DO IT FOR A LIVING

Reid has been very busy lately managing several businesses. He still has KSTuned which is the Honda racing side and then has Kaizen Speed for the domestic cars. But his new venture is a weatherproof. solid-state relay that can handle heavy current and is interconnectable. This makes it very easy to daisy chain additional relays without having to run more power wires. He also made it so that you can attach a CAN control module as an option. This gives the customer the ability to keep it very simple or more complex with the CAN module.

Reid has entered the relay into the 2019 SEMA Launch Pad Competition presented by the Young Executive Network. Reid needs your votes to move onto the finals. So, follow this link and go vote!

Voting link – http://bit.ly/VoteLunde 

Johnny joined the military after high school, served his time, and then used the GI Bill to go to college. He really didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and began messing with cars and going autocrossing. He worked a short stent helping at a friend’s shop and then got a job at PFC Brakes doing sales and technical support. This job took him all over the world supporting various racing platforms.

His next job was at OG Racing selling safety gear and brakes. He was also making custom seat inserts for race teams. He began working with Elan (makers of the NP01) making seats and started looking at the extrusion they had for their wing. Eventually, they gave him one and he did some testing against a typical carbon wing. Turns out, the Elan profile added several MPH down the back straight and in turns at Road Atlanta. Right then, he knew he had something that works. He made a kit for the BMW M3’s and started making wings for all different vehicles.

Now he has 7 people and they help all sorts of teams with the aero needs. On top of creating wing kits, Nine Lives Racing can also do CFD analysis and provide information and parts to complete the aero package.

Jonny Mill grew up in a small town in California and moved to LA as soon as he graduated high school. He worked at a talent recruiter and had various jobs in the entertainment industry with advertising and marketing. He always enjoyed cars, but things really took off when he developed The E-Stopp (an electronic parking brake). It was intended for handicap vans but soon found an amazing niche in the automotive restoration market. He was approached by Bryan Harrison of SEMA to compete in the first SEMA Launch Pad competition and took first place. After that, he started an innovation company and then began doing marketing/advertising for various TV shows and networks.

He recently took a position at WheelWell.com where users can showcase their car builds. It has grown to an online hangout for car enthusiasts to share reviews, link to all the products used in their build, and even facilitate selling their vehicle. WheelWell’s latest push is their marketplace which allows users to purchase the parts they see on the user’s build. They have even introduced a “mod score” which rewards users for generating their own content and provides discounts in the marketplace.

To check out all the builds, or even add your own ride, check out WheelWell.com

Charlie Eklund moved down to Houston, TX to attend Tuner School in 2017. The people at Hennessey Performance saw something special in Charlie and offered him a job in the admissions department for the school. Since then, Charlie has been the face of Tuner School to narrow down the applicants and help them get jobs after graduation. To further help them out, Charlie helps students find part time jobs while taking classes and they even offer a house where the students can rent a room and not have to worry about furniture.

John Hennessey started Tuner School because he was getting multiple inquiries on how to work on cars and tune them. So, he just decided to meet that specific need and develop a curriculum with various industry experts. The classes are capped at 15 students to focus on providing the best education possible.

Richard Tomlin owns a paint, restoration, and fabrication shop south of Houston, Texas called Apex Auto Works. He made a name for his shop by building cages for Spec Miatas and was cranking out one a week. The shop is located on the way to a road course so he catered to the weekend racers and was able to do anything they wanted from complex fab work to paint and body. 

He recently embarked on a new venture by developing an absorbent powder called White Pony Dry. It is far superior to kitty litter at quickly soaking up spills so that you can clean up and get back to work. 

Bob grew up working on Fords by building engines and going drag racing. He got turned on to the Buick Grand National and became obsessed with going faster! After some frustration with trying to fine tune their setups, Bob decided to start diving into the actual electronic tuning. This opened a whole new world of going faster and picked up a bunch time at the drag strip.

He had a couple computer businesses and a shop but was always helping people tune. So, he decided to make it a real business in 2007. The demand for their services kept growing and they focused efforts on the teaching side. They offer online courses and in-person teaching. They also provide support to past students to make sure they can be successful in tuning whatever platform they choose. They currently rent a 5,000 sq ft facility in Florida and have 15 people on site and around the world. They specialize in teaching students how to use a particular tuning software and give their students experience in tuning a stock car, basic bolt ons, and forced induction. This gives the students real world experience on the platform they want to tune.

