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(uplifting music) (uplifting music ends) - Welcome to "Business Forward".

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Christopher Brower.

Christopher is many things: car enthusiast, car reviewer, YouTube star, social media influencer, I threw that one in.

I'm guessing that's right, but also an entrepreneur, so welcome.

- Thank you.

Appreciate you having me on.

- I mean, let's just get right down to it because I've watched your shows, I'm gonna say shows, 'cause you have so many of them and it's really, really amazing.

Before we get into that, so where are you from?

- I'm from Ypsilanti, Michigan.

- Ypsilanti, Michigan.

- So about six hours north of here.

- Okay, and you have a connection here.

- I do, yeah, my buddy Sean Benet from Kauth & Mayeur.

I went to Northwood University with him and he's the one that got me looped into all this with you.

- Isn't that crazy?

Because he texted me and he goes, "You're gonna love this guy".

- [Christopher] He loves talking me up.

- Well he did, he did a good job of it.

So let's focus on, why don't you tell us the business you're in and then I've got 5,000 questions for ya.

- Yeah, so primarily it's YouTube.

I contribute content to four different YouTube channels, Winding Road Magazine, the Topher, Daily Motor, and my personal one, TopherDrives and basically what we do is we get press cars from the manufacturer, two different cars a week, we put a camera on our face, we drive them, review them, and then they go back and two more come the next week.

And we're paid all through YouTube monetization and that's pretty much our business, primarily anyways.

- We're gonna talk about the monetization of it.

So let's slow down and for our viewers, you get two cars a week?

- Yes.

- What does that even mean?

- So, they're called press cars.

so they're cars that are set aside specifically for the media.

So they're housed at two different kind of middlemen companies.

So half the cars are at one called Navs, half the cars are at one called Drive Shop and they're distributed to different journalists all through the Detroit, kind of metro Detroit, Southeast Michigan area every week.

So we're fortunate enough to be kind of in there with that due to our following and our history with relationships with the manufacturers.

And yeah, two different cars show up a week.

My colleague Charlie does a great job booking cars for us.

He works directly with the OEMs and with the two middle companies and the cars just show up.

- (laughing) This is crazy.

Okay, so we're not talking about just Ford or GM.

like what companies are we talking about?

- Pretty much everything.

You know, we don't get anything crazy like Ferrari, but companies- - I saw BMW.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

We get quite a few BMWs, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi.

We had a couple Lamborghinis out in California when we were out there last, 'cause of course they have a fleet out there as well with some higher end stuff.

We've had a couple of McLarens.

But, I mean it's even just fun stuff like Hyundai Elantra N, Toyota GR Corolla, Volkswagen GTI.

And I mean, pretty much everything you can think of.

- All right, so they're press cars?

- Yes.

- They have you drive the car in the hopes of giving them a good review- - Yes.

- Which then they can take the review and sell more cars and use it for branding or whatever they wanna do, Is that how they do it?

- So they don't take our reviews and push them out personally.

Our reviews just get posted on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, wherever.

Primarily YouTube and they go out to just our subscribers or wherever the algorithm pushes them out to.

What we do after we film is we send the manufacturers the links so they can view what we've done and they can see well, how many views did it get?

Are the comments positive?

What do they say about our car?

Do we agree with what they said about our car?

And you know, we try and be honest about things.

We're not, you know, saying every car is the greatest thing in the world because being honest and real about a car goes a long way.

The audience really appreciates that, so, but that's pretty much how it works.

- So, okay, this is interesting.

So when you're sitting in a car, now I watched an episode last night and you hop into an electric BMW, a big one.

- i7.

- The i7?

- Yeah.

- The thing was cool.

- Probably my favorite EV so far.

- Okay.

- Yeah, excellent car.

- So EV, electric vehicle.

- Electric vehicle.

- So you get in this car and do they have little highlights that they want you to look at, or do they give you like a little cheat sheet on something or do you just go?

- So sometimes they'll send a bit of press information with the loan agreement, so when we get the e-mail saying, "Hey, here's the car that's coming."

If it's a new model, sometimes they'll say, "Here's what's new for this year, here's what we've revised, here's what you could talk about.

But they never give us like a script or anything that we necessarily have to say.

- Okay - It all kind of builds.

