• Brandon Medford started a luxury automotive brokerage firm in 2017.
• Since then, he's built a multimillion-dollar net worth through different businesses.
• He enjoys treating his kids to things like courtside tickets but says underneath he's still frugal.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brandon Medford, CEO of Brandon Medford Enterprises. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I was 22, I was working as the finance director for an automotive dealership. I was bringing home more money in a month than my parents made in a year. My annual income was about $500,000, and I had virtually no expenses because I was still living at home.

And yet, I still ended up broke. I was spending money on partying, travel, and $1,000 dinners. Most of my friends were making $50,000 a year, so I paid for everything when we went out. I wanted to take care of my people.

After three years of that, I had no money in the bank. I realized I needed to change my mindset about money. At the time, I was devastated, but looking back, I learned an important lesson: you should always budget and live below your means.

As my wealth grew, I looked for more frugal role models

I left that job in 2017 to found an automotive brokerage company. It took off quickly, and I started selling luxury vehicles. What set me apart was how I delivered cars. I would deliver cars anywhere, with a big bow and confetti. People wanted to celebrate the milestone of getting their new car, and I made that possible.

The business continued to flourish, especially after 2021, when I founded a loan program that specifically helped entrepreneurs purchase luxury cars. Suddenly I was selling Astin Martins, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and other luxury cars like they were Hondas.

As I built my wealth, I realized I needed to emulate people who reinvested their money. I know someone who sold a business for $80 million and reinvested $70 million. You'd never know he had $80 million in liquid assets because he lived off the $10 million. I wanted to be like that, not like the fast-spending guy I was in my early 20s.

I want my kids to enjoy the fruits of my labor

I reinvested money in real estate, business investment, and other enterprises. Today, I'm a multimillionaire. I'm also a dad to three kids, ages 7, 5, and 4.

I still consider myself a very frugal person, but I'm not afraid to indulge in what my wealth can offer me. I want my family to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I helped connect my 5-year-old daughter with a modeling gig at New York Fashion Week, and now she goes to birthday parties with Dream Kardashian.

My 7-year-old son and I go to Knicks games and sit courtside, meeting the players. When I was growing up, my dad took me to one Knicks game every year, and we sat way up high. I used to point to the courtside seats and say, "One day, I'm going to sit down there." To be able to do that now with my dad and son is very meaningful.

At the same time, I take the kids to the modest homes of my family members in Queens. They know that not everyone is wealthy because they see it in their own family.

I sometimes revisit the Wendy's I used to work at

When you see someone driving a luxury car, you can react one of two ways. You can say, "Wow, he's flashy." Or, you can say, "I wonder what he's done to be able to afford that." I've always been curious — asking questions like that — and it's helped me build wealth.

Today, I sometimes drive my Ferrari to the Wendy's in Brooklyn where I worked when I was 16-19. I'll go through the drive-thru and tell the person at the window, "This is just the beginning." I want them to know I was where they were 13 years ago. With discipline, they could do the same thing I've done.

• Grady Stickney gained over 600,000 TikTok followers in four months.
• Stickney, a college student, told BI he's overwhelmed that his success came as a TikTok ban looms.
• President Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day extension to find a buyer or face a US ban.

The TikTok ban has left creators facing uncertainty over the past year. One of TikTok's fastest-growing creators says the pressure has been overwhelming.

The law that could ban TikTok went into effect in the United States on January 19 after the Supreme Court upheld it. The law requires TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app.

While President Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 20 granting a 75-day extension for TikTok to find a buyer, the social media app's future in the United States remains in limbo.

Creators can often build large followings on TikTok faster than other social media platforms. One TikToker previously told BI that he gained over 3 million followers by making four to five 10-second videos a day.

So the possibility of a TikTok ban came as harsh news to Grady Stickney, who has gained over 600,000 followers and 155 million views on his account since November.

"One of the things that affects me the most is the fact that it happened so fast," Stickney said through tears in a TikTok video on January 18, a day before the app briefly shut down to US users.

Stickney told BI that his success on TikTok has been overwhelming.

In just four months, outside of the thousands of new followers and millions of views, he also said he got an offer to audition for a feature film. He said he struggles with the idea that "this could all be gone tomorrow," but is comforted that his videos have resonated with so many people.

"It's a little voice in the back of my head now that says, 'even if I don't get to keep the constant interaction with these people, people love the fact that I'm myself,'" Stickney told BI.

Stickney is a senior education major at a small Christian college in Indiana. He said the confidence gained from social media will help his teaching career.

