Matt Brown (Creator, SuperfastMatt)

Matt Brown, better known as SuperfastMatt, joins Jim Belosic to talk about his unconventional path from delivering pizzas to becoming a mechanical engineer, working at Nascar, Tesla and Apple, to eventually building one of YouTube's favorite automotive channels.

Along the way, Matt shares stories from NASCAR, Formula SAE, Tesla, and some of the wild projects that have made his channel so popular. They get into engineering, fabrication, YouTube, creative problem solving, and why building real things teaches lessons you can't learn in a classroom. From his off road Dodge Viper to land speed racing and dreams of building an airplane, Matt explains how following whatever seems interesting has led to some pretty incredible opportunities and a lot of entertaining projects.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Oh look. Okay, so it's the beginning of the pod.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I can't think with this voice. This is what you actually look to me.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Don't talk. Matt, is there anything we should avoid? Any sensitive topics? I don't think so. Okay. We will dive into real religion and politics. Yeah. I do like to throw shade on Chrysler quite a bit. I don't know why. What happened during pizza delivery where you're like, ooh, mechanical engineering is where I want to go? Don't want to deliver pizzas when I'm 40.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

The original. Not the new restaurant that doesn't exist yet. Yeah. People were like, oh, nobody's going to buy electric cars, and they're not going to buy them from this company in California that nobody's ever heard of. I mean, there was like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

You could do the hug.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

And then I'll I can ramp it down. And then I say, hey guys, welcome to our shitty podcast. Welcome to the Just Gonna Send It podcast. I'm your host. Fuck it.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Can you turn it down?

unknown 1:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

I'm your host, Jim Belosick. Uh today joining us. Very, very special guest. I know I say this every single time. Very, very, very special guest. Matt Brown, aka Super Fast Matt, from the YouTube channel sharing the same name. Thank you for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here. We were blessed with Matt's presence. He flew in from exotic Los Angeles to our Reno headquarters to uh come do a little tour, check things out. Um so we figured while he's here, while he's here, we should probably question him on the pod. So we're gonna go deep. We're gonna find out all the super fast mat questions that you guys have always wanted to know, um, but never had this exclusive forum to find out.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

This is your first podcast, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:53

No, I've done a couple of others. He's a big deal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I couldn't find him.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

So sorry, joining us is producer Dom. Not on camera, right? You're not on camera? Okay. Whatever. Dom's here. Um okay, so we're we're gonna get in. Also what is your title? Marketing Operations Manager. Sarah is is joining us too. Um this is this is the worst podcast Matt has ever been on. So I apologize, Matt. I will I promised him sushi after this. Uh we were talking about Reno All-You Can Eat Sushi, which sounds really bad, but it's I promise it's it's really good. Um disagrees. What do what's your I love sushi? Yeah, sushi's good here.

unknown 2:31

It's great.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Okay, it's all you can eat. It's amazing. Matt is stunned. Um okay, so let's start the way we always start. Um how did you get to where you're at? Like let's go back to what what did you do as a kid? Um, where did you grow up? What was early life like uh if it's relevant to where you're at today? You know, anything that you were interested in? Were you always building stuff when you were five years old? We're going way back.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Uh yeah, I tended to take things apart more than build things when I was young, which is I think proto-engineer kind of, you know, proto um maker territory. Um and uh yeah, I don't know. I I actually I wasn't really into cars until I got one. And uh it started, I got this old uh 1979 Plymouth Valari, which the Valari was notorious for the previous generation, would would gather water in the fenders and they would rust out, and then you'd hit a speed bump and your fenders would fall off. It's not a very good car. A lot of stuff was breaking on it, and I would fix it, and then I got to the point where I was just fixing stuff that wasn't broken, and then um yeah, I really liked it. So I ended up going to college for computer science for about a year or a semester, a little over a semester, and decided I didn't want to do that, so I just did nothing. I just delivered pizzas for two years. And then I was like, I want to go back to engineering, like mechanical, to you know, build actual physical things. And that's kind of how my brain works. So um yeah, I went to college for that. Um where'd you go? University of Oklahoma. And is that where you were born and raised? Yeah, I grew up in Oklahoma. Okay. Um suburb of Oklahoma City. So did that for a while. Um yeah, I I guess like where I'm at now how did I get where I'm at? Is it it it's a very meandering, yeah. It's like because I think I think back when I when I started college, I I really wanted to work for Chrysler. And by the time I graduated, I had no interest in working for Chrysler. And at this point, I don't think you could pay me enough money to work for Stellantis. Um But I I just, yeah, it's it's changed a bunch. I just followed whatever I've been interested in. And it's a lot of that's been sort of mechanical engineering, fabricating, automotive, um, and the the whole like the whole car, you know, you can be into cars your your whole life and not explore the whole, you know, different areas of it.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

So you're going to college and you know, freshman year, you're like, man, I really want to go work for Chrysler. By the time you graduated, you're like, hell no. Did you have exposure to Chrysler during that period? Did you intern? Or how did you think that? I didn't. How did that shift?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah, just talking to people. Um I guess that they have a kind of a culture of they don't really do anything new, they kind of just uh iterate, you know. They don't they're not trying to make the best car, they're just trying to make something that's a little bit better than what they made last time. Um I do like to throw shade on Chrysler quite a bit. I don't know why. But uh I don't most of my first cars were Chrysler products, so I like to have some ammo. And I do have the Viper, yes. Um, I gotta say, I've had a Viper too.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

They're shitty cars.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah. Yeah, they're absolutely terrible. Yeah, I always say about like so that's the second one I've owned, so obviously I like them a little bit. But I always say about the Viper, it's um the looks don't disappoint, the burnouts don't disappoint, everything else, pretty disappointing. Uh it's it's kind of a kick car that happened to be made by a manufacturer, the first two generations for sure. Um but boy, it's it like those the styling and the and the giant V10, it's it's so cool. Yeah. Uh that is a car that only Dodge could have made. So I mean I think that's kind of why I I really like the idea of working for Chrysler's stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