It was tough for me the first year or so that I was doing this 'cause I hadn't driven a lot of cars, so I had nothing really to compare to.

But at this point, now that I've driven pretty much everything, not to sound like that, but I've driven a good amount of cars and the two gentlemen that I work with have been doing this for five to 10 years, so they've really driven a lot of cars.

So it's all about just saying, you know, how does this i7 compare to the Mercedes EQS, which is the electric vehicle that Mercedes makes that competes?

What's better about the BMW versus the Mercedes and how does it drive, how's the steering, how are the brakes, how's the NVH?

Like, you know, it's just stuff like that.

Figuring out for the market, what makes sense.

- So car companies could potentially like say, "Hey Chris, we're gonna fly you out to- - Yeah.

- San Fran or Hawaii" or something.

'Cause I saw you driving a car in Hawaii.

- So that was actually my colleague, Chris Amos.

- Yeah, Chris.

- From the Topher- - Your partner.

- Yep.

So he went out to Hawaii and drove the new Toyota Grand Highlander, mm-hmm.

- That's crazy.

Yeah, that car was cool too.

- Yeah the last travel I did was the Mazda CX 90 I think?

Which was, where was that?

San Francisco?

Yeah, Mazda CX 90 in San Francisco.

So yeah, they flew me out, put me up and then basically what they do for that, it's called the first drive event.

So you go night before, have a nice dinner, sleep in the hotel they provide, wake up in the morning, have breakfast, they give you a briefing on the car, "Hey, here's what we've done, here's what the car is, you go out, you drive it for the day, do a review, film it, whatever.

Some people are, you know, newspaper, magazine journalists.

They can do their thing as well and then have another dinner at the end of the night, fly out the next day.

- Yeah so I'm just wondering, since I'm also considered media, can I get one of these press cars?

- Potentially.

- So let's talk about, because it's more than just cars.

- Yeah.

- There's also a business model attached to this.

- Oh yeah.

- Probably a lot of strategy involved behind-the-scenes.

But you know, you focus a lot on content creation.

I know it sounds self-explanatory, but for our listeners and viewers, what does that mean?

Content creation, is that just filming?

- Content creation can be a lot of things.

For us, it's filming.

For us, it's doing our POV YouTube videos.

But the biggest thing in having success on YouTube or really any platform is just coming up with a unique product, 'cause you know, there's a ton of people that do car reviews for example, but a lot of them suction the camera to the windshield and focus on themselves driving the car and that's an okay format, I'm not bashing on that at all or anything.

But what's unique about us is we put the camera on our forehead, it sits right here.

Sometimes I get a little line across my forehead.

It's probably still on here right now.

But it's all about having that unique model and being able to appeal to an audience and being able to keep people coming back the next week when they see your thumbnail when they're scrolling on YouTube, having them click on that and watch the video, you know, week-after-week or three times a week or however often we post.

- Yeah, that's pretty cool.

So you know, this will age me, but back when I was younger it was magazine news consumer reports.

- Yeah.

- And you'd sit there, you'd open it up and then compare the Corvette to the Camaro to the so-and-so, right, on the sports cars.

And you'd sit there and go, "Those are all cool".

And then they had another thing that you could buy cars It was called Hemmings, I don't know if you know that.

- Hemmings?

- Hemmings.

- Yeah, I've heard of that.

- Hemmings and then, so that was back in the day.

Now with social media, it really does drive a lot of sales, obviously, but also decisions, you know?

Because the view that you take, I like it because it actually shows the dash.

- Yes, that's the biggest thing, is people want to see the car.

Yeah so of course there's some focus on us on the Topher channel because we talk and we review the car, but the entire time, the only part of us that the audience sees is our wrists and our hands.

The rest of it is the car.

So, you know, we get out, we do a walk around, we open the hood, we open all the doors, we sit in the back seat, we open the trunk, we show the wheels of tires, we show the entire interior and it's nice for people to just kind of have that simple, raw, organic view of the car, as opposed to some crazy high production with crazy shots and you know, the person doing piece to camera and at that point, is it really about the car?

Or you know, so.

- Do you have to, when you're testing a car like that, do you have to abide by the law or do you go on track sometimes too?

- We do go on track sometimes, yeah.

- And then so like you can on a track, you can go different than on a highway, right?

- Of course, yeah.

