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DO IT FOR A LIVING

DO IT FOR A LIVING is a podcast where YOU, the performance racing industry enthusiast and shop owner can hear from the best minds in the performance racing industry talking about business and tech. We discuss new products and services and the best resources used by the big dogs. You can listen on your way to work or in the shop. With new episodes coming out every week, you'll find interesting topics and valuable information you can use to build your performance business. Now take this information and use it to build the next record-breaking car, or the next innovative product.
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Now displaying: Page 5
Jun 6, 2016

Jeremy is a 4th generation gearhead. He grew up working on everything from go carts to dune buggies to race cars while growing up. And he still has the same passion today as he did when he was a kid. The traditional college path just didn’t feel right and Jeremy decided to go back to work with his dad at one of his body shops. This is when he began transitioning towards working on hot rods. He got a job at a small hot rod shop and eventually purchased the shop. They have since moved from the original location and have grown to 50,000 square feet and employ 60 people.

Jeremy is very focused on making improvements at the shop. As the business has grown, he and his brother have had to take on more professional roles and drift away from getting their hands dirty. This means implementing new software to manage and track the workflow called GlobalShop. They work hard to ensure their fabricators have all the parts and tools they need within easy reach. They talk with the chassis guys to hear ways to speed up and simplify the processes. They attribute a lot of their success to constantly improving their operations.

 

May 30, 2016

Don explains the ins and outs of running a successful dealership. While dealerships are often considered in a negative light, they are in the business of making money and are pretty efficient at doing so. Don provides valuable insight about the methods and metrics they use to gauge success and make decisions. They hold weekly status meetings and utilize software to track and delegate every aspect of the business. Listen in to gain knowledge about ways that you can improve operations at your shop!

 

Don Herring Jr. started his automotive career at 12 when he began washing cars at a dealership. During high school, he moved up to work in the parts department. He went off to college thinking he was going to become a doctor, then changed plans with the hopes of entering the air force. Unfortunately, his timing coincided with the end of the cold war and his aspirations of entering the air force diminished. So he again turned his attention to the automotive industry. He was making very good money being a car salesman during college and moved back to Dallas to join the family dealership. By 2005, his family had 3 dealerships and Don Herring Jr was in charge of the third dealership. He survived the 2008 economic turndown and 2015 has been their best year since then.

May 23, 2016

In this episode, we go down a slightly different path and interview a smaller shop owner to get his perspective on running a performance shop.

Justin Miller started working as a dealer tech at age 17in Raleigh, NC. He began doing work and selling parts online in his free time. Justin has worked hard to grow his business with an initial investment of his own $1200. He now rents a 4200 sq ft building with a dyno and several lifts. And he employees 1 full time technician and a receptionist.

May 16, 2016

In the first Do It For A Living roundtable discussion, we discuss the idea of certifying shops, tuners, and engine builders to work on customer cars. Kevin Dubois assumes the role of a shop owner. Ben Strader takes on the task from an education standpoint. And Todd Earsley will act as a consumer.

The idea is to bring a sense of legitimacy into an otherwise fragmented market. Think of something like ASE certification for mechanics, or Better Business Bureau for businesses, or even Master Plumber certification.

We go over topics such as: Does the industry need some sort of standard? What might the qualifications be to become a “Certified Shop/Tuner/Engine Builder?” Who would enforce this standard? How would this benefit the consumer? And many more!

May 9, 2016

David Localio was fortunate enough to have a family who fully supported his addiction to horsepower! He bought his first car in 6th grade. (That’s correct. 6th grade!) His first experience with turbos came when he got ahold of a Buick Grand National and spent all of high school modifying it into the 10’s. He got a job at a local repair shop and realized that service work just wasn’t for him. So he enrolled in the School of Automotive Machinist (SAM) and ended up working there as well. He then went on to be involved with a ton of influential racers and engine builders over the years. He eventually began working on import motors because he saw a void in the market. This was the official beginning of Headgames Motorworks.

