior discussions we've had. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher,
Speaker 1: wherever finer podcasts are found. We love your comments, feedback
Speaker 1: and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. Check out my weekly column you can
Speaker 1: find that on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Be sure
Speaker 1: to give us a review on Apple iTunes. Sign up
Speaker 1: for our daily reads at rid Halts dot com. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter at Ridholtz. I would be
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that
Speaker 1: helps us put this conversation together each week. Reggie Basil
Speaker 1: is our audio engineer. Michael Batnick is my head of research.
Speaker 1: Attica val Broun is our project manager. Michael Boyle is
Speaker 1: my producer. I'm Barry Ridholts. You've been listening to Master's
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio.