Just Gonna Send It
Just Gonna Send It is a podcast about the people behind the machines, the welders behind the hoods, the fabricators behind the sparks, and the stories that made them who they are. Hosted by Jim Belosic, CEO of SendCutSend, each episode focuses on the events that put our guests on the path of manufacturing, fabrication, and hands-on trades.
We don't cover much industry news or the latest tech. It’s more about why people build, how they got started, and what lit the fire. We talk about childhood influences and first jobs, side hustles and screwups. You'll hear conversations about what got people into making things, and the moment where they knew to "just send it" and make it happen.
Whether you’re already in the industry, or thinking about taking that first step, this podcast is a reminder that everyone starts somewhere, often without a plan.
Just Gonna Send It
Mike Burroughs (Founder / Creator, Stanceworks)
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Mike Burroughs, founder and creator of Stanceworks, joins Jim Belosic to talk about turning a passion for cars into a career built around creating and building. From starting Stanceworks as a car culture blog to making the jump to YouTube with a Honda swapped Ferrari 308, Mike shares the winding path that turned Stanceworks into what it is today.
They discuss what it takes to build ambitious cars while documenting the entire process, how Mike approaches sponsorships and running a business around content, and why taking big risks has been a recurring part of his journey. They talk about his Ferrari F40 project, the evolution of automotive content, and the lessons Mike has learned from spending more than 15 years building Stanceworks.
You are blessed and I am wildly jealous.
SPEAKER_02Thankfully at the time 308 values weren't quite what they are today.
SPEAKER_00If you're old like me, you remember Magnum PI. He drove the 308 Ferrari.
SPEAKER_02I've heard that there's like a nine month wait to get a gearbox. Is that true? Turns out it's eleven months. I just got the invoice for it yesterday.
SPEAKER_00What color was the gear blow?
SPEAKER_02It was orange.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. It was orange. It only worked for like the first month that I had the truck instead of like a two-cocktail browsing eBay type thing.
SPEAKER_02It definitely was.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to our shitty podcast. Which producer Tom doesn't like me to call it that. Um this is the Just Gonna Send It podcast. With me, your host, Jim Belosic. Uh, today's a very, very special guest, Mike Rose from Stance Works. Welcome to the show, Mike.
SPEAKER_02Thank you guys for having me. I'm beyond excited to do this.
SPEAKER_00So same, same here. Uh this is this is uh this is near and dear to me. Um but this is of all the guests that we've had, uh you and Super Fast Matt, I actually know what the hell you guys do and I can relate. And then I'm in I'm in great company. The idea behind the pod is just to kind of talk to people about their journey, you know, uh how they got to where they are. Because very, very few people actually planned and said, like, I'm exactly gonna be at this point in my career, at this point in time. Um and I think that's so common that people don't talk about it enough though. They don't say like, oh, I'm at this really successful position uh by luck or circumstance, or you know, I chased a girl across the country and that's how I ended up here, or whatever. But people don't tell that story very much. That's fair, that's fair. Everyone's trying to show off that oh, you know, this I knew I would always do this, and I did exactly the right schooling and I had exactly all the right jobs, and that's what made me successful. Um, so we want to hear about the chaos that kind of got you to where you're at today.
SPEAKER_02Well, humorously, there's kind of two anecdotes that fall really well into that exact description, and and one of them is I landed in California because a former business partner chased a girl across the country, um, not me. And then kind of second to that, uh, I think it was maybe two weeks ago, I was I was home uh in Tennessee with my mother, and she asked me, she said, Did you ever imagine that you'd be where you are today doing what you do right now? And I didn't know how to answer her because I don't know that I've ever thought about where I might be. I'm very much a fly by the seat of my pants kind of person. I just go with the flow. And so I can't say that I thought I'd be here, but there was never to kind of go against that, a doubt that I'd be here. There just wasn't really a plan. I'm just kind of I'm always just going with the flow, and that's why I'm here right now.
SPEAKER_00So before we get in too far, um, why don't you tell everybody like who you are, what you do, where where you at today?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so my name's Mike Burroughs. Uh I am, I suppose, a founder, the founder, um, we'll go with a founder along with uh my dear friend Andrew Ritter of Stanceworks, which began as a blog and a forum just documenting car culture. And it has just kind of ebbed and flowed for the past 16 years uh into what it is today, which is a YouTube channel where I document my progress on a bunch of really slow-moving projects. Um, but I love doing it. I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world. What could be better than my job literally being getting up, going out to the shop and working on my own projects? I feel blessed beyond words and I'm living the dream.
SPEAKER_00You are blessed, and I'm wildly jealous. Like I think, I think you know, you super fast Matt, a couple other guys are like literally living the dream. So um I'm I'm super excited to hear more about this. I'm I'm hoping that waking up going in the garage working on my own projects um at a slower pace than I am today would be would be absolutely great. I'm working on projects every single day for work. Um but it's stressful and chaos, and it would be sometimes fun to turn a wrench again.
SPEAKER_02So we'll I'll get there so I feel like I feel like sometimes I see bits and pieces behind the curtain of send cut send that makes me almost terrified of how big some of those projects you must be managing have to be and how big this whole operation is. So I can't imagine the kind of pressure and projects you're managing and all that kind of stuff. I I'm not gonna say that I'm envious of it.
SPEAKER_00It would be nice just to have you know uh one car on a lift and have that be a project for about six months. So someday, someday we'll get there. Someday you'll get you'll get back there. So I'm assuming uh so I didn't realize you've been doing this for 16 years. I just did uh a little deep dive on your YouTube channel, and I uh it looks like your earliest video is uh 11 years ago, right? Uh it's uh Jeremy Whittle's uh nightfall. It's like 1.1 million views.
SPEAKER_02It is so the YouTube channel technically it existed back at that time, essentially as a place for us to host videos that occasionally we would post to the blog itself. Um my pivot to YouTube and taking it as kind of a real effort and focusing on it was in December of 2020 with the introduction of my uh Ferrari 308 project with the with the Honda swap. I had done a handful of episodes prior to that on my Model A, um, which I started in 2018, and I think I I'm maybe a half dozen episodes in total. So I was kind of testing the waters and and just seeing how that format worked for me. And I definitely look back at that time and think, man, I should have stuck with that. How much further along would I be kind of getting in that much earlier? Um, but even still getting started in 2020, I told myself, oh, I'm late to the game, I'm way too late to be doing this, everybody's already established. Is there still room for a newcomer? Um, but I'm glad I did it. And I tell everybody all the time, because they'll ask, oh, should I start a YouTube channel? Should I dive into that kind of thing? And I say 100% best decision I ever made. However, if you look at my job and you think that my job is working on my cars, it's not. It is producing a show about working on my cars. So there you have to be in love with the content creation if you're gonna be a content creator or it's not gonna work.
