How Social Media and Passion Sold $60M in Cars w/ Chau Nguyen | Ep 442

**Chau Nguyen** (0:00)
At this time, I'm all in on technology. The entire time I'm messing with old rusty cars, I questioned myself the whole time thinking, am I a mechanic? And am I a used car dealer?
Why am I doing it? Even my wife was like, she came out of the garage and see me under the truck, sweating with a wrench, being like, what are you doing? I actually think I was confused for a while that, I say, this can't be me, I'm a tech guy.

**Chris Do** (0:26)
Your identity and how you see yourself actually is a big driver as to what you can pursue and what you will not pursue.

**Chau Nguyen** (0:32)
My name is Chau Nguyen, and you're listening to The Futur.

**Chris Do** (0:38)
Today's episode is a special one for me because our guest man who's related to me is my cousin, his name is Chau. He was here almost 10 years ago to the day. I think we're episode four or five in the pod and just very new to the whole content game.
He came here because he was sharing with us. He had sold his previous business venture called Campus Special, exited for $20 million, started a new venture, which I was really excited about. I thought, this is it. This guy's got the might and such. Everything he touches turns to gold. A company called HireWire, kind of like the gig economy before that was a word. I think you had your finger on the pulse of lots of things that were going on.
And then you were jamming on that for a number of years, don't know what happened, and you reemerged with another business, which is what I want to talk about today. If this story intrigues you, at some point, hit pause and go and watch the original interview, it's going to give you way more context. And I'm just going to put the link in the description, you can check that out. Now, I know every time you would come out to California, you talk to me about cars, and you start a new company called Vintage Broncos. And I think it's an expression of your love for vintage cars.
Usually businesses don't always start like we're sitting with Venn diagrams. It starts with a passion, a purpose, or something that you want to do that sparks an idea. Take us there.

**Chau Nguyen** (1:52)
Well, I have to say that cars was always the magnet for me. That was what I just loved. And everything I did before that, I loved too, but it was really more of just a, if I win at this, then I can go buy cars because it's what I really wanted.
So if you're out there and you just have an obsession for cars or whatever it is, I think that's a good thing because then it'll motivate you to go after it so you can get it. And that's what happened to me.

**Chris Do** (2:16)
Where does the beginning of the business idea began? Like the spark. I think it was like you were retrofitting, the classic car, yes. Tell us about that.

**Chau Nguyen** (2:24)
It all happened by accident too. And the fascinating thing about this is if you follow Vintage Broncos from the beginning, which was 2019, then rebranded to Vintage Modern. That was really the documented journey of me just buying an old Ford Bronco. It was a 1970 Ford Bronco. I bought it for fun. Zero concept of a business. I just bought it because I liked it.
And at that point in time, I had had over 50 cars. But I bought that old Bronco because I just thought it looked cool. And when I got it home, it looked really, really nice, but it had so many problems. I mean, I'm talking about everything you can think of did not work. So we were really spoiled and that truck had so many issues. It sparked the beginning of, well, how do we make it better?
And that, how do we make it better question went from fixing my old truck, to dabbling in restoration, to building a car company, to just keep pushing the envelope to make it the best of everything you can have. And the coolest part about it to me was that I never did it to make money or start a business. I just did it because I loved it. And I think that's where the great businesses come from.

**Chris Do** (3:29)
Start to finish from you driving that thing home day one to like, it's done. I like it. How much time are we talking about? And second question is how much money have you dumped into the original one?