DO IT FOR A LIVING
Todd Earsley & Kevin Dubois interview the big players in motorsports and pr
Last episode 4 months agoDO IT FOR A LIVING is a podcast where YOU, the performance racing industry enthusiast and shop owner can hear from the best minds in the performance racing industry talking about business and tech. We discuss new products and services and the best resources used by the big dogs. You can listen on your way to work or in the shop. With new episodes coming out every Monday, you'll find interesting topics and valuable information you can use to build your performance business. Now take this information and use it to build the next record-breaking car or innovative product.
Are you the creator? Get your badge · Claim this podcast
Episodes (186)
105: Dom Tucci is expanding the family business of building hot rods with his design firm Dom Tucci Designs
Dom Tucci has been exposed to hot rods his entire life. Both his dad and grandfather built many customs cars during his youth. But Dom didn't originally envision himself working with cars. He went to Syracuse University for Industrial Design and fell in love with 3D modeling and design work. As he progressed through the program, he was still helping his dad out at Tucci Hot Rods and really did enjoy the work. It was very hands-on and required a lot of visual details that he was learning in school. After graduating he created Dom Tucci Designs. He did renderings for his dad's Tucci Hot Rods customers, designed various logos, and created branding material for companies. 3D printing has also become a large portion of his business. Using his design, Dom established a relationship with a 3D printer manufacturer and built over a dozen unique parts for their Ford Fiesta featured in the Ford booth at SEMA 2017. Dom is trying to showcase how this technology can be used to push the aftermarket industry to new levels.
104: Ben Horst of Eddy Motorworks epitomizes the term "hot rod" with his Tesla-powered Exocet
Ben started tinkering with cars when he got into high school. When he enrolled at Georgia Tech for Mechanical Engineering (with a minor in Chemistry), his interest grafted towards electric cars. He participated in making a solar vehicle and modifying a Camaro to be a hybrid. Then he took it to the next level and made a tube-chassis hybrid car from scratch using a V-Twin engine, a forklift AC motor, a snowmobile CVT transmission, and batteries from a Smart Car. Ben kept bumping into Kevin Patrick of Exomotive at car shows around Atlanta. They got to talking and decided to team up to produce the Electrocet. It's an electric version of the Exocet using driveline components from a Tesla Model S. To get the company going, Ben applied to an incubator at Georgia Tech and they decided to invest in Eddy Motorworks. They have created a teaser video that you can watch here. Their business model is to assemble the Electrocet's and sell to customers as well as doing electric car conversions to conventional vehicles. They have been chosen as a semifinalist in the 2017 SEMA Launch Pad Competition. If they make it to the finals, they get to pitch their company and compete with 9 other business ideas for a chance at a free booth at SEMA in 2018 and lots of publicity.
103: Sasha Anis of OnPoint Dyno is positioning himself as a leader in electric car performance
Sasha started his automotive career by buying a small shop just to work on his own car. He started to help friends with their cars and then began charging for his service. He worked at it for several years but just couldn't make it profitable. So he closed the shop and moved on. He worked a corporate job and realized very quickly that he just didn't want that life, so he decided to go back to working on cars. Sasha decided to start tuning cars and use a mobile dyno to travel to the customer and called it OnPoint Dyno. He also does vehicle setup and driver coaching on top of the mobile dyno business. He now has 1 employee and a small shop to store equipment and tune cars. His latest big project was to transforming a Lotus Evora into an electric car. Sasha used the motor from a Tesla Model S, batteries from the Chevy Volt, and a MOTEC for traction control. They recently finished the car and went 11.4 in the ¼ mile on their first time out. The thinking behind this electric vehicle is preparation for the future. Sasha is betting that manufacturers and consumers are shifting towards electric cars and wants to be a leader in the performance market.
102: Susan Johnson of Moore Automotive takes a deep dive into proper accounting practices
Susan is the VP of Finance for Moore Automotive. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and started her career at a CPA firm. She worked at that firm for a while and then helped several other businesses "fix" their accounting and ensure that everything was setup correctly. She now has a total of 20 years of experience in Finance and Accounting. In 2010, she met Bill who owned Moore Automotive and they got married a few years later. She officially joined the business in 2015. Moore Automotive is an interesting business story in that it actually started by a different person and was originally a service shop. Bill bought the business in 2003 and began branching out to more performance installations. They learned to tune EFI, purchased a dyno, and started working on import performance. While they still do a lot of maintenance stuff, the performance mods are the fun part! They are in the process of doubling their square footage with a new building which they bought. Their current space isn't very efficient and has over 30 years of accumulated stuff cluttering up the space. The new building allows them to optimize the layout and increase the process flow throughout the shop. Susan has taken running the shop very seriously and focuses on getting the most out of the operation. She excels at using data to predict future revenue and make changes to increase efficiency.