SPEAKER_00And it's it's the persistence too, right? I mean, there's so many people that have started a YouTube channel, they do three videos, and then you know, there it's like what what is it? Uh if you can make it to 15 videos, you're like in the top, you know, 5% of YouTubers or something like that.
SPEAKER_02I would believe it. I mean, honestly, I have no idea. Um, kind of the nerdy side of me, I wouldn't say I'm like a hugely data-driven person, but when I started my channel or really taking my channel seriously in 2020, I didn't have any friends that did this. I didn't have any way to kind of compare and understand am I doing this right? Am I seeing success where I need to see it? What do my numbers really mean? I mean, Google gives you really good analytics, but I didn't know what to make of it. Um, and so I started a spreadsheet, just an Excel spreadsheet. And I think maybe the first month that I did it, I put in, let's call it 20 or 30 channels that I would call my contemporaries, guys doing the same thing or tangent to what I'm doing. And I put in their subscribers and you know how many views their videos were averaging that month, how many up episodes, and basically all the public data that you can get. I built myself a little calculator so I could track it. And I started tracking it week over week, and then as it got bigger and bigger, it started to be month over month. And now I don't I don't check it often because I don't need that information anymore. Um, but it was really interesting to kind of see so many people that when I started doing this were putting in a ton of effort, and then the fall off, the number of channels that I was tracking that were doing so much more, so much better than I was when I started. The number of those that are still going today is like substantially smaller than I would have expected. They're either massive today or they've quit. And so I definitely think there's something to that persistence of having to stick with it. You're gonna post a bunch of videos that totally bomb it happens to me all the time, but you just have to keep going.
SPEAKER_00It's the grind. And that's why I think if you're if you're doing it for the love of the game, if you're doing it as if no one's watching, then I think you have a higher chance of success. Because if you're like, oh man, you know, I'm I I just did I did 50 videos and and I only have 50 subscribers and and you quit. It's so much easier just to be like, I'm I'm doing this for fun. I'm gonna do 500 of these and I don't care if anyone's watching. And then, you know, hopefully you get that that bump, you know, that that one absolutely you know, was there was there a time where um you know you're like, oh crap, that just came out of nowhere? Like, where did all these subscribers come from? Like, does was there one particular time?
SPEAKER_02There's been a handful of of those like major bumps in growth, and I can't say any of them feel unexpected. You know, it came with when I started my 308 project, when I announced that I was gonna put a Honda engine in this car, when I got it running, when I finished it, and then of course, like the big transformative point in my YouTube career was the introduction of my F-40 project, and I think that was something that people weren't expecting. I didn't even think that a project of that scale or caliber was even possible. So I have to imagine other people felt the same and felt the same sense of holy crap, I can't believe this when I posted it.
SPEAKER_00Um talk to me a little bit about uh like subscriber count at the Model A. Oh, it actually looked the the 308 was first, right, on YouTube.
SPEAKER_02Uh so technically the Model A was first just in those first few episodes I published in 2018. And I think when I decided to take things seriously with the 308, I had I think I was maybe around 10,000 subscribers, which is a big place to start. It's it's a better head start than the average person gets. But those 10,000 came on the heels of just having a brand presence with the blog. And when we post a video or something, people would just inherently be like, oh, well, I followed the blog, I'll follow the channel since I clicked on it, type of thing. Um, I want to say it was maybe in like that 7,500 range. Um, so I did get that head start that I'm grateful for. Um, unfortunately, it was all just like kind of a random people. So the first videos that I was publishing weren't getting any views, but it was still better than nothing, better than uh, you know, a totally cold start. Um, but with that 308 introduction in the end, yeah, December of 2020, um, that's really where I took it seriously and things started to build momentum.
SPEAKER_00And so did did you buy? So I guess we should tell people about the 308 a little bit if you're if you're brand new to Stanceworks. The did the 308, did you know that you were gonna swap it, or you're just like, I bought a 308, here's what it's like.
SPEAKER_02Uh no, I I knew exactly what I was getting into. I had the whole build planned out. Um, I had been talking about it for quite a while, and the idea of being able to afford a Ferrari was like completely foreign. I didn't think that'd be something I ever got the chance to do. Um thankfully at the time, 308 values weren't quite what they are today. It was still an expensive car, but um, I kind of I would say maybe got lucky is the wrong word. Um, but I'm gonna go with I got lucky. I I built this V8 swapped Land Cruiser, and the Land Cruiser 60 series market exploded. And so I sold a truck that I had like next to nothing in uh for 40,000 bucks, which is more money than I've ever seen in my life. And so what did I do with it? Well, I said, well, I'm gonna go buy my dream truck, and I spent 42,000 bucks on a Hummer H1 that I found over in Riverside, California. Uh, I emptied my bank account to go buy this thing. I had two grand in my name, the money from the Land Cruiser, and I was like, I gotta go buy this ridiculous vehicle. Um, and so I drove that thing around for maybe it was six months, maybe it was a year, and the value of those things exploded. It was all leading up, you know, kind of to COVID, and then the there was the COVID boom. Um, and so when I sold that that H1, uh, it was interestingly enough, same story. I I sold it for 60. So I turned a really good profit on it. I had about two grand in my name, and I found that 308 for 62,000 bucks, most expensive thing I'd ever bought by an incredible margin. Um, but I knew exactly what I was gonna do to it. I even called my parents beforehand because it was this kind of like pivoting point of I had stopped uh this idea of running a fabrication shop for customers uh with my former partner, Riley Stair. Um, we realized we made better friends than business partners, and I said, okay, what am I gonna do next? I thought maybe I continue with the blog, but I realized people's attention span is getting shorter, no one's reading long format content anymore. Where do I want to go from here? I didn't want to just pivot to Instagram and create what I was calling eyeball fodder. I wanted something that had more staying power and that people would actually pay attention to, and I said, all right, well, let's let's just turn to YouTube and document projects. Let's build something really cool. And I had this idea of this Honda swapped Ferrari 308 time attack car. Uh, I told my parents, hey, I think I'm gonna buy a Ferrari and then I'm gonna rip it apart and put a Honda engine in it, and I want to document it all on YouTube. Um, and I kind of expected them to be like, You're an idiot, like we raised you to be smarter with that money, like you should invest it or like do something with it. Um, but no, they were like, that sounds really cool. You should go for it. Um, and so I did, and thus began what we call the 244 GTK. It's a it's a 1981 Ferrari 308 GTBI. So like the least valuable version of that car. Um and I ripped it apart and put a Hana motor in it.
SPEAKER_00Didn't Magnum PI drive a 308 or a 328?
SPEAKER_02That was a 308. It was the it was the uh target top version of the car.
