Throttlecast: Episode 17

In this episode of Throttlecast, hosts Dave Codrea and Grant Brewer sit down with entrepreneur and automotive enthusiast Matt Kossoff to talk about his journey from retrofitting xenon headlights in his parents’ basement to building and selling the renowned automotive lighting brand Morimoto. Matt shares how his passion for cars led him to create The Retrofit Source, grow it into a multimillion-dollar business, and eventually launch new ventures like Founders Parts and the luxury coffee machine brand Molten Coffee Co. Along the way, the conversation dives into Porsche restorations, Ferrari collections, entrepreneurship, product design, and the importance of turning hobbies into meaningful businesses.

#ThrottleCast #MattKossoff #DaveCodrea #GrantBrewer #CarCulture #AutomotivePodcast #CarEnthusiast #Morimoto #TheRetrofitSource #Porsche993 #PorscheTurbo #Ferrari355 #CarsAndCoffee #Entrepreneurship #FounderStory #LuxuryCars #AutomotiveLifestyle #CarCommunity #CoffeeCulture #MoltenCoffeeCo #CarGuys #ExoticCars #GarageLife #AutomotiveIndustry #PerformanceCars #PorscheLife #FerrariLife #CarPodcast #BusinessJourney #carcollectors

 @mattkossoff5841 ​

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I bought a manual E forty six M three. My roommate gave me a crash course how to drive manual on his cavalier.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Welcome to Throttlecast, Powered by the Ride Lounge. This is where people pull up, bring their builds in their cars, and tell their story. Let's get into it. Welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Hey, thanks for having me, guys.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

So you want to introduce yourself for the audience? For those that don't know you, what you do, all that good.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Well, my name's Matt Kossoff. Um live here in Middleton, known Grant for a long, long time now. 10, 20, 30 years. You know, I mean, look, we could take this conversation in a million different directions from the intro on, right? So, you know, I mean, my name's Matt, I like to take long walks on the beach, you know. Or, you know, I've started a business, I sold it, I'm a big car guy, you know, I like to go to bed early, wake up early, I love coffee. There's a million different things that I could say. Yeah. But um, you know, see where the conversation goes. What do you what do you guys want to know? There you go. What do you guys want to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Well, I'll I'll start off with uh where I met you. So it was gosh, I got this like. Was it on the beach? No, it wasn't on the beach. It was actually uh I think it was in the wintertime, actually. I had bought like my first new car ever. I'd bought like a brand new Mercedes. And um I don't know why I didn't look for this. It was at night too, which I I should have looked, and I just thought, oh yeah, it's got xenons, it's got all this stuff, and uh man, I went to go drive it home and I go, man, this thing does it just has the regular halogen bulbs, and I just felt so defeated. I spent all this money on a brand new car and it didn't have the blue lights, you know. This nice little uptick in uh in luxury there. And uh I started surfing on the internet and I found this place called the Retrofit Source, and I go, you know what, I'm just gonna drop by there. I get in the shop, there's like a row of this collection of cars. I forget what you had at the time. Maybe you had like a Viper, you gave the silver 355 at the time, a couple other cars, and I go, Yep, what is this? You know, and then I bump into you and you're like, Yeah, this is my collection. Here's what we do here. You had a kit in stock, I plugged it up and problem solved.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Boom.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

And then uh years later, I had a um an Audi S4 quantum gray car. And I'm like, man, I need some wheels for this thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

And Matt just so happened to have a set of rotiforms in fit in the car, and I was like, so I ended up putting those on the on that car.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

And uh yeah, just seeing you at shows over the years. I mean, we've we've crossed paths. You were at the toy drive that that Tyler was doing. Um, so that was a nice refresh. And uh yeah, so even though we don't hang out on a constant, I've just known you forever and always been a good dude. So like what you're doing.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Yeah, I mean, car guys we tend to gravitate towards the same places, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

What was the first car that you were like, yes, this is awesome? The first car that I've had that I'm like, yes, this is awesome. BMW M3, E46. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah. When I was um I was still in college, that was the first like real sports car that I was able to afford myself, right? Which, you know, mind you, like I already had my business kind of up and running, literally out of like a spare bedroom in this house that I was running. We'll get into that. But um, I bought a manual E46 M3. My roommate gave me a crash course how to drive manual on his Cavalier the week before. I had still had no idea how to drive it when I took delivery of the car. It was a good used, you know, M3 at the at the time. Um, and took delivery of that car, dumped the clutch, and figured out how to drive it. You know, I mean that was the that was the plan B. But yeah, E46, it was carbon black over cinnamon interior with a six-speed manual. And um always remember that car. It's a great car.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

That's a great car, still a great car today. Yeah. Yeah. Those values have gone up tremendously. Absolutely. You know, Barry of Entry.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

So, what was in the spare bedroom? So you started in a spare bedroom?

