Today I’m talking with Matt Farah, Chief Editor at The Smoking Tire.  If you have ever searched for a car on YouTube, you would have come across Matt Farah.  He’s been reviewing cars on YouTube for over 10 years.  Matt has a combined social following of almost 2 million across platforms.  He knows how to use a platform such as YouTube to build a revenue generating business.  Today he’s going to show us what it’s like to follow your passion and start a digital business. 

 

This podcast is hosted by SendOwl, the digital sales and delivery application helping entrepreneurs to sell digital products, memberships, subscriptions, and even physical products online – anywhere you can paste a link.

 

Guess what?  SendOwl just crossed $250,000,000 in customer sales!

           

 

3:00 – Tell me more about The Smoking Tire

 

Well I grew up pretty much obsessed with cars.  I used to drag race in high school.  I thought it would be cool to be one of the guys that could write for the magazines, but that’s a job that only like 4 people in the world have.

 

I bounced around from car job to car job.  I started a driving club.  I owned a car wash.  I learned my way around the business by doing.

 

I decided when YouTube launched in 2006 that we should make videos of the drives.  That was my first foray into making videos with my partner Tom Morningstar.  That turned into me getting an actual job at this very early multi-channel network.  They hired me to make a show based on cars because of what we did in our silly little videos.  That’s something that will never happen again in history.  I got lucky because I wasn’t very good at making videos but someone was willing to pay me for my time to do it. 

 

We wanted to continue making videos and so Tom and I moved to California where we could make videos year-round without weather issues.  We started The Smoking Tire in 2009.

 

A very successful YouTube channel can sustain one person in LA.  I have like 4 jobs now and The Smoking Tire is one of them.

 

 

7:30 – You have a huge following of over a million people collectively. How does it feel?

 

It’s like a little tap into the world of being a celebrity but it’s also kind of isolating.  I can go to a car show and I know that I will be a celebrity there.  But I can go to a mall and nobody knows who I am.  It’s nice to be able to choose the time and place to be a celebrity.

 

Unlike a real celebrity, like a movie star, people will come up and talk to you like they’ve known you for a very long time.  Many times, I think, “Do I know this person?” “Should I know this person?” “Have I forgotten this person?” 

 

But I still feel like I’m at the beginning.  I feel like I’m at the bottom to middle of my climb, not the middle to top.

 

 

10:00 – You graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004.  You started posting on YouTube in 2006.  At what point did you realize that you could build a business with your passion?

 

My dad taught me that if you need money, you have to do what you have to do to get that money.  But, if you’re young and you have the time, you should try to turn your passion into your business.  It’s very easy to get complacent and wind up with a mortgage or a wife or kid that might keep you from taking the kind of risks that you need to take to be successful with your passion.

 

Let me be clear, I do come from a place of moderate privilege.  I had advantages that other people didn’t have.  I’m aware of that.  I’m not sorry for it.  It just is what it is.  What I am saying is that if you come from a little bit of a cushion I could afford to be a little risky with my business decisions knowing that if it all went down I wouldn’t be living in a cardboard box.  Know that I had that ability, it was helpful for me to get into this.

 

Having an online business is just like having any other business with a storefront.  You can’t just do it in your free time.  You need to commit. 

 

So, when the company in New York went under I sold my half of the car wash and I sold one of my cars and we used that money to run The Smoking Tire for two years.

 

You need to really commit financially and with sweaty palms.  You must find a way to crank out content.  You can’t push through that wall unless you push hard.  Until you have like 200,000 subscribers you’re making like no money.

 

 

15:00 – You drive some of the best cars in the world.  How do you get these cars in your hands, and what advice do you have for entrepreneurs who need resources that are owned by other people?

 

Most people when they email me and they say “how do I do what you do,” they don’t actually want to know that… They want to know how to get the cars.

 

But what happened is this: I developed a reputation over a very long period of time of being a responsible person.  Now if you watch my videos and see me out there driving fast or whatever, you may call that irresponsible but I have a reputation of giving people their cars back in exactly the condition they were given to me.  And if something does happen I take responsibility for it.  