SPEAKER_00If you're old like me, you remember Magnum PI. He drove the 308 Ferrari. Um but yeah, it was it was like the least desirable Ferrari, like during you know, me growing up and like no one really cared about it. Everyone wanted a Testerosa or an F40 or something better.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And and that seed got planted. I think I was in, I had just started college, and my stepdad at the time was on this. Well, I mean, he was always my stepdad, but at the time he was talking about wanting to kind of buy a retirement car. And he said you can get a Ferrari 308 for 25 grand, 20, 25,000 bucks. They were at the bottom of their value. And me being in college, I was like, a Ferrari for 25,000 bucks. I've never seen that much money, but like maybe I could sell my E36 and I could like, you know, save some more money, and maybe I could have a Ferrari as a college student, and then I was like, and then I'll bag it and put cool wheels on it and like blow the internet up. Uh, I could not pull the money together. I did not get a 308, but that idea stayed in my head. I kind of fell in love with that car. I said someday I'll get one. And that's kind of when that opportunity came up, and I realized, you know, I sold this H1, I had the money to pull something off, and of course my tastes had changed. I said, I want to build a race car, and I figured it'd make a cool platform.
SPEAKER_00What are what are the 308s like what's a what's a stock 308 in good condition selling for today?
SPEAKER_02Today, I think if I still had if if I had left my car alone, I I think the car be worth right around 100,000. So yeah, not a crazy appreciation, but I mean that's 40 more than I paid for it, and that's 80 more than it would have been when I was in school.
SPEAKER_00So well, it's it's something that I've observed, and I think you know everyone should know. There's there's these these certain things that you can buy that are always like just outside of reach. And you're like, oh, I'm gonna wait for them to drop in price, or I'm gonna wait till I have a little bit more. Like you'll you'll never catch up. You just have to go for it and you do and hope for the best. Um same thing with me with a Testerosa. I remember at one point there was a Testerosa for sale for like $75,000. That was about $90,000 more than I had. I was like totally in debt. Oh my god, I could grab that car, but it's just out of reach. And then they were selling for like $120. And then they went up to $200, and then we were just watching at Pebble Beach. They're going over the block for $300,000, $350,000 for a test rosa. That was $70,000, you know, in recent memory. So um if you really want something, you have to grab it, and then if it's the right thing, if it's the right uh, you know, it's got the right provenance, it's got the right history, it's they didn't make too many of them. Um yeah, hang on to it. Maybe you get to drive it for free and sell it for a profit. So or you put a K24 in it and go nuts.
SPEAKER_02Or you totally destroy any value that it might have and mess it up real good, but you didn't make it.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you sold it right after you No, I st I still have the car.
SPEAKER_02Um I thought you were selling one of them. Nope. Um, so I still have the car. It's been uh just kind of sitting in cold storage since September of last year. So I took it out to Laguna Seca for the final round of grid life, and I blew up my third quaf transmission while I was there. Uh I called up my friends at Hollinger uh after I had partnered with them on the F-40 project, and I said, Hey, I need a gearbox for this thing. I can't keep blowing these things up. What can we do? And then I followed that with also I've heard that there's like a nine-month wait to get a gearbox. Is that true? Turns out it's 11 months. I just got the invoice for it yesterday.
SPEAKER_00So sorry, I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_02Uh it's a bummer. The car's been sitting, but this should be a new chapter for the car, a new level of reliability, a new level of performance. Um, it means I get to work on it again, and more importantly, I get to drive it again. I'm excited to go back out. And I still feel like there's so much that this car is capable of that I haven't really got to find that limit yet and push it because I've just been so many teething pains, but I still have the car, thankfully.
SPEAKER_00But I mean, that that K24 swap, you know, so putting a lowly Honda motor into a a Ferrari, I mean, that did help blow up the internet a little bit, right? So you're at you're at 10,000 subscribers, and then you do the 308 project. Um, you know, what what what did that do to your channel? What did that do to your your YouTube career?
SPEAKER_02So uh I remember some of the milestones. Uh I again I started in December of 20, and by the end of 21, my first year of doing it, I had gained, I was, I had I hit 60,000 subscribers. So I did about 50,000 in in growth in that first year, which was huge. I mean, it felt unbelievable to see that many people coming and watching what I was doing to this car, especially because the format of my content was a lot different and less polished than it is now. And there's still always room for improvement. But when I go back and watch those early episodes, it's pretty rough. So I'm appreciative of everybody that saw through that part of it and wanted to watch what I was doing. Um, and then a second year in, by the end of the second year, I had I had crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark.
SPEAKER_00You get the which I think is do they send you the play button out of 100,000?
SPEAKER_02They do. You have I had to like Google how to find it because I was like, I really want one. And uh it felt like kind of a really cool thing to have. I have it sitting, it's sitting on the wall on a on a shelf. Uh, but you have to go through a process of like telling them, hey, I actually do want that. I think it was free. I don't think you have to pay for it, but you have to like go and fill out a form and say, hey, send me that thing. So uh they they send that one over, and now it's just that slow trudge towards the gold one. Now I want now. I feel like the silver hundred thousand one is just chump change. I want that million one. Oh, the gold is a million.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so Dom is a million.
SPEAKER_01We're at 96,000.
SPEAKER_00We are at 96,000. Oh, you're right there. Right there. And Dom is desperate.
SPEAKER_01I'm so desperate. I'm like, we're so close.
SPEAKER_00Producer Dom and Logan and the whole team have worked so hard to do all this. That that that play button is gonna be pretty cool. So uh if you're listening, like or watching or whatever, to like tell your friends.
SPEAKER_01Go subscribe.
SPEAKER_00Subscribe or else smash that smash that like button, subscribe, whatever, whatever YouTubers say. I'm a really shitty YouTuber. Dom's pretty good, but you know, I'm bad. You guys are doing great.
SPEAKER_01Um, okay, so I have a question really fast. You were in college for media studies, right? And like communication.
