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    ENTREPRENEURSHIP
    Podcast 13 min read

    How Social Media and Passion Sold $60M in Cars w/ Chau Nguyen

    with Chau Nguyen

    Chau Nguyen and Chris Do examine how a personal car obsession became a business built through social media.

    Chris Do

    Chris Do

    Founder, The Futur™ · July 15, 2026

    The Opportunity That Did Not Fit

    A business can be obvious to everyone except its founder. Chau Nguyen, the entrepreneur behind Vintage Broncos, later rebranded as Vintage Modern, was finding customers for classic-looking vehicles while questioning whether selling cars belonged in his future. In his conversation with Chris Do, he reports more than 200 vehicles sold in the preceding year and roughly $60 million and change in revenue.

    The obstacle was not simply finding demand. It was recognizing demand in a business that did not match his professional identity.

    Nguyen had already built and sold Campus Special, an exit Do describes as worth $20 million. He then pursued another technology venture, HireWire. Those experiences established a particular picture of success: he was a technology entrepreneur, and cars were what success allowed him to buy.

    Working underneath an old truck complicated that picture. His wife would find him in the garage, sweating with a wrench, and wonder what he was doing. Nguyen was asking a version of the same question.

    Was this really his work now?

    Do identifies the deeper conflict: “your identity and how you see yourself actually is a big driver” of what becomes possible. A professional identity can provide direction. It can also make an emerging opportunity look like a distraction because it arrives wearing the wrong uniform.

    Identity can obscure evidence of demand.

    Nguyen was not struggling to care about cars. He describes them as the magnet behind his earlier ambitions, the thing that motivated him to succeed elsewhere. What changed was the possibility that the reward could become the work itself.

    That distinction matters because the familiar instruction to follow an interest leaves out the uncomfortable middle. An interest does not immediately arrive as a credible business. It arrives as time spent in a garage, money spent on repairs, and an activity that can look less prestigious than the career it interrupts.

    Do points to the value of people outside that identity: advisers, peers, or a group able to notice what the founder cannot yet accept. Their contribution is not necessarily expertise in the product. Sometimes it is the distance required to see that other people are already responding.

    The tension belongs to the broader shift suggested by Moving from Makers to Entrepreneurs: being capable of doing the work and being willing to build a business around it are different decisions.

    Nguyen did not resolve that tension with a grand declaration. He kept working on the cars while evidence accumulated around him. His eventual business was not the execution of a perfectly articulated plan. It was the recognition that a supposedly personal problem was becoming a shared one.

    A Broken Truck Reveals the Brief

    The original purchase was not a market test. Nguyen says he bought an old Ford Bronco in 2017 because he liked how it looked. By that point, he had owned more than 50 cars, but this one introduced a particularly frustrating gap between appearance and experience.

    It looked right. It did not work right.

    During the following year, the truck broke down repeatedly. Nguyen estimates spending $50,000 to $60,000 on it, with the mechanic keeping it longer than he did. The purchase delivered the visual appeal he wanted without the ease of ownership he had come to expect.

    That gap became the product brief, although there was no company attached to it yet. He wanted the character of an old vehicle without constantly negotiating its shortcomings. The ambition was not merely to preserve something. It was to make the experience better.

    When Nguyen sold the truck, he missed it. Despite the expense and inconvenience, he had enjoyed improving it enough to buy more Broncos in 2018. Vintage Broncos followed in 2019.

    The business signal came through ordinary conversations. Neighbors noticed the old trucks and asked what he was doing. Nguyen explained that he wanted the classic appearance with an experience closer to his G-Wagon or Range Rover.

    The response was “me too.”

    Shared frustration made the opportunity legible.

    That response was useful because it concerned the desired outcome, not simply admiration for a beautiful object. The neighbors were identifying with the same compromise. They wanted something recognizable from the past without giving up what they valued in the present.

    • Nguyen wanted the look of a classic truck.
    • Repeated breakdowns exposed the cost of that preference.
    • Other people wanted the same appearance without the same inconvenience.

    These were not formal research stages. They were the signals Nguyen describes encountering while making something for himself. Their value lay in their connection: personal dissatisfaction led to a clearer proposition, and that proposition produced recognition from other potential customers.

    Do emphasizes that Nguyen did not commit too aggressively at the beginning. He experimented, listened, and allowed the response to influence what happened next. The listening extended beyond conversation to how people reacted when the cars became visible online.

