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079: Louis Gigliotti focuses on efficiency and tracking metrics to keep GSpeed on a path to success Oct 10, 2016

Show notes

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 when a local shop at a race track became available.

Louis jumped on the opportunity, moved into the space, and became GSpeed. He and his partners rent 7500 square feet of garages and have a total of 12 people. Louis stresses tracking data within his shop and making sure they are doing the right things to be successful.

078: Cole Powelson of LYFE Motorsport shares his journey to building the fastest Time Attack R35 GTR in the world. Oct 03, 2016

Show notes

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.

Even though he has been in business for several years, growing the business still excites him! His success in racing has opening a lot of doors for cool opportunities. His shop is now 7500 sqft with several lifts, a shipping area, composites area, and a fabrication spot. He also has a 1000 sqft space at Miller Motorsports Park which has a lift and can be used during track events. Lastly, he has 5000 sqft of storage for cars. He employs 7 full time people which he has hired from all over the country, and even from Canada.

He and his team of guys now hold the crown for the fastest R35 Time Attach GRT on the planet with their recent win against the HKS GTR.

077: Jens von Holten shares his story of sailing from South Africa to the Americas and eventually purchasing Fuel Injector Clinic. Sep 26, 2016

Show notes

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 England. He got to work on some really cool projects with the Formula 2000 cars (1 step below Formula 1). Things came full circle when Jens hopped on another sailboat and returned to the US. He was offered a warehouse job by his original sailing partner who stayed in the US. He worked in that business for several years and took a break from the racing scene.

Years went by and a friend turned Jens on to an injector company that was up for sale. It was appealing to him because the product was physically small, the time requirement for the business wasn't too large, and the price was right. So Jens decided to buy the company and enter the injector market in 2007. This company was called Fuel Injector Clinic. He has grown the company to 9 employees over this time and still enjoys working in the industry. This growth did not come without struggle, though. Jens had a lot of trouble with the original owner not understanding the non-compete clause written into the purchase contract. This led to a lot of headaches and litigations that ended up going nowhere.

Fuel Injector Clinic has teamed up with ASNU in an attempt to create the volume needed to be taken seriously by the injector manufacturers as far as scale goes. FIC has also partnered with Holley to help match their injectors for all the newly EFI controlled Pro Mod cars. JKens believe that the company should work for you, not the other way around. He values his work/life balance and tries to not work crazy hours all the time.

Looking forward, Jens is excited about direct injection and is looking for possible partnerships with pump companies. And he sees a rejuvenation of the port injection with all of the issues being seen with direct only injection engines, mainly dirty valves. This provides another avenue to sell aftermarket injectors.

076: Ryan Basseri from Rywire details how he grew his custom wiring business Sep 19, 2016

Show notes

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 they produce.

The bulk of their business comes from ready-made harnesses that are kept in stock. But they do still work on custom projects and customer cars to bring more awareness to the company. And Ryan also teaches a Wiring 101 class for High Performance Academy.

075: Brian Tooley, the founder of Brian Tooley Racing, tells us how he went from hand porting heads in his apartment kitchen to running 5-axis CNC machines Sep 12, 2016

Show notes

Brain is a self-proclaimed geek who spent most of his early years at Radio Shack. He was very interested in electronics and building model rockets. Never did he imagine that he would be programming machines to port heads for some of the fastest cars out there.

When Brian turned 18, he joined the Navy and bought a Z28 Camaro. This sent him down the path of performance cars. In 1993, he started Total Engine Airflow and started porting heads. He then began working for Holley Performance doing product development. He didn't last long at this job due to disagreements with the management. So he left the job and restarted Total Engine Airflow in 1996. He really stepped things up in 2001 when he bought a 5-axis CNC machine building heads for some really big name shops. He was approached by Trikflow who ended up buying his business in 2004 to join the Summit team.

All of this leads to him starting Brian Tooley Racing around 2010. His business only sells what it has in stock and even has a real-time quantity tracker right on the website. His business continues to grow and he is nearing completion of a much larger fulfilment center to meet the growing demands. Brian is a self-taught businessman and has spent many hours absorbing as much knowledge as possible to improve his situation.

074: Brian Mack from Lathrop & Gage talks patents! Sep 05, 2016

Show notes

Brian Mack initially had aspirations of becoming an astronaut and got his Aerospace Engineering degree in college. After college, he took a job at Pratt & Whitney where he got to work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. He went on to work for a company designing replacement parts for gas turbine engines for power plants. But, within a year, the company was sued by GE for patent infringement. This was Brian's first experience with patent law and got to see the mix of engineering, science, and law together. From this, he decided to move and pursue his law degree. He has worked with software companies, energy companies, engineering firms, and one of the Big Three auto manufactures on patent work.

Lathrop & Gage has a long history of providing counsel for all sorts of legal matters. This podcast covers the specifics of patent law and we will be featuring more podcasts that cover other areas pertaining to the aftermarket automotive industry.

