Speaker 1: 0:57

Alright, so welcome back to the BusinessBike Social Media Uncovered podcast, where we dive deep into the stories of those who are cutting through the digital noise and making a real impact with their brands. I'm your host, matt McKay, and today we're going through a story that is nothing short of inspiring, a journey that is going to light a fire under every business owner listening in. In the spotlight today, oakley Ingersell is a name that has been buzzing in the business world across social media platforms. At the age of 20, oakley has not only become the talk of the town but a sensation on TikTok with over 500,000 likes, 36,000 followers who cannot get enough of his car detailing videos. Just the likes and the follows that make his story compelling. It's the hustle, the bold decisions and the vision for something greater.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Each of the notable publications like the Otago Daily Times and Making Headlines in the Sun in the UK. Oakley's journey from university student to owner and founder of cleaner cars is one for the books. Oakley is a new car-validating business that has been booked out for weeks in advance, all through the power of word of mouth in the savvy TikTok marketing. For every listener out there thinking about taking the leap, wondering if it's worth the risk. Oakley Ingersell's story is a resounding yes From quitting university to becoming a self-made or tributary.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Oakley Ingersell is a new car-validating business that has been built in the past. Oakley Ingersell's story is a resounding yes, from quitting university to becoming a self-made or tributary. Oakley embodies the spirit of innovation, resilience and the shared joy of following one's passion. Oakley, welcome to the show. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here today.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Thank you very much, matt. What an introduction Awesome. I've never had an introduction like that, so thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 2:29

I've been really excited to have you since we were talking because I just think if anyone can resonate with this story, it's going to be so many of those younger generation that feel like they're kind of lost in the world and feel like university or traditional ways of communicating is really the only way that they can go.

Speaker 1: 2:48

But I think, with the platforms out there like TikTok, with social media and just the hustle and bustle of actually owning your own business, I feel like this episode is going to be really, really cool and hopefully inspiring to everyone listening. So I wanted to start with the basics. So it's incredible to see what you've achieved and I think I've commented on a few videos before we even messaged via TikTok. I feel like the way that you can transition a simple or simple in your eyes, a way that you can clean a car most probably hard for most people to comprehend about how to take a car that's extremely dirty and turn it into a masterpiece, but I feel like your storytelling ability is phenomenal. So can you tell me it's such a young age. Can you walk us through what inspired the initial idea and what were the first steps you took to turn that into reality?

Speaker 2: 3:35

So I've kind of been entrepreneurial my whole life. I grew up in a family business. My grandparents owned a catering business down in Timaru so I've been working with them for generations in the family in that business for since I was like 10 years old and I did entrepreneurial stuff selling donuts, selling loom bands at that business. And in high school I competed in the Young Enterprise Scheme, which is like a business development sort of course in high school, and I did really well in that. That got me my business place first in Canterbury for that and that was an educational card game teaching kids about what's in their food, so like top trumps. And while I was doing this I was also running an Instagram page for forward driving because I liked forward driving and trucks and I grew that to 40,000 on TikTok and 10,000 Instagram and I monetized it by selling rooftop tents and awnings that are imported from China. So I've kind of been doing the TikTok thing for a while and I've always liked business.

Speaker 2: 4:35

And then out of high school I went to university, studied business, found out it wasn't my thing. I'd rather run a business than learn about business, because I've already been running a business for years, just at a smaller scale. So I went to university, found out I didn't like it, left after my first year and went all in on car cleaning Because I knew how to clean cars and I knew that if I did what I know how to do on social media and consistently keep doing it for months and months, it would have to work out because it was my only option. If it's your only option, I think you just got to make it work and I did.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Yeah, I mean it's crazy that you just casually say that you grew an account to 40,000 and monetized it and did all of your things and then decided to do a different business. I feel like that you've encapsulated most people's lifetime in about five, six years, right? Like so many people are guaranteed you're going to be watching this or listening to this and being like I've tried that so many times and it hasn't worked. So what do you feel like for I mean pulling everything back again to that first account? What do you feel like for you gets a video from zero views or zero followers to X amount of views, like I mean views of Vanity Metrics? What I'm obsessed about is how many followers you can get on those accounts, because followers, especially on TikTok, are very, very hard, right, yeah. So what do you think spiked that community with that first page?

