He Won 1.5 Tesla Roadsters with Referrals! 😮 Tactics in a Tesla

- See, me and you both.

We're trying to be cool but we're both nerds at heart.

- Yeah, not cool at all.

(laughs)

Dude, what's up, man?

- Not much, man.

How are you?

- Good, you wanna go on a car ride and talk a little bit?

- Yeah, hop in.

- How 'bout you come in here?

- No, no, no, I've got the three.

- But I have the X, I have the wings.

They go up.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, but mine's newer.

- But I also have all the Hero cams in here so.

- Okay, all right, cool.

- Okay, we'll see you in minute.

- All right.

- [Man] 'Sup man?

- What's up brother, how are you?

- Come on in.

Come on in.

Somebody who I know is very familiar with the Teslas

because you are the Tesla guy.

(laughs)

You've become the Tesla person on YouTube.

- I have or one of 'em.

Having a lot of fun with that

but every time I get in this car,

I'm always just crazy impressed

with how advanced the tech is, so.

- [Man With White Sunglasses] Like the X

versus the other ones?

- Dude, it's nuts, it's nuts.

You don't have to open the doors or even touch 'em.

Just every bit about this vehicle specifically

blows me away.

- So how many people have you referred to buy a Tesla?

- As of right now, as of today, 88.

- 88?

Dude, that's perf, like 88 miles per hour.

- (laughs) Right, exactly.

We're goin' back to the future man.

- Dude, that's insane man.

'Cause you're helping people make a decision

to buy, not like an online course,

or a piece of software,

I mean this is a huge dollar amount

that you're getting people to pay.

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean the average has to be around 100 grand.

Which is nuts, ya know?

But it's a pretty high touch thing

and, you know, Teslas sell themselves.

- They do.

- I think people that buy using my code

probably were already headed down this path.

Hopefully--

- [Man With White Sunglasses] How do you

become the person who convinces them

to actually pull the trigger?

- Well, I don't really do a lot of selling.

I just kind of share information

and I think through that process,

it solidifies a lot of people's understanding.

And for some, maybe the answer's no,

but for many, the answer is just even more yes

than it was before.

You know?

So it's one of those things where,

that's why Tesla doesn't have a marketing company.

Or a marketing team or anything.

- Yeah, or you don't see any commercials.

- Yeah, exactly.

They don't do any advertising or any of that stuff

because they don't need to.

- That's crazy.

- (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

So it's a cool relationship

because it's not like I'm selling them something I made

and I'm not benefiting directly

in terms of getting a commission off of the sale.

So it's kind of mutually beneficial

where I do get some cool prizes, some really cool prizes,

but at the same time,

they're getting something out of it as well.

So we're all coming out ahead in the end.

- So how did you even start with this?

So for those of you who are watching right now

and you don't know, Ben,

you can find him on his YouTube channel

at Teslanomics, or as you say Tes-la-nomics.

- I was gonna correct you but I gave you a chance (laughs).

- I know, we don't have to spend like the 20 minutes

that we're gonna be here together arguing

Tesla versus Tes-la.

But Elon says Tes-la, right?

- So does Franz.

- I have to give you that.

- Yep.

- But you've become known as the Tesla guy

on YouTube at Teslanomics.

What is it that you do on that YouTube channel specifically?

- So I like to think of it as exploring the world

of sustainable tech.

And that kind of goes hand in hand with what Tesla does.

Right?

They're trying to transition us to better forms

of transportation and energy and all those kind of things.

You know when I started out,

I was just making actually teaser videos

for my online courses,

'cause I have all these online courses around data science.

And I did one explaining

about how much money I was saving in gas

by having a Tesla and it went nuts.

And so then i started making more Tesla videos

and more Tesla videos,

bringing my background as a data scientist

to kind of explore and kind of uncover these insights,

not from a superficial level,

but kind of like a deeper analytical level.

- That's crazy.

So you did a lot of videos about data

and then one of them about Tesla took off

and you just kind of rolled with it.

