How TGE REALLY Affords His INSANE Investment Car Collection & The Cars To BUY!

I'm close to burnout most of the time.

Stress is such a killer even in young people.

And that's the one thing that really, really worries me.

So why do you live like that?

Because if I don't, I'm going to be in a plinky plonky job until I'm 80.

Tom!

Hello, hello, welcome back to TGE TV.

TGE, YouTuber, influencer, a serial entrepreneur.

Making for your underground a year, that's not rich to me.

Rich is being able to choose whether you work.

But now as I've got older, I've realized I'm still going to be in a hamster wheel

unless I make that needle-moving money.

I'd say my core business is the cars that I buy.

I love them, but they're also business tools.

But like, take the career GT as an isolated example.

I bought that in 2020, probably about a million quid up on that car.

That's almost business exit money there, just in that car.

Have you ever been offered will you promote this crypto guide for me?

I probably could have retired by now if I jumped on a lot of that scammy stuff.

How different is that to actual trading realistically on a stock floor in London?

The traders on the trading floor in London aren't.

Tom, from selling air fresheners to appearing on YouTube,

investment cars, watches and everything in between.

I'd actually love to hear how in your own words you would describe yourself.

So Tom, in your own words, who are you and what do you do?

In my own words, I'm Tom. My initials are TGE.

So I'm on social media as TGE.

I'd say content creator.

That sounds miserable, but yeah, content creator.

I would say entrepreneur, but then people call themselves entrepreneurs.

But this is the thing, like the introduction to this video,

it was so hard with you because I followed you for so long.

It actually negates the need for me to have too much of a script today

because I've seen the story unfold like so many other people would have.

It's actually kind of recently I've seen the guys going on reunion trips

that I used to watch back in the day,

but you've done so much since I discovered your content.

But I thought a great place to start today would be around investment cars

and investment car pieces because it allows me to ask,

what do you currently have in the garage?

We'll start with the important stuff first.

So currently in the garage, we'll go larious first.

We've got a Carrera GT, Porsche Carrera GT in the garage.

We've got Jaguar XJ220, which is recent addition.

We've got a Ferrari 250 GT, Pinfarina Coupe.

We have got a 997 GT3 RS.

We've got a manual Ferrari 430.

We've got a Defender 90 commercial that I wrapped around in.

Fantastic.

We've got, well, so we've got an SLS MG with the doors.

We have got a Porsche 912 from 1966.

Well, I say we've got that.

There is no we, by the way, with me,

but that's in restoration somewhere in the ether.

Waiting for an update on that one.

Well, I'm sure I've missed something.

And that's just the stuff that you've had now.

The stuff over the years is the thing that blows everybody's mind,

is the thing that inspires people to want to get those cars

and make them also want to learn and understand how that's possible.

So if we take that current piece of like, wow, that's sick,

and mold that into a question of, to have that wow that's sick,

what's one thing that you have now that you had in your earliest years

that without you wouldn't have those wow, that's sick cars?

Ah, generic answer, just work ethic.

It's just that's, I wake up every day and every day's a work day.

If I'm awake, I'm at work.

That's it.

The office is in here.

It's not somewhere I go.

It's not somewhere I visit.

It's here.

So if I'm conscious, I'm working.

And that's how I've always been, even when I was 12, 13,

I had a couple of like paper jobs, all sorts of stuff.

I was just on it from the get go.

That is real good context there,

because I love putting things into real tangible contexts

that people can understand.

Because just saying work ethic,

that will mean different things to different people.

Because to some people, working four days a week, nine to five is,

I'm knackered, that's, that's working.

Or getting to the office 15 minutes early.

I wanted to ask you to visually represent

what that work ethic looked like to you.

And I think you did tie that up really nicely

with how you answered then.

But if you were to look at it over a course of years,

what's the impact been on you?

Do you enjoy working like that?

I enjoy what I do.

And I'm aware of the fact that what I do

is the best of a bad bunch of people work on the whole

for the money and they do it for the money

because they wouldn't do it for free.

I, they don't enjoy enough that they would be doing it for free.

They have to be paid to be doing it.

So what I do is the best available,

is the closest thing I'm ever going to get

to doing what I would do for free.

But so making content, driving around in the cars,

meeting amazing people, traveling, fantastic.

Getting it to pay the bills and the commercial side of it.

So working with brands is fantastic.

But you know, as well as I do,

you do a lot of kind of sponsored bits and bobs.

It's not always plain sailing and weaving the sponsor bits

into content that you just want to make and enjoy.

That is a bit of a pain sometimes.

Sometimes, not always.

Some brands are easy to work with and others.

But showing the other foot, the other alternative

is sitting at a desk all day, which I did for a decade.

I'd rather slam my head in a door than do that again.

I don't think I could probably even go back to it now.

And early doors, I was a cleaner.

I used to clean toilets and stuff

in a community center.

I was a lifeguard at the same time,

and I'd be cycling between shifts,

just double shifting the whole time.

So I've seen what the alternative is

and now messing around basically for a living,

making videos and checking in the occasional

sponsored bits and bobs.

That's the best it's ever going to get,

work-wise for me.

So you know, career-wise, that's the closest

to absolutely nailing it I'm ever going to get.

Next up.

Can you just summarize before we run too far away

what that desk job was for that amount of years?

And at that point, were you still describing yourself

as a content creator?

Because that's the bit that people saw

when behind the curtain, there was a kind of plowing,

very well-paying desk job.

Yeah, so I think people got in their heads.

You know, I was on trading floors in banks,

and I think people got into their heads

that I was this Wolf of Wall Street.

Yeah, and I wish that was the case because

I probably wouldn't be making YouTube videos

for a living if I was creaming seven-figures trading.

I'd probably still be doing that,

or I'd probably just be on a beach somewhere.

My background was law, I went to law school,

so I was kind of doing semi-legal-based stuff

on trading floors and in banks and in various funds since.

So nothing hugely glamorous.

It was decent money, but it was not the sort of money

that was ever going to make me rich.

It wasn't the sort of money that was ever going to allow me

to finish working.

Hold up, because the thing that I've noticed recently

with like a load of guests that come in the van

is we're so fortunate to surround ourselves

by like-minded people that often do the same sort of thing as us,

or just high-performing, high-achieving people.

So the bar of what rich is moves higher for us.

I had a great example the other day,

was when Andy Willman was sat in the van.

He said the exact same line you just did then,

it would never make me rich.

I said, hang on a second, Mr. Willman,

what's like that to you?

And he's like, well,

Bezos would have been the nerd that we bullied at school

that's now on the yacht out at sea.

And he's like, rich, rich, rich.

So when you say it wasn't going to make you rich,

it was still enough to buy houses and buy supercars, right?

Finance them, yeah.

It was enough for me to A, get the lend,

and B, make the monthly.

So rich is obviously a sliding scale.

Rich is like a definition that it rattles people.

It rubs people up the wrong way.

Me saying, I'm not rich is going to rattle some people in one way.

And then other people would be like, well, yeah, you're not.

You're poor compared to me.

So in my mind, rich is being able to choose whether you work.

Rich is being able to wake up wherever you want in the world

and do whatever you want.

That's rich to me.

Make a few hundred grand a year,

but then having to spend 100, 200 grand a year

on mortgages, bills, and blah, blah,

and needing to stay in that hamster wheel,

even though the numbers on the screen are huge,

that's not rich to me.

And my definition has changed over the years.

So when I was at college, I was at school,

I was thinking, I'll make a hundred grand a year.

I'll be loaded.

Brilliant. I can go on nights out.

I can go on holiday, can do whatever I want.

I could buy the occasional rolly.

All in, rich.

But now as I've got older, I've realized

I'm still going to be in a hamster wheel

unless I make that needle-moving money.

I need that exit from a business,

that kind of chunk coming in.

So that seven-figure chunk that just lands,

and you think, ah, that's slush fund.

Now I can choose whether or not I do anything

for six months a year, two years, whatever it is.

So that definition has changed.

And that needle-changing money,

that definition for you would have always

been selling a business,

and sounds like still potentially is.

Does the investment cars that you listed off a minute ago,

does that come into that needle-changing money?

Yeah. So my business, I'd say my core business

is my media company, which is my social media,

and you roll into that, the AdSense,

you roll into the brand deals,

and then you roll into that as well.

The cars that I buy, those are, I would say the assets.

It's a bit more emotive than that,

but they're taking all the emotion out of it,

the assets, right?