SPEAKER_02That's such a cool way to put it. Um, so technically speaking, if I had gotten my degree, it would have it would have been uh a degree in mass communication, um, but with a concentration in photography. I was going to school for photography, um, and I did use I don't know if I used what I learned in school. I was a photographer for a while. Um but yeah, it was 2011. Uh stanceworks had grown as a as a blog and a forum enough to uh kind of begin this idea of taking it seriously and doing it full time. And by that point, I had picked up two business partners, um, one being my dear friend Andrew Ritter, the other half of building this entire thing, he really deserves so much credit. It there and oftentimes wasn't the one in the spotlight for it. Um, Andrew was here all the way until 2018. And then we also had another partner named Ben. And to Ben's credit, he came to me really early and he said, Hey, I see what you're doing here, and I want to help monetize it and turn this into something. And so, like any ignorant, I think, I don't know, like 20-year-old, I was like, Okay, here's half of my company. And um so he helped kind of bring this idea of like bringing on sponsors, advertisers, and trying to like make some money with this. And then we brought on Andrew, who's the most talented just designer, one of the most talented people I've ever met, period, across all things, but really talented designer. He was doing all of our merch, uh, all the graphic design for the site, all of the branding. Um, and so it was three of us with with equal share of the company. And in March of 2011, the two of them moved out to Costa Mesa, California, where I am right now, um, to pursue this whole thing full time and really give it an effort to see if it could grow into something that could support everybody. Um, and I figured, okay, I will finish college and then I will move out. I had, I think at the time, another year and a half to go. I made it to the end of that semester, summer semester. I came out, I spent the summer out here helping, working, getting everything set up. And then I got back to school starting, I don't know, September, I think is when classes kick off. And I made it until October. I didn't make it far at all. And I sat my parents down at the table, uh, kitchen table at their house, and you know, had my whole speech formulated about I want to drop out of school, I want to move to California and try to blog full time. And I thought that there was, they were just gonna say, there's no way over our dead bodies will that ever happen. There was never an option to, you know, skip a year, take a year off, or to not go to school. I mean, I had initially wanted to go to trade school just to learn to work on cars, and they kind of pushed me, hey, let's let's like try to get like a you know a bachelor's degree, and then if you want to try something different after that, you can. Um, so I thought there was no way they were gonna allow this. And when I sat down and told them, they said, we've been waiting on this, we knew it was coming, and we we fully support it. We think you should. So I withdrew from my classes and in November of 2011 I moved out here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as a as a parent, yeah. You can see it coming usually. Yeah. Just like, uh yeah, I I I knew I knew this wasn't gonna work out, honey. Let's just go go go to move move to California and go play with cars. So were you always exactly a car guy?
SPEAKER_02I mean, did you grow up in a car household or uh so I did grow up in a car household, certainly. Uh far more than like normal. Um, my dad is a diehard car guy. Um one of the latest series that I've been working on on YouTube is he built a car for Hot Rod Magazine back in the 80s. Uh a really special car with some really cool history. He sold it before I was born.
SPEAKER_00Was it an old movie or Camaro?
SPEAKER_02Uh it's a it's a uh F-body Camaro. F-body, okay. So close. Um, I tracked the car down, I bought it back, and then I surprised him with it, and now I'm kind of going through it and fixing it up. So he is every bit as much of a car guy as I am. He's even more of a motorcycle guy. Uh, but I didn't grow up with him. I grew up with my mom, and then uh my stepfather Jim uh entered the picture in '98. Um amazing, amazing man. He passed away, I guess it would be three years ago, uh, just a couple months ago. And he was also, I mean, fully in it. He hosted car and driver television and motor trend television when they were on TV way back in the day. Um, so I grew up around it. Um, but I wasn't really interested in cars until I was on the verge of getting my license. Prior to that, I was like interested in Counter-Strike and playing computer games. So once 15 hit, and I was like, oh, there's a there's a driver's license coming up, then I started paying attention to cars. And I think from there I really found my own way. I think one of the coolest or one of my favorite parts about where I am today and what I do for a living is what brought myself and my stepfather Jim closer and closer together, uh, up until the end of his life, because he uh has he ran a production company for 25 years uh and had shows that focused on shooting sports. Um but in totally finding my own way through YouTube, I realized how much what I was doing looked exactly like what he was doing, just in a different medium almost. Not even medium, just different, you know, way people are watching it. And I think when he realized that and we really started to get to like get to the nitty-gritty of production and sponsors and how to make it all work, it was really cool, really rewarding. Um kind of just a wild ride to be where I am now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's cool. You kind of absorbed it just through proximity a little bit, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I I feel like I fell the apple didn't far fall from the tree. I do feel like I fell on my own and then happened to just kind of land here. So I'd say it was more in my blood versus um necessarily like cultivated.
SPEAKER_00I think it's in your mom's blood too. She likes car guys.
SPEAKER_02She definitely does. Uh I mean she's she's done a lot of really cool car stuff. She had an uh automotive at agency throughout my entire childhood.
SPEAKER_00So very much in your blood. So okay, so what was your first car?
SPEAKER_02Uh my first car was a 97 Chevy S10 pickup.
SPEAKER_00Oh, a single cab?
SPEAKER_02Single cab. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh short, short cab. Uh I think there was only one bed length on those things. Yep. It had neon underglow, bought it with the neon on it. Uh, it also had uh like big subwoofers stuffed behind the seats because there's like a little bit of space. Um, and it was like to 16-year-old me, it was the coolest thing in the world. What color was the underglow? It was orange. Oh, yeah. It was orange. It only worked for like the first month that I had the truck. Uh and then I decided I was gonna try drifting that truck in the rain and slid it off the road and into a tree. So then came a Honda Prelude, third gen Honda Prelude. Not long after that, I bought my first BMW. I think anybody that's been following Stanceworks for a long time knows me as a BMW guy. Uh, my first E30, I got it for 250 bucks. My stepdad was like did not want me to buy it, even though it was 250 bucks. He was like, You're never gonna be able to afford to keep that car on the road. It's just gonna break and be unreliable. And I like begged and pleaded because I also needed a ride to go out and get it. And finally he was like, All right, fine, it's your money, your mistake. And uh here we are.
SPEAKER_00Um okay, so bunch of cars. Uh, any nostalgia for for an S10 pickup?
SPEAKER_02Is that not for the S10, definitely some nostalgia for the third gen Honda prelude. Uh, I would love to own another one at some point. Uh, and there's actually a really talented fabricator here in SoCal that has one for sale, and I'm like, I'm fighting the urge to buy it because it's exactly what I'd want. Uh, but I don't I don't really need more projects right now. I kind of have too many. So we'll see. Someday I'll have another one. Um, I don't know if I'll go back to the go back to the S10, but um Cyclone.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm I I hate 100% a cyclone.
SPEAKER_02I would I would love. I actually was talking about Cyclones like two or three hours ago uh with Vinanatra as potential project options. So there's some love for those for sure.
SPEAKER_00Happy to sponsor a cyclone.
SPEAKER_02Uh that's those are near and going cyclone shopping right after this.
