Millionaire at 27

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom podcast. We have Will Fan with us. Will is a special guy. He's an EV entrepreneur, technologist, founder. He's an executive at Solo Automotive, uh, lead visionary and CEO at eMobility. It's a family office, uh, for OEM. He's into GPUs and AI supercomputers and an RWA Innovator, uh, from Vancouver, British Columbia. But spends back and forth in there, US, and a bunch of places in the world. Very interesting guy, risk taker with lots of successes and failures. So Will, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Hi everyone, my name is Will Fan. Um, thank you so much for this, uh, interview and podcast. Um, yeah, I mean, I live here in Vancouver, Canada. I'd say started from the city where I was born. I actually, you know, became one of the top innovator in my own city here. And eventually I was able to branch off to other parts of the world, like in Asia, in the US, winning some of the top competition and getting invited to many kind of recognizable award in my industry for electric vehicles, climate-related sustainability technology, right? So yeah, thank you for this.

And who are you, Will? How did you start out in life? What's your story, your childhood, adolescence, and how you grew up in an entrepreneur eventually?

Yeah, parents immigrated into Canada in the, I think, mid-'80s, you know, decided that Asia was a different, you know, different time in their life and they wanted to live in more Western civilization. So we moved to Vancouver, Canada, which is on the west coast of the Pacific. Beautiful, beautiful city. I mean, you see mountains, oceans, skies are always blue. We have very clean air. And so, you You know, but not all was bright and sunshine because we end up in a neighborhood where there was a lot of mixed immigrants and cultures that end up getting sent there by the government and I guess the immigration officers. So I grew up in a very multifaceted, you know, community. There's, you know, you have your Indigenous, you have your local Caucasians, you know, you have You have people from Africa, you have people from parts of Southeast Asia, but ultimately, you know, we went to a public school and, you know, when we were young, we did not, not a lot of people went well with each other because we share so many different backgrounds and cultures. I think it was a big mistake mingling everyone together so early. Everyone fought, everyone, it was It was a scary time. I mean, we were, you know, I was the only son in my family and, you know, we were taught like eventually, unfortunately, like, you know, kids at school, they were so scared of being bullied and they were carrying their own knives. You know, this is like, you know, an 8-year-old, a 10-year-old really scared for their life. And I saw that firsthand and I thought this is not going to be a normal life, but I saw that world and I said, you know what, one day I want to make a better place. And I think we got to just improve the society. That's how I kind of envision myself later on, who or what I want to become later.

So did you pick up kung fu, Dan Lok style? Or Jeet Kune Do.

Yeah, yeah, we, uh, you have to learn a little bit kung fu, you know. You gotta, you know, watch a lot of Jackie Chan movie, I guess, you know. It helps because it was like the only skill, the only training that you can have to protect yourself, um, you know, during those time. This is probably in the, um, you know, mid-'90s to 2000, right? I mean, we're Everyone was just so young and you can't even think about going to school because you think about how you're going to survive not being bullied in school. And that's actually what I had to go through.

So chip on your shoulder there, I guess, but also that relentless desire to make money, right? You were an entrepreneur quite young. When was your first business? I see 2013 here. I think mine was like 2015 as well. Very young. I was 17. How old are you when you start your first stuff?

I actually came back from LA when I just turned 23. I kind of had that, you know, LA hive, you know, like where we want to go there and we believe that we're going to be successful and we're going to be happy people. And it wasn't the case. I spent a lot of money, end up broke, and then went back to Vancouver when I was 23. And I got lucky. Lot of exposure in terms of like technology and e-commerce. So I started my own e-commerce digital software technology company, and it was really odd because I was not a software guy. I was not a coder. I was just going on forums and seeing how people were making their money. I saw this guy, he was driving a Mercedes and he was taking care of his daughter and he was working at home. He was making about $100,000 a month. I was like, wow, I got to be like this guy, you know, except, you know, everyone called him a scammer and things like that. But I always ask myself, like, there's usually a reason why. And the why is the people who are afraid that that is even possible, that you can make $100,000, you know, spend time with your wife, travel with your daughter and have a nice Mercedes car, you know. So, you know, I asked him for some favors, some help. And yeah, he taught me how to build a landing page, how to set up online sales systems and automate the business. So technically the first business I learned was how to build a landing page and automate it. So I was very fortunate, found a team out of Africa and India and very low-cost software development and copywriting. We produced a lot of digital assets. I mean, before social media was even a thing, like YouTube wasn't a thing, Instagram wasn't a thing, you know, we, I think Vine just had started. And so that was like that era. And then we start to, you know, learn about website plugins. You know, I saw a guy who at the time we researched how did this guy made, I think he made north of $10 million selling a theme, a WordPress theme. So I, I asked myself, okay, how, how can we do it? So, uh, we're not theme developers, but, um, I kind of came to the conclusion that why not build a web-based app or a plugin model to attach like an appendix to the website. So, uh, you know, we start to do like banner ads, hyperlinking citations, you know, for social media. So, um, you know, that kind of business, like it was, very, very new. I mean, like, we definitely, what you call it, trailblazed it. And that went on for 6 years. And eventually I think that was my first business that given me, has given me financial freedom. And that's why I end up learning how to make money.

