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133: Kris Miller has helped Powerstop Brakes increase their brand’s recognition through strategic sponsorships and by creating excellent content
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 body. His next move was over to AMS Performance as their 4th employee. He helped them grow the business. He decided to make a career changed and moved...
131: John Nguyen quit his day job to pursue Track Spec Motorsports and has parlayed that into the Spec Corvette racing series
John was born in Florida but moved to Philadelphia when he was 10. He and his dad 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 had a side hustle of selling other people’s parts online. It became more and more difficult to make a profit and he wanted to take the...
129: Dennis Overholser, co-founder of Painless Performance Products, takes us through the ups and downs of growing his wiring and accessories company
Dennis grew up on a farm in Indiana and went to Nashville Auto Diesel College before getting drafted to the Air Force during Vietnam. He took a position as a mechanic for their vehicle maintenance division and spent his time repairing equipment. When he got back to Indiana, he met a girl whose family lived in Ft Worth. During one of their visits to her family, he realized there were a lot of jobs in Ft Worth and made up his mind that is where they wanted to move. He got a job as a tractor dealer as a mechanic...
125: Dirk Starksen from ACT Clutch tells how he got started and how he continues to innovate
Dirk has always been a builder and tinkerer. He started working for a clutch company called Kennedy Engineered Products that built engine adapters and clutches for VW’s. He was working as a clutch assembler and was in college for a Mechanical Engineering degree. He worked his way up the ranks at KEP. In 1994, Dirk was working on a project for the Japanese import vehicles and asked his boss if he could take the idea and run with it. In 1996, he started ACT and started branding the pressure plates himself. He has steadily grown the business over the...
123: Glen Reid of Futura Trailers brought his innovative idea of a lowering trailer to reality
Glen is from New Zealand and his dad actually used to own a trailer company. His dad sold the company in the mid-eighties and it was a couple decades before Glen got back into trailers. After high school, Glen got into construction and went off to create his own construction company. Glen then moved to Dubai and did construction there as well. Over the next decade, he built a very large business with around 700 employees. His next adventure went down a completely different path. He took his wife and two small children to the United States. They bought...