Ray, a dealership veteran, and his son Zach built CarEdge from a YouTube channel that hit 600,000 subscribers. They now make $10 million annually selling a $50-80/month database of dealer profit margins and a $1,000 car-broker service that guarantees savings or refunds the fee.
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So the story of this business is that it was started by a father and son duo. The father's name is Ray. The son is Zach. The father, he basically managed car dealerships for years and he was like, oh, there's like, I know the ins and outs. And his son, I think was 24 or 25 at the time. And his son always wanted to start an internet business and he also liked YouTube. And he was like, hey dad, what if I just asked you some questions on YouTube? About like, you know, how do you properly negotiate at the car dealership or how much profit car dealerships make so we know better what to ask for, you know, things like that.
Love it. Gonna work.
Yeah. And within, I think something like 8 weeks, they got 13,000 followers on this YouTube page. And they were like, you know, we were going to buy all these fancy cameras, but then we just got like our iPhone and made it kind of janky. And it just, people kind of liked it. And it was during the pandemic. So people were watching a lot of that stuff. And so they parlay that into starting a business called Car Edge. And so if you go to caredge.com, what's it say? Do you see the headline?
Uh, yeah, it says your personal car shopper is here. No hassle, always fair prices. So basically they will help you buy a car.
So the way it works is there's this thing called an auto broker or a car broker. I think you got your car now from a friend of ours who's a car broker. The industry is typically like mom and pop, and a lot of times if you Google like car broker. New York City, you're going to go to like kind of a mom-and-pop website and you get on the phone or send an email to this person. You tell them what type of car you want and they have relationships with tons of dealers. So they know, they know the ins and outs of the car business. You pay them a fee, $500 to $2,000, and they typically will go and buy the car for you. But the savings that you get in the price of the car is typically better than the fee that you pay them. And so it's no big deal and they do all the negotiating for you. So it's not uncomfortable for you. Whatever. Cool. What these guys did is they took like kind of a startup-y internet vibe and they created a nice website for it where you go to their website and they, you could, you could search different cars and they will rather, they have a variety of products. So like one, they have got this thing, it's, I think it's like $80 a month or $50 a month and they will just like give you tons of information, like a database on what the profit margin is on different cars. So you can go negotiate yourself or you can spend $1,000 and tell them the car that you want and they go and buy it for you. And they'll even organize it so it gets shipped to you and they do all the organization and all that work. And if you don't save at least $1,000, you just get your money back. And they built this massive business because if you go to their YouTube page, I think they now have 600,000 subscribers on their page. And it's this really cute dynamic between a father and son.
All the pictures on the site, by the way, are like the dad giving the son a noogie. It's like just a, just wholesome, just so wholesome.
And that father and son, like, dynamic for the brand, it makes you like them a lot. And they're like, you know, there were a bunch of car podcasts, but we basically, what they described, what they wanted to do is, they probably have no idea who we are, but it's what you and I do of just kind of like riffing a little bit less professional.
You're the father, I would assume.
Am I? You're older than me. You can be the dad.
You know how there was this big viral thing where it was like, um, you know, PewDiePie versus T-Series, like who can have the most subscribers on YouTube?
Yeah.
So these guys currently have 533,000 subscribers. Your boys have 529,000. We are 4,000 subscribers behind Car Edge. I'm just going to leave that there for our loyal army who doesn't want to see us lose to this father-son car buying duo. Go to YouTube and subscribe.
All right. Yeah.
Back to this.
They, uh, this business is now doing, so he has a video where he breaks down the revenue. So he pulls up their QuickBooks and you can see it, but he blurs out the numbers. And I messaged him and I was like, hey, uh, I have this thing, this podcast, like, and he goes, yeah, you know, I've heard of it. Uh, I go, just can you tell me the numbers and I can talk about it? And he, and, and so he did. And so this business is now doing roughly $10 million a year in revenue. I think it's only 2 years old or so, and it seems like a great business. These things could be really cool.
