TMCP #625: Dan Kahn – A Crashers Guide to SEMA 2025! What To Know If This Is Your First Time At The Big Show!
The MuscleCar Place
TMCP #625: Dan Kahn – A Crashers Guide to SEMA 2025! What To Know If This Is Your First Time At The Big Show!
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Term
qualifying
In racing, qualifying is when drivers try to go as fast as possible to get a good spot at the start of the race. The faster you are, the better your starting position will be.
Term
A main
The A main is the big race at the end of a racing event where the best drivers compete. It's where the winner is decided after all the qualifying rounds.
Term
heat race
A heat race is a shorter race that happens before the main race. It's used to see who can start in the best position when the main race begins.
Concept
inside dominant track
An inside dominant track is a type of race track where it's easier to drive on the inside lane than the outside lane. This means that drivers often prefer to stay on the inside to have a better chance of winning.
Concept
legend cars
Legend cars are small racing cars that are very fast and tricky to handle. They are often used in short races and can be hard to control, especially when racing closely with others.
Term
twitchy
When a car is called 'twitchy', it means that it reacts quickly to the driver's steering. This can make it hard to drive smoothly, especially when going fast or turning sharply.
Company
Miller Performance Motorsports
Miller Performance Motorsports is a team that participates in a type of car racing called legends racing, which features smaller, classic-style cars. They help drivers improve their racing abilities.
Concept
legends cars
Legends cars are small race cars that look like older classic cars. They're used in racing events and are popular because they're cheaper and easier to drive than bigger race cars.
Concept
circle track racing
Circle track racing is a type of car racing that takes place on round or oval tracks. Drivers race in circles, trying to finish the most laps in the shortest time.
Concept
Formula One
Formula One is a top-level car racing series where the fastest cars compete in races around the world. It's known for its exciting races and advanced technology.
Concept
road course races
Road course races are car races held on tracks that have curves and turns, unlike circle tracks. They test a driver's skill in handling the car through different types of turns.
Concept
SEMA
SEMA is a big car show in Las Vegas where companies show off parts and accessories for cars. It's important for people who work in the car industry or love cars to see what's new.
Term
EVs
EVs are cars that run on electricity instead of gas. They are getting more popular because they are better for the environment and technology is improving.
Term
production car segment
The production car segment is about cars that are actually made and sold to people, not just ideas or models that aren't for sale. It includes everything from cheap cars to very expensive ones.
Concept
aftermarket motorsports
Aftermarket motorsports is about car parts and accessories that you buy from companies other than the car's original maker. These parts can make your car faster, look cooler, or just different from how it was when you bought it.
Brand
BMW
BMW is a well-known car brand from Germany that makes luxury cars and sports cars. They have a big factory in the U.S. where they build many of their cars.
Company
Michelin
Michelin is a famous tire company from France that makes tires for cars and trucks. They are known for making high-quality and durable tires.
Company
Bilstein
Bilstein is a company that makes parts for car suspensions, helping cars handle better and ride smoother. They are known for their high-quality products.
Concept
NASCAR
NASCAR is a type of car racing that happens mostly on oval tracks. It's very popular in the U.S., and the cars used in the races are specially built for speed.
Concept
car culture
Car culture is all about the love of cars and the community that forms around them. It includes events where people show off their cars and share their passion for vehicles.
Car
Ford Taurus
The Ford Taurus is a type of car made by Ford. It has been popular for many years because it's roomy and comfortable, making it good for families.
Part
coilovers
Coilovers are parts of a car's suspension that help control how the car rides and handles. They can be adjusted to make the car sit higher or lower, which can improve performance.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Camaro is a sporty car made by Chevrolet, and the 1969 version is a well-known model that many car fans love. It's famous for its powerful engine and cool looks.
Part
sway bars
Sway bars are parts of a car's suspension system that help keep it stable while turning. They make it less likely for the car to tip over or roll to one side when you go around a corner.
Car
Ford Mustangs
The Ford Mustang is a famous sports car that people love for its speed and cool design. It's been around for a long time and is often seen as a symbol of American cars, making it a popular topic among car fans.
Brand
Tesla
Tesla is a well-known car company that makes electric vehicles, which are cars powered by electricity instead of gasoline.
Term
internal combustion performance
Internal combustion performance is about how well engines that run on gasoline or diesel work, especially when people make changes to make them faster or more powerful.
Car
Dodge Ram
The Dodge Ram is a big truck that people often use for work or towing things. It's known for being tough and reliable, which is why many people choose it for heavy-duty tasks.
Car
Jeep Wrangler
The Jeep Wrangler is a tough car that people use for off-roading, which means driving on rough paths and trails. It's popular because it can go almost anywhere and has a classic look that many people love.
Car
Ford Bronco
The Ford Bronco is an SUV that people love for its ability to drive off-road and its cool, vintage style. It used to be very popular and has recently come back, making it a hot topic among car lovers.
Car
Chevrolet Impala
The Chevrolet Impala is a big car that many families use because it's comfortable and has a lot of space. It's been around for many years, making it a familiar choice for people looking for a reliable vehicle.
Term
engine rebuilding
Engine rebuilding means taking apart an engine to fix it and make it work like new again. It's done to help engines last longer instead of just replacing them.
Car
Chevrolet C5
The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast sports car that many people admire for its stylish look and powerful engine. It's been around for a long time and is often talked about because of its performance and how much people love to drive it.
LIVE
The Muscle Car Place online podcast, episode number 625.
This week, a 100% bonus episode and a treat for those of you headed to the SEMA 2025 show.
Our guest is the Dan Kahn of Kahn Media and his company is the PR and marketing arm behind
all those great companies in the industry that you know and love.
Dan knows a lot about the SEMA show in particular and the value it can bring to a company presenting
or a content creator creating content or even a job seeker headed to the show with a resume and a
dream. Now all of those segments are going to get some great advice here from Dan and if you're
worried that Dan might not give you the straight facts and try to make this all look easy and
rosy, well worry no more. Dan's pretty direct.
Kevin Costner was full of it at Field of Dreams. Like if you build it, they will not come and I've seen
that. I've seen so many people fall into that trap like, okay, the show is open.
Let the POs rain down. Like that's not unfortunately how it worked.
This is the place for you. Now here's your host, Rob Kibbe.
Yes indeed, I am Rob Kibbe and welcome to the MuscleGarplace podcast. Well, here we are everyone.
This is up. What's that, Bern? You're jumping in now?
Burn him in the intro. Say again, Bern. You say we're releasing this bonus show for SEMA,
but it's Halloween night and there's something we have to do. It's not even night time. How do
you know that? Okay, you're saying if we don't do something we'll be haunted forever?
Okay, what is it? What? We have to play Thriller by Michael Jackson? That's not a thing. We're not
going to get haunted. Say that again. What? Well, that's a good point. I don't want to take any
chances either. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Just don't do enough to get us sued, okay?
Okay. There we go. Hope you're happy. Michael Jackson was a weird dude, but that's a great song.
It is the song of Halloween. That's for sure. All right, good job, Bern. I guess that's all
that we will not be haunted. All right, welcome everybody. This is a very fun bonus show. Oh,
happy Halloween to you too. This is a very fun bonus show that I wanted to put out for those of you
who are on your way to the SEMA 2025 show. This is with my old friend Dan Kahn of Kahn Media.
A long ago, when we first met, we launched a show, a podcast show called Cars for a Living.
We've remained friends ever since those days, and that show was all about being in business
in the automotive aftermarket, chasing your dream. And we both have in our different ways here.
And Dan has put together Kahn Media, the company. It's the biggest name in PR and marketing
in the aftermarket and one of the most respected. Dan built that company from a spare bedroom
with gold fashion grit and a lot of networking. I don't know anyone better than networking in
this industry than Dan. So that's what initially got me to call Dan out on this. Dan has served
many roles inside of SEMA on the boards. And he's also well aware that it used to be the way you'd
get at the SEMA show is you'd crash it. You'd show up, you'd borrow pass from somebody, you'd fake
your way in the door. Those days are gone. You shouldn't be doing that anyway. And Friday,
it's open to the public. So I pitched the idea to Dan that we make a guide called a
Crashers Guide to SEMA, but it's really just great advice for people going to SEMA that are
trying to do some business here. So that's what you're going to get here. So this is a Crashers
Guide to SEMA with Dan Kahn for those of you who are content creators, presenting companies, or even
job seekers. And really, this is intended for those of you who are going maybe for your first time,
but for those of you who are going for your 20th time, this advice really applies. I can tell
you that the most important thing about going to an in-person trade show is direct connection
with the people you want to do business with, because you never know where that's going to lead.
