Do It For A Living

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.

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 f

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

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 i

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

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 futu

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 an

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.  

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 sc

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 provider

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 re

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

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

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

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 operation

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 ti

Louis Gigliotti was born into racing and his father, Lou Gigliotti, took him to his first race when he was 4. He was welding and building tube chassis cars in his early teens. For college, Louis chose Purdue University to be close to Indianapolis and racing. Purdue had a Formula SAE team and Louis joined to pursue his passion of building cool and fast cars. Louis left school early and worked for the family racing business and competing in World Challenge. This lasted a few years before Louis decided to branch out on his own and started GSS Speed with a partner. That business only lasted 6 months before Louis decided to close the doors and go back to work for his father. He got into the same cycle of working too many hours over too many days and became burned out again. This led him to start Gigliotti Racing where Louis would work small jobs for various other shops. This arrangement worked well for him and work continued to come in without him having to go out and hunt for it. An opportunity presented itself w

Cole Powelson grew up racing BMX bikes and first worked assembling bikes at a shop. When he was in high school, he began transitioning his passion towards cars. Fast & Furious came out and this drew Cole to the tuner scene. He went to a technical school and even attended a Porsche factory training program in Atlanta when he was 20. By 22, he had moved back to Salt Lake City and was turning wrenches for a race team while worked at a dealership full time. Around this time, Miller Motorsports Park opened up and provided Cole with more and more motorsports opportunities. Cole was slowly building up his performance shop while still working full time. This allowed for an easy transition when the time came to do it full time because he already had systems and customers in place to make a go at it. Because of this, he was turning a profit by the second month of running LYFE Motorsport full time. While there were struggles along the way, his preparation and planning helped to mitigate their effect on his business.

Jens von Holten grew up in Cape town, South Africa during apartheid. While this was pretty difficult, it did open his eyes to understanding how other people experience the world. He received his Mechanic Engineering degree from the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town and had aspirations of becoming an engineer for a racing related company. His first position at a race team was the humbling job of sweeping the floor! Jens was willing to do anything to prove himself so he set out to be the best floor cleaner ever. This quickly materialized into promotions within the team and he traveled with the race car all over the country. To add to his love of racing cars, Jens also enjoy sailing. He and a friend actually sailed from Cape Town to Brazil. They continued on through the Caribbean and then ran out of money when they reached Ft Lauderdale. They stayed for a while and then Jens collected enough money to return to Cape Town to finish his college degree. He then took a position with a Jackie Stewart’s team in E

Ryan grew up in Monterey, CA and enjoyed the car scene of that area. His really got into cars was with a Honda CRX back in 1999 and began doing modifications and even engine swaps. He moved to San Jose for college and continued working on his passion for the CRX’s. He started a small wiring business out of his apartment during college to makes small looms and sub-harnesses. This started to grow and Ryan decided to leave college to devote his time to the wiring business. He moved into a house with some friends and turned the place to his own personal wiring shop! But he quickly realized that he needed a more legitimate space to work. So he moved back down to Southern California and rented a shop to grow the business. Since moving, he has continued to grow the business to a 2200 sq ft facility and has hired a couple employees. And he still has a partner, Peter, who has been with him from the start. They have accumulated quite the inventory of connectors, plugs, and wires that are needed for the many harnesses t