"Now that this has all happened, it's more about the fact that I can go on after social media is over and know that I affected that many people in a positive way," Stickney said.

He said the support he has received on TikTok in recent months has been surreal. He receives compliments on his personality, his music taste, and his "willingness to be myself in front of this many people."

"It's just so validating," he said.

Stickney said his personality doesn't always mesh well with others because of his "raw" nature, but TikTok became a home for him to find a community that appreciates his sense of humor.

"It's all support, and so it's just so overwhelming to see this many people be this strongly affected," Stickney said.

It's a common misconception that — through ads and brand deals — a large social media following always comes with a large check. While some creators do rely on income from social media content, a survey from Influencer Marketing Hub showed that more than 48% of creators make less than $15,000 a year.

Stickney said he makes about "enough to pay for dinner."

Stickney's account mostly consists of videos of him dancing and making facial expressions inside a Spongebob-themed bathroom. Stickney told BI that he didn't expect to find success when he started posting regularly in November, but he decided to keep making posts after seeing how much attention they were getting.

"I posted one dancing video in my bathroom to a SpongeBob song, exactly how I do now, and threw up the rock finger gesture where, like the pinky and the pointer finger, and people loved it," Stickney said.

When asked if he is a SpongeBob fan, Stickney said, "No, that's the best part."

Stickney said his father — a community artist — painted the bathroom for him and his sister when they were kids and "apparently had an obsession with Spongebob."

"I love the show, but I'm not, like, this fanatic about SpongeBob that everybody assumes I am with this bathroom," Stickney said.

Last month, Fortnite Festival, the game’s Rock Band-like music mode, rolled out local multiplayer on PlayStation and Xbox. It’s a great addition if you and up to three buddies want to relive the halcyon days of ‘07 on a single TV, particularly if you’re using a nostalgia-inducing peripheral like the PDP Riffmaster — which is now available from Amazon, Best Buy, and PDP for an all-time low of $109.99 ($20 off).

Much like the old guitars developed for Rock Band, PDP’s wireless gamepad allows you to strum along with real songs in both Rock Band 4 (RIP) and the free-to-play Fortnite Festival. It offers a lot of the same functionality as previous controllers, though, seeing as it’s been nearly a decade since Mad Catz’s last Stratocaster-style gamepad, the Riffmaster introduces a few modern tricks. That includes USB-C charging and a 3.5mm audio jack, along with a dedicated analog stick on the back of the neck for more straightforward navigation.

In true RB4 fashion, the Riffmaster is also outfitted with five color-coded buttons higher up the neck and a second set lower down, each of which you can use to hammer out the various notes as they appear in their respective lanes. A strummer and a whammy bar make good on the classic Rock Band experience, letting you unleash vibrato on the Xbox, PlayStation, or PC with the included USB dongle.

More ways to save this weekend

• If you’re looking for a cheap way to stream Super Bowl LIX next weekend, Amazon’s latest Fire TV Stick 4K is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $29.99 ($20 off), nearly matching its second-best price to date. It’s not quite as capable as the step-up Max model — blame its lack of Wi-Fi 6E support and 8GB of storage — but the 4K streamer still offers Wi-Fi 6 and broad HDR support for Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR10 Plus.
• The PlayStation version of Final Fantasy I-VI Collection Anniversary Edition is down to an all-time low of $39.99 ($35 off) at Woot through 12:59AM ET on February 29th. The excellent remaster pulls together the first six Final Fantasy titles with revamped pixel graphics and rearranged orchestral scores, as well as an array of gameplay tweaks and quality-of-life improvements. I, for one, welcome the ability to turn off random encounters, which remain the bane of ‘90s-era JRPGs (sorry, not sorry).
• Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, a thin-and-light Windows laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor and 16GB of RAM, is going for $899.99 ($500 off) at Best Buy through the end of today, February 2nd. That’s a new low on the 15-inch machine, which, despite its bummer trackpad and other shortcomings, remains a solid rec thanks to good all-around performance, fantastic port selection, and bright 120Hz LCD display. Read our review.

Over the last couple years, it feels like we’ve heard news of mass layoffs and hiring freezes from tech companies nearly every week, and since the beginning of 2024, there’s been a new wave of layoffs and firings.

In the first few days of January 2024 alone:

• Google cut around a thousand employees
• Discord cut 17 percent of its staff
• Twitch cut a third of its staff (and Amazon fired hundreds from Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios)
• Unity cut 25 percent of its workforce
• Humane cut four percent of its employees

And all that adds to the tens of thousands of tech and gaming layoffs that hit in 2023.