 

A lot of business is taking on responsibility and risk.  I’ve stepped up immediately and taken responsibility for things.  It’s a reputation that takes a very long time to build.

 

When I get a press car from a manufacturer it’s great because I get to spend a lot of time with each car.  It helps me get an in-depth review.  Press cars come with insurance, so God-forbid that I smash a press car into a wall, as long as I am not negligent that car is covered under an insurance policy. 

 

But, if I’m driving a personally owned car, any time that I get into somebody’s car I have to be prepared to write a check for the value of that car.

 

People who are getting started in this industry don’t realize that or don’t have the stomach for that.

 

And the thing is that a YouTube video only makes a couple hundred bucks.  I’m looking to make a couple hundred bucks against a risk that could be in six figures.  That’s a stupid thing to do for a job!  Mostly people would say “why would you do that?”  It’s because I love the job.

 

If I wrecked a car, fortunately I wouldn’t be living in a cardboard box.  But if you don’t have the resources to write a check you shouldn’t be in this business. 

 

 

21:30 - How much time did it take to generate revenue after your first YouTube upload?

 

I was fortunate because I had a contact at YouTube.  Back then you had to apply to be a partner.  Now there’s no vetting process.  But back then I emailed my contact at YouTube and I told him what I was doing. 

 

We were partners from day 1 so I got lucky there.  We were making money immediately but it was pennies.  It was two years before we had anything resembling more than a couple hundred bucks a month.

 

The Smoking Tire in its current state with 700,000 subscribers will support one person living in LA.  Not two.  One person in a middle-class LA lifestyle.  But I want to be rich!  And that’s why I hustle harder than anyone else in this business.  That’s why I make more videos and why I studied how the YouTube algorithm works and how I can maximize the profitability for this business.

 

I’ve had to keep other side jobs.  I do voice over.  I host and product for other YouTube channels on an independent contract basis.  I write columns.  I have a television show on NBC sports.  I do a podcast.  This is all going on concurrently. 

 

The Hollywood hustle is having an oil drum of a bank account with 20 hoses in it that are all on trickle.  It’s about keeping all those hoses trickling all the time and that adds up to a lot.  It can be stressful because you have to fragment your time across various gigs. 

 

A car isn’t a movie ticket or a set of batteries.  It’s not a cheap thing.  People take what I say very seriously.  It’s very important that I say what I really think.  And when I go to my grave I want to be able to say that what you heard in that review is what I really thought.

 

 

28:00 – How do you stay so consistent with your content?

 

From 2009 to 2013 we tried very hard to make television on the internet.  We were not happy with the level of TV programming in America about cars.  We made well produced pieces that would be TV quality.  While we were growing an audience, I wasn’t a good businessman and I wasn’t doing math. 

 

We would do a video and bring in 500,000 views and it would be like $600 but we would have spent 40 hours on it. 

 

I was hanging out with these video game guys who publish their videos on the internet, picture in picture.  These guys make a ton of money going straight from their x-box to YouTube.  I thought “there’s no way I can do that.”  Because I needed editing, and good cameras, and everything else.

 

But they said, “Why do you need all that?”  And that’s when I realized that I didn’t need to make TV on the internet, just to make internet on the internet.  And I stripped everything out of the video and worked backwards. 

 

So, I removed the camera men, the sound guy, editing.  I started doing picture in picture with a real car.  It was like Twitch but with a car.  Now it takes 90 minutes to do one video instead of 40 hours.  I can do between 4-6 of them per day.  I have never had to ask for cars since.   I can air videos every Monday through Thursday and now I have a stash of 50 unaired videos.  So, I don’t have to touch content for six weeks.

 

I put out more content than MotorTrend by myself.  And now my videos are actually profitable, which almost nobody on YouTube in the auto space can say.

 

The content gets the same amount of views no matter how good or bad the technical presentation of the content is. You just have to do the math correctly.

 

 

 

34:30 – I saw you had a degree in Fine Arts Photography and I was going to ask you about the creative art matters for YouTube but it sounds like it doesn’t matter much.

 

I always loved photography as a passion which is why my chosen media platform is Instagram.  But I graduated the same year that the first DSLR came out.  So, I spent most of my time processing film. 