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Well, I started so I started my business um actually out of my parents' basement. By the time I bought the E46, that was four years into college, and so I was grinding for a little bit by then. But you know, my my roommates were all selling, you know, their blood plasma to pay, you know, the bills, and I was buying M3s, you know, and so like things had you know changed a little bit for me. But um, yeah, look, I started um my business, which is you mentioned the retrofit source, out of my parents' basement when I was just graduating from high school in 2005.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Golly, man.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

And you know, for me, I mean it's something that started as a hobby. I've always been a car guy ever since I was a little kid. Um, you know, similar to you're talking about the xenon lights on the Mercedes, right? Like xenon lights, like it was the new technology that was like just coming out and like they had to have like because it looked so different than the old halogen lights.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

They were blue and they were cool and bright.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

They were cool, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:09

It was very fast and furious, like, gotta have it. Um and so my dad bought a uh he bought an accurate TL. Um, the first like TL, you know, that had xenon lights, and I was just like infatuated with them. I was like, these are so cool. I gotta put I gotta put xenon lights on my stratus. So the Dodge Stratus. Um I wanted to find a way to do it. You know, I was like, I want to find a way to do it, but nobody made any like HID kits for a Stratus. There was nothing like a, you know, there was no projector headlight kits for Stratus, you know. Like at the time, like they were starting to sell you know the Alteza like clear taillights. I remember those. HID kits like kind of were they were around, but they were really crappy, and so I was out of options. And you know, I can go on and on about this story, but you know, to try to you know get to the point, I was hanging out at this car dealership on the street. I would always hang out there during the summertime. They sold Porsche and Audi in Cleveland, Ohio. And I think I was hanging around telling the guy that ran the body shop because he was the only person that would talk to me. I was like an 18-year-old dude that was hanging around the Porsche dealership, that I wanted to find xenon lights for my stratus. He's like, Well, hey, I just had these like Audi A6 headlights that were, you know, they were from a car that was crashed, and so like I'm gonna throw them in the dumpster. But if you want them, like they're xenon, you could maybe do something with it. That was the key. Okay, so I took these lights home and I'm like, I don't, I don't really know what to do with it, but um I hid them in my parents' basement because I didn't want them to know that like I was up to something, you know. And when they were gone, I took the lights apart, I took the xenon ballast off the headlight, I took like the bulbs out and also like the projector. Um I like took all those components off to salvage them, and then I was I took the headlights off my stratus, I started cutting them up with a Dremel tool, and like you know, I found some nuts and bolts to like literally the ghettoest thing ever, like rig these xenon parts like into my stratus headlights, and then I, you know, I was like, oh, just put them back on the car. Well, of course, like none of the wiring matched up, nothing worked. Fortunately for me, it was still like back in the day enough that cars were just still 12 volt, yeah, you know, like and simple. So I had to you know break the news what I did to my dad. Like I cut up the headlights on the car, dad, like they don't work anymore. Like, I need you to help me fix them. My dad's always been sharp, like, you know, good with his hands, and he helped me wire them up, and we made them work. And so I had these audio headlights on my Stratus.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

And um, you know, from there, right, like back in the day, there's no Facebook and Instagram, it's only forums. Forums, yeah. Forums, you know. So I was on the Stratus forum hanging out with other Stratus boys, and I'm like posting pics that I took with like my parents' like real camera or whatever, like on the forum, and everybody else is like, what? This is cool, like I need that. Can you make some for me? And that's how the business started, where people literally would take the headlights off their car, mail them to my parents' house, and I would go back to my friend at Audi, get some more crashed headlights, cut up these people from the internet's headlights that they shipped to my parents' house and send them back to them. And so I like kind of started this little business where I was becoming known like across different forums. I spread out into like the Mitsubishi world, and like I was doing all kinds of cars and trucks. This guy you can just send your lights to and he'll chop them up and send them back, and they'll they'll be xenon.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

That's amazing. You might have been the guy that did the headlights on my 92 Acura GSR.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

It's highly possible.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I had the one-piece headlights, TSX projectors, all retrofitted. They worked. It's highly possible. But the new Mercedes, you know, it didn't have them.