Speaker 2: 6:07

So my first page it was called NZ4x4 Club and I just posted pictures of other people's trucks that they were really proud of and I posted videos of them doing cool, stupid stuff in the trucks. And this was when I was like 16, I think I started this. I was working at the freezing works down in Temeru over my school holidays and during my smogo and lunch break I would just post, I would make the post, queue posts and post about three, four times a day and just consistently doing that every day. And also I would follow people back. The maximum amount of followers in a day I think it was like a hundred interactions you could have I would just follow everyone back on the page bigger than mine and then that some of them would follow me back.

Speaker 2: 6:55

So it just slowly grows you. It was honestly just a grind and a hustle and consistency. When I went back to school after the holidays, I was still posting in my morning tea and lunch break while my friends were playing and talking to each other. I'd just be on my phone. So it is honestly just a hustle and a grind and consistency. If you do anything really well or pretty good for a long amount of time, you'll see results.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Yeah, and it's crazy that, like such a young age like I know I keep puffing on about the age thing, but there's so many people that I see that are just like taking advantage of their smoke goes or their breaks and just sitting down and doing nothing.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Where, like, there's so much time left in a day if you actually want to do something for yourself Like you talked about your business school versus creating a business for yourself, but even you going and getting a job in your holidays takes that initiative around, like I don't want to just sit around and do nothing and I feel like that's that's that's inspiring to hear. So when you started thinking about that next step and I know you talked about cars, like and obviously being the first page is around cars and forward driving and stuff like that when was it when you realized that you could take the everyday cleaning your own car to then making a business out of it, like, where did you feel like that next step was? Because everyone starts to enjoy cleaning the car that they like driving, but then it becomes a chore at some point. So how did you turn that, I guess, chore in most people's eyes into something that you absolutely are obsessed with and created probably one of the biggest businesses you could look for in terms of scaling, that sort of things.

Speaker 2: 8:35

So the reason I started a car detailing business or car cleaning business was because I knew how to clean cars. I had worked at Espresso car wash the school holidays after I finished high school for a couple of months and I learned the skills. And then I was watching an Alex Hormozzi video one day when I was leading up to knowing that I was going to drop out of uni. What am I going to do? I have to do something. I don't want to get a job, I want to start my own business and make it work. And Alex Hormozzi I heard from him what do you know how to do? What do you know how to do? Turn it into a business? And what I thought I knew how to do was car cleaning at the time.

Speaker 2: 9:16

And another thing Alex Comozzi said trade your time. Your time is worth nothing, and my time was worth nothing at the point. So what could I do with my time? I could clean cars and then at home, when I'm done cleaning cars, I could make TikToks, because I also knew how to do that and then put them on social media. And here we are it's a year later and I couldn't have imagined that this is all happened. I've got an employee working right now. If you told me this a year ago, I wouldn't have.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Yeah, wow.

Speaker 2: 9:45

It's just consistency, that's it.

Speaker 1: 9:47

So in terms of I guess also before we turn into the employee and all of that stuff because I definitely want to talk about that, because I feel like that's a cool step into the next evolution of business, which is like another scary thing you're bringing someone on, you've got all these responsibilities, you've also then got a forecast and all this other stuff. But when you walked or when you made that decision to, I mean, not drop out of uni, but to make the decision to go into a business that you're going to thrive in, how was that conversation? Because I think a lot of listeners will go and say the scary thing for them is that they have to then go to their parents and go. I don't want to do this traditional thing that they've grown up thinking about. Well, your parents might be a different because they've owned their businesses before, but how was that conversation? You don't have to share every detail, but how was that conversation when you tried to pitch that idea?

Speaker 2: 10:36

Well, it's just me and my mom and my grandparents as well. So I'm very close with my mom side of the family and they have always been supportive of me. They've seen me have success in my businesses throughout high school so they obviously knew that I had it in me and if I was confident in something, I think they would have trusted me. And also, throughout the year, they saw me hate uni. They knew I didn't go to uni. They saw me ball my eyes out multiple times over tests and stupid stuff that I just I hated. I honestly just hated it, hated.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Studying for a test to just forget about it when you have to learn about the next test. I just couldn't compare. It doesn't make sense. Why would you do that? And it upset me because I knew what I wanted to do and I wanted to learn and get better and grow a business and grow myself, and through a business you can grow yourself.

Speaker 2: 11:32

But I think anyone in the position that is scared of judgment from peers or your family in 10, five years down the time, if you have a successful business, and even if you don't, will you be proud of yourself for making that decision and taking that risk. I think at this age. If anyone's my age or even below 30, come on just, you've got nothing to lose. It's the best time. The longer you go on, the more fearful you will be that you will fail. And I'm not really afraid of failing at my age because, at the end of the day, if I go back to having nothing, I am like most people, my age. It doesn't really matter if you go back to having nothing. Yeah, it's a lot less scary when you're younger. I think people should take more risks. That's it. Just take the risk. It's always going to be scary. You never know, gonna know, but I think just do it. Yeah, it's as simple as that. Take the risk. What?

