Why I’m Glad I Lost £25,000

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Yeah, you did read that right. I've lost 25,000 pounds this month as a business in the UK. We're obviously a used car dealership and it is officially the worst month I've ever had in my life in all business, in all careers, etc. Now, there's good reason for it. I'm going to explain to you exactly where we've gone wrong this month and what the figures look like exactly and as to why we've ended up at a negative figure of minus 25,000 pounds. 25 grand is a salary now.

[00:00:26]That's kind of minimum wage. So, it is a huge amount to lose in a month, especially for a small little car dealership based up in West Yorkshire.

[00:00:33]However, I'm not massively concerned about it, which is probably going to be the most bizarre thing about this video because there are lots of other things going on and lots of reasons I think why we've had such a rubbish month. So, what we're going to do is start off and look at the positives. What we actually did that made some money this month. So, we sold five cars, which is pretty terrible for any car dealership. We try and do 10 a month if we can. 10 a month will keep us afloat. That's a nice number to be doing. So, we sold five cars and each car gave us a round about 3 and 1/2 thousand pounds worth of margin on gross margin, which gave us 17 and 1/2 thousand pounds worth of profit.

[00:01:09]Which is the trap that people fall into, isn't it, when they look at a dealership and think, "You bought it for 15, sold it for 18 and 1/2. You've made 3 and 1/2 grand." Well, this video's going to explain to you exactly why that isn't profit. So, 17 and 1/2 grand was the money that came into the business this month. The money that went out of the business was well over 40,000 pounds, which is a huge amount for businesses to spend in, especially of this size every month. Now, I'm going to break down as to where all that money has gone and hopefully you'll start to understand why I'm not overly concerned. I've had bad months in the past. We've had We've lost five figures in a month regularly, but then we've had months where we've made, you know, 30,000 quid in a month. So, it's it's not unusual, but it is particularly catastrophic this month.

[00:01:51]So, let me explain where we've gone wrong. First [snorts] of all, this month we did a road trip, which meant that I essentially closed the business down for 10 days. Now, this was a bit of a Brucey bonus for the lads. It was also something that got offered to us by a road trip tour. So, they're like, "Do you want to come along and film it, etc. Enjoy it. Consider it a break. And if you could do a video for us off the back of it, that would be great." So, we had 10 days out of office where I essentially closed the place down. I did a video about this last week. As a result of which, we only had sort of 2/3 of the month that we were working for.

[00:02:19]Now, in those 2/3 of the month, we had two bank holidays. I was poorly as well, which is totally unlike me. So, actually, when you break it down, we only worked for probably half of the month, which is not good, especially when you're trying to sell used cars.

[00:02:32]Now, also, on top of this, we've had the issues overseas. So, fuel prices have gone up. I genuinely think that's affected the market and people are slower to make decisions that they might have once made a lot quicker in the past. kind of got this perfect storm situation has resulted in a low amount of car sales. So, that kind of explains that side of things. But, then, the actual cost of what's gone out this month is fairly excessive. Usually, I spend around 25 grand a month-ish. 25 to 30 is sort of an average month spend in this place, which, again, is scary numbers, isn't it? Now, the problems we've had this month. First of all, my rent has gone up in this building. So, we're on a lease where every 3 years the landlord is going to put the rent up, and he puts it up by around about 10%, which is sort of 3% a year compounded up to sort of 10, there thereabouts. It's fine. It's written in the contract. But, that happened this month the worst possible time. So, my rent has gone up by 10%. My rent here is around about 2 grand a month-ish. So, that is an extra 200 pounds a month that it has gone up by. Also, business rates have gone up as well. My business rates have gone up by around about 300 pounds a month.

[00:03:33]Also, >> [clears throat] >> stupidly Well, stupidly or not stupidly, and you'll probably think this is the right thing to do. W- With the cost of living crisis and everything going up, including the electricity, by the way, which has gone up by about 150 quid a month, I thought it would be the right thing to do to give the lads a pay rise.