SPEAKER_03 8:39

So, you know, I took the business to college, you know, I ended up I was living in a dorm room, and so it was very difficult to, you know, continue cutting up people's headlights out of my dorm room. You need an oven so you can like soften the glue to peel them apart, and of course, like Dremel tools, and you're making a big mess. So that was not sustainable in my dorm room. So what I ended up doing was I transitioned from the guide that would do your lights to I'm gonna make a guide, like a universal guide, to show you how to do it, and I'll sell you the parts. Okay. And so I started kind of expanding my supplier network to all of these junkyards around the country. And like, just to give you an example of like how OG this is, I was faxing these junks. Like this flyer that said, like, I want to buy your broken Xenon headlights. Like if they got broken tabs, cracked lenses, I'll buy your Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, whatever headlights for bottom dollar because it's garbage to them. Yeah. Salvage art. They exist to sell good use parts, not bad use parts. And they would ship these huge, you know, like a Gaylord's like a huge cardboard box worth of broken headlights to my parents' house in Cleveland. I would go back every weekend, take all the parts out, like put them in boxes, go back to Columbus to go to school, and I had my little sister like shipping out orders from my parents' home while I worked out of my dorm selling these things on eBay and like the forums.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

And it was like amazing. I mean, I had such a blast with it. I mean, and and the whole time, you know, like I'm I'm just like over the moon because I'm a car enthusiast. Like I started that business doing it like for myself, right? Because I wanted cool xenon lights on my car, and other people just picked up on it.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

What was the transition like from college dorm room, having your sister ship it to where you're getting your first facility? What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 10:29

It was a big move, right? I mean, I decided to move to Atlanta in 2011. It was one year after graduating from Ohio State. Um, you know, the business had built a little foundation, you know. I mean, as I mentioned, like I was making more money than my roommates. And so like I had to make a decision like get a real job or like stick with this. You know, of course I ended up sticking with what I was doing. Um, and so I ended up moving to Atlanta because I had family in Florida, we had family in Ohio, it was a good middle ground, and we had like a lot of customers down here, and I was like, you know, I'm just gonna make the jump. And so it literally went from a business that was started my parents' basement and ran out of different basements as I had moved, you know, different places through college and after school, to renting a real place, a 2,000 square foot place. I had rent, I had real bills, and there was one other employee, like my roommate at the time, that came down to Atlanta with me to see what happened. Um I hired one person through Facebook who was like a follower and a customer for the company. His name's Andrew Powers, and he still works for me to this day.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Um and I literally told him, Hey, meet me at Home Depot because we got to go buy like materials to build like a shop. And so that was like our first meeting ever. So he met me at Home Depot on his first day in the job. We built a shop here, and um just started, you know, reinvesting into the business. I mean, it continued to grow very well, all organically. You know, I didn't like I was always a cheapskate, so I didn't believe in like paid advertising or anything like that. But I mean, we were just like a group of car enthusiasts doing car guy stuff, you know, and our our our Muse, our subject matter expertise was in lighting. Um so that was 2011. From 2011 to 2018, um, you know, I kept hiring people one by one, by one by one. And I think that at at that point, 2018, there was 20, I want to say 24 people at customer service, working in the warehouse. I mean, I'd met you in the meantime, you know, like we had a moving up, we moved up, we bought built like a new shop. And um in 2018, um I took on a partner for the business. Yeah, so I sold 75% of the company to a private equity group here in Atlanta, and it was the best decision ever. I mean, those guys were awesome. So it really made a big difference with the company because, you know, I mean, you know, as as some people listening to this might understand, like if you have your own business, I mean, every dime you you spend on that company, you know, is your money, right? As the as the owner, the founder, whatever, and like to grow that business, like every decision is an opportunity, but it's also a risk. Yep. Right. And so like when I went from a place where, you know, I I know in my head, like there's a lot of opportunities to continue to grow this business, but I'm you know, 50-50 whether or not I want to like go and pursue these things, to I know there's a lot of opportunity, and I get to spend your money to try to do it. It was like a game changer, right? So, I mean, those were like the glory days of the company. You know, I don't want to drag on too much about the story, but between the time that those guys came on board, you know, we built an amazing team around me. I transitioned from becoming like the CEO to being the chief product officer, which product development has always like really been the part that excited me the most. And we 5x the company, both in terms of revenue and the profitability, and then together as a team, we we sold it in 2021 to WheelPro Tune again.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Cool. Where did uh is it Morimoto?