Speaker 1: 12:29

do you think people your age have they probably have the capability of doing what they imagine to do. They've probably got this idea. They're probably trying to pitch it to their parents or formulating in a way of explaining it even to themselves, about not going down this traditional route which, in New Zealand, the traditional route is you go from high school to university. I have no idea why, and hopefully that shift changes in the next 15 or 20 years. But what do you think is stopping them? Like I know that, the risk and the fear, but do you think it's because they don't surround themselves with the right people? Do you feel like it's because they don't? Let's say, the Alex Samosy situation like that clearly indicates to me that you've done your research outside of traditional mediums of getting information. So you're going to the likes of YouTube, you're going to the likes of different pages or different content. So what do you think they have to do to kind of navigate that hill that they're trying to climb?

Speaker 2: 13:24

YouTube videos, and not just YouTube videos education. Why would not be taking the risks that I would be taking or let's call them calculated risks now? Because I know the risks and I've assessed the situation, because I've been educated by people who know more than me, who are online and give all this information away completely for free. 10, 20 years ago, if you could have found a billionaire or future billionaire like Alex Samosy to give you all of his advice and wisdom and help you get rich like people wouldn't be able to comprehend that. And now you can go onto YouTube and learn from not just one billionaire, hundreds of billionaires, hundreds of thousands of millionaires that have done what you want to do and have blueprints on how to do it and lots of advice. Like I would not be who I am today if I hadn't consumed all the content that I have online 100%. That has been the biggest contributor, I think, to the position that I'm in.

Speaker 2: 14:32

Of course, you've got to take risks, but you've got to be educated, of course, and know stuff. Like I don't know nothing, I don't know everything, but I try and learn as much as I can and you can learn anything online for free. If you want to pay, feel free. It'll probably fast-track the process, but I have not paid for a single piece of information that I've got online and I don't think I will, because you shouldn't. It's all there.

Speaker 1: 14:58

An interesting caveat today is.

Speaker 1: 14:59

do you feel like there will be some sort of shift towards I guess, not self-learning, but that self-educational learning because of, I mean, the rising costs of universities, but also that the one train or one track thinking when it comes to university like you went into a business school that you felt wasn't educating you enough, to the point where you felt like you were being sustained and I feel like there's this trend at the moment that people are starting to really understand how powerful being self-employed is. You know, when I was self-sider being self-employed in 2015, it was the biggest risk you could ever take, but now, thankfully, you know close to 10 plus years or whatever how many years it is people are starting to take those risks and it's like an everyday occurrence now. So do you feel like there will be this like paradigm shift between people actually going I want to educate myself without the burden of a student loan versus going to university just going through the motions, getting a degree that you don't end up using? Do you think there'll be some sort of shift like that?

Speaker 2: 16:58

100%. Yeah, because it's simple. Why would you pay with average three-year degree, first year's free uni minus 10 grand 20, 30k to get a uni degree in New Zealand and that is really cheap America. You'd be paying hundreds of thousands. So in New Zealand you're lucky you might pay 30,000 for a degree.

Speaker 2: 17:20

If you spend a third of that 10,000 on education, even a 1,000 on education, you could learn probably similar, if not more, and also on this side with the university degree, I feel like it's very localized, like you'll get a localized a professor in Christchurch that maybe owned a business or studied business in university. Compared to you might have options of hundreds of different people to learn from, or you could learn from five, 10 different people at the same time and pull all their resources into one and get all the best things out of it and learn from them, and until then it's just a better ROI. You can learn for eight hours a day from this person that knows less from them, or learn four hours a day from people that know double as much or can change your business double as much. Yeah, it allows you to have control over what you learn. That's one of the things I didn't like about uni. You'd learn stuff that you.

Speaker 2: 18:23

Why am I learning this? I don't need to learn this, I don't need to know this and everything on YouTube. Youtube is an algorithm. It sends you the best videos that have been watched that YouTube knows are really great videos that have educated other people, or people have watched this video till the whole way. Maybe they've shared it, maybe they've commented, maybe they've liked it. Let's push this out to other people, because this is a great video and this can teach other people. Yeah, learn online 100%.

Speaker 1: 18:54

Yeah, no, it is crazy, when you start thinking about it, the amount of information that's available versus the small amount of information that is out.