But um, but then what shifted? Because you know, you kind of had this this aim, and you're you're going to school to become an ME to go do something like this, and then you got turned off from it.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah, I think I I got more interested in racing because I did Formula SAE in in college, which is I don't know if you're familiar with that. But a bunch of colleges get together and build race car and compete against each other. And um so when I got out of college, I was looking for racing and I went straight into NASCAR. I worked for a team that doesn't exist anymore called Furniture Row Racing out of Denver. Uh and that was pretty much enough to make me not want to be involved in racing. It was kind of like you always hear that automotive technology starts and you know it like trickles down from auto racing. Uh and I don't think that's true. Even from like Formula One and higher higher uh racing series like that. I think it's you know, those cars have a lot more to do in common with airplanes than they do with road cars. There's not like a lot of technology trickle down, and most of it's about like the regulations. Yeah, a lot of it's yeah. So for instance, you know, like uh some team figured out that they could use titanium valves, and then everybody else had to use titanium valves, and then somebody figured out that they could run hydro hotter EGTs if they like alloyed more of some, I forget what it was, magnesium or something in their titanium. And so they like kept pushing the envelope, things get kept getting more expensive, and then at one point some teams complained, so they just set a rule that's like you can only have this much alloying element in your titanium. So there's this alloy that exists nowhere in the world except for one racing series, and it has no application outside of that. So like racing is kind of uh the engineering part of it's really interesting, but especially when you get into a a series like NASCAR that's basically a spec series, it's it's about the driver personalities, it's about advertising, it's not really about engineering.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

And I love I love a true spec series, like I love the sealed block or you know, sealed crate engine type series where it is more about like setup and it's about the driver and everything. But then on the opposite hand, I love the absolutely like unlimited stuff, you know, like land speed racing or um like King of the Hammers or something where there's so much more innovation. Pike's Peak, yeah. Yeah, it's just it's so cool to see the innovative side, but then when people with really big wallets get involved, then you know that's that's how the stuff kind of gets shut down sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, yeah. That's actually what I love about land speed racing, is somebody with a big wallet can get involved and they'll take a record, but there's 400 other probably more than that, it's hundreds and hundreds of other records.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Um, and usually there's not somebody with a big wallet showing up. So um but yeah, that's my preferred type of racing, is is because especially the streamliner that I build is great because the only rules that exist for that car are the safety rules, and then it has to have four wheels and they have to be covered. Yeah, they have to be covered. So, like other than that, you can do whatever you want. And that's the kind of freedom that I like. I want the blank slate.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Um we'll come back to the streamliner in a second, because I am fascinated by that. Um but I want to go back to delivering pizzas real quick. So computer science was interesting, or at least that's what you started, but then you hated it, and so you delivered pizzas for a while. What happens during pizza delivery where you're like, ooh, mechanical engineering is where I want to go?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Um I don't know. I I I guess I just didn't like I wasn't sure I wanted to go to college or what I wanted to do, so I stopped doing the computer science thing. And after a couple of years, I was like, oh, I have no direction, and I don't want to deliver pizzas when I'm 40. So um yeah, I was just really interested in cars and I thought, well, I'll get a I'll get a job as an automotive engineer.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

How how early did you join the Formula SAE team?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

I think I found it my freshman year, but I wasn't really involved with it. And then I kind of became I was on the five year, I took five years to graduate. So my my sophomore year, I um I really got involved and then I did it for four years.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Aaron Powell And was that the stepping stone that got you a job at NASCAR? Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Okay. Yeah. Uh I got hired by one of the guys that was heavily involved with Formula SE. And then my next job and my next all my jobs kind of came from that. Even I worked at Tesla and uh sat down after I got hired. Well, during the interview, the guy asked me a bunch of questions about Formula SE, and then I sat down first time I sat down and presented to Elon, the first thing he said to me is I was inter uh introduced as oh, he's you know, this is Matty's from the Formula SA program, and Elon said, uh, oh that's a great program. It's awesome. We get a lot of really good engineers out of there. So yeah, it's like I guess that's if you know if somebody out there is wanting to do kind of what I do, I would highly recommend Formula SAE.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah. Highly recommend it. That's been a common thread of the pod is um guys that are doing their college rocketry team. They're getting jobs at SpaceX or you know, Blue Origins. Because of the rocketry team. Yes. So these clubs, the club level, the team level is I don't know, it might even be better to it might be something that helps you get jobs even more than the degree itself. Uh yeah, for sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah. I I think it's it's like the problem with engineering school is that you learn a lot of how was that? What's that? There's a yogi barra quote. It's like uh in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they're not. Uh you learn a lot of theory in school, but you don't really there's not maybe you have a capstone to kind of bring it all together at the end. But formula SE is just like apply, apply, apply, all engineering, practical engineering. You learn like way more. I feel like if you come out of formula and then and you were actually involved with it, you probably have a two-year leg up on somebody in terms of like practical you you were obviously it depends on a bunch of different factors, but it's it's very valuable.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, no, I I agree. Um it it's the same thing that we do here every single day is you can have a lot of theory, but you know, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. You know, it's what no plan survives contact with the enemy. So if even during college you can you know do internships, you can get real world experience, you can build a portfolio, you can go build real projects. Uh you have, like you said, two, maybe three, maybe four years of experience ahead of your your um colleagues who graduate and never had any of that that experience. There's there's kids that we're hiring that are right out of college, and they come to us with these massive per portfolios. They're like, check out like these parts that I've machined. And I built my own CNC router table and I programmed this, uh, this crazy code uh you know from scratch or whatever during college. And then we have kids that come to us with you know these beautiful degrees and and masters and whatever. And I'm like, cool. So what have you actually built? And they're like, well, nothing yet. You know, I'm hoping to learn how to do that here. And I was like, compared to you know, other people that are applying, you're you're so far behind. So yeah, do it. There's kids in high school that, well, Cohen. Cohen's done all kinds of stuff just out of high school, too. First robotics um was his background. And then he hit the ground running here and is like running circles around a lot of people because he's had experience like since middle school, basically. It's kind of like joining a club or you know, a team is kind of like getting a job, I guess, as far as experience goes. Yeah, for sure. So that's cool. Um okay, so so NASCAR and how long were you at uh on the NASCAR team? Were you an intern or they gave you like a real job?

