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...

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...

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,...

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...

Joe grew up in Oregon, 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...