Do you remember Stefan James, the online entrepreneur?

Yeah. Yeah. There's like these local guys before they were like, doing the coaching e-commerce. So I have seen some of them in my city and we were very big on that. Like there was so many gurus like 15 years ago, they're like, everybody was an e-commerce online coach guru. So yes, you can say like I grew up around certain of these individuals for sure.

I remember watching his podcast. Yeah, being very inspired. I think the guy was making at some point a million a month, right? And that that looked big back then. In your case, when did you start making enough money to acquire business, right? Because ultimately you ended up acquiring companies, rescuing some from the dead. When was that moment specifically?

Yeah, so I joined a family office when I was 24. So I was building my SaaS business model online while I worked at an investment firm. And the reason why was I made significant amount of money. Like, you cannot imagine, you know, I actually did manage to hit like my first 6 figures, you know, starting with $100 a day and then 6-figure a year and then 6-figure a month. And not only that, there's times we did it, we done it in 1 week. And so eventually I realized that there's no way to just make money. You actually have to manage your wealth. So what that means, uh, I went in the investment company, I learned some of the best, like I was studying like how private equity, hedge fund, family offices were created. Like I knew family office before family office was even a thing because I really want to ensure like, how do I maintain my money?

Because I know that Well, I think we lost you. Mike, check, one, two, one, two. Gonna let you know when I can hear you again.

Okay, I'm back.

Yeah, yeah, I lost you at the family office part.

Okay, great. We can edit it even though it's live.

It's going to be hard to edit.

All right.

Yeah. Further, further version will be editable. But yeah, tell us a bit more about the family office part.

Yeah. So about in 2014, I was learning about family office and so it was kind of like quite interesting. We had a very wealthy individual in my city at the time. You know, she was this young girl. We were both the same age and we kind of like hung out a lot and became good friends and business associates. Eventually, you know, I was in our family office and one of my lawyers said, there's a very wealthy individual in your city or in your community. And I said that, okay, you know, and they said, you might know her. I said, I was like, no way, because the community is very small. We, especially like of Asian descent business owners, we were all startup founders technically. So this individual just so happened to be my friend. And apparently what really intrigued me was she was also approached by family office, including ours. And what had happened was her father passed away. And when her father passed away, I was shocked because she inherited almost a couple billion dollars when she was 24. And that was my first experience of running a family office. And so I remember she—

That's crazy. A couple billion dollars, right? And she didn't know what to do with it, right? This is like, what about the legal part, right? And did she have siblings as well? Because that part is always difficult, right? Like who gets what?

So the mother had to run with the, you know, the daughter, which is my friend. And then ultimately, unfortunately, the brother can't. The brother is autistic. So sometimes some of these families, like the children are born differently. So I remember I was in a business meeting and, you know, we would go on till 10 PM. Every time she phones me and she say that she's working till 2 AM. But here's the thing, when you're a 24-year-old girl, you know, that, you know, is doing well for yourself, you, you, you think that, you know, she doesn't have to work for the rest of her life, but ultimately because she's the eldest and she had the most experience, most exposure, uh, the closest to her father, right? But the thing was, she told me she didn't have enough time to spend with the father. So meaning she had very minimal or some exposure of his likeness of entrepreneurship. So I think because maybe the death of the father who died very young at 52, I believe from a heart stroke. And I think the love of her between the father and her somehow triggered this kind of survival mechanism, which actually ultimately made her to become a very successful businesswoman later on.