SPEAKER_00Um I don't know how much you can talk publicly about like the the finances behind all this. So because I sure you know a lot of people listening, they're like, Oh, I want to start a YouTube channel, and it seems like all those guys are rich. Uh YouTube must pay you a lot of money. When you're starting out, I mean you're not you're not getting a whole lot of money from views or anything. It's it's sponsors, it's ads, it's everything. So can you talk a little bit about you know the first months or years or whatever as you start to make this a living? Because you know, you you were making some kind of money off the blog, right? You had merch.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. So I think, and I'm I'm totally happy to talk about it. I I I shy away from talking about like specific prices for things on project cars, specifically the F40, just because I don't want that to be the focus of what makes that car interesting, because it is phenomenally expensive. But um, yeah, I think I think the economics of YouTube is really interesting. It's like probably what most people want to know how it works. Um, I have to say, I kind of cheated at the beginning because I had the blog and thus I had sponsors that were already supporting me, right? So I had a way to pay for the shop and to pay for my rent. Um, and so it wasn't enough to do much else with. I was kind of taking one project, finishing it, and taking all that money into the next one. But yeah, I had website sponsors and advertisers that I called up and I said, Hey. And the first one was to HR, they've been my longest partner. Uh Roland, uh, rest in peace, was just the biggest supporter right out of the gate. I met him at SEMA 2013 and he said, I know your rusty BMW, and I've heard that you want to bring that car back to life, and I want to help because I think that's the coolest car. Let me know how I can support you. And from there, every single project idea that I ever came to him with, there was never hesitation. He just said, I want to find a way to make sure you can do this. Um, and so when I called him up, I said, Hey, I think I want to stop blogging and I want to pivot to YouTube. Uh, I am gonna buy a Ferrari 308 and do a Honda engine in it. What do you think? And he was like, I think you sound crazy, and that's awesome. Let's do this. And some sponsors were into the shift, other ones were not, not everybody stuck around, but thankfully enough did that I had that kind of head start where I didn't have to worry about how to monetize it right out of the gate. Because I think if you're a new YouTuber or if you watch the path that a lot of YouTubers take, they have to have a normal job and they have to YouTube in their spare time. And that's really hard to do. I can't imagine trying to put in the effort that I was doing because I did two episodes every week for like a year and a half, and that would not be possible. Or accomplishing the progress that I saw or did accomplish on that Ferrari project in that first, you know, year and a half, two years would be impossible to do while also trying to maintain a normal job.
SPEAKER_00So people don't they don't realize that uh 20 minutes of video is easily 20 hours worth of effort.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean the yeah, were you editing to yourself? So you were like filming and editing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I ran everything solo uh up until three years ago uh last month. Uh I hired Anthony, my videographer, and he has been one of the greatest things to ever happen to my career. Thank you, Anthony. Um, but I was doing all of the filming, all of the editing, obviously, all the fabrication, the hosting, managing the sponsors, all of it solo, which I think, I mean, that's not unique to me. That is every YouTuber's career. Um, I tell people that it's the best decision I ever made. And I know that their path would certainly look different from mine. I imagine everybody's path looks a little bit different. Um, I think that so much of it comes down to that consistency until the the videos can make you enough money to where you can pivot and do it full time. And there's definitely a jumping off point where you say, I don't think that you you wait until it makes enough to surpass your day job. I think you realize that, hey, if I give this full-time effort, then I will see that much more return and I'm gonna take the gamble. Maybe that's not how everybody approaches it. I know that I had that moment when it came to hiring Anthony. I did not have enough money to pay somebody else. And I told him that. I said, I there's just I do not have any more money, but I think that if I hire you, that we will be able to transform what our content looks like, we'll make longer, better videos, and I will see that reflected in the income that we make, and then I'll be able to pay you. Are you down to ride this out with me? And and thankfully he was, and it worked out.
SPEAKER_00So that's what I told Dom, and she said, no, please pay me. I need a paycheck. Yeah, we we do direct deposit for Dom. Yeah. So lucky. So the these these sponsors, like so, none of our stuff is monetized. Um so I know nothing about monetization. However, as a sponsor, you know, I know what we pay some YouTubers, and we can pay anywhere from a couple hundred bucks or free parts up to six figures or more. Like it's it's wild the the range. So when you're starting out, like what should you expect? Should you expect sponsors at uh 500 bucks a video or five thousand dollars a video or per month? Or like what have you seen? And then what is best? Like, what would you recommend someone who's just starting out?
SPEAKER_02So people ask me all the time about sponsors for their project cars or YouTube or what have you, and I or conversely, sometimes you get the comments that are like, oh, well, I could do what you do if I got free parts, or getting free parts must be nice, or what have you. And I try to remind people there's no none of it's free. It might seem free because you don't have to give money for it, but you definitely have to give something back. And importantly, that's what any sponsorship needs to be. You need to let a sponsor see value in you. And if if you're just asking them for parts, what does that serve them? Nothing. It's it has to be a symbiotic relationship. That's how it works. And so I try to tell people hey, show a sponsor that you're worthwhile, that maybe your audience is a unique set of eyeballs, or maybe your project does something unique, or you're gonna, you know, help deliver a certain message or or what have you. But like you can't just say, hey, my car is cool and you should put your parts on it because there's a lot of really cool cars out there. And you also I try to remind people like at some point, you are their target demographic. You're the person who's gonna buy their stuff. I had somebody ask me recently, hey, how do I get a partnership with uh I think it was an engine builder or something? And I said, You could ask them, but I think you're the guy who they're expecting to buy their parts because you're like one of the few people who's gonna pony up to spend that kind of money for your race car. Like, so you got to find that balance. Um, as far as like what the income actually looks like, I feel, you know, I don't know if if my approach has been atypical. I've always tried to approach like I did the blog, where I want to understand what kind of cash flow I have coming in every month. And so I've always sought sponsors that want to be a monthly uh check, and then they see the value in what I'm doing. Some sponsors are more strict than others about like, hey, here we need to know exactly what we're gonna get, and it needs to be, you know, we want a one-minute plug, you have to send it to us before we post it, and you know, really play by the rules. And other ones, like you guys really trust the process and allow me to just kind of like fit things in where it's natural and showcase using this stuff. And honestly, I not to not to be overly pluggy here, but one of my favorite things about working with you guys, and I'm assuming Jimmy, you remember this, is it's the most um, I guess in a way, like direct and organic uh birth of any relationship that I I have. Because I started out as a regular customer, having seen your services, I don't know, on another channel or maybe in an ad or something. It your ad dollars worked really well. Kudos. Uh, and I did an episode where I said, I'm a customer, I'm paying for this stuff, and I just want to see if it's any good. Like, is this something that I should be utilizing in the process of building my project cars? And it was to do uh a chassis on my Model A. And I did it, and it completely changed my workflow. It was it was a game changer, and I think I said that in the episode. I was like, this was amazing, this was unreal. I'm never going back. And then to hear from you guys, and you guys said, hey, that video is actually really cool. We'd love to do more with you. And now here we are. Um, I tell people all the time that send cut send is genuinely the most valuable toolbox I have or tool I have in my toolbox. Um, and so it's I think kind of going back to that sponsorship aspect when it is symbiotic. Like I genuinely love using your services, and I think that's reflected. And I showcase how it changes my builds and how it improves them. That shows through to the audience, then it's probably pretty clear to people why Send Cut Send would want to be a part of that. And I think you could take that and use that for any sponsor. That's how you need to make it work if you want to work with companies. I think that's well, but what do I know?
