Brady Drake
In just seven years, a group of kids living in lakes country Minnesota, known as the Cboys, have gone from casual YouTubers to full-blown influencers, boasting 3.65 million subscribers on YouTube, 1.2 million followers on Instagram, 753k followers on Facebook, 656.4k followerson TikTok, and 379k subscribers on Snapchat.
They are without a doubt the biggest influencers in the lakes area, and we were lucky enough to get a tour of their facilities from group members CJ Lotzer and Ben Roth.
The Main Shop
“This room is basically the hangout room. We have friends coming and going every day. And on the weekends, we usually have people staying here for videos or friends coming just to hang out. We come here to play darts, shoot pool, and maybe drink a couple of beers. We’ve got pinball, we used that quite a bit. If there’s a game on, this is where we’ll watch the game or a UFC fight.” – Ben
“Now we’re over 1 billion views on YouTube and 3.5 million subscribers… None of this has been fast. We’ve been doing this for eight years. It’s like a snowball that you push and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and you keep just adding all of these different pieces. The bigger you get the bigger reach you have to add on all of these different pieces to the team.” – CJ
We have an ATM here. Some people come over and try to play pool for money but don't have cash when they lose. It has happened so many times that we got the ATM. Now we don't have that problem anymore."
“We’ve got the sauna, hot tub, and cold plunge out here. In the last year, we’ve really been trying to take better care of our health and watch what we eat.” – CJ
“These are just little pit bikes. They are great because kids and adults can ride them. We like keeping these around for people to use when they come over.” – Ben
The CBoysTV Crew
Cj Lotzer
Instagram | @cjlotzer
Ben Roth
Instagram | @benroth
Ken Mathees
Instagram | @kenmatthees
Ryan Iwerks
Instagram | @ryaniiwerks
Evan Sheff
Instagram | @dudeevanbro
The bathroom at the compound includes a beer keg urinal.
“This is six feet tall. Evan rode it. It works better than you would think… Our mechanics are whizzes. I swear they could be engineers as well.” – CJ
Watch the YouTube video here!
“The storage containers are really nice because they help us keep everything out here organized.” – Ben
“We had this custom sign made years ago. That thing cost us like $5,000 back in the day and it damn near bankrupted the company. It was a big fight because we didn’t realize it was going to cost that much… That’s one thing about our business model. We’ve made a lot of money, but we’ve also put a ton of money back into the business to make these videos. On average, we probably spend $30,000 to $40,000 per video that we make and we do that weekly. Some cost more, some cost less. And usually, when we spend that money on a vehicle for a video, that thing is toast after we make the video. You can’t sell that thing.” – CJ
“This is the shifter cart that kind of started the channel.” – Ben
“This was the first video that got traction. It was actually our third video ever… I think the video has about 3 million views now. It wasn’t necessarily going super crazy viral at the time, but when you have 0 subscribers and you get 10,000 views, that’s crazy. The first time we hung this up, we didn’t hang it up right so it fell in the middle of the night and just smashed. It was great because we had the footage of it.” – CJ
Did you know?
The Life Wide Open with CboysTV podcast has 220k subscribers! Listen here!
The [Audi] R8 is going to be given away. We’re doing a thing where every $5 you spend on CboysTV.com get’s you an entry to winning this car. This is seriously such a badass car. It’s super sick and super fast.” – CJ
“We have a workout room, but as you can see, it doesn’t get used much…All of those boxes there, are seltzer alcohol drinks that our buddy TooTurntTony sent us. We didn’t know where to put them so we put them in the gym.” – CJ
“This is our merch bay which is overflowing. We’re running out of space. We’re actually building a new warehouse right now that will be just merch.” – CJ
Most Viewed
The most viewed video on the CboysTV channel is their Best of CboysTV 2023 compilation.