The telephone game is real. You will meet a person of a person of a person as a result of
somebody you met at the SEMA show. And it might be the first person you meet that you need,
but it might be the fourth down the chain that happens. That's why you go to trade shows live
and in person. They're still valuable, and that's still where you get a lot of business done. And
in fact, I might say it's even more important now than ever. Hopefully this is really, really
helpful for you. I asked Dan to do it as a favor, and he took an hour out of his day to do it. So
it's appreciated. He will tell you about all that's up in his world here. When we get to that
interview, listen all the way to the end. Take notes. You might listen to it twice. I probably
will too. I always learn something when I talk to Dan. All right, with that said, I don't have a
lot else for you, but I do know that for those of you who are longtime listeners and you've been
following along, you might like to know how the Dallas Kibby Legends car did at the Asphalt
National. So, Bern, cue the intro for the Dallas Kibby Legends car racing update.
Okay, here we are. As you hear this now, his points season is done. It's over. The last two
weekends in a row now, we've been in Las Vegas out at the Speedway with him racing. The first
weekend was just really a practice run and a chance to race there in a normal track race.
And then last weekend was the Asphalt Nationals. So, we arrived Wednesday night,
all day Thursday with practice, nothing but practice. Friday was qualifying and heat races.
Saturday were the races themselves. Dallas races in what's called the semi-pro class. There are
several classes there, but basically it goes young to old. Young Lion is age 16 and under.
Semi-pro is where you go after Young Lion. Masters is 40 and over. And then there's
something after that. I think it's called Grand Master, Grand Wizard, Grand Puba. It's
something for old people, maybe 60. I can't remember, I don't know. Semi-pro is where the bulk
of the people are. And you can be in the semi-pro or the pro, even if you're over 40, you can choose
to do that. But basically, when you look at the semi-pros, it's kind of people 16 to 20,
basically. And they're all people racing at that next level, trying to move up to the pro class
or on to bigger and better things in their career. And I would say most everybody there
does have that dream of maybe racing at the next level or even the professional level.
So, for Dallas, this is his second time racing basically against national competition. His first
time was in June. We went out to a couple of weeks in a row at the races in Charlotte,
North Carolina, at their summer shootout. And the first time he went there, it was the first
time he had ever been kind of on a flat track. He did okay. He didn't make the A main in his class,
and he was in the B main. And the B main is the way you race in, and it's where the slower cars go.
And he started to figure things out towards the end of his B main race. He didn't make it to the
top, and he didn't move on. We actually went out there for two races in a row, and a second one
got rained out. So, we never got to try that. But that kind of gave me a bookend. That was the start,
the beginning bookend, and then this event, I thought would be the finale, and that would kind
of tell us how the season went. In the meantime, he's been racing here in the Midwest the entire
time. We ended up doing between points events, non-points events, and some dirt races. He
probably raced 35 times total. 23, 24 of those counted towards national points. And he wasn't
a contender for national points, but he did quite well. My goal was to get him to 30 points events.
I was on track for that. I ended up not realizing that one of the races we did wasn't sanctioned,
so it didn't count as points. And I also thought the last week in Las Vegas, our very first time
out there, I thought that would count. I didn't realize the points cut off. It already happened,
so that didn't count either. And then we had a string of like five rainouts in a row in either
July or August. And I mean, they all just happened back to back to back. We were just kind of screwed.
Most of them happened while we were at the event racing or on our way in the door to an event.
And then when I say while we're at the event racing, like he had taken practice and had
qualified already for one race before they canceled it. We had another race where we all
showed up and we sat in the parking lot while all hell broke loose. And then they finally
canceled it an hour later. I mean, there's just stuff like that. So the reason I wanted to hit
30 is because I'd just kind of done my homework. I'd look at years past winners and that's about
what they ran. They ran about 30 races. So I kind of knew 30 was about the number. I didn't get them
to 30 in the end, but I would say it was a good valiant effort. So how did he do? Well, he did
okay in practice and he did a little bit better in qualifying. And the way that this works is the
A main, the main show, the big feature took the top 20 cars just on qualifying time. And then the
remainder after that had to race their way into the show. They took a total of 30 cars in the race.
And he was tied a three-way tie for 18th by just based on time. And by some other tiebreakers,
he was placed at 20th, but three cars at 18 had the exact same qualifying time. That meant that he
had to, he had to finish really well in his heat race or even better win his heat race. And he went
out in his heat race and he started fourth. And then the leader, well, not the leader, the number
two person, the person on the, ahead of him on the outside jumped to start. And then they gave
the option to car number three to take the outside line and he declined. And then they gave the
option to Dallas to take the outside line from fourth to second. He took it. And the reason that
number three didn't take it is because the Las Vegas bull ring where we're racing is an inside
dominant track. It's very hard to pass on the outside there. You got to have a whale of a run.
And even then it may not work. So Dallas started on the outside and actually,
since he won, why don't you listen to Dallas after his post-race heat interview? This is from
Legends Nation. They get all the credit here. This is on the Legends Nation social channel.
Dallas got a victory out there. I believe that's the one of the last semipro heats of the day.
Not too bad. You had to work your way to the front. Tell me about it.
First restart, the outside 11 car jump. So race super guy told me I can take the outside. I
want it and then took it, fired off pretty well. Got side by side. I was running about third,
rolled the top really well, got a big run on the leader, got to the bottom of them and just kind
of checked out there. What do you have to work on with your car for tomorrow to give it just
that extra little bit? Yeah, you just want to work on consistency, getting faster times here
and there. I mean, it got a few sixes. It's supposed to run in sevens and eights though,
so we're just going to work on getting it into one a little bit better, but other than that,
got enough complaints. Okay, there you go. So if you followed on social media,
Dallas went out and straight up won this heat race and he did it the old-fashioned way. He passed
a guy on the outside and he finally found his way. He passed third place to get himself to second
on the outside and then he passed for first place on the inside. He just did great and it was super
cool and that locked him safely in the show. Because of that, he started in the main race. So
if you look at where he started in Charlotte to where he was here, big leap, big, big leap.
I'm genuinely proud of him. He can do this. He has the talent to do this.
So then we went to the main race. He started 17th and the goal here was to just survive
long enough to try to get to the top, maybe even get a top five, but a top 10 for sure,
but a top five was kind of the goal. So he started 17th. He got up to 13th, then he got caught in a
spin. Either he spun somebody or somebody came down on him and spun themselves out. I will admit,
if I were the race director, I'd probably made the same call. They faulted Dallas and they sent
him to the back of the pack. So he had to go all the way to the back of the pack. These kids are
the best of the best. It's a melee of cars and a bit of a wreck fest, but it's a wreck fest because
they're all making such tight moves in these little legend cars, which are super twitchy to drive,
and they're kind of like, I put it on Facebook. I described it like this. I said, driving a legend's
car is, how do I put it, like being chased by someone who's branching a knife while you're
wearing slippers coated in butter on an ice skating rink. It's a very hard car to drive because it
basically wants to always spin out. So it was the 35 lap race with a 45 minute time limit. They
used all of it. He started at the back of the pack. I zoomed in and by my certainly biased
judgment, but I think I am making the right call here, he was making a pass on the guy ahead of him.
And the rule is, at least my understanding is the rule is in asphalt racing, when you've got a
bumper on the guy, not when you're at his door, but when you're at his rear bumper, you've got
position. And at that point, he's got a lift. Dallas was at the guy's door and then he started
coming down and Dallas started backing out actually. And he was deep into turn three at that point.
And he backed out and almost backed out enough for the guy to clear him because that guy was
coming down to try to pinch down and get to the line. And that guy ended up hooking his bumper
on Dallas's front bumper, spun himself out. That's it. Dallas didn't hit him. He didn't hit Dallas.
He just spun out. That's all it was. But Dallas got sent to the back. So then he had to go all the
way to the back again. And I don't remember at that point, there were a few cars out, but he got
itself up to, I think, I don't know, maybe 20th. Then a wreck happened in front of him.
And there was nowhere to go. So he and the car behind him just piled into it. And that
smashed up the radiator. That is not a fixable thing in the hot pit. And his race was over.
So he didn't get to finish it. And he was six laps short of finishing the race,
credited with 24th overall. But it was a sad end, certainly. But man, did he do well.
And I will say that we had to do some changes in our race team here. His coach, Jackson,
wasn't there. I won't explain why he wasn't there, but he wasn't there. At this point,
that coaching relationship has ended. It's ended and we'll have to create a new one there
to go forward. But that was a bit of a bummer. The race team we were there with, though,
is Miller Performance Motorsports. They're one of the top teams in legends. Zach Miller himself
said, you know, I obviously, I didn't know Dallas super well before this, but I was really
surprised. He's got a lot of speed. So going forward, he'll race legends cars some more.