[00:03:49]Um now, I did that for two reasons.

[00:03:51]First of all, it felt right because everything else is getting squeezed and it just felt I didn't want the people who work with me to feel like they were under pressure and I was doing nothing about it. But I mean, everything seems to be on the employer at the moment, doesn't it? So, I gave them a pay rise for that reason, but the other reason as well is they're great lads and I genuinely felt like I wanted to pay them more money. So, we had that coming as well. So, that is an additional cost each month, which I'll put in the calculator here. I'm not going to say what it is because that's not fair on them. So, we've had additional costs in lots of different areas. Now, fuel's gone up as well. So, again, that's hard to quantify, but that is an additional cost into the business. Now, this is where it starts to get messy in car sales. So, I'll just pull up last year's figures. So, let's have a look at the quarters that I had in last year. So, my business year is from March to February.

[00:04:37]That's the tax year that we kind of run the business through the limited company. So, quarter one, March, April, May of last year, we lost 1,500 quid.

[00:04:47]Quarter two, we made 22,000 pounds.

[00:04:50]Quarter three, we lost 3,000 pounds and then quarter four, we made 42,000 pounds. So, quarter four, Q4 of last year was the big one. That is the one that leveled the books across the entire year. And this happens regularly in business. It's not unusual to have, you know, peaks and troughs like this, but that was a particularly kind of volatile year for us. Now, the problem in car sales when you make a load of money is you have to pay marginal VAT, which you'll probably know of anyway. If you don't know of it, basically what it means is anything between what you bought a car for and sold it for, you have to pay VAT on, regardless of what you spent on it, regardless of how long you've had it in stock for, regardless of anything else.

[00:05:27]So, you buy a car for 10 grand, you sell it for 15 grand, you'll pay around about 1,000 pounds in VAT, regardless.

[00:05:34]As a result of which, we basically in Q4 made 124,000 pounds of gross margin. Now, that netted down to 42 grand worth of profit essentially when everything else came out. As a result of which, even though you can offset everything VAT-wise, we had a VAT bill of over £15,000 that landed last month. So, on top of all of these increases that we've got, so you've got the rent, you've got the rates, you've got the increases in salaries, which by the way, if you'd had the lads on minimum wage, which I don't, you'd have been paying an increase in wages anyway, increases in NI, then you've also got increases in pension contributions as well, because of course you put the salary up, their pension contribution is a percentage of that salary, and then you've got the increase in electricity cost, increase in fuel cost, everything's you getting the picture, aren't you? And then, this ridiculous VAT water landed as well.

[00:06:26]Now, on top of all of that, we bought a few cars last month that have been going through prep, and all the prep costs also landed into that month's figures.

[00:06:34]So, we ended up spending around about £43,000 in a month, which has ended up with a minus 25 grand figure at the end of it.

[00:06:42]Now, why do I look fairly chilled out about this? There's good reason. Because in this business, I've got lots of different moving parts. I've got the actual car sales business, then I've got the car buying business as well on one side of it. Now, this is a company that I set up with Paul, it's called Car Mora, it's a website here, and essentially what we do is we buy cars from the general public, and we sell the cars to trade. Now, I used to buy cars from the general public directly, and then sell them out of my retail business, which I still do, but now most of those cars are coming through Car Mora, so Car Mora is essentially taking its granted small amount of trade profit out of those cars. As a result of which, I'm still buying them, but I'm buying them off my other business. So, the the margins on the cars have reduced a little bit, but I'm kind of still getting half of the reduction, if that makes sense, cuz I'm 50/50 with Paul on the other business. So, I'm still buying cars in, so we've kind of got lots of cars coming through, and there's lots of different changes as to what I'm buying. So, for example, I've just bought an Infiniti, which I'd never have bought before. I've got a Fiat 500 in here, which is the sort of thing that I used to buy and sell. And I'm looking at the the whole sort of direction of the business and the the types of cars that we've got in here.