“We actually had that post installed and we had Ken’s Bronco up on it. This was right when the Bronco first came out… He didn’t know. We did it when he was gone. We had a crane come and pick it up and it was up there and nothing was holding it. It was just up there. He was so mad. It sat up there for awhile and then the crane came back and took it down. And we were like, ‘Well, we’ve got to put something up there.’ So, that’s a hummer with pontoons and a motor and it actually works. We’ll take it out on the lake and boat around on it.” – CJ
“This is where we’re building the drift track. There’s going to be a skid pad and then it goes through the trees and comes out the other side. It’ll be all asphalt.” – CJ
The Second Shop
“We just redid this place. We got it last fall. We’re just finishing up actually. – CJ
“We got this space because we wanted to be able to do more projects and some of these projects take months. So you can’t be working on a project and have it sitting in the middle of the shop and be walking around it all the time. This gives us that element of surprise.” – CJ
“This is another Japanese mini truck. We painted it red and actually put a turbo and crotch rocket motor on it… This is actually a crash doll and we managed to break it. The face actually blew up on the first day of having it so we had to buy a new head… We named him Reckless Randy because he’s not afraid to do anything.” – CJ
“On the bottom is a Z06 Corvette that Ryan got last week. Above that is a replica Unicorn, it’s a 1965 Mustang that has been wide-bodied and has a new motor in it—it was made to be a replica of Ken Block’s car. He was a super famous racer and drift car driver and he owned DC Shoes… And above it is a fake Lamborghini—we have two of them actually. Probably the worst thing you could spend your money on as a person is a fake Lamborghini. They’re not cheap either. They’re like $25,000.”
“This is our kitchen. We have three other employees that work out of this building so they need it. This is also a hangout spot. We do meetings here now.” – CJ
The CBoys were featured on the cover of the August 2020 issue of our sister magazine, Fargo INC!
Check it out here!
“In here we have every single nut and bolt combo, which is super helpful. It saves us a bunch of time.” – CJ
“This neon sign just finished up… This one thankfully was a little bit more justifiable than our last sign.” – Ben
Have you ever seen a SeaDoo with wheels? Check it out in action here!
Micah Sandman holds a piece of Cboys merch.
Check out all of the latest CBoys merch here!
Vintage dirtbikes from the Cboys vintage dirtbike testing video.
The Graveyard
“This is the graveyard or retirement home.” – Ben
Recently, the Cboys mechanics built a fake Cybertruck using the frame of an old Chevrolet.
“Our mechanics are special. We are very particular about who we add to the team—you have to be good and willing to work hard because we’re always working… The first mechanic we used to have fixed a bunch of our broken stuff. He was a professional snowcross mechanic and he lived down the road and had a shop. So, in the summer he would do odd jobs and fix our stuff and we asked him one day if he would ever come on full time and he did. Gavin, our second mechanic, hit us up and wanted us to just give him a chance to prove himself. he didn’t know it but the six-foot-tall dirt bike was his test. If he could build it in four days we’d hire him. It worked great so we did.” – Ben
“This is the second fake Lamborghini. We took it to the hardest off-road track in America and it got super messed up so we had to get it towed out of there.”
“This is a full-sized remote control four-wheeler. You
can get it going like 80 mph and you can run it from
the comfort of your car.” – Ben
“It lasted about half a day. Ben tried to take it off a jump with Reckless Randy and he hit the jump halfway and it flipped and broke. We had these two guys build it for us and it took them two months to make and they were standing there watching this with us. We drove it for like two hours and then totaled it.” – CJ
“We keep everything. We never sell anything because it’s worth more to us for one day down the road filming a video with rather than selling it. Content is king for us. Content is worth more than gold in our line of work. That’s why we keep everything.” – Ben
1 Billion
In total, the CboysTV YouTube channel has over 1 billion views!
“Our grandpa got diagnosed with cancer so me and CJ shaved our heads with him. And were like, ‘Now that we’re bald grandpa, we need Harleys.” So, the next day we showed up with two Harleys and a sidecar so that he could ride with us… He was having the time of his life. Just three bald guys rolling around Fargo.”– Ben
“I felt pretty cool dude. When we had our shaved heads and we were riding around on our Harleys and had these leather vests on, I’ve never been more feared in my life. People weren’t looking at us the same.” – CJ
The Van
This is a look inside the van the Cboys take on road trips. It’s complete with reclining massage chair seats, TVs in the front and back, and WiFi.
Watch CBoys content, purchase merch, and more here!
cboystv.com
Youtube | @CboysTV
Instagram | @cboystv
Tiktok | @cormorantboystv
Facebook | /cboystv
Snapchat | @cboystv
New videos out every week on @CboysTV on YouTube!