Speaker 2: 19:01

It's disgusting.

Speaker 1: 19:03

And the thing that I was thrown away with. When you look at university going through it myself and stuff like that it's always compact into seven weeks. You're learning six months, seven months worth of information to seven weeks, and you end up just rope learning it With YouTube and the self-learning. You can actually listen to it as many times as you want, but you can listen to it in different areas, different mediums, day and night. It doesn't matter how many times. You can just relearn and keep going and actually learn that process Cool.

Speaker 2: 19:33

It doesn't feel like learning if you're watching a YouTube video.

Speaker 1: 19:35

No, no, and you can have it on the background, what I found with the podcast side of things is that you end up learning so much by just listening to it and absorbing it, when you're not actually switching on and focusing too much on it.

Speaker 1: 19:48

You're actually just learning so many different things.

Speaker 1: 19:52

When you took that plunge, did you have some sort of roadmap in your business to then hire that first employee, which his name's Jack, right, yeah, yeah, first employee was Jack.

Speaker 1: 20:03

So when that roadmap just because again, the other kind of system or the other demographic that I'm assuming is going to be listening to this is they need to have everything planned out. They need to have the next seven years, because the next thing I like exploring is that every business, school or business thing oh, you have to have a business plan, you have to have this plan. You have to have 17 different documents to state exactly what you want to do. But, as we've experienced over the last like four years, and you would have experienced this launching your businesses and going through the different social media channels every day is different. You cannot plan a single day to be the same. So therefore, like when you started this business, did you have a plan or like a roadmap, at least in terms of where you felt like the business was going, or did you just adapt to the oncoming demand of what you were experiencing?

Speaker 2: 20:52

I had goals, of course, and I obviously wanted this to be a business that I could work on for years to come and grow as the business that I kind of get known for and that can be my successor. But in terms of a road like an exact roadmap, of course not. As you said, business is never the same. Every week is different. Some weeks, like it's not as busy as the last week, and other weeks will be double as busy, like you just can't plan. So it was more of just I need to start this, I need to keep doing this and see where it takes me, because at that point, dropping out of uni, I didn't have a Clark Island business. I had cleaned a neighbor's car and then I posted on the neighborhood community page and that booked me out for a couple of weeks and then I made some TikTok videos of those cars and then they booked me out for another couple of weeks from the TikToks and then kept making TikToks and it just kept snowballing. And as it kept snowballing, obviously you started making more money and demand goes up. And when demand goes up and when it's only me to cope with the demand, I had to put the price up to dissipate the supply, hopefully, and it did. And then, as it kept going on and I kept getting booked out with this new, the price was still at now. Then I brought Jack on, because what I can do cleaning a car I thought I can just teach someone else to do. And I trusted Jack. Jack respected me. That was the one thing that I wanted when I had someone, someone that respects me as a young person being their boss, because most people wouldn't really respect me, I don't think. So I got Jack. I taught him. Jack was working for me part-time, as it was just me working up to making it a real business. This was before the first official tax year. We had a couple of months of just being a hobby business and then, once April 1st came, we started business and nearly end of April 1st now. So we're nearly at the end of the first financial year and one of the goals I had. So of course I had goals. One of the first goals I had was 100K in the first financial year and, fingers crossed, we will just get over it. So that's awesome. And another goal was actually to hire someone, make it a semi-passive business. Business is never going to be passive. I have found this out. You've always got to be there and be the boss and be a leader for your guys, of course, and work on the business as well as in the business. But yeah, I've hired someone. Ticked off that goal. We should hit 100K ticked off that goal.

Speaker 2: 23:38

The signed written business cards that was one of them was a goal at the start. If I get a sign that was always when I was in high school If I have a signed written business card in my business, I've got a business and then I got one like a couple of months and now I've got two signed written business cards rolling around Christchurch. It's awesome seeing people who haven't seen in a while and they'll say I've seen your cars around it. I tell my mum about you and it's real cool.

Speaker 1: 24:07

Yeah, I mean, what a milestone to hit in your first financial year. The stats are crazy when you look at the amount of businesses that don't.

Speaker 2: 24:15

I didn't think I was going to do that. I thought it was unachievable. And that just shows have high goals even if you're full short. You got close to your huge goal. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 24:26

I have some awesome congratulations on that as well. I feel like a lot of businesses that don't realize how big that milestone is because of how many people talk about it. They talk about how this 100K is. You can make it in a month or whatever, but for a business what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 24:44

I think that's a really, really cool achievement. So hopefully you go away and celebrate that after the end of the financial year. So there's a lot to unpack over that kind of period, which is cool. It gives me a little bit more to dive into.