We try to keep it pretty tame on the street because of course we don't wanna go out and do anything crazy or illegal, but it's nice when we get to go out on the track.

GingerMan Raceway in South Haven, we've got a good setup with them where we go out there twice a year.

We had the BMW M4 CSL out there just a few weeks ago and that was a lot of fun.

So getting able, or being able to push that car to the limit was sweet.

- When you get into a car, no matter what the car is, like, what's the first thing that you look at?

Do you look at comfort?

Speed?

- When I first get into it?

- Right when you sit in it.

- I like to see how easy it is to pair my phone to Apple CarPlay.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- That's cool.

- But then afterwards, my colleague, Charlie, likes to say , "A good journalist within the first thousand feet can know 90% of what they wanna say about the car", so it's really just about putting that car into gear, how light's the steering, how heavy is the steering, how does it ride over that first bump?

and then getting it out onto the main road.

You just kind of get a feel for things, I don't know.

It's hard to explain.

- That's pretty nice.

- I struggled with it at first, but now that I've driven a lot of cars, it kind of comes quickly and I don't really have to, I mean, the only thing that I really look at before, horsepower, torque, curb weight, price options, things like that, that I have to kind of memorize right beforehand.

But otherwise I just drive it and say what I feel.

- Yeah, that's pretty cool stuff.

So let's talk about the YouTube social media piece, okay?

'Cause I've never, I kind of know enough to not know what I'm talking about.

- [Christopher] Okay (laughing).

- Because I see all these people, these influencers and all these different people that are doing things and maybe that terminology is not even right.

- [Christopher] I think it's correct.

- [Matt] So let's take one of your shows as an example.

- Okay.

- And when I click on it, there's an ad, but most people, you know, after five seconds, they skip that ad.

- Yep.

- Right?

- Yep.

- So is that how you make the money?

- Yeah so there's a number of ways that ads work.

I understand about 90% of it.

I was hoping my colleague, Chris, could come with me, but he was busy this week, so I'll do my best to try and explain it.

The way that it works is once you reach monetization threshold, which to explain that, we'll start with that.

Once you start a YouTube channel, you have to have 1,000 subscribers and I think it's 40,000 hours of watch time are the two most important things.

So once you hit a thousand subscribers, which is pretty easy, that happens pretty quick.

The 40,000 hours of watch time is what takes a while, then you're eligible to be monetized so then you can have ads in your videos that you get paid for.

So the way it works is they'll have the ad at the beginning, but then you can actually place the ads throughout your video the way that you would like.

So say you have a 10 minute video and you do a walk around of the car, well you may wanna place an ad before you put that car into drive, before you start driving.

So then the ad plays, the ad is watched and then you go out and, you know, you have the rest of your video.

But the way you make money is based on watch time.

So say again, you have a 10 minute video, you have three ads placed through that, If somebody watches only 30 seconds of that video, you're not making optimized money from that view, if that makes sense?

- Yeah, totally.

- Whereas if someone watches the whole 10 minutes and they watch all three ads, it's higher revenue.

So they call it RPM, Revenue Per Mille, which is a thousand in French, I think.

- That is crazy.

- Yeah.

- So I, when I watch another one tonight, sitting in my chair, just chillin', I'll watch through the ad and you get paid more.

- Okay, thanks.

- All right.

So now I get that piece of it, how do you get the advertisers?

- It's just through YouTube.

We don't deal with that at all.

It's just whatever ads YouTube feels are appropriate to place in our videos.

- Oh my goodness 'cause I wondered, 'cause they're big companies.

,I'm like, how do you get to a company and say, "Hey, here's my show", but YouTube does it.

- YouTube places them strategically, so a lot of the times we'll get like car ads in our, I've watched our videos before where say we're reviewing a Genesis GV70, and in the middle of the video I get an ad for a Genesis GV70.

So like they- - Oh, wow.

- Strategically put these ads in the videos, yeah.

So the AI could probably pick up the- - Yep, the algorithm.

- The algorithm for where to place the ad.

- Yeah.

- Because one of the things I saw last night was a cell phone company.

- Okay.

- It was cell phone and it was interesting 'cause I was trying to think, how would a cell phone company, is it with what you said earlier about pairing your phone?

Or was it potentially, you know, who knows?