    That attentiveness connects naturally to The Skill You Need To Win Clients That No One Talks About. Here, the relevant signal was not an elaborate sales objection. It was the repeated discovery that the founder's preferred solution was also someone else's.

    Personal taste alone would not have established a market. Neither would a neighbor's compliment. But together with subsequent interest and purchases, those early exchanges gave Nguyen a reason to keep investigating rather than dismiss the project as an expensive hobby.

    The Celebrity Moment Had a Handle

    In January 2019, Nguyen was learning Instagram from his children. He began photographing and filming cars he found beautiful, without an established audience or an expectation of what the account would become. The early progression was modest: zero followers, then a hundred, then a thousand.

    The summer brought a different kind of signal.

    Nguyen recounts listing vehicles on AutoTrader when Usher's manager contacted him about buying a Bronco. In the same week, Jennifer Lopez's team reached out about a vehicle she wanted to give Alex Rodriguez for his birthday. According to Nguyen, both parties wanted the same truck.

    He told Usher there was another interested buyer. When a decision did not arrive, the vehicle went to Miami for Lopez's surprise.

    The transaction mattered. So did one small decision around its delivery.

    Nguyen put the Instagram name on the truck. He says photographers captured the delivery at Lopez's home, and the images circulated through entertainment coverage and social media. A moment that could have produced attention without attribution instead carried a route back to the business.

    Attention needs a route back to the business.

    The following morning, Nguyen says, Usher's manager texted that the singer would take the Bronco. It had already been sold. The sequence made the demand difficult to dismiss: two highly visible buyers had independently pursued the same vehicle.

    Do characterizes the episode as influencer marketing, even though Nguyen had not begun with a formal influencer strategy. A prominent customer gave the unfamiliar company a recognizable point of reference. Someone encountering Vintage Broncos could now connect the brand to a purchase by a person they already knew.

    But the distinction between a sale and an endorsement campaign matters. Nguyen describes a customer transaction and the publicity around it, not a paid arrangement with scripted promotional obligations. The article's lesson is narrower and more useful than simply hiring someone famous.

    A real customer wanted the product, and the company made itself identifiable when that purchase became public.

    That mechanism helps explain the event without turning it into a repeatable formula. A founder can prepare to capture attention. A founder cannot schedule two celebrity buyers to compete for the same available car.

    The more durable choices were already present: build something desirable, make it visible, give interested people a place to find it, and continue publishing after a spike in attention. Celebrity interest accelerated a process that had begun with product photographs and ordinary followers.

    The question of why particular content spreads is also the subject of Why Some Videos Blow Up and Others Don't. Nguyen's account adds a specific business distinction: reach was valuable because the attention could be traced to a company with something available to buy.

    The photograph was not the product. It made the product easier to discover.

    The Price Changed the Promise

    Attention could bring people to the company. It could not make an expensive vehicle satisfying to own. As Nguyen moved into higher price points, he faced a problem that attractive photographs could not solve: buyers were purchasing an experience, not merely an appearance.

    Do notices the aesthetic decisions in the cars: colors, materials, stitching. Nguyen explains his standards through his experience as a customer. Having owned so many cars, he had a clear sense of how refined the finished product could feel.

    He wanted the old vehicles to approach the quality he associated with a modern Ferrari. Anything short of that left him dissatisfied. Reaching the standard required changes in vendors, people, and processes, not simply more conviction about the design.

    The pricing progression sharpened the pressure. Nguyen describes moving from vehicles around $50,000 toward $100,000, $150,000, and $200,000. Compromises that customers accepted at one level became harder to justify at the next.

    Higher prices raise the burden of delivery.

    His least favorite response to an expensive vehicle was “love it, but.” The qualification mattered. It meant the object had succeeded in one dimension while disappointing in another, leaving the buyer to reconcile the price with an unresolved problem.

    Nguyen did not want admiration to become an excuse for inconvenience. His answer was to keep changing what the business built.

    • Restoration returned an old vehicle toward its original condition.
    • Restomod added modern elements to an older vehicle.
    • Vintage Modern's current proposition, as Nguyen describes it, is a modern vehicle that looks classic.

    These distinctions are central to his account. Restoration begins with preserving or recovering the old object. The product Nguyen says he now builds begins with a different priority: modern driving, reliability, and safety features, combined with classic-looking design.

    That is his description of the proposition, not an independent technical assessment of every vehicle. Its editorial significance is the change in the problem being solved. The business moved beyond improving old trucks toward reconsidering how to deliver the appearance customers wanted.