- Yeah, well you know I think that's my whole philosophy

on really business is experimenting

and looking at what the data shows.

By the way, if you do the Tesla wave

when you're not in a Tesla--

- Wait, there's a Tesla wave?

- Yeah, I mean you just did it.

That's it. - Oh, oh, okay, I thought--

- I do the two finger, like I'm a cool guy, peace.

But I'm trying to be cool but you know.

- Wait so, have you done it like not in a Tesla

to a person who's in--

- Yes, and they just look at you really weird.

(laughs)

- So I have, let me go into autopilot real quick,

I have a Tesla sign that I want to become popular.

Maybe you can help with this movement.

But I want to go autopilot

and then do the Tesla sign like this.

Like a timeout but it's the shape of the Tesla logo.

- Yeah, that's right, that's right.

- So if I see a Tesla, I'm gonna be like, boop!

- (laughs) There you go.

- And I show that to my wife and she's like, why?

- Right.

See, you and me both.

We're trying to be cool but we're both nerds at heart.

- Yeah, not cool at all.

- (laughs) But we have cool cars

so that's helping a little bit.

Um, no yeah, I was in my truck one time

and I did that to somebody

and they just looked at me like what is this guy doing?

- But we're starting to see them everywhere now, right?

- Yeah.

Yeah, just yesterday, I parked.

I was going to a coffee shop near my house

and another one, a black model 3, exactly same car,

pulled up and parked right in front of me.

It's crazy that even in a market like ours

where yes, we're in California,

but San Diego's much smaller than say L.A. or San Francisco,

that there's that many of them floating around out there.

- Well, I remember we were the first in my family

to have an X in our neighborhood.

And so we got looks all the time.

People hadn't ever seen this car before.

Now it's just, you know, oh there's another X.

- Right, all the time.

I think the wings on this one, the doors,

are specifically kind of attention getting, you know?

- Kind of why I got 'em but also

because they are just like the DeLorean

and so whatever I can get--

- Now, can these open in your garage?

- They can.

- They can, okay see--

- They don't open all the way

'cause they know not to open all the way,

but I have enough room in the garage for them to open

for the kids to get in.

- See I have an older home with a small garage

and we had a Model X loaner for a little bit,

no chance.

Like you couldn't even, my son, two and a half years old,

couldn't even crawl in there.

So at that point, we were like, yeah,

maybe we'll wait for the Model Y

and they'll have regular doors probably.

- So Model Y, I only just recently heard about it

because it's your featured video currently

on your channel.

I didn't even know Y was coming out.

- Yeah, so that's the next priority for them

is the Model Y,

which is like the watered-down cheaper version

of this car, of the Model X.

And so, yeah, hopefully it'll have normal doors.

It'll probably have less features.

Probably similar interior with an iPad style design.

- So like the three to the S, this would be the Y to the X.

- Correct, correct.

It'll be cheaper, all those kind of things.

And this is the largest and fastest growing segment

of the U.S. auto market right now.

- What is?

- The Crossover SUVs.

So it makes total sense for Tesla

to be going after this market.

It could be huge.

- I mean, they're just gonna use the same body

as the three or something, right?

- Uh, they went back and forth on that

and then Elon came back to, yeah,

his team convinced him to use the same platform.

But then the big advancement

is this thing called the flex circuit, which would--

- Sounds like the Flux Capacitor, that's awesome.

- Exactly.

It's gonna reduce the amount of wiring.

So this car has around three kilometers of wiring in it,

which is an insane amount.

The three has one point five kilometers.

This one is gonna have 100 meters of wiring.

- Oh wow.

- Si you're taking an insanely reduced amount of wiring,

which reduces complexity,

which makes it simpler to build, more profitable, et cetera.

- So he'll only be a few months late

with the delivery of that one.

- Well, that's the big question, right?

You don't have a factory to build it.

So that's a problem.

And also, this flex circuit wiring

isn't exactly like an industry standard technology.

So you may have some more challenges there.

- Right, I mean Elon makes up his own stuff

along the way, so.