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Morimoto.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Where did that come into play?

SPEAKER_03 14:10

Morimoto, so uh I this was when I was in college at Ohio State. There was the Retrofit Sores, right? Which was the store that sold all these different brands of lights. Um the best ones were Japanese. Koito, Matsushita, Denso, all the Japanese stuff was known like amongst people who knew headlights as the best stuff. And so I wanted to make my own house brand for the retrofit stores. That house brand is what became Morimoto, but what inspired me was that I was I was high watching the Iron Chef. And Iron Chef Morimoto came on. I think I had spent probably the whole day like browsing the internet for like Japanese cities and other things to take inspiration from. And I was like Morimoto, that's it. That's yeah, that's it. Then there it is. Yeah, that's hilarious. So that's that's a true story. And and my claim to fame, I don't want to drag that on either, but you know, Morimoto came out of nowhere and it was nothing for a little while. But you know, if you look on Instagram now and you search Morimoto, there's more pictures of headlights than there are sushi.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Hilarious. And so like that's a success.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

I mean, that's that's it.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

And but you I mean you're growing a business from until 2018, you take in a partner and then it kind of just goes to the moon from there.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Yeah, right. I mean, it grew really, really well, really organically. Like I said, we had a great team, we were working in a great niche. And look, how I started that business is it's very simple, right? I mean, car enthusiasts, all different kinds of parts you can you know put on your car wheels, tires, suspension, lights. But in lights, like that category was notoriously shitty.

unknown 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

You know, like HID kits was like, yeah, I want HIDs, but they're all junk, but whatever, I'll buy one and I'll replace it in six months.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

We can all agree on that. And so like my position was I want HIDs, but I want them not to be shitty. And so like that's literally was like the entire thesis of the business is like, why don't we go in here, like, let's just do this right and try to make the highest quality product that we can for car enthusiasts who want to upgrade the lights on their car, they're willing to pay more, but they don't want a piece of shit.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

You know, like they don't they don't want to you know succumb to that. And so I mean that's what it was. And so we were never like the company or the brand, and the brand still isn't today, like that would come in in the category and compete, you know, on pricing to try to be like the most value player. We're just like, let's make the best product we can in that category.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah, and there's value in that because like you said, every six months you're you get a little light on the dash, one stops working.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Your light bulbs out, you're getting pulled over, you can't. I mean, you can't see like lighting, you need lights on your car. That's important. But like people were just uh, you know, like they were just accustomed to HID kits being something that they want, but they were all junk, and so I you know, I was like, let's change that.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Now, before we get into this and what's behind this right here, uh while we're on the topic of lighting, tell us about founders' parts. Is that it?

SPEAKER_03 17:08

Yeah, founders parts, well founders parts, so um all right, quick thing before founders parts. So, you know, as you know, like sold the company, we sold the company again. I mean, a great, great opportunity and a great experience overall. But at some point, you know, I decided to leave because there were more suits and ties walking around than there were car enthusiasts. It is what it is, right? Um, and there were a lot of projects as the chief product officer for the entire lighting division of the company that I wanted to do, you know, that I wanted to support that, you know, finance, you know, whatever the bureaucracy wouldn't sign off on. And so Founders Parts was basically like all the things that I wanted to do as the chief product officer for the company that I started and grew that didn't get approved by other people in suits and ties, and then I left and I'm like, pew, pew, pew, pew, and I'm gonna go make these lights myself.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Hilarious, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Um and so uh Founders Parts is it's a pretty small company. You know, it's more of like a way to just kind of keep my foot in the door in the automotive industry just because I've always truly enjoyed it. Um we make um really, really, really nice high-end lights um for Ferrari and Porsche, classic Ferrari and Porsche. Awesome. So I mean again, you guys know like old 360s and 430s, if you look at the OEM lights, like they're all hazed out, and they don't even make those lights anymore. You can't even buy an OEM 360 headlight from the factory anymore because that's just out of production. I'm like, all right.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

So you guys are making 360 headlights?

