How Tomi Mikula Turned a $1,000 Flat Fee Into Half a Million Dollars in Sales – The Untold Strategy Revealed

Ever wondered why buying a car feels more like a dreaded chore than an exciting purchase? Well, Tomi Mikula faced that exact frustration and decided to shake up the whole process. After years entrenched in the automotive world—climbing ranks from sales to finance—he heard the same complaint echo time and again: people absolutely hate buying cars. So, he flipped the script with Delivrd, a business that started by offering free deals and evolved into a $1,000 flat-fee service focused on saving customers’ precious time and sanity rather than just a few bucks. With 25 full-time employees now handling over 400 deals a month and raking in close to half a million dollars in sales, Tomi’s journey is a masterclass in listening to customers, pivoting your business model, and using organic content to fuel growth. Curious how he cracked the code on car buying misery? LEARN MORE.

In this week’s episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast, Tomi Mikula and I discuss how he grew Delivrd from 100 free deals to 400+ deals per month. After years in the auto industry, he built the company around a problem he heard repeatedly: people hated buying cars. Today, Delivrd has 25 full-time employees and generates roughly $400,000 to $500,000 in sales.

The model changed as Tomi learned what customers valued. Delivrd moved from a $2,500 service centered on saving money to a $1,000 flat-fee service centered on saving time, energy, and stress. Those lessons also shaped its pricing, hiring, and organic video strategy.

Watch the Full Episode

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Turning Dealership Frustration Into a Business

Before launching Delivrd, Tomi spent six years in the automotive industry. His sales experience went back even further. He began working in cell phone sales from age 18 to 23, moved into leadership, and later entered the dealership business. At the dealership, he quickly moved through the ranks.

He became the top salesperson at his dealership within 11 months.
He later moved into automotive finance.
He regularly dealt with customers during one of the most stressful stages of purchasing a vehicle.
He kept hearing one complaint: people hated buying cars.

That last point stayed with him. Tomi believed the second-largest purchase many people make shouldn’t be so unpleasant. On January 3, 2023, he gave notice at the dealership and left to create Delivrd.

The original goal sounded simple: let people skip the dealership experience while still receiving a competitive deal. The challenge was figuring out what customers were willing to pay someone to remove from the process.

Testing the Idea With 100 Free Deals

Rather than assuming his dealership experience gave him all the answers, Tomi decided to study customers from the other side of the transaction.

He offered to negotiate 100 car deals for free. In many cases, he even offered participants $100 for their time after the deal so a third party could conduct a two- to three-hour interview. Those interviews began changing his view of the company surprisingly early.

At roughly 15 free deals, Tomi started questioning his original theory.
By around 30 deals, he felt confident that saving money was not the main reason people wanted help.
Price frequently ranked around fifth or sixth among the issues customers discussed.
Time, energy, anxiety, and trust appeared much higher on their lists.

That discovery reshaped the business. Tomi had entered the process believing customers primarily wanted someone who could get them the lowest possible price. The interviews suggested that many customers cared more about avoiding the stressful work surrounding the purchase.

It also helped him identify a type of customer that was less attractive for Delivrd. People whose only priority was squeezing every possible dollar out of the transaction often made more sense as do-it-yourself car buyers. Delivrd could serve a different group: one willing to pay to reclaim time and avoid the parts of the transaction they disliked.

Shifting the Offer From Saving Money to Saving Time

Delivrd’s first paid service cost $2,500 and attempted to remove nearly the entire car-shopping experience. The company conducted a needs assessment, arranged test drives at the customer’s home, worked through the purchase, and coordinated delivery. It was a highly involved service.

Then Tomi learned something else: many people enjoy shopping for cars. They like researching models, watching YouTube videos, comparing options, and taking test drives. They dislike what comes later: negotiating and completing the purchase. That led Delivrd toward a narrower offer.

Customers could keep the enjoyable research and shopping stage.
Delivrd would handle vehicle pricing and dealer communication.
The team could negotiate the trade-in separately.
Add-ons and accessories could also be handled for the customer.
Delivrd would stay involved through financing and final vehicle delivery.

The change removed work Delivrd didn’t need to do while focusing the service on the pain customers were willing to pay to avoid. Tomi also lowered the price from $2,500 to $1,000.

The $2,500 version sold roughly 10 to 15 deals per month. Tomi felt the audience for such a comprehensive service would remain too narrow if he wanted to build a much larger company.