[00:07:53]So, we used to sell big heavy stuff, and we still have some heavy stuff in, but the bread and butter kind of got forgotten about. And when I look through the figures for last year, there were loads of stuff in here. Kia Sportage that I sold there, Mercedes ML, you know, you've got a Ford Puma, you've got an XC90, which gave me a headache this year. That's how long ago I sold it in June. You know, 520D, Q3, you know, you GLE, lots of sort of bread and butter cars that we've stopped sort of doing, and I think that's had a negative effect on again the reason why we've not sold as many cars. So, I've been focusing on buying a little bit more bread and butter stock in the background as well.

[00:08:30]So, we've got the car dealing business, which has lost a load of money. CarMora, which has made some money this month because we've bought and sold 25 cars.

[00:08:38]And if you have sold us a car through CarMora, a massive thank you for that because obviously it adds everything adds up. Then, as you well know, I've got YouTube, I've been taking revenue from YouTube as well. So, all of these things adding up means that this minus 25 isn't as bad as it might look, although it is still minus 25 within the business.

[00:08:54]Now, the other thing that we've started doing as well is of course raffling cars. So, we've done a couple of these so far, and whilst they're not massive money makers, so for example, we've got this E46 330Ci that we're raffling at the moment. And by the way, that ends in a week, so if you've not bought a ticket for that, this is your final reminder.

[00:09:09]I'll try and remember to drop it on the videos that we've got coming out, but I suspect I'm not going to do so. Final reminder and call for that one, it's there is a link in the description below if you want to buy a ticket and a QR code if you want to scan it on your phone, but that is likely to generate some sort of a revenue to again offset this sort of all over the place spreadsheet that I've got going at the moment. So, I have got a lot of plates spinning with a lots of different things, and although this minus 25 grand thing is shocking, I think there's good reason why it is anyway. Take everything out to one side. I think, you know, fat bill costs, pork wholesale, everything sort of accumulates into one. But, if it wasn't for everything else, I'd be starting to get really concerned. Now, obviously on top of all of this as well, we had the road trip. Now, the road trip there was a bit of an expense there because we had to pay for fuel. There were a couple of places we had to pay to stay over, all that sort of stuff. But, it was a business trip and it was a sort of perk for the lads. So, I don't mind that at all. It was it was nice to be able to treat them and they loved it.

[00:10:07]So, we had the Audi R8 that we were kind of getting ready for this road trip. We put a big silly exhaust on it. It sounded amazing. And Callum, who used to work here, who's a mate of mine, he came back across to experience the R8 because he didn't get a chance to go on the road trip, which is a crying shame. And this is him experiencing what I think sounds now like a Lamborghini.

[00:10:28]Shades would have been a good idea.

[00:10:30]Probably. Do you want these ones while I shall drive it? No, you're all right.

[00:10:32]Are you sure? No, no, you'll look cool.

[00:10:34]Yeah, but you're driving. I know. Well, that's what you're going on about.

[00:10:37]My problem is it?

[00:10:50]Oh, mate, it was so good.

[00:10:52]>> Wow. It just looks It just every single photo was like Oh, no. I saw you'd have loved it, man.

[00:10:59]Yeah, I can imagine. It felt awful you not being there cuz I was like cuz Tim for the first 2 days >> [laughter] >> I was like I know a guy that would just appreciate all of how sketchy this is.

[00:11:09]>> Did you just have constant It was sketchy. So sketchy, mate. Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:13]He was doing a lot of air braking.

[00:11:15]Oh, you could have. Oh, you could have.

[00:11:17]You could have, couldn't you? Could you?

[00:11:19]No, you're on phone. Could you?

[00:11:22]Well, I'm coming out anyway.

[00:11:24]Yeah, they're all doing 5 miles an hour.

[00:11:26]>> I don't know. I don't know No one's going to go anywhere.

[00:11:30]It's so aggressive.

[00:11:31]>> It's so aggressive. Wait till it comes off song.

[00:11:38]>> [laughter] >> It's so nice. It's really nice. It's really nice. It's not No mountainous roads are these, are they?