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Uh I was only there for about six months. They so they the engineering side wanted to like really ramp up engineering and to spend a lot more money. And that's kind of I got caught up in that hiring, and then after a few months, the owner kind of decided he wanted it to be a tax write-off more than anything else. So they kind of were happy coming in 35th rather than gunning for first, which I didn't I wouldn't want to work in that company anyway. So I got laid off, which is fine with me. Um they started they started leasing engines from Hendrick and and and kind of stopped doing a lot of their own engineering. Uh, and then I went to work for one of the suppliers, the valve train supplier, the company that made our valves, Dell West out in uh Santa Clarita. And I did that for a I don't know, not quite a couple of years. Uh and that was pretty interesting, but it was mostly like a manufacturing um, it wasn't super interesting. And I was kind of looking for something else. And then uh Tesla was kind of just ramping up hiring for the Model S. And I thought I talked I talked to a friend who had worked with them um through some software sales, and he was like, Oh, they have no idea what they're doing. They're they're not gonna make it. And I was like, that sounds pretty interesting. Like this, this uh, you know, they because they had already made the roadster, and uh I didn't think it was, I thought probably it was gonna fail to.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

The original roadster. The original road. Not the new roadster that doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah. Um yeah, I did I I thought it was probably a pretty good chance of failure, but it look it sounded like an interesting adventure, so I started there, and um, that was wildly interesting. Um I think like if you had to pick a five years to work in any automotive company over the last like 100 years, that five-year period I was at Tesla is gotta be one of the most because it was like when I started, people were like, Oh, nobody's gonna buy electric cars, and they're not gonna buy them from this company in California that nobody's ever heard of. And by the time I left, everybody everybody's like, uh obviously Tesla's in the lead. Obviously, the future's electric, obviously. I was like, there's another quote I I remember. It was um all technology goes through three phases. Uh it's first ridiculed and then violently opposed and then accepted as obvious. And you can kind of see that in that because it wasn't really violently opposed, but like it was ridiculed about the time I started, and then by the time I left, it was obviously so well as as like a V8 guy during that period, you know, you you hear about electric car and and everyone's like, oh, they have no soul, they don't sound like anything, you know, they're they're eco, silly, you know, Hollywood stuff.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Uh and then the Model S came out and started just dominating, you know, track records, and the zero to sixty was insane. If you had the chance to drive one, it was like nothing that had ever existed. And then I remember when they they were on the streets, like no matter what you were driving, you didn't line up on one at a stoplight. It's just, you know, I uh if you're in the Ferrari or Lamborghini or whatever, it just didn't matter. Um, and then that changed a lot of car guys.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah, you know. I still think they're kind of appliances, and I think that's fine. I think most people uh I think the correct vehicle for most people is an appliance. Like most people aren't like you and I. Uh I would prefer there's there's something about a rumbling engine under the hood. You know, when I started building a land speed car, I thought about going for the electric record, and I was like, nah, I want to go back to internal combustion. I want the I want the noise, I want the vibration, I want that that feel.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

I like I like a car that it may not start on me once in a while, or it's gonna leave me stranded. Like just it's like it's like a dog that just like very, very loyal, but it it just might bite you every once in a while. Like that's a the it adds a little excitement in in the life, I guess. Um okay, so yeah, you're at this magic time in Tesla. So what can you talk about what you did specifically?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Is there any like cool things that yeah. Uh so I started on the the thermal management team. So I was basically integration for pumps and heat exchangers and stuff like that. And then when I got there, we were looking for a factory, and they were gonna buy the old Downey studios in the Los Angeles area. And then they ended up getting the uh the Fremont factory from Toyota, and so all all these jobs moved up north. The engineering headquarters moved up north. And I talked to my boss and I was like, I don't want to move. Um so I ended up, they started a studio engineering team. There was like, I don't know, five or six of us. And so I started doing that. So the designers would come up with these crazy ideas like, let's make the the door, you know, go like that.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Uh, and then we'd have to figure out how to actually do it. And that was really fun because designers tend to live in a world of you know, impossible awesomeness, and engineers tend to live in a world of everything needs to be a box and be done the way it's always been done. And so to have that kind of friction and uh work with those guys was pretty cool. He'd come out with some pretty cool stuff.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah. Um Is there is there anything that that maybe the world doesn't know? Like something that that could have been really cool, but it was, you know, didn't make it off the cutting room floor. Yeah. Um I mean, I don't want Elon to come after you. Yeah. I mean there was like We heard Elon's a big fan of the pod.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah, just kind of set up.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah, just watching all of them.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

There was like uh, you know, they do like I remember when they made the Model X, they do the clay models first. And they start with like a a scale, small scale clay model. And I remember they had um they had a clay model of a station wagon, a Model S station wagon. It never made it past the like eighth scale or quarter scale or whatever. And I loved it. I thought it looked super cool. I know you're a station wagon guy. Yeah. Um I think that there was there's a lot of people that don't like station wagons.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

So I think that no, there's nothing better than a long roof. I I saw some renderings of the Cybertruck as like more of an SUV, and it actually made it look like okay. Um you know, and way more practical. I mean, I guess it's not supposed to be practical, but yeah, I I'd love to see a a wagon Model S or something like that. What is it, the Porsche Tay Can? Yeah, yeah. That has like a shooting brake style. The thing's awesome. Yeah, it looks great.

unknown 20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Um okay, so so you're at Tesla for what, five years? And then five years. What's what what made you pillow?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Uh I just wanted a break. It was it's a tough place to work. Um it's a lot of hours and a lot of um you know you're revving pretty high the whole time. And I was just like, well, I'm gonna take some time off and just do nothing for a little while and figure out what I want to do. So I ended up um renting a room in Telluride, and I just snowboarded every day for a whole month, every single day. Um that's amazing. Yeah, yeah. It was great. It was awesome. I burned myself out on snowboarding. I've only been a couple of times since. Just got sick of it. Um and then while I was doing that, I got a call from Apple. And uh one of this, one of the guys at Apple wanted me to go, we had the school project, we think you'd be interested in it. And I have I was going to be in the Bay Area like the next Friday or whatever. So I was like, hey, I'm gonna be in the area, I could stop by and we could chat about it. And I didn't realize that he had it was set it up as like a whole interview thing. So I just showed up in a t-shirt and jeans. And um, I was not looking for a job, so I think that probably helps because I showed up with this attitude of like, you know, impress me, you know, or whatever. Um but I ended up getting an offer there, and um, so I worked there for a couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Aaron Powell Cool. Uh anything that the audience would know about or so I'm not actually sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Apple's really secret.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Was this the the uh the infamous Apple car that you can't talk about?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah, I I'm not sure what I can talk about because they're very, very secret. Okay, don't yeah, no litigation, please. Yeah. What I always what I always say is I I went to s I went to college so I could work on cars. I worked on race cars in college. I read about cars, I make videos about cars, I build cars, I worked for car companies. And then I went to work for Apple. I wonder what I was working on.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Uh okay, well let's sidetrack uh to the uh the Ferrari. Luce? Yeah. Is that how you say it? Yeah, yeah. Because that's like, is that the Apple car?