    The company name changed accordingly, from Vintage Broncos to Vintage Modern. The newer name expresses the combination Nguyen had been pursuing from the start: the visual character of one era and the ownership expectations of another.

    This is also a useful distinction for service businesses. Increasing a price does not automatically improve the experience behind it. Nguyen's account ties the higher price to harder operational work, an issue that sits alongside Crafting a Great Client Experience.

    The premium was not permission to tolerate less. It was an obligation to resolve more. The work behind the product had to become more demanding as the promise attached to it became more expensive.

    A Feed Becomes a Record of Work

    Buying an expensive vehicle from an unfamiliar company across the country requires confidence. Nguyen recognizes the difficulty plainly. A website can show an appealing object, but a buyer still has to decide whether the business behind it can deliver.

    His answer was to keep making the work visible.

    Nguyen says the vast majority of the company's vehicle sales come through social media. He connects that outcome to years of showing cars, people, and activity behind the scenes. Followers did not encounter only a polished claim at the moment they were asked to spend money.

    They could encounter a continuing record of the company doing the work.

    Repeated visibility can support buyer confidence.

    Nguyen describes social media as part of how customers conduct due diligence. That does not make an Instagram feed a substitute for contracts, references, or other checks. It explains the role he believes the content plays: reducing the unfamiliarity of a business before a buyer enters a transaction.

    A single photograph can create desire. A sustained record can make the people and processes behind that photograph feel less remote. In Nguyen's account, the audience had seen the business for years before some followers became customers.

    He reports an audience of more than four million across platforms, including 2.4 million on Instagram, at the time of the conversation. Those figures are snapshots he provides, not a guarantee that every follower represents demand or that the same totals apply indefinitely.

    The publishing effort is more revealing than the headline audience size. Nguyen says he posted three times a day, seven days a week, for approximately seven years. The account's apparent momentum sits on top of a large amount of recurring work.

    The team behind that output remained small:

    • Nguyen stayed involved in creating and posting the content.
    • A videographer handled photography and video.
    • A part-time editor supported production.

    From outside, Do observes, that level of output can suggest an agency or a substantial creative department. Nguyen describes something leaner, with the founder remaining close to an activity he considers essential to the business.

    He also acknowledges that he has probably waited too long to delegate content. That qualification keeps the story from becoming a simplistic argument for doing everything personally. His involvement reflects the importance of the channel and his enjoyment of the work, but it also raises a capacity question.

    Founder-led does not mean effortless. Nor does a small team mean the function is unimportant.

    For Nguyen, social media was not a decorative layer added once the company became successful. It was part of how strangers found the vehicles, watched the company develop, and acquired enough familiarity to consider a substantial purchase. The scale came later. The publishing habit came first.

    The Business Had to Earn Its Cash

    Nguyen's previous exit creates an obvious temptation when interpreting the story: assume the car company succeeded because an already wealthy founder could keep funding it. Nguyen pushes back on that explanation. He says he deliberately treated the business as something that had to stand on its own.

    That distinction does not erase the advantages of his experience or personal resources. It describes the financial rules he chose for the company.

    His first startup, he says, was bootstrapped without outside capital and ultimately sold to a public company. His second raised $4.1 million and spent all of it. In his assessment, the first was more successful.

    Coming out of those contrasting experiences, he was wary of treating available capital as the solution to every difficulty. For the car business, he wanted revenue, profit, and repeated delivery to build the cash needed to continue.

    The company had to earn its operating cash.

    This was not an argument that all funding is harmful. Nguyen was explaining why he imposed a particular constraint after seeing two different financial models play out in his own companies. His response was to separate personal wealth from the operating decisions of the new venture.

    That separation changed the standard for action. A business with orders still had to build vehicles, deliver them, and retain enough money to keep operating. Interest alone did not pay for the next stage.

    The distinction is easy to lose in a story with famous customers and millions of followers. Those signals make the company visible. They do not, by themselves, establish whether the operation can sustain itself.

    Nguyen describes the discipline as a repeated sequence rather than a breakthrough: sell, build, deliver, and accumulate cash. The glamorous parts of the story do not eliminate that requirement. They increase the importance of meeting it as demand grows.

    He marks June 2024 as the production of the first consumer vehicle in the company's newer phase, with one completed that month. At the time of the conversation, he says the company was starting a new build and shipping a build each day.