David was hit really hard by the financial crisis in 2008 and barely made it out still in business. He was forced to let most of his people go and got several months behind on his bills which has wreaked havoc on his credit. But he toughed it out, worked hard, and emerged stronger than ever! Now he works out of a 5000 square foot building with several employees and cranks out some of the best heads in the market.

May 5, 2016

Andrew Brilliant was gracious enough to continue to talk with us about aerodynamics. Tune in to this special Bonus Episode to hear more details about what he can do to improve aerodynamics on your car.

May 2, 2016

Andrew grew up in LA loving cars and knowing he wanted to be involved in racing. He attended Berkeley where he got his Mechanical Engineering degree. During his first job as a software engineer, he started helping the owner of the company who happened to have a couple race cars. This was his first experience with a racing team.

This let to Andrew creating simulations to determine gear rations and then expanded it to aero simulations. He continued to get more and more opportunities with racing teams and decided to leave the software company. He discovered that aerodynamics was that “thing” that he wanted to do for the rest of his career. This is when he created AMB-Aero. The chips started to fall into place and he moved to Japan where all the most advanced aero cars were racing.

He has worked on some very famous Time Attack cars from all over the world. And he is available to visit your team and discuss ways to improve the aerodynamics of your race car…without breaking the bank. But if you want to go all out, he is the best in the business and his car’s lap times can prove it!

Apr 25, 2016

His passion for performance really got started when he went to college for mechanic engineering and joined the Formula SAE team. While at a competition in 2010, he met a representative of Pratt & Miller and ended up getting a job with them at their design office. This transitioned into a job at the Cadillac Racing team with Pratt & Miller. He worked on the CTS-V team for 4 years and now works on the ATS-V team. They use complex simulations and advanced telemetry data to make the cars perform at the absolute limit. With the rules constantly changing, the team has to adapt to stay ahead of the competition.

Apr 18, 2016

 

Alex grew up reading automotive magazines and aspiring to be one of the feature builders. He moved to Southern California with high hopes but no real direction on how to get into the racing industry. He got his first automotive job at Web Camshafts where he learned a lot about drag racing. Alex went on to build several Honda’s that got a lot of attention but the real break came when his Integra went 8’s in the ¼ mile. The side gig of making and selling manifolds out of his garage transformed into Sheepey Built.

Given that Alex doesn’t actually weld, he has taken great steps to set up his process flow to be as efficient as possible. He took what he learned at Web Cams and applied it at his own shop. He has specific people dedicated to tasks in order to keep the parts moving out the door.

Apr 11, 2016

 Kyle Shelley is the sales director for Turn14. He was good friends with the founder of JSC Speed (and then Turn14) and got to see the business be created. He had several sales jobs before becoming the first employee at JSC Speed. He started out at the bottom and worked his way up over the years. Turn14 was actually established in 2007 and JSC Speed was sold off in 2011. This is when all the efforts were put into the wholesale business.

Turn14 has a new “authorized seller” solution where the Turn14 customer must be approved by the part manufacturer to sell its parts. This allows the manufacturer to vet and validate that reseller as a legitimate business. Turn14 is trying really hard to ensure that legitimate businesses are reselling aftermarket parts. They are looking for shops and people who respect the pricing structure and give the industry a good reputation.

Kyle goes over the meaning of MAP (minimum advertised price) and UPP (unilateral pricing policy)

If you are a manufacturer and want to ensure nobody is violating your MAP policy, Oris Intel crawls the internet and looks for these violators. This is a new breed of companies using search algorithms to find violators and provide you with the necessary information to take action.

Turn14 also has a new position called the Brand Equity Specialist whose sole job is to ensure all their buyers are operating within the laws of pricing structure.

Apr 4, 2016

Dale has been tuning turbo EFI V8’s for many years, but the American drag racing market has traditionally been dominated by carburetors and nitrous controlled by antiquated methods. Dale made his break into the US by way of a forum post to Dominator (from Street Outlaws) offering to tune his car on EFI. Since then, he has also converted the Dung Beetle car to EFI as well. This has really changed the game for the domestic drag racing market and requires a much different approach to tuning 3000+hp cars.