SPEAKER_01 22:03

I mean, because it's Nah, that was so that was Johnny Ive. I think he had left Apple before I started, before they started working on that project. It just it looks like an Apple car. It looks like somebody called it a I saw a comment, somebody called it a uh a Prius Pro Max. Uh-huh. That's that is dead on.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah. I don't know what the deal is with that car. Um I'm not really a huge Ferrari fan to begin with. I'm not like they they feel a little bit too much like look how much money I have. Agreed. Um and that one I don't like for other reasons, I guess. But a lot of people seem to really hate it.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

I haven't seen one in person, so I can't comment all the way. Because like sometimes if you see something in person, you sit in it, you're like, oh, okay, this starts to make sense. Looking at it on a computer screen, though, it looks like shit. Um the interior though is pretty rad. It just shouldn't be in a Ferrari. It's it doesn't make sense. The uh the vents, the little Logan, Logan, put in the the show the vents. The vents are super, super cool. I like all the cliques. Yeah. You know, it's like not just touch screen, but it's got little clicky tactile things. Um I think it's really cool, but it would have been amazing in a in a Honda or a Toyota or a Kia or Yeah, it kind of looks like a like a Honda to me.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Uh yeah. You're right, the interior looks cool, but it's I don't know. Designing cars is hard to I don't know that you can just have a product designer, no matter how good they are, design a car out of nowhere without some experience and have it be good.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Aaron Powell Okay. So we were talking about this a little bit at lunch, you know, about making your own car, you know, the challenges that go into that. Because um I was saying, you know, I started out in graphic design, graphic design became marketing, marketing and advertising became software, software became hardware, and then I was like, someday I'd I want it to become like a car company. You know, I always want to make my own car. What makes a successful car designer slash car builder, you know, at a very, very small scale? Like what what type of skills would you would you need to actually be successful?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

You know, I don't I don't really have a designer's eye. I I don't I don't do design well. Um whenever I design, like when I did the the bumpers and the and the side pipes for the uh for the Viper, I kind of just stole everybody else's idea, which I think is actually what you do when you're a designer. But um I so I can't really speak to what like what you need as far as how to make it look good, but I think that's very important, especially if you're doing a small, a small run. It's gotta look good. It's gotta evoke some emotion in people. So the design comes first and then you have to do all the packaging or you know, yeah, there's a there's a back and forth, you know. You can sketch something out and then give it to engineering and they'll totally fuck it up.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

But I think like some of these things, it it feels like designers design stuff without having any knowledge of manufacturing or fabric fabrication or production. So, like you said, they just have these like whimsical ideas and then they're designing things that can't be made. Yep. That was that was a big problem at Apple. So if you have some background, like if you've run a bridge port or a lathe or or run some some welding beads, like maybe you'd be a better designer too. Like, do what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Um yeah, maybe. I don't know. I I do think that there's something nice about having a designer that's a little bit in the clouds who is willing to work with engineering and manufacturing and listen to them. Um because you kind of get I think there is something nice. Like engineers really do like kind of want to just make things the way that they were 20 years ago. Um they want to do the safe thing. And so if you can kind of like get a designer to really push their comfortable boundaries, um I think that I think you can come up with something good as long as there's a conversation going on.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Yeah, I just see I see designs that are beautiful, but manufacturing was not part of the conversation. And it turns out that you need a five-axis CNC machine that's 20 foot by 20 foot or whatever, and then load it with a piece of material that's non-existent, or you have to actually spin up a new foundry just to produce that size block in order to, you know, it's like what you see in um what the F-22 Raptor program or whatever, where they have these huge forgings that you have to develop all the equipment and the entire supply chain for. I just I always wonder if the designer or the engineer knew a little bit more about manufacturing, would they make the right kind of compromises in order for it to be more easily manufactured and then still have a great design?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Uh yeah, probably. I mean, I I I think you'd end up with a different product. Yeah. But I'm just cheap. I just yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I if you're doing something like an aerial atom, you probably don't have you could you could probably do I actually I think that there's a I think if you there's like if you go s so far to one side of the the spectrum of like you know something is purposefully engineered and there's no designer was involved and it's supposed to do one thing, if you go really far to that way that way, I think you end up with something that looks really good because it's like form is entirely function. So you know that's why you get some like old fighter jets and stuff like that. I mean nobody there was no designer looking at the SR71 being like, make it more swoopy here, you know, but it looks badass. And it's because it's like all the way on the side.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Well, if it looks good, it flies good, right? Yeah, yeah, that's what yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Who said that?

SPEAKER_02 27:38

I was that Kelly Johnson? Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Um okay, so you're at Tesla for a little while doing very, very cool projects that we can't really talk about. Um and you said two years? Uh two years at Apple, yeah. Okay. And then is is the concept of the Super Fast Mat YouTube channel like in your head at this time? Or how did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Uh so the name Superfast Mat, we'll rewind a little bit here. This was back in college. I was driving uh the Formula SE race car. We went to a local autocross and we showed up late and uh we were signing up, and typically they make you write your actual name, and uh we were late, and the guy was like, Philly's out, I'm gonna go to the driver meeting, get over there as soon as you can. And so we all wrote down goofy names. And I wrote down Superfast Matt McCoy. And I ended up getting the fastest time of the day there. So it just kind of stuck. My friend started calling me Superfast Matt. So I had the um Instagram, I had the Twitter, and um then when I left, let's see, I I had the whole time I was engineering, I was occasionally sending off I'd I'd do like a write-up for something. I'd go to you know, Pike's Peak and do a write-up about it, or I'd go, you know, whatever, and I'd send it off to automotive magazines, and occasionally they would publish something. And I really like that. I really like writing. And then after Apple, let's see, I'm thinking about this timeline, I started writing a little bit more, and I ended up I ended up writing for Jalopnik on Saturdays, and I hated that so much. Uh the way they had it set up was that if you were writing on Saturdays, I was in charge of writing every column, every article on Saturday. And it was like it was eight or nine, and they were on East Coast time, so I'd have to wake up every Saturday at 6 a.m. And you can't like come up with enough ideas to write eight or nine columns every day, so you have to go into it with some ready to go. And um yeah, it was just kind of miserable. It ruined every weekend. I couldn't, you know, I'd have to wake up early, so I couldn't really do anything else. How much does that pay? Can you talk about it? Nothing. It paid I was it was something, but it was like it might you might as well have rounded it to zero. It's so little vanity project or something. Well, I when I was trying to get into um automotive journalism, um, and that was a really good that was a really good experience to realize that I don't want to do that. Uh I don't ever since then I don't consider myself a journalist. I'm like, I'm just telling stories, I'm just walking around with a video camera. I'm not trying to report the news or tell the truth or be objective or whatever. Um But I can't remember. So like I started making videos, I decided I wanted to do videos, and I got I came up with 10 ideas, and I started making 10 videos, and I think when I got to five, I started uploading them, and then I finished the other ten and I started uploading those. And I think that's a that's a pretty good idea. If you're trying to get into YouTube, just make 10 videos, and they're probably not gonna be great. You're gonna figure out how you do it or that you don't like it or whatever. Um, and then I kind of I kind of just have I I don't know, I figured out my groove the way I make a video, and they're kind of all the same. I do a lot of different um subjects, but the the sort of style of video is it's all voiceover uh and it's all me, it's all b-roll. I almost never, almost very, very rarely am I walking around with a camera interviewing somebody or talking to, you know, I show up on camera pretty. So anyway, I figured out my groove, and I kind of I made a few videos, they did all right. Oh, I actually I remember so rewind back to when I was at Tesla, we had the door handle, the Model S door handle, the presenting door handle. Well, I I grabbed one of those out of the the bin of ones that were broken but still worked, and I made uh a beer keg. We had a keg erator and I cut the hole in and I put the door handle in the like glued it in from the back and I had it set up to a sensor whenever you walked up. If you uh what do you see, you put the you put the beer under the spout, it would present the door handle, and you pull the door handle and it would fill up your beer. That's awesome. And so I put up a YouTube video of this, and this was like 15 years ago, and I got a whole bunch of views on it. So when I started Super Fast Matt, there was a way you could I don't know if I changed the name of the channel or I could you could like transfer videos or something. So I basically started Super Fast Matt with 100,000 views and 10,000 subscribers or whatever, 5,000, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