[00:11:52]Mate, honestly, since I've got back I've hated driving.

[00:11:55]>> [laughter] >> Just It's I'm guessing there was no traffic. Nothing. It looked like there was nothing. Nothing at all. Like I I reckon I can count how many cars I saw coming the other way.

[00:12:04]Honestly. So you're going on the other side of the road into apexes and just not caring.

[00:12:10]We had a lead car. Yeah, yeah. So he like >> Car coming, motorbike coming, whatever.

[00:12:15]You probably will never do it again.

[00:12:17]Maybe.

[00:12:18]>> Chasing a 458 up a mountain pass. Him sideways. Just I said to him I said within 20 minutes I'll never forget this. No, no, you can't.

[00:12:25]>> The rest of my life. Yeah, how can you?

[00:12:27]And the other thing as well is everybody loved that.

[00:12:30]They stand in the streets and cheer for you. Literally. It was so cool, mate.

[00:12:35]Everyone loved it. That's amazing. Right car? Yeah. Yeah. 100% the right car.

[00:12:40]>> That's good.

[00:12:45]>> [laughter] >> It just Oh, wow. Didn't get tired of it.

[00:12:53]We're literally I think there's a sniff of fuel in there. We'll find out, won't we?

[00:13:00]Are you ready, sir?

[00:13:01]>> Yeah, I'm ready, sir.

[00:13:12]OH, I WOULD.

[00:13:14]>> [laughter] >> YOU WANT TO SWAP SEATS? Eight days of that, seven days of that.

[00:13:22]Tiring. Oh, how did you cope? Oh, doctor. Every night we go again.

[00:13:29]It's looked some of the hotels are outside of when you fire it up on cold start. There's no No, you can't. Yeah, not when it first fires up.

[00:13:47]Oh, unbelievable.

[00:13:50]What a thing. Don't it sound just Yeah.

[00:13:52]It's perfect.

[00:13:53]>> absolutely.

[00:14:02]>> [laughter] >> Oh, he's so good.

[00:14:07]He's so good.

[00:14:14]>> [laughter] >> You were being really good. Did you see that?

[00:14:19]>> What's going on? Setting your alarms off in here, do you reckon?

[00:14:26]Unfortunately.

[00:14:31]Nah.

[00:14:33]Oh, the alarm's going to ring in a minute.

[00:14:35]>> [laughter] >> Amazing.

[00:14:40]Amazing.

[00:14:41]It's a shame Callum couldn't come on that trip, but it's it's great to see him enjoying the car. Now, on these weeklies we do like to show you all the things that have been going on in the business as well. I've had the Fiat 500 drop in, this bright yellow car, and I absolutely adore it. I love a Fiat 500 these days. I sold loads of them as a business. It was kind of how I started.

[00:14:57]And genuinely, it's one of the cars I'm most excited about at the moment. And we've got a little bet going on. So, we like a bet in here. Normally a quid or a round or something like that just to kind of keep the excitement going. And we have a little bet as to how long this car's going to take to sell. And this is us putting the bet in place.

[00:15:13]Yellow is the color of the moment.

[00:15:17]Quavers.

[00:15:18]AA Cars. Should be fantastic sponsors for the channel and also supporters in many ways. And we're going to get them out to have a look at this.

[00:15:25]This is a yellow 3500 that came in on part exchange and it's the most excited I've been about car in ages.

[00:15:33]Borderline R8 excitement on that.

[00:15:35]What does that tell you? I'm a sad old man.

[00:15:39]>> [snorts] >> We're going to have a little wager.

[00:15:41]It's just gone live now.

[00:15:44]What we saying? How long? Let Let Alex go first this time cuz he's got nothing to go on.

[00:15:50]And he got asked how long is that 24 days and he goes I'd say probably 25 days.

[00:15:55]>> [laughter] >> How much is it going up for?

[00:16:00]Ooh, he's asking questions. That's not like him. No.

