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- Colorado-based YouTuber Matthew Beem has risen to fame on social media over the past few months.
- He told Insider that he once borrowed $20,000 to fund a video idea to customize Logan Paul’s old car.
- Beem said the video cost around $50,000 to make due to unforeseen damage to the car.
YouTuber Matthew Beem said he’s still paying off a $20,000 loan he took out to fund a video idea about a car owned by popular influencer Logan Paul, hoping it might help him would like to expand his channel.
In September 2020, 25-year-old Beem, who usually posts content about building large-scale objects and statues, posted a YouTube video titled “I Spent Thousands on Logan Paul!”. which now has 13,000 views. In it, he said he will be customizing a yellow Dodge Challenger car previously owned by Paul.
Paul is a controversial influencer with 23 million subscribers. He rose to fame on the now-defunct Vine platform and regularly posted vlogs to YouTube. He received widespread backlash for filming an alleged corpse in Japan in late 2017, but later apologized and continued posting content to his large fan base.
Beem told Insiders he was inspired by Paul and other influencers who rose to fame on the platform during the “vlog era.” When Paul gave his car away to a fan in September 2020, Beem decided to contact the fan so he could get his hands on the car and “paint it amazing” for a video.
The YouTuber told Insider he was working as a head painter at an auto shop at the time, saying, “When I felt confident with the knowledge I learned painting cars, I was able to save good money and thought, ‘I’ll do anything give and make a really big investment.'”
Beem said he plans to take out a loan to buy the fan’s car and use it in his video, but his friends and colleagues thought the idea was “crazy”.
“I told them I did and they thought I was crazy. That was probably the scariest moment because I worked full time for seven years and I was only about 23 at the time,” he said, adding, “I was getting about 50 views on a video and hadn’t seen any real success at that point. But I just really believed in it and wanted to take the plunge.”
A post by Matthew Beem (@matthewbeem)
According to Beem, the video ended up costing him nearly $50,000 when someone crashed into the car, meaning he had to pay extra to have it fixed. The YouTuber said he borrowed $20,000 from a Colorado-based credit union to help cover some of the costs. (Insider viewed documents related to the loan.)
“It was a lot more expensive than I initially thought because of that accident, but luckily everyone was safe and it all worked out really well in the end,” he told Insider.
After Beem posted the video of him buying the car on Sept. 30, 2020, he said his channel “got some traction” and that he’s found more success on the platform. While the video itself didn’t go viral, Beem said the concept inspired him to produce other videos about custom cars and projects, each eventually garnering millions of views.
A subsequent video posted in January 2022, in which Beem said he tried to ship the customized Dodge Challenger to Paul’s home in Puerto Rico but didn’t because it was too expensive, now has 3.3 million views on the platform.
Beem has skyrocketed on YouTube over the past few months, adding more than 1.2 million subscribers from September 2021 to March 2022, according to analytics tracker Social Blade.
He told Insiders he also borrowed $14,000 from a family member to fund another video, which currently has 4.6 million views, of him customizing a Smart for popular YouTuber MrBeast. (Insider was unable to independently verify this loan with the YouTuber’s financial records.)
For more stories like this, check out Insider’s Digital Culture team’s coverage here.