    Those statements describe production at different moments. They should not be mistaken for a fully documented annual capacity figure or a guarantee about future throughput.

    The same distinction applies to his ambition. Nguyen forecasts more models, physical locations in major destinations, and competition with established luxury names. These are plans, not completed milestones.

    The reported sales establish the scale he says the business has reached. The forecasts establish the scale he wants. Keeping those categories separate preserves the strongest part of the story: a company that began with personal dissatisfaction had to prove itself through repeated transactions and completed work, not only through a compelling account of what it would eventually become.

    Keep the Evidence Stronger Than the Story

    Nguyen's account is tempting to compress into a familiar formula: pursue an obsession, post about it, attract prominent customers, and grow. That version is clean enough to circulate. It leaves out most of the decisions that made the business credible.

    The original truck was expensive and unreliable. The founder questioned whether the work suited him. The product changed as expectations rose. Content demanded years of repeated effort, and the company was expected to support itself rather than draw automatically on its founder's past success.

    The useful pattern is not that enthusiasm guarantees a business. It is that enthusiasm kept Nguyen close enough to the problem to keep noticing what needed to change.

    Let customer evidence change the business.

    Neighbors identified with the desired outcome. Buyers competed for an available vehicle. Higher-paying customers exposed the limits of the existing experience. Social audiences responded to the work and, Nguyen says, became a major source of sales.

    Each signal asked for a different response. None was simply an instruction to do more of everything.

    • Repeated interest gave Nguyen a reason to explore the business.
    • Public attention gave him a reason to make the brand identifiable.
    • Rising expectations gave him a reason to change the product.
    • Financial constraints gave him a reason to insist on delivery and operating discipline.

    These are observations from his account, not a named framework or a promise that another founder will reproduce the outcome. Their usefulness lies in how specifically they connect evidence to action.

    For a creative business, that connection is more demanding than simply having good taste. Taste helped Nguyen recognize the colors, materials, and finish he wanted. The business required him to turn those preferences into something other people could purchase, receive, and enjoy.

    The same applies to visibility. Beautiful content introduced the vehicles. Continuing to show the work helped establish familiarity. Neither activity excused shortcomings in what arrived at the customer's door.

    Do closes the conversation by revisiting his confidence in Nguyen's earlier venture. HireWire had seemed obvious to him, an idea that should work. It did not produce the outcome he expected, and Nguyen eventually found a different direction.

    That admission prevents the ending from becoming a portrait of entrepreneurial inevitability. Previous success did not make the next idea certain. Previous disappointment did not settle what Nguyen could build afterward.

    The challenge for a founder is sharper than being willing to take a risk. It is being willing to revise the story about who the founder is, what customers want, and what the company must deliver when the evidence stops supporting the old version.

    A compelling story can sell the first promise. The product has to keep it.