I do not know what the plan is for next year. I don't think we'll do another solo only legend
car racing season. We'll do a lot of legend cars, but I don't think it'll be solo. I think he's
probably got to move on and start learning how to drive some of the bigger cars if his goal is to go
circle track racing. Or, you know, Formula One is becoming a thing in this country. And I'm not
even joking about that. There's a lot of opportunity there as well. During the off season here, I am
going to try to have him run a couple of road course races. Miller Performance would tell you for
sure if nothing, it's a great way to train and get some new skills. But I'm trying to keep my eyes
open here. My job now is not to be his crew chief as much as I would love to be. I love this stuff.
I love learning setups. I love knowing why things go. I love learning all the little tricks.
I'm an engineer by education, but I'm a car dude at heart. I love learning this stuff. But I'm 50
years old and I've only been doing this for four years now. I'm still learning a lot about racing
in general. And the people we're going against have been doing this for 30 years. So there's a
gap there. And I don't want Dallas to have to wait on me. So my job now is to run the company.
And the company, I guess, is Dallas Kibbe, the future LLC. I don't know you know how to describe it.
I can help him get there. The good and the bad about racing is, and I'm sure Clay Millican,
top fuel NHRA superstar would tell you the same, the best driver in the world doesn't always win.
You've got to have great equipment and great people around you and a little bit of luck too.
But without great equipment and great people, you'll be a mid-pack person if you get there at all.
So I understand that part of it. He'll learn that part of it. So that's my job here. Put that
together and make that happen. I will say this, if the worst thing that ever comes out of this
is I got a bunch of one-on-one time with my son while he was still living on my roof,
it was worth it. And I'm only looking forward to more. This isn't the end. This is clearly the
beginning here. But just wanted to share that with you. That's probably our last Dallas Kibbe
Legends car racing update of the year. I'll keep you in the loop on what he does in the off-season.
I'll certainly keep you in the loop on what our plans are for next year. It's been a really
really fun season. I appreciate you following along. I was a little surprised with how many
people took an interest in this. All this show is about muscle cars. You know, it's about cars in
general. I didn't know how many people would dig this or not. But I don't even know what to tell
you other than thank you for following along. Thank you for supporting them. Again, this has
been a real treat. So with that said, Burn, that concludes the Dallas Kibbe Legends car racing update.
Well, let's go ahead and get to the Dan Kahn interview. And remember, as you hear this,
we're on our way to SEMA 2. And it's going to be quite a week. I look forward to seeing Jeff
Allison and Zip Simons and Kirk Hansen and Danny Giustino. If you don't hear this tell SEMA week
and you're at the Roadster Shop Party, look for us. We're there. All right. We'll see you Thursday
night at the Roadster Shop Party if nothing else. All right. Okay. Don't forget once per month,
we do have Mr. Rick Schmidt from National Parts Depot on to talk all things NPD. But you can ask
him anything you like. Send in your questions to me, Robert, at themusclecarplace.com. And of
course, visit nationalpartsdepot.com to peruse for all your muscle car parts needs because they
find the source they expect the best. There is a difference and they've got the goods. Send in
your questions for December. The November Ask Rick is already recorded. Up next, feature interview
time. This is Mr. Dan Kahn of Kahn Media with some outstanding insight for those of you headed to SEMA
as a content creator or presenting company or even a job seeker. And as even more of a bonus,
I throw in some quick answer questions for him about trends in the industry that maybe we'll
see 10 years from now or maybe we won't. Like, how big will EVs be in our segment by then?
And will the $400,000 production car segment we're seeing now that's
only getting better? Is that still going to be a thing then? And what about motorsports?
Will that be a winner or a loser by then? So you'll hear from Dan too. Enjoy.
Today, our guest is Dan Kahn. Dan is the president of Kahn Media. He has served on the SEMA board
probably in numerous capacities. Over the last 15 plus years, he's put together the team that
has at the top of the heap for marketing and PR and the automotive aftermarket and beyond.
Every now and then, he builds an award-winning hot rod for fun. He can grow a beard in a week.
He digs guns, coffee, camping, Star Trek humor. That last one is very important to me. Today,
I thought all of those things are true. All right. Today, I thought as a bonus show,
just for SEMA 2025, we'd have Dan on to figure out how to crash it in the best way possible.
So Dan, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Rob. Glad to be here.
It's been a while and I left out my brother from another mother that launched cars for living the
podcast. But every now and then, still, over a decade later, somebody will ask me about it.
Like, you still do that? No, we don't do still do that. But we did do that.
No, but I think it set us both off on an interesting course. And my favorite thing,
Rob, when we get to, and I don't think we get to connect nearly as often as I'd like, but
it still feels easy just picking it up and just start chatting like we were talking yesterday.
So that makes it great. Thanks, man. Likewise. It's always fun.
And I appreciate you coming on here because you're a big deal, Dan.
I don't know about that. You're a big deal. Your insight.
Just a car guy trying to figure it out.
Well, your insight into the aftermarket industry specifically is really valuable. So
I kind of preface what I want to do today. But just in case somebody has never heard of you,
Dan, who are you? Where are you from? Where are you from now? How about that?
Well, yeah. So I'm talking to you now from my office and studio in Waxaw, North Carolina,
which is about an hour south of Charlotte. I was born and raised in Southern California.
I'm one of the very few who actually was born there. And a car guy from the beginning,
multi-generational car guy. And I was one of those weirdos that just woke up one day as a
teenager and said, I want to talk about cars for a living, which was the premise of our show
all those years ago. And I'm fortunate enough that that has kind of come true. So I was an
automotive journalist for many years and a photographer and a writer and made the jump into
PR and worked for a couple of other agencies. And first in the aftermarket motorsports side,
and then working for bigger kind of OEM type brands. And then saw the digital thing come in,
I think maybe just a minute or two before some of my colleagues at the last agency and said,
hey, we need to pivot for that. They didn't see that the same way that I did. So I said,
well, I'm going to try it anyway. So I left and started Con Media actually 17 years ago next week.
So it was November 5th. Kind of wild though. It's been a trip. We are no longer just a PR
agency. We're an integrated marketing agency. So we handle everything from media buying to PR
to we do a lot of influencer and content creator work. We do a ton of production work,
ground creative. We do a lot of rebrands. We do a lot of media buying. We acquired another agency
a few years ago in the outdoor recreation space doing kind of hunting fish stuff.
We still have an office in LA working with a lot of motorsports groups as well as OEMs and
aftermarket brands as well as SEMA itself. And then we have an office in Bozeman, Montana that
does more of kind of hunting fish under the tread agency brand. And then I opened this office here
in the Charlotte area just a couple months ago. And we have a big announcement coming that I can't
say yet, but there'll be a third agency joining the portfolio very soon. So no kidding. Yeah.
And in this place in Charlotte, do you have a spare bedroom? I do. Come visit. Super. And can I use
it every Tuesday next summer? Sure, we can figure that out. Part of the impetus behind the move was
so it's not a secret that the Southern States have done a really good job
on job creation, right? So within about a two and a half hour drive of where I'm sitting right now,
you have BMWs, North American plant and headquarters, Michelin, Bilstein, the ton of
performance aftermarket brands are in the immediate vicinity, as well as, of course, NASCAR is just a
stone's throw for me up in Concord. It's interesting because I think when I move, because I move my
family here to open this office and we were recruited by the state of North Carolina and
is a cargo. I mean, obviously my first concern was my kids and my family. My kind of close second
concern was living in Southern California, I was just surrounded by car stuff constantly.
And I'm like, man, am I going to miss that? And I will tell you, I do not. Like even just the local
cars and coffee here, the diversity of the car scene is wild. I was at an event just a couple
weeks ago, I'm standing around with all the hot rod guys and there's young guys cruising in in
McLaren's. There was this guy there who definitely won the trophy for weirdest car. He was a totally
home-built overland Ford Taurus station wagon and he designed his own coilovers and lifted it. I mean,
it's wild. So definitely a strong car culture here. Do you have any regrets from a personal
perspective? Here's why I say that. I know you, I would like to think pretty well. I know when
you make a decision, you rarely question it or have buyers remorse or anything like that. But
this was a big one. You grew up in SoCal. That's your home. And it will probably be in a way,
always your home. Like your body clock always kind of runs on the time zone where you were born
or where you grew up. It just works that way. Has anything set in like that yet?
We're only about four months in. Everyone I talk to says it takes about a year to totally
acclimate. I don't have any regrets right now. And I will tell you, and I don't want to get into
politics and stuff, but the Southern California I grew up in is not the Southern California of
today. I will put Southern California and LA specifically up against any city in America
or the world when it comes to both food and car culture, period and weather. Like if you want good
weather 320 days a year, that's SoCal. There's really nowhere else in the country. If you want to get
the wildest ethnic food you can find or a really great burger, no problem. That's a 10 minute drive
away. And the car thing is that's a real deal. You can go up to Angeles Crest Highway and see the
craziest hypercars you've ever seen in your life. And the exact same day, you can go to Bobby Green's
shop in Altadena and see the coolest traditional hot rods on earth, right? So I think all of that
is real. I would say like some stuff I was expecting, the bugs, man, there's a lot of bugs.
