Matt Beenen's guest appearances

Matt Beenen

DO IT FOR A LIVING

Lance Stander

Ben Strader

Paul Yaw

Tony Palo

Chris Delgado

Shane Tecklenburg

Jim McIlvaine

Mike Lewin

Jay Payson

Chris Jewell

John Veloso

Steven Aghakhani

Dave Donnals

Reid Lunde

Jud Massingill

OwlTail

Since he was a kid, Matt always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Using inspiration from his childhood, he decided to start a side gig to follow his dreams. His initial idea consisted of 50 latches that allow you to drop the Ford F-150 back seat down to access some secret storage. To his surprise, a Facebook post in a small F-150 group resulted in him selling out rather quickly. So, he began his journey to go at the business full-time. His second product development was a bedside rack system for the F-150’s. This side hustle first took over a bedroom, then grew into the garage, and grew again into a storage unit that was run off a generator and a string of lights. His biggest struggle has been dealing with knockoffs that originate from his success on Amazon. He even wrote a blog article warning other small business owners about the pitfalls and helping people learn from his experience.  Fast forward to today and BuiltRight Industries is housed in a 5000 sqft warehouse and has 2 full time employees and a couple part timers. He has worked hard to expand the business to other vehicles and continues to develop new products. And he has even begun selling his products through Turn14.

Since he was a kid, Matt always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Using inspiration from his childhood, he decided to start a side gig to follow his dreams. His initial idea consisted of 50 latches that allow you to drop the Ford F-150 back seat down to access some secret storage. To his surprise, a Facebook post in a small F-150 group resulted in him selling out rather quickly. So, he began his journey to go at the business full-time. His second product development was a bedside rack system for the F-150’s. This side hustle first took over a bedroom, then grew into the garage, and grew again into a storage unit that was run off a generator and a string of lights. His biggest struggle has been dealing with knockoffs that originate from his success on Amazon. He even wrote a blog article warning other small business owners about the pitfalls and helping people learn from his experience.  Fast forward to today and BuiltRight Industries is housed in a 5000 sqft warehouse and has 2 full time employees and a couple part timers. He has worked hard to expand the business to other vehicles and continues to develop new products. And he has even begun selling his products through Turn14.

157: Matt Beenen returns with BuiltRight Industries

Matt Beenen has always been interested in how things worked and his parents facilitated this fascination. As he grew up, Matt was interested in vehicle technology and pursued this passion by getting a Mechanical Engineering degree in college. He got involved with the SAE Mini Baja team at college. This gave him insight into teamwork, scheduling, and actually manufacturing a race vehicle. After college, Matt got a job at BAE Systems and worked as a systems engineer. On the weekends, he modified and raced his 2006 Subaru STI. This is where he met some of the GrimmSpeed employees. An engineering position opened up at GrimmSpeed and Matt jumped on the opportunity. Matt was doing engineering work for them and also manage their product development path. He stepped up and worked to improve the operations of the business and began bringing on other engineers and developing processes at the company. GrimmSpeed now has 13 employees but keeps a very entrepreneurial working mindset, meaning that each employee may perform various roles throughout the day. They recently moved facilities and currently occupy 18,000 square feet. This facility is where they do the R&amp;D, marketing, fabricating, inventory storage, and shipping. They are expanding their products to more platforms and will be introducing stage upgrades with parts and off-the-shelf tunes.

Matt Beenen has always been interested in how things worked and his parents facilitated this fascination. As he grew up, Matt was interested in vehicle technology and pursued this passion by getting a Mechanical Engineering degree in college. He got involved with the SAE Mini Baja team at college. This gave him insight into teamwork, scheduling, and actually manufacturing a race vehicle. After college, Matt got a job at BAE Systems and worked as a systems engineer. On the weekends, he modified and raced his 2006 Subaru STI. This is where he met some of the GrimmSpeed employees. An engineering position opened up at GrimmSpeed and Matt jumped on the opportunity. Matt was doing engineering work for them and also manage their product development path. He stepped up and worked to improve the operations of the business and began bringing on other engineers and developing processes at the company. GrimmSpeed now has 13 employees but keeps a very entrepreneurial working mindset, meaning that each employee may perform various roles throughout the day. They recently moved facilities and currently occupy 18,000 square feet. This facility is where they do the R&amp;D, marketing, fabricating, inventory storage, and shipping. They are expanding their products to more platforms and will be introducing stage upgrades with parts and off-the-shelf tunes.

082: Matt Beenen tells us how he climbed the ranks to become President of GrimmSpeed