SPEAKER_00I think it goes back to that persistence too. Like if you're doing it for the love of the game and you're doing it regularly, like sponsors will notice. Like we hunt people down. You know, a lot of people reach out to us and they're like, Oh, come sponsor me. And they they do exactly what you were saying earlier. They're like, I have a race car, sponsor me.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, well, where do you have 500 of you have a race car?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like where's where's your audience? And they're like, Oh, yeah, I show it at my local Carson Coffee in you know, Omaha. I'm like, I don't know if we're a good fit, you know. Um so we have all that inbound, but then we do a lot of outbound too, because we're like, oh man, these people are doing really cool projects instead of doing something that's never been done before. Um we can see like your audience is our audience. And so I'll tell you know, anyone who's aspiring to get sponsored by us or to do something that's gonna be sponsored, just do it because you love it, be persistent, grind it through, and then watch your spam, watch your watch your email, every single part of that inbox because people will reach out. Like we've reached out to a couple people you know dozens of times, and then we finally, you know, track them down on LinkedIn or Facebook or something like that. And we're like, hey dude, we've been emailing you, and they're like, oh my God, I don't even my my contact at you know, YouTube channel or whatever, I've never emailed that. Sometimes you know sponsors are becoming more and more savvy, uh, especially around YouTube and social and everything, and there's a lot of outreach that's going on. So if you are starting a channel, like check your inboxes, check your DMs, um, check your uh you know, your other uh in LinkedIn or whatever and and see who's actually trying to hunt you down because it's it's really the one of the best ways to advertise nowadays. Um we don't do a whole lot of investment in you know Google ads or or you know direct placement or whatever. It's uh it's always um gonna be something like Evergreen and uh via partnership. So it's uh it's worked out really well for us too. Like we love to take a bet. Um you know, we're kind of like an angel investor. Like we'll take a bet on on someone when they're just getting started, and uh a lot of them grow up and we get to grow up with them. So yeah, you've you've been a a great example. We're we love watching your story. Um so so you built a 308 and it it kind of broke the internet. There was a lot of attention around it. Um let's see here. You the 308 and then uh what anything else after the the 308 before the F40?
SPEAKER_02I mean, there was the 308 and then there was a handful of episodes with the Model A, and I crashed it, and then I had to fix it and then deal with other issues and blah blah blah. Uh and there's been some other projects here and there, but the next big one is certainly the F-40.
SPEAKER_00And that was that was about a year ago, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, I think we introduced it a little bit over a year ago. Okay. So it's been it's been in the works a lot longer than that. I mean, it was I I had all the body panels uh showing up for months and months and months uh before we ever went live with anything. I think I probably told you about it. It had to be at the beginning of 24. Yeah, it was a long time ago because when I found the parts, um, I guess like for a bit of explanation on what this project is, if for those that are not familiar, I'm a really shitty host.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02I don't no, no, you're you're doing great. Um the the F-40 project is uh I found an authentic new old stock F-40 set of body panels, so real deal original Ferrari parts, uh, but just the outer skin of the car. And I had been jonesing to build another tube chassis vehicle, something really crazy that just pushed my fab skills to the limit, but also allowed me to take everything that I've learned from previous projects and really go crazy with something. Um and prior to the F-40, I thought that I was about to build uh a really crazy Mercedes 190e DTM race car type of project. And then bouncing around on the internet one night, I came across F-40 body parts.
SPEAKER_00And I said like a two cocktail browsing eBay type thing.
SPEAKER_02Because I've It definitely was. I think I think I was actually drinking and driving on iRacing, to be clear. Uh, and then finished up a race, and then I'm I was like sitting in my sim rig, kind of just cooling down, and oh let's bop around the internet, and then uh yeah, I was on voice chat with my friends and was like, dude, no way, like here's an F4 40 hood. Like, what's what's up with that? That's crazy. I wonder what that costs. Add to cart. And it's like, oh wow. It's like not as expensive as I thought that it would be. It's not cheap, but I was like, and then I looked around the the website and they had a few other panels and I started adding. And they had the front half of the car. So I still had to find the back half. Uh, but I added the front half, all the pieces together. Uh, and I realized, like, okay, well, if I sell, if I sell my E30, my E28, and I empty my savings account, I could buy this. And then I'd have to figure out how to buy the back half of the car. So it's like, okay, well, if I sell my Model A, then I could buy the back half of the car. And then I'd have an entire F40 body. And so that's exactly what I did. And so before I like committed to doing it, uh, I called you up, I called Roland up at HR. Uh, I think it was just the two of you guys, and I said, Hey, I kind of want to go for this. I think this is nuts.
SPEAKER_00Yes, do it. I'm in.
SPEAKER_02Um, and then there's you know, there's a few other puzzle pieces after I kind of started figuring out what was gonna be needed to do it. Um, and then yeah, I I I sold what felt like everything. I didn't have to sell everything.
SPEAKER_00I like I said, I kept the 308 and some other stuff, but we sold a lot for just the shell of this car. For people who don't know what a Ferrari 40 is, it's the best car ever. And uh we just watched a couple of them roll over the block at Sotheby's for six million, I think they're they're going to be.
SPEAKER_02One went for eight million dollars.
SPEAKER_00Eight million dollars for the eight million dollar car. Um and so yeah, you can just imagine how much that just the hood is.
SPEAKER_02And that's yeah. I mean, we're talking, you know, well into six figures for some body panels, and uh, and so it took liquidating a lot of stuff to pull it off. Uh, and I genuinely I have a video saved on my phone that I hope I get to use. I'll probably show it when I finish the project. Uh, but I sat here, uh, I think it was like 2 a.m. and I had to stay up because I had to buy the parts from the UK. And so I was about to send the payment, or I had just sent the payment, uh, and so I had to like talk to them late, get everything confirmed. And I took a cell phone video sitting right here at my desk, and I think I addressed the camera and I said something along the lines of I was like looking at my bank account info, and I said, I just bought the parts, I I did the deal. I now have $258 left to my name across every single account. Period. Like that was it. Um, and rent was due the next day uh for the shop. Uh, and that means I had to pay Anthony as well. But I had a check coming in from somebody, uh, I think it may have been like a pens oil check or something like that, coming in. They was supposed to get here the next day. And so I was like, okay, I have a five-day grace period on being late for rent before they charge me late days. I if I get if the check comes in, I can deposit it, it will clear, and I can pay rent and pay Anthony. And I so I literally like uh said to the camera, like, I have put it what feels like everything on this. I mean, again, I don't want to misrepresent. I didn't sell all of my physical belongings to do it, but I sold off three cars and really went for it.
SPEAKER_00Um and I had to I what's that big bet big to win big, right? I mean, that's yeah, yeah. That's a common thread I've heard from you for this for the last hour. Like you're you take big bets, but they're you're not wise.
SPEAKER_02I do believe in in putting it all on the line, yeah, yeah. Um, and so I had to ask Anthony to have faith too. I had to say, hey, I'm gonna make this gamble. I hope you believe in this, because if this doesn't work, like this could be done, but we're gonna go for it. And he was all about it.