Right. And she, she was like, hey, Will, do you know about business? You know about numbers? Why don't you help me? Like, what was the dealio?

That's right. Yes. She asked me for that, exactly what you said. And, you know, even became one of my first earlier investors. You know, she asked me, Will, how much money you need to start your business? What do you need? You just give me a number. And I'll make it happen, you know? And it's wild. I remember stories within our city, our community. She, there was a, how we know her was she was the unknown donor of a university in our local city here. And, you know, like $20 million out of nowhere, like this is what, and not only that, like anonymously, meaning, The only way you would know is somebody that received that money and the lawyers that were involved somehow, right? And that was the only way you would know who's who in the zoo and how much money they contributed and what they donated. So, you know, these kind of things, right?

Man, what a crazy start. And the money you raised from her initially, was it for Nexpress? Was it for Solo? Like, which one was that?

It was actually for another company, a private equity that we helped raise. So yeah, she put in like $50,000 as a seed, as a seed round. You know, not bad when you're a 24-year-old and you got a really good person on your cap table right off the bat. But no, she helped it. It's kind of funny because when you run a family office, you're helping other families make money, not yourself. So Interestingly enough, I have a business, but it wasn't as comparable as what they have, right? So, you know, I did help that other family contribute that investment for a fintech project. And so eventually later on, we kind of moved on. Everybody had their own business. You know, she went back to China. I stayed here. I really liked North America. And so yeah, I end up probably leaving private equity by 2017 and started a company called Nextpress, which is a logistics company. And at the time, I realized how wealth was created. I realized how wealthy people, how they kind of like put themselves together with groups. And eventually I end up having a friend. We started kind of our own like we call it like a PayPal Mafia mastermind, right? So a group of young entrepreneurs all had, you know, we were just like 26, 27, all had goals of achieving, you know, what do you call the everyday dream, which was like a house, getting married, getting a nice car, being financially well off, you know, so, you know, we were, you know, I was in a group like that and we, suddenly discuss about Bitcoin. Out of all the topics, it was Bitcoin. And somehow when I was in the family office, it was very early on that Bitcoin was a huge subject because of its great volatility and the way that it's a digital asset that can be moved around virtually. And this kind of really, I would say, create an indicator for family office that this was the next version of liquidity and currency and things like that. So eventually I used my company to build Ethereum miners, Bitcoin miners, when it never existed. Like, it was like an unproven technology. And I at the time had to use my remaining life savings and, you know, you know, just the R&D itself was probably half a million dollars. And that's R&D, meaning you won't get that money back if your R&D is a complete dud. It will be, you know, you spend half a million and that's it. And that's all your money. So I took a risk. I believe in the technology. I believe in digital currency. I used to love playing video games. And back then you retain a lot of digital rewards and digital tokens. And that kind of like sparked my interest that, hey, such a thing before that was impossible. Now it is, right? So in-game digital currency became now somewhat of a physical commodity that you can trade in the real world and that has value, right? So built the earliest Ethereum mining rig that you can imagine from early 2017, you know, Binance just had started the exchange. The ICO were just coming out and, you know, Ethereum miners were just, you know, putting a bunch of GPUs, creating software, the algorithm, and then we figured it out. And then we're— next thing you know, our hash rates were, you know, were good. And I started mining Ethereum and I was like, I don't even know what Ethereum is. And but it worked. And then apparently a lot of customers and investors start flooding to me and saying, we heard you built Ether Miners. And kind of like, that's how one of my business grew into a basically $1 million business overnight. Probably within less than a year, I had a million-dollar business, like, other than my software business. So I had kind of two businesses in the frontier of digital asset and digital marketing, and that kind of like took off together. And I think by the time I was 27, I was instantly a millionaire. No doubt, you know, you can drive nice cars, nice Audis, you're not worried about paying a meal or going out on a date or whatever. You know, it's just like, you know, those are the fun times. So that's how I started my Bitcoin journey. And Um, starting with a Copycon Express, which originally was for logistics. It was— I was just importing, exporting products, and suddenly I'm importing, uh, GPUs. That's how it started.

In 2017, you were importing? That's, that's crazy, right? Because AI wasn't even— I mean, crypto mining was a thing, so you would import it for crypto dudes and sell them to— sell them the GPUs? Was that the model?