- Yeah, it also has to do with age group.

You know, YouTube takes a lot of- - Demographic information.

- And so, whoever's watching the video- - That is so cool.

So do you get paid more if you have more likes, or followers or whatever it's called?

- So subscribers help, for sure.

Subscribers, all that does is it pushes the video out to the subscription feed on YouTube, so there's four tabs at the bottom if you're on mobile.

You click your subscription tab and all of the channels that you're subscribed to, they all show up.

So whenever we post a video, it gets pushed out to our subscribers, but also it gets pushed out to different areas of YouTube.

so there's this thing called up next where you're watching some video, say a car video from another YouTuber and our video is suggested to come up next.

And well, if you don't touch anything, it'll just automatically play up next, or you can click, no, I don't wanna watch that, or I wanna watch this one instead.

So there's all sorts of ways that the algorithm pushes the videos out.

I don't a hundred percent, like, I don't think anyone really a hundred percent understands why.

- That's cool though.

- But yeah, oh no, it's great.

- All right, so I think you've already answered it, but I think you're in a pretty good spot.

If I was like a mentor to you, because my question was how do car companies know you?

But now I don't wanna ask that.

Now, I think I know how they know you, but now you've got an opportunity, really, to even take this further don't you?

- Mm-hmm.

- And scale.

- Yes.

- So in your mind, what does scaling a business look like on YouTube or your shows?

What does it look like?

More shows or better shows that you have now?

- So what I've done when I came onto the team, I mainly just contributed content to the three existing channels and what Chris and Charlie, my colleagues, what they kind of encouraged me to do was, "Hey, start your own thing, get your own thing going because you know, you already have the car, you already have a little bit of extra time in the week where you're driving the car, you might as well shoot something for yourself as well, build that up and then if someday, something happens with one of the other channels or whatever, you have your own platform."

So that's kind of what I've done, just within the last year or so.

I've only got about 40 videos up on my personal channel.

It's not a ton.

- Stop there for a minute.

Think about this; here you got a couple people that are building their business and have built it over time.

- Oh yeah.

- Right?

And they're known.

- Yes.

- And here you come along and they're saying, "I wanna help you."

- Yeah .

- Why don't you, they're not saying this, but this is how I'm reading it, Why don't you come over here 'cause we want what's best for you because we like you, even though you're kind of a competitor on this show?

- So, kind of.

- Kind of?

- But in the way that our channel is set up in the way that our subscriber base, they all know all of us and they all like all of us.

- Okay, yeah.

- So I'm not Super competitor, and also since I contribute to the other channels as well, more than I really, I'd post like one video a week on my personal channel so it's nothing crazy yet, but- - But that's leadership there.

- I am so fortunate to have these two guys.

- That's what I'm saying.

- I mean they've changed my life in more ways than one and it's just been incredible to work alongside Chris and Charlie.

- So Chris and Charlie have in a way taught you, let you, so to speak, ride their coattails- - Yep.

- To teach you, mentor you, and then now you're becoming- - Yeah.

- That's awesome.

- Very fortunate.

- That is so cool.

- Yeah.

- So, you have Topher Drives.

- [Christopher] That's my personal channel, yep.

- So did you pick the name because there was already the Topher?

- So- - Is it because both of you are Christopher?

- Yes so a lot of people, a lot of people get confused.

I've actually met people in person that are like, "What is Topfer?

What is Topher?

What's Topher?"

and I have to explain to them, well it's the second half of our name.

And myself - I love it!

- Myself as well as the other Chris, we grew up with our families and our friends calling us Topher.

So Chris had his channel, The Topher and you know, I grew up with my cousins calling me Topher at family functions and I just felt that it kind of fit the brand to kind of my stick with that and just go Topher Drives.

And the Drives part, just driving a car, so.

- That is- - I like to focus a lot on driving with my channel, instead of being stationary and walking around, so.

- So how does a guy like you wake up and go, "You know what, I'm gonna actually make some money today and do this?"

Like how, how do you plan out your schedule?

- A lot of it, like money-wise is kind of inconsistent with like, if videos do well or not.

I mean obviously I go out and I do my best and I put my all into these videos and really try and give the most accurate depiction of these cars that I can.

But I mean I also have other things that I do.