Mar 28, 2016

Steve Ciabattoni started his career in payment processing right out of college where he was recruited (by his current partner) to work for a very large payment processing company. In 2011, he and jumped ship and created 360 Payment Solutions. Now, 360 Payment Solutions serves nearly 3000 merchants and employs 28 people. They label themselves as a Payment Processing provider, meaning that they help companies accept all types of payments including: checks, gift cards, electronic payments online (paypal), as well as credit card processing

In this interview, Steve discusses the new chip card technology (known in the industry as EMV - Europay MasterCard Visa), Apple pay, pay with phone, and integration with business software.

Back on Oct 1, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express shifted their liability statement and said you are going to be responsible for any chargebacks that come through if you don’t have the ability to accept the chip cards. And you cannot fight it. This is a shift in responsibility and something that you should consider.

Steve advises business to NOT lease your machine. Often times, this contract cannot be canceled and you will spend $40/month for a $300 machine. So over the life of the contract, you will be paying hundreds more than just buying the machine outright.

If you are in the market for a merchant provider, you want “interchange plus” pricing. This is the best fee structure for business and will give you the lowest rates for all types of transactions. And you will sound smart to the salesman!

For automotive businesses, you should have an “effective rate” below 3%. Your effective rate is calculated by dividing Total Fees by Total Sales.

Mar 21, 2016

Jim McIlvaine used to play professional basketball but now he runs the social media and web-presence for Optima Batteries. While playing basketball, Jim would do freelance work for magazines where he would meet people and attend events across the country. After Jim left the NBA, he eventually joined Optima Batteries as their “E-care Manager” where he created the Facebook page and began answering questions or comments on web forums (You may be familiar with his forum handle OptimaJim on almost every forum in existence). Today, you will see him at many automotive events taking pictures, streaming videos, and answering questions from customers about Optima’s products.

Jim says it is extremely important to gathering as much information about your potential customers as possible. The most important thing is to obtain an email address which can be used in Facebook to target an audience similar to this specific person (likes, location, age, sex).

Mar 14, 2016

Peter started TX2K back in 2000 after he went to a Supra event in Las Vegas. From the humble beginning of 40 Supras banding together to go to the drag strip, the TX2K franchise has transformed into the premier Supra, GTR, Roll Racing, and Drag Racing event in the country!

TX2K16 is improving this year by showing the roll racing speeds up on the large display boards at the end of the track. This betters the experience for the attendees by allowing them to easily see the winner and how fast they were going.

Mar 7, 2016

Back in early 2000, Chris Raymond was building websites and forums for other people. He saw a void in the market for a DSM forum and set out to make one himself. This is what spawned DSMTuners.com

He also runs Garage 40 which focusses on automotive businesses to help them with social media, email marketing, web design, and reputation management. Brand management is tough because you have to be in every place when your shop or product is talked about by your audience.

In this interview, Chris explains the ever-changing atmosphere of online marketing and what you need to be doing to succeed.

Feb 29, 2016

Tim Bailey was one of the early Subaru tuners when the WRX hit the states. Eventually, he started Surgeline Performance which was later purchased by Trey Cobb. While Tim still works on the actual tuning, most of his time is spent controlling the dealer and tuner network for Cobb. Now he travels all over the country to set up new dealers and help out existing ones. In this interview, he goes into detail about how they manage that network and why it is so important to regulate the prices of their products.

Feb 22, 2016

Chase Lautenbach & Justin Keith created Street Car Takeover just a few years ago because they saw a void in the racing market for more “streetable” cars to compete in drag racing and roll racing. Their series has expanded to 10 events in 2016 and they are looking to keep growing. While the main event is the drag racing, Street Car Takeover also incorporates a shop open house, car show, and other meetup prior to the actual racing. They want to offer more experience for the fans and encourage people to participate.

