James (TheStradman)

James is a gearhead, and a popular YouTuber.

He has 4.31M subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘TheStradman.’

Introduction-

James was born into a middle-class family in Newport, Oregon, United States.

His father was a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and his mother was a teacher.

James has three elder brothers.

As his family wasn’t well off, they lived in a small house in Newport, Oregon and he grew up here.

Early love for cars-

Since his childhood, James loved cars.

Also, his father and brothers were car enthusiasts.

While in his second grade, James saw his teacher’s  Jaguar E-Type and a McLaren F1 and developed an interest for exotic cars.

At 15, he decided that he would grow up to own either a Ferrari or a Lamborghini.

‘TheStradman’-

At 14, James’s favourite car was the Ferrari Challenge Stradale.

During that time, he was thinking of a username for FerrariChat.com while sitting at his parent’s computer and that’s when the name, TheStradman striked him and he used this name as his username.

Later, James named his YouTube channel as ‘TheStradman.’

Wanting to become a shortstop-

While growing up, James considered Derek Jeter, a former professional baseball shortstop as one of his role models.

At 9, he too wanted to grow up to become a shortstop for the New York Yankees.

But James dropped this plan in his sophomore year of high school upon realising that his batting average wasn’t good.

Then, he wanted to grow up to become an entrepreneur.

Losing in the stock market-

In September 2008, in his sophomore year of college, James wanted to earn money for buying supercars so, he invested his summer savings in the General Motors.

But in the same month, he lost all his money as the stock market crashed.

Education & career-

In 2011, James graduated in Accounting & Finance from Oregon State University.

After graduating, thanks to the recession, he couldn’t get a job and so, he moved back to his home to live with his parents.

Here, James started a business of trading cars but unfortunately, it didn’t click.

Later, he moved to Utah in his 2002 Audi TT and leased an apartment for a period of six months.

Fortunately, after a couple of weeks, James secured a job at the Montage Deer Valley in Park City of Utah.

Starting his YouTube channel-

James was getting paid $17 per hour at Montage Deer Valley and while working here, on 27 July 2012, he started his YouTube channel, ‘TheStradman.’

Tim of ‘Shmee150’ was his inspiration for starting a YouTube channel.

Prior to starting his YouTube channel, James was a car spotter and was capturing photos of cars.

Later, he felt that it would be better for him to shoot videos of the cars and so, he started his YouTube channel.

Losing his job-

After a year of working at his job, James realised that one of his colleagues was getting paid more than him.

So, he thought of giving a couple of weeks of notice period assuming that his boss would plead him not to leave and would raise his salary.

But this didn’t happen, as his boss allowed James to quit his job.

Living in Audi TT-

After leaving his job, James decided to move to the Beverly Hills in California to car spot.

He was attracted to Beverly Hills because that city had a lot of supercars.

James started living in his Audi TT and started filming cars.

His routine involved parking his car in a free parking space and then, walking up to the Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and standing there daily for around 12 hours to film the supercars.

And in the evenings, James would drive to the McDonald’s and park his car there and edit videos and use McDonald’s free Wi-Fi to upload the videos onto his channel.

He was cautious enough to switch residential streets while sleeping in his car because he didn’t want to get into trouble by parking his car in the same street every night.

Likewise, James lived in his car for 58 days and at that time, he showered at a beach in Malibu.

Being independent-

Once, while James was living in his Audi TT on Santa Monica Boulevard, it broke down during the night time.

The fuel pump of his car went off and the Santa Monica Audi quoted $1200 to replace it but during that time, he had only $800.

Thankfully, James’s mother came forward to financially help him but as he wanted to be financially independent, he declined her help.

He was 24 at that time.

James ordered the fuel pump online for $200.

He spent a few days learning how to replace the fuel pump online and then, he replaced the fuel pump by himself.

His second job-

Later, James moved to his parents’ home and secured a job as an auditor in a hotel.

He started working in the graveyard shift and was paid $14 per hour and he worked in this job for around six months.

Meanwhile, James didn’t stop working on his YouTube channel.

His first viral video-

Once, in the Sun Valley Tour de Force event in Idaho, James filmed a few Bugatti Veyrons and out of them, a Bugatti Veyron SuperSport hit 246.4 MPH and he filmed that and titled the video as- Bugatti Veyron Super Sport hits 246.4 MPH!!.

This video was published on 28 July 2014 and this video got featured on the front cover of Yahoo and got viral and got more than a million views in a day.

James earned around $6000 with this single video and later in 2020, he purchased one of those Bugatti Veyrons which raced in the Sun Valley Tour de Force.

Up until July 2014, he had only around 2500 subscribers on his YouTube channel but thanks to this viral video, he gained thousands of subscribers.

Some of his other videos which were filmed in that week, also started becoming viral.

Thanks to this success, James realised the potential of YouTube.

His third job & becoming a full-time YouTuber-

In August 2014, James moved back to Utah and secured a job as an entry-level cost accountant in Park City.

He was getting paid $45,000 per year in this job and even while working in this job, he continued working on his YouTube channel.

During that time, James decided to buy a Lamborghini Gallardo to further grow his channel and for this, he started saving money by living very frugally.

Buying Lamborghini Gallardo-

After saving $50,000, James used it as a down payment and purchased a 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo.

On 26 October 2015, he published a video titled- Lamborghini at age 26: What I do for a living to afford a Lamborghini Gallardo featuring his Lamborghini.

This video became very viral and thanks to this, James earned $20,000.

And that’s when he decided to become a full-time YouTuber but he wasn’t ready to resign from his job.

But after working as an accountant for almost a year and a half, James got laid off on 1 April 2016 and since then, he has been a full-time YouTuber.

After becoming a full-time YouTuber, he started working with utmost dedication on his channel.

Subscribers & other YouTube channels-

As of December 2023, James has 4.31M subscribers on ‘TheStradman’ YouTube channel.

He has a couple of other YouTube channels namely, STRAD and STRAD SHORTS.

James earns from a variety of sources like AdSense, sponsored content, merch, etc. of his YouTube channel.

James invests most of his earnings into supercars and with this, he gets the content for his YouTube channel.

Some interesting facts about James-

• James is an introvert.
• He is a Lamborghini fanboy and his favourite Lamborghini is Lamborghini Aventador.
• Koenigsegg RR is James’s favourite car.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of James?

Share with me in the comment section below.

Also read- Inspiring Story of Supercar Blondie