Elizabeth Lopatto spoke to experts in an article published last year to try and answer the question of why so many layoffs are happening right now despite tech companies continuing to register sizable profits. One reason is that “investors have changed how they’re evaluating companies,” even if there’s a lack of evidence that the layoffs can help solve any of the problems they may have.

Here’s all our coverage of the recent outbreak of layoffs from big tech, auto, crypto, gaming, and more.

• Microsoft’s ‘performance-based’ cuts have started.
• Zuckerberg says Meta will lay off more ‘low-performers’
• Meta is laying off employees at WhatsApp, Instagram, and more
• Brave has laid off around 15 percent of its employees.
• Apple is cutting jobs across its Books and News apps
• Dell is creating a new sales team to focus on AI.
• Intuit fires 1,800 employees to hire 1,800 employees and focus on AI.
• Best Buy is laying off more employees as it reckons with falling sales
• Microsoft layoffs hit HoloLens, Azure cloud teams
• Microsoft shuts down Bethesda studios behind Redfall and Hi-Fi Rush
• More Google layoffs.
• GTA 6, BioShock publisher Take-Two to lay off hundreds and cut projects
• Best Buy Geek Squad employees report mass layoffs
• Amazon lays off hundreds in the AWS physical store technology team.
• EA is the latest gaming company to lay off workers.
• “Why are we expected to do the coding Olympics for every company that wants to interview you?”
• Mozilla is laying off around 60 workers and scaling back its Mastodon instance.
• Paramount is cutting 800 jobs as it looks to “grow revenue, while reducing costs.”
• Warner Music Group to lay off 600 employees and close the Interval Presents podcast division.
• Amazon Health, Corsair, DocuSign, Drizly and Glowforge are the latest tech layoffs.
• Snap is cutting 10 percent of its staff
• Almost 30,000 workers in tech have been laid off this year.
• Jack Dorsey’s Block is also cutting jobs.
• Alphabet posted $307.4 billion in revenue for the 2023. It also spent $2.1 billion on layoffs.
• PayPal is laying off 9 percent of its employees.
• This is not “Play Nice, Play Fair,” Blizzard.
• Embracer lays off 97 Eidos employees and cancels new Deus Ex game
• Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees
• Vroom goes screech — laying off 800 workers and exiting used car sales.
• eBay will lay off 1,000 employees — 9 percent of the company
• Riot Games cuts more than 500 jobs
• TikTok is cutting jobs, too.
• Layoffs at the developer of Dead by Daylight.
• Google CEO tells employees to expect more job cuts this year
• YouTube is the latest part of Google to be hit with layoffs
• Google layoffs continue with ‘hundreds’ from sales team
• Google’s latest layoffs are just the beginning
• Layoffs hit a Gearbox studio.
• Instagram’s latest job cuts reportedly affect around 60 workers.
• Audible is laying off 5 percent of its staff.
• Discord is laying off 17 percent of employees
• Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees
• Google is losing its Fitbit leaders and laying off hundreds of AR employees
• Twitch is cutting one-third of its staff
• Hundreds of Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios workers are being laid off.
• Humane lays off 4 percent of employees before releasing its AI Pin
• Twitch is reportedly planning to lay off 35 percent of its staff.
• Unity is laying off 25 percent of its staff
• 2023’s great games were overshadowed by a dark cloud of layoffs
• What do Houston, Nashville, and Dallas have in common?
• A $2 million dollar investment yesterday, layoffs today.
• Etsy is cutting around 225 jobs.
• Unity is probably going to do layoffs
• Ubisoft lays off dozens of workers as gaming industry struggles drag on
• Google’s postpandemic ‘reckoning’
• The Google News team just got a little smaller.
• LinkedIn lays off hundreds of employees for the second time this year
• Job cuts hit Qualcomm.
• Telltale Games laid off staff — but it’s unclear how many jobs were cut.
• More layoffs at Twitch.
• Naughty Dog is reportedly the latest studio to cut developer jobs
• Worms publisher Team17 loses its CEO, starts “period of consultation” ahead of restructuring.
• Epic Games cuts around 830 jobs
• BioWare is laying off ‘approximately’ 50 people
• Google’s $99 a night company hotel advertises ‘no commute’ as a perk
• CD Projekt Red is laying off about 9 percent of its staff
• Amazon is forcing some staffers to relocate as part of its return-to-office mandate.