SPEAKER_03 18:38

360 headlights, 430 headlights with real carbon fiber inside, so they look just like the you know, the 430 you know uh headlights with the carbon in them. Um same thing with the 360s, and uh we released SKUs for Porsche 964 taillights, which if you touch one of those, like the OEM one, it's gonna fall apart. Yeah. Um 997.2 taillights and 996 wide body. So you know, look, and the and the reason why those guys didn't want to give a green light to these projects is because they are they're for niche audiences, right? Like the company by the time I left was making lights for Ford F-150s, you know, like Dodge Rams, Toyota Forerunners, like all the like obvious stuff out there. And I always saw opportunity in um you know niches that you know had people who wanted something, but like nobody else was doing it. It's like unpopular to do it, right? So like Ferrari guys they need lights, but can't even get OEM. I'm gonna make them. I'll be the one guy making it for a small group of people, but I'll be the only player in town. And so that's kind of founders' parts.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

So this is a fairly small business, but it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

And that's a that's a good option instead of like scouring the internet trying to find like a used headlight or a used taillight, but you've got this modern OEM plus kind of solution. Yeah. I mean, I think it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Yeah. And the headlights, I mean, are really designed to be more or less OEM replica. So they're not like not trying to like rice out your Ferrari. It's very much respects like the originality of the car.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Is your sister shipping those out or different strategy?

SPEAKER_03 20:15

No, she's retired from working for me. She's grown up now. But uh that would be cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

All right, so going on to the uh piece de Resistance, this uh Milton Coffee Company or Milton Coffee Co. Line one, it's sitting right here. Where did this start?

SPEAKER_03 20:30

It's quite nice, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 20:31

It is super nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

I mean well, where do I begin on this, right? So let me let me just underscore what you know the story that I just told, right? Like in each in the in the world of like automotive enthusiasts, people want HIDs on their car. But they understand like all HID kits are junk, okay? In the world of coffee and coffee machines, this is a very similar story. I'll I'll connect the dots here in a second. In a sense that single-served coffee, pods, Curig, and espresso is the biggest group of coffee machines, it's the biggest category within coffee machines on the planet. The US, North America, globally. The pod coffee machines are the number one. But I didn't I didn't understand why no company had invested in making a high-quality machine for the biggest user group out there, right? I mean, everybody loves pods, but they've just kind of like grown accustomed to or accepted the fact that like the machines themselves are mediocre at best. Plastic inside and out, like they're kind of embarrassing on your countertop, they don't look great. Um and the coffee itself, like is it's good, but it's it's not great. Yeah. If you know better, like you know better. And so, anyways, after I was done working at um TRS and Morimoto, and I left, I had some free time. I was like, I want to invest more into coffee as a hobby because I've always loved coffee. And I bought myself an amazing coffee machine by a company called Slayer. And they make these machines in Washington state by hand as a as a $12,000 coffee machine.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Oh geez.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Much like, okay, I I guess I have a lot of like there's a lot of patterns in my life. Much like I had no idea how to drive my E46 stick shift when I got it. I had no idea how to use this machine when I bought it either. So like I get the. But it was coming to the house. It was coming to the house. I'm like, I want it. I'll figure it out. So they they came and they installed this machine in my house. The guys that came and they were like, you know, they gave me the rundown on how it works. And um ultimately I figured it out, right? I mean it's got a shot counter on it, so like a 3,000 shots later on this machine. And that thing is just as much a piece of like countertop art as it is a piece of equipment or an appliance that makes incredible coffee. Um but nobody knows how to use that, right? Nobody knows how to use that. And it just so happens that in the world of coffee or pro coffee or like the coff, the companies that make the gear, they only make really nice gear for enthusiasts, right? People who are enthusiastic about coffee, they're willing to spend the time, you know, like dialing in the grind size, the temperature, like all of the things, so that, you know, maybe if you're lucky five minutes later you've got a great cup of coffee. So there was only nice machines that you know were A, truly high quality, and B, um, you know, like looked the part for those guys. Call it like the one percenters of coffee, right? They're like real enthusiasts. But the other ninety-nine percent, the average people who like, I just need my caffeine and like I gotta get in the car, I got stuff to do, use machines like this. You know, like put my pot in and push the button, and I gotta get back to work. But there's nothing that anybody had made up until now that was like a nice piece of equipment that was, you know, truly well engineered, like truly high quality, and or like looked just appealing, you know, on your countertop. And so I dusted off my you know, my years of experience in product design and development, you know, at my former business, paired that with like my new kind of like passion for hobby, you know, my perspective on the fact that this was a very large customer base who, in my opinion, was vastly underserved by the incumbent, you know, like Nespresso. And um, I dove in. So yeah, started the company. I started the project um in the end at the end of 2024, literally sketching it up on a napkin. I mean, that's where everything starts. I probably like find the drawings where I'm like sketching, you know, like on my on my notepad, you know, like what this machine could look like and like conceptualizing like how I want it to be different than what you know was mainstream. And um, you know, look, I mean, I'll I'll be completely like just honest, you know, like in this conversation is that it is the most expensive Nespresso machine on the planet. Like, I'm not not trying to like sugarcoat that or hide that, right? But in the world of coffee, first of all, it's a way bigger customer group than people buying HID kits for the disagree on that. There's way more people that drink coffee than than put HID kits on their car. So, you know, that that sort of made sense to me. But as the nicest machine, like it's designed for one percenters who drink pod coffee. So it is the most expensive, but it was never designed to be cheap. Okay? And so like you have to understand that Nespresso is a business, credit where credits do, they're in business to sell pods. They don't want to sell you machines. Like their business model is razor and blade. The machines are designed purposely to be cheap so that they can get you into their ecosystem so they can sell you pods over and over and over again every single day, right? And this machine was designed to be the opposite. So like 99% of that audience is like, What I don't understand this. Like, I can get one at Target for $99. Why is yours? That's okay. Go get it. And that's exactly it. It's like, go buy it. Like, I'm totally fine and like comfortable with that. But 1% of you are are not happy with that. Dude, I would totally buy it. Or your space, or likes the fact that it's like your coffee's not going through 10 layers of plastic before it gets in your cup, because this one's all stainless steel. Nice. So you know, look, I mean, I have a history of making shit that I want and hoping somebody else likes it. Whether it's cool headlights for my stratus or coffee machines, you know, that check the box for me. And um I guess that's that's the playbook. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

