Redefining Car Goals - How a 335i Changed my Life

Hey guys , my name is Adam L Z and this is my 2008 BMW 3 35 .

I , to most of you guys , this may just look like another car .

But believe it or not , this piece of machinery has actually changed my life .

I stand before you .

Now at the age of 20 with the largest BMX youtube channel and questionably the largest clothing company in BMX and neither of those would be possible without this car .

Now , before I tell you anything about my 335 I , I kind of have to tell you guys the story behind it .

It's a long one , but I think it has the potential to inspire a lot of you guys .

So just bear with me as I take you guys a few years back to high school .

Let's go for a ride .

So before this car , I owned an E 46 325 .

I , it was an awesome first car , but part of me always wanted more .

I've been into cars since I was a really little kid and I kind of always wished that I had a platform that I could mod and , you know , make faster and have a little bit more fun with , with an automatic 2.5 liter .

I didn't really find that there were any mods or anything that were really worth my time .

They were worth the money .

Everything changed one summer when I was hanging out at Wallingford Bike Barn , you know , I'm outside riding my bike and then this black space ship pulls up with red interior .

Sounds like nothing I've ever heard before .

And I was just in love at the time .

I really didn't know much about BMW S .

So I talked to the owner a little bit .

His name was Justin and I learned a lot about his car , including the fact that it was a 335 .

I now before that day , I had really never heard of the 335 before .

Other than maybe seeing it , I just figured it was a 3.5 liter .

But when I found out that it was a three liter twin turbo in line six in a beautiful luxurious car .

I was like sold that was like the car of my dreams .

So actually prior to that , I had my sights set on an E 46 M three , but the 335 was newer , had more gadgets .

It was faster , had better gas mileage and it had turbos as every young kid is at some point , I was in love with the idea of having turbos on a car so I could hear them spool and it's also cool having a turbo car because it's a really good platform if you're going to modify it , because it's a lot easier to get more power out of a turbo car versus an N A .

On top of this , a 335 was kind of like the same price as an E 46 M three at the time .

But that's still pretty expensive .

So this is kind of where it all begins .

I'm the type of person that's like all in with stuff .

Like when I love something , I love it and when I want it , I want it .

So the daunting task was upon me of how I would get a 335 I for a solid car , like the one I wanted stick shift with red interior because the red interior is a must .

I was looking at anywhere from 20 to $30,000 .

Now , that may not be that much to you , especially if you guys make payments on cars like that's doable .

But for me , I think I was like 17 or 18 years old and I'd always operated under the idea that debt sucks .

So I always try to buy everything out right in cash .

So come up with 20 or $30,000 cash is kind of tough .

So like I said , when I want something , I want it .

So that's when I did the deed that no one can ever forgive .

And I started selling drugs .

No , I'm just kidding .

I'm just kidding .

I did not sell drugs .

I'm 100% kidding .

I did not start selling drugs .

I promise .

I promise .

I've never , ever , ever sold drugs and I don't ever plan on it all kidding aside though , I wasn't about to get a job to make the money .

I'm the type of person that just hates working for people .

And on top of that I'd seen nine to fives ruin a lot of my friends' lives and kind of make them fall out of BMX .

Got to have a little pull in there for you guys .

I know it's probably boring .

But , yeah , I've seen 9 to 5 jobs ruin my friends' .

BMX lives over and over again .

They get involved trying to pay off a car with a 9 to 5 and then they don't have time to ride anymore .

Which sucks .

But , you know , that's what some people are about , but I wanted to stay with BMX .

I was , I didn't know how I was going to get the money or what I was going to do .

But I went around to my friends and my family was like , see this car , this is the car that I'm going to buy .

I am going to get a 335 .

I , I do not know how , but it's going to happen .

Some people smiled and nodded , but most people just laughed at me and were like , ha ha .

Yeah .

Cool .

Yeah .

Right .

And , you know , that kind of attitude is what pushed me to want the car and to actually , like , strive towards it even more the idea that people didn't really think that I could do it .

A guy named Brianna saw potential in what I've been doing at the time .

You know , I had a youtube channel back then and I had a pretty decent following .

So he took it upon himself to try and help me figure out some way that I could get this car .

I think it's just because he was sick of hearing me talk on and on and on about it because I was obsessed to say the least .

He came up with the idea of me doing like a signature shirt through the bike barn because they were actually my sponsor at the time .

I had my friend Mike do up a design that kind of intertwined bikes and cars and it was awesome , but the design wasn't print ready and we had a hard time figuring out how to get it , print ready .