Yeah, we— well, we have to invent it first because we We don't know if it will work and just realized that was my life-saving money. Like my first initial cost was maybe $500. And then eventually you realize that R&D would cost on average half a million to buy the hardware. You need enough hardware for the compute and to kind of create the network. So, you know, I had to like decide you know, if this was the business for me. And I believe in computers, I believe software, I believe in digital currency and tokens. I was very bullish. So I took— I basically went all in knowing that possibly I couldn't go back. And so, but it worked out and we were hashing, the algorithm were kicking in, we created mining pools like that was a real thing. And yeah, you're right, it's like unheard of. It was just very early. We were at, you know, kind of like the narrative of ICOs at the time. Exchanges were popping up. I didn't understand that side. I only understand the hardware layer. So that's how I started.

Man, that's crazy. So you began making good money. At what point did you start investing and you began being into cars? Maybe you were always into cars. When did you actually pivot to invest in physical stuff like cars?

Yeah, you know, going back, I love cars when I was a young boy. And so going back to school, we, you know, I had all these toy cars my father used to buy for me, and it was kind of the only way I can bond with him. And so, you know, I knew that I love cars and I want to get back into, you know, being in the car business. But it didn't make sense, like being a manufacturer is like out of most people's mind. It's not possible because your startup capital—

crazy business.

Yeah, your startup capital has to be in the hundreds of millions to billions, uh, just because you were talking about factory and, um, you know, all sort of, um, you know, moving parts.

So logistics, it's hell.

Supply chain, you don't know who's who, right? It's very emotional because like, um I wouldn't think that I can actually go back into my passion as a kid playing with toy cars, RC cars, and knowing that the electric motors— so back then, the RC cars and toy cars, we had batteries, lithium batteries, lead acid, Duracells. And I was always wondering, how come it's not in a car like today? Why are we running these engines and I built my first sports car when I was 19. I bought it. I was very fortunate. I worked for 2 years at a restaurant, bought a Mark IV Supra during the 2008 economy crash. Yeah. So bought like a Fast and Furious car, but my engine just kept failing because it was just, I was overdeveloping it. I was putting on a new turbo. I was spending my life savings just trying to figure out how to make a 1,000-horsepower car because if you did—

Oh my God.

You kind of get a clout, right? You know, so—

A car to kill yourself, a 1,000-horsepower Supra modified, that's like, that's a life, you need a good life policy with that.

Yeah.

Man, okay, and when did Solo came into the picture, right? Like that's a hell of a story in itself.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, going back to hardware after the Bitcoin, I had to buy a company, an electronics store. It was like the biggest one in Canada and it was being acquired through private equity. And then suddenly that company went bankrupt, went bust. I bought the remaining assets and relationships to get into all like the computer, AI, GPUs and things like that. Now we were already doing data centers back in 2017, 2018, right? And we were talking about data centers 10 years ago and look at the data centers 10 years after, or almost 10 years now. And at the time, the technology was just so ahead. AI was not even like possible because we didn't even have the chips. And I thought maybe one day somebody would put AI with chips together, but we believe in artificial intelligence back then. Because of all the technology that we created that would have been more efficient that way. But suddenly we didn't have the chips. So I was kind of left with, okay, well, you know, I want to get maybe into other hardware, maybe. So, you know, this is now COVID, COVID 2020. I, you know, got into electric scooters and I started to distribute scooters. Into Canada. I was one of the largest distributors of electric scooters. I brought in a company called Lime, and Lime is the largest rideshare company in the world right now, was just publicly listed on NASDAQ. And at the time they were actually losing money. And, you know, they're looking for, you know, the parent company were looking for someone like me to kind of redistribute, put it into people's hands rather than rentals. So during COVID all rideshare ceased to exist or stopped and/or minimal. Like if you took an Uber, only one person can take it, right? So there was distress in the economy of transportation. People were losing their job. They couldn't get access to affordable means of transportation. The transit and the metro system kind of like paused and only allowed few individuals into the trolleys and onto the trains. So, you know, what I did was I say, you know what, let's get scooters in. And there you go. I got my first, you know, kind of like electric mobility on wheels and batteries and it's on the road and end up selling thousands of them, you know, almost every year and supplied it by whole entire city, city by city. And that's kind of like how I first initially got into the, idea of a single-person transportation model, right?