100: Reid Lunde returns as a guest for Episode 100 and tells us about Kaizenspeed and KS Tuned
Episode 100 features a very special guest! Reid Lunde sits down on the other side of the table for his own interview. He has spoken with dozens of other influencers in the business, but never had a chance to really share his story. Now, he gets his shot! Reid's first experience with cars came in the form of RC racing when he was a kid. Not coming from a car family, he pretty much went out on his own to find inspiration. When he got into high school, his love of full size cars started. He made money at a telemarketing agency and saved up for an engine for his Honda. He spent a short while taking business classes while dreaming of speed. He finished his Associates degree and had plans to finish up his Bachelor's degree. But, he just couldn't get excited about school and just wanted to get to work. In the early 2000's, he started modifying cars in a friend's backyard. Then they stepped it up and started renting a building. He has been growing the business in the Honda market for over a decade. A few years ago, Reid dove into the Chevy platform and that provided a whole new set of challenges because the market is so much different. But he persevered and now offers warrantied performance upgrades through a local Chevy dealership for his Corvette packages. To expand the business like this, Reid separated the business into two unique entities: Kaizenspeed for the domestic side and KS Tuned for the imports. This way, he can separate the content between the Honda and Corvette platforms and focus on each customer base independently.
099: Ron Sledge gives some insight on how King Engine Bearings operates in the US.
Ron Sledge has spent his life excited about cars and knew from an early age that he wanted to work on them as a career. He started his career in the aftermarket in the early 70's at Michigan Engine Bearings as an industrial engineer. He got them involved in NASCAR in the early 80's and traveled all over the country going to the races. In 2010, Ron starter working at King Engine Bearings. Ron has worked to double the sales since he started and solidified King Engine Bearings as a premier motorsports-grade bearing. He has stayed in Kentucky, and now gets to work from home. King Engine Bearings employs several people scattered all over the country to maintain operations in North America. King Engine Bearings is actually headquartered in Israel, so it is paramount to have good communication among all employees. In total, King has about 250 employees with manufacturing and sales worldwide. King focuses on OE replacement bearings, high performance upgraded bearings, and even aviation bearings. They work closely with customers to determine which platforms to develop new products for. They will be releasing a new coating this year which they released at PRI 2016 to address some of these customer concerns.
098: Kenny Tran of Jotech Motorsports says passion and focus are the keys to success
Kenny immigrated to the US from Vietnam and acquired his love of cars through his cousin who subscribed to every car magazine imaginable. They would pour over pictures and specs and dreamed of owning one of these sports cars. His passion for cars continued to grow and in 1995, he started to work at Jo-Tech which was started by his brother-in-law. Kenny was going to college for business administration but decided to purchase Jo-Tech instead of finishing his degree. The opportunity was too good to pass up, so he took the plunge and bought the business. Kenny quickly grew the business and began sponsoring a drag racer to get his name out there. They were doing good and going faster and faster each time they went out. Sadly, while his team was repairing the car on the side of the road one night, they were hit by a drunk driver and totaled the car and severely injured several people. Kenny tried to bounce back by building his own car, but that was also hit by somebody and totaled. Not one to quit, Kenny went and purchased a Civic with lofty goals of making it run 11's in the quarter mile. They were successful in their first night with the car and then quickly got down into the 10's. Coming from this success, Kenny decided to take the car to California to compete with the big guys. They were able to set the world record for a Honda Civic and solidify their name as a very fast performance shop. While going to many races each year, Kenny happened to meet a marketing director at Scion and they wanted to partner up on a drag car. He capitalized on this new relationship and then leveraged that to work with other companies to join as partners with the racing program. Kenny has taken this success and built up quite the reputation as an elite GTR builder but he also works on many other platforms to meet the needs of his customers.
097: Sam Barros of Nostrum Energy saw a need for aftermarket direct injection injectors and is meeting the demand.
