DO IT FOR A LIVING

The business was originally started by their parents who did maintenance and custom work in California. Theresa studied graphic design and worked as a machinist. She went back to work in the family auto body shop and worked in the front end. She taught herself how to pinstripe and paint and continues to do so to this day! Sara was also interested in working at some sort of automotive business and...

On this episode we get a chance to talk with Vadim Belogorodsky from CANtrolls. CANtrolls is a company focused on using CAN interface hardware to make engine swaps easier… but it goes way beyond that! Vadim taught himself to program at age 13 and has since worked on medical devices, oil rigs (doing CAN-based Networking) and most recently with Zero Avia an electric aviation startup. Vadim is a stan...

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 ca...

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 pl...

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 th...

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 jo...

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...

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 bu...

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 want...

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 eve...

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 crea...

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 sol...

Chris has been in California his whole life and used to have a job at a company that developed vehicle care products for professional body shops. This gave him intimate knowledge about materials and products for the car care market. One weekend, they were out an event demonstrating some car care products and caught Jay Leno's eye. He invited them out to his garage to test out their products and sh...

Will grew up in California and has always had a passion for cars. After high school, he started an apprenticeship at a machine shop working on engines. He went to college, but it just wasn't for him. He was much more interested in racing than he was in going to class. After a few years, he began working at Centerforce Clutches via a recommendation from a friend of a friend. He started as a machini...

Tony started his car passion by contributing and participating on the LS1.com forum back in 1998. He wasn't happy with the support of that forum and decided that he could do it better. So, he started LS1Tech.com in 2001. All the while, he was working in the Oil & Gas industry. He continued to teach himself various software systems to allow him to create websites, design graphics, and model parts....

Bret grew up in Jasper, IN and dabbled with cars during high school. After high school, he worked various jobs in Jasper and then took a job in Florida as a tech rep for the NHRA Drag Racing circuit. A few years later, he started working for a company in California to work for Blower Drive Service. He had been traveling about 300 days per year and decided to settle down back in Jasper with his new...

Steve has known he was going to work with cards since the first grade. His dad was an engineer and his mom was a pianist and they encouraged Steve and his siblings to pursue any passion they wanted. This even includes Steve attempting to build a submarine as a kid. He ended up getting drafted to the Vietnam War and worked as an electrical engineer supporting the airplanes. Once he got out, he went...

Jason grew up in upstate New York and spent his childhood around cars. For college, he went to Clarkson University and got his Mechanical Engineering degree. He had every intention to go work for an auto company in Detroit but he just couldn't commit to the cold weather. So, he moved south to work for Home Depot as a mechanical engineer. He worked his way up the ranks and eventually moved on to wo...

Brent is a first generation American and his parents immigrated to the states after WW2. He spent a lot of his childhood playing with electronics. During high school, he practically took over the computer lab in the mid 80's to code and tinker however he liked. He went to college to get a Computer Science degree and worked for Microsoft after graduating. He then moved over to GE Capital to do soft...

Dave grew up in Melbourne, Australia and has always been a petrol head. He knew from an early age that he wanted to work with cars and left school at 15 to get an apprenticeship at a local dealership. During that time, he began racing go carts to satisfy his need to race. Once he finished his apprenticeship program, he became qualified to be hired as a mechanic. He then got a job at a shop that fo...

Lance is from South Africa and he grew up working with his dad at his dealership and salvage yard. When he grew up, he took over part of the business and spent years growing it. Eventually, he decided to make the move to America and attempted to continue with the auto salvage business. He came over on a holiday visa and quickly discovered how hard it is to become an American citizen. After 3 rejec...

The Ring brothers grew up around their dad's fueling station and spent their time tinkering with whatever they could get their hands on. Jim moved around a few times and eventually moved his family back home to Spring Green, WI (2 hours west of Milwaukee). He saw a 1969 Camaro Indy Pace car for sale in the paper and had to get a loan from a bank to purchase the car. He fixed it up and ended up sel...

Kris grew up in Chicago and stayed there to go to college. His family has always been enthusiasts and he grew up tinkering with anything he could get his hands on. He got a degree in Aviation Flight Management and got his A&P License. He never worked in the aerospace industry because he got offered a job at a fuel management company. This company was buildings components of Holly's EFI throttle bo...

Gary was born in Panama but grew up in the United States. His father had a machine shop and Gary was always around cars. He worked at his dad's shop at a very early age and learned the importance of hard work. His parents ended up getting a divorce and Gary moved to Panama to live with his mom when he was 9. In his early 20's, he bought a truck and began modifying it immediately. He increased the...

John was born in Florida but moved to Philadelphia when he was 10. His dad and he were always tinkering and fixed things rather than replacing them. He stayed in the area and went to college at Penn State to get a Mechanical Engineering degree. Even though his passion for cars never went away, he got a job at a beverage company and ended up in California managing a facility. During that time, he h...