[00:16:04]>> [laughter] >> It's going up for a smidge under £4,000.

[00:16:08]He's not asked He's not asked all the questions, has he?

[00:16:11]This is disgusting by the way. Is it?

[00:16:14]This isn't This is like no potted beef I know.

[00:16:19]Look at that. What's like bloody dog food?

[00:16:23]Well, there's big chunks of fat in it and all sorts. I think the problem there Tim is you've been spoiled for the last week eating in five-star restaurants.

[00:16:31]And now he's back on the gruel.

[00:16:33]>> [clears throat] >> He's back on the Yorkshire gruel.

[00:16:35]Go on then Alex. 26 days.

[00:16:39]26 days. Bearing in mind >> 16 You think two weeks to sell a car? I know what he's doing here. It's just 26 days and then he gauges your reaction.

[00:16:48]If you're shocked he thinks oh I've messed up here. That has been in stock for 120 days. Yeah, but that's a Porsche.

[00:16:55]The Tesla has been in stock for 60 days.

[00:16:57]The S3 down there has been in stock for 60 days. And you reckon the bizarrely colored Fiat will do it in two weeks?

[00:17:05]I'm trying to give you a steer here. 24 days. You've gone less than 26.

[00:17:10]>> 24 days. 24 days.

[00:17:12]>> I shall say 17 days. Ooh.

[00:17:19]I'm going to go 14 days. You're wise.

[00:17:22]Yeah, we pushed you away, didn't we?

[00:17:24]>> [laughter] >> I saw what you did.

[00:17:25]>> Thank you.

[00:17:26]>> no idea. I reckon it will be a couple of weeks. It is a lot cooler, though.

[00:17:31]>> [snorts] >> Odd cells. Yeah, it's cooler.

[00:17:33]>> Odd cells.

[00:17:34]Right, I think you've got a job.

[00:17:37]>> [laughter] >> Full biscuit. I don't know what's in the fridge. Beer.

[00:17:43]Beer and guacamole. Right, the bet's on, then. Bet's on. 14, 17. [clears throat] 26.

[00:17:52]So, last week as a whole was a bit of a difficult week cuz it was the first week back after the road trip. We were all broken and trying to get back on top of things, but we did sell a car. So, we sold this beautiful Porsche 911 uh to a subscriber. I'm not going to name him cuz I don't know if he wants to be named, but he came across on the Saturday, loved it, beautiful part exchange. We'll be more about that coming up as well because it's a rather special. And um yeah, we bought a couple of cars as well during the process. So, business-wise it was fairly decent for the week. However, we did want to go through all the fuel receipts as to exactly how much that road trip cost us as you can see in this clip here.

[00:18:24]So, Tim and I are getting through the rest of the beers. Sevilla.

[00:18:28]Where's that from? Southern Spain. Thank you. Mhm. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to Southern Spain cuz we just worked out how much fuel we spent on this trip.

[00:18:37]I'll give you a clue cuz Alex is going to guess first.

[00:18:39]That's all the fuel stops.

[00:18:41]That's all you see.

[00:18:42]>> that's it. All right, okay. That's all you've seen. It is the battle of the smartest here.

[00:18:47]>> [snorts] >> Closest person to the fuel doesn't get the next round in. Place your bets.

[00:18:53]>> Um Well, who's going first? That's So, we'll toss a coin. Heads or tails, Alex?

[00:18:57]>> Heads.

[00:19:03]Tim, go first. Okay. I'm going to say 1,300 pounds. I'm going to go lower. I am going to go lower. I had a figure in head that was lower than that but What was it? Maybe 1298?

[00:19:16]Believe it or not, it was [snorts] It was >> [laughter] >> Is that what you were going to guess?

[00:19:22]So, I'll [clears throat] say 12 99. Yeah.

[00:19:25]>> What? Right. Well, karma is a 1340. Oh. Hey, hey, that were a good guess that were it.

[00:19:33]>> guess. That were a bloody good guess.