- Yeah, he definitely, you know,

without him pushing things to 11, we wouldn't get to eight.

So I think because of that,

that's how we make progress.

- So we could geek out about Tesla--

all day. - All day.

- But I want to talk about you

and your brand and your business.

I mean, what's working for you right now?

You've got the YouTube channel.

How often are you posting a video?

- I've actually upped it to about five days a week.

- Why?

- But I have a hack for you.

Now I'm nervous.

This is like my hack, I don't wanna tell people about this.

- You don't have to say it if you don't want to

but now everybody's gonna wanna hear you say.

- Now they're gonna wanna know.

All right, so here's my secret

and I think it goes back to what I was saying before.

The idea of experimenting with things

and looking at the data

and then when you have show good signs,

kind of push on those a little further

until you find a rhythm.

So the rhythm I've found,

and I've been doing it for about five weeks now,

is I do a live stream on Monday.

And in the live stream, I cover Tesla news stories.

So those in themselves are very attractive

to algorithms and SEO and all that kinda stuff, right?

'Cause it's already popular in the news.

Then, that's maybe about an hour long show,

and so from there I'll cover three, four,

maybe five stories.

I take the top three of those stories

and I create highlights from that live stream.

So just segments, ya know?

Seven minutes, 10 minutes, depending on how long it is.

And that goes into subsequent days.

- The separate videos.

- They're separate videos but all it was

is a portion of that live stream.

- Interesting.

- And at first I was nervous that my audience

would be, would kind of revolt.

Like, oh my gosh, I've already seen this,

what's going on?

And there are a few people that have commented on that.

But the deal is is that the way the YouTube algorithm works,

only 20 to 30% of my subscribers even see my videos.

- Yeah, same with me.

- Right, so it's one of those things

where publishing every single day,

it's not like the same people are getting bombarded

with your stuff.

And then the other side of it

is like well, an hour long video is a hard one to digest.

So this way you're taking the most juicy bits of it

and then chopping it up and making it easier

to digest for them.

- I like that.

I'm sure you're getting people who

are watching all the way through

who are becoming bigger fans of yours.

- Sure, sure.

And I did notice when I first started doing it,

where people would, the same people were commenting

on every video.

So it was one of those things where it was like,

oh wow, I had just assumed they wouldn't watch

if they had already seen it.

But the like to dislike ratio is super good.

So is the watch time

and the suggested versus your subscriber base.

So yeah, I mean I'm posting five days a week

but that's one live stream and then one produced video.

- 'Cause five days a week I've also heard,

if you're gonna be on YouTube,

is a great strategy to get kind of the maximum velocity.

But I mean that's overwhelming.

Even with a studio and we've got Caleb in the back there.

You can't see him.

Can you wave, Caleb?

Hey, there he is.

It's still a struggle for us to kind of stay moving forward.

- And with your content man,

it is so deep that each piece,

it's not, like mine is literally me talking

about some news story for five minutes.

That takes me very little time to prep or whatever.

You, each thing you post

is like a strategy on how to do something

that's super valuable and informative.

So each piece, I'm sure, takes a lot of work

and a lot of time.

- Outlining, scripting.

I would love to get to a point

where I could just see something on the news

and be like, oh, well there's my content idea.

- Right (laughs).

- And then now I just have to share my thoughts about it.

Which is kind of cool.

And I'm sure I could add that in

in some way, shape or form

with different things that happen.

Changes in Facebook and I could fit it in.

I just haven't been very active with doing that.

- Yeah, it's one of those things that's certainly,

I think your audience,

and me as someone that's listened to your podcast

for a long time, would love that, right?

YouTube algorithm changes.

Great, let's hear about it.

Or how Facebook is changing things, or whatever.

All that kind of stuff I think would be easy

for you to make and also, people would love it.

So you do, my strategy is I do the livestream, chop it up.

So I'm posting every day even though I'm only recording

for one of those days.

- I like that.

Have you always been good on video?

- I don't know.

I think the video stuff and my comfort level with it

goes back to my days in corporate America

when I was doing a lot of presentations.