It's a good playbook.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

So it's only two years old. Business is two years old that you started, right? Well, the business itself conceptually is two years old. Okay, so I started drafting notes at the end of 2024. Um I left my old company at the end of 2024. And so I started full-time on it, um, bootstrapped at the beginning of 2025, uh, building a team, you know, building a website, like maturing like the thesis statement of the business while also co-developing the product in parallel with that. Um and we started taking pre-orders early this year, and we will finally start delivering those pre-orders next week. Okay. So we got a lot of work to do. Exciting. Yeah, we got a lot of work to do. Awesome. But we've taken a lot of pre-orders, and so I think it just underscores that there's people out there who, you know, like they value that convenience of a machine like this, but they don't want to want a piece of shit.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Yeah. That's the exciting part. You get like your first anytime you're in business, the first sales, the one that's furthest away, the person that buys three of them, all that stuff's super exciting in the very beginning.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Oh, 100%. Look, I mean again, like I not to draw too many parallels, but I came from a company that sold 80,000 sets of headlights in a year. We were doing close to um 75 million dollars in revenue. That's it. And when somebody comes to the website for Milton Coffee and buys a box of pods, I'm like, yes, we're going to this is an awesome pod, guys. You know, so like we're back at the bottom, but like we're you know, we're celebrating like every win like that, you know. So it's been fun. I mean, we got a little buzz going, made a good connection with um like Hearst Publishing, who owns like Road and Track and Car and Driver. Yeah, and we're gonna be serving um espresso with those guys out at the quail and nice uh car week. Um, I was telling you earlier about um the PT espresso bar at Luft. So yeah, we got some cool stuff going on. That's cool. We really like you know, half of our customer base so far are car guys.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah. Of course.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

I'm a car guy.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Like I said, I made it for myself. Is there a mobile version or no? Like a mobile in-the-car version? Mobile in-the-car version.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

You know, like that old Volkswagen like Beetle one that has a coffee machine on the dashboard? Not yet. No. We got we got some things we gotta work out first.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Speaking of product development, what was the biggest challenge with getting it to this final form right here?

SPEAKER_03 28:52

You know, a lot of things are kind of similar to, you know, like the projects that I was working on in the past. And so like sourcing, you know, and having an understanding of how materials are made and developed, be it injection molding, die casting, stamping, like a lot of that stuff kind of crosses over. What was difficult though was you you really take for granted, I think, a lot of the user interface type things that go into appliances, as a you know, as like somebody who uses appliances every day, you know, like you have to think about like how the water tank is gonna go in and out. You know, like how heavy is that water tank gonna be when it's filled with water? You know, like what do the lights mean when they're flashing, and how are people gonna perceive that you know, without any prior experience? And so a lot of you know, development and thought went into the user experience and making it intuitive. And you know, you would think that that's a lot easier than it is, like again, as people who use that stuff every day, but it continued to evolve like up into the point where we're like, dude, we gotta pull the plug and get these things in production. Um and I think we nailed it. I think we did a really good job. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, but that was that was a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yeah, yeah. Well, it looks awesome. Yeah, and it matches your 993 that you brought today.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

