Today
Today, home is Atlanta, and it has been since I sold the business in 2019. Instead of being the serial entrepreneur, my work now is Senior Vice President of Driven Lighting Group, the Lighting division under Hoonigan. The people I get the most energy from are the ones who also love building something: entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, anyone climbing a ladder they set up themselves. Outside of work I lead an entrepreneur group to pass on my experiences and create a space for business owners to connect and learn: people at every level of success come together to share ideas, challenges, and support, with the goal of everyone building their own empire.
My wife and I met in a Christian college group, both of us there for the music and the community, and twenty years of marriage later we still cannot get enough time with each other. Two kids and one house rule: "You have to be doing something productive." Art, sports, learning a new skill, building something, all of it counts. Sitting around wasting your life watching YouTube is not an option. I am also starting to get into golf, which Atlanta makes very easy and my scorecard does not.
What it means to be a builder
I like building things I can touch, and things I can't. The deck I built when the kids were little and the engines I have pulled with my own hands come from the same place as everything I build now: brands, teams, departments, and leaders. The instinct is identical. See the whole system before it exists, put it together to my own vision and standard, and the joy is in seeing it become reality. The only difference is the material and the lead time. A wooden deck takes a weekend. A brand takes years. A leader with a team can take a decade, and it is the most satisfying build there is.
That thread runs through everything on this page: a car club that became car shows, a garage hobby that became a company, a company that became a portfolio, and now teams built to run the system whether I am in the room or not.
Where the instinct comes from
Both of my parents were entrepreneurs. My mom owned an antique store; my dad ran his own high performance engine machine shop, and together they had rental houses on the side. Later he went back for his Masters and ended up teaching at the same college where he had learned engine machining in the first place, and spent the rest of his career teaching others to follow in his footsteps. I never really learned there was another way to live.
How the first business started
By the end of high school I had modified every car I could get my hands on, engines to ECUs, suspension and exhaust, to paint. Then the Fast and the Furious era hit... HID and LED lighting arrived, and that was the final frontier of the modification scene. I needed it.
The closest shop that sold those types of lighting products was three hours away and I did not have the money anyway. So I figured out how to contact the factories in China that were actually making the product, years before Alibaba was mainstream, and got the upgrades that fit my car. My friends saw the results and wanted their own, so I charged them just enough to cover a couple of extra sets for myself! Just like that, a young business was born. The part I loved most was the teaching: researching what worked, figuring out what each vehicle needed, and showing people. That instinct, taught first and sold second, became the foundation of Headlight Revolution, and it still shows up every time I onboard a new leader.
The garage
I am not a sentimental car guy. I keep a list of cars I still want to experience, and it stays long on purpose, because a favorite is impossible: every one of them is a deeply different experience. Growing up, the list was anything with two seats, a manual transmission, and rear wheel drive: the Pontiac Fiero, Toyota MR2, Toyota Supra, Nissan 300ZX, Nissan 350Z. The love evolved as the business grew, until the list got serious.
The Lamborghini Diablo was a piece of automotive art, conflict, and history, incredible to own and share, and honestly not that fun to drive. The orange 2009 Murcielago was the best sounding car I have ever had, and parking two of Lamborghini's V12 flagships next to each other in one garage was its own reward, but the maintenance was unbearable; the cars just break, even babied and low-mileage. The Audi R8 was the best all-around sports car I have owned, fast enough to feel like flying, comfortable enough for grocery runs and date nights. But the Ferrari 488, with upgraded turbos, exhaust, intake, and sound system, was the best of all of them for style, speed, and comfort. The only thing it could not do was fly under the radar. Kiss a quick trip to the gas station goodbye.
Car shows and racing are a constant thread in my life. I grew up around them in northern Minnesota, created and hosted my own regional shows with Club Redline, the car club I started, and now work through Atlanta's never-ending roster of shows across the state and the region.
The rest
I have played drums since sixth-grade band. I have traveled the country playing, been in a few hobby bands, and there is still a full kit in the basement that the kids and I beat on from time to time.
My taste in movies runs to epic hero stories: Batman, Superman, the Avengers, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones. But if I had to pick one movie for the rest of my life it would be the original Jurassic Park, and I quote it more than I should. In a meeting recently I explained a brand's quality philosophy to a room of consultants using John Hammond's "spared no expense" line: quality and performance were always the first priority, and that is what drove customer excitement and demand.
Some of the best meals of my life have been right here in Atlanta. Hal's, Chops, Marcel; the best steak in Atlanta is at Hal's (the filet...). The dream restaurant on the list is Eleven Madison Park in New York, which I found the way a lot of people did, through Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality. Which brings me to the shelf.