And I am not used to that. Like I have just been getting the crap bit out of me the last
couple of months. And I'm not used to that. The weather is definitely not as good, but we're in
the South. So it's not like we're going to get buried under snow. It's not like we're in Southern
Florida where it's like 110 and humid. So that's more of an adjustment, but I kind of expected
that. I would say if I had anything close to a regret, it's that I have three kids. I think my
younger two have done a good job and they're acclimating and they're doing well. My oldest
is having some challenges. We moved here and then she went straight into her freshman year
of high school and it's just different. So she's struggling and that breaks my heart.
She's also super smart and she's getting great grades. If I could go back and do it over again,
would I wait another 10 or 11 years until all my kids are out of school? I don't know
because I'm not sure what life would look like in 10 or 11 years. And this was something that we
spent five years driving around the country in our RV. We spent 100,000 miles and five years
trying to figure out where we wanted to go. So it wasn't an impulsive decision. And like you said,
I tend to be pretty focused. So once I decide I'm going to do something, it's going to happen.
So I don't know if I have regrets yet. I would say as of today, no, I love our town. I like our
property. I finally got my dream garage if I always wanted. So selfishly, I guess I'll have to admit
that that was part of it. It was pretty sweet. Yeah, but TBD. Okay. Well, now everybody knows
that you're genuine and you're a softy. How's that? All right. So not only you had the hard
charger, Dan Kahn, but like a little gooey center. Man, when it comes to my kids, I'm sure you're
the same. I don't do anything for them. Okay. So here's what I'm hoping to do with you. Now,
Dan, you would never tell someone to just crash SEMA and violate the rules, of course. But
here was the perspective I threw at you. And I absolutely said, say no if this is not okay.
But what I want to do is help people going that are possibly listening to this on the way there,
that are going there to sell their social media presence. So a couple of years ago when you came
on, we talked about the theory of are there too many content producers? Well, times have changed.
Now the media is content producers. That's who makes the media and the traditional media really
is just one of them now. So for those that are going possibly even for their first time,
how do they get the most ROI out of it? What would your advice be to a brand new,
not new to content production, but new to going to SEMA?
Well, let's start by saying five years ago, if we were having this conversation,
you would literally have to crash SEMA. And I would never endorse that because they're my client
and I love them very much. Today, you don't even need to do that. So first of all, even if you're
not a content creator, even if you're not even in the industry and you just like cool cars,
show up Friday and just get a ticket. That is a relatively new thing that between there is now
public ticket blocks available, especially on Friday. They have an event called SEMA Fest,
that's sort of the after hours deal where they've got like the Black Rose playing this here,
which is kind of cool. Queens of the Stone Age. Queens of the Stone Age and they're going to have
Hoonigan's doing drift demos and burnout box contests. And they're going to have like Optima
Unleashed, which is Cam Douglas and the Optima team puts on a great show with the craziest
pro touring cars you've ever seen. And it's legitimately a pretty wild deal and you can
just buy a ticket online. So that part is cool. I would also say again, four or five years ago,
I'm not sure that not only did the companies exhibiting at SEMA not necessarily know what
to do with the creator. I'm not sure SEMA knew what to do with creators at the time. There was
internally, there has been a huge amount of change in leadership at SEMA and they've got
by design, they have a new board every few years because people cycle off like I did and they
cycle back on and they have a CEO now the last few years named Mike Spagnola, who's a died-in-the-wool
hardcore car guy. His son races. Mike was a racer. He's a total collector. The head of marketing is
RJ De Vera, who's sort of a legend in the important tuning and JDM space. So they have leadership now
that really not only gets it, but they're consuming this content, right? So you now have a bunch of
cheerleaders that would say, Hey, look, if even if you've never been here before, come on in.
We want to host you. We want to welcome you. And I think that's cool. They have a content
creator of the year award. In fact, first, because they started doing like a featured
artist every year about four or five years ago and like Ed Tilrock, who's like the pencil guy,
you know, he does was really hyper realistic pencil illustrations was one Max Grundy, who does that
kind of retro futurist kind of hot rod, like bombers and stuff like that's his style. Well,
this year, the featured artist isn't even a traditional pen and ink artist. It's Larry Chen,
a photographer and a content creator and a YouTuber. So I think to me, that's a real
indicator that this is a whole new ball game. And I would say the first thing you should know
when you go into the show is first of all, just register as media. And that's a pretty easy thing
to do. And you're going to get a colored badge that's going to indicate to everyone who's booth
you walk into that, Hey, you're not a buyer. You're also not some like industry guest who's
like brother-in-law owns a body shop and you're kind of lurking in their booth, because one of
the things you have to keep in mind is the exhibitors that seem like these are the people
that are paying a lot of money for a booth. And they're not just paying a lot of money for the
real estate. They're paying a lot of money because you have to Vegas is Vegas, right?
You've got to pay to bring in kind of all the structure of your booth. You got to pay for
power drops. You got to pay the union guys to set it all up. It's not an inexpensive thing.
They need to maximize every minute of their four days at that show. So if you've got a sales guy
working at a booth, his job is really to sell parts. And he wants to talk to buyers from Summit
and JEGS and the chain stores and Rob's local hot rod shop. And that's what he's there to do.
But there's also going to be people in most of those booths that are there to try and make
connections and talk to creators and try and get their word out. And so if they see that media badge,
they're going to say, okay, this is somebody I should probably engage with. So that's going to
right out of the gate, make it a whole lot easier to have a conversation and not get blown off.
So at this point, if somebody's going in now, let's just assume they've properly registered as
media. Let's just say they know what they're doing in general and creating content. They've
just never been to SEMA before. There's a lot of content creators at SEMA now. Sometimes it's hard
to stand out. Maybe that's how I should have asked it. What would you tell a new content creator as
far as standing out? I will give you a few pieces of advice. And this is coming from somebody who
helps manage creator meetings at SEMA for a very long time. The first thing you should do is be
as professional as possible. So this might sound sort of unusual because I think most people think
at a trade show, you can just like walk up and talk to anybody, make appointments.
Again, these people, most companies, unless they're huge, unless they're like, you know,
mothers or Holly or some of these like giant companies that have a 50 by 100 foot booth and
they're bringing 20 or 30 staff members in. Most of these brands, even decent sized brands
that are doing a lot of business, they'll typically only have three or four people on the floor of
their booth. So time is of the essence. So if you have a contact or an email address or you want to
look them up on the SEMA show.com website, send them a note in advance, even a day or two before,
even the week of the show. Hey, I'm here. I'd love to meet with someone from your team. Here's my
page. Here's the kind of content we create. Here's the audience we talk to. Who should I talk to?
Who could I have a chat with in your booth at the show? Or if you don't have a contact,
just send them a DM on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or whatever platform you're on. Hey,
I'm here. I'd love to meet with someone from your company and tell you about what I do and the kind
of content I create. Even if they don't respond, even if they don't send a note back, there's a good
chance they're going to see your note. And when you walk in, you can at least say, Hey, I sent a note.
I want to talk to somebody. Another thing I would also suggest, and this is going to sound a little
weird, but hear me out, go in, introduce yourself and explain who you are, what kind of channel
you're running and the kind of content you create first. You would be surprised if you put yourself
in the shoes of a person who's working a booth at the same show. The thing that they get hammered
with the most is random guys walking into their booth saying, Hey, do you have an insert part here
for a insert year make model here? Hey, do you have these sway bars for my 69 Camaro?
And the challenge is, is if you're that guy and you're working a booth and you're having that
conversation 30 times a day, 40 times a day, 50 times a day, you don't know the difference between
a category buyer for summit where if you have that conversation with that guy, it could change
your entire year financially, right? A content creator who literally just wants a pair of sway
bars for his 69 Camaro, but maybe you get some exposure or a new creator relationship that,
again, could change your whole life or guys like you and me, I'm as guilty of it as anybody.
When I have a spare hour on Thursday of the SEMA show and I've been working the whole week,
I actually want to go be a car guy. So I want to walk around and look at all the new stuff,
I want to look at the builds, I want to look at the cars and I'm guilty of it too. I walk into
some booth and I don't maybe know those people and I think they've got the cool parts and
I've got my own project cars and I can say, do you have these parts from my blah, blah, blah?
And if they don't know who I am, I'm just another tire kicker, right?
They don't know how to differentiate that. So if you go in and you're polished and you
introduce yourself and you say, this is who I am. And by the way, even if you have 30,000 followers,
you don't have to have 300,000 followers or 3 million followers, that's okay. Just be honest
and transparent and say, this is who I am. This is the kind of content I create. And in fact,
I had that experience a couple of years ago with a young guy who literally was doing that.
He was going around, he was dressed kind of like a young guy, wasn't dressed particularly.