I know.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, tell us a little bit about the car and kind of how you've mirrored the the machine to look like it.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Well, the machine itself, um this actually is underbird green. That's Irish green. So that's a different PTS shade, but I got an underbur green in the garage, so don't mind that. Um it's woven leather, uh real leather on the side, which is the same as what's in the interior of the car. Insert B-roll here.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

Um and that was actually one of the most fun parts about development, is there's such a wide variety of materials and finishes and um you know the way these things play together. So like leather is one of them. There's six shades of that. There's carbon fiber, there's hammered metal, there's wood. And so, like, no matter what it is, you can put these things anywhere. But the point is that this one matches that car, which is possible no matter if it's a you know restored 9-11, you know, or a Corvette or a Lamborghini or whatever. Like the whole one of the you know major points of the of the machine is that it can match whatever it is you want.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

I haven't made this one. Yeah, then you're bringing a lot more emotion into the coffee business by doing this.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

I just love it. Yeah, you know, I just love it. I mean, in cars and coffee, they go hand in hand.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

You almost need when you go to spec out your new Porsche, this needs to be like on the configurator. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

Check matching coffee just too. Porsche can charge you know 10 grand for it. You know, I don't know if I can at the same price, but I think that's a great idea. Just uh we'll give you your commission check when those are.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

There you go. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 31:32

So the turbo, not to um not to miss that. It's a uh it's a 9693 turbo. Um bought it in 2019. It was my second turbo. I had another one that had like a hundred thousand miles on it before that, and it was a huge piece of junk. But I always wanted another one, so I got this one which was 27,000 miles on it when I bought it. So it was all original navy blue over gray. It's not navy blue over gray anymore.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, obviously.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

When I bought the car, I never even drove it home. I drove it straight to the body shop up the street from Merritt Partners, um, where I bought it over in Chambly. And the guy that ran the body shop, Ted, he used to run Porsche Perimeters Body Shop, but he went independent, stripped the whole thing down. I mean, it was complete nut and bolt restoration, um, dry ice detail, motor was completely rebuilt. Um, of course, now it's Irish green, really, really properly done. Um, the interior all went to uh guy named Phil Cato, who's a friend of Brian Fuller, if you know who that is.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Um Yeah, I was on the Cafe and Octane TV show with him.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Yeah, so Cato worked with Fuller. I was friends with Fuller. He did the all the interior on the car. It's now it's leather, you know, tan alcontain. Looks stunning and woven leather, and um, you know, it's green over tan. I mean, what can I say? It doesn't get any better than that, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:50

So how many green over tan cars does that make for you now?

SPEAKER_03 32:53

Uh I'm gonna have to take a second to count. One, two, three, four, five, five.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

So you have five currently? Yes. Name them off real quick if you don't mind for the audience.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

And one coffee machine. That's right. Technically six, just put some wheels on it. Did I say five? Okay, so the 993 Turbo, Audi RS6 Avant. Um, I've got my 550 Marinello. Yep, saw that one. Beautiful. Um, I've got my GT3 Touring, um, and then my uh 96 Ferrari 355 GTA.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Gosh, I love that car.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

All green over tan. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

It's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

It was a toss up what to drive today, but the turbo, the turbo one, because I had a little bit of traffic to find the other ones.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

You ready for some rapid fire?

SPEAKER_03 33:34

Let's go. Does sound good?

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Let's do it. Greatest car you've ever driven.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Drew RGT.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Okay. And you still have that one, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Still have that one. That's the only car I have that's not green over tan. Yeah, not green. You're gonna you're gonna oh I'm I'm messing up the rapid fire by asking questions. No, no, no, you're good. You're good. We can make it some little.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

Is it gonna be green and tan or no? Uh I had plans to paint it green over tan. Or I had the car's tan inside already, but I had plans to paint it iridium green. It's a toss-up. The car that has appreciated so much. I never planned to sell it, so I don't know if that really cares.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

You could do a recommission.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

It's likely to end up green.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Yeah. Yeah, that'll be. It's highly likely.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

So it'd be six.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

All right, so it gave me kind of a rhetorical one here with my AI. It's a green over tan or bust. Obviously, I know the answer for that. But if you couldn't do green over tan, what would be the other color combination?