Speaker 1: 24:55

So when you thought about bringing on that first employee and I say employee, but I feel like the relationship you guys have is a really cool dynamic, especially on social media as well, because that's again something I want to just touch on before so when you made that decision because, again, I think one of the sticking points for business owners is they're too scared to scale and bring people in because they're worried about the whole respect thing, they're worried about the age in which they are at that business. They're also worried about the extra income that they now have to generate because of that. So when you started making that decision, was it a very easy decision to do? Like, regardless of the fact that you knew him already? Was it a very easy decision to make or was it a very? You know? Was it fair? Was there fear around that bringing someone on into the business?

Speaker 2: 25:41

Of course there was fear no-transcript. I knew it was a step that I had to take if I eventually wanted to get the business to where I want to go Like. If it's not just going to be me forever, I have to hire someone eventually. And why not just hire them now? If the business is doing more than enough to just sustain me and I don't pay myself a wage, the business in the 100k web, the business will barely profit because obviously just reinvest bought lots of vehicles, lots of equipment, lots more chemicals, jacks on a full time wage. But yeah, it was a huge risk. I didn't know if it would work. I didn't know if I'd have to hire Jack in three months, but I didn't and it's purely down to me and Jack. Jack does great work and he keeps the customers happy and I do great work too, and we've kept posting on social media, we've kept running great ads and we've kept getting referrals due to our good work and it's all kept working.

Speaker 1: 26:50

And when you looked at the way that, the cool thing that I found with that is that you actually pretty much introduced them on social media relatively quickly, and I feel like that again is a tool that businesses don't do. They're so scared of showing their team because there's some fear of them might be moving on. They're fear of being on camera and stuff like that. So was that intentional to open up to the audience around how you hired someone? Or was that just because you're so used to the way that you create social media? It was just a byproduct of that?

Speaker 2: 27:22

Yeah, it would have made a good video hiring someone at 20 years old and also 100% want to be open and share everything with my audience. I'm not that consistent with TikTok at the moment. I kind of went off making TikTok videos just because TikTok is a draining game. If you're making the fast-paced content and getting views, it's draining. So I want to go to more YouTube style video, like film, like a weekly, what we do in a week and then cut that down so it's less so, it's more personable and more us and it's more real and authentic. But obviously I will still be doing the like storytelling style TikTok videos because it's awesome and the transformation style videos we do. It works really well because you literally have a before and a before looks like this and then after. So it makes people want to stay to the before, stay to the after and also the storytelling aspect, as you said, it's actually fun and it works really well.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Yeah, I think that the one that resonates with me the most is that I think it's the turner's detail. You did so, like we did the before and after it was just like it's just crazy when people think their car's clean and then you do that and you're like I guarantee people watch that video. Went to their car and said my car is now dirty.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Yeah, exactly, and like it's funny because you hop into like people's cars and your car's pretty dirty and they're like no, it's not.

Speaker 1: 28:59

You feel bad? No, I could imagine. Yeah, I'm pretty, pretty pedantic when it comes to car cleaning in terms of, like, I like that around it. I mean, I'm not no good cleaning my own car. I have someone that cleans that, but unfortunately you're not in Wellington yet. I'm pretty sure I commented on one of your TikToks saying that.

Speaker 1: 29:15

But however, you got doing yours, you got got to come, so it's not this really cool kid that's building a business similar to in the way that he's not so much on social media, but he was just posting community pages and what resonated with me was that he was relatively the same age. He's putting all his work out there and I said, hey, I've got two cars that need cleaning. I'm too busy to clean them myself. Here you go.

Speaker 2: 29:39

And he also comes to the house as well, which I'm a fan of kind of stems from my original. What's his name? I know two guys in Wellington. There's clean car collector, that I know, and also attention to detail. They're two guys in Wellington, yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:52

Yeah, yeah, have you got the Tesla's? Yeah, so, yeah, so I've got two Tesla's that he cleans every week and every. I wish it was every week, but he's packed out so he can't do it every week, but I'm trying to convince him to do more videos because I'm like it is a video is just it's more ROI than photo and texts.

Speaker 2: 30:12

It's easy, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:13

Videos where it's at. Yeah yeah, but yeah, he's awesome, he comes and cleans those, so yeah. So coming back to, I guess, the financial year, one thing that I want to experience kind of dive a little bit deeper into is when you see that income. I think a lot of business owners get caught in the whole income profit loss tax situation. So when you started your business, did you, did you kind of nail that from the get go or did you use different softwares, countants like all of those things, like whatever you need, you can divulge, you can divulge.

