In 2023, I started negotiating free car deals with strangers I met on Reddit. I wanted to start a business, but first I needed to educate myself. So I asked a question that the auto industry didn’t ask. “What makes you happy?”
I closed about 50 deals before getting my first paying client.
Three years later, my company, Delivrd, started charging a flat $1,000 fee to negotiate a car purchase for people who didn’t want to go to the dealership. We closed more than 3,000 deals and generated $2.3 million in revenue last year. This year it’s on pace to hit more than $3 million. We have 15 employees, all of whom are remote.
Delivrd’s primary expenses in 2025 were payroll, software, and legal and accounting services, totaling $1.5 million. It generated revenue of $2.3 million.
Nathanael Berry appears on CNBC’s “Make It”
On average, our customers save $6,300 per transaction on car negotiations.
My sales pitch is unusual. I tell almost everyone who calls me not to hire me. I don’t have a magic wand or a secret formula. People hire me not because they can’t do it, but because they don’t want to do it. I share almost everything I know for free on social media. If you have the time, patience, and access to a trusted dealer, save money and do it yourself.
I spent 6 years inside the dealership until I realized I had a problem
I started my career as the number one salesperson in the Verizon ecosystem. He then moved into automotive sales and spent six years becoming a top 1% automotive finance manager. I was able to do my job, but I was also the person whose customers would walk away and say, “I don’t want to buy a car.”
They hated all the waiting and interaction. The feeling that something is being done to us rather than for us. I tried to fix it from the inside. We’ve made the process faster and more transparent. Yet people left saying the same thing.
After hearing that story eight times in a row in the Treasury Department, I realized that I could be the best salesman, but it still doesn’t matter. The building was the problem.
So I left.
Spent $10,000 on market research
In addition to the Reddit sale, I did other things that might sound crazy. I paid another 100 people $100 in Amazon gift cards each and had a third party I hire sit down with me and talk to me for two hours about what they actually wanted when they bought a car.
In addition to negotiated deals, Delivrd also makes money from social media advertising and brand partnerships.
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We learned that customers don’t care about price as much as the industry thinks they do. They value their time, their sense of control, trust, and clarity. Money is almost a footnote. So I built Delivrd around these four things, not savings.
At Delivrd, five people are involved in every transaction. Clients only talk to two of them; the rest work in the kitchen, out of sight of clients.
In the background, there’s a team of researchers out there looking for where the best deals are, there’s someone monitoring and verifying that all the paperwork is as promised, and there’s someone making sure the car is handed over in perfect condition.
My best advice for turning a boring skill into a business or side hustle
1. Pay the price of truth
If I had trusted my own assumptions about what customers wanted, I would have been wrong to build Delvrd.
Specifically, we asked things like, what actually makes this the best buying experience in the world? What are the current issues when buying a car? What did they consider a “good deal”? How long will it take? How much time will they spend to make it happen? How much would they pay for this?
Paying 100 strangers $100 each to sit with an outside interviewer was the cheapest market research I could do.
2. Put your worst numbers on the table first
In an industry that hides everything, fees are the most unpleasant number for me. Saying “$1,000 every time” in the first 30 seconds of the call destroyed my short-term conversion rate and built long-term trust.
3. Tell people not to hire you
If you’re actually good at something, you can afford to be honest with people who don’t need you. Half the people who call me don’t need me, so I tell them that. The other half become lifelong customers. If someone feels like they’re being talked into something, they’re not going to introduce you anyway.
4. Protect the experience, not the price
In my industry, everyone is competing to see how much money they can save. I quit after the first year. What customers actually want back is Saturday, control, and sanity. Build around the experience they want, and the savings will automatically recoup.
When I’m not working, I like to take walks with my wife. My job requires long hours, but working remotely gives me flexibility, which I really value.
Nathanael Berry appears on CNBC’s “Make It”
I pay myself about $186,000 a year, but I bank a full year’s paycheck for everyone I hire before I take it for myself. If someone is going to take a risk on me, I want their risk covered first.
Delivrd is on pace to do 400 to 700 transactions a month by summer. I don’t know when this will end, but every deal is another step into an industry that doesn’t need companies like mine to exist.
Tomislav Mikula is the founder and CEO of Delivrd.
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