I think he was wearing like shorts and like flip flops or something. And by the way,
try to look a little more polished at SEMA. You don't have to wear a tux, but-
A shirt would be good. A shirt is good. Maybe a logo.
Yeah. And he walked up and he was professional and he was polite and mom and dad did a good job
because this guy was like a teenager, shook my hand, said, hey, this is who I am. This is the
kind of stuff I'm working on. I'm really interested in trying to grow my career.
Well, he has a channel now called Dorm Room Mechanic. And the way he actually got his channel
started was he was rebuilding a motor in his dorm and he got kicked out of his dorm.
And I have heard of this guy. Yeah. And he did a great job. And I really liked the way
he presented himself and he was professional and he seemed like a serious person. He wasn't just
there trying to score free parts. He was trying to build something. So we introduced him to Norris
Marshall, who's the CEO of Blueprint Engines. And he and Norris kicked off and Norris took
an interest in him. And not only have we done kind of a deal with him where we've now done some
content deals with him between Blueprint and his channel, but Norris has given him personal factory
tours and checks in on him and does some mentorship. So I think my favorite thing about our industry
is it's full of people who are just trying to figure it out, including people who end up making it
to top positions in major companies. They still remember what it's like just being the kid in
the garage trying to figure it out. So if you present yourself in that way, they're going to
feel good about wanting to help you and work with you. I've got one more tip to throw in there that
we learned a long time ago. So including myself, we'll have three or four people out doing interviews.
Logistics. Logistics are so important at the SEMA show. You're going to pull up a show floor
map. It's free and online. Do not book appointments back to back that are across the room from each
other. On the map, it looks so easy, but I assure you it is not. Leave a 15 to 30 minute buffer
between your appointments. You're going to need it. It takes a while. It's actually way worse now
than ever before because now that the West Hall has come online in the last couple of years. Oh my
goodness, yes. Yeah, you can go from like Central Hall to North Hall and it's not like the end of
the world. If you're hustling, even if the crowd's really bad, you can maybe do that in 10 or 15
minutes. But if you've got to go to the West, I have made that mistake too. Or I'll have a meeting
in Central and then a meeting in West and then another meeting in Central and that is just horrible.
That is a serious, that's about a half a mile walk. It's a good long ways. You'll be tired at the
end of the day. Okay, next question. You own the booth. It's your first, you've paid the money.
You brought your team out there. You're way over budget already. How do you maximize four days at
SEMA? Because now, just like you said, you've got content creators coming at you. You have buyers
coming at you. You've got brother-in-laws with passes. You've got all that crap. What is your
goal when you leave there? Let's say that you're not a builder. You're a manufacturer of product.
Good question. I've got a few things for that one. First of all, Kevin Costner was full of it
at Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come. I've seen so many people fall into that
trap. They think that, well, I'm here. It should work. I'm like, okay, the show is open. Let the
POs rain down. That's not unfortunately how it works. You have to imagine this is one of the
biggest trade shows in the world. Not automotive, just period trade shows. You're talking about
120-ish thousand people, several square miles of trade show floor that's just covered in booths.
It's a lot. How do you elevate yourself? A couple of things I would suggest. First of all, SEMA
actually has pretty great resources. You can work with your rep who sold you that booth and say,
what do I do to get on people's radar? Maybe some of it is like some sponsorship,
get an overhead sign. It's a little extra money, but when people are trying to find you, especially
if you have a smaller booth and they're trying to figure out your barriers somewhere in some hall,
if you can just look up and see your logo hanging from the ceiling, that's well worth
the extra couple thousand bucks. Are you kidding me? I've been doing this 20 years. I never knew
that's why they do it. Is that it? I thought it just looked cool. It is very helpful.
Take advantage of those kinds of resources. Certainly, again, same advice I would give to
the influencers. Book as many appointments as you can. That is something that we've actually
had these conversations every year for as long as we've been doing this, which is, again, 17 years,
where we'll say, okay, we'll tell the clients we're going to load you up. We're going to get you a
color-coded spreadsheet of every appointment we book for you over the course of the day.
Because we're on the marketing side, we're not booking sales appointments. We're not
booking appointments with vendors and raw material suppliers. We're mostly focused
on PR and marketing stuff. And some clients will say, okay, I'm going to give you one day
to do marketing. So just fill me up as much as you can. We've had others who have said,
look, I'll take every meeting you can book. So load me up. Again, just like on the creator side,
it's important because certainly there are going to be people who walk by and the light bulb goes
off and they go, I need one of those widgets. That's great. But a lot of them, they're hustling
around. They've got a million things to do. They've got a million people to see. Someone's
going to grab their arm in the hallway and say, oh, hey, Rob, I haven't seen you in forever.
So you want to have those appointments. There's people where you're like, if I don't meet with
this company while I'm at SEMA, it's going to be a real disappointment. So make that appointment
in advance. There's nothing wrong with that. Another piece of advice I would give, and this one
isn't just to have a successful SEMA show. To me, this is sort of a key to success in our industry
is network, network, network. As big as our industry is, and it's a huge industry from
a dollar's perspective, it's a relatively small family. Everybody kind of knows each other.
It's very relationship driven. And one of the things I think that's great about SEMA,
not just as a show, but as an organization, is there's a tremendous amount of networking
opportunities. They've got, I think, 11 councils and networks. Join one. Most of them are free.
If you make parts, join TORA. If you make hot rod parts, join HRA. If you make restoration parts,
join ARMO. Start showing up. They have meetings at the show. Introduce yourself. Most of them have
receptions. And they're different nights, you know, Tuesday, night, Wednesday, and Thursdays,
night. The different groups have different receptions. Show them up. They give you a drink
ticket. You get a crappy free drink. It doesn't matter. The whole point is work the room. Talk
to as many people as you can. Meet as many people as you can. But even beyond that,
there's a lot of opportunities. So like the SEMA, there's member lounges in most of the halls.
I've actually signed clients just going into a member lounge and just talking to people. And
everybody needs a break from the show floor or from their booth for a few minutes. And you can
usually go in there and get a cold bottle of water and some peanuts and just like take a minute to
take a breath. That's a great place to go meet people. So to start talking to them, go to the
kickoff breakfast Tuesday morning. It's huge. There's thousands of people in there that down
on a random table and start introducing yourself. The prayer breakfast is another really good one.
I like that event a lot. The Thursday night banquet where they kind of give out the person of the
year award and the content creator of the year award. Same deal. Every major power player in
the industry has had that banquet. Certainly the parties are fun. That's kind of a different vibe.
But the sanctioned events before and after hours, the networking events, SEMA education
institute where they have seminars. I'm doing one on Wednesday. Those are a great place to
meet people and network. And especially if you sign up for ones that are sort of aligned with
your business, you're going to end up probably meeting a couple of possible customers. You're
going to meet a couple of vendors. And that's the kind of thing where you do that a couple years
in a row and your schedule starts to kind of form itself. Sure. Would you credit networking
at SEMA and joining committees as like one of your keys to success? Absolutely. My first year
in business, I joined what was then called YEM, the Young Executives Network. They since renamed
it to FLN, which is like Future Leaders Network, I think, but it was like the Young Person Club,
basically. And I just showed up at a SEMA show actually, just walked up and went to a reception,
said who's in charge. They pointed me to a lady named at the time, Lee McGuire,
now named Lee Reiser. I think she was like chair-elect of the group at the time. I said,
hey, I'm Dan. What do I do? How can I get involved? Should you want to hand out tickets? Sure.
And I sat at the door and handed out drink tickets. And then they said, hey, we have these meetings
every month. You should join a meeting. I said, okay, in a month or two. And they said,
do you want to run for like our select committee, which is sort of the kind of the board of the
little group? And I said, sure. Did that for a year? I think a year or two after that, I was chair
person of that group. I got a lot of visibility by being on that group. I ended up becoming
pretty good friends with Melanie White, who was chair of I think the truck group at the time.
And we ended up getting opted into this thing that doesn't even exist anymore. That was sort of
like a liaison between the councils and networks and the board. We ended up going to board meetings
for a year. So now I'm in the boardroom. I don't get to vote, but I'm in the boardroom for a year
with all these power players in the industry. A year after that, I'm on the board. And then I did
that for six years. None of that would have happened if I hadn't walked into a kind of reception with
watered-on drinks and handed out drink tickets. And certainly lots and lots of business opportunities
came my way as a result of that. So I coach a lot of people on this. And it's interesting that some
people really lean into it and some people get very gun shy about it. I am not by nature a party
person. I don't go to bars. I don't drink really. So for me, it's sort of against my grain a little
bit, but I do it because it's important. The ability to meet other... So especially in your
business where I mean, you're in the business of networking. That's your whole business is
networking. You're networking people to consumers, but your networking period, I get it. But getting
plugged in is helpful because while you may not have anybody in your town that's going to buy
your stuff. Say you make ED parts for Mustangs or something, somebody in that room does maybe many
somebodies. So I think that's awesome point. Let's go to number three. There is an opportunity for
somebody to just show up on Friday. Like you said, you can buy a ticket. Let's say you want a job
in the industry and that's your only way in the door. You buy a ticket, you pay money,
and you fly yourself. You get there. What would be your best ROI to trying to show up on Friday
with a purchase ticket to meet people to try to network for maybe a job?