Sam Barros came to the US to pursue a mechanical engineering degree at Michigan Tech University. During college, Sam interned at a nuclear power plant as a system engineer and loved the idea of working at a large engineering firm. But, when Sam graduate, he went a completely different direction. He moved to California and worked as a special effects engineer doing high-voltage special effects. One day, Sam got a random phone call from a very prominent businessman, Nermal Mouliea, who proposed that Sam come work for him on a new fuel efficiency project. Sam did a little research to find out if this was the real deal, and it turned out to be true. So Sam packed up his stuff and headed to New Jersey to head the project. The idea was to spray water directly into the combustion chamber to reduce heat losses within the engine. While the idea is similar to water/methanol injection of many forced induction applications, this idea took it to the next level and very accurately injected fine water particles into the cylinder. They were able to achieve 25% increase in fuel efficiency with this system. While this was an excellent result, the problem was implementation. It is very difficult to modify an existing engine and even more difficult to get an OEM manufacturer to implement it in a new engine. So, they took this technology and applied it to fuel injectors. While the OEM's were coming out with Direct Injection (DI) engines, the aftermarket had not been able to keep up. They now manufacture and modify injectors for many engines to supply the aftermarket customers looking for more power in their DI engines. EFI University is teaching a class on DI tuning using Nostrum Energy's Cadillac featuring their injectors. They work with companies such as Lingenfelter who provides a larger high pressure fuel pump for many applications. In addition to the DI applications, Nostrum Energy also manufactures their own Port Injection (PI) injectors. They are unique by integrating a divorced spray pattern to inject fuel directly down each port.
096: Thad Norman of Hypercar Development has lofty goals for their McLaren and wants to break a whole bunch of records
Thad Norman teamed up with a long-time friend, Safa Yousef, with aspirations to turn up the performance on the McLaren cars. Safa came from a racing background in both cars and motorcycles, while Thad came from an engineering and automation background. Together, they knew they could push the limits of what is capable with a factory car. They weren't shooting for straight line performance, but were more focused on all around improvements. Thad and Safa had to seek outside funding to get the business going and had to try several different avenues before finding investors willing to put money into this sort of business. After securing funding, they purchased a 12C and began development for the next 2 years. The result was the 800hp package and cooling kit. They have since gone on to develop a 1000hp option and a 1200hp option that utilizes their globally-patented tri-boost technology. They are developing even more parts to step the power up to 1500hp.
095: Hear how Chris Rhoad started StudioRhoad.com to build beautiful websites and create engaging content for businesses
Chris went to college and specialized in Advertising and Design. He worked as a graphic designer at various companies over the years before ending up in Knoxville, TN. He had started StudioRhoad.com many years ago, but really took it serious a few years ago, and decided to run the business full time. He now employs 4 people and has several freelancers located around the globe. His team specializes in creating websites geared towards the end user. This process includes a discovery phase where Studio Rhoad determines exactly who the end user is and how that user interacts with the company. They also help with social media marketing and content generation. To this day, Chris is still surprised at how many companies have not incorporated mobile-friendly website platforms even though as many as half their users are on a mobile device.
094: Jim Liaw tells us how he helped bring drifting to the US with Formula Drift
Jim Liaw grew up in Southern California and was immediately drawn to the street racing scene. But his passion really started when he saw an E30 BMW M3 and fell in love with the looks. During college, he reached out to any automotive related business he could think of looking for a job or internship. He landed a spot at Sport Compact Car as an intern working on finding new sponsors for the magazines. His next job was in the import drag racing with the IDRC series and sold sponsorships and booth spaces for their races. The next position was at Vision Entertainment that produced Hot Import Nights doing more sponsorship managements. Jim then teamed up with a friend to start Slipstream Global Marketing with the goal of helping companies optimize their promotional spend at events. They landed a big client with Mazda and worked with them to increase youth awareness to the Mazda brand at motorsports events. In 2003, Jim gets word that the Japanese want to hold a drifting exhibition event in the United States. Their first event at Irwindale Speedway was a huge success! Despite this, the Japanese counterparts weren't too keen on hosting more events. So, Jim and his partner set out to create their own drifting series and called it Formula Drift. Since then, they have been growing the series every year. They employ 6 other people and are holding 8 events in 2017. They stream all of the races for free on the internet and strive to provide the ultimate experience for the fans.