So it was like that was a huge help from the But you kind of saw like, oh this could this could be something. Like you kind of had that that hit. Yeah. You know, you got a taste of it. And you can that then you're like, okay, let's do 10 ideas.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yeah, yeah. So I get the beer cake thing was like it was like almost eight eight or ten years before I started. Okay. Okay, got it.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

So it's just this like when I started I could people had been watching it for eight to ten years, gaining views, getting subscribers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So when I started, I already had some subscribers and I already had enough views to be to like monetize, which is great. Because you don't have to start out getting three views a video or whatever. So that was kind of nice. And then I I kind of died off on making videos for a little bit, and then COVID hit, and I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna work on this. I bought a Jag, um 1950 Jaguar Mark V, and I bought a Tesla Powertrain and I was shoving the Tesla powertrain in there making videos, and um everybody was stuck inside with COVID watching YouTube, so the videos kind of took off. And then I remember I made, I got to some number of videos with that, five or six or something, and I had made enough money to pay for the project, and I was like, this is super cool. Oh my god, that's awesome. And then uh, but not enough money to like pay the bills or whatever. And I was kind of in and out of jobs. It saved up a little bit of money from Tesla. And this is past Apple past Apple, yeah. Okay. Um and then yeah, it just started getting really good views and started growing. So I just kind of kept making videos, and I kept telling myself I was gonna make a video a week, usually ends up about one every three weeks. Um, because I always make these, I like the videos to be big projects where I spend 40 or 50 hours in the garage making something, and then I gotta spend 10 or 15 hours making the video. So it usually ends up being uh more than one. I don't I I like to take things at a pretty chill pace, you know, so I'm not I'm not working 50 hours a week.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

So yeah, I was gonna say we we have a a couple uh fans of the show, or fans of Senko Send, and we are fans of them. Uh Kyle Kuhnhausen, who's an incredibly talented uh automotive fabricator, he does the most beautiful, brilliant projects, but he doesn't film them because he realized that when he has to go film them, if you put in 40 hours, then it's like another 20 hours of editing. You know, shout out to Logan, our editor. Like editing is like a real thing. Like that's such a full-time job. So, like, how were you able to be able to straddle both? Because usually we see we see people who are like really good at making videos, but their content sucks. But you have like really good content and really good projects, but then you're also like committed to doing the editing and stuff. Like, how are you just a like psychopath mechanical engineer that just does stuff?

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Yeah, kind of. Uh I like I like editing. A lot of people don't like it. I really like it. I like the process of sitting there and stitching together the video and getting the the the pause right before the punchline and after it just right. And I I think that's kind of a necessary part of making videos, is kind of enjoying that. You can you can like offload it to somebody else, um, but you're paying them to do it, so you gotta make a certain amount of money first. But like, I don't know, that's where the creativity comes in. It's like it's not really editing, it's kind of directing, you know. It's certainly with the way that I make videos. And yeah, I think it will, I mean, I think it all comes down to the story, right? Like Do you know the story?

SPEAKER_02 35:29

No. Before okay, just uh once it's all shot, like you you make a you make a crazy bumper for the off-road Viper. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

All the video is shot, and then you I kind of have an idea of what some of the points are gonna be. And I try not to get too much video because too much video is is worse than not enough. Because then you have like 400 hours of video to dig through to figure out what you want. So usually I have a pretty good idea of kind of what I want to talk about. I'm actually working on a video right now about wiring my race car, and I didn't get nearly enough video. So I'm kind of having to go back and like take things apart and then get a video of me putting it back together, which I hate doing that stuff because that adds a whole bunch of time. Um but yeah, I I don't really I don't feel like getting the video during the project is too distracting.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

I think it's when we were walking around the shop, you were recording, and then you would talk to your hand. You put your hand in front of the lens. So is that my that's my trick note?

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Yeah, when I'm looking through my videos, if I see a hand in the thumbnail, I'm like, that's just a note to myself. Okay. Um yeah, so it's just like I will I will watch that on the flight home and then transcribe whatever I said, and that'll be in the notes to I want to talk about this or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

That's cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Do you use any AI tools like for transcribing or anything yet? Yeah, I'm I'm falling behind on the AI. Uh I should probably dig more into that. I feel like that's it every time I use it, I'm very impressed with it, but I don't use any of it for for video making.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

We tried it, we tried it for like some social videos early on, but I think we were way too early. What was this, two summers ago?

unknown 36:56

It was a while ago.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

Yeah. I would just I'd have a cocktail in my backyard.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

It was like the when the very first Gemini launched.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Yeah. It was and we're like, oh, it can do these magic edits, and then it would just edit a bunch of slop and then ruin everything, and none of it was usable. So I don't know. We I guess we could try it again. But that's why we got Logan and Don. Yeah, it's like we got an editor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Job security for you, Logan. I don't I don't hire anybody, partly because I like to, I don't I don't really want a job. I'm not trying to create a job. I'm trying to like keep doing it's fun with the way I do it, but also because I I think it would I would be the most miserable person to work for as an editor because I'd just be over your shoulder the whole time being like, no, remove that, no, change that. And I want to kind of be in control of it. So I think that also makes me not want to trust AI to do anything. Like, just let me do it. Yeah, I'll do it myself.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