[00:19:34]Yeah. Your round.

[00:19:36]I had 1200 quid in my head before we set off.

[00:19:38]>> That's what I said before we set off.

[00:19:39]Have you accounted for the fact that that was yours?

[00:19:42]Yeah, [snorts] cuz I've just looked at what has exited my bank. Okay, yeah, yeah. You've won Tim, I wouldn't push it.

[00:19:48]Right. Yeah, okay. Yeah, 1304. I mean, these are These are all fuel receipts.

[00:19:53]Every single one of these is fuel receipts. And those.

[00:19:59]And you were quite generous Rob, I must say. You got the meal on the first night.

[00:20:03]>> I did. Yeah, and I got a few drinks, didn't I? You got a few drinks, didn't you?

[00:20:06]>> Thank you. I'm glad it was I'm glad it was Got a few bits as well. Yeah.

[00:20:10]>> [snorts] >> Likewise actually Tim, to be fair. It has to be said, I thought you were very generous on the trip. I noticed that you bought a few bits. You got me a sandwich at the fuel station a couple of times.

[00:20:19]You were getting the roadies in. Yeah. I feel like we both did our bit there, Tim.

[00:20:25]>> [laughter] >> Wicks.

[00:20:28]1340 pounds.

[00:20:32]You weren't being very sympathetic with the old right foot though, were you?

[00:20:37]Downshift. Downshift. Yeah. Downshift.

[00:20:42]You know what I'm looking forward to?

[00:20:44]Another tinny? Yeah.

[00:20:46]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, I don't know if that's more or less than you thought it was going to be, but it was worth absolutely every penny. That road trip was amazing. The lads loved it. It was fantastic. And next week we're going to be hopefully, cuz Alex is away this week, dropping a full video on that so you can see all the ins and outs, exactly where we went, all the roads that we went to, all the hotels that we stayed in. It was just amazing. It'd be great to kind of have you on that journey as well.

[00:21:10]So, overall, I'm not concerned. I mean, I'm really deflated, to say the least.

[00:21:16]Nobody likes losing money, but I do think that I did a video about what was happening with car sales recently. I think that the the tables are going to turn soon. It feels like the phone started ringing a little bit more, and it feels like it's just starting to fizz a bit. Bit of good weather in the UK changes people's perception on a lot of things. So, I'm excited about what's going to be happening. And genuinely, if I look tired and knackered and all that sort of stuff, it's cuz I've got so much stuff going on. But, I I'd stand on this. I think this is going to be the best year we have, even though we started off so utterly badly.

[00:21:46]Anyway, at the end of every week, what we like to do is go for a pint. And rather than having a bet, this time round, we decided we're going to do the Wheel of Fortune. And this is how this went.

[00:21:57]It is that time of the week again. It's the wheel. Cue the music.

[00:22:04]Let's the wheel decide.

[00:22:06]>> decide. The completely fair wheel decide. So, we've got all three names lined up. Is it control?

[00:22:11]First one it lands on buys the round.

[00:22:13]Agreed. Done.

[00:22:18]>> [snorts] >> Oh, it's a crying shame, Alex. Would you believe it?

[00:22:24]>> God's sake.

[00:22:27]So, once again, thank you for joining me on the weekly. Hopefully, this month is going to be better. I feel like it's going to be, and I'll be keeping you updated every week with what's going on.

[00:22:35]If you've not bought a ticket for the raffle, it is going to be over next time you see a video on a Saturday. So, there's a link in the description below.

[00:22:41]Any pound that goes on a ticket supports us as a channel, but also we're going to be doing a charity donation on the back of that. And this time round, we're going to be doing a charity donation to Sue Ryder. We're looking We would like to do at least about 1,000 lb, and it's looking like that's going to be possible now. So, thank you everybody that's bought a ticket so far. Thank you for your support. Thank you for watching.

[00:22:58]Thank you for subscribing. And I will see you on the next one, where hopefully we've sold a few cars. Cheers.

[00:23:04]>> [music]