Simplifying Pricing Around a $1,000 Flat Fee

The $1,000 price also reflects another lesson Tomi learned from the dealership business: customers get frustrated when they cannot easily tell what something costs. Delivrd therefore charges the same flat fee for its standard service even when one purchase requires more work than another.

Some negotiations take longer. Some vehicles are easier to source, while others require far more dealer contact. Tomi still prefers a clear price customers can immediately grasp.

At its current scale, that simple pricing model has become a sizable business. Tomi says Delivrd is generating roughly $400,000 to $500,000 in sales while handling more than 400 deals per month.

The company also has high operating costs. Tomi estimated expenses at roughly $200,000 to $250,000, making efficiency increasingly important as Delivrd adds more customers and employees.

That approach requires pricing the service so difficult cases can remain profitable. Once that baseline is established, improving margins becomes an operational question. Delivrd can refine its processes, staffing, communication, and deal flow without presenting customers with a complicated pricing formula.

Finding the First Customers on Reddit

Getting those first 100 deals wasn’t easy. Tomi quickly ran through the obvious pool of friends and family members who were shopping for vehicles. He needed strangers who were willing to let a new company negotiate for them.

Reddit became one of his most productive sources. He joined car-buying communities, searched for people asking for purchasing advice, and messaged them to offer help.

Tomi says he messaged hundreds of people.
A small percentage agreed to let him negotiate on their behalf.
After roughly 25 deals, he asked those customers to refer another person who could also receive the service for free.
For the following group, he asked customers to refer someone who would pay.

That sequence created Delivrd’s earliest referral system. It was still a very small business. Tomi said referrals generated only about two to four paid deals per month during one stretch.

By November of his first year, his savings were running low enough that he considered moving Delivrd to part-time status. Then one video changed the trajectory.

Growing the Company Through Negotiation Videos

Tomi had started producing car-buying content on social media, initially giving general advice rather than publishing full negotiations. One early video discussing a frustrating dealership call reached around 60,000 views. Five people signed up for Delivrd from that video, giving the young company badly needed momentum.

Later, Tomi recorded a much longer negotiation with the general manager of a Mazda dealership. The recording was 27 minutes long. It had no sophisticated thumbnail, polished visual production, or elaborate editing. He uploaded it anyway.

The video generated roughly 300,000 to 400,000 YouTube views overnight, according to Tomi. That result pointed Delivrd toward a content format that became central to its growth: letting people watch the very negotiations they were paying the company to avoid.

The irony is part of what makes the content work. Customers may not want to spend hours negotiating with dealerships themselves. They can still find it entertaining to watch an experienced negotiator handle tense calls, objections, pricing discussions, and dealer tactics from the sidelines.

Turning Live Calls Into a Content System

Delivrd eventually built a full content process around those negotiation calls. Tomi livestreams negotiations so people can watch the calls as they happen. The livestreams then become source material for long-form YouTube videos, which can later be turned into short-form clips.

The team tries to preserve the character of the calls rather than presenting every dealership interaction negatively.

A producer tracks positive and negative calls.
Edited videos aim to reflect approximately the same positive-to-negative ratio seen during the calls.
Short-form content focuses on compelling individual moments.
Long-form YouTube videos follow a beginning, middle, and end.
The original livestream remains available for people who want to see the complete interaction.

Tomi’s livestreams once ran eight to 10 hours per day. That volume provided the company with an enormous amount of source material and gave potential customers a close look at how Delivrd worked behind the scenes. It also created something harder to produce through a conventional advertisement: visible proof of the service.

Moving Prospects From Short Videos to Live Content

Delivrd’s content channels now work together as an informal customer journey. Tomi said many people first encounter the company through short-form content. From there, some move to the company’s YouTube videos and eventually reach the livestreams.

The livestream appears particularly important near the point when someone decides to hire the company. Potential customers can watch Tomi negotiate, hear him answer questions, and see the process without relying solely on the company’s claims.

Delivrd has also accumulated nearly 1,000 five-star Google reviews, according to Tomi. That library of customer feedback gives prospects another source of reassurance before handing over a $1,000 fee for help with a major purchase.

Interestingly, the company has grown this far without a traditional sales department. Tomi or team members have historically answered email inquiries as capacity allows. As Delivrd moves beyond 400 to 500 deals per month, Tomi expects a more formal sales function to become necessary.

Scaling Growth With Very Little Paid Advertising

Paid advertising has played almost no role in Delivrd’s story so far. Tomi estimates he has spent around $300 on advertising since starting the company. That money went to Google Ads, produced no website clicks, and convinced him to pursue a different direction.