And that all came from following Nancy Duarte's

presentation strategy,

taking her training,

getting comfortable speaking in front of people.

So I think that translates well to video.

And in some ways it's easier

because there's not a person standing there

that's gonna throw a tomato at you or something, right?

- Right, right.

- I mean, what do you think

'cause you do a lot of public speaking now?

- I mean I was terrified about it at first.

I would never have thought I would have ever put my face

on camera, let alone get on stage.

But just little baby steps along the way

has gotten me more and more comfortable.

And I still get really nervous.

Like before we go and record a video like this,

or before I go on stage,

I still sometimes get really anxious.

Before backstage I still am known

to almost throw up.

I like dry heave a little bit.

But I persist and I get through it anyway

because I know once I get started, things are good

and I'm good to go.

But for you on your channel,

by the way, we just stopped and we're gonna hang out

at this really cool place right here.

You can't see it right now.

But we're gonna get a little romantic.

Not really.

But you'll see in just a minute.

Um, that's for the watch time

so they'll stick around.

- We'll do like a bromance

like Peter Mckinnon, Casey Neistat thing.

Did you see that

where they're drinking a pina colada together?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love those guys.

But for you on video,

how have you felt with your comfort level

with YouTube specifically?

What has been the biggest help for you with that?

- Yeah, ya know, when I first started vlogging,

I had a lot of that nervousness.

There's something very unnatural

about walking around in public,

holding this giant camera pointed at your face, right?

But as I started to do more of my own editing

and I started to piece the things together

and see the reaction online,

I realized even if I look weird and awkward

out and about in public,

the response that I get online is so kind of fulfilling.

And it's so great to have that quick feedback loop, right?

Like you record, a couple days later you post it.

Or you know, whatever.

So I think just having an audience online

that embraces you,

kind of refuels my bucket

of being comfortable doing this thing.

- How would you recommend a person who's starting out

who has yet to build that audience

and does not have that immediate feedback

because they don't have a large viewership yet?

- Oh man, I would say

in the beginning it's very easy

to kind of over absorb the littlest bit of feedback you get.

So you get one dislike on a video

and it's like, the world is ending!

No!

People don't like me.

But really that's just one.

Down the road, you'll be getting thousands of people

that dislike your stuff

and tens of thousands that like it.

So it's one of those things.

In the early days, I would say,

just focus on being true to your art.

If that's sharing insights

from whatever superpower you have,

or from some experience you're going through

and you're just a vlogger,

focus on just making great content

and being true to what you want to bring to the platform.

And then from there, I would say your audience will come.

And as they start to come, engage with them.

Really try to make it a human thing, you know?

- I know that's something you do very well.

And as you've been experimenting with different kinds

of videos for your channel, not everything has panned out

or has done well,

and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.

But let's do a quick change of scene, cool?

(snaps fingers)

All right, so we were gonna go to this romantic place

which was a pond that was really cool

but it was just way too windy.

So we're back at the studio.

- You owe me that date.

- We'll do it some time.

(laughs) But no, I want to talk about your business model

because your money isn't actually coming

from the Tesla stuff.

This is more of a, sort of a, I don't know.

What do you even call it?

A side gig or a passion project or--

- It's fun.

That's mostly what it is.

I've enjoyed some really cool experiences because of it.

I've got some really cool prizes kind of

in the works and stuff.

Definitely the money is helping and growing.

I look at YouTube and Teslanomics

as the future of what I want to be doing

because it kind of marries my own passions and interests

with something that is also financially sustainable.

But yeah, currently it's small and growing

but it's not the most substantial part of my income.

- Where is your income coming from?

- Yeah, it's from these old online courses

that I built, back starting in 2013.

- So you created online courses back in 2013 about what?

- Data science.

- And where are they?

- They're on pluralsight.com

and lynda.com or linked and learning,

that's kind of the same thing now.

- So not even on your own branded website or anything?

- No.

When I first started out this was kind of a side hustle

where I was making these online courses.

I was still working full time for Mozilla actually.