And the whole idea pretty much just got abandoned .

So it was back to ground one .

Me wanting this car with absolutely no idea on how I was going to get it .

I should also probably add that I pretty much had given up on youtube at the time my first channel got banned because I was stupid and I was asking kids to click ads , which is like a big , no , no .

And then after that one got banned , I started up two more channels and I still got banned from the residual effect .

So I had pretty much given up on youtube and was just kind of over the idea of making videos because I was just so frustrated .

So I was just going to school riding my bike and just doing what a normal bmx rider does .

It just kind of sucked because a couple of my first youtube channels are actually pretty successful .

Like I had a few videos with six figure view accounts .

I had like 30,000 subscribers and I almost just let all that go to waste my marketing class in high school though , changed everything .

I , a friend named Dan Nolte who is really different than a lot of my BMX friends and everything because he wasn't a BMX writer .

He was like a runner and he was just really smart and he had the ability to look at everything that was going on with an outside perspective .

And he saw what I had going on with youtube and he really pushed me to start doing everything again and to start back what I almost abandoned , he kind of helped me figure out what I was going to focus on , which happened to be like making how tos and the stuff that I was good at , you know , teaching kids how to do stuff and I'm pretty sure he even helped me come up with the rebranded youtube name of LZ BMX .

So that's crazy .

Like Dan's helped me so much , but I didn't want to become reliant on these advertisements that I kept getting banned from again .

So I wanted to find another way that I could capitalize off these videos .

So I went back to the shirt idea thinking that there would be some way that I could get the art workable to put on a T shirt because it was a sick design that we had .

I'm actually wearing it right now .

So I had my friend named Kevin Ken help me redo the artwork and it was actually really , really easy for him to get the art to where it was print ready .

So it kind of annoyed that we didn't do that earlier on .

But , you know , oh , well , things happen .

So since I was doing this on my own and I didn't have any help from the bike shop .

I had to figure out how I was going to get the shirts printed .

Luckily , my dad knew a guy that he used shirts before and I was able to get 100 shirts for $400 but I didn't have $400 .

So I did some random yard work here and there sold some video games that I never played .

And sold some bike parts and sure enough , I had $400 ready to make my first investment when I first dropped the shirts and put them up for sale .

People went crazy at the time .

Not that many youtubers or even BMX riders had been making clothing .

So it was still kind of like a new thing and everyone was just really hyped about it in just a few nights .

I almost sold out entirely and turned that $400 into well over 1000 for me , that was a lot of money at the time .

The only thing that I really regret about it is that for that first batch of shirts , I did use a cheaper style shirt , like , you know , the ones that you would get for free at like a school rally or something like the cheap Gilden ones .

So I'm still to this day thinking that I lost a couple of potential customers when I sold those crappy shirts because right away right after that , right after those sold out , I went ahead and replaced them with way nicer shirts like , you know , like super nice soft quality because I realized actually through a lot of my classes that you can't value people as like a one time customer , you have to value them as a lifetime value .

So since I loved learning how to do stuff , I decided to learn how to use Photoshop and I started pumping out new designs left And right now , since this video is supposed to be about my car , I don't want to tell you the entire history of my business , but I can't tell you that it slowly and surely took over my life before I knew it .

I was spending every hour , you know , driving out to pick up new shirts , packing orders all night , getting less sleep .

But I can't explain how much I loved it , how much I learned and just how awesome it was .

I even started shirts with this kid face from my school on it and selling them in my high school halls .

Like that's , that's how serious I got .

I , I probably should have gotten in trouble for that .

But I never did , you know , it was really hard work , but I enjoyed every single second of it .

I was doing my own thing , becoming financially independent and I really was truly learning a lot .

I continued what I had going on into college .

I go to school all day , do homework when I got back , ride at night and then ship orders until like two AM in the morning .

It was hard work and it took a lot of time .

But I think by the end of the story , you'll see that it paid off as the numbers in my bank account grew and grew and grew .

I started becoming more and more obsessed with the 335 I s because they suddenly became realistic for me to own .

One day I spent every night online researching all the problems with them , what options I wanted where to buy them , how much mileage , what year to buy and all the nitty gritty little details that you could possibly imagine .

I even planned out like every single mod that I wanted to do after I got the car , I have a problem .

But every single time 335 I on the road , it was a reminder to me of why I was doing what I was doing and why I was working so hard and it really just gave me the energy to push through when times got tough .

Some of you might even remember in my Instagram bio quite a long time ago .

