Graham Stephan is 34 years old and is worth roughly 23 million dollars but has made his money by being frugal. Stephan grew up in California and always has been in the business and social media space. He started by selling houses after high school. This allowed him to eventually save up enough money to own his own investment properties and start to grow his net worth. He would post on YouTube and instagram about how he was building his net worth and would give financial commentary and advice, as well as information on the real estate industry. He would always discuss how it was best to live a simple and frugal lifestyle and grow your money while you are young.

One of the trademarks of his personal brand that he developed was his iced coffee. He would talk about how spending $5-10 on an iced coffee is ridiculous and would show people all the time how he makes his coffee at home for less than a dollar. This habit allowed him to build a personal brand and give his podcast a name.

The Iced Coffee hour is a podcast that Graham started in 2020. He has on different entrepreneurs, influencers, and investors. So much of his podcast goes over how his guests made their money, and how they spend it. He is able to get advice for his audience and give them so much information on how to be financially secure. The podcast posts weekly and has exploded in popularity over the past few years. Stephan also has multiple sponsors for his episodes, which allows him to bring in lots of revenue for the show.

Ed Bolian has always had an obsession with cars and a knack for business. As a high schooler, he had an albino iguana breeding business that turned his love for reptiles into an entrepreneurial venture. Although it didn’t end up being the thing that brought him all of his success, he was able to pretend that it was more successful than it was and get into different exotic car dealerships and convince salespeople to let him drive different exotic cars like Lamborghinis and Ferraris. In college, Bolian started an exotic car rental company. The company would loan out super cars to various clients throughout Atlanta, sometimes including rappers, and Bolian was able to have a fleet of amazing cars of his own at a young age. The company was not extremely successful due to how a significant repair on one of the vehicles could lead to all of the profits being eaten up.

Next, Ed worked as a Lamborghini salesman. This gave him lots of exposure to supercar owners, and allowed him to work within that industry after closing his rental business. Throughout his time selling Lamborghinis, he was able to learn all about how automotive sales worked, as well as tracking down specific versions of cars to meet clients needs.

Possibly Ed’s greatest story in the car community is his cannonball run. The Cannonball Run is a drive that is based on the 1980’s movie. It starts at the red ball garage in New York City and ends at the Portofino Inn in  California. People will modify their cars to drive through the night across the country to try and beat this record. Bolian was able to beat the record in 2013 in a 2004 Mercedes S55 AMG with a time of 28 hours and 50 minutes.

With all of this automotive experience, Bolian noticed how difficult it was to find and track information about a car. There was carfax, but you would need to pay to learn about a vehicle and it was not crowd sourced. VinWiki allowed people to post about their own cars, and have other people comment on them. This gave each car more of a story, and could lead to more detail for people who are looking to buy the car instead of just a small amount of information that you would get from a carfax report. To help with marketing, Ed created a youtube channel to go with Vinwiki. Other people would come on the channel and talk about different experiences and stories they have had with their cars. The channel grew to two million subscribers and has helped the business grow substantially too.

Ben Francis is 32 years old, worth $1.4 Billion and is the founder of Gymshark. In 2012, he started Gymshark out of his garage in Birmingham at 19 years old. Francis was very passionate about fitness and bodybuilding, but was struggling to find any apparel that was designed for the gym instead of just sports in general. Realizing this need, he bought a printer and started sewing his own gym clothes with his friend. He would send out his products to various influencers and YouTubers that he followed within the fitness community to try to gain notoriety and sales. Eventually, this method caught on, skyrocketing the company to a 62% year over year growth figure since 2020. Seeing how Ben took his passion for fitness and need for gym apparel to a multi billion dollar company is extremely inspiring. It shows that you can have a massive impact and level of success at an extremely young age. Furthermore, you can achieve that success by following something you are passionate about and progressing a market forward.