So why why do you think everyone loves your channel so much? Because anytime we bring it up, everyone's like, oh my god, I love that channel. He's the goat.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Uh to be honest, I try not to think about it too much. I just I I I love uh I have a cool job. I like make goofy stuff in my garage, and then I make a video about it with some dick jokes, and then 500,000 people watch it. Like that's so cool. No, that's that's a good joke. That's a good joke. That's a good job. That is a good job. Yeah, and I make enough money to pay the bills, so it's like I have nothing to complain about. And then when it like as to why people like it, I think if I had to guess, probably because I I think it's genuine. Like I think it's just like I script out everything. So I'm I'm I'm looking for a story, I'm making sure there's a story there. Uh, and there's, you know, like I watch I watch a decent amount of YouTube, and so I know what I don't like, and I don't like try to avoid that stuff. Like my biggest pet peeve, the thing I hate the most in YouTube, is whenever I click on a video and there's like a 20-second like rock and roll intro with some words moving around, and then the guy's like, hey, it's Steve here, we're gonna do this thing. Be sure to like and subscribe on this channel, and we do this, and we do that. And I'm like, I'm 25 seconds in this video, and you haven't even I don't even know what you're doing, or you know, you're wasting my time. So I always try to like the first sentence is like kind of a hook. It's kind of like a you you can watch the first seven seconds of my video and know what the video is about and hopefully be interested enough to watch the rest of it. Um but I think part of that is because I make videos about stuff that I think is interesting. And if I think it's interesting, probably there's half a million pep people out there that are gonna think it's interesting. What is that, the the Rick Rubin approach?

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Oh, is that yeah? He uh I don't know, he comes up on my timeline sometimes and he's just like, I make music for me. Like that's as a producer, I do it if I like it, then someone else will like it. And he's like, if no one likes it, but I love it, like I don't give a shit.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

It's still a win. So I totally I think that's a I think that is the best approach to creating anything. Make what you want. Um yeah, like I remember who said it, but I remember some comedian talking about like you don't you don't write jokes that you think other people will think is funny, you write jokes that you think are funny. Yeah, that's how you make other people laugh.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

I think that like some of that, I don't know if it was Norm MacDonald who said that, but Norm MacDonald would write jokes that he just thought were funny, and then he would go, you know, on the late show or whatever and just basically bomb. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the audience thought it was terrible. But then if you were another comedian or something, you could see the genius in it. It's super cool.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah, I think the trick is there. Like make something you you love and then don't care if other people don't love it. Yeah. Um and I kind of don't. Like it it it does. What what are some flops?

SPEAKER_02 40:39

Have you had something that you really loved and then there was like no views or no?

SPEAKER_01 40:43

I mean, if I really loved it, I don't really care if there are no views. There are videos I put out where I'm like, you know, I got a deadline, or I got whatever, I have a like a an ad attached to it that has to come out, or I just like have to get this video out because it's been too long or whatever, and I put it out and I'm like, I don't really love this. I hate doing that, but it happens. But if I really like a video, three people could watch it. I don't give a shit. It's awesome. I love it. Uh and generally there's a correlation, a pretty strong correlation between videos I really like and videos that get the most views.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Is there any project that you've wanted to do but haven't been able to or or started and then had to shut down? Like a million.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

I could do this, I could literally do this YouTube building thing for the rest of my life. Um, I could do it for a hundred years. There's so many things I want to do. Um I want to build an airplane. I want to Are you a pilot? Do you have a no? That's it's um it's on the list for the later this year. Do you get motion sick? Not really sometimes, but not significantly. Okay. I've been up in planes a bunch. I got friends that have planes fly around a lot.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

I get very motion sick. Oh, do you? Yeah. That keeps me on the ground. Yeah, it keeps me out of race cars too. I had a Formula Atlantic for a little while. And I I I could do a 20-minute session, and then I would get so sick I'd have to pull off my helmet in the pits and puke out the side of the car.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Wow, yeah, that's pretty bad. And then go back out. Yeah. A buddy of mine and I bought a side-by-side, we're gonna race side by side, and we we did one race, and driving it was okay, but being in the passenger seat looking at the map and being like turn left up, you know, whatever, it's like uh both of us were like, we're done. Yeah. Um so you want to build a plane? Like you want to build like a kit? Yeah, I kind of I kind of like the idea of building a plane because it it's it will require a uh an a modus operandi, I guess that's like different than what I normally do. Because I like to, whenever I build something, I'm like, let's try this. Maybe it works, maybe it breaks. You can't really do that with an airplane. You can do it once. Um so I'll probably if I build one, I'll probably buy a kit, probably buy like a vans or something, a vans RV. And then um I would actually love to do a series of videos where I sort of I kind of want to find an online engineering curriculum, mechanical engineering, and go back through it because it's been so long. I've forgotten most of it. But I think it'd be cool to go through it and pick out the stuff that I think is really interesting because there's a lot of really interesting things. And then I'd love to do a series, a video series where I each video is about one topic that I think is interesting and I kind of dive into it for 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Oh my god, it's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

Dom just shot me a glance. She's like, We're doing that. Yeah. With engineering? Yeah. Oh, cool. Um, well, I'm gonna do one better. So Jake, you heard it here first. We'll just we'll sponsor the parts for you. Yeah, I kind of want to do it around a build though, and I think I can do it around an airplane build. Because I think the problem with buying a kit plane is like it's not really good YouTube for me to be like, here's the instructions. I read them and did it. Agreed. Um, but if I could kind of be like, hey, we're gonna talk about buckling today, and this like push rod here is in buckling, and the reason it works is blah, blah, blah. You know. Or aerodynamics is an obvious one. There's probably a dozen.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

I keep hearing about you know, students right now, uh they're they're going to lectures, they they have their textbook or whatever, but the most like the the education that is sticking with them is actually coming from YouTubers. Yeah. You know, it's probably

SPEAKER_01 44:05

It's like you just get a person from like no no shade on teachers, but you just get someone from the society and they stand in front of 30 kids and kind of just like talk at them for an hour and then they go to another class and they talk at them for an hour. It's like we have uh so many resources and there's it it was always the applicable engineering, always the applicable stuff, even if it wasn't engineering. I like really liked um English in school too. Um English comp. I love anything where you can kind of create something and then you get the the uh part of the learning process is creating something that sticks forever. Learn by doing it's so much better. I don't know why we don't do that. We just try to do that with everything.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

I question like the people teaching like if they're so good at what they're teaching, like why are you teaching? Yeah, I I spoke at a um were you there with me when I spoke to the business school at UNR? That was like that was forever ago. Um they invited me to this entrepreneurship class to go there. It was a class to learn how to be an entrepreneur. And I went there and I was like, if you guys are taking a class for this, like you've already failed.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

You don't need a class on how to be an entrepreneur. You shouldn't even be in class, you should be out, like scrapping together a business. Um, and I I don't know. I I guess if the person's retired and then they're they came back to like teach or something, uh that's who I would want as my teacher.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

But those were the best teachers I had. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

So when there's someone who's teaching theory or what they learned in a textbook, but they've never gotten their hands dirty, I don't know. That's doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence in what they what they know. Um okay, so you want to build a plane. So you have a big shop, yes?