    TRANSCRIPT

    At this time, I'm like all in on technology. The entire time I'm messing with like old rusty cars, I questioned myself the whole time thinking, am I a mechanic? And am I a used car dealer? Like, why am I doing it? Even my wife was like, she'd come out of the garage and see me under the truck sweating with a wrench being like, what are you doing? I actually think I was confused for a while that this can't be me. I'm a tech guy. Right. So your identity and how you see yourself actually is a big driver as to what you can pursue and what you will not pursue. My name is Cho Nguyen and you're listening to the future. Today's episode is a special one for me because our guest and who's related to me is my cousin. His name is Cho. He was here almost 10 years ago to the day. I think we're episode four or five in the pod and just very new to the whole content game. He came here because he was sharing with us. He had sold his previous business venture called Campus Special, exited for $20 million, started a new venture, which I was really excited about. I thought, this is it. This guy's got the mightiest touch. Everything he touches turns to gold. A company called Higher Wire, kind of like the gig economy before that was a word. I think you had your finger on the pulse of like lots of things that were going on. And then you were jamming on that for a number of years. Don't know what happened. And you reemerged with another business, which is what I want to talk about. gig economy before that was a word. I think you had your finger on the pulse of like lots of things that were going on. And then you were jamming on that for a number of years, don't know what happened, and you reemerged with another business, which is what I want to talk about today. If this story intrigues you, at some point, hit pause and go and watch the original interview. It's going to give you way more context. And I'm just going to put the link in the description. You can check that out. Now, I know every time you would come out to California, you talk to me about cars, and you start a new company. It's called Vintage Broncos. And I think as an expression of your love for vintage cars, usually businesses don't always start like we're sitting with Venn diagrams. It starts with a passion or purpose or something that you want to do that sparks an idea. Take us there. Well, I have to say that cars was always the magnet for me. That was what I just loved. And everything I did before that I loved too, but it was really more of just a, if I win at this, then I can go buy cars because it's what I really wanted. So if you're out there and you just have an obsession for cars or whatever it is, I think that's a good thing because then it'll motivate you to go after it so you can get it. And that's what happened to me. Where does the beginning of the business idea begin? Like the spark? I think it was like you were retrofitting the classic car. Yes? Yeah. Tell us about that. It all happened by accident too. And the fascinating thing about this is if you follow vintage Broncos from the beginning, which was 2019, then rebranded to vintage modern, that was really the documented journey of me just buying an old Ford Bronco. It was a 1974 Bronco. I bought it for fun. 19, then rebranded to vintage modern. That was really the documented journey of me just buying an old Ford Bronco. It was a 1970 Ford Bronco. I bought it for fun. Zero concept of a business. I just bought it because I liked it. And at that point in time, I'd had over 50 cars, but I bought that old Bronco because I just thought it looked cool. And when I got it home, it looked really, really nice, but it had so many problems. I mean, I'm talking about everything you can think of did not work. So we were really spoiled and that truck had so many issues. It sparked the beginning of, well, how do we make it better? And that how do we make it better question went from fixing my old truck to dabbling in restoration, to building a car company, to just keep pushing the envelope to make it the best of everything you can have. And the coolest part about it to me was that I never did it to make money or start a business. I just did it because I loved it. And I think that's where the great businesses come from. Start to finish from you driving that thing home day one to like, it's done. I like it. How much time are we talking about? And second question is, how much money have you dumped into the original one? Yeah. I bought that first truck in 2017. In that one year, that truck broke down constantly. It was at the shop. I was always throwing money at it and fixing it. And my mechanic had it longer than I did. I probably put like 50, 60 grand into it. This was like, it felt like throwing good money after bad, you know, but here's the thing is that once, uh, and I only keep. and my mechanic had it longer than I did, I probably put like 50, 60 grand into it. This was like, it felt like throwing good money after bad. But here's the thing is that once, and I only keep my cars for about a year. So I sell the car and I miss it. And I enjoyed the process even though it was painful and it was expensive. And so after selling that car one year later, I bought a couple more just for fun, just to dabble, just to have fun with it. And that was 2018. And so 2018, you buy a couple of Broncos, you fix them up, and then 2019, the business formed. And that was when vintage Broncos were born. When you bought those cars, was it your intention to fix them and sell them? Yeah, not the first one. Right. But after that, it was, what I found was other people wanted the same thing. And when I would describe what I was doing with it, my neighbors who were surprised to see me with an old truck were like, oh, what are you doing with that? And I said, yeah, it looks classic, but I just want it to be like my G -Wagon or my Range Rover. And they're like, me too. And the more I heard me too, the more I started thinking, I think a lot of people want this too. And that's kind of where the business idea started coming together. So at what point is it like, let's turn this into business, let's go all in on this. What sparked that? Yeah, well, a couple of things, Instagram, big, big lever. This is January, 2019. I didn't even have Instagram. My kids were teaching me how to use it. And I just started