I do, you know, the four different YouTube channels, but I also do some photography for Bring a Trailer, which is the auction website for high-end cars, so I do that freelance on the side.

What Chris Amos told me when I got into this is he was like, "Being self-employed, you should always have like five streams of income because if one of them goes down, it doesn't matter 'cause then you still have four."

so I just, I keep myself busy I do some eBay, I do the Bring a Trailer photography and then I do like a bunch of YouTube stuff.

So I'm always busy.

- I love that.

So Winding Road Magazine, Daily Motor, The Topher and Topher Drives.

- Yep.

- And you do the photography.

- Yep.

- And who knows what's down the line, right?

- Yeah, I'm really happy with what I do right now.

I don't really want anything to change.

I'm sure it will at some point, but- - Let me ask you this.

Do you, like, I know there's car shows everywhere.

Are you to the point where you're a known celebrity that you guys are asked to be at a car show and you have the Topher and all that there?

- Funny enough, actually, we have done a couple where actually recently, just a few weeks ago there was a local cars and coffee and the people that put it on watch our channels.

So, you know, we're cool with them and we show up to the events and stuff.

But it's cool walking around and walking around with Chris and getting recognized and people saying, "Oh, we love your videos."

And I never, never in a million years thought that I would ever be at a point where someone walks up to me at a car show and they say, "Hey, I love your videos."

It's like, I'm still so like taken aback by it.

- Yeah, it's an honor.

- It is.

It is a huge honor.

- Yeah, so here's here's your sixth revenue stream.

- Okay.

- All right?

Figure out where all the car shows are and do one a month and then those 12, this next year could turn into 36 the next.

'Cause as you're scaling right, I'm always thinking about how to take that idea to the next level.

- Of course.

- And it seems like what I saw with you, which I find very interesting, is that you have found some puzzle pieces, the missing pieces that people are always looking for at the beginning of entrepreneurship.

However you got 'em's irrelevant.

It could be other Topher, it could be, it doesn't matter, right?

- Yeah.

- You're starting to put together this business plan and it's a fluid plan.

I find that just fascinating.

So what's the next couple years look like for you?

- I'm hoping to just keep building with what I'm doing.

I'm hoping that the Topher channel grows, I'm hoping all the channels grow and you know, we just build an even bigger subscriber base and we can just keep doing what we're doing, 'cause this is always what I wanted to do.

You know, even going to Northwood University, they call it dealership school, even going and studying to basically work my life away at a dealership, always in my heart, this is what I wanted to do.

I wanted to review cars 'cause I grew up watching "Top Gear" and I just thought that that was the coolest thing, so.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you ask what I wanna do in two years?

I hope I'm just doing the same thing.

I mean, but just building and going out to more and more people, and it's just, it's what I love, so.

- Are you allowed to be given a car?

Have they given you a car yet to keep?

- So the closest thing they do to that is called a long term loan, which we've done, but not while I've been with the channels.

A lot of the times, bigger magazines will get long-term cars, Car and Driver Motor Trend for long-term testing.

So the manufacturers will do a loan for six months or a year and they'll report at different mileage intervals How has this car been, has it been in the dealership for maintenance?

Has it broken?

What's it been like to live with for a year?

so that's the closest you'd probably get to like being given a car.

- [Matt] That's pretty cool stuff though.

- Yeah.

Actually, you know what?

Right now we do have a long-term loan.

I forgot, we have a Polaris four-wheeler that we got for like three months.

So that's the closest we've gotten.

- That's cool, that's cool.

So let me see if I'm thinking right here.

So the car manufacturers, they're not going to take a Lexus, as an example, and trust you with it and unless they figured that you were a quality person?

- Right, yeah.

- I mean, is that true?

- That is true, yeah.

They don't just hand it out to anybody.

- Yeah, why would I let you have my brand if you weren't going to take care of my brand?

- Exactly.

- Interesting.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, they watch, most of the time, they watch what we put out and it's all about, I mean, Lexus, you bring up Lexus, they have a Christmas party every year and you know, we make sure to go, hang out with our Lexus people - That's awesome.

Well, I appreciate you coming on the show.

I mean, I wanna have you back on because I think this is gonna be fun.

Well good job, man.

- Thank you.

- Proud of you.

- Yeah.

I'm Matt George and this is another episode of "Business Forward".

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