I love them, but they're also business tools,

the business assets.

They drive use, they drive eyeballs,

you sell those to brands, right?

And that keeps the cash flow going,

that keeps, you know, your retainers coming in.

But like, take the career GT as an isolated example,

I bought that in 2020, probably about a million quid up on that car,

and I've made 20 videos with it.

I've driven it 100 miles.

I know that annoys people that I don't drive the cars that much,

but I still can't really afford to have that car

and rat-round in it as much as I want.

I'm not at that level where I can buy,

I can get in, I can get the finance on it,

I can get approved, I can meet the monthlies for now,

but I'm not at the level where I can drive

thousands and thousands of miles on this thing,

but I'm nearly a million quid up on this.

So that's almost business exit money there, just in that car.

So if you do that, and you keep buying assets like that,

and you make 300, 500 million quid a per car,

and you do that on a few different cars,

you end up with an asset pool

that you can then borrow against and buy more stuff.

But do you see yourself having an end game for that stuff?

Because this is the part...

I don't ever want to sell.

This is the problem.

This is the part of the needle.

So the cars are like a lovely, enjoyable backup plan, steady.

So if it all goes pear shaped,

I have that asset pool that I don't want to get rid of necessarily,

but I can sell and I can release a load of cash and happy days,

and I can say, I tried, I had a credit sheet,

but my financial goal is not to ever need to sell any of that

and make a chunk out of coming out of the business,

or enough years of a decent run rate to put a big pot together,

and I don't need to sell anything.

So at the minute, if you were to stop doing the daily churn

of what you currently do that makes up your life,

and if we get into what all those bits are that currently make up your life,

but I know you listed off the kind of media side of it,

how fast would you potentially fall off the hams to will

if you just didn't want to work for three months?

How far am I off going under the waves if I just stopped making content?

I would say only a few months, probably. The burn is real.

So when you've got, because you've amassed the stuff that you have,

and a lot of that's funded and on finance,

how do you manage that internal pressure to make sure that that's being delivered?

Does it ever, how close do you get to the coffee cup spilling out?

Oh, every day it's lapping at the edge every single day.

Every single day I wake up and there's some sort of,

yeah, I mean, I'm close to burnout most of the time.

So why do you live like that?

Because if I don't, I'm going to be in a plinky plonky job until I'm 80.

And is that your biggest fear?

I'm not going to experience what I've experienced in the meantime.

So I'm very well aware of the fact that I don't know how long I'm going to live.

Occasionally, I am at burnout point, but I've been so lucky to do what I do.

I've managed to turn something I love into a living,

which ironically is the quickest way to hate what you love.

But we'll get onto that.

So yeah, I live like that because I'm only around once.

Why do you love the things that you love?

What was it about those kind of years growing up that formed

what you kind of love now wanting to make that your thing?

When I was a kid, I just loved cars.

I know that sounds idiotic, but I just loved cars when I was growing up.

Me and my brother, we just loved cars.

We just had all the top trumps things.

I just loved it.

I loved watches as well.

I was a weird kid.

I would always draw cars, draw watches.

I mean, I wasn't cool then.

I'm definitely not cool now, but I've always loved it.

And sitting at my desk, I remember thinking,

and do you know what, I credit him, Paul Wallace,

when I was building my fitness business with my brother.

Paul, I used to just watch him on social media.

Basically messing around in cars and thinking,

how is this guy making a living out of messing around

and just filming videos and just,

to all intents and purposes, just having a good time

and just telling people he's having a good time?

Great.

So we did some workouts together and he explained that actually,

you can make money out of ad sense, brand deals, yada, yada, yada, yada.

So I was like, I'll take a punt.

I'm going to finance a Lambo and see what happens.

If I can make $1,500 a month to pay the finance,

then, and the car doesn't lose money,

if I can make two and a half grand a month out of my socials,

I'm paying $1,500 a month finance,

you know, $500 of that's repaying the car.

The car doesn't lose value after a year.

I've made $20, $30 grand, whatever their maths is, don't, don't troll me.

And I've had a Lambo.

Let's give it a go.

Is the buzz now anywhere near what it was then?

I think you do anything for a decade

and your livelihood is strapped to anything.

It zaps the fun out of it a little bit.

Do you remember, like, a trip or moment that that became,

like, maybe a thought that entered your head for the first time?

Like, you obviously sounded so excited to get into that world.

And rightly so, like, I think for any of us that's got into this world,

you get those moments where you go,

Oh my God, I have actually, I've made that work.

I've just come back from this experience, or this thing,

or this coffee, or this podcast, and it was really good.

I loved it.

Yeah.

And somehow it works.

But there's ones that you come back, you get those first ones,

Christ, off we go.

Like, do you remember how long it was until you got that?

The negative experience of me thinking, what am I playing at?

Yeah, like, I'm not sure I like this.

Not sure I'm like this, but like,

without the thing that you would have thought was fun

a couple of years ago becoming unfun.

Do you know what?

The day that I got my career at GT,

I had it delivered to Goodwood.

I had a film crew and everything there.

I'd made a load of arrangements and I'd never even seen it.

I hadn't even seen this car.

I bought it through a friend who I've known for years,

and I trust him to bits.

So I didn't need to see what I bought it,

and I delivered to Goodwood.

And it was the first time I was driving it,

first time I was going to sit in it,

and I had loads of people there and a camera crew and blah, blah, blah.

I was like, this should be amazing,

but I'm not having a good time.

Like, I actually don't, I'm not enjoying this.

I've ruined something that's supposed to be like really, really special,

but me turning this into this moment has made this a reality.

I wouldn't have bought the car otherwise.

I wouldn't have been able to.

So it's kind of catch-22, really.

So, yeah, it does get quite stressful sometimes,

particularly when you're working with a brand,

they're paying you sometimes a fair bit of money.

You've got a few minutes to film something.

You've got to get all your cameras in,

and I don't have anyone helping me film stuff.

So cameras, mics, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.

And you're driving this amazing car on an amazing road,

and you realise that actually all you're thinking about is your video,

all you're thinking about is the content,

all you're thinking about is making sure that you can deliver what you need to deliver,

and the invoice will get paid because you've delivered what you said you're going to deliver.

So, yeah, but to the audience, you're just having the most amazing time

like driving around in this fancy car.

And this isn't a sob story, I'm just saying,

there is a different side to it where you just,

sometimes you're actually not focused on the experience at all.

You're just focused on needing to get your job done

so you can ping an invoice at the end of it.

How much has that content creation changed,

and how much harder is it now that when you first started after that work out with Paul?

It's so much harder now.

There are twice the amount of platforms there used to be,

like 10 years ago.

You used to just be able to bob out with an iPhone,

make any old guff, stick it up, and then get hundreds of thousands of views.

Now you actually need to make an effort,

and that's where I'm coming unstuck.

That's a question.

Bob out with an iPhone, and I know this is your style,

I know this is you, and you're unapologetically you as well.

But bob out with an iPhone,

chuck up any old content, get millions of views, yeah?

That statement.

Great.

But genuinely, are you proud of any of your old videos?

Do you take any pride in those back catalog of videos?

I've always prided myself on it being personality-led,

not being on high production, not being based on,

can I get access to this?

Can I get access to that?

Who's better, organizational admin?

Who's better at getting better guests and collabs and whatever?

I've never, the background admin has never been my forte.

The first six years of the channel, I was full-time at a desk,

so I didn't have any time to sort anything out.

I didn't have any time to travel, do any of this stuff.

It had to just be churn, just go into a car park,

make something up for 20 minutes, go back,

edit it overnight, and go back to work the next morning.

So my channel evolved on the Bishbash Bosch personality-led,

and I think if you can churn something out in a car park

in 15 minutes with just an iPhone and some car people have seen before,

like, you've got something a lot deeper than someone that relies on editing,

you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So if a brand is listening right now that might want to work with you,

because this is the bit that just blows.

Roll up, roll up.

This is just the bit that blows my mind.

And they hear, churn up in a car park,

film it on any old gaff, chuck out an iPhone.

If I was the brand, if it was my brand, I'd be thinking piss off.

So how do you turn that into I can actually deliver what I need to deliver for you?

I actually think that if you can make content that is low production

and is based on you and your audience are following for you,

you have a much better buy-in and a much stronger buy-in and a much greater ability

to sell product for a brand than someone that is reliant on high production values.

And I've seen it with my own stuff.

You know, I've built businesses based on just my audience with no marketing budget at all.