While doing the GPU stuff, right, still being into crypto, um, so you made money with this. So because most, uh, e-mobility companies like are deep in the sinkhole, but you actually made a killing with this. Why do you think was so successful? Why do you think it caught fire so fast?

I, I think the But most important, like a lot of industries were, like you say, like people would just stay within their niche. I didn't, I just evolved around a niche. I think technology is moving so fast that I would say everything's like a trend rather than it's like, you know, there are businesses that are relatively stable. Like now, if you're, you know, obviously not many people are in electric vehicle manufacturing. But generally, if you have supplies, if you have distribution, you have a manufacturing factory, you always can sell products. You can make other products. You can make robots. You can make drones. You can make other things. Right. So if you think about, you know, those are like relatively stable infrastructure, right, compared to maybe certain trends like, yes, there are companies like in the electric mobility space that went under or had to go through a merger is because, you know, these industries only last maybe 2, 3 years, but we were trailblazers and pioneers of those. But ultimately, everything goes through what you call, it's just a process, right? Rather than a long-term business. I mean, my software business was a long-term business, but then it only lasted about 6 years until social media regulation kicked in and, you know, eventually our platform is not as relevant. Like nobody uses blogs now. They use like, you know, Instagram, X, they use their own social media platform. So like our business naturally had to die because people profile was embedded into their social media. They don't need blogs, right? WordPress blogs and things like that. You know, most maybe a showcase website, that's it, you know, or e-commerce store, they still exist, right? So naturally, I just knew I had to evolve. And if I didn't, I'm just going to be spending money in a niche that may or may have already passed. And you might want to not invest more because you would depreciate. And then one whole entire generation, you could miss out, or you could stay in and ultimately doom or fail. That's kind of like how, you know, businesses are naturally run, I guess.

And Solo car, it's such an intriguing car, right? Like, do you think you can make money with this one? Because it's, it's cool to be the owner of that company, right? And you showed me all the, the Tesla, right? It's a nice PR move, but like bringing these cars to market, having actual buyers That's a hard part. So to me, it seems you, you reunited a conglomerate of investors and you bought the remaining assets. Where are you at with that Precise company right now? You're like taking it away from the grave, sort of. You're bringing it to market. There's compliance stuff. How's the company going nowadays?

Yeah, we finished a lot of our compliance. We're road legal and We got our license plates in Spain now, our mother factory country. So our Solo in Spain is like license plated, everything. We even have plates in China. Usually if you're EV, you get like a long green license plate. US, Canada, we also have license plates. I drive one every day. It has a Canadian license plate. In the US, we have DMV license plates. Late. So we went through all that hurdle. And yes, like in the past, there's a lot of investment that have gone through. And when I bought the company, we were kind of like restarting, but luckily we didn't have to restart so, so much. And I think the advantage of that is that, you know, you're buying something with actual IP, right? Relationships. You're buying a supply chain. And so the fact that you can be an electric automaker, it's like, I think there's only about 300+ registered known auto brands on the road today. Like, if you name them, like Toyota, Tesla, GM, Mercedes, BMW. So you can go on and on. And China has a lot more. And so the fact that you can even play at that level, it's like, yeah, there's only a fair few people that can. And, you know, at the time I invested, maybe I made a decision to invest in the right moment and take on this opportunity once in a lifetime, once in a generation. I don't even know if you can do it again the next lifetime because everything's all consolidated into like big companies. It's gone very corporate. There's very less control, like, you know, less kind of creativity and most kind of modern automotive corporations. So as a smaller company, but still significant enough to penetrate the market, yes, we have sold and made a few thousand units. Marketing it and getting consumer hand is always the hardest because there's so much CapEx, you know, you know, you have to build up the product, you have to run campaigns and just the budget is like— English. Dealer. Yeah. Well, the good thing is we can work with dealerships because our Solo is like a single passenger car, but it's like very brand agnostic.

Doesn't compete much.