That's a great question. And I will give you a caveat before I get into it. And that is that,
unfortunately, it kind of depends on the size of the business that you're looking at that you
want to work for and what you want to do. First of all, if you want to work as a fabricator
or a body or paint person, if you want to work for a car builder, book that ticket right now,
because I can tell you as somebody who works with a lot of pro car builders,
the demand for people to work in their shops is higher than it has ever been right now. They're
having a really tough time finding talent. And if that just means you show up and push a broom
and ask someone to let you apprentice it because you know nothing, you just have a desire to do
this for a living, cool. Sign up. If you're an absolute ace TIG welder and you know how to
hammer and dolly a panel and you're ready to start fabricating and
working for one of the top builders in the country, they're all hiring. So do that.
That's pretty specific, right? If your skills aren't quite that specific, or maybe you want to
work in accounting or you want to work as a cad cam or whatever, there's generally
positions open across the industry. And I think we're fortunate that in our industry,
this is one of the things that AI can't do yet. So there is a lot of opportunity out there.
I will also give you the asterisk on this comment is that unfortunately,
most of the CEOs and owners are not typically in their booth on Friday. Typically, these are the
folks that show up a day or two early. They're overseeing everything coming together. Usually,
there's a fair amount of kind of business networking that's happening early in the show, Monday,
Tuesday, a lot of the kind of heavy lift kind of like car debuts and parts debuts. That's usually
happening on Tuesday and maybe a little bit into Wednesday. That banquet I told you about,
that's Thursday night. That can go pretty late. And then the Roadster shop also has their party
Thursday night after the banquet. That goes even later. So in my experience, a lot of CEOs and
owners either don't go on Friday or they're showing up at noon and they're hurting because
Thursday night was a late one. So if you expect to show up, walk into a booth, talk to the owner
of the company and hand them your resume, you might be surprised that that probably isn't
necessarily in the cards for you on Friday. But that doesn't mean don't do it. What that means
is the same thing as everything else we just talked about, which is try and do some groundwork
in advance. Come up with a list so you can look at the floor plan of all the halls right now.
Just go to cmshow.com. That's all there. Figure it out. Like you said earlier, Rob,
have that logistical plan to figure out, okay, here's the five, six, seven companies that are on
my dream list that I would love to work for. Figure out where they are, get their booth numbers,
map out kind of the order that you want to hit them in, and ideally send these people a note.
Hey, I'm coming out to the show. I would love to work for your company. Is there a way I could
talk to somebody and at least learn more about what it's like to work there? Don't expect to
meet the CEO or the owner. But even if you're talking to a sales guy, hey, can you tell me what
it's like? Is this a good company? Do they treat their people well? Who are you looking for people?
Can I get your business card and I'm going to shoot you an email with my resume? Can you forward
that to HR? Having that come from somebody working in the booth, hey, I met this person and they seem
really cool. You should definitely take a look at this resume. That's going to put you to the top
of the stack right out of the gate compared to somebody who's just like cold applying on like,
you know, LinkedIn or Indeed or something like that. So I think manage your expectations, try
and book meetings in advance. But even if you can't, don't give them a paper resume. I hate to say
that because I like paper, but these guys are trucking home so much stuff. That resume is never
going to make it into the hands of the person that matters. Just get their card, get their contact
info, send them an email and say, hey, when you get back in the office and also be mindful of the
fact that the people who are working at SEMA, especially if they're working a booth, they did
not show up when the gates opened on Tuesday morning. They were there at the minimum from Sunday.
And some of these guys are driving the truck with the booth in the car in it, right? So they're
driving out from wherever their company is based, probably on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They're
doing set up on Sunday. They're doing set up on Monday. They're working a show for 10 hours a
day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. They have to break the booth down. They have to drive
home. They're going to be cooked for a week or two. So give them a little grace and then follow
up with them a week or two later and say, hey, I don't know if you remember me. I walked into the
show on Friday. I met you. I really want to work for your company. I don't know if you got my resume,
I sent you, but if you could forward it to HR, I'd appreciate it. And is there anything else I
should know? What else can I do to kind of get on the radar of the company? I think that's awesome
advice. You're right. You never think about the personal work in the booth, anywhere but that
booth. You think they just appeared there on Tuesday, but chances are they spent this year,
Halloween, Friday night at a holiday in an Oklahoma or something. They're tired. They won't
forget that you showed up in person though. And that's surprising because in this day and age,
a lot of people don't necessarily meet in person the first time. You and I didn't.
We met in person two years into our relationship, I think, but it doesn't always go that way.
And then you're spot on on the Friday morning appointments. They can be hit and miss. I do
have a good relationship with a company now that I had a Friday morning appointment with,
but when I went to do my interview with them Friday morning, he was way too hungover to be
doing it. And we mutually agreed that it was not a good idea. I'll call you like in January
for this. Yeah, Friday morning can be rough. I don't want you to throw up on me and I don't
think you can get through it. So okay, let me give you some just fast-hater questions. You can
answer them with as much depth or as little as you like. You are a wise sage here. The gray in
the beard is making you look like you know stuff. Thanks. In 10 years at the SEMA show,
10 years from now, will EV be a huge deal or will it continue to be like it is now,
a part of the machine? No, it'll be a part of the machine. SEMA, like the rest of the entire
industry, pushed really hard for the EV thing for a couple of years there. And I think had some
interesting stuff like a busy moto, for example, came out with that like 935K3 looking Porsche
Le Mans thing that had all the black one. Yeah, it had like the whale tail and I kind of looked
at Kremmer brothers like Le Mans car. I had an EV drivetrain. That was cool. I don't care what engine
is in that thing. It's cool. It looks like a Porsche Le Mans car. And then there's been some other
stuff. Icon Jonathan Ward a few years ago, he had a, I think it was a Morrison chassis kind of
lead sled Merc with a Tesla drivetrain. I think that's sort of interesting. But again, that could
have had a Chevy in it. It could have had a Tesla drivetrain. It could have had a Daihatsu diesel
in it. It still would have been cool because Jonathan Ward built it and he builds cool stuff.
So I don't think that it should be excluded from the show, but at the same time, do I think it's
going to take over? No. I think at the end of the day, there's enough people in this country,
if you get away from the coasts that are passionate about internal combustion performance,
you modify your vehicle for either aesthetics or performance. The free market has made it pretty
clear in the last six months that without subsidies and incentives, there's not nearly as much demand
for EVs as I think some people thought there was. So I think until that changes, when you can go out
and buy a five liter Mustang or a diesel Dodge Ram or whatever, and that's what people want to buy,
a Jeep Wrangler, that's what the aftermarket is going to support. Because at the end of the day,
we're in the business of making parts people buy to modify their vehicles. And there's not
that many modifications you can make to an EV. It's hard hitting. So there's no right or wrong.
It's just how you see it. I've heard Bob Lutz give his impression of where we are today and where
the future will be. And every now and then, Bob gets them really right. And every now and then,
he makes the Aztec, right? It happens. Okay, how about this one? There's kind of a market of the
$400,000 car right now. And you know what I'm talking about. And there's lots of them. And
they're all really super cool. They're kind of a semi production car. Is that going to peak
in 10 years? Or is that going to die in 10 years? Man, that's a great question. I'm going to admit,
Rob, this one caught me off guard. Not the question, but the whole trend. Having worked with the Ring
Brothers as long as we have, I think that the Troitre-Penier Ring Brothers, sort of million
dollar ultimate custom build that's more art than car, has been normalized over the last decade.