So I would say, you know, line up a load of content creators,

you know, some big ones, some small ones.

You say, here's an iPhone, here's 15 minutes,

go make an entertaining video about that.

A lot of them would falter because they don't have any gab there

or you put them on live somewhere, you know, you stick them on a stage with a microphone.

They're going to drop the ball because they're not wired like that.

So I do think there's definitely a better level of buy-in,

a lot of the time with people that are a bit more personality led.

And you know, it's not right for every single brand.

So, you know, some luxury brands, they probably don't want you bobbing around in a car park with an iPhone.

You know, which is strange really for a sec because you've,

I've also seen you pivot like a lot of people that'll be listening and watching this

into luxury watches and more luxury stuff.

So clearly it works.

I'm just trying to get to the bottom of understanding how and why it works.

So when I work with a nicer brand, we do higher production and we can go into that stuff.

It doesn't stop you from doing that and I can do the presenting stuff, the luxury stuff.

I can do that in my sleep.

That stuff I find a lot easier than just the kind of run and gun blog stuff.

And with that, I've still got my audience that have been watching me for years

and they've watched me build up and watched me put money into things

and put money into these luxury brands myself out of my own pocket.

And there's a lot more of kind of like 4D offering than, you know,

sort of superficial high production stuff that someone's not actively in that market

themselves as an individual.

I think it's, yeah, I see why the brands are in, but they give you a brief.

Some brands will say, you know, we don't want you making just random guff.

We want the sound to be good.

We want the angles to be good.

We want this shot, that shot, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's all in the creative brief.

So and some brands, they say we want it to look organic.

We want it to be POV.

We want it to be shot on an iPhone.

Don't shoot it on a professional camera.

We want it to look like, you know, you've just kind of made off the cuff.

So it does, it does shift.

And I think we're seeing a movement from the luxury brands as well

into that more POV organic stuff.

So if you look at a lot of luxury brand socials now,

iPhone photography is massive.

They're going now back into that like the grainy like 90 stuff.

They're going back into the more like run and gun stuff.

So do you think there still could be a second wave on the kind of vlog style real content?

I hope so, because it's a lot easier.

But talking about a lot easier, talking about videos, and also I asked you

what videos you'd be most proud of.

Yeah.

I think it's a good question that if you were to sit down with your kid in the future,

and they've got to an age where they can understand everything,

and you're on the sofa, it's like, dad, I want to watch one of your videos.

Which one would you currently bring up?

There is a video of my brother and I, and unfortunately Archie Hamilton,

I'm joking, I love him, in my brother's turbo s in Monaco.

Driving around, he's put some stupid exhausts on it.

It's popping and banging and just causing the most amount of noise.

And we're just crying with laughter in the car.

It's just the funniest thing ever.

And I just think my brother and I at a mate of ours down in the south of France,

prattling around in cars, having the time of our lives.

Is the production any good?

No.

Is there a plot?

No.

Is anything achieved?

Does anyone learn anything from the video?

No.

But it's just guys having a laugh, and I think that epitomizes why I started the channel.

That sort of thing to have that sort of experience.

And to call that my job is crazy.

So yeah, I'd happily show my kid that.

They'd probably think their dad was an idiot, but they'd probably already clocked onto that.

When you were a kid, was life around you having a laugh?

Yeah, my parents were really, really good to my brother and I.

I think that it was quite centered around just tiring us out, basically.

We would get shoveled from wherever just to get us to...

Because we were just a nightmare, the pair of us, I think.

They'd probably be labelled these days our behaviour.

There would probably be a label put on it.

But yeah, back then we were just energetic, naughty.

So they were very, very focused on us.

We were very, very lucky.

We just got put around the place just tiring us out, football, tennis, whatever.

Want you to be anything in particular?

Nope.

They never said you need to be this, that, and the other.

You need to be an astronaut or archaeologist or anything like this.

We just want you to be decent people.

We want you to work harder.

We want you to be good to people.

That's it.

And if you have a good life, then great.

If you have fun, we don't care if you're rich.

We don't care if you're poor.

We just want you to be decent, hardworking, and ideally don't live under a bridge.

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So what impact was it on you when you lost your dad?

I think my brother and I reacted in pretty much exactly the same when he went.

We just buried ourselves in work.

We were always hard workers.

We were always doing back-to-back jobs.

We'd always make sure we had two jobs on top of studying,

and we were always doing that.

But I think when he went, we just buried ourselves in work really.

We channeled the grief into fuel, just put the fuel on the fire and just said,

you know, we just get our heads down, do something that he'd be proud of.

And also add to that, a catalyst was also the realization

that you don't know how long you've got.

He was very, very sensible throughout his life,

and he was not saving for a rainy day,

but he was always focused on the fact that at one point,

he would be able to relax and be able to chill.

But just as he was coming to that point in his life

where he could think about slowing down and stopping working and blah, blah,

you know, he had six months of illness and he was gone.

So we now have that realization that you don't know how long you've got.

You get told it the whole time when you're younger,

but unless you see it firsthand, and obviously you have as well,

I don't know if you feel the same.

Like when people tell you, you know, you don't know how long you got left,

you're like, oh yeah, all right, whatever, I'm going to live to 80, 90.

But then when you see it firsthand, that actually in your 50s, in your 60s.

Even in your 20s these days, a lot of lads that've got their own businesses

and are under a serious stress are actually getting more heart attacks.

And there's some crazy figures around that going around at the moment.

Stress is...

About just how stress is such a killer even in young people.

And that's the one thing that really, really worries me, the stress thing.

Like I look after myself in every single aspect,

but and stress isn't one thing that I can say, Ben, sort the stress out.

So you can't just sort it out.

So if you're sat here now with the view on your life,

and you've got many things that you strive to achieve to get,

and you've got beautiful homes and a lovely partner and a healthy lifestyle,

but you are working, you're very stressed,

and you're working hard to keep the hamster wheel moving, as you said.

What's one thing that if you could have changed it in those,

I met Paul Wallace, become a content creator days,

and started peeling off on this journey,

what's one thing you're like, I just don't forget to do that,

if you could go back and tell yourself.

There's nothing that I would have done additionally,

but there are things that I just wouldn't have done.

So I probably wouldn't have invested so heavily in the property that I'd invested in.

I wouldn't have put the cash into that.

Really?

The stuff that, you know, the boggo, buy-to-let stuff,

I wouldn't have bothered with that.

Why?

It's just sucked up a huge amount of liquidity,

and it's not passive income.

Maybe I've done it wrong, and I'm pretty sure I have done it wrong,

but it's not passive income.

And with all the changes and the tweaks,

you know, little nibbles here, there and everywhere,

so the tax efficiencies and the increase in rights for renters,

which is great, I'm not having to go,

but just all these little things that, just being a landlord,

it's not passive income, and it's not even close to being passive.

Like, most weeks I've just got hell from one angle or another.

Some tradesmen ripping me off, or a tenant going batty about something.

I don't know, do you do any, like...

Yeah, I do, but I don't have them.

I'm very fortunate not to have them on mortgages.

Yeah.

So the only homes that I've got are ones that are owned outright

through the sale of our previous business.

No debt?

No, there's no debt in there.

And that is the rainy day fund, I also call it my mum fund,

because it's all for her.

So I do it in a completely different way,

because I can't actually understand how to make the buy-to-let thing work

in this day and age.

Difficult.

Yeah, B&B thing in certain areas, you can,

but I think the buy-to-let stuff now,

and obviously you can do like HMOs and whatever,

and sort of start partitioning places and packing people.

I don't want to do any of this sort of stuff.

So you also hate people?

I don't, yeah.

My experience with a lot of people has been pretty unpleasant.

Let's just get into that.

Did you hate people when you were like 21?

I'd like to clarify, I don't hate everyone.

Just, I would say 99.9 and I'm joking.

You just struggle with people, I don't hate people.

I've seen the worst in so many people,

and I now find it very hard to trust people.

I'm very cynical about people.

I don't, when I meet someone I don't know,

I don't think I hate you.

I just think, what are you after?

How are you going to screw me?

What is it now?

Don't you have a little say in?

It's like, prove you're not a...

I remember you telling me once that a car launched.

I'm not sure.

It's got some profanity in it,

but it's like everyone's a see you and tea until they're not a see you and tea.

Oh, I don't want to get you demonetised.

Are you got a bleep machine?

Do you still get demonetised if there's a bleep machine?