Speaker 1: 30:44

But it's an interesting question where I think a lot of people, including myself, when I started, I went down the traditional roads of accounting and all of that stuff and attended not to be the best in terms of the way that it was presented, because, again, the same between business school and self-employment accountants versus the likes of Henry and zero and stuff like that, there's such a big divide. Now you can have your flexibility on what you want to choose. So was there any kind of plan around what you wanted to do there?

Speaker 2: 31:13

Yeah, so when we went to being a real business on April 1st, I just went straight to the accountant before April 1st and just said I want you to sort all my numbers on my accounting because I just don't want to even think about it or have to worry about it. So, yeah, I did that. I went with SBA, small Business Accounting, one of the biggest, one of the bigger firms. They're national. They've got quite a few in Christchurch. One's real close to me and the guy that I meet up with he gives me great advice and I really like him so I'll be sticking with them for as long as I can. Really, I'm happy with them and through them we use zero and that just does most stuff automatically. But you obviously have to code some stuff yourself, but it's real easy In terms of hiring someone.

Speaker 2: 32:01

I went to the accountant and they just set up a smartly payroll system which is all automatically done, sort of through that app. And when I told him I was starting real business, he also got me set up with ASB F-Post Machine, mobile F-Post Machine, which is like $40 a month. So that's real easy. Yeah, it was all quite straightforward. I just went to the accountant to do it because I figured there and it was easier. And also I went to the bank and when you start a business, you have to start a new business bank account. I went to the bank, went to the accountant and that was it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:48

That was as simple as that you thought it'd be harder, but no.

Speaker 1: 32:51

No, no, it is pretty simple. When you have that plan, it's when people start thinking they can do their own tax returns and they can do their own GSTs and stuff like that, because, because they want to save some, save some money around some accounting is supposed to save you money. Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool, okay. And then and then, when you think about the, the brand, you talked about the vehicles, you talked about the sign wrapping. You talked about the cohesiveness between your uniform, the color scheme and all of that stuff. Was there an intentional way of thinking about the logo and the color scheme when you started, or was it just kind of a thought that this looks cool, this is what I wanted to do, or do you, do you have any story behind that?

Speaker 2: 33:29

It was always yellow and blue. I don't really know why it just yellow and blue came to mind and my girlfriend at the time she had a black Toyota Aqua and I was like these cars are so economical and they're great to drive. And then I saw a light blue one drive past one day and just the light bulb went and I knew that I had to get a light blue Toyota Aqua because I'd already made the business logo at this point and the light blue was exactly that color and I started well, this fit here. Well, this fit here, this fit here. Oh, I'd say the seats are like a shelving system. Oh, let's just do it, it'll work. And I got him to that Aqua. It worked.

Speaker 2: 34:13

And got the light blue uniform, which means Jack, we've got the yellow hats, which we haven't all the time. Yeah, I try to keep the branding pretty, or use it, because obviously it needs to be a professional brand. I've got the light blue directors uniform on right now. But yeah, of course branding has to be, as I'm trying to make a professional business. At the end of the day, if the more cohesive and more professional you look, the more value you have to see.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Yeah, and I think the cool thing is is that the little golden piece of information in that whole entire sphere was that you looked at a car and said I need to take the seats out, I need to make those systems fit, where someone might have looked at that car and said, oh, you know, like a Hilux or a truck would have been better, you know where.

Speaker 1: 35:04

Like you looked at from an economical standpoint which I feel like again is years and years and years ahead of where a traditional person your age would have been thinking around because they would have just been like yep, it's my time to look like a cool car and stuff like that and the economics behind your. On the road all the time you're going to different places, you're doing two or three cars a day, so you know you've got to be economical there, and to look at that and say I can make that work rather than I need to go get a bigger car is a really cool piece of information there, because a car is an expensive cost. You know you've got two of them right.

Speaker 2: 35:38

You've got to get it signed written.

Speaker 1: 35:40

You've got to get it fueled. You've got to get it Warren and fitness. You've got to get it regoed. Then you've got to get it, probably in the next year or so If they bring it out. You've got to get it road user charged and all of those things that that are looking to come out for businesses. So there is a lot of ongoing costs and obviously all of the insurances and stuff like that as well. So there is a lot of costs or hidden costs that you don't think about when you've got a work vehicle log books as well, which accountants will need eventually.