 

There is no degree that can prepare you for this kind of job.  You learn by doing.

 

But I love cars so I have to be successful at this.

 

 

37:00 – Some entrepreneurs try to tackle every social media platform at the same time.  What has worked for you?

 

I try to focus on social media platforms that either bring me money, or that I enjoy using.  I don’t like SnapChat.  I found that if I put the energy that I would spend on marketing into just making another video, I’ll get a better return.

 

I produce content that I want to watch, and so people share it.  That goes across any platform.  The fact that I hate everyone else’s content makes me better at my job.

 

Your last column won’t write the next one for you.  Keep producing content.

 

I have made some garbage content that is still easily searchable on the internet.  But you have to move past it and make something better.

 

I’ve had every worst-case scenario happen short of killing somebody.  At one point, I literally had no money.  I had 250,000 subscribers, was releasing a TV series, was putting out videos that were getting millions of views, and I took a job bouncing at a bar for $50 a night so I could cover the bills.  Fans were coming up and asking me to take a photo with them while I was carding them at the door. 

 

Being famous is really inconvenient if you aren’t also rich.  If you are famous and poor, that is sh**ty. 

 

Now I still do some side work but it’s all related to my industry.  Like maybe I’ll do appearances as car shows, or emcee at an event.  I can command a decent day rate now which is much better than bouncing at a bar!

 

 

 

46:45 – If you were going to start something like this again today, what would you do?

 

I have no idea.  I’m super O.G. YouTuber.  There are 3rd generation YouTubers.  The people that grew up watching me now have fans who grew up watching them.  It seems so saturated now.  When I started, there were NO premium content creators in the content space that weren’t magazines.  There was nothing.  Now that market is quite saturated. 

 

What nobody wants to say is that the answer is if you want to be me, you have to start by being me.  You have to have the personality, the passion, the ability to speak on camera or produce something.  I can give you the formula for what hard work looks like.  Ultimately, if you are not the personality that is driven and studious enough, that someone wants to listen to you, you’ll never get anywhere.

 

I hate talking about this because I’m no-one special.  I’m just a dude who likes cars.  But if someone points a camera at you and your personality changes, this isn’t for you.  I can be the same person if there is one camera or a studio audience.

 

Watch my videos and see what goes into the making.

 

• Adobe premiere pro
• Studying Titles, SEO and Tags for YouTube
• How to place good merchandise
• Camera angles
• Sound bits
• What time and days to upload content
• Social media management

 

I do all of these things.  To be successful you have to break down what your job is and become proficient in all of the things you need to be doing.  Understand how all the systems work so when you are big enough to hire someone else to do it and you can give the right instructions. 

 

If you want to compete with someone who is already doing it, just take your own angle to differentiate. 

 

 

 

Rapid fire:

 

Do you think flying cars will become a thing?

 

Absolutely not.  Humans can’t even be trusted to drive on the ground.  Do you really think they will be able to drive in the air?

 

 

What’s your favorite road to drive so far and why do you like driving it?

 

There is a road in Switzerland called the Susten Pass.  That’s about as good as it gets.  Nobody up there, beautiful mountains, fresh air.  Up in the alps, it’s brilliant.

 

 

What really went through your head when you said, “Oh Jesus, this gentleman is dragging a log?”

 

That was the most profitable video I’ve ever made!

 

When I was driving along I could see the dirt trail.  But I was confused about how it was weaving all over the road.  Shock and disbelief.  That’s one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever seen on a road.  But I’m glad that video did over 2 million views.  That was the most viewed post on Reddit for 24 hours!

 

There’s another video of the Dinan BMW M4 and there are people in the road doing pushups which is another super crazy one. 

 

I have two videos coming up.  One where I’m driving a 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing and in the first corner of the video there’s a girl crossing the street on a horse.  I screech to a halt.

 

In another one I have a vintage Porsche, it just started raining and we come up on a guy who just crashed a Malibu in a ditch in front of us. 

 

Additional Resources:

 

What types of digital products can I sell online?

 

How much should I charge for my digital product?

 

Matt Farah’s Instagram Page