093: Dave Vasser used hard work and determination to build Nitrous Outlet into a powerhouse in the nitrous market
Dave Vasser grew up in Waco, TX and fell in love with street racing right away. He wasn't too interested in school and actually dropped out in 10th grade to work with his uncle at his framing company. He worked at various other businesses but always dabbled with modifying cars and making them fast. He opened his for automotive business in 2000 selling race gas and nitrous out of a trailer. The next year, he started renting a space and doing installs. The business grew rather quickly and he had to move to a larger space to accommodate the various techs and salesmen. Throughout the growing process, Dave was always selling nitrous products manufactured by other people. He really enjoyed this side of the business and ended up turning over the install portion to one of his mechanics. This allowed Dave to focus on making products he needed that other people weren't making. In early 2004, he decided to take the leap and stop selling other people products. Now, Nitrous Outlet is the largest nitrous parts manufacturer in the world with 30 employees and 13,000 square foot building. His new goal is to run the business better and become more efficient. He has hired a CFO to manage the finances and assembled a management team. Dave is getting back into racing after the car has been neglected for many years.
092: Ken Anderson has helped many companies grown their US presence. Hear about his latest venture with Mountune USA
Ken Anderson grew up in LA during the 70's and enjoyed normal kid stuff like biking and skateboarding. Ken's first car was a VW Bug and he discovered how much fun it was to customize it. In the mid-80's, he got a job at a local Honda dealership in the parts department. That dealership begin importing Mugen parts from Japan and was installing them onto cars. After a few years of working at the dealership, he wanted to get into racing and got in touch with Russ at RC Engineering. Ken started as a shop assistant and learned a lot about engine dynamics during his time there. Then, he heard about an opportunity at HKS and got a job as a sales person. He got in on the ground floor of HKS bringing their excellent build quality to the US. After some time, he had an opportunity to team up with Rod Millen and began importing parts for the Miata when it was first brought to the US. They built some great cars and imported all sorts of parts for the Miata and other Mazda cars. Eventually, Ken saw yet another opportunity in SUV's and branched out to start a company that imported accessories for vehicles like the Land Cruisers, Montero's, and Troopers. This was the first company that Ken started on his own and he grew it to be a very large company. Then he sold his stake to a partner and exited the business. The next venture was back into smaller sports cars. He met a man who worked at Cosworth during a car event and this meeting turned into another business opportunity. At the time, Cosworth's primary role in the US was to support the Champ Car racing series. But Cosworth wanted to manufacture and sell more parts in the US and Ken was put in charge of that task. When Ford sold off the Cosworth arm of the business, Ken helped introduce several products for different vehicle manufacturers. They got started with products like a CNC head for the Subaru STI, as well as a CNC head and cams for the Mitsubishi Evo. After building up yet another business, Ken left to go work for COBB Tuning for the next 1.5 years. Ken then traveled to England for the Autosport Performance Trade Show and had a meeting with Mountune to sell them the Accessport. David Mountain, the founder of Mountune, was actually looking for somebody to introduce the US to their products and knew that Ken would be perfect for the job. So Ken took the offer and opened up Mountune USA by himself and proceeded to grow the company very quickly. He now employs 13 people and occupy a large building with a showroom, install area, engine dyno, and warehouse space.
091: Mike and Rossy Welch tell us how they met and built Road Race Engineering
Mike got his start with race cars be being a corner worker at the local track. After a near-death experience with a crashing car, Mike decided to move to tech inspection. Here, he started to offer repair services to the guys going through tech and then branched out to helping them modify the race cars. Then he dabbled in co-driving with Rod Millen and helping them build cars. Mike was then approached by a friend who wanted to open a shop so they opened Road Race in late 1993. Over the years, the business never really got a strong footing and the friend left the company. This forced Mike to reevaluate his situation and move the business to a smaller & cheaper location. This was at the same time that he started to focus on Mitsubishi's. When the Evo hit the states in 2003, the market changed pretty drastically. Road Race went from mainly selling parts online to mainly installing parts and tuning customer cars. But during a race in Mexico, Mike met Rossy. She had grown up in drag racing and was checking out the rally racing. They hit it off and Mike proceeded to go out of his way to help Rossy's team with parts and repairs. They married 3 years later and now Rossy runs the shop. Road Race is now in a 6500-square foot building and is made up of 8 people. They specialize in Evo's but still work on a lot of DSM's and still dabble in various random vehicles.