There's no competition. We're the only players in the category. And by the way, we are a highway legal car. You can drive this on the highway, right? So, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, if I go back, I sometimes would think, should I do it or not do it? You know, I'll be damned if I don't, I'll be damned if I do, right? That kind of thing. Because it is really expensive to run an automotive company. It takes a lot of like my resources, my time, my capital. You know, I always tell people like, don't do it. You know, our generation, I think this is it. Like, I don't see like, you know, somebody younger trying to start this, I could be one of the last youngest EV auto manufacturers in the world, right? You know, I just in the next few months, I got invited to Giga Texas in Austin, the main factory where Elon sleeps in, right? You know, things like that. So I get exposure to a lot of different factories around the world, like in Europe, US, South Korea. So, so it is a different world for sure. And, you know, you You kind of grow into that and the family of automotive companies. And, you know, like my family, we're not in automotive. They're not in high-tech technology. This is like a once-in-a-lifetime first generation. Most automotive companies are either publicly listed or owned by conglomerates or private equity. So, you know, like it is something very unusual. And then, you know, every day I'm still doing like self-discovery on myself, like How am I going to move this forward? I can't go back. The hardest part is when you build something like this, you can't go back to anything else. You can only—

That's the beauty of it as well.

Absolutely. You know, this is something, you know, it's going to be managed continually. And my board, it's, you know, a lot of my board members, they're mid-60s, 70 years old. You know, I got to take care of them. You know, I'm the only youngest one. In my team. And so, you know, I got to be mindful, you know, and then learn fast. You know, in this industry, you have to learn very fast, make fewer mistakes, you know, and it's— I don't think I know everything. I think even though I— as much training as I have, I think this industry, you're always learning. You can't stop learning. So I tell people I don't know everything because I'm learning every day.

Dude, it's crazy. I love it. You shocked your system, you rolled the dice, you went all in, you know. And I mean, that's the Elon way, right? Um, and me, I started the, uh, one of the finest, uh, nootropic in Canada about like 10, 15 years ago, and I consider that to have been a big risk. It went under and I lost, uh, multi-six figures on that one. I was, uh, 19 when I started that one, and I still don't regret it, right? Because I got a triple PhD in entrepreneurship, right? Like, trying so many things and learning that quick. And I wish I would still take risks of that size nowadays, you know? Like, nowadays I'm starting my VC firm, but even that is not that risky, you know? It's like betting on 10 startups and letting the power law do its thing. So I love the Elon vibe here and taking risk and fucking going all in. My follow-up question is, is the GPU business booming right now? That seems to be one of your cash flow source. Like, has that exploded since the AI revolution?

It has. I have waited for AI chips since 2018 and even back in 2017 with Ethereum mining that you know, how come we can't have better AI to do the hash rate for us? The hashing was so important to get the cost down, get the, you know, the algorithms, you know, the, you know, computing on the blockchain. Right. So, so now that we have the chips, I mean, I've waited for almost probably 8 years, more than that. And since 2024, 2025, I noticed that the AI chips, the revolution of AI chips start to come out.. And I knew that was the right time to get into AI right away and get back into supplying, supporting on the GPU chip side of things. So yes, it is booming. And like right now I'm still working with infrastructure company. I'm still supplying, doing preorders. I do work with, very fortunate with NVIDIA and many other known kind of, you know, GPU and AI chip company. So that kind of, that kind of gives me an edge right now to kind of like, okay, Well, I can put that in my own car for autonomous technology, but I can also buy and sell, supply and distribute that as well.

How do you manage stress with all these companies? How do you just not implode on yourself with all that pressure on your shoulders?

Yeah, it's a lot of pressure for someone as young as me running probably 5 companies. Each class of industry is incomparable in itself. Like, you know, they're all, you know, like the top of the headline in your news right now. And so, you know, I would say I'm thankful maybe for earlier exposure. Like when I was younger, I went through the whole process and I made money in that process. So I guess that kind of confidence allowed me to kind of like reinforce myself There are times that are very difficult, very difficult to sleep, very difficult to socialize because your mind frame, your mindset when you're talking to people, when you're out there, you're in a different place. You're not even—

You're intimidating to them.

Possibly. And sometimes I try to be normal too. I try to fit myself in.

I try to be normal. Don't try.