SPEAKER_01 45:49

I have a three-car garage.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Uh so if I the plan is I'm gonna take flying lessons this year, and if I like it enough, I'll buy a plane. And then I'll get a hangar at my local airport. And then if I like it enough, I'll build a plane, and then I can start at my garage and then move it to the hangar, finish it there.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Okay. I guess, yeah, I mean, hangars, you're allowed to work on stuff. Like you can have equipment there and everything. Okay. I'm just picturing like the hangar that I pictured was like white epoxy floor with like a jet in it. Um I don't think they're gonna let you run like grinding equipment in there.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

So I'm near the Torrance Airport, and there's a bunch of tea hangers there that you know that people have stuff parked in. A guy, uh one of my viewers shot me an email and he's like, I I must have mentioned, I think I mentioned building an airplane before, and he's like, Hey, I've got a van's RV 8, I don't remember what it was, uh at the airport near you. So I went and hung out with him and flew around and checked out a shop and it was like, Oh, I need to get one of the you have to have an airplane to get the the hanger. But he had two other cars and like a bridge port and a bunch of stuff in the house. Oh, yeah. So it's a hobby shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I think they frown on people buying a plane that doesn't fly and then using it as just a hobby shop, but like uh they verify that you have a plane if you have it. You have to have a valid FAA number number and a functioning plane to get it. Oh functioning, though. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Are hangers expensive? I mean they're very finite quantity, right? They're cheaper than the same amount of space outside of the airport, but not by a ton. Okay. I thought it'd be way more expensive. No, no, they're not too bad.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

What's the security like?

SPEAKER_01 47:24

And it's an airport. You have to have a badge and badge in and just cameras everywhere. Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's better again, it's better than any other shop you're gonna find around town.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

Hmm. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Go to the local airport too?

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah, no, Carson City Airport.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

That would be the fastest way to get away.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

Oh my god, that'd be so nice.

unknown 47:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

All right. Well, we'll see if planes. Yeah, I don't know if Aaron's listening. Aaron doesn't listen to these podcasts. My wife doesn't listen to my bullshit. She hears me plenty of time. Can you imagine if Aaron listened to the podcast? Is that what she wants to do? That's true. Um, all right. The two the like the two the two biggest projects have been maybe the Viper and the Land Speed Car. Is that true? Okay. Um how did the Viper come about, the off-road Viper?

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Did you just was that on your list of 10 wild ideas? No, actually a friend of mine came up with that. And uh he has uh wife and a kid and stuff going on, and so he I was like, Are you gonna do this? And he's like, No. I was like, Do you mind if I do it? He's like, No, go ahead. Oh, that's awesome. Um yeah, I don't know. He I it was it kind of came up as in a conversation. And the cool thing about the Viper, like I said, it's not super, it's not a great car, but the the looks are awesome. And I just thought, like, wouldn't it be cool to crank that up to 11? You just take something that's already outrageous, crank it up to 12, really. Take an already 11 out of 10 outrageous looking car.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

Do you still cruise it?

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Can you do you like take it out for cars and coffees? I took it out to uh King of the Hammers, and um re- so the plan was like take an off-road, push it, break it, fix what breaks, and then do that five or six times, and then it'll be a good, proper off-road car. And I'm starting to realize that that it's just not gonna ever be like all the stuff I've done, great. All the Dodge stuff, not so great. Not it's Dodge's fault. It is a little bit, but like I'll I'm taking a car that was never intended to be off-road and I'm rattling it around really bad. And the hood shakes really bad, and the paint's chipping off all any corner of the hood where it's rattling into other stuff, the front fascia is cracking. Uh, and I hit a rock at 50 or 60 miles an hour that was that my lower control arms, sand cut sandbox welded, lower control arms, did work like a champ. I hit a rock, so they they're not the best design. I ended up with shocks that are a little too long, so that instead of having just like triangular lower control arms, they kind of dive down a little bit and then come back up so it can pick the lower shock up. Well, that means that's the lowest point in the car. And I was trying to straddle a rock and I didn't straddle it enough, and it just smashed right into the lower control arm. And it still works great. The three important points are where they're supposed to be. The middle looks a little looks a little dented, so you guys might be getting another order from me for a new lower control arm. Um, but I took it, we took it out and drove around at King Hammers and really like wrung it out. And I I think I'm gonna fix it back up and I'll still take it off-road, but I'm not gonna like hammer it. Uh, because when I when I took it to Hammers, I had the coolest car there. There's a lot of cool cars at King Hammers, but that is that is the Viper spiritual home. I would there'd be like 150 people lined up watching the race, and I would drive by slowly behind them, and every single person would turn around and be like, whoa, and pull out their phone and get a video of it going. But while there's an active race going on behind them, um, it was like it was really cool being in that car and like just having everybody really jazzed about it.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

So you have a three-car garage plus projects, like, and you have the jag, you have the viper. You do you still have that? Was it a Dotson that the Honda or the Honda? Six center down. Yeah. Okay. So okay, that's what I was getting at. Like, do you is there a second home for these things?

SPEAKER_01 51:07

No, I have a carport, sort of like makeshift carport in my side yard, and then I have a pretty big driveway. So I've got stuff. I kind of the Jag's gonna go away one of these days. I'm I've I haven't even looked at it in two years. I I don't know why I still have it. I need to finish up some stuff on the interior and then get rid of it, probably for half of what I put into it or less. Um but I have yeah, I I bought the house I have because it had a lot of space for for parking.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Okay. Yeah, because I was gonna say I like that's been the number one uh constraint for me is space. Cars are big, and if you're a car guy, it's it's a curse to be able to be into cars because you're always like stashing cars everywhere. I have I have cars at my mom's house and cars at my dad's house, and you know, cars scattered. I had one parked in our shop for a little bit until Phil kicked me out. Um But uh sometimes you run into projects that you're like, I can't sell this. You and I talked about Tesla Honda a while ago because I have this crazy, you know, uh Tesla powered Honda thing, and I was like, I don't think I can just sell this to someone because it's it needs weird feeding and watering. Like you have to be the person who birthed it in order to take care of it, you know. So that's why I was like, Super fast Matt is the only guy who could take care of this thing. I was trying to give it to you. Um and then you're like, I don't have any space. So you know, do you do you have that issue with some of these projects? Like the Jag, could you sell it as would you just sell it as a roller?