090: Hear what it takes to start a performance shop with James Siebert of F&S Motorsports
James Siebert has partnered with his friend and fellow car enthusiast, Scott Frazho, to start their own brick and mortar performance shop. They have both been interested in and have owned Mitsubishi's over the years and exchanged stories at the annual Buschur Shootout. Individually, they both have been working on friend's cars in the respective garages and would purchase parts via another shop to install on customer's cars. They also would buy race cars, part them out, return them to stock, and then sell them to raise working capital. In 2016, they decided to partner up and create F&S Motorsports. In the beginning, they just had a website that sold parts, but in November, they opened their brick and mortar location in Michigan to begin working on customer cars. Scott is about 30 minutes from the shop, but Jason commutes 1.5 hours each way to be at the shop. The hours are pretty brutal now, but he considers the initial time as an investment in the company with the intention that it will pay off in the future. They are navigating the waters of starting a business with building up their customer base, marketing their business, and figuring out the best packages to offer their customers. We will be following up with James and F&S Motorsports in the future to see how they are progressing.
089: Marty Staggs of Turbosmart USA explains how he helped bridge the gap between Australia and the US
Marty Staggs was born into drag racing. Both his father and grandfather raced meaning that he was always around fast cars. As a child, Marty helped his dad build dune buggies in the garage and learned to weld at a very young age. He pursued an education in mechanical engineering but never got his college degree. He met his wife and quickly started a family so he got jobs working in commercial controls businesses. But he was always building stuff for cars and focused on the VW platform. Eventually, he stumbled upon a Turbosmart Wastegate and loved the product! In 2006, Marty went to SEMA and met with the owner of Turbosmart. They started to hang out and formed a friendship right away. Marty found out that Turbosmart had a US distributor and they stayed in contact over the years. This friendship turned into a business partnership when Marty was asked to take over the US market of Turbosmart as the Vice President & General Manager. Since 2009, Marty has grown and expanded the business with proper planning and passion to make it more successful.
088: Frank Rehak tells how he transformed his family auto shop to Driveshaft Shop over several decades.
Frank Rehak grew up working at the family's shop and initially thought he was going to find a career as a motorcycle mechanic. He got a few jobs working on motorcycles and realized it wasn't as great as he hoped. So he went back to work with his dad. He started at the bottom cleaning the machines and sweeping the floors. Frank worked his way up and eventually had quite a lot of responsibility at the shop. He had a few ideas about doing exchanges with customers and boxing up product to sell them anywhere and slowly began implementing these ideas. He started to transition the shop to doing more CV axle rebuilds. But then the market was flooded with new replacement parts from China and he had to reevaluate his business model. So, he began offering upgraded drive shafts. Now, things have become very serious! They own a 50,000-square foot facility in North Carolina and employee 29 people.
087: Cody Loveland of LoveFab and Affinity Aero shares how he went from Honda's to NSX's to tube-frame carbon-bodied race cars.
Cody Loveland worked on bicycles during his early teens but realized cars were way cooler when he turned 16. It didn't take him long before he was piecing together turbo kits for his EK Civic and quickly had a group of people asking for him to make parts for their cars. His step-dad loaned him the money for a tig welder and Cody never looked back. While he was working as a package sorter for UPS, he started LoveFab, Inc in 2002 and worked both jobs for several months. But he quit his job and decided to not go back to college to focus his efforts on LoveFab. He was working out of a home shop from 2006-2012 and transitioned to working on NSX's. He eventually began renting a 7000 square foot commercial space and quickly realized how difficult it is to run a large-scale operation. He encountered some miscommunication with a customer that ended up costing him tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, he had a daughter and realized that he needed to downsize his operation. While he didn't close LoveFab, he scaled it back and returned to a home/shop style space where he continues to fabricate turbo kits and work on cars. His latest passion project is called the EnV8 and is a tube-chassis, LS-powered race car that he hopes to produce and sell in the future. He is still modifying the design and testing his work, but he is excited to unleash the full potential!
086: Franco Ganino of Alliant Insurance talks about their Garage Keepers insurance plan called Installers Edge
Franco Ganino has been working at Aliant Insurance for 23 years. Being a car guy, Franco was excited when given the opportunity to work with Bob Corwin to work with SEMA and provide insurance. At the time, Bob was risk advisor for the NHRA and they become instant friends. They worked together to create an insurance product specifically for the SEMA members. They created "The Specialty Equipment Insurance Alliance" (SEIAinsuance.com) with the initial goal of proving manufacturers with product liability insurance. After 10 years, they started to add plans for garage keeper's insurance. What they came up with would be known as "Installers' Edge." He has spent years collecting, restoring, and racing cars so he understands what shops do when the install aftermarket parts and tune them for higher horsepower. This helps him cater insurance plans for his clients and ensure that they are fully covered. With Aliant being an insurance broker, they are connected to every insurance company out there and work with providers to insure the shops.