Be sure to check them out at car shows and trade shows as they look for helping more individuals and businesses learn to tune!

Dave grew up in Austin and has lived there his whole life. During middle school, he played in a punk rock band (look up The Snobs – Schools Out, Let’s Skate) in the early 2000’s. They organized a tour on the east coast and recorded a couple 7” records. While touring and playing shows, he got turned on to street racing. Having no affinity to school, he dropped out of High School and decided he wanted to play music and race rally cars. After some coaxing, he convinced his dad to “invest” in an Integra Type R rally car.

Eventually, Dave decided that this was his future and started instructing others on how to drive a rally car. There have been a lot of hiccups and various partners, but he has finally settled down and got things figured out. He now leases 140 acres outside of Austin and holds various types of classes. He has 1, 2, and 3-day classes, personal training, and group events. And there are various types of vehicles including FWD Hyundai’s, side-by-sides, Evo’s and STI’s, and even Ford Raptor events. Dave runs the place on his own but has about a dozen instructors who help when needed.

Dan lived in a house of car enthusiasts in southern California. Both his dad and grandfather owned their own businesses, so Dan was kind of groomed to have his own business as well. In high school, Dan bought a 1968 Mustang Fastback and spent 2 years restoring it with his dad. Once they finished it, Dan went out and took some “professional” pictures of the car, wrote an article, and sent it to every magazine he could find. He was able to get this car featured in some magazines and even on a few covers! Being a true entrepreneur and knowing what he wanted to do, he took classes in journalism and photography, so he could create better content.

Purely by chance, his neighbor ran a business that had several small niche magazines that included a couple car magazines. Dan took the job there during college and worked his way up the ladder to become the editor. He worked at several other publishing jobs in cars and tech. He started to see an opportunity with the new social media growth in the mid 2000’s. So, he pitched a large proposal to his boss to begin changing how they do marketing and focus on the new social side. Well, things didn’t go to plan, so he made the calculated risk to go out on his own and do it himself!   

Since 2008, Kahn Media has grown from his spare bedroom to a 7000 square foot office space and 20 plus people. They offer a full suite of marketing and PR and can cater the package to fit your needs and budget.

Joe grew up in Oregon and stayed there through college and went to Oregon Tech for Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Business. He never really saw himself owning his own business, so he spent several years working for other companies as an engineer. He spent all his extra time playing with and modifying offroad trucks. He soon realized that he could take a pretty good tax write off if he created a business to research, develop, and sell various parts he was making. In 2008, he made a simple web page and began making wheel centers to utilize the Hummer H1 wheels on other vehicles. 2 years later, he was shopping around for a tube bender and couldn’t find anything he could afford that he liked. So, he decided to make one himself!

He slowly transitioned out of a full-time job by moving to part time contracting. This allowed him to ramp up Rogue Fabrication while tapering down the time at his other job. He continued to do consulting part time until finally doing his manufacturing business full time. They continue to bring more operations in house and currently employ 6 people. Their product focus is for chassis fabrication tools that include the tube bender, notcher, dimple dies, drill press reduction kit, and a press brake for taco gussets.

Colin grew up buying and restoring pedal bikes and really enjoyed working with his hands. When his dad took a job in Washington with Boeing, Colin bought a 1940 Ford which was quite a step up from the bicycles. He went to college at Washington State University and preferred to look for car projects instead of studying. Having to haul dead cars all over the place, Colin began looking for better solutions to tie them to the trailer. In 1993, he made the business official and started to sell his products. In 1994, he met Tim Foss of Street Rodder Magazine and took a job working for them in advertising and sales. He spent 5 years there while still doing Mac’s Custom Tie Downs on the side.

In 2003, he moved the business from Washington to Idaho and was done for personal reasons not business benefits. His new facility is 17,000 sqft which houses all their manufacturing machines, assembly equipment, shipping supplies, inventory, and even Colin’s collection of project vehicles. He employs 16 people and have been steadily growing over the years. They make all sorts of products for securing your gear including the Versa-Track systems, ratchet straps, wheel tie downs, tow straps, wheel chalks, and many more!