• Microsoft is laying off 276 employees in Washington.
• Niantic lays off staff and shuts down games as it focuses on Pokémon Go
• Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff
• Google is laying off employees at Waze
• Ford is reportedly preparing more layoffs.
• Reddit is cutting ‘roughly 90’ staffers and reducing hiring.
• Verizon warns customer service employees of impending layoffs
• Meta has started its third of three planned rounds of layoffs.
• Disney’s third planned round of layoffs has started.
• Meta’s next round of layoffs will start next week
• Microsoft won’t give salaried employees raises this year
• Nuro plans for more layoffs as the AV sector’s economic woes deepen
• Unity is laying off 600 employees.
• Clubhouse is laying off more than half of its workforce
• Amazon is laying off Studios and Prime Video staffers.
• Lyft lays off nearly a third of its employees.
• Dropbox is laying off 500 people and pivoting to AI
• More Amazon layoffs.
• More Lyft layoffs are coming.
• Whole Foods is laying off several hundred corporate workers.
• Insider laid off employees on Thursday, too.
• “Why should we stay at Meta?”
• Meta layoffs hit London.
• Meta’s latest layoffs cut employees in technical roles
• Amazon is laying off some advertising staffers.
• Meta’s next round of layoffs might happen this week.
• “Humbled” Silicon Valley VCs are loading up on money from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.
• DPReview’s archives live on!
• Meta’s layoffs are reportedly ‘gutting’ its new customer service teams
• Amazon’s layoffs could affect its gaming efforts.
• Apple has reportedly started a small number of corporate layoffs
• EA is laying off 6 percent of its workers
• Lucid’s laying off 18 percent of its workers
• The site that’s supposed to help people find jobs is laying off thousands of people.
• Amazon is shutting down DPReview, the go-to camera reviews website
• How Apple’s avoiding layoffs: delaying bonus payments, pausing hiring, cutting travel budgets.
• Amazon’s layoffs included ‘just over 400’ job cuts at Twitch.
• Amazon’s latest layoffs cut 9,000 more jobs in divisions including Twitch and AWS
• Even Apple can’t escape the economy.
• Meta is laying off 10,000 more employees in a series of cuts
• Waymo has laid off over 200 employees this year.
• Cerebral’s laying off even more staff.
• Meta’s “year of efficiency” reportedly isn’t off to a good start.
• Thursday has brought even more layoff news.
• Ebay is the latest to announce layoffs.
• Zoom is laying off 1,300 employees, around 15 percent of its workforce
• Pinterest’s new round of layoffs comes weeks after its last cuts
• Rivian is laying off 6 percent of its employees — again
• Is it time to start the Intel deathwatch?
• PayPal is laying off 2,000 employees.
• January was the worst month for tech layoffs.
• Why are so many tech companies laying people off right now?
• Spotify is laying off 6 percent of its global workforce, CEO announces
• More details come out on which departments saw layoffs at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon
• Today on The Vergecast: Elon Musk status update, M2 MacBook Pros, and tech layoffs.
• Google cuts 12,000 jobs in latest round of big tech layoffs
• 1,852 Amazon workers are out of a job in Seattle.
• Amazon begins another round of job cuts as it lays off more than 18,000 people
• Microsoft says it has changed its ‘hardware portfolio’ amid layoffs
• Microsoft announces big layoffs that will affect 10,000 employees
• DirecTV is reportedly laying off hundreds of workers.
• Verily, Alphabet’s health-focused company, is cutting jobs
• Meta confirms it’s rescinded some full-time job offers
• Esports and lifestyle brand 100 Thieves is laying off staff
• Amazon confirms it’s laying off 18,000 workers.
• Amazon confirms its massive layoffs will affect 18,000 employees
• Vimeo is laying off 11 percent of its workforce in another round of job cuts
• Apple’s market cap is down $1 trillion from its peak exactly one year ago.
• Micron will cut 10 percent of its workforce next year.
• Some ex-Meta employees say they’re not getting full severance.
• GameStop is reportedly cutting more jobs.
• Kraken crypto exchange lays off 30 percent of workforce
• DoorDash announces layoffs affecting 1,250 workers
• Job cuts are coming to a Silicon Valley original.
• Alexa isn’t pulling its weight.
• Robot delivery startup Nuro is laying off 20 percent of its workers
• Amazon’s CEO says more layoffs will happen in 2023