085: Gidi Chamdi exposes the real truth about what it takes to chase the 6 second quarter mile with his GTR.
Gidi Chamdi was born in Israel and immigrated with his family to the US in 1985. He wasn't really interested in cars until he stumbled upon a magazine showcasing the R35 GTR. He became intrigued and bought one in one in April of 2013. A friend turned him onto a Shift Sector event in Willow Springs and got a tour of the track from Jason Huang. At the end of the event, they did an impromptu roll race and Gidi won it. From here on out, he was addicted! He did some research and picked ACG Automotive in San Diego to install the AMS Alpha 10 package. He competed in another Shift Sector event and won that one as well. So he upgraded to the Alpha 14, then the Alpha 16 where he won the Buschur Shootout, then the Alpha 18, and finally the Alpha 20 package. He has now built the infamous Alpha G which AMS Performance uses as a test bed to go fast. It was the first car to get their billet block and receives all of the prototype parts from AMS. They are chasing the elusive 6.XX pass at the quarter mile and it is just in reach. His best run to date was a 7.14 at 212 mph. To add to his resume of fast cars, Gidi also has a pair of Underground Racing TT Gallardo's. He races one at the half mile events and has jockeyed for first place with another UGR customer. His current fastest is 244 mph (fastest is 247). But he thinks they will do 250 at the next event.
084: JP from Radium Engineering tells how he concentrates on design and outsources the manufacturing.
Jeremy Powell (aka JP) grew up in Florida and his family couldn't care less about the car culture. JP spent his early years skating and building ramps. When he graduated high school in 1995, he bought a Honda Civic and started to modify it with an intake and some headers. After feeling zero performance gains, he decided to bolt on a turbo kit which really woke the car up! From here on out, he became addicted to performance. During college, he decided that he wanted to work in the aftermarket automotive industry. He mailed a copy of his resume all over the country to various parts manufacturers in hopes of landing a job. After a few weeks went by, he received a voicemail from AEM and ended up getting an interview! He landed the job and began development on their first ECU which became known as the AEM Series 1. A few years passed and he received a job offer from HP Freaks in Oregon. His new job was to design and manufacture parts for BMW's. After a few years, he decided to start making totally unrelated parts on the side and unofficially started Radium Engineering. Fast forward to 2015 and they decide to make a legit business out of it and go full time. They started into the fuel management system while upgrading a Lotus. It had really bad starvation problems and had a fuel pump that was very difficult to access. They decided to make a surge tank for the car to get around having to deal with the stock pump. This is how they got started down the path of making fuel systems for various cars! Radium Engineering is still just 3 people and they are now in Portland, Oregon and rent a 3,000-square foot facility. They outsource all of the CNC machining, laser etching, anodizing, and powder coating and have no plans to ever buy their own equipment. This allows them to focus on the design, assembly, and shipping their products.
083: Zach Denney explains how he brought ECUMaster to the United States
Zach Denney started his career in the automotive industry by working at Discount Tire. He also participated in the auto tech program in high school. Zach went off to college for engineering but he couldn't really get motivated and ended up leaving school. He started working at a shop that bought and sold Supra's. After that, he began working at ATS Racing working on MR2's and honed his fabrication and tuning skills. Zach then went back to engineering school at UNT in Denton, TX and became involved with the Formula SAE program. He started building wiring harnesses and became very familiar with the electronics of the vehicle. During this time, he discovered ECU Master out of Poland and was intrigued by their products. He bought one of their products and was very pleased with how it performed on their Formula SAE car so he reached out to ECU Master and proposed becoming their US distributor. To his surprise, they said yes! With a little seed money and some guidance from his brother-in-law, Zach was able to begin importing the products and setting up a sales platform to get them to potential customers. With the aftermarket ECU market being very competitive, Zach has made a point to provide whatever customer service is needed to help the people buying the products. He is excited about the release of the EMU Black ECU which is more compact and has many new features. Zach also manufactures several wiring harnesses, boost controllers, and sensors to compliment the ECU. He rents an 1800 square foot facility which is mostly office space bud does have a place with a lift to work on cars. He hopes to hire a full-time employee in the middle of next year to help with manufacturing and order fulfilment.