And back then it was just kind of fun.

I was like, okay, I want to teach this thing.

And one course wasn't a huge amount of money coming in.

It was a little bit, you know,

so it kind of started out just like beer money.

And then a few more courses grew into paying for my car,

paying for my house.

And now 26 online courses later,

that is the most significant portion of my income

is from these courses that I've made

starting back five years ago.

- And they're still pulling income for ya?

- They're still doing great, yeah.

I mean every now and then you see a blip up or down

and that's the unfortunate part about building it

on someone else's platform

is that I don't have control over that.

Like I can't do a launch or any branding

or any marketing around a course

because I don't necessarily own it.

But at the same time, I, starting out,

only had to focus on creating the content.

I didn't have to focus on, as you know,

the whole entirety of being an entrepreneur.

- Right, the marketing and the branding.

- Yeah, so it was easier to get started.

But the revenue of course

wasn't really the best opportunity so.

- If you didn't have the Tesla stuff going on now,

which I know is your focus

and it's the residual income that has allowed you

to have the time to focus on this,

what do you think you'd be doing?

- I would probably still be making online courses

for data science stuff.

I'd probably still just be helping people learn

how to advance in their careers

or how certain companies can uncover, use the data

that they have to better serve their customers.

- I'm sure you're getting a lot of enjoyment

out of what you're doing with the Tesla stuff.

- It's amazing, yeah.

- What's been the most significant, coolest thing

that has happened as a result of it?

- Well, as we've talked about the referral program

is really cool and that has a metric in there

which is how many pounds of CO2 that we've saved

as a community, Teslanomics community,

by people switching over to electric vehicles.

And that's now over 330,000 pounds of CO2

that have not entered the atmosphere as a result.

And I mean, yeah, financial, there's all these other metrics

that I probably should care about more,

but to me that one is probably the most meaningful.

- Why is that the most meaningful to you?

- Well, you know, it's funny.

When you look at all the things

to really care about in the world

and to get upset about,

there's always something that bugs somebody else.

To me this is like the thing that trumps all of them

because it's like, look,

if we have runaway greenhouse gas emissions

and all this and global warming,

that's it, game over.

Nothing else matters anymore.

And so thinking about the future, what I can do,

the small little, you know, whatever I can do

to really help that.

And through Teslanomics and all this

I'm able to help people

kind of find whatever motivation they needed

to go electric, than it's all worth it.

Every little bit adds up so it's really cool.

- I mean, when I started my first business online

it was about helping people pass an exam

in the architecture industry, about sustainable design

and environmental-friendly buildings.

And I felt the same way.

It was my small little thing that I was carving out

to do good in this world, right?

Because I was helping other people pass this exam

so that they could build buildings that were sustainable.

And I didn't have a metric like that

but that's cool that they actually keep track of that.

I think that's really smart of them to do that.

- Yeah, it totally helps

with the kind of social credibility or whatever.

And they have a really cool map and infographic

that shows it.

So each person that has a referral code,

like you do 'cause you're a Tesla owner,

you can go see where you're saving the CO2

and all that kind of stuff.

- I've referred one person, my buddy, Dylan.

And as a result I got a prize.

Your prize with doing so much volume

is the new Tesla Roadster, which goes zero to 60

in one point nine seconds, which is insane.

- Or faster.

- Or faster.

Mine is a tour of the factory, the Gigafactory,

which I haven't redeemed yet.

But I really wanna go.

Have you gone?

- I have not been to the Gigafactory.

I've went to a VIP tour of the Fremont Factory

but not the Gigafactory yet.

- And then you've been to a lot of live events and such.

- Yep.

- You're always going to be going to those things

because you're keeping track

of what's in the news and such.

Those are just, in terms of a business model,

when you think about the car industry and automobiles,

Tesla is like and Elon is like Steve Jobs in that way,

where it's a big celebration

every time a new thing comes out.

And you were there when the trucks, the semis--

- We all thought that was gonna be the most boring event.

We were like, really?

I don't know, semi trucks?