Yeah, see you next Tuesday until you prove otherwise, basically.

Do you still live by that?

I don't, and I think you live a very miserable existence

if you do assume that everyone is bad news.

I have a very, very sharp radar for see you next Tuesdays now.

But that just comes as a result of I'm old.

I've dealt with so many vile people,

and I think being in the social media space,

you must have seen it as well.

Now you've come from not being in social media.

The past five years, you're now on social media.

You must get so many people saying,

A, you got a bit of money and you got a bit of clout online.

They're after something.

And it's not always immediately obvious,

but they're always after something.

And then a lot of the time in the back of their mind,

there's always a bit of animosity as well.

You've got money, you've got a bit of clout.

There's always a little bit of a lot of these people that think

screw this guy.

And there's a bit of animosity there,

particularly if they've got a very standard job.

A lot of the time people don't fully respect

what goes on behind the scenes.

The people in social media,

they just see the flashy stuff above the surface.

And I get it, it's annoying.

It's inflammatory, some of it.

I'm not talking about what you do, some of what I do.

On the face of it, it's annoying.

But yeah, you've got those ingredients in there,

and now I just have a very, very keen eye on

why is this person talking to me?

What do they want?

What are they after?

How are they going to screw me?

Now, this one, this question is actually

just a bit of a personal one.

So I apologize to the audience

that they might not be able to relate.

Because I was in a situation where,

when I grew up, I was more fortunate.

I just couldn't help being in that situation.

I didn't even know.

I can't help the wound you fell out of.

I'm part of the time.

And I ended up in my dad's business,

and I was then able to very easily start an online store

off the back of that that I went and developed,

and it grew to be quite big.

And I was like, oh my God, how has this happened?

And I remember even one day dropping off some samples

to your house when I was still in that business,

that box that you asked me to collect 100 times over.

But there was always this thing

when I grew up watching you guys in the back of my mind,

because I, sorry if I've used the wrong words,

but I used to think that you guys were very derogatory

of anybody that had any opportunity or money

or the rest of it were in your younger days.

And I would see that as fuel and fire.

Because I think, well, I can't help where I grew up

and what I have.

But what I can do is graft like crazy

until those people have a mindset change to think,

oh, there is like a few of these guys that, yeah, okay,

fair enough, you had like an easier start.

But like, I mean, it is actually a graft place.

And I've used that as fire for so many years.

So you're only a chunk of your earnings then for being rude.

So prove that you can just go out and still be a good person

and build things off of hard work and who you are.

Versus the chance and opportunity you have.

Would you say your mindset shifted on that a little bit?

I think in the early doors of social media,

there were a lot of people that were,

I think they would be referred to as Nepos,

but I don't think Nepo is the right term.

Nepo is slightly different,

but basically rich kids that were just flexing online.

And using that to flog Gough.

And there was a lot of that around.

And with that, there was a lot of entitlement

and the attitudes that came with it.

And we're talking sort of 10 years ago on social media.

And some of that hasn't changed.

There's still a lot of rich kids.

And there's nothing wrong with being born into America.

Because, you know, we're all born in the UK.

We live in the UK.

We're already in the top percentage of humans

that are not only living right now, that have ever lived.

We are already, it doesn't matter who you're born to

in this country, you are still lucky compared to actually-

I saw something on LinkedIn about that this morning.

A huge, so it is on a siding scale.

So I'm not saying, you know, some of us are unlucky here

and some of us are lucky.

We're all lucky on our own way.

But it was the attitudes that came with it.

And I get that from your side that, you know,

you want to prove people wrong.

And actually, if you start with one X,

you can turn it into five X with a bit of graft.

And I know a lot of people that are born into insane wealth

that have completely squandered it.

And I would say that's the vast majority.

The vast majority of people that are born into amazing positions,

family businesses, whatever.

There's a saying, isn't there?

You know, the first generation of family business

is, you know, the ones that grow out.

The second generation is the one that ruins or something.

It usually goes in cycles.

Yeah, I'm the second generation, so I crap myself.

You had the pressure and the stress.

I think it's the third generation, isn't it?

Because they don't see the graft that went in at the start

and they're so far detached from the original graft

from the business and they've not actually had to learn anything

because by the time they've grown up,

everything's been delegated.

So they've actually learned nothing about the business.

It tends to be third generation that goes to pot.

Apparently, I wouldn't know.

I mean, yeah.

Well, will you know at some point,

is that now how different is your outlook

on what your life is going to be over the next 10 years

versus what if you were like in your 20s,

what you thought you'd be now?

I aimed and I didn't have a plan.

I aimed to retire by 30.

I didn't have a plan.

I was just in a day, you're thinking,

it was more I want to retire by 30.

I'm so bored of working already.

But no, my outlook shifted.

I never wanted to really get married.

It wasn't something that was on my bucket list.

I have to tick this box to have a successful life.

But I've got married because I really wanted to

and I'm very happy I did.

So things have shifted.

All I want now is just peace, quiet, dogs, wife and chill

and be able to wake up and choose what I do.

That's all I want.

Whether or not it's still working in this space,

choosing the deals I do, choosing the videos I film,

choosing the travel I get to go and do.

And I can say no without thinking,

I do have that two-day period free.

Let's go to the other side of the world.

So when do you gamble on getting rid of one of the cars

or something to unlock that sum that now allows that stuff to happen?

The cars are plan B. They're not in the business plan.

So you've got no current plan,

even though you've made a million quid out of the CGT,

it's not linked quid on paper.

Yeah, on paper.

You've got no plan to unlock that.

Because surely there's also a,

oh, maybe these are piqued are going to come down a bit,

not sure where these are going to go.

Maybe they'll still keep going and get your opinion on that.

But it is gambling a little bit as well at the same time, isn't it?

Yeah, and I think all of business is,

whether or not you get someone that sets up a business selling

flowers, they go and rent a warehouse,

they go and hire three members of staff, blah, blah, blah.

That's a gamble, you know.

You say to them, where's your business going to be in three years?

They hope it's grown.

But that's still a punt.

And I think putting your money in something tangible like that,

I can see it.

I can go and drive it.

I can sell it for something.

It's insured.

It's way less of a gamble than a lot of other things out there,

as far as I'm concerned.

And that particular genre of car, it's a 2006 car,

that demographic of buyers is growing.

Now, the 50s Ferrari, a bit more of a gamble.

You've got that demographic, which is shrinking.

But those 90s heroes, 2000 heroes, that market's growing.

So is the amount of content that I'm seeing around investment cars.

I've seen you've been doing stuff with autofolio,

and we get into the fact you've just got a Jag XJ, and why that is.

But what I see in your eyes when you start to talk about 2006,

this many miles where it's going,

what it's doing is actual genuine enjoyment,

has started to create content around investment cars pieces,

reignited an actual enjoyment for creating content.

Yes, it has.

Because I feel like I can really talk about how I feel,

and really go into the thought process behind buying these things.

And a lot of people get aggy when you talk about cars,

as a kind of a financial instrument.

And that's not the whole piece.

My far as rule to buying any of these cars, I have to love it.

That's the first brick in that kind of building.

That's the first thing.

And if that's not there, then I don't bother.

I have to love it.

But also, it has to make financial sense.

And it doesn't make financial sense.

I can't afford to do it.

I'm not there yet.

I haven't exited for 20 mil, 30 mil.

I can't just buy stuff that if it loses a few hundred grand,

who cares?

I care.

Like, I can't eat if that happens.

So I like explaining why I've bought stuff.

And it's basic economics as well, a lot of it.

So explain the CGT.

So the CGT, most of the audience are car lovers, aren't they?

They know what the Crea GT is about.

I just think any car that it was a moment in time,

or a last of its kind, or a first and last like the Crea GT is,

or a kind of a unicorn moment in a blue chip brand's history,

is always going to be a good bet.

You know, they say in luxury, you buy the icons.

So like the Crea GT is iconic.

Yes, you're probably going to be all right.

Porsche, it's going nowhere.

It's always been an amazing brand.

It's always going to be an amazing brand.

It's got so many elements that they're never going to do it again.

And it's just, it's got an audience of people that 2004,

when it first got sort of released,

those people grew up without on their wall.

They're what, in their 20s, 30s.

Once they get into their 40s and 50s,

they're going to start making that needle-moving chunks of money

and they're going to start thinking,

right, what did I grow up wanting?

What was the car when I was growing up?

Crea GT. Give me one of them.