082: Matt Beenen tells us how he climbed the ranks to become President of GrimmSpeed
Matt Beenen has always been interested in how things worked and his parents facilitated this fascination. As he grew up, Matt was interested in vehicle technology and pursued this passion by getting a Mechanical Engineering degree in college. He got involved with the SAE Mini Baja team at college. This gave him insight into teamwork, scheduling, and actually manufacturing a race vehicle. After college, Matt got a job at BAE Systems and worked as a systems engineer. On the weekends, he modified and raced his 2006 Subaru STI. This is where he met some of the GrimmSpeed employees. An engineering position opened up at GrimmSpeed and Matt jumped on the opportunity. Matt was doing engineering work for them and also manage their product development path. He stepped up and worked to improve the operations of the business and began bringing on other engineers and developing processes at the company. GrimmSpeed now has 13 employees but keeps a very entrepreneurial working mindset, meaning that each employee may perform various roles throughout the day. They recently moved facilities and currently occupy 18,000 square feet. This facility is where they do the R&D, marketing, fabricating, inventory storage, and shipping. They are expanding their products to more platforms and will be introducing stage upgrades with parts and off-the-shelf tunes.
081: Jud Massingill, founder of School of Automotive Machinists, tells us how he built the coolest vocational school around!
Jud Massingill was born in Houston and has lived there his whole life. He attended the University of Houston and met his wife there. They have been married since the 70's and she was the person who motivated Jud to make The School of Automotive Machinists (SAM). Jud got started racing at the circle tracks and caught the eye of an investor who wanted to back his racing team and open up a machine shop. This investor decided to spend his time and money elsewhere and offered the business for Jud to buy. He jumped on the opportunity, hired a few guys, and took a swing at running the own engine machine shop. One day, Jud and his wife were eating dinner and he was commenting on how hard it was to hire skilled employees to run the machines. His wife suggested he open up a school and actually teach people to do it! So, she spent a couple years filing paperwork and submitting to become an accredited teaching institution. Over the years, Jud has kept it as a family business. His wife still runs the day-to-day operations, Jud teaches many of the classes, his son does the marketing and drives one of their drag cars, and his daughter handles and advises the students. They have worked very hard to make the school as good as possible and recently designated A National School of Excellence by the accreditation committee. This is something that less than 1% of vocational schools have achieved, and they've done it two times in a row! They currently occupy 30,000 square feet but have ambitious plans to double their footprint. They employ around 30 people at the school and have around 200 students. The SAM courses include; Block Machining, Head Machining, Engine Block Combination, CNC, EFI, and Associate Degree program. Students can take one or all of these classes. Jud is very proud that they are among the top 1% of vocational schools when it comes to job placement.
080: Jason Dienhart details how he created Global Time Attack
Jason grew up in Orange County, CA and has always enjoyed going fast and being involved with fast cars. He was particularly fond of the late 80's and early 90's import tuners cars. In 1995, Jason purchased a brand new Honda Civic hatchback SI and began installing parts before he even brought it home! Things got extreme pretty fast and before he knew it, Jason was swapping motors in his Honda and in his friends' cars. Jason became a crew chief for one of his friends and found a skill in organization and planning events. He used this skill to get a job at Super Street Magazine to produce the events they held. In 2004, Jason and the guys at Super Street had the grand idea to hold a Time Attack style event like the ones they saw in Japan. The plan was to hold it after SEMA in hopes that a lot of the professional Japanese teams would stay longer and participate. A lot of the rules were created around what Jason knew best, and that was drag racing. That is why the event has no power limitations, but instead uses tire width and tread wear to break up the classes. They held several events but Jason later left Super Street to pursue jobs at other automotive enthusiast companies. Fast forward to 2010 and Jason is once again excited about hosting his own Time Attack race series. He teams up with a partner and holds a press conference at the SEMA show to announce Global Time Attack. They team up with NASA (National Auto Sport Association) to bring some legitimacy to their program. He has since broken out to run the series by himself. There are 3 main events: Road Atlanta, NOLA Motorsports, and GTA Super Lap Battle. Jason also organizes some Pro-Am events local for the California people throughout the year. GTA Super Lap Battle is still the largest and most publicized event. It is held the Thursday & Friday after SEMA and draws a huge collection of cars, spectators, and media!