SPEAKER_03 34:20

I don't know. Maybe maybe blue over tan spectrum. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Uh let's see here. Your Milton one you're Milton Line one or a perfectly spec Porsche.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

I go Milton Line one. I get two more Porsches.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

This is a good one. One entrepreneur who changed how you think about building things.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

One entrepreneur who changed how I think about building things. Um I want to go Jonathan Hole, merit partner. Okay. Good friend of mine. I love Jonathan and I respect Jonathan. You know, A, he's somebody that I always want to be around because like he helps me be a better person. What I love about Jonathan, though, is that he's such a grinder, but he also like has a normal life. He's got four kids, a wife. He tries to maintain that balance, and like he lets me know that like it's okay to be tired sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

That's good.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

And so I respect Jonathan for that. That's a good one. Very successful and he's a great guy.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

The moment you knew TRS was actually going to work.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

When I left college, and as part of a as a prerequisite to graduation, I had to do an interview at the business school to graduate, like a real interview to get a job, get a um uh whatever, get a job after school. They said, Why do you want this job? And I said, I don't. And that was like I was like, I'm going with headlights.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

If you if you had to start over tomorrow with nothing, same game or something completely different?

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Same thing. Do what I like. Follow my hobbies, turn them into my businesses, work hard.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Yeah. Uh best piece of advice you've ever received and who gave it?

SPEAKER_03 35:50

I'll give you two. One, my mom told I told my mom I wanted a Ferrari. She said, good. If you can afford it, you can have it. I was like, deal. Two. Um guy I knew in Cleveland, Ohio, it's an older guy. He said, work on your business, not in your business.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Yeah, that is a good one. Um what does success look like for you right now? Not revenue, not headlines, just life.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

I'm trying to maintain a little bit of balance. You know, I mean, especially like in the TRS glory days, I was like a nonstop, you know, like 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. grinder. I got three kids now. Yeah. You know, I try to take care of myself, spend time with my wife every Friday. We were together all morning. And so, not over-index on anything. You know, have fun with it. Like, nobody's got a gun to my head to like make this a smashing success. And so just take it naturally. Just enjoy it and like enjoy what I've built and don't uh go nuts over it.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

That's good. Porsche Ferrari, forever. Porsche. Okay. Uh the car in the current collection that gets driven the most and why?

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Depends on the time of day. If it's me alone, probably the 993.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Really?

SPEAKER_03 36:58

It's fun. It's easy to drive, though. I mean, I love taking cars out and riding around, running errands, and stuff like that. If I'm driving with my wife, I'll take the GT3 touring because it's comfortable. I can close the windows and her hair's not blowing around. Down buckets. Turn the air conditioning on. Does it have buckets? Yeah, buckets. Oh, it does? Okay, she doesn't mind. Okay. Otherwise, it's my raptor, which is completely covered in crumbs and dirt and all that stuff for my face.

unknown 37:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

Alright, last one. What do you want people to walk away from this conversation thinking about?

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Uh look, I'm a normal dude. Honestly, you know, I've I've accomplished a lot. That I'm a normal guy, that nobody handed me anything, and all I did was turn my passions and my hobbies into my businesses, right? And I think that that's really an important connection that I want to make and I want people to know because people, everybody dreams, right? But people see others that have achieved a certain level of success. I'll never get there. You know, look, I wanted to be a valet car driver when I was a kid because I thought that was the best way for me to get behind the wheel of like a nice car. That's good. That's a true story. And my mom gave me that advice. If you want a Ferrari, go find a way to afford a Ferrari. You know, and look, I was lucky enough to find a way to turn my hobby into my business. But the point is that unless you love what you're doing, you know, you're not gonna have the same level of dedication and energy and enthusiasm that you need to invest the time to turn that business into something meaningful. And so, like for me, now I feel reinvigorated. I didn't feel that way when I left my old company because it had changed so much. But I mean, it could be Sunday morning at 6 a.m. and I'm like, hell yeah, I want to wake up and work on that. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

Or I could stay up late, talking to my factory, it's 10 p.m. on Tuesday. Like, I don't mind at all, right? And I and you have to love what you're doing to take something, you know, and make it meaningful. So that's it.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

That's brilliant, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:57

Yeah. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Well, Matt, thanks for coming by, man. Thanks for hopping on the pod. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Pleasure. Let's drink some coffee.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Let's do it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Let's do it, guys. Let's see how this thing works. Cool.