And that's when they go crazy.

So if you look at their 40s,

they were dwindling around half a million, even cheaper.

They were sort of $600, $700, and they're like late 80s.

And now they've gone crazy because the people that grew up with those,

their 40s, 50 years old.

What's an F40 now?

Two and a half million quid.

When I bought my Crea GT, there was an F40 on the market.

It was a Scruffy one. It was $700, and I couldn't get there.

I couldn't get the finance done.

There was also an LFA for $300, and I tried getting the finance done

on that at the same time as the Crea GT,

just to buy them both at the same time.

And I struggled to get the lender-proofed even on the Crea GT.

I mean, actually, even on the Crea GT,

it was still give or take half a million quid thereabouts.

So I was on it.

I just didn't have the money to hoover up as much stuff as I wanted to.

And were you really excited because you thought that that moment in our time

was a time where it was like this little window between where they've gone

and then where they go in?

I must admit, I didn't see the Crea GTs going to where they've gone so quickly.

I think that it's even surprised me that the fact they have shot up.

I always knew they were going to be a good shout,

but I remember people telling me not to buy one.

They said they've made too many of them.

Don't buy one of those.

You know, they made less of them than F40s, and F40s are two and a half million quid.

And F40s built like a kit car compared to a Crea GT.

Crea GT will be around in 100, 200 years time.

F40s probably would have disintegrated.

So what's something that you wish you would have bought that you haven't?

Because a car for me, that when it was like business sale money,

I definitely had the thought of like,

instead of buying any other cars and like having fun with them and driving them,

do I just go out and buy a Bugatti Veyron for 600 grand?

That was like at my time because I thought,

is that going to be just a standard 16.4 gray and black?

Is that going to be like the next McLaren F1 in my head?

Like a needle moving car in 2006.

What's your opinion on that?

If you'd bought that, you would be in for, what, 100 grand?

150 grand of faff and admin and repairs and servicing by now.

It's cheaper and that's what's driven the values up now

because you can get other places to work on them.

And there are workarounds on all of these things now.

So you have to get into a car whilst that stuff's prohibitive

in the hope that that stuff changes whilst you have it.

So you have to deal with a bit of pain.

So the credit GTs, I remember people saying,

oh, a windscreen's a million pounds on that car

and you can't get this, you can't get that.

Now, you've got places like RPM Technique that will work on them.

All these extracurricular places that can work on a credit GT

and there's no bother at all.

And you can choose where you get serviced and whatever and it's all fine.

You need to get into a car whilst the servicing

and whatever is really expensive, it puts people off

and that to change whilst you're in it.

So Lafts, for example, Laft Ferrari,

they've had about a million quid jump recently

because Ferrari's announced a £10,000 a year warranty on the battery pack.

So the main concern with the Lafts was battery packs can go belly up.

It will cost 150 grand.

They're on back order for God knows how long.

Who wants a 150 grand bill and a car that's dormant for three months?

It's a fair play to Ferrari.

They've sorted that out.

It's a fair play to Ferrari and they've always been good with that

after sales with their cars and looking after their old cars

and keeping those residual values high because they've realised

Halo product, a rising tide carries all ships, right?

So their whole brand values brought up.

But you see the Lafts, they jumped a mil.

As soon as Ferrari announced that,

suddenly those people that thought, don't fancy 150 grand bill,

they're just thinking, 10 grand a year, fine.

What's that, 800 grand a month on a Laft?

Who cares?

I mean, so it's those things in the background,

you need to be sort of close to all that detail to make your decision.

So the Veyron, you'd still be quits in, but it wouldn't be the kind of...

But do you think if I sit here just to have a crazy opinion in the van and say,

I think that that's going to be a 20 million car in 10 years?

No, they make too many of them.

They make too many.

This will be a good clip in a few years time, won't it?

If it goes my way.

Well, everything's going to be 20 million pounds, isn't it?

Because inflation is so wild.

Like probably by the time this podcast is ended.

Not just that, but the fact that are you as excitable?

I'm certainly not about the stuff that's coming out now.

New cars.

No, but that is not because the stuff...

It's partly because I don't actually like it,

but it's also because I've gone through the chair

and I've been in and out of so many of these new cars.

Now I've finally honed in on what I like about cars and what I enjoy

and what it is that these things mean to me.

And it isn't the latest and greatest.

I've tried it and I had to try it to know that actually I don't care.

I don't want the latest slight marginal power gain and whatever.

To all my loyal listeners listening on Spotify,

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I urge you to do me a quick favor that you might not know that you could do.

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It really will help us if we're able to grow our streaming platforms

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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast

and I really hope to bring you some more inspirational guests soon.

Because when I remember TGE buying satin blue 488 pistas with a yellow stripe...

I missed that car.

That was my favorite car I've ever had to use that.

When I remember moments like that in your journey,

lary, lary specs on stuff sometimes.

And now I sit here and if you'd have told me watching then

that you'd be doing a podcast with Tom in 10 years

and he'd just bought like a dark blue Jack X J220,

I'd be like, that's just absolute rubbish.

There's no chance he's done that.

It's like talk us through.

Have you always loved that or is this like the change in you?

Like you're going through a new way of loving God.

So as I've got older, more grumpy and more miserable,

yes, some of the stuff from my childhood is becoming more and more important.

And I've realized that what I love is design, provenance and not collectability,

but just unrepeatable, iconic stuff.

And that isn't happening so much anymore.

My brother and I, and this sounds like such a cliche and I promise I'm not lying.

My brother and I have a model X J220 that we had when we were kids.

My dad gave it to us.

It's a dark red one, but it's near enough, the same thing.

And it's at my mum's house still.

I meant to bring it to the video to film with the X Jango.

This is a model, but they were iconic things growing up.

And I think particularly the X J220, they are so, so, so undervalued.

And we can timestamp this, come back to this in five years.

I guarantee they're going to be well over a million quid, 100%.

And so what roughly are they now?

Half a mil, if that.

I reckon he's pushing up prices a bit.

I'll let it, yeah, is it if that?

I know what he's like.

Got on Lakeside Classics, there's a green one on there for 550.

So how do you monetize that knowledge?

Let's talk about that for a second.

Let's just, because we're going to get back to this,

because this is just the most enriching brain conversation

when you can get nerdy about cars.

But how do you turn that love, that passion,

and then being able to create the content creation

into part of your monthly like,

okay, I can actually make a bit of money out of this,

because I've seen you doing stuff with Autofolio, right?

He shot the success, Ari.

I love his videos.

I love his posts atop of my feed nearly every single time.

Love it.

Yeah.

So I spent years and years people asking me,

what car shall I buy?

Shall I buy a 458?

Shall I buy a 488?

Shall I buy a McLaren or whatever it is?

What's going to lose me the least value?

Because I think there's a misconception that people that

have money, also, they got there because they like keeping it,

and they like not doing stupid things with their money.

So even if they got a lot of money,

they still don't want to buy something

that loses them a load of cash.

And I don't think it matters really how much you've got

on the whole from what I've seen

towards the attitude of these people,

like they want to put their money into something

that they're not going to do their balls on.

I think that's human nature.

I think that's just sensible.

So I just get questions and questions,

years and years and years of,

shall I buy this?

Shall I buy that?

Is this going to go on value?

Is that going to lose money?

Well, I'm just guessing.

These are the reasons behind my guess.

Go wild.

And I saw Autofolio bring out this information product.

And obviously, London Muscle, that was an information product.

That is an information product.

And they're fantastic because you can sell them worldwide.

You can sell an infinite amount of them

with no extra workforce.

It's not a money printer,

but you see now with people sending courses, right?

People have worked out that you sell

selling information products.

It's perfect.

You don't have postage.

There's nothing.

It's just digitally automatically sent out.

And in the back of my mind, I was like,

I need to release an information product

about cars and blah, blah, blah.

But it's on the to-do list, which never gets touched.

And then Autofolio started doing their thing.

So I reached out to Harry and I knew his dad actually.

I said, let's do something.

I can just create a whole guide

surrounding what I've bought, what I've sold,

bought and sold prices of every single car,

like Laid Bear in this product,

which is actually a bit scary.

I've never actually listed all out what I've bought and sold

and how much I've lost and made on stuff.

Do you have to be careful giving the perceived financial advice?

I know you've got a background in law,

which definitely helps.

Yeah, for sure.

I imagine it helps.

But surely that's a little bit of hot water

because my friend Adam works at Bonham's cars on love.