SPEAKER_00And so the that big bet. I mean, uh has so far has it been worth it? I mean, I'm looking at your views and they're like off the charts for that project. Um, just the announcement was a million views. Um did that attract new sponsors, did it did it help with finances and stuff? Like was it was it something that that you've got to do?
SPEAKER_02Yes, and is it worth it to be clear, yeah, totally worth it. No, not an ounce of regret whatsoever. Best decision I've ever made in terms of projects and YouTube and what have you. Um, so very much worthwhile. I would say that I'm probably a little bit defensive of over-monetizing or sponsoring the project. So, like I'm really apprehensive about bringing more companies on because I don't want to over-commercialize it, oversaturate it. There's already a handful of brands that are kind of my my mainstays that are involved, and I've been really careful not to overdo that. And I think that means I'm leaving a lot of money on the table. I'm sure that there's plenty of companies that would love to be involved, um, even just coming down to like free parts or what have you. But a lot of the times uh I find that I'd rather pay for a part than to owe somebody something. Um it to kind of go back to the point earlier, like those free parts are oftentimes the most expensive free parts you're ever gonna get, you know. So I'm really careful about that side of things. Um, I have my partners that are present, that I have these long-standing relationships with. I mean, using you guys as an example, we've been working together now since 21, maybe something like that, number of years. Yeah, um, and you know, I really want relationships with companies that feel uh not just like authentic and like family, but companies that see what I'm doing and see the value in it, but like I guess also like appreciate it versus just seeing my audience as a set of eyeballs that they could purchase. Um, and that doesn't mean that we don't have to play the YouTube game sometimes and do ad integrations. Like the this is not cheap to do, and rent in California is crazy. And I've now got Anthony that I've got to pay his bills, and I've also got Blake uh Art Graphics and Merch Guy. So it's it's it's a small business, it's a three-man operation, but that's a lot more required income than I ever expected to have to provide to anything. So on top of that, it's an expensive car to put together, and then there's other projects and trying to keep all the plates spinning at the same time, which I don't have to explain that to you, but so so the the Ferrari is coming together.
SPEAKER_00Um I know progress is is slow, um, and then you guys had the cease and desist from Ferrari, right? They don't they don't like you messing with um with what they made. They were polite, but yes. Yeah, yeah. Ferrari is Ferrari.
SPEAKER_01Was that the biggest challenge so far? Was the cease and desist?
SPEAKER_02No, I don't want to call that a challenge. They were very respectful. Um they it was a very polite letter. It could have been a lot worse. Um, I've been kind of said I've been told by my lawyer, like, hey, don't you don't need to like explain the whole thing on YouTube because I at my first question was like, Can I go to YouTube with this and flaunt it? And they were like, Yeah, let's go. Don't don't do that. Um, so but I do want to be clear, like, as far as a as a letter from Ferrari goes, they didn't have a lot of asks and it was very professional. They didn't ask me to not build a car, they didn't try to like flex their muscles, they didn't say stop. Um, they just wanted to protect their brand, and that's understandable. I get that. I think everybody with a brand wants to protect it, especially one is globally known as Ferrari. So I get it. Um, as far as like the biggest challenge goes, honestly, um, I think it is maintaining momentum in a way that I'm happy with in um tandem with making episodes that I feel like are worth watching. I find myself as a content creator getting very stuck on feeling like an episode won't be enough for people to enjoy. And I tend to focus on the comments that are like, dude, in this episode you only did four tubes. What the hell? Yeah, why is that? And it's like, yeah, but those four tubes, because I'm doing this by hand, like those four tubes took me days. And amongst those days, I still have an entire business to run. And like I find myself spending as much time just managing this beast as I am working on cars. And then I found last year, I got this amazing opportunity with Falcon to go race the 244. And I felt like that's what I built this car to do. Here's my opportunity. You know, I spend years and so much money to build this 308 race car. Now I get to go race it at multiple races around the country, and they're gonna provide all the race support. Like, I gotta do this. But then I realized, like, man, this was a way bigger commitment than I thought it was in my head. I was like, okay, five weekends across the year, that's not a big deal. Well, it turns out it's five weeks, but then there's also all of the fixing of that car that comes between each of those events when that takes multiple weeks and you gotta tear the car apart every time. It's like, man, I spent most of last year scrambling to find any time to work on the F 40. And I told myself this year I really want to get to focus on a lot more.
SPEAKER_00So um, so I think, or go ahead. Oh, sorry, I was gonna say with the with the F-40, you know, it's I don't know what percent done it is right now. Is there a point where you know, as as a business owner now, you're like, okay, I'm I'm halfway through this project and I really want to see it over the finish line. But as a business, I have to have the next one in the pipe. Like you have to start getting ready and and thinking about the production, right? And and what the next year of content is gonna be. Like, how do you think about that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, there's there's other projects that are in the pipeline already, and oftentimes there it's the other projects that come with budgets that allow me to make the F-40 work or to like keep the channel going. I think a lot of people would say, dude, stop focusing on other stuff, just build the F-40. But as much as I don't want to believe that it's true, I know that people would have project fatigue almost immediately. They would say, like, all right, I don't need to see weekly updates on this car where you're just getting, even if it's a week's worth of progress, like a week's worth of progress on a project like that doesn't necessarily look like a lot, especially when you account for how much time I spend sitting at the computer designing parts and things like that. Like a lot of the times I'm just sitting there staring at the car trying to figure out how I want to solve a problem, and that doesn't make for good YouTube. So there's gotta be other stuff that fills in those gaps and other projects that keep the audience from getting that fatigue. And there is also that planning ahead, figuring out what comes next. There's a long list of cars that I want to build, and I'm hopeful that I'll get the opportunity to build all of them. Um right now, I will say the focus is focus on the F-40, fill in the gaps with other projects that are supposed to be smaller in caliber, but hopefully just as meaningful for people to watch, such as this kind of Camaro project with my dad, or I bought a 71 F-100 from uh Brian Scotto from Hoonigan and his wife Ashley uh a couple months ago, or a couple in in January, time flies. Uh but um that we did one episode and like shockingly, it did, I think it has like 400,000 views, which is crazy for a 71 pickup truck. Um, but it goes to show like when you change it up on people and you give them something a little bit fresh, they're like, Oh wow, okay, yeah, I want to see this. And so we're gonna come back and dive into that project, kind of fill in some gaps too.
SPEAKER_00So how how big does stance works get? Like, what's what's the the dream, you know, in five years, ten years, whatever, are are you looking at more of what you're doing today, or is there is there like a moonshot?