But those are all one-offs. And in many of those cases, those builders aren't even really making
much money on those cars. As shocking as that sounds to normal people. When you look at the
man hours, it goes into like hand-forming like a Troy, you know, he's been building that Thurgeon
Camaro for like, I don't know, like 10 years or something. And it's got an entirely hand-formed
body. There are certainly people out there affluent enough that they're like, I want the most crazy
custom Thurgeon Camaro of all time. And I don't know care what it costs. Or like same thing with
like Riddler cars and AMBR cars, right? I think to me that's sort of its own thing. And I grew up
in a world where if you had, I mean, I'm going back in time here, but if you had 40 or 50 grand
and you were pretty handy and you had a good set of tools and enough time to invest of your own,
you could go buy a mediocre old Mustang or Camaro or Bronco or K5 and you could restore it yourself
with aftermarket parts and on a normal middle-class salary and have a pretty nice car when you were
done. And if you had more money, you could bring in more outside help or you could make it happen
faster. You know, it's the old sign on the mechanics wall, good, fast, cheap, you can only
pick two, right? This other thing where it's like you said, that $400,000 kind of semi-production
car. It's a semi-production, like it's kind of custom, but not really. Like really, you get to
pick the color. You can maybe pick from a couple of drivetrain options, two or three, maybe pick
the wheels. Now, when you pull up to the country club, everyone thinks you've got the most double
throwdown custom badass, whatever Mustang, Camaro, Blazer, Bronco that they've ever seen,
because they're all driving BMWs, right? So to them, you just blew their mind. I don't think
that's going to go away. I also don't think it's ever going to completely take over because there's
just a finite number of people out there that can afford that. But to me, what I relate that to is,
I mentioned a guy named Norris Marshall earlier in this conversation and I've gotten to know him
pretty well. And he's a friend and a client and he owns Blueprint Engines. And Norris' story is
fascinating because he was an engine rebuilder in Nebraska. He had a little shop and he grew
it organically over time. For a while, he was one of the larger production engine rebuilders.
And this isn't like hot rod and custom stuff. This is you go to your local nap auto parts store
and say, I need a small walk to replace in my 78 Impala. And they say, okay, we'll sell you one
for 1500 bucks and you have to give them the core, which is your old blown up motor. And they give
you a new short block and you swap the heads and then taking all that on and know how you can get
your car back on the road. And he did that. And I think his business grew and grew. And he tells
the story that for a while, he kept getting calls from competitors saying, hey, do you want to buy
my line bore machine? Do you want to buy my honing machine? And he's like, this is great. I can grow
my business and I keep getting my business grows every year. I can buy all these expensive machines
for pennies on the dollar. And then all of a sudden he realized like, why are all these guys selling
you their machines? And then he like, and he's told the story a bunch of times now. And he's like,
all of a sudden light bulb goes off. He's like, Oh my God, I think our market is shrinking. And
then he started doing the research and he realized like, people aren't rebuilding their engines
anymore. Why aren't they rebuilding their engines? Well, on the stock replacement side,
first of all, engines got a lot better. So blown up at 80,000 miles, they're going 200,
300,000 miles. Also, cars are just on the road longer. People have a different mentality about
fixing things versus replacing things. And that's when he kind of realized like, Oh,
well, maybe I should start making new crate motors for the performance market.
I remember earlier in my career, when my first job, so as I was a counter guy at P A W, which was
a performance warehouse, the majority of the parts we sold were pistons, rings, rebuild kits,
right? Those businesses almost don't exist anymore, because the market changed. I think
people now have more disposable income than our parents did and certainly more than our grandparents
did. And we also have less time. So it's like, okay, I could rebuild my own motor and find a machine
shop and do all that and try and figure it out and get a Haynes manual and get the torque specs and
do it all. And maybe it's going to work. And maybe it's not, and I can spend a couple of months on
it, or I can put six grand on the credit card, just buy a turnkey crate motor. It comes with a
dyno sheet. I know it's going to work. It shows up in a week. It saves me a lot of time. It's got
a warranty. I know it's going to work. I can plop that thing in my pickup truck and I'm good to go.
I think this is the same thing that's happening at a much grander scale,
where there are people out there that are car people. They've always wanted to own something
kind of cool and vintage. They want it to be reliable, like their wife's SUV. They don't want
to have to chase all the BS that you and I have to deal with with our cars all the time, right?
So they want it to be reliable. Someone else needs to have done all the kind of heavy lifting in
terms of engineering and figuring it out. And if they need to figure out a way to pay a little
more money rather than trying to do it all themselves, they say, hey, my time is worth
something. My aggravation is worth something. I'm going to do it. So I think that's that sort
of sweet spot of the people that are buying these things. I don't think that's going away.
I think what that looks like is going to change. And I'll give your listeners a sneak
preview of something we haven't announced yet. Two of the biggest names in that space
are going to partner up. They're going to announce the first turnkey new Fox body
Mustang at the show. Awesome. And it's going to be right in that price point.
And when I first heard it, like as somebody who owned a lot of $1,000 Fox body Mustangs,
I mean, and they were all crap cars, like, I mean, I could buy $1,000 Fox bodies 20 years ago,
all day long. And I did. I'm like, Oh my God, no one's going to spend $350,000 on a Fox body
Mustang. Turns out people are because it's going to be guys like you and me, but with bigger bank
accounts, right? And they're going to say, I've always wanted that car and this thing is super
awesome. I'm going to buy it today in 2025 for whatever reason, that's the 350 to 400k. I don't
know why it's not less. I don't know why it's not more. That's just where it is. And that seems to
be what the market will bear and expect for something that's super high quality. But again,
is basically a little production car. And frankly, Dan, I love that. I love everything about it.
I can't wait to see who the two players are with the Fox body Mustang. But that makes
total sense now, because Fox body Mustangs are 30, 40 year old cars. Whereas the other
production cars were kind of more thinking of those are 60 year old cars, they're brand new
60 year old cars. So I get it here. You know, 20 years from now, is it going to be like
brand new C5 Corvettes? I don't know. Maybe. Like we don't really know yet. But I mean,
if you had told me that a year or two ago, I don't remember if it was last year or two years ago,
that there'd be like three super, super, super high end G bodies debuted on the same
show floor on the same day at SEMA, I would have laughed. They're all like million dollar cars,
right? But they were. But there they were. And they were all bitching. They were all super cool.
They were all executed at the same level as a Pebble Beach Conqueror winner,
but they were 80s GM G bodies. I think people just want to buy the car that they wanted in
high school. Final question, 10 years from now, knowing what you know today, that every struggling
TV network is putting on as many game shows, but more specifically live sports as they can,
because that's the last thing people will freaking watch. Will motor sports ever become a bigger
deal to the mass market than it is today? So it's already happening. Yeah,
it's happening in real time right now. And I am thrilled. I would say huge props to Liberty Media.
I think when they came in and bought F1, I wasn't sure what that looked like.
At the time, Americans could not have cared less about Formula One. And I think we drive to survive
and the Austin race and the Miami GP. And I think they've done a phenomenal job building,
signed a sort of like drama and story. The racing's been good. Vegas is crazy.
I think the Formula One started it, but like a perfect example is a really close friend and
mentor of mine is a guy named Terry Cargas, who's been a motorsports guy his whole life. He actually
worked with Paul Newman back when he was racing. He was the Bud Light and Budweiser sponsorship
guy from motorsports in the early to mid 80s. So imagine being that guy where you walk out to
Darlington or you show up at the Indy 500 and you're the guy in the Budweiser jacket with the
Budweiser checkbook. Everybody wants to be your friend, right? So here's a guy who's been in the
motorsports business for a very long time. And he's currently the director of the Peterson Museum.
But he came to me about nine or 10 years ago and said, hey, the France family owns the rights to
all AMA professional motorcycle road racing in America. It has really fallen on hard times.
We have very few teams competing. We have no TV deal. We have no viewers. And we think we can
build this thing up into being basically the feeder series to MotoGP. And we're going to buy
the rights to it with a couple of partners. And he brought Wayne Rainey in who, for those of you
who don't know who that is, he was a world champion back in the 90s. I said, oh man, nobody cares about
motorcycle racing. Like I'll do respect. I love that you're chasing a dream at the time, I think
in his 70s. But that's not going to work. Like motorcycle racing has always been the redheaded
stepchild of motorsports, especially in this country. And Rob, they did it. They just kept
grinding away and grinding away and grinding away. And they got a TV deal. They have unbelievable
social media. They worked with Dorna, which is the sanctioning body for MotoGP to come up with
the same camera system that Dorna uses. So when you're on a road race bike and the bike's leaning
way over and the rider's dragging a knee, the camera actually has a gimbal in it. So it moves.
You can see the right perspective as the bikes are going around the track. So the coverage is
unbelievable. The social is unbelievable. The TV deal they have has been great. And you can get
a streaming on their own app. You can get it on a couple of the sports apps on like Roku and Apple
TV. As a result of that, they're now selling out at races like Laguna Seca. They're going to
Rhode Atlanta. They're selling out major motorsports facilities. And then they had stuff like they
invented that whole king of the baggers things, which is the most antithetical thing I've ever
heard. We're like, hey, we're going to get a bunch of like Harleys and Indians. We're going to have
baggers, you know, hard bags on them and these big chrome couches. And we're going to have guys
road race them. That ended up being super popular because a lot of people ride Harleys and they want
to see some guy in leather is leaning it down. So, and that's just the last couple of years that
they've really kind of gotten in the groove. So I hear stuff like that. I mean, certainly on the
flip side, you know, there have been some series that have had their struggles. And I think NASCAR
is kind of trying to figure out their way forward right now. And I think IndyCar with the
ownership changes on its way back. But at the grassroots level, certainly the biggest threat
I see is that the race tracks are disappearing in places like Texas and California and Florida
and the Carolinas where I am where real estate just keeps going up and up and up. And, you know,
you've got a racetrack that might be a lot more valuable if somebody tore it down and built a
bunch of condos or something. That's real. And that's a challenge. But I think if we can put
butts and seats and put eyeballs on TV content and streaming content and they can actually be
profitable, that gives those track operators and those sanctioning bodies a lot more reason to
keep doing this. Obviously, I have a personal vested interest, but I'm just curious from your
crystal ball mind of how business and marketing and media works, you look at the NFL, they're the
king, king of all sports in the world. Then you've got the other football, you've got worldwide
soccer. You do have Formula One from a worldly perspective. But in this country,
to the NBA, Major League Baseball to a lesser extent, there is room for the motorsports world
to win some market share. It's there. They haven't made it into the common man's home, though. I can
tell you my wife has no idea other than my friend, Clay Millican, who else races in the NHRA. She
I think there is some of that happening. And certainly, and I mean, I'm a guy who spent
literally the only real motorsport my dad followed was in HRA and he was hardcore.