073: JJ Jabaji used to flip cars to make a buck. Hear how he transitioned into building billet Subaru blocks at IAG Performance Aug 29, 2016

Show notes

JJ entered the car scene by helping friends out with audio and alarms. When he went to college, JJ opened up a small car audio shop. During his senior year of college, he started working with a friend who owned a performance shop in 1996. Before he finished college, he realized that he needed to devote all of his efforts into the performance shop and decided to work there full-time.

Fast forward to 2004 and JJ has started his own shop. He began buying and flipping cars to make some money. This morphed into buying and selling just Subarus and turning modified cars back into stock cars. Then he would sell off the performance parts to make even more money. 2007 was a turning point for JJ and his shop. He had been selling just parts but saw a need in the market to install these parts as well. But then the market took a turn for the worst. To keep the doors open, he resorted to selling Christmas trees during the winter and scrapping U-Haul trucks. He weathered the downturn and has been rocking ever since!

Nowadays, he is shipping out 5-6 engines each day and installing a few more each week. He is manufacturing parts and machining engines all day long. To get to this point, he had to take on a little risk and lease equipment versus saving up and buying them outright. But this risk allowed his business to grow quickly and get ahead of the market to make some money. IAG Performance now has a total of 5 CNC machines in a 24,000 square foot facility and 30 employees. His latest project is a billet block for the Subarus which should allow them to produce much more power. He plans on expanding the footprint of his business to continue to make more products.

072: David Buschur holds nothing back and details his 25-year history modifying cars Aug 15, 2016

Show notes

David first realized the potency of a turbo when his dad (driving his Turbo Buick) smoked his V8 Monte Carlo from a light. This led David to trade in his Monte Carlo for an AWD Eagle Talon in 1989. He bought an air filter and an exhaust for the car and ran a mid-13 sec ¼ mile which amazed all the big V8 guys. From this point forward, David was hooked! He immediately began making parts he needed to see what the car was doing and to make it go faster. David got involved with an email community and began selling parts he made all over the country.

David and a few of his buddies got together and had the first unofficial Shootout with a total of 4 people in 1991. The next year, David organized the first official Shootout and 8 people showed up. His attendance to the event doubled (at least) every year as the platform became more and more potent. Now in its 26th year, The Buschur Shootout (DSM/Evo Shootout and some GTR's) is enormous and cars come from all over to compete and show off.

In this interview, David stays true to himself and has no problem calling people out. He was kind enough to keep some names out if it, but don't think he is holding back. When you have been in the industry as long as he has, you learn a thing or two about loyalty. While David refers to himself as the "dumb redneck" sometimes, he continues to push the envelope in the tuning world.

071: Terry Fair of Vorshlag Motorsports exposes the hard truths of purchasing CNC machines Aug 08, 2016

Show notes

Terry Fair started doing paint and body work at 14 even though his family really didn't have any interested in cars. Terry's decision on which college to attend was based on an invite from a friend to go check out an autocross held by Texas A&M in College Station, TX. He had never seen anything like it and he totally fell in love. He went for a couple rides with people that he still works with to this day.

After college, Terry and his wife, Amy, moved to Houston and he began working in the oil industry. He was still wrenching on the side to keep the automotive passion alive. In 2005, Terry had moved to Dallas and teamed up with an old college buddy to create a real business out working on cars. They created Vorshlag (which means absolutely nothing) and started to specialize in LS swaps back before it was cool. In 2006, they flew to Holland and teamed up with AST to create a mono-tube motorsports shock. Eventually, Terry bought out a business that built camber plates and this became the main product for Vorshlag. He has moved a couple times but stresses having a nice, clean facility for customers to see and experience the level of professionalism at Vorshlag. His current space is 7500 square feet and employs 6 people.

Recently, Terry dove in and bought his own CNC machines to manufacture his parts. He made this decision because he was getting more and more frustrated working with outside vendors to manufacture both prototype parts and production pieces.

070: AJ Hartman details how he transitioned from working at a body shop to manufacturing composite aero parts Aug 01, 2016

Show notes

AJ didn't really come from an automotive enthusiast family. But when his older brother purchased a white Fox Body Mustang, AJ immediately fell in love. During high school, he began working at a collision business and began working on cars. He worked there for 6 years and picked up body work pretty quickly. After that, he got an associate's degree in automotive technology and got a total of 8 ASE certifications. He began working at Pep Boys but quickly moved back to a collision shop. AJ purchased a house and began doing side jobs out of his garage. These side jobs kept getting bigger and bigger until he finally made the leap to make a real business out of it! His first composite part was a headlight duct for his Mustang.

One thing led to another and AJ ended up purchasing another composites business which really got the ball rolling on AJ Hartman Aero. He leveraged his experience repairing cars to begin making composite parts. His current shop is 5200 square feet with several rooms dedicated to each process of making composite parts.

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