I know you know Adam Rose.

And he drives loads of stuff from Bonham's.

And he has to be so careful what he tells people that come in

when they say, so you're telling me this is going up in value.

He's like, no, I'm telling you that I like this

and that it could go up in value.

My personal opinion is that it'd go up in value.

But I can't tell you it's going to go up in value.

So I've been very careful in this guide to say,

this is why I think these things will go up in value,

these specific cars.

This is why I think these things are under value.

These are the usual things that make these cars jumping value.

My guess is that they will.

And I've put my own money into them and I'm waiting to see.

So if you think this sounds logical, hop in.

If you don't, don't.

Things can go up and down.

Go figure.

But yeah, in terms of calling things like financial instruments

and saying this is something that you will make money on

and this is a financial product, you do need to be,

you do need to be a bit careful.

So let's just talk about the levels of like the amounts of money

that those cars are that make up that document

to see whether it's actually possible for the layman

that loves cars to actually move a needle and make some money.

So because they might just look at the stuff you've got

and go, I got a million pound Grera GT.

Like he's in Joe McCary buying a classic Ferrari that's staying.

Yeah, it's not related.

Way beyond my league.

It's so beyond like even financing a 5.7 C McLaren

or something like that.

It's unbelievable.

So talk me through like, and we don't mean individual cars

and not advice, but just roughly if you add 30 grand,

60 grand, 90 grand, 150 grand, 200 grand,

like the auto trader jumps when you're searching for cars,

what the sort of things are that you'd be thinking,

yeah, that's cool that move a needle.

So in the guy, we've got stuff for every price point,

including even if you've only got like 500 quid.

Shuck into a car.

We've worked with a car crowd.

I know, do you know a car crowd?

Yeah, I've heard of them.

It's that fractional ownership of investable cars.

So you can get in.

You can get your piece of whatever it is.

So they've had stuff like Ford GT40s, 996 GT3 RSs,

Testarosses, SLS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

some serious stuff.

So if you want to dip your toe in

and you get involved and make a bit of cash out of,

hopefully out of cars, then you can do that.

But we've got stuff at like 10 grand, 30 grand,

50 grand, 100 grand all the way up to two, three mil.

So do you want to name just a couple

that people might not be aware of?

I bang the drum so much about all this stuff online.

I want to preface as well, like the investment car thing.

It's not me saying this is the best way to make money.

This is my way of saying if you want to make money out of stuff

that isn't incredibly boring,

you can combine potentially making money

with something you actually like doing as well.

And don't get me wrong, I could have made loads more money

if I just put my money into Nvidia or Bitcoin

or pretty much anything else other than cars.

But going back to what I said earlier,

if I have 20 years and then I drop dead,

at least I spent 20 years messing around

and built up a big pot of toys.

Because watches is the other side to you, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So watchfolio, I imagine will be coming at some point.

Slightly trickier.

Really?

Slightly trickier.

The watch market is a little bit more volatile and it's...

Maybe not what people think that statement.

Yeah, it is a bit tricky.

And people in the watch market have been treating watches

like in financial instruments for a lot longer, I feel, than cars.

The investable car sphere is much more a mainstream term

than it was a decade ago.

But people putting money into watches, I feel...

It's probably slightly longer in the tooth, potentially.

And I think the gains and the amount of people in the watch market now,

the astronomical gains on some of these watches have been made.

And unlike cars, there aren't really that many watches that...

Cars, we've got the advent of just automatic gearboxes and everything,

hybrid technology, smaller engines, and all the safety systems,

all this guff that's destroying brand new cars

and ruining it for people that like...

smelly, noisy, enjoyable cars.

Watches, you don't have that.

You don't have a reg change, which means that new watches coming out of crap

and the old watches are great.

So you don't have that either.

Watches, you can just continue to make as many as they want.

And there's a new brand every single week

and with bits of hype here, there and everywhere.

So you can still track money in and watch it grow a bit.

But if I do a watchfolio thing, I think it's going to be a lot trickier.

It's going to be a lot trickier.

We need to be very, very careful on what we're...

Because you also spent much of your early life in London.

You said like you started out on trading fours,

not only that, that was your social sphere, right?

Your friends lived there, you're driving around there,

like you're constantly in and out of London.

Like I was sadly in and out of Swindon.

Bigot, I love everyone I know in Swindon.

But like now, if you were to walk down the street in London,

would you be wearing that?

Oh, this is from Tammy, mate.

No, I wouldn't.

No, not a chance.

If I go into London in a nice car, I don't wear any watch tool.

Whether or not it's cheaper or expensive,

I think there's an assumption that it's expensive.

So if I'm in a nice car, I have my sleeves rolled up

and I have no watch on.

And that's that.

If you come up to my window with a balaclava on

and you have a little look in, you see nothing on my wrist.

Go to the next car because I'm not wearing something nice.

And I don't have any of my watches with me in my house anymore.

I have a vault, like a bank vault that all of my stuff is in.

Nothing's in my house.

A, I can't get insured to have it in my house.

I have to get a vault built into my house.

And who wants that?

And B, I don't want them on site.

I wouldn't be able to sleep with my wife and my dogs

with all that expensive crap in my house.

So yeah, I mean, the whole London thing,

I hate being negative about London,

but it's not as bad as people bang on, but it is still crap.

I mean, if I walked around with that, dang me out.

I mean, I'm dressed like a tramp today.

So maybe people just assume it is from Tammy,

so I might get left alone.

But it's not, it's not a risky one to run at all.

Yeah, it's not ideal.

So I just mentioned watches because you've actually done

a lot of stuff with Grail Watch Club I've seen, right?

And that includes some raffling.

Yeah, and we haven't yet got on to raffling.

So what is that?

So Grail Watch Club is competition business and we give away watches.

So it's half my business, half business partners.

We set up in 2020, 2021 in fact.

So we're going four years or so.

And we basically give away a Rolex every few days.

People buy tickets as a fixed amount of days.

It's a very standard competition business,

except we're incredibly transparent about exactly how many tickets,

exactly how long it's got left.

And regardless of ticket sales, we draw it.

So like every three days or so.

And yeah, it's just been going from strength to strength.

It's great.

I've met some amazing people giving them like crazy watches

that they've paid like 10, 20 quid for.

It's been fantastic.

And that as a business is something that sort of touching on that kind of exit thing.

That is a business.

That is a very saleable business.

We've all heard about seven days performance, dream car giveaways,

I think elite click, bonkers.

You know, there's lots of exits and moving around.

BOTB, they went public stock exchange.

They got taken private again.

They got bought out.

So there's lots of mergers, acquisitions and movement in that market.

There's lots of big players, big gambling companies

that are buying up these sorts of businesses.

So whilst, yeah, that company does make money,

the play with that would be build a monster in that space.

And we are the watch giveaway business.

Other businesses, they dabble with watches

and it doesn't seem to go that well for them.

But we are the watch giveaway business in the UK.

And, you know, I think that's a very excitable business.

It's a very scalable business.

It's going really well.

So I think in terms of the trajectory on that one,

that was pretty exciting.

And I'm actually really proud of it.

I think it's great.

Without your ins to various watch dealers, et cetera,

would that business be a lot more challenging to run?

So my business partner in that, James,

he was actually in financial services,

speaking with at a day job in banking,

very organized, very on it, like super, super detail led.

All the things that I'm actually not,

he has all the ingredients I don't,

and that's a long list of things that I don't have.

And he then moved from that into watches.

So he went to work for a massive like watch trading platform.

So he knows the market inside out.

He knows where to source these things.

We don't buy them at retail.

We buy them in the trade.

So we buy them at trade price rather than sort of retail price

just watch the Swiss and whatever.

So he's buying very, very well.

And we're buying, that'd be a good one.

People love these.

This to me, and I bought this.

This was on my birthday and I actually had it on offer.

It's the first new watch I've ever bought.

Perfect.

My other watch is used.

And I bought this because we used to call my dad Mr. Blue Sky.

And my granddad always had a fluted bezel on his watch

and a Jubilee bracelet.

So to me, that's my dad and my granddad in that watch.

It doesn't get more iconic really than that.

White gold fluted bezel.

I mean, yeah, your crown's unscrewed.

Go steady with that one.

So this is going to be absolutely baffling.

I'm not very good at telling the time.

I never have been.

I can never look at a watch face and know what the time is

unless I look at it for like three to five seconds.

I mean, I think it's right.