I had keeping that hashtag 3 35 insight .

I never really told people what it was and not that many people figured out what it was about because it was kind of random .

But to me that was just that little reminder that I needed to see every time I looked at my bio to keep me pushing through that beginning stage of owning my business because anyone will tell you the beginning stages of owning a business when you're setting everything up and doing all your first orders .

And not knowing what you're doing at all is the absolute hardest part ever .

And that's what discourages a lot of people from doing their own thing .

So to me , the 335 really kept me focused and kept my head in the game .

So only one year after printing my first batch of shirts , owning a 335 I became financially realistic .

I had actually worked so hard saving up for the car that when it came time to buy one , I started looking for cheaper alternatives and I was looking at like E 46 M three again because I got cheaper Mark four R 32 s just because I had worked so hard for that money .

And I just thought it was totally stupid to spend every dime that I made on a car , which it is .

But I did it anyway because none of those cars really got me going and really fit me as well in my own head as the 335 did I spoke with my best friend Cody and my girlfriend Nicole who had been hearing me talk about the 335 non stop .

And when I told them that I was thinking about getting a different car .

They're like , no adam , you've literally had your sight set on a 335 for so long that you just have to get one .

If you don't get one , you're just selling yourself short .

And ultimately , they're probably right .

If I wound up with something else , it would always be that part of me .

It's like man , you know , I set out with this goal in the beginning and I never even followed through with it .

So my first year of college ended , I had enough money for a 335 .

I , so it was time to start the hunt .

I literally spent so long on every site .

Craigslist , auto trader forums looking for a white red , 335 I sport package NAV , stick .

Well , I guess I didn't even really care that much about NAV , I just wanted to be white and red .

That was stick shift and it is so hard to find one with low mileage that I spent so long and just got frustrated and I ended up flying home because I had already sold my other car and I had no way to get around .

So I flew home to Connecticut and started to look up there .

So I was running out of time because once I flew up there , I got the idea that , hey , it would be really cool if I could get one in time for when Nicole flew up , so I could surprise her at the airport .

So I had like a two week deadline .

I found one online that seemed like it was somewhat decent .

It was like an eight hour drive to New Jersey .

The car was white sport package 63,000 miles , 2008 navigation , coral red interior .

The car was really , really , it was almost perfect .

The guy was asking a little too much for it , but I was running out of time .

So I drove out there with Jimmy wrote the guy a check for $25,000 .

Probably the craziest feeling ever .

Like seeing that much money on a check was probably the most absurd thing to me because I think I was still like , it was like 18 , 19 at the time .

So for me that was a lot of money , especially to hand over for a car .

But driving that car home from New Jersey was one of the best feelings ever .

It kind of sucked though because I put a plate on for my old car , which is like super heavily illegal .

So Jimmy was trailing me really close on the way home so no cops could scan it and I couldn't really open it up or accelerate that much because I didn't want to get in trouble .

The only real things that I didn't like with the car were that they had a flat black painted spoiler , flat black painted lip and flat black painted rims , which , oh , she nice that I just absolutely hated .

They look terrible , but I didn't care that I knew that was easy enough to swap out .

I plan on getting new wheels anyway .

So I just bit the bullet when I showed up to the airport and Nicole saw the 3 35 I swear she was more happy than I was , it was the coolest feeling ever .

I got it on video .

I'm gonna show you guys the clip right now because it's like one of the coolest moments I think ever for me .

I don't know .

There's a 3 35 .

I what ?

Oh my God .

You what he , no .

How do you have this ?

I don't know .

I found it wasn't Jeffrey go , no one knows Adam .

It's secret .

I'm being serious .

His wheels are pretty big .

This , we said we were gonna be in the over there .

I mean , I can take this .

Shut up .

Holy crap .

Do you like it ?

Yes .

Is it actually yours or are you like renting it ?

It's mine forever in a week .

It is the hardest secret I've ever kept .

A lot of people thought that she was just like into it because it was an expensive car or anything because I never really like explained the whole back story on how obsessed I was with these cars all in all .

I can't express how great of a feeling it was being able to buy the car of my dreams at 19 knowing that I earned the money completely on my own .

It was like the most rewarding thing ever .

I used to get a lot of crap with my old car because I didn't pay for it myself .

And you know , I even got crap with this car .

Like , what did mommy and daddy buy it for you ?

But deep down inside .

I know how hard I worked for this car and that's a level of pride that no one can take away from me .

So the story doesn't end there .

I've obviously done quite a lot with this car since I got it .