• Roku lays off 200 US employees
• Steve Aoki dropped the beat at Amazon during layoffs
• Amazon employees are still waiting to hear if they’ll keep their jobs.
• Amazon confirms cuts to hardware and services teams
• The Amazon layoffs have started.
• Ask A Manager has weighed in.
• The Tech Winter, visualized.
• Amazon mass layoffs will reportedly ax 10,000 people this week
• Tim Cook confirms that Apple’s slowing down on hiring.
• Twitter reportedly cut thousands of contractors without warning
• Disney is preparing to cut jobs, according to leaked memo from CEO
• Meta announces huge job cuts affecting 11,000 employees
• Twitter’s layoff notices in Africa are missing something.
• Meta layoffs are starting tomorrow, and they’re going to be bad.
• Elon Musk’s Twitter layoffs leave whole teams gutted
• Amazon confirms a “pause” on corporate hiring.
• Amazon curbs corporate retail hiring for the rest of 2022
• Lyft to lay off 13 percent of its workforce as economic outlook darkens
• Peloton CEO promises the company is ‘done’ with layoffs
• Twitter braces for layoffs
• Intel layoffs are coming in Q4 as it cuts billions in spending
• Wireless ISP Starry lays off half its workers in a bid to save cash
• Leaked documents show just how fast employees are leaving Amazon
• Warner Bros. Television’s massive job cuts worsen WBD’s diversity problem
• Layoffs at Gimlet and Parcast expose cracks in Spotify’s exclusivity model
• Intel reportedly planning major layoffs, likely affecting thousands of jobs
• Peloton’s CEO doesn’t understand why people aren’t happier he laid off 500 people
• Peloton CEO cuts 500 more jobs to ‘assure the future viability of the business’
• Warner Bros. Discovery is ‘absolutely not for sale,’ says CEO
• Meta is freezing hiring
• CNN lays off audio staffers as it shifts podcast strategy
• Meta and Google’s definitely-not-layoffs prod employees to compete for new jobs.
• Patreon is laying off 17 percent of its workforce and closing offices
• The T-Mobile / Sprint merger hasn’t created jobs — it’s cut thousands
• Snap lays off 20 percent of employees and cancels projects
• Ford is laying off thousands of employees, and here’s the memo explaining the change
• Wayfair lays off 870 people, about 5 percent of its global workforce
• Crypto.com laid off 260 employees — then quietly let go of hundreds more
• Peloton gears up to hike prices, lay off 800 employees, and shutter stores
• Rivian is laying off 6 percent of its employees
• Shopify is laying off 1,000 employees
• Zuck turns up the heat
• Ford will reportedly slash a quarter of its workforce to fuel EV expansion
• Google pauses hiring for two weeks to ‘review our headcount needs’
• Apple reportedly wants to slow down hiring in 2023
• Giant NFT marketplace OpenSea lays off about 20 percent of its staff
• Read the memo Google’s CEO sent employees about a hiring slowdown
• Ford-backed autonomous car startup Argo AI lays off 150 employees
• GameStop is laying off staff and has fired its CFO
• Substack CEO says he’s ‘very sorry’ about laying off 13 people
• Tesla lays off nearly 200 Autopilot employees who help train the company’s AI
• Netflix cuts around 300 jobs after losing subscribers
• Tesla accused of violating federal law over ‘mass layoffs’ at Gigafactory
• Tesla layoffs reportedly affect hourly workers, too
• Spotify will reduce hiring by 25 percent
• Coinbase is laying off 1,100 employees as Bitcoin prices continue to fall
• BlockFi and Crypto.com lay off hundreds of staff as coins slump
• Crypto winter has come, and Coinbase is in trouble
• Elon Musk reportedly orders hiring freeze, 10 percent staff reduction at Tesla
• Klarna used a prerecorded video message to lay off 10 percent of employees
• Snap plans to slow hiring, warns that revenue will grow slower than expected
• Meta freezes hiring for Messenger Kids, shopping team, and other products
• Netflix is laying off 150 employees and cutting dozens from its Tudum fansite
• Here’s the memo Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal sent about firing execs and a hiring freeze
• Uber CEO vows to be ‘hardcore about costs,’ slow down hiring in memo to employees
• Netflix tried and failed to build fandom with Tudum
• The company behind celebrity cameo videos has laid off a quarter of its workers
• Netflix is laying off staff from the fansite it just launched
• Fired Peloton employees crash new CEO’s first all-hands

‘Anthony fully gets it and I’m so glad he said this’ wrote one fan