SPEAKER_02I don't know, like maybe it's a disappointing answer. I don't know that I have plans for it to be more than it is now. I mean, like the business owner, I'm not I'm not a businessman, but the business owner in me like wants to say, like, oh, keep it growing, get it bigger, bigger, blah, blah, blah. Like, more opportunity, more yes, hire more people. Uh, but I also think that, or one of the things I've certainly learned is there's power in saying no. And I also don't want to fall into the same like trap or mindset of approaching this, maybe a terrible analogy, but like shareholders always demanding more value, more growth, get bigger. Like, if that's the goal, like growth isn't unlimited. That's not that I don't want that to be my goal. My goal that when I started was to say, I want to find an audience that really enjoys what I'm doing. And if that audience can grow to a point where it sustains me doing what I want to do, then we're both happy, and that's all I need out of this.
SPEAKER_00I've and I love it. You're not greedy, like just if you're you get to a point where you're happy and it's putting a roof over your head and you're doing what you truly love, like maybe that's all you need. I think I think you can end up ruining it if you try and go too far. Because then all of a sudden it becomes a job, and exactly that people are breathing down your neck, trying for more and more and more, and and then it's not fun anymore. It's like don't meet your heroes, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think in many ways it already is more of a job in ways than I want it to be at times. Um, just keeping uh certain partners happy and keeping this the plates spinning, and and you know, some some of these companies are like big corporate entities where there's a lot of red tape and things like that, but they're also necessary to make the whole thing work. Um but to that end, like I don't want to I don't want to grow it into an empire. I don't want to be the next, you know, YouTube mogul that has, you know, who knows how many employees and you know operations and businesses and stuff. Like the entire purpose of any of this was just so that I can do what I love to do, which is to build cars. And I'm doing that now. I need to recognize like I'm right where I want to be. I have the opportunities in front of me that I want to have. As I said earlier, like I'm living the dream. I feel lucky. Uh, I think there's a lot of room for refinement to like hone this process and make it work even better for me and for the people that work for me. Um, but I try to be like a really good, fun boss. Like, I don't work the guys hard. Um, I I rem I try to say like there's a reason I'm my own boss, and it's to have the freedom of that. And thus I want them to have the same freedoms too. Like they set their own schedules, they come in when they want, they leave when they want, they get unlimited time off, and that's not with some sort of like caveat to it. It's like you take the day off. I don't care. As long as like we're getting the things, we're hitting our milestones, it's fine. Um and so yeah, I I think I just I really want to make sure that um just focused on doing what I want to do. I think like there's that goal of wanting a million subscribers, but if I'm honest, I don't necessarily know that that's gonna happen. I don't I don't expect it. I think that while a project like an F40 is really widely um uh people find it interesting, it's one of the most famous cars of all time. I know what my content looks like, I know how detail-oriented it is, how sometimes it drags on, how I'm like in the weeds about stuff, how I'm explaining the why, not just the how. Or maybe I'm like, you know, just going too in-depth, but I get enough feedback that people enjoy that part of my content. That's what I like making. And as long as the audience knows that's what they're getting into, then you know I'm closing in on half a million subscribers. Yeah, half a million should be enough, I would think. And anything from there is it's just growth, it's a continued audience, right? So you need a member play button.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But I need that play button. We'll we'll do our best. Uh go, go, go subscribe to Stanceworks, please, guys. Um, uh that's incredibly wise advice. It's grow to the size that feels comfortable. Don't let anyone tell you you need to go bigger. Um sometimes bigger is not better. And yeah, you you have you know, there's three of you. Uh when there's 30 of you, it's a whole different set of problems. When there's 300 of you, it's a completely different set of problems. And um yeah, we're we're living it. It's still fun. There's still a lot of challenges, but yeah, but sometimes it's uh it's fun to be a small crew and just still doing what you're allowed to do. So um to to kind of wrap up here, uh Dom always likes to ask uh one question. What's one piece of advice that you would give to the audience? Um that can be about anything, but what what do you do all of our listeners out there? How many listeners do we have, Dom? Or watchers, or what are we?
SPEAKER_01Uh oh god, we have a lot of people. Oh 96, but yeah. Oh, we have our 96 game on YouTube, but we also have a ton on each website.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, anyway. There's probably two dozen people that are listening to your advice. So what's one literally dozens of us? What's one piece of advice that you would want to give to these guys?
SPEAKER_02Um, I guess like if if we look back to some of the conversations here today, I think uh I've never looked back and regretted kind of taking a gamble. Uh it doesn't mean it always works out. I've had it not work out plenty of times, but I can't ever look back and say that I regret trying. I'm a I'm really big on going all in and giving things my full effort. I don't like throwing in the towel. Um and so I think like it's it's easy for me to say in my current position of privilege that people should put it all on the line and and chase their dreams. So I want to recognize that, but put it all, put it all on the line and chase your dreams. I am where I am now living my dream uh because in part I've done that. And I've met a lot of people that have helped me get here, that have allowed me to stand on their shoulders, um, that have supported me to get here, that have believed in me, um, that have uh done so much to help carry me to where I am now. I'm not a I would never call myself a self-made man, but I've never shied away from asking for help from those around me, from seeking guidance from those around me. So I'd say do that as well. Um trust those that know more than you and rely, don't hesitate to rely on people that have more experience than you. Turn to them and take their guidance and know when to listen, know when to ignore it, but listen more often than than not, because uh other people typically, uh at least in certain avenues, have a lot of experience, and people are usually really willing to to lend that to you. Yep, and that that's that's a real lucky gift to get from somebody.
SPEAKER_00Dude, you're awesome. Thank you so much for your time. This has been cool. Um, I know I got a kick out of this. I know our our dozens of uh of audience people got a kick out of this too. Um Thanks again, man. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Thank you guys for having me. This was great. Thank you guys for just continuing to be a partner for believing in this F40 project when I came knocking.
SPEAKER_00Um I said I have first dibs on that if you ever go to sell it, right? You did, you did. I I just want to reiterate that publicly. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Eight mil.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, that's right. Eight eight mil. Yeah, well, um we'll see.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, thank you guys for that. And and just also like I'm gonna do a shameless plug because I believe in what send cut send has done to my projects, and it makes me look a lot like a lot better of a fabricator than I am in reality. So me too. That's why we started. That's exactly everything from the way that that the projects themselves turn out to the tools that I get to make to make those projects easier. Um, you know, the chassis table, all of the jigging, every bit of everything that has gone into that project would be impossible for it to be what it is right now without you guys. And I'm excited for this one, I'm excited for the next one. So thank you guys for that.
SPEAKER_00We will we will support you with whatever you do. Um yeah, looking forward to what's next. Thanks again, man. Do we have an outro? Am I supposed to say something?
SPEAKER_01Can you say like thanks for listening? Love to have your feedback. Find us uh on Insta and YouTube at send cut send.
SPEAKER_00Can we just use that?
SPEAKER_01Thanks 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 sendkutsen.com or find us on socials at sendkutsen at gym below sticks. Don't forget to subscribe, download, and share with your friends. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.