Part of it was geography. The snake had his shop literally 200 yards from my dad's office.
So I used to walk into Pradoam's shop as a kid all the time and just wander around and they
would just ignore me. Kenny Bernstein was local to us. NHRA is trying to figure some stuff out.
They've had some very recent wins, though, like media.
They have. And there are viewerships going up. And I think honestly,
Juan Gonzalez is the owner and CEO of Mission Foods. And shout out to Juan Gonzalez, man. That guy,
so like the tortilla company, like the tortillas that are at the end of the islet,
pretty much every major supermarket in America. That guy is a hardcore motorsports fan and he is
a freaking genius because he has figured out how to sort of prop up these different motorsports,
whether it's sponsoring the bridge at Laguna to being a major sponsor of HRA.
He's gotten involved in a bunch of different types of motorsports and I think that has been
a real injection of life into sports like NHRA. So I think the four wide gnats and things are
good too. But I think to me, the model of what can go right is and again, I'm not even really an
F1 guy. I would rather watch an HRA race than an F1 race. The one place where I would disagree with
you is we have several different family friends who drive many vans and could care less about cars,
like really are like it's opposite of car people as humanly possible.
And they are aware of Formula One and they watch Formula One and that's because of Netflix.
Really? And they're like literally, I've had conversations like with the wife of one of these
families and she drives an EV and she's literally like, so what do you think of Lando this season?
I'm like, huh? I'm thinking like who shot first kind of thing. Like I'm thinking Star Wars or
Renser. Oh no, Lando Norwood got it. No, I don't know. I don't follow F1 that closely. Sorry.
She's like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's because they're watching Drive Survive
and they're watching Netflix and now they're watching the race and they know who Zach Brown is
and they're following McLaren and I think that they made it accessible. And I think the one of
the things about any sport, whether it's, I mean, I've been watching the World Series with my father
a lot because he's really into it. I'm vaguely aware of baseball, but I don't know that like
super intricate detailed rules of every little thing and he does and it's intimidating, right?
And I think that if we need to make this more accessible to people who are, especially with
younger people where like all these like Twitch and streaming platforms, you've already got a
bunch of young people that are willing to spend time and money watching someone else play a racing
video game before they'll actually watch a real race live on TV or on a streaming service.
We got to figure out how to fix that because if they're going to watch some other kid in his
basement instead of the real thing by choice. Yeah, let's have them watch the real thing where
somebody spent, you know, $50 million in R&D on some crazy carbon fiber race car that goes 250
miles an hour. That's way more interested to me. So we have to tell that story and they have to see
that this is real and they have to understand it and they have to understand the stakes there.
And I think like that Brad Pitt movie, I thought that was actually pretty good and it did a pretty
good job and it was basically like top gun Maverick with race cars. Cool. Bring people into the fold,
make them feel like they don't need to be intimidated. They don't need to understand
how the car works. They don't need to understand all the rules. That's where I think even like
with NASCAR or something like the shootout type stuff from like, Hey, let's get back to basics
here. Make it easier for people to get invested emotionally and they'll keep showing up to watch
it. Okay, here's the final one. It actually was movie related. Do you think it is true? The Brad Pitt,
Tom Cruise movie crossover will happen, meaning they'll bring Sonny from F1 and
Cold Trickle together in the next movie. That's a thing. Google it. I'm sure you know it.
I don't know. Tom is certainly having a moment right now. So good for him. I think that top gun
movie made like a literal billion dollars or something. I hope it made more. It was worth it.
It was so good. My wife and I rarely like the same movies. We both are cheering and like,
okay, there's a win here. I did an episode of my show yesterday and I interviewed my first boss,
which was an interesting experience. And I knew this guy had done PR for everybody.
And I knew he was sort of a legend in PR circles. But I learned something new on the show. I did
not know that he was the PR guy behind days of thunder. You're kidding. No. And I'm like,
you're kidding. What was that like? And he was like, it was great. It was cool because NASCAR was
fully behind it. And that was when they are at the height of their power. Tom Cruise was at the
height of his power. We got to do pretty much whatever we wanted. You want to take a car
out into Times Square and do a doughnut? Sure. Do it. You want to go buy a hotel full of hookers
and blow, you know? I don't think that's Tom's deal, but sure. It was everybody else's.
So I think it would be cool if it happened. I'd watch it. I would too.
I hope there's a rental car scene because that needs to happen. Absolutely. All right, Dan,
you've been very generous with your time. Thank you again for doing this. For everybody who's
listening to this on their way into SEMA 2025, take some notes from the master here. It's very
helpful. What contact info would you like to give out? And if they got a little more time
on the plane here, what's another podcast maybe of yours they could listen to? Well,
certainly check out my company is Con Media, KAHN. So just go to conmedia.com. We're on Instagram,
we're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn. I have a pretty active LinkedIn page myself just under
Dan Con. I have a website for myself as an author, which is just dancon.com. And then also,
check out Only the Strong Survive, OTSS, which is our podcast. It's about business and leadership
and entrepreneurship. So check it out. It's on Spotify, YouTube, all the major platforms.
Sweet man. I look forward to seeing you next week. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Dan. Fantastic. See you at SEMA, everybody. Please make sure that you've
filed along with Con Media and also subscribe to Dan's podcast and look it up right now and
hit the old plus button. I think it is an Apple podcast. Okay. For all of you going to or at SEMA
right now, I hope we'll see you there. On Friday, November 7th, our muscle car place show will
not be SEMA content. It'll be our regular first show of the month format with Ask Rick Richmond.
And he's going to do a preview of McCacken 2025, the muscle car and Corvette Nationals.
And as he'll tell you, that's quite possibly the premier Pebble Beach style event for muscle
cars in the world. That event in particular does happen the weekend before Thanksgiving in Chicago.
Scotty Stapp will be there, I believe, with Ryan Bruthi, autoarcheologist. But after that,
we'll be back in mid-November with plenty of content from SEMA 2025. Lots of it. We'll probably
have a couple shows at least. So between now and then, hit me up on Facebook or Instagram.
Be sure to sign up for our weekly email newsletter. You can do all that on the home page of the
musclecarplace.com website. And as always, don't forget to keep chasing your dreams,
let me chase mine. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you at SEMA. Bye-bye. Oh, and happy Halloween.
They make it all possible. See you soon at the muscle car place.
About this episode
Dan Kahn from Kahn Media shares invaluable insights for first-time attendees of SEMA 2025, emphasizing the importance of networking and preparation. He discusses how to effectively engage with exhibitors, the significance of registering as media, and strategies for making meaningful connections. Kahn also highlights the evolving landscape of motorsports and the growing influence of content creators in the automotive industry. This episode is packed with practical advice for anyone looking to maximize their experience at the show, whether they're job seekers, content creators, or industry professionals.
Original notes
This week on The MuscleCar Place, Rob Kibbe welcomes Dan Kahn, president and CEO of Kahn Media, for an insider’s masterclass on how to get the absolute most out of SEMA 2025. Dan’s deep roots in the automotive world—spanning journalism, car building, agency leadership, and service within SEMA itself—give him a uniquely panoramic view of the industry. As the author of The New Rules of the Road, he’s built his career around helping brands and creators tell authentic stories that connect passion with professionalism.
In this episode, Dan shares proven strategies for creators, builders, and businesses alike: how to navigate SEMA effectively, build meaningful relationships, and create content that truly stands out. From the etiquette of approaching brands to leveraging media credentials for access, Dan breaks down what separates those who simply “walk the floor” from those who maximize the experience. Whether you’re an industry veteran or a first-time attendee, this conversation is a blueprint for turning SEMA into opportunity, influence, and long-term success.
The post TMCP #625: Dan Kahn – A Crashers Guide to SEMA 2025! What To Know If This Is Your First Time At The Big Show! first appeared on The Muscle Car Place.
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