Speaker 1: 36:07

So to have that kind of foresight is a really good piece of information that people should should focus on there when they're looking to build a business. So we you feel like the brand is now and I say brand because I think you truly have built a brand Do you, do you feel like you have that brand because of the, the community that you've built on social media, or do you feel like it's because, also, at the same time, the way that you've done that, you've let the community in to the story behind the brand, like you're almost documenting it like a cool series on YouTube. That sparked my interest of behind the, behind the brand, and you just document the whole process around that sort of thing. So that would be a cool YouTube series that I think a lot of people underestimate that people want to know about.

Speaker 1: 36:51

But do you, when you're, when you're building the brand, do you feel like anything stood in your way, or did you have any challenges building that brand, or do you feel like when you were building it it was quite seamless?

Speaker 2: 37:05

I think it is. My age is definitely a part of the brand and I think the hardworking sort of nests of young people is going to be a part of the brand too, as I look on to bring more young people on the team and I definitely, as you said, the journey is a part of it too and I'm going to continue to grow it and bring on more young people and I hopefully, hopefully I'll get more young people, although probably the age of 25, to potentially manage some stores and work independently. And if we're known Nationwide or even Christchurch wide, I think one of the things that he was so set with our brand is hardworking young people and definitely have my story be a part of it and I hope to inspire lots of other people to do similar through that and I think that's going to be really big part of it. Yeah, as you said, documenting the journey and the kind of behind the brand aspect is 100% going to contribute to it as well because, say, in five, ten years time, if we've got a store in each city and we're working on like thousands of cars over New Zealand and people know our brand and we'll be able to look back at this video or my tiktoks from the first year or some YouTube videos that might be coming out over this next period, and just see the growth in the progress. That will definitely be a part of it and that will be cool.

Speaker 2: 38:40

Like listen. I've watched this happen growing up. I've grown up watching the Sidemen and everyone on YouTube. I've been watching Alex Homozi since he had 200,000 subscribers, so I've just seen all this growth and all these people transition from being a YouTuber and then having a personal brand and now having multi-million dollar businesses and having prime behind you a billion dollar business from making content online, just growing yourself and making yourself known. Yeah, it's so cool. Everyone should do stuff.

Speaker 1: 39:18

It's interesting that you talk about those brands because I feel like those brands are those brands and they have that success because they influence a lead and I say influence with a grain of salt, because influences have different interpretations for different people. They think of the Kim Kardashian influences, but what I'm trying to streamline the influencer is is that content creator or that business owner that lets the community in to see what actually the business is about, or the brand is about behind the scenes podcasting, tiktok, youtube, all of that stuff and to bring your community over this whole entire journey with you, I think makes you different in a very crowded market space. So, similar to the social media market space that I'm in, I think car detailing is a very saturated market. You've got different brands that offer different types of veleting or detailing.

Speaker 1: 40:07

So do you think you could be in an era where you could be one of the content creator lead or the content lead businesses in your niche? Because I feel like and I could, you know, I feel like you are the one that is making that, that change. I feel like hopefully people listening will start seeing that. But I feel like a lot of the success has become apparent because you've let people into the areas where most people wouldn't. So do you feel like that is the trajectory that your business is going to take? In terms of the way that you're going to be this brand? The way that you stand out and the way you differentiate yourself is both in quality car cleaning and detailing but also, at the same time, the way that you can scale that quickly or quicker than the everyday business that's in the same niche is because you have that social media, you have that content creation and, most importantly, you know how to make a video where most of those people don't.

Speaker 2: 41:01

Exactly Now. That is exactly the plan Build a business with the backing of the content and social media and pushing it for free. If we continue making content for years and years every day and get up on social media and just grow their awareness. At the end of the day, marketing and advertising is making oneself known. If half a Christ Church even if I can just get the kids of TikTok to know about my business in Christ Church, maybe they'll tell their parents, maybe their parents will tell their family, maybe then they will tell them.

Speaker 2: 41:41

Word of mouth is the most powerful, but social media can start it off and 100%. I plan to grow my business and be the number one in the car detailing industry through the backing of social media, because you can get a lot of value from social media videos and I plan to educate people about car detailing and car care from my videos too. So it'll be not only the kind of behind the brand perspective but also the education and combining the two and getting the trust and and yeah, the trust from you and being out and people have got 50 to 100,000, $200,000 cars. They want to know who they can trust with their vehicle and if I am gonna sorry, I'm gonna tell the world that Espresso car wash washes the cars terribly and is scratching all your cars, then maybe they're gonna make the decision to bring it to someone that cares about their car and isn't gonna scratch it and gonna take care of it and employ people that actually aren't idiots and aren't gonna steal stuff out of your cars, crash the curb their rims.