Whatever and then Elon had that tweet

that was something like, it's gonna be so awesome.

It's gonna blow your mind

into another dimension or something.

And we were all like, ah, I don't know.

So there were all these rumors about what could be unveiled

because it had to be something more than the semi trucks.

And yeah, that's when the Roadster got unveiled.

Megachargers.

The pickup truck was like hinted at

and there was a sketch.

It looked weird.

But yeah, all of these things were unveiled

and it really, it did blow all of our minds.

- Yeah, that's cool.

And you're always keeping up on the news like you said.

That's how you do your live streams and such.

There was one thing you did recently related

to a news thing that happened where Elon

was featured in an interview, an exclusive interview,

where you got into the model three factory.

Into see how it was running and Elon was very honest

about how things were going.

He was stressed,

he said he was sleeping at the office a lot.

Not the factory.

And you did something related to that

that I thought was really interesting and really cool.

Can you share with everybody what that was?

- Yeah, so,

so as a billionaire,

I thought there's no way he's actually sleeping there.

No way.

And as soon as I heard about the interview I'm like,

all right, I wanna see where he's sleeping.

I really, and they showed that, and it was crazy

because it's like the worst, tiniest little couch

and you think--

- With a pillow, that's it.

- With a pillow, yeah.

And then you see a sleeping bag kind of on the table.

And you're like, first off, you're sleeping

in a conference room with glass walls.

People probably walking by like, is that really him?

What's goin' on?

So I just thought, hey, you know,

Elon's done so much for us, Tesla owners

and everything that we should do something for him

and buy him a couch.

Buy him a new couch.

So I created a GoFundMe

and in the first day we got about $4,000.

- That's insane.

But more than that you've gotten now media outlets

reaching out to you.

- Yeah, yeah.

I've got NBC in the Bay area reached out.

Business Insider, USA Today,

CNN International. - What do they want?

- They just want a quote.

They just want to know why I did it,

what they idea is.

And yeah, it was just kind of a fun idea.

It wasn't really like,

I didn't think anybody would actually donate.

I thought, oh, he's a billionaire.

People will kind of just laugh it off.

- It's kind of funny.

- Yeah, but it took off.

And now it's like trending on GoFundMe (laughs)

out of nowhere.

It's probably the only thing I've ever done

that's truly trending.

It's like, of course, like the dumbest little idea.

- Well, we'll see where it ends up

'cause how many days are you into it now?

Just a couple days?

- Yeah, just a couple days now.

- It'll probably be up there for like 30 days or something.

So we'll see.

I mean, Elon could be getting a $50,000 couch.

- (laughs) Which would be great

to even figure out what that is.

- Yeah, I mean does it have autopilot

or falcon wing doors or something?

I have no idea.

But dude, this has been a lot of fun.

Any final words of advice for those who

are out there watching this content right now

and they're just looking for a dose of inspiration?

And you know you've done multiple things

to build a name for yourself, build an audience,

generate an income.

What might you suggest for people who are just starting out?

- Yeah, I would say the biggest thing

is just to kind of be true to your art

and to what you want to bring to the online community,

whether that's on YouTube or Facebook

or a podcast or whatever.

Really kind of just be true to that.

It's very easy when you're just getting started

to try to kind of chase different avenues

of making money and that can really destroy the credibility

and the authenticity.

And I feel like we're in the era now

where the clickbait world has kind of passed us.

The old sensational shock jock kind of media

is kind of going away.

We're in the era of engagement and authenticity.

And so kind of like your journey, just started out.

You weren't an expert at this when you first started.

- No, not even close.

- Yeah, so staying true to whatever it is

that you think is your superpower and what you're bringing

to the community.

And then yeah, as things come up, experiment with ideas

because you never know.

You could have a YouTube channel based on Tesla one day.

- Dude, thank you for being here.

Make sure to check out all the links below.

Teslanomics on YouTube.

Anywhere else people should go to find ya?

- That's it, that's it, yeah.

- Click on the link below.

Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

And hope you enjoy this.

(lighthearted electronic music)

English - Default