Sean David Kerr (Bikes and Beards)

Sean David Kerr is a motorcycle enthusiast, entrepreneur, and a popular YouTuber.

He has more than 1.9M subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Bikes and Beards.’

Introduction-

Sean David Kerr was born on 26 February 1986 in Texas, United States.

He grew up in Pennsylvania.

His father was a military officer.

Sean’s mother, Amy Kerr, works at SmileDirectClub.

He has three siblings: a brother, David Kerr, and a couple of sisters, Cait Nelson and Jessica Canupp.

Education-

Sean did his schooling from Lancaster Mennonite School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Then, he initially attended a community college and a year and a half later, he shifted to Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa Falls, Georgia.

While studying here, Sean met his future wife, Rachel.

He studied law.

Career-

In 2007, at 20, Sean was working as a delivery driver for a pizza shop.

During this time, he was living frugally and saved up some money and took a no doc loan and purchased a house.

In the midst of all these, Sean was also attending the community college full-time and was also doing a full-time job.

He used to frequently switch jobs and worked 36 jobs even before attending college.

Flipping motorcycles-

In his final year of graduation, a few people at his church were starting a motorcycle parts company.

Sean was approached by them to tear down the motorcycles which they would purchase from National Powersport Auctions, Atlanta.

Here, he saw an opportunity of buying motorcycles privately for cheaper price than that in auction and he succeeded in convincing the people of the motorcycle parts company to buy motorcycles from him.

Thanks to the lax open title laws of Georgia around 2010, Sean was able to purchase private motorcycles at attractive prices from numerous police officers and flipped them for a profit.

Here, he got a chance to ride many unique motorcycles and this reinforced his love for motorcycles.

Success with frugality-

Initially, as Sean didn’t have enough money for purchasing the motorcycles, he used to borrow money from his father.

Soon, he started earning handsomely, but he invested all his earnings in purchasing assets which would help his business grow.

Like, Sean used to purchase cheap conversion vans for a few hundred dollars to transport motorcycles and after they gave up, he used to earn money by scrapping them at the salvage yard.

Later, he bought a used F-250 truck for $2500, and he also bought a used landscaping trailer to tow to his truck to move more motorcycles in order to earn more money.

Few disappointments-

Thanks to his motorcycle flipping business, Sean accumulated $30,000 and with this, he started a trucking company.

Later, he had to sell the couple of vehicles of his trucking company for a loss.

Then, Sean moved from Georgia to Lancaster and planned to build popcorn dispensing kiosks and place them next to Redbox kiosks.

He wanted to name his venture, ‘Popcorn Bucket’ and was very passionate about it.

But unfortunately, Sean had to drop this idea because during that time, he was in a debt of $45,000 from student loans and was just earning an average salary from his job.

Working as an internet manager & flipping motorcycles in a car dealership-

Sean used to buy motorcycles wholesale from Craigslist and private individuals and then flip it to dealerships like WOW Motorcycles in Marietta, Georgia, etc.

In 2014, he was working as an internet manager for a large used car dealership and his job involved helping the dealership sell cars online on eBay and performing optimizations to sell more cars online, and then ship them.

While working here, Sean used to also attend auctions to buy motorcycles and thanks to this, he gained good knowledge about the automotive industry.

As he felt that his job didn’t offer him sufficient growth opportunities, he wanted to quit his job and start his own business.

Once, someone approached the car dealership to trade in a motorcycle and as Sean had good knowledge of motorcycles, he entered the scene and took in the motorcycle.

Within 12 hours, they sold the bike with a good markup and made a good profit on it.

Soon, they started trading in more bikes and selling them for good profits.

‘SRK Cycles’-

Thanks to flipping motorcycles at the car dealership, the idea of ‘SRK Cycles’ was born.

Sean’s plan with the SRK Cycles was to help the dealerships trade in motorcycles and then purchase and sell them for a profit.

Initially, as he didn’t have the required capital, he wanted to partner with the owner of the car dealership for establishing the SRK Cycles.

But later, Sean changed his mind and wanted to be on his own.

So, in April 2015, he quit his job at the car dealership.

Sean named his new venture as ‘SRK Cycles’ after the initials of his daughter.

A successful business-

As Sean didn’t have enough money to start the SRK Cycles on his own, he partnered with Guy, the owner of Fine Cars by Guy.

So, he started his venture under the umbrella of his dealership and this allowed him to sell motorcycles without paying for any overhead and large upfront costs.

Sean started small and in the initial months as he didn’t have any inventory of motorcycles and he used to sell the motorcycles as they arrived.

It took him three months to grow an inventory of 10 motorcycles.

Eventually, Sean’s business grew and he started earning handsomely.

Within the six months of starting, they had the largest used motorcycle inventory in Lancaster County.

On his own to a million-dollar business-

Even though Sean had a successful partnership with Guy, he decided to start his own dealership and be on his own.

So, he leased a building for the SRK Cycles.

Sean sold the house which he bought at 20 and this gave him $30,000 as seed money for his venture.

After running his business successfully for a couple of years, Sean tried to get loans from banks but couldn’t succeed.

So, he approached a venture capitalist through his contacts to raise money.

Sean successfully convinced him to lend a couple of hundred thousand dollars for selling motorcycles online using the YouTube videos.

He, in his speech to the venture capitalist stated that venture capitalist’s money would be used only for either the motorcycle inventory or as a cash in the bank and for all other purposes, he would use his own money; this was the selling point of his speech.

Eventually, Sean grew the SRK Cycles to a million-dollar business.

SRK Cycles was located in Salunga-Landisville, Pennsylvania, United States and has moved to Tennessee.

A successful YouTuber-

On 8 November 2011, Sean started his first YouTube channel, ‘Srkcycles.’

And on 19 June 2017, he started his second YouTube channel, ‘Bikes and Beards.’

As of December 2023, Sean has 678K subscribers on ‘Srkcycles’ and 1.93M subscribers on ‘Bikes and Beards.’

Sean sells apparels and accessories through his website.

Personal life-

On 13 December 2009, Sean married Rachel whom he met in college.

They have four children.

Sean lives in Tennessee.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Sean David Kerr?

Share with me in the comment section below.