Content became the primary way of putting Delivrd in front of potential customers. The company has also experimented with another approach: performing its service for people who already have large audiences.

Building a 25-Person Operating Team

Delivrd started with Tomi doing nearly everything. Even after hiring employees, he remained deeply involved. As recently as March 2026, he said he was still negotiating about 60% of the company’s deals while handling other responsibilities.

That eventually became unsustainable. Today, Delivrd has around 25 full-time employees, with multiple people contributing to each customer transaction. A typical deal involves roughly five team members, while the customer generally communicates with only two.

An initial team member handles the consultation and customer intake.
A deal coordinator manages communication and the client experience.
Negotiators search for vehicles and work directly with dealerships.
Client advocates help evaluate whether proposed deals match customer needs.
Media employees turn negotiations and livestreams into content.

Tomi estimates that one negotiator can handle about 20 deals while maintaining the service level he wants. At 400 deals per month, staffing requirements add up quickly. Delivrd also needs employees for consultations, client management, marketing, editing, and production.

Stepping Away From the Founder Bottleneck

One of the hardest changes for Tomi was accepting that customers didn’t need him personally involved in every transaction.

For a long period, Delivrd operated around what the team internally called the “Tomi effect.” Tomi would make at least one phone call on every deal so the company could tell customers he had personally participated.

That model placed a natural ceiling on growth. If Delivrd wanted to reach 1,000, 2,000, or 5,000 monthly deals, Tomi couldn’t personally call every customer. His transition away from day-to-day deal production came with a price.

Tomi said stepping away while the team adapted contributed to roughly $100,000 in refunds because the company could not keep pace with demand during the transition. Still, removing himself from routine production opened his schedule, letting him influence far more deals at once.

Replacing Himself With Better Systems and People

A major part of that transition involved hiring people who could take work away from the founder. One hire changed Tomi’s opinion about delegation: an executive assistant.

He had resisted the idea, questioning why he needed someone else to handle tasks like email. His former executive assistant, Ashley, eventually became a director at Delivrd.

Tomi now sees an executive assistant as one of the earliest hires he would make if he were building the company again.

The role can become far more than administrative support. Someone who works closely with a founder gains deep familiarity with priorities, communication, decision-making, and how the company operates.

For Tomi, that relationship helped create another leader who can carry more responsibility while he shifts his focus elsewhere.

Expanding Delivrd Beyond Its Current Service

With operations requiring less of his direct attention, Tomi is spending more time on content and future growth opportunities.

One opportunity is Canada. Around 20% of Delivrd’s audience is Canadian, according to Tomi, while the company currently serves customers in the United States. He estimates entering Canada could add roughly $100,000 to $200,000 in monthly revenue.

The company is considering several additional categories.

Delivrd previously paused work on used cars and wants to reopen that service.
The team is developing a separate approach for exotic vehicles.
Tomi said Delivrd once handled a $10 million vehicle transaction.
The company is considering RVs and boats.
Planes are another category Tomi has discussed.

These higher-value purchases may not use the same $1,000 pricing model. An exotic vehicle can involve allocations and sourcing work that lasts for months. Tomi sees that as a separate service with pricing that reflects a much heavier workload.

Reflecting on What He Would Change

Asked what he would do differently after roughly three and a half years, Tomi returned to two closely related lessons.

First, he would hire an executive assistant earlier. He estimated he would make that hire four to six months sooner if he could rebuild Delivrd from the beginning.

Second, he would remove himself from production earlier. Tomi came to believe that much of his own work was replaceable, even when it felt tied to the company’s identity. Staying heavily involved may have helped Delivrd in its early stages, but the same habit later became a constraint.

That transition is especially relevant for business owners whose company depends heavily on their own personality, expertise, or labor. The traits that help a founder survive the first year can become the same traits that restrict the company a few years later.

Final Thoughts

Delivrd’s growth came from repeated testing, not one perfect decision. Tomi started with free deals, customer interviews, Reddit outreach, and a service built around saving time, not just money. Negotiation videos later became a major source of demand.

Three and a half years after leaving the dealership world, Delivrd handles more than 400 deals per month with 25 employees. Tomi believes the company could reach around 1,000 monthly deals next year and has a longer-term goal of 5,000. Each stage forced him to question earlier assumptions.

Customers cared more about time and stress than he expected. Long negotiation videos drew hundreds of thousands of views, and his own involvement eventually became a constraint on growth. His experience shows the value of listening closely to customers, simplifying the offer, and changing your role as the business grows.