taking pictures and video of something like. Well, a couple of things, Instagram, big, big lever. This is January, 2019. I didn't even have Instagram. My kids were teaching me how to use it. And I just started taking pictures and video of something I thought was beautiful. And when I shared that in a certain way, other people loved it too, which is a really interesting thing because it's intimidating to start Instagram with zero followers. And believe me, I has no intent or expectation that it would grow to what it is today, but you start with love. And I didn't know it then, but I just kept posting and posting and it went from zero to a hundred followers to a thousand. It just kept growing. And there was an inflection point that summer where I really started scratching my head going, wow, I think there's something here. And what happened was I would post these cars for sale on like AutoTrader. And one day, Usher, the musician, his manager reached out and said, hey, Usher, what's one of your cars? I said, cool. So he came to the house. And in that same week, Jennifer Lopez, her team reached out. She came to the house that same week and said she wanted a car to surprise Alex Rodriguez for his birthday. And so in like a matter of 48 hours, Usher comes to the house. He wants the car, but Jennifer Lopez wants the car. They're kind of like, you know, fighting. The same car? Yeah. The same old Bronco. And I ended up shipping it to Miami. And I told Usher, hey, if you want this car, I need to know because Jen wants the car. He goes, yeah, I'll let you know. He didn't get back to me. I ship it down to Miami. It happened to be her 50th birthday. It was the end of her world tour. And she's like on fire at this point in Miami. Because Jen wants the car. He goes, yeah, I'll let you know. He didn't get back to me. I ship it down to Miami. It happened to be her 50th birthday. It was the end of her world tour. And she's like on fire at this point in Miami. And we go to her house. And I had this idea that we would put the Instagram name on the truck. And paparazzi were everywhere. And so they're taking pictures. They see the delivery of me coming to J -Lo's house, doing the whole surprise. And that ended up all over e -news and social media. And then the whole concept of, wow, like this superstar celebrity buys a classic truck from vintage Broncos. And we leveraged that. And that just took off from there. And here's the best part. So Jen, super nice, gives us front row tickets to her last concert. We land in Atlanta 7 a .m. the next morning. And the first text I get is from Usher's manager. And it says, Usher will take the Bronco. And I had already sold it to Jen. And I'm sitting here thinking, wow, these people are fighting with the car. I think we've got something here. Okay, that's pretty obvious at that point. But let me. I didn't think so. I'm a mechanic. Am I even my. The entire time I'm messing with like old rusty cars, I questioned myself the whole time thinking, am I a mechanic? And am I a used car dealer? Like, why am I doing it? Even my wife was like, she'd come out of the garage and see me under the truck sweating with a wrench being like, what are you doing? And so I was, I actually think I was confused for a while that this can't be me. I'm a tech guy. Right. This is fascinating. So I'm going to take a moment here and address a couple of things to our audience, which is number one is your identity and how you see yourself actually is a big driver as to what you can pursue and what you will not pursue. Currently in that moment, you're a tech founder, entrepreneur, and you couldn't see the opportunity in front of you because there's something else here that seemed so obvious from the outside. And sometimes that's why it's helpful to have objective people in your circle, a board of advisors, a peer group, a mastermind, something that you belong to. They're like, yo, what you're doing here is blowing up. This is fire. Number two is you didn't go all in too fast. You're kind of messing around and you're listening. So learning to listen is really an important skill, not just in conversation, but you're like, my neighbor is like, that's kind of cool. I would probably, that sounds like a cool idea for me too. And you're like, okay. And then you put it out and social media is telling you this is pretty cool. It's very difficult to grow on social. Even at that point, much easier than it is now, already people are finding you. And I think because I spend all my time on social, I'll tell you something that you probably didn't know back then. When you do something at a very high level. Even at that point, much easier than it is now, already people are finding you. And I think because I spend all my time on social, I'll tell you something that you probably didn't know back then. When you do something at a very high level for things that people are very passionate about, those things grow. It's not that there's an audience for everything because that's not true. There's an audience for things that people are very passionate about. And you take something that's old, retro, and vintage, and once you find your formula, you just keep doing it over and over and over again. And that's what you did. But you are doing classic 101 influencer marketing without even knowing it. And you are also doing the big domino theory, which is if you can just get an A -level celebrity, the person who can endorse and influences other people's buying decisions, you've done one beautiful stroke. It's like, boom, you hit it, and it's great. That kind of authority says, if it's good enough for J -Lo at peak Lopez mania, you're doing great. As I followed your account over the years, I noticed a couple different things. Number one, very tasteful choices in color, materials, stitching. And when you look at it, you're like, this person understands design. So as a tech person, where did you get your aesthetic sensibility from that you're making these really smart choices? Where does that come from? Yeah, I think an important part of the story is that I already knew what the customers wanted because I was a customer, because I had had so many cars. And so for me, everything I did was to try to make those all... I already knew what the customers wanted because I was a customer, because I had had so many cars. And so for