It's really hard. I mean, it's, but ultimately we can't please everyone, but I end up attracting the right people. And maybe I was very fortunate that I found like-minded individual like myself and we have these kind of conversations. And I mean, my greatest happiness is maybe when I found myself, when I found my purpose. And most people haven't found themselves yet, even like, you know, you're always a different person every 10 years, I call it. So I was still the same person 10 years ago and, you know, maybe just, you know, more mindful, have more knowledge, you know, made a lot of mistakes and then successfully, you know, solve them as soon as I can, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, that kind of experience really reinforces, you know, your personality, your integrity, your character and And I mean, like, if I think about it too much, it would probably not happen because most of my business, I have to do it with a grain of salt, which is just taking that leap of faith. And, you know, if it works, great. If it doesn't, I took that risk upon myself and somehow all my business worked out and I was very fortunate. You know, my mistakes were very minor. You know, you're right. In this generation, it's really hard to make a major mistake because if you did, we call it the generation debt. You know, like, I remember when I first built my sports car, my engine blew up 3 times because it was just the wrong technology built on a, you know, a 4-cylinder vehicle. And so I knew that electric vehicle was the technology that would future-proof all sort of kind of like major maintenance issue. And so I learned my mistake and I couldn't recover from that building a car and spending all your money trying to figure out how to make it faster. And so I think, you know, I thought I can't recover from that debt. You know, like I had to use my own life savings and cover my line of credit. And that was scary too. And you know, you're building it on a car, which is depreciating. Not appreciating. Like, you know, so the, the only thing is if it was kind of the show car, I might be able to get some success from that, but I couldn't even make into a show car because it was just like always in the shop, right? That kind of thing. Yeah.

Yeah, dude, I love it, man. You're, you know, there's very few people— Elon gets praised a lot, but there's very few people actually putting like it all in on the table. Another guy is Brett Adcock, right? Like, uh, playing in many fields at the same time and trying to cross-pollinate. Is there some cross-pollination between all the businesses you're building right now?

I am vertically integrating it. They are of like kind of like putting my spread my time like very horizontally and I'm trying to like put it back into a vertical mode, which I think like what Elon did was very smart when he created TerraFab. It's like Well, Tesla manufactures, it can produce anything it wants, right? SpaceX, Starlink, X, xAI, like, why not just put it all together? And it just makes so much sense because that saves us a lot of time, you know? And, you know, I can kind of give you a sneak peek, like, actually what had happened was in 2022, when Elon acquired X, he came to a TED Talk. I was outside the venue and I met his best friend, Steve Jurvs. Which at the time, running SpaceX and Tesla as a board of members. And he helped Elon in 2008 went through the bankruptcy. They almost lost everything. They lost their homes. The banks were doing collection. They were insolvent. It was crazy. Basically, they were the brokest of their time. And despite of all that, they went and still raised money and got funding and succeeded with SpaceX rocket launch and all that and getting the confidence of investors to reinvest back in Tesla. So I actually was very fortunate. I met his best friend and he gave me good advice was that what I'm building now was in fact a limitation rather than a success. Can you imagine that? The everyday people is trying to get to here, but he's telling me, break away from that and go here. So we both look at the sky and that day where there wasn't much clouds, but I think what he meant was break your ceiling. Like our current success, it might be, you know, definitely like the, you know, you're in the top 10% when you have a business that's doing well in the world, you know? And so But ultimately that could be your barrier to getting yourself to the 1%, right? And that was kind of like my understanding of inequality, equality, and social mobility and realizing, wow, it doesn't matter if you built a multimillion-dollar business and you've done well, you have a nice car and you can buy a house. Like that didn't matter anymore. Like I had to put that aside and said, you know what they are building, they sacrifice everything. They sequestered their home, their livelihood, their marriage, line of credits, and you can't imagine. And I realized that was the only way to grow, is to get out of your comfort zone and have a bigger mission. And you have that purpose. I think if your purpose is aligned, I think the universe would just make it happen for you. You just have to really believe in it. Yeah.

And believing is hard, right? Because no one else is going to believe in you, and most people are going to tell you no, and you're You need to be very delusional to be very successful. Most people don't get that, right? Um, what's the finality of your empire? I mean, I know there's like no limits, right? But, um, is it, uh, an AGentic empire? Is it like fueling most data centers? Is it Elon style, having giga factories? And ultimately, would you compete with Elon?

I, I would say I would work with him. He is our leader in the street, uh, trailblazer, right?

So he is our god, or—

well, like, you have a—

you have his portrait in the office with like a halo.

Really? I've got nice lights.

He's a leader.