I don't actually set the watch, look at the watch,

do anything with the watch.

I purely look at the watch to remind me of my old man.

Just a bracelet then.

Yeah.

Fair enough to be fair.

I mean, I'm amazed that's actually telling the time.

I actually set it in the car.

Just a real kind of bit.

But yeah, people, you know, that is,

that sort of watch is currency.

You know, that's just, it's just a staple.

You know, it's a luxury staple that's cool now.

It was cool 50 years ago.

It's, I mean, I don't know.

They made them 50 years ago.

30 years ago.

It's going to be cool in 30 years.

It's sick.

And you can't really destroy them.

So that's the sort of thing we give away.

So you're still Rolexes.

You're still Amigas.

Like the real kind of like day to day stuff that everyone loves.

And is there still enough people buying tickets on raffle competition sites?

Yeah.

I mean, it's a massively saturated area.

And I think where we're excelling is the fact that my name's behind it.

Not that I'm, you know, not that I'm super popular,

but there's the trust there.

You know, I'm, I would hope that people would know that I'm not about to put my face to a scam.

You know, it's my business.

I'm behind it.

I'm not on a like just a retainer or a bung from them.

Like it's my company and it's important that everyone gets the prize that they actually

win.

Unlike some of these companies where you can buy a ticket and how do you know if anyone's winning

it?

How do you know they're actually giving it away?

You got no idea.

You've got absolutely no idea.

It is a regulated space, but it's not that regulated.

Will it become more regulated?

I think there will be changes down the line.

I think there's a paper in parliament now about sort of building up the regs.

And I think that will drop out some of the, some of the smaller companies.

You see that as an advantage.

I do.

Yeah.

And the fact that there's someone in house that people already trust that they know

isn't just some fly-by-night scumbag who's going to pop up, rip a few hundred grand off

people and disappear again.

You know, we've been going four years and, you know, I'm not at the stage of life where

I need to be ripping people off.

It's great.

It's absolutely great.

Some of the watches have been given away at Wild.

I mean, we occasionally do like Rowdy for Gold, like Daydates.

We do a lot of steel Daytonas.

Some of the people you meet though, like they never in their wildest dreams would have a watch

like that.

And you go and give it to them and they're just, they can't believe it.

One guy, I think it's one three watches, one three off us.

And that's when you get people saying, oh, it's a fix.

If it was a fix, I wouldn't have given it to the same person three times.

I would have found some of you.

So I think we've had one or two double winners, maybe more than that.

And then we've had like a triple win as well.

So crazy really, but that's cool.

It's a great feeling.

And yeah, fingers crossed, you know, at some point might exit it.

Not desperate to do so, but might do.

If we do, then we might be having a very different conversation.

When do you stop taking the risks that you're running though?

So like buying another car, another car, another car.

Do you think that you would be a content human if you had a retired at 30?

And you didn't have the risk?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Do you?

Yeah, definitely.

Because I've heard from people that when they've stopped working,

I think Tom Hartley said when he came on here that he had a couple of weeks

where he just did this complete trial with his wife to cut himself off with work.

And he literally came out and he showed me these pictures of him with shingles everywhere

because his body just so wasn't used to not.

Christ.

I'll let you know hopefully.

Do you think that would be you?

That'd be a great problem to have and to trial and be able to test.

I'm nowhere near being able to test that yet.

But if the trigger point will be if I exit a company or come into a load of money,

if I find a secret relative somewhere that's left me, God knows what,

that might be a trigger for getting rid of some property, getting rid of some assets

and then just getting to a figure where I realize I can't burn for it.

And a lot of the time I'm stressed and bored.

I'd rather just be bored.

Are you sensible stressed?

So even though, because what I mean by that is the stuff you're buying,

there is some strategy to it, but it can also be viewed as a bit chaotic.

How do you view it yourself?

Are you like behind the facade of it?

Fuck it.

Let's just have a go.

There's no spreadsheets.

There's no formal organization.

It's in here.

I know where I'm at with everything.

But in terms of our time, can you find this document for that?

And I'm not that organized behind the scenes.

How is in here somewhere?

How is your early years in learning part of the law?

And what was that helped most of your life?

Would you say that is something so valuable that people should kind of get their heads around?

I wouldn't say so.

No.

I mean, I did law at uni three years of that and then you're taught.

Because it wasn't Jay, your brother, a barrister.

So he got a scholarship into an inn, like a barrister's inn in London.

And neither of us actually went into practice.

So he did the BVC for those people that are boring about it.

I'm not sure it was even called this anymore.

He did the BVC.

So we both did a law degree.

He went into the BVC, which is what barristers need to do to then start barristering.

And then I did the LPC, which is what solicitors need to do to start,

I'm just going to say soliciting, but that means something else.

So our idea was to set up a criminal law practice between us, right?

Are we going to do the legal aid stuff in police stations?

You don't know what you see in the bill.

And so tell some scumbag to say no comment.

You know, set up a table like this with police on the other side.

And you go and do like call outs, police station.

And that's what I wanted to do.

Because as I hate routine, I quite like the idea of just being woken up

and going and doing things.

I know it sounds like hell, but that's what I want to do.

And then I could pass them on to my brother.

And we'd have a law practice where we could just sort of pull people through end to end.

Cheers.

Turn through the criminals or not criminals, as the case may be.

That was the idea.

We're coming towards the end of our studies, legal aid stuff,

all the funding fell out of it.

And to get a training contract in that sort of thing,

it was all just turned into hell.

So I was like, you know what?

I'm going to go into banking and day to day the law stuff doesn't really help.

In terms of like being able to write an email, read an influencer contract,

respond adequately to these things like problem solving, blah, blah, blah.

There's loads of like transferable skills, but actually the legal side of things.

What you learn at uni and law school, you learn how to apply the law.

You don't actually necessarily learn the law.

You need to learn some case law and have something front of mind.

But actually all you're doing is qualifying to look it up.

With your investment car pieces now, without your years in banking,

would you be doing that as well?

I think so.

Yeah.

I think so.

There's nothing I learn and learn in finance that most people wouldn't understand.

Anyone that's mortgaged their property or has done anybody to let staff

will understand how to finance a car.

It's just asset finance.

It's the same thing, just that the interest rate is higher

and there's a higher level of risk involved in it.

You know, the finance of my cars, it's pretty much exactly the same as a mortgage.

Bar the balloon.

Obviously the mortgage, you're paying off over 35 years.

But on car finance, you're paying it for two, three years

and then you have the balloon payment.

So you're only paying off a chunk of it and then you go again.

But actually over the life of it, it's still probably a 20-30 year agreement.

Just looks different.

You just have to keep looking at it.

The same in the mortgage.

You have to look at it every two, three years anyway.

So it's pretty much exactly the same thing.

And actually a mortgage is going to be more stressful.

Because you can't just get out of a house.

Who do you look up to anybody?

Do you like seeing individuals online and you think,

do you know what, the way they've got it, that's what I've got to aim for.

Do you put anything there as like I'm aiming for it?

Sounds really arrogant.

This isn't me saying I've smashed it, but no.

Because I have inherent distrust of what people are telling me online.

I know the smoke of mirrors that goes on with people

and what things look like and what things are.

A lot of the time, the most successful, smartest people don't look like that.

And a lot of the time, the people that look like they're the most successful

and the sharpest people, they're actually just smooth brains

that are just very good at the window dressing.

So no, and I'm not a massive content consumer.

That's not me saying I know everything.

I could probably do with watching more podcasts, watching more videos,

but I'm so busy trying to put my own guff out

that I don't have time to sit down and actually...

Your stuff, I've barely seen any of it.

I would love to sit down and watch an hour and a half

of someone that I could actually learn something from,

but I'm too busy just swipe up, use my code.

So it's at some point, yeah.

Why do you still like the UK?

And is there a reason you're still here?

Because so many guys are now...

I was wondering if you're going to get onto this.

To buy out of the UK.

It seems like it's also part of financial strategy,

which you're incredibly up to terms with.

Why haven't you taken that step?

Or will you?

Have you looked at it?

Have you thought about it?

Do you know what?

I'm incredibly negative about our current government.

I didn't vote for it.

I don't agree with pretty much anything they've been doing.

I think it's the worst government I can remember.

I think it's the worst Prime Minister in the generations, if not ever.

And I think everyone would probably agree with me by now.

I was saying this when they came into power.

I cannot stand this Labour government.

I cannot stand them.

I love the UK.

I love being born here.