me, everything I did was to try to make those old classic cars as close and as nice and as perfect as a modern Ferrari. And until we reached that point, I was just unhappy. And we went through tons of trial and error, vendors, people, process, all kinds of things because if it wasn't at that level, I was just unhappy with it. And so it was this kind of relentless, nope, it has to be this or it won't be good enough. And that was what got it to where it ended up at, which was I knew what it could look like. And I knew if it wasn't that, then not only would I not be happy, but the customers would be happy. I think in addition to that, the nuance here is that when we first started the business, restoration, you're playing in like a $50 ,000 price point and then you move up to $100 ,000. And the expectations get higher, then you move to $150 ,000 and the expectations get higher and you move to $200 ,000. And what happened was that things that maybe would fly at the $50 ,000 level, they're not going to fly at the $200 ,000 level. And that was a good thing because it raised the bar on what good looked like. And I feel this obligation and pressure to deliver happiness. And the last thing I wanted to do was, I didn't care if it was $50 ,000 or $150 ,000 or $250 ,000. If you purchase a product from me and you're not over the moon happy about it, then I'm unhappy about it. And the last thing I wanted to do was, I didn't care if it was 50 or 150 or 250. If you purchase a product from me and you're not over the moon happy about it, then I'm unhappy about it. If you want to build a good company, keep doing what you're doing. You want to build a great company, you've got to exceed expectations. And the thing I hated was delivering a vehicle that cost $250 ,000 and having them say, I love it, but. And so I think that was a good thing that as a price point crept up, the standards went up and then therefore the effort and the process and all the things we did behind the scenes went up to ensure that we exceeded the expectations. And I think that it's one of those things where when your customers expect the best, you must deliver it. And if you don't, then you're not going to be around for a while. I think there's kind of like three kind of phases of this journey. There's restoration, which everybody knows, right? All numbers matching, start with a rusty vehicle, make it back to the way it was again. And somewhere in the last, call it 10, maybe 15 years, restomod became popular, modern restoration, modified restoration. And that was all about making it more modern, but it was an incremental gain over a restoration and still short of your modern 2025, 2026 vehicle. And so what we built today is a different step above that, which is a modern vehicle that looks classic. And that's how you get everything. 2025, 2026 vehicle. And so what we built today is a different step above that, which is a modern vehicle that looks classic. And that's how you get everything. You get a modern driving vehicle, modern car reliability, all of the safety features you'd have in a modern car. And people don't know this, but Restoration Restomont has zero safety features. And that was pretty much what I spent the last four years of my life doing to what it is today. At any point in this, when you get funding to do something, you don't spend the money the way that you would if it was yours and if you were limited resources. So you start scaling way faster than you need to and you burn money. Are we back to you financing this again? I don't think a lot of people know this because if you look at my background, you'll say, oh, well, he sold a company and made millions of dollars. That's why he was able to do this. But the truth is, I didn't, much like I raised my kids. I didn't want to make it easy. I wanted them to earn it. And with this company, I kind of separated from my past. I thought about as a separate startup that was broke and poor and had all these orders. And instead of just like throwing money at it, I made it stand alone. And keep in mind, my first startup that was sold to a public company was a bootstrap company, no outside capital. My second company, we had 4 .1 million in funding and we spent all of it. And the first company was more successful than the second company. So coming right off of that, approaching it, I was a little bit gun shy about throwing money at things because funding and we spent all of it and the first company was more successful than the second company so coming right off of that approaching it i was a little bit gun shy about throwing money at things because i just watched how these two things played out and i said to myself now this company is going to stand on its own and to do that we i had to basically act like i was poor separate my life personal life from the business and say for this company to be successful we need to generate revenue and profit in the form of sales you don't have that then you don't have anything and so there's no safety net there is no like get out of jail free card and just hey just go fund it it was no we're going to have the financial rigor and discipline and efficiency and we're going to build cars and deliver it and do it over and over so we can build cash and that's how we did it so i think what happens is when you operate with discipline i think that's the word you're going to increase i think the probability of your company being successful let's fast forward to now end of 2025 how many cars did you sell what is the number in june of 2024 we produce our first consumer production vehicle and we did one that month fast forward to today every day we start a new build and we ship new build how do people buy one yeah this is the other fascinating part about all this the vast majority of our sales come through social media and because social media was such a strong platform for us you have to think about it like Yeah, this is the other fascinating part about all this. The vast majority of our sales come through social media. And because social media was such a strong platform for us, you have to think about it like who's going to buy a car from a company they never heard of across the country that you find on a website and you got to go do your own due diligence and get references. It's a very intimidating thing in general. But the difference was from pretty