He, uh— what, you know what it is? We, we, we never really invented anything. I think what it is is you pass it down from success from predecessors to successors, meaning potentially what we create is a family of lineage of passing down skills that could potentially be lost. Right. I can't imagine his kids running it. I can't imagine somebody else running it because the reality is it's really difficult. So you have to have that type of grit and endurance to run, you know, mega factories and, you know, You know, I have, you know, already ideas of looking into AI data centers in space, you know, and things like that. My friends, they have payload launches that they're doing. And, you know, I can definitely embed a chip into the payload and really join the space economy. That's kind of like what I am already initiating right now. So it's kind of like a sneak peek. Things are rolling on that side. But ultimately, I mean, I just love cars. I love manufacturing. You know, I do have a big, big plan and, you know, getting technology into the people's hand and upskilling people. I feel that, you know, the people even in my city and just in general, sometimes I go to another country and I feel that technology is euthanized from the school system. The school system's kind of like teaching you be of service, offer service your time for money. While doing nothing, you know, and, you know, my belief is that we should offer production, you know, rather than saying pay me for your time, your service money. I think we've gone kind of really far from, you know, with that. And, you know, a lot of people don't understand manufacturing anymore. Can you imagine that, you know, the bread and butter of every country back then was a manufacturer? You know, you wouldn't be able to you know, trade anything for a country like thousands of years ago in Silk Road, you'll be like, what do you have to offer for your country, right? You know, so production, trades, merchants are very, very important. They represent the actual GDP of a country, right? So yeah, we would say, I can say, yeah, we inherit the legacy of production.

Yeah, well, most kids want to be like the next MrBeast, right? And they think that this is a finality. It's not, right? Like, uh, just one part of it. And being an influencer is mostly not cool. The reality of being an influencer is mostly miserable. Um, I like the Elon successor thesis of things, right? Because you know what's Elon's weakness? It's its biology. Uh, guys pushing the machine 24/7, he won't live super long, and he will need like a fine predecessor. So if he can acquire you before that and you guys can have a good relationship, you could be the next, uh, Tesla CEO, who knows. Or, um, acquire as much share as possible, right? Uh, not hostile takeover, but just accumulate share and, and run the empire there.

I, I think it might, it might happen in terms of like even you can run multiple industries now because the problem with our industry is getting older. You know, your average CEO is like 50, and that's still considered young if you're running a factory with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of employees and multi-billion dollar budgets. So, you know, like, yeah, in your 50s, you're still kind of young for doing that. And so, but the problem is a lot of the younger generation, they're mostly employees and there's not like many of us like that are actually like business owner entrepreneurs running from the business perspective and, you know, the everyday of the mill kind of thing and just grinding it. So yeah, possibly we can run maybe one or even multiple automotive industry because I feel that possibly even like industry can kind of consolidate or join as like alliance. Strategic alliance, things like that. So, you know, it's just that there's a talent shortage, talent shortage of entrepreneurs that can run factories and manufacturing. It's definitely— I do see that it's a problem in our industry. Industry is not getting younger, it's getting older, right? And the younger people are not really into doing this.

I love it, dude. Where can people find out more about you, Will?

You know, I'm very private, actually, but I am on social media, like on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, @willfan with the X, you know, Will, W-I-L-L-F-A-N with the X. And so, you know, I kind of like post kind of like my work on social media. You know, I don't make money from it, but, you know, it's just like a place where I can show my work. And yeah, I mean, eventually I will kind of like come out more and tell the world and get on the news. Like, I have been approached by a lot of marketing agencies and PR and news channels and things like that. So we, you know, I'm very careful because it is kind of like I'm in the building stage and what I say, what I do is going to be heavily monitored by everyone around the world. Like, not just my family and friends, but you know, investor governments and, you know, like why say what I do is going to be so important. And so, and because we do have this kind of stewardship in providing entry affordable vehicles like our cars are $15,000 and, you know, we're the most competitive price advantage in North America and we do provide equal accessibility and affordable transportation for everybody. You know, you can pay this off with a one-year paycheck. That, you know, that's my goal. And so I realize I do have this kind of responsibility and stewardship in ensuring that everybody succeeds and they can have affordable transportation. And that one day, who knows, you know, I could be working with other manufacturers and, you know, running multiple businesses. And most likely that could be the case where mergers happen. And eventually I will be responsible for many companies.

I love it, dude. So that was, uh, Will and Charles