I love being here.

I love the UK.

I'm not going anywhere.

And I'm not being driven out.

I'm not being incentivised out by attack saving or something.

I don't want to go and live in another country.

I want to be here.

I want to earn money here.

I want to contribute.

I want to be part of this country's future.

I don't want to swirl off.

And I understand people that are going because they have children.

I don't have children.

If I had small people and I was living in a different part of the UK

and I felt slightly more at risk, then maybe I would sack it off.

Have you ever been offered the...

Will you promote this crypto guide for me?

Will you sell some of these things or stuff like that?

And I know that you kind of joke.

And you're very open and honest with the audience,

the fact that you do joke about it.

And there is serious behind it.

But like, right, let's get on this brand deal, this content.

Is that the point you say no?

Yeah, I say no all the time.

So things that crypto rug pulls, all this kind of stuff,

the trading groups, the signals.

I probably could have retired by now if I jumped on a lot of that scammy stuff.

But ultimately, I don't want to knock at the door 4am in five years time

because I've been part of some money laundering ring or some rug pull

or some scammy forex, whatever, or trading signals, this that and the other.

I don't want the FCA at my door.

I don't want anyone at my door.

I want to be able to go to sleep and wake up the next day and think,

I'm doing the right thing.

So I say no to a lot of stuff.

Do you think in the next five to 10 years,

we're going to see people that many follow online

starting to potentially go down one after another?

No, because they leave the country and they go to places where they can avoid it on the whole.

Are you shocked at the amount of people that can't see what's actually going on?

Everyone loves the idea of a fast buck.

And people believe the thing that looks like the best option for them.

So I'm not surprised that people buy into it.

I'm not surprised that people go for it.

Do you understand how it makes money for the people doing it?

Yeah, yeah, you don't want to get into that.

It's a churn.

It is a churn.

And you know, yeah, I do making six figures a month out of that alone,

if I went down that route.

And I think with my background, people assume that I'm in the markets,

I was a trader and I'm financially this, that and the other.

So if I started saying, right, that's it, guys.

I'm finally going to own up to actually how I make money.

Join my Telegram group.

Off we go.

I'll be churning.

I'll be having it off 100,000s a month.

But what's that from?

Where's that 100,000s a month come from?

You take it.

I don't want to get into it because it's if you shine too much of a light on it,

people will try and get into themselves.

I don't want to put any airtime into it.

I just want to say I don't.

Okay.

How different is that to actual trading realistically on a stock floor in London?

The traders on the trading floor in London aren't creating Telegram groups

and getting 12 year olds from Coventry to sign up and taking money off them.

So someone who acts like yourself for so many years as this brash f off.

I don't care.

You can't say anything that's going to hurt me.

I'll just do anything.

I'm here for myself.

I'm here for my own life and all the rest of it.

F you a little bit to an extent.

What I'm getting at is have I found TGE's moral compass?

There's hard stops in there.

100%.

So I won't promote anything as illegal or an immoral.

It's obviously a sliding scale, right?

So like EVs, for example, if you extrapolate that, that's immoral.

They're mining this, that and the other.

There's nothing less sustainable than a brand new car, right?

No one needs a brand new car.

There's loads of cars.

There's cars everywhere.

You can just go and buy a car that would exist.

So that's not so.

So it's a sliding scale morality, right?

But I mean just outright what most people would agree is a moral.

It's a hard stop.

Would my dad be proud of it?

Would I be able to sit down in front of him and say,

Dad, I've made money out of this.

All good.

And if he would turn around and go,

you're a scumbag, then I'm not doing it.

So do you actively still think, even after all these years,

feel like me, of your dad every single day and what he'd say

to the things you do, do you use him as a guide?

I do.

And I also think about what would he think of this person?

Am I going to business with this person?

Am I dealing with this person?

Am I hanging around with this person?

What would my dad think?

If I introduced my dad to this person,

what would he think of them?

And if he would have a quiet word with me

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Sack him off.

Why do you believe his opinion always would have been right?

It's just it's hard.

Why doesn't it?

You believe him?

He's a good guy.

He was a good guy.

He never did anything.

He was always just, he just said in life, don't lie.

Don't do anyone over.

Don't lie.

And you'll always be able to sleep with a clear conscience.

You know, some people get further ahead earlier on

by being rats.

But ultimately, you know, when everything runs its course,

those people take 15 steps back because they've built a house of cards.

You know, if you're always good to people and you're transparent

about what you're doing and you're open about what you're doing,

you will never have to look behind your back.

You will never have to look over your shoulder.

So how much have you changed from 28 year old Tom, for example?

And would the Tom right at the start of that crazy explosion of content

and videos and everything?

Would he have been more likely to drop in to join my telegram group then?

Or would he have still said no?

Still would have said no.

I'd have been even more unlikely to have been promoting the financial guff.

Even more unlikely to have been promoting it back then

because I was so close to my day job.

And my day job meant way more to me then than it would do now.

So don't forget, I can't go back and work in that sphere.

If I'm promoting financial guff and I have an FCA warning out on my name,

I can't go back and work in financial services ever again.

I can't set foot in a bank ever again.

I mean, I'm not going to get like, shoot away at the door,

but I can't apply for a job.

I can't do any of that thing.

So that's less important to me now.

I still take consultancy roles.

Occasionally I'll dip into like a fintech or a challenger bank

or a bank and come in and help with stuff.

So occasionally I will do a contract.

I'll still take contract work.

So three months, six months, full-time role, fully remote.

So I can work from wherever I am.

I'm still in that sphere every now and again.

I think that's what a lot of people don't realise.

I'm still dipping.

I still do take a recruit or ring me and say,

we've got a role here, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Day rate stuff, happy days.

So I still do it.

So there's also that element of it.

I don't want to promote anything financially legal

because it potentially cuts an income stream from it as well.

Are you then proud of the choices you've made up to now

and do you believe you will get that pot of gold that you're chasing?

Yeah, I'm pleased.

I'm obviously gutted.

I haven't retired yet.

Absolutely devastated.

My aim was to sort of semi-retired by the time I had kids if I have kids.

And I haven't had kids yet, but I've also not retired yet.

So we'll see how that goes.

But yeah, I think so.

The couple of my businesses are a point that if I exit them,

should be okay.

I can't retire on a yacht with sort of four helicopters,

but I can come off the gas, right?

And I can start choosing where I am, what I'm doing.

And actually, if I do get that pot of gold,

the first thing I do is not going to be buying a car or anything like that.

It's actually just going to take a breather

and just enjoy having some money in my account for a change.

Having some liquidity for once.

Well, I think this has been probably one of the most laid back conversations

I've ever seen with you in history.

And I think you're a very different person to speak to

than the one that you were 10, 15 years ago.

You might come across that may have been a little bit more punchy in the van.

10 years ago, I was doing my nine to five,

which wasn't a nine to five.

It was an eight or six or whatever it is, right?

And two or three times a week, I'd be doing all nighters.

So I'd be filming and then editing overnight, having a shower sometimes,

changing, then going back to work.

So I was running on nil sleep.

And that was to try and dig my way out of a full-time job.

I was a very different human then.

I actually look older 10 years ago than I do now.

I was that close to, I don't know, something pretty bad.

But I was just desperate to not have that 40, 50 year stretch ahead of me at a desk.

And I saw the content, social media stuff as my ticket out.

So I was like, if I don't start digging hard now to get out of this,

I'm going to be sat at this desk with these people that I hate for the rest of my life.

And I cannot do that.

I cannot get up when it's dark, go to work.

And I'm not saying I'm above it.

I'm just saying I really hate it.

I hate routine.

I hated what I was doing.

Linky Plonky.

I hated it.

And I can't do that 40 years.

Well, I think it's amazing that you're not doing that now then.

So, Tom.

Long may it continue.

Thank you so much.

Thanks very much.

What I'm also going to do is leave a few links in the description to this video,

the things that you've mentioned during this podcast.

So you'll guide an autofolio.

Put a little bit of information on the screen as well about what that is over the top of

when we spoke about it.

If you go back in the podcast, you may have seen some further information

on screen when we're talking about that.

But I want to thank you for over just over an hour in the back of the van.

Chaos.

It's been a good temperature when I actually recorded my first episode

with Paul Wallace in the van.

We did it in near 30 degree heat at services in the summer.

And it was not as comfortable as this.

So, Tom, thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Appreciate it.

It was really good fun.

Turn on.

Cheers.

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