Feb 15, 2016

When the Modified Magazine decided to stop printing the physical magazine, both Peter and Dave found themselves without a job. So they looked for alternative means to produce content and decided on YouTube. In their channel, Speed Academy, they “focus on bringing performance oriented content to car enthusiast.” They have found that a website and YouTube channel are the perfect combination to generate content, get participation from fans, and provide the means to collect advertising money to keep going.  Listen in as they provide advice for shops looking to reach a greater audience.

Feb 8, 2016

Rhys is a professional driver. But did you know that he is also a shop owner? He has taken his love for racing and turned it into a successful company. Rhys Millen Racing produces parts, builds movie cars, and champions race teams. His repertoire includes Global RallyCross, Pikes Peak, Formula Drift, Fast & Furious cars, Penzoil commercials, and RedBull sponsorships. The dedication to the sport and the constant drive to get new contracts puts Rhys in the upper echelon of specialty shops. Tune in as he talks about the challenges of meeting deadlines and the time required to maintain his place in the industry.

Feb 1, 2016

Lucas English of English Racing currently has built the fastest Evo X in the world. They have also been a key player in pushing the GTR to the limits at the drag strip. He has grown from humble beginnings in the DSM scene to a world-renowned shop for fast imports. English Racing is located next to Lucas’ house in a rural area outside of Vancouver, WA (just north of Portland, OR). He has struggled with land usage permits, neighbor complaints, and unrealistic expectations from customers. But his story shows that hard work and determination can make you successful.

Jan 25, 2016

Mark Jager doesn’t own a shop and he isn’t a professional driver. He is an enthusiast who loves to go fast and continues to push his car to the limits! Mark’s efforts off the track have raised the bar for how a driver/team can help their sponsors by actively providing updates, attending events, and using social media to generate exposure.  Mark addresses some of the shortcoming that are prevalent in the racing industry when it comes to sponsorship and hopes his story can help change it.

Jan 18, 2016

Jimi Day from FM3 Marketing discusses how he went from being an investment banker, to a shop owner, and finally to a marketing company that hosts and promotes motorsports events.  His company is most well known for their involvement in the Hot Rod Power Tour, Holley LS Fest, the Optima Search for the Ultimate Street Car series, and their newest event called Road Trip. He took his expertise at writing proposals and took that knowledge to get sponsorships for builds. He emphasizes that you need to be humble and try to continually improve how you do business.

Jan 11, 2016

In Kevin Dubois’ first interview as an additional host, he talks with his partner, Todd Earsley, about how they are going to keep Do It For A Living going! They will be helping Reid to do more interviews and provide more episodes for the listeners.

Todd took his experience in business school and partnered with Kevin Dubois to help make shops more profitable. In today’s immediate satisfaction, internet market, it has become more and more important for shops to ensure their service side is operating at its fullest potential.

Jan 4, 2016

Kevin Dubois is the co-founder of My Shop Assist, a project management system designed specifically for aftermarket automotive shops.  He took his experience (and mistakes) as the owner of Evolution Dynamics to create a tool to help owners run their shop more efficiently.  After a tremendous crash at Pikes Peak in 2012, he decided it was time to buckle down and get serious about turning his performance shop from a hobby to a real business.

Jul 24, 2015

Belak Industries is a wheel manufacturer based out of Miami, FL focused primarily on Honda drag racing. Damian Borroto established Belak Industries in 2012 after a decade working in multiple Honda speed shops in the Miami area, and eventually opening his own shop, TD Autowerkes. Damian has a “can-do, make-it-happen attitude” and he survived some serious setbacks in the last year. In 2014 he had his race car and trailer stolen, only to get pieces of it back. So he set out to build another car, and did! But on it’s first outing, a freak accident caused it to wreck, and total the chassis. Now he’s on to building his third SFWD race car and he hasn’t even considered giving up!

Game Changing Product: ID1700, Belak Wheels, AEM Infinity, FTW Fuel

Most useful software program: Windows

Favorite App: Pandora, WhatsApp, Instagram

 

Favorite Shop Tool: Hammer!... and his Dyno

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