Speaker 2: 42:53

I haven't. I didn't see that at Espresso. But yeah, social media is really powerful and I think everyone should be incorporated. If you've got a business and you're not incorporating social media, I'm sorry you're an idiot. You will agree. It's so silly the ROI you can make a video and get views for $0.

Speaker 1: 43:14

Exactly, and all you're exchanging is time, and majority of the people listening have plenty of time, just no money or no infrastructure to be able to pay for traditional paid advertising. So you've heard it from the man himself If you want to get reach and you want to get your business out there, you need to start posting on social media. Just a highlight, though I saw this video quite recently. You had quite a good achievement in detailing quite an expensive car. Do you want to touch on that car that you detailed?

Speaker 2: 43:42

Yep. So we did a $400,000 Aston Martin that just came through the email inbox. One day, 2023, aston Martin DBX. Had a quick Google searched on Trademey $400,000. This can't be right. This car's in Christchurch and booked them in as assistant booked it in, of course, went to the house on a Saturday morning Meet him. He was an awesome man. Turns out to be the guy that sponsors the Christchurch Stadium, so he's a big guy and he was awesome and he commented on my LinkedIn post and we connected. So, all through car cleaning, who would have thought? And that is one of the like my favorite things that I never would have even thought about when I started this business is that I get to meet so many business owners and learn about their business and just meet cool people that work really hard. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1: 44:37

Yeah, I mean, it's a phenomenal car but at the same time, I feel like that's such a cool milestone that people are either going to understand or they're not going to understand. But I just wanted to touch on that because that was a cool video and a cool milestone. So, wrapping up, I know that you're short on time today, so, wrapping up, do you have any advice for aspiring business owners that are really close to making that decision to build a business and do you feel like what could they do in order to get over that hump or jump over that hurdle that they're facing at the moment?

Speaker 2: 45:10

I think a lot of people, me included, struggle with perfection. I've got a mate who works really hard. He always has lots of different business ideas, but he can do something really well. Also, he's a barber and he's a good barber. But he always has these different ideas and he's jumping one thing to the other.

Speaker 2: 45:32

But if he just did what he did and made his own business, he could do really well. Or even if he didn't want to do that. But if he just did one thing and stuck with it, started it and stuck with it and just kept working really hard on that for who knows six months a year, just do it for a long enough period of time that you'd be proud of yourself and you wouldn't feel like I half-ass this, never half-ass it. Put everything into it and if by the end of it you haven't had success and you really feel like I put my everything into this, there is nothing more I could have done, there's no other way I could have made this work. Then pivot on to something else. But until you haven't done that, you haven't exhausted every option, then you could probably still make it work. You can make anything work. It's on you to work hard and do it consistently. It is as simple as that.

Speaker 2: 46:24

I think I remember a quote. I'd probably butcher it, but Denzel Washington said dreams are just dreams without goals and goals are just goals without consistency and hard work. You can have goals, but without consistency and hard work and discipline to work hard and be consistent you'll get nowhere. I think that's it. It's a formula to success Consistency, hard work and discipline.

Speaker 1: 46:53

That's it. It's just really just consistency, hard work and discipline. That's awesome. This episode has been a blueprint for anyone that's listening that they want to follow in your footsteps. You've literally laid it out the whole entire episode for them. I think there's going to be about 2% that actually understand how to do that and then the rest are going to go.

Speaker 1: 47:16

Still too hard. I still don't want to post on social media. I don't want to put my face on there, which we get. I understand that from an agency myself. We understand that completely and easily through and through. But hopefully, this episode is why I'm so excited, because I feel like your story is. You're the age, you've got the following, you've got the business, you've shown that it works, you've let everyone in, you've built this community. So, yeah, your really congratulations on all the success you've had and I can't wait to see the next five years for you and just be in the background and encouraging and cheering you on. So, finally, to tee up the or finish up the whole episode let the followers, let the listeners know where they can find you and if you want to plug anything, you can go for gold Cleaner cars.

Speaker 2: 47:57

That's it. We're on TikTok, instagram, facebook. That's it. Yeah, go support Cleaner Cars. We're in Christchurch, new Zealand. Thank you guys for watching. It's been really fun.

Speaker 1: 48:08

Not a problem. Yeah, no, it's awesome. Thank you so much. I hope we're in and wish you all the best for the future.

Speaker 2: 48:13

Thank you.