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Or do you I would probably put project in the title, even though it's done. Like you can get in it, flip on the switches, and drive it around. Uh the it like mechanically is great. The body work it needs body work. I hate doing body work, I'm just not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 52:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

The Honda, when I sold it, the S600, I made a video about it, and in the video I basically argued that people should not buy it. I was basically like, this is highly custom, it's not very safe. It's you know, if something breaks, you know, you can email me, and I might have you know the inclination or knowledge or time to give you some direction, but don't expect it. Um and some guy bought it that he was a he was pretty handy with a wrench. He'd raced cars in the past, he'd been a mechanic.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

So it's almost like giving away a a dog or an animal or something. You want it to go to a good home, but they have to have like the right size yard and stuff, you know? Yeah. Dom does not like cars. Dom doesn't give a shit.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Could not care less about cars.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

No, some of these things are like dangerous, though. Yeah, yeah. Uh yeah. Well, okay, so like if you had to sell the viper, you know, but I'd be less worried about the viper.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

I mean, still the the you buy any Viper and it could kill you in five seconds. You're right. It might actually be safer because it's harder to get up to speed because you're burning up the tires, doing burnouts on your off-road all C C tires the whole time rather than the fat 335s or whatever. But um Yeah, I don't know. I we were talking about this also at lunch. It's like, how do you, you know, if you you you could maybe find somebody to to pay you to make something, but then you're not making what you want to make, you're making what they want to make, and it's a completely different thing, it's not fun anymore. So I'd rather just the YouTube is paying for the projects, so I'm just gonna keep making whatever I want to make, and when I get tired of it, I'll sell it. And I like honestly, the Jag's probably not gonna pull in half the money I put into it. I don't care. Yeah, like it's I I like the yeah, YouTube already paid for it. So YouTube already paid for it. Plus, like, I don't buy car projects for the car, I bought it for the project. Like, that's what I'm all about. And um there has to be a car at the end, and I have to enjoy it at the end, but it's not the reason I do it.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

Yeah. Um, any projects that you started and just gave up and the world has never known about them?

SPEAKER_01 54:52

I have this scooter, it's a razor scooter that's 10 feet long and 10 feet tall. What I've had is this like a Burning Man thing? This is yeah, I originally made it for Burning Man, and then I started making it, and then COVID happened, they canceled Burning Man, and so I kind of like shoved it in the corner of the garage. And every like once a year, I I get tired of like tripping over it and I'll pull it out, do a little work on it, and then get I just don't care about it.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Wait, have you ridden this thing? Yeah, yeah. Wait, how do you ride it if it's 10 days?

SPEAKER_01 55:19

So it's it it's just imagine a razor scooter scaled up, and then the it's got the um the post going up to the two handlebars. I've got you know those foam rollers there for the handlebars, and then part way up, whatever like four feet up, there's like really stubby little handlebars that you can steer in, and it's got the brakes and the throttle.

SPEAKER_02 55:36

And you you told me that you were in like uh you're in a neighborhood where it's a bunch of young families and stuff, and then you're just the the dude at the end of the street with all these cars in your driveway. I'm the weirdo. And then so one day you just like bust out this scooter and you're cruising around the cul-de-sac or yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

We drove around the cul-de-sac. Yeah. Um we haven't I haven't quite finished it yet. Uh I did get it approved for Burning Man this year, so I think I'm finally got the motivation and the reason to finish it, and then I'm can get rid of it because it's just been following me around. It started, I started on it before I started the YouTube channel, so it is technically the longest project of the channel.

SPEAKER_02 56:14

Uh I would say like other burners are probably a good target market for that thing if it goes up for sale, right? I mean, who else is gonna buy it? Oh, maybe, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Um shop to shop.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Yeah, we'll take it. Yeah, that's how we'll cross the street for building three.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Oh yeah, we have we have our Reno campus now.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

So yeah, that could be we could all just yeah, you just hug each other, right? I do have I do have two, so the the front driver holds onto the little handlebars, and then I have two actual razor scooters where you can like flip up the handles and stand there and hold on to the hug.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

Yeah, you could also do that.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

The hug is the best. I will say riding it straight is fine, but as soon as you start to turn it, it feels real scooter. What are the tires? The it's from a fat tire scooter, so it's just got a hub motor in the rear, and there it actually perfectly scales up from a from a razor scooter. Okay. Yeah. Wild. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

Is there a video coming on that?

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Yeah, whenever I finish it, I'll I'll do a video. I it it's funny because I I have a folder on my desktop that I've had for forever that's got the videos of me when I started making it, and I look a hundred years younger. Like to look at the videos like, is that my son? That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Um, this has been awesome. Uh did did we miss anything?

SPEAKER_00 57:27

I think this No, just the final question.

SPEAKER_02 57:29

I will ask your final freaking question, Tom. Um, this was good. This is super good. I don't know how long how long have we been going?

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Um an hour six, but about 15 minutes of that.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

I think that's a that's a record. Yeah. Okay. Um I'm wildly ADHD, so usually like halfway through these things, I'm like, I'm gonna go do something else, but you held my attention very, very well. Um so one piece of advice to someone listening, it can be uh advice about anything.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

Um just general life advice?

SPEAKER_02 58:00

Yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

I think probably my advice is inspired by you, would be if you if you think something should exist, go make it. Don't expect other people to to make it. Don't the future doesn't happen automatically, it happens because people find something that they want done or that needs to be done and they do it. So just do things, do good things. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

I love it. Matt, thank you for being on. Um, if people want to find you, well, they already know where to go. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus stud. Um this was good. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, everyone. Uh what do I say? Love you by? Or oh no, Dom has an outro. Oh, wait, hang on. Here, watch this. Here, look. And then you can go into your music. Perfect. Oh, wait. Is this okay? Thank you for being on the show, Matt. Okay, love you by pleasure. Do we have an outro? Am I supposed to say something?

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Can you say like thanks for listening? Love to have your feedback. Find us um on Insta and YouTube at Suncutsman.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Can we just use that?

SPEAKER_00 59:05

Thanks for joining us on today's episode. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can email us at just gonna send it at sungetsman.com or find us on socials at sunketsman at jimbelosic. Don't forget to subscribe, down below, and share with your friends. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.