I think honestly I thought it'd be almost bigger because looking at the traffic, they get almost like 2 million visitors a month. To their site. And so that is a huge amount of traffic to your website for this thing. So I am, I'm extremely impressed. This is only 2 years old-ish.
Yeah, it could, it could be 3, but yeah, something like that.
Is this something you normally do when you buy cars? You use car brokers?
I haven't, but I've heard of them. We actually talked about it years ago of people who, uh, you know, we brought this up in one of the early episodes. I've never actually used it, but I remember last time I bought my car, I was in the dealership for like 4 hours, like signing paperwork, right? Wiring the money. It took forever. And I was like, I'm never doing this again. And so I just started Googling car brokers. I was like, I'm going to try one. And that's how I found these guys.
And were they YouTube first? So it was an audience first play. YouTube first.
Yeah. YouTube first.
Did they even plan to launch this as a service or did it start as just, let's make a YouTube channel?
The kid, Zach, has a blog where he's been blogging since he was 22. And he previously, he ran some small information business that was doing like $150,000 in revenue. And it's cool. You could see him blogging as he goes. And he's like, I've always wanted to learn how to make money on the internet and start an internet company. And so you could see like he had like 2 or 3 businesses that weren't huge or anything, but it was very promising for a 21-year-old. And I have a feeling, I kind of like clicked their LinkedIn and looked around. I think the mother passed away from cancer. And so I think there was like a feeling of like Zach, the kid was like, you know, I want to be with my father more. Let's see if we can do something together.
Yeah. He's got some cool blog posts. So yeah, getting your first customers is really hard. And he talks about getting their early customers for this. And then another one is From 10,000 to 14,000 subscribers in 3 weeks. Here's what we learned. Here's what happened and here's what I learned. And then, uh, I haven't read these yet, but I'm just looking at the titles.
These are cool.
I'm gonna check these out.
Yeah, this is a cool kid. I think now, I think he's only 25. I think, I think he's young. Um, and it's just a really promising business. And on some of the blog posts, he talks about how he is like, now I have to project financials so we can decide when to hire people. And so you're actually seeing him do this in real time, but he is not in you and I's world. And so it's a really fun business. To pay attention to and see what this guy, uh, what is he going to build. Isn't—
how cool is this? Father-son businesses, like, um, or just like, you know, parent-kid, but in not in a, uh, succession, you know, hand-me-down type of way. So a couple examples of this. We had Al Doan come on and talk about Missouri Star, the, the biggest quilting store on the internet. And it's Al and his mom. And he's like, you know, Alan, I think his name, her name is Debbie.
I don't know.
He's like, yeah, like same thing, YouTube channel where she makes content and she's the star. And Al was the like, cool, I'll figure out the internet and like e-commerce part of this and let's make this a thing. And this is a 9-figure business that sells quilt supplies to other moms across the country. It's amazing. And it's Al and his mom that do that business together.
Or, and Al does a thing that I love when he refers to his mother. He doesn't say my mom. He goes, yeah, I was just hanging out and mom wanted to like quilt, you know, like when they use, when they use mom as like as a proper noun. I love, I'm like, whenever I hear someone do That, that like when they just refer to them as mom, not my mom.
Yeah. Uh, it's very cute. So it's Al and, uh, and Jenny, they basically created it and she, and her YouTube videos are great by the way. I've, I've like randomly watched these even though I have no, I have no interest in quilting, but I'm interested in her videos because she's so wholesome and she's so good on camera. So I think that's a great example. We had the, the guys from FarmCon and Ag Swag, same thing, father and son doing business together, but not in a, um, legacy, you know, you could take over my business, but they started new businesses together. And I just think that's so cool. You know, if my kids wanna do something like that, that'll be a blast. All right. If you like that clip, there's a full conversation with a lot more just like that. Just follow my finger. It is right here.