But I think I'm going to save that for another video , even though I just talked a lot about money and my own materialistic desires .

Keep in mind that is not the point of this video .

I'm not trying to teach you guys how to make money and I'm not trying to tell you that the only reason I've ever done anything was just for this car .

This video was about goals .

That is the reason why this car changed my life .

Not because I became some better person with this car or met lots of women because of it .

This car was just a tangible goal for myself that I could work towards and it helped keep me focused without having goals .

It's kind of easy to get lazy .

One quote that I really like is that it's not about what you achieve through your goals .

It's about who you become through achieving your goals .

I can't express how much I personally learned through starting a business and how much it's changed my life for the better after I got the car , I kind of started losing steam with youtube because , you know , I got my goal and I was kind of done .

But then I realized I had created something much bigger than just getting this car .

I'd made all these videos and impacted so many kids lives .

I was getting messages left and right about kids saying that like our videos were the reason why they started BMX and even our videos helping some people through tough times .

I get a crazy amount of satisfaction out of making like how tos and helping kids .

And even though it wasn't my initial intention when I started my youtube back up , it just made me so happy that it kind of changed my whole focus on what I was doing rather than focusing on my own financial goals .

I started out ways that I can make videos that our viewers really enjoyed because now that I'm happy and I'm living the life that I want to live , there's not much more that I can do to make myself happy other than making other people happy , once you get to a certain point , financially making more money just doesn't really bring you any additional happiness .

And I slowly started to realize this and that's when I just shift the focus on the viewers because ultimately , like that's how I started and that's what got me success and that's what gives me the most satisfaction out of making these videos and doing cool things .

So with the clothing company up and running and selling a decent amount of merchandise , I couldn't just abandon it even though I'm happy just making videos .

I had something really cool going and I had to come up with a new goal fast .

The brand could crash before I know it .

Right now .

My sights are set on getting my own house maybe sometime in 2016 .

It's a stretch .

But I feel like it's one of those things where if I really work hard towards it and I apply myself , I do think it's possible .

That's one of the coolest things about looking out my window and seeing this car .

It's a reminder to me every single day that if I really , really want something and I really work towards it , almost anything is possible because I can tell you two years ago , I did not picture myself actually standing in front of the car of my dreams talking to 400,000 people on youtube .

It's an absolutely amazing feeling and I can only hope that each and every single one of you feels this way at some point in your life .

Anyway , guys , let me sum this up .

I'm 20 years old .

My youtube channel has grown exponentially and I have a clothing brand with its own warehouse and two full time employees between my few streams of income .

I'm able to make enough to support myself , my , your wife and live comfortably while I'm doing it .

And the best part about that is that I get to do what I love every single day .

Yes , it still takes time and yes , it's still hard work .

But if you love your job , you'll technically never work a day in your life .

I really don't like talking about money .

In fact , I hate it with a passion , but I really want to inspire as many of you guys as possible .

I know I've had my dream shot down a million times and I'm sure some of you guys have too .

You know how many people told me there was no money in BMX .

Don't fall into the trap of thinking .

There's only one way to do things different that you're passionate about .

If you work hard , success will come , I promise you that I see it over and over and over again .

Some of the most successful people do what they love regardless of if there's any prospective future in the industry or whatever it is .

You've probably heard this from your teachers .

You've probably heard this from your parents , but take my word for it .

I am not getting anything out of making this video other than getting the satisfaction that if I help one person achieve their dreams , then it's so worth it .

Set goals , work towards them and don't be discouraged .

If you fail , you're going to learn more in the process than you can imagine .

And then if you ever try again , you know exactly what not to do in my business classes , they actually encourage us to try and fail at some point because you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes .

Another cliche quote that you should probably remember is that it takes a lifetime to become an overnight success .

I personally have been making youtube videos for almost seven years and I'm just now starting to see everything grow .

I can't express enough how grateful I am for each and every one of you that has been with me through this journey and is here with me right now .

It's absolutely mind boggling to think about how much support I have from so many people .

And I don't ever take that for granted .

I'm doing this for you guys .

That's why I say if there's ever any type of video you want me to make or anything you want to see anything you want me to talk about ?

Tell me I've gotten this far by listening to your suggestions and taking your advice .

So I do not want to ever lose focus on the most important people of all .

And that's you guys right after you finish watching this video .

I want you to find a piece of paper , find a marker or something and write down one goal that you wanna work towards .

If you stay focused and give it everything you got , I promise success will come .

I'll be rooting for you guys when