much the very beginning, it was social media driven. And we were very transparent about our work. We displayed everything behind the scenes. So you start to build this following. And this following builds trust and credibility. And I think what happens is today, people, when they look at social media, that is due diligence, right? They saw it. They've seen it for years. They see the people behind the scenes. And so the vast majority of all the vehicles we sell was from social media. We became famous on the internet through pictures and video and virality. And it attracted more celebrities, billionaires, athletes, all kinds of people, which then created more credibility for guys like you and me to go, hey, if LeBron has one, then I'm going to buy one. And I'm pretty much built that from zero followers to what it is today, posting three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for like seven years. How many followers are you up to today? Across all social platforms, we're over 4 million. What about an Insta? 2 .4. And let's talk about the media team, the people who make this content. are you up to today? Across all social platforms, we're over 4 million. What about an Insta? 2 .4. And let's talk about the media team, the people who make this content. I think initially you said you shot it, you did the videos. Now I assume to keep up with that, you got other things to do. What does the media team look like? It's shocking for me to say this out loud, but it's still me and one other guy. A videographer? A videographer that does pictures in video. We have a part -time editor. And we produce a lot of content. But it goes back to the most important things I won't delegate. Just like in the beginning, I didn't delegate sales too soon. I've probably waited too long to delegate the content, but it's still such a key and important part of the business. Plus I love it. So I stay close to it. But yeah, from the outside looking in, you think there's an entire agency and team and creative director and all kinds of people. But in the spirit of running it lean and being, you know, resourceful, it's a small team executing really, really well. And who's posting? Who's managing? Who's reading the comments? I am posting it. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. Some people don't understand the game. This is the game, everybody. Everybody wants to be like, phone it in and just sit back and count your money. It does require a amount of dedication and passion. And if you're not passionate about this thing, I just can't imagine you being in there with HireWire. Like, let me do all the social posts myself. Okay. Final two questions. I think we did something like this last time. Let's get into our crystal ball moment and say, let's I can't imagine you being in there with Hirewire, like, let me do all the social posts myself. Okay. Final two questions. I think we did something like this last time. Let's get into our crystal ball moment and say, let's future cast 10 years out. Where are you as it relates to vintage modern? First of all, 10 years is like dog years to us, right? So that's probably like - Well, I'll see you in 10, I know that. It's been 10 years since we sat down, right? In 10 years, we'll have more than five different models commercially available. We will have physical locations in the greatest hotspots of, you know, not just the US, but the world. And people will choose to buy a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, an Aston Martin, or a Rolls Royce, or they'll choose to buy a car from vintage modern. And I believe that it won't take 10 years, but within the next four years, it'll be a billion dollar revenue company. Hopefully still just be as actively passionate and obsessive involved in it as I am now, because this is what I love to do. So to get to a billion, I was just doing some mental math here. If the cars sell for 300 ,000, you sold 200 of them. Are you a $60 million, $80 million, a $200 million company? What are you today? So we know how many X that is from now. Well, last year we did over 200 vehicles. So that's going to be about 60 million and change in revenue. And over the next 24 months, 36 months, we expect to double and double. And so a billion in revenue would be somewhere around close to the 1 ,000 units per year mark. And over the next 24 months, 36 months, we expect to double and double. And so a billion in revenue would be somewhere around close to the 1 ,000 units per year mark. And we think... So 5X? Yeah. Oh, okay. You said five cars, 5X. Makes sense. Yeah. Cho, it's been great talking to you. If people want to find out more about the cars or just follow you on socials, where do we send them? They go to VintageModern .com, which is our website. It has a configurator where you can play with all of your colors and options and get a real -time quote and see exactly what it'll look like inside and out. And on social media, Vintage Modern on Instagram and all the other YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, you can follow us on social media at Vintage Modern. Last time I said this, I was wrong. And I went home and told Jesse, like, God, this guy, he just choked and figured everything out. This is a brilliant idea. HireWire, it's like, no, it's just so obvious. It's supposed to work. It didn't. Took a couple of detours and you found something else and you'll keep finding things. And that's the thing about entrepreneurs. Some of us can hit it once out of the park. Very few of us can hit it multiple times out of the park. And here you are showing whatever has to happen, you'll figure it out. And that's how you continue to evolve. So super happy for you. Very proud of your accomplishments and just wishing you the very best. Yeah. Really appreciate that. It's a game of survival, no matter how many times you've done it. So you know that. And I appreciate you having me here today. And it's just great to be able to reflect on 10 years. It'll be cool to do it again. wishing you the very best. Yeah, really appreciate that. It's a game of survival, no matter how many times you've done it. So you know that. And I appreciate you having me here today. And it's just great to be able to reflect on 10 years. It'll be cool to do it again. We won't wait 10 years next time.
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