Episode 219 with Sean P. Holman, media mogul.

From multiple subscriptions to multiple books – Sean P. Holman, writer, editor, businessman, dad. Follow his journey through the media. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

5:06 – growing up, you could get yourself in as much trouble as you wanted to 

8:57 – what can I get away with before my mom would get mad at me for spending money on something I probably didn’t need?             

15:38 – offroading was like freedom, you were away from the road, no street signs or anyone telling you what to do

31:28 – At the end of my career, I had been there for 20 years, and I was overseeing all the truck and off-road magazines when they decided to dissolve that part of the business 

40:32 – The romanticism of off-roading started for me in the magazine; the problem is we used to be influencers before there were influencers

53:35 – My favorite is the Raptor story, it goes back to 2007, starting with “how did you know?”

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Transcript

[00:00:01.080] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:45.280] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread victoriously.

[00:01:13.020] - 

Have you seen 4Low magazine yet? 4low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4LOW is the magazine for you. 4Low cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4Lowmagazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:39.800] - Big Rich Klein

On this episode of Conversations with Big Rich, I'll be speaking with a guy who went from having 13 magazine subscriptions as a kid to working his way up in the print magazine business. That's right, Sean P. Holman. Sean, it's great to have you on the podcast, and I'm really looking forward to hearing your story.

[00:02:00.340] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, thanks for inviting me on. It's one of those things that I feel like everybody in the industry has been on, so I'm glad to get my turn now.

[00:02:08.830] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it's a fun thing, and hopefully we learn all about you. With that, let's get started. Where were you born and raised?

[00:02:20.590] - Sean P. Holman

I'm a SoCal native, born in Orange County in Anaheim, and then been a lifelong resident of Huntington Beach, California. So been here forever.

[00:02:31.250] - Big Rich Klein

Huntington Beach is pretty good.

[00:02:33.680] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, it doesn't suck. I've traveled the world. I've wheeled on four or five continents, and I've had a chance to see a lot of different places. And it's funny because I'll get home and you land at John Wayne Airport and you get that ocean air hit your face and you go, Man, I live here. And there's never been a place I've gone where I like more than where I already live.

[00:02:56.850] - Big Rich Klein

Wow, you're fortunate. There are lots of places that I would love to live. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we got the ocean smell, too, but it was from the fog. Oh, yeah. Grew up right by San Francisco International Airport, so We had wind and we had fog at the right times of the year, but it was always windy. That's why they put the airport there.

[00:03:20.790] - Sean P. Holman

Cold, windy, Candlestick Park.

[00:03:23.870] - Big Rich Klein

Yes, absolutely. I started going there, ride my bike there as a kid, watching Giants and going to 49er... Well, went to 49er games first in Keesar in Golden Gate Park. I'm old enough to do that. And then a season ticket holder with the Niners, and still am.

[00:03:41.050] - Sean P. Holman

So, yeah. Very cool.

[00:03:43.320] - Big Rich Klein

So let's talk about those early years, your family, of course, must have worked in the area?

[00:03:52.290] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah. My family was from here. My dad's side of the family My mom was from the LA area, and my grandfather worked at the Department of Water Power and moved the family down to Huntington Beach sometime in the '60s. Then my mom's side of the family is from Louisiana, and my grandfather was a, I guess, Carpenter, but they moved out to town. It was a dairy area in South Los Angeles County called Norwalk. But yeah, so my- No longer dairy. No longer dairy. No, it hasn't been that way in a long time, although there's a few a few hints if you know where to look. But yeah, so from my mom and dad, they were SoCal natives. And yeah, just they decided to raise the family here. And we're all still here. We're all still in SoCal.

[00:04:55.710] - Big Rich Klein

So what was it like growing up in that area? What'd you do as a kid for entertainment when you weren't having to do school work and stuff?

[00:05:06.830] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, it's funny. I used to joke how I never... I lived behind the beach. I don't have any tattoos. I don't surf. In fact, it's a joke from when my wife and I met each other. But yeah, as a kid, we rode our bikes a lot. I mean, it was pretty awesome living at the beach growing up. I mean, my house, I grew up in is my parents still live there, the mile from the house I own now. So it's nice because we're close to family and stuff. But it was super safe. You can get yourself in as much trouble as you wanted to. We had an airport here that was a shopping center. We used to go lay in the weeds by the runway and watch the planes take off and land until a pilot would report us. We get chased out of there. Then I would go ride my bike. I would go ride 20 miles. I would ride to Angel Stadium or up the River Jetty or down to Corona Del Mar, which is south of Newport Beach. I looked back now on how far and how independent I was as a kid, where my mom basically saying, Hey, come back before the streetlights come on.

[00:06:17.210] - Sean P. Holman

And we were just gone all day. And when we go to the beach, we go to the wedge in Newport, go boogie boarding, rollerblading. But a lot of it was just friends riding our bikes and going somewhere. That is until we had a chance to drive. And then, of course, our world expanded greatly.

[00:06:38.720] - Big Rich Klein

Right. We'll get into that. What was school like for you?

[00:06:45.670] - Sean P. Holman

It was all right. I went to a private elementary school and then went to a Catholic elementary school. So I had been in a public and parochial school all through eighth grade and then went to a public high school, so went to Huntington. It was definitely a pretty big culture shock coming from a private school to a public school where I didn't really have the friends that all knew each other since kindergarten and all that stuff. But met friends, ran a cross country in track, and then became friends with the auto shop teacher, Mr. Spring, and spent a lot of time in auto shop. I've always been somebody who loved I had anything automotive. I had 13 magazine subscriptions growing up. I soaked them up every day. The best time of the month was when those magazines was hit the mailbox. I had Auto Week. That was the one magazine that came weekly. I would just absorb as much information as I could. Then I would spend a lot of time in auto shopping out. It eventually became his teacher's aid there. It was great. It was a... It gave me a nice place to land and hang out where I knew my stuff and I didn't feel overwhelmed by the rest of the high school experience.

[00:08:05.900] - Big Rich Klein

Was your dad or anybody else in the family hooked on automotive?

[00:08:12.880] - Sean P. Holman

Not really. I mean, certainly not my parents. I had an uncle here. My grandpa was a car guy, actually both of them, but not in this. They like cars. They're working on cars. They knew about cars, but they didn't have a hot rod or project or a toy. All my family is super practical people, and they did what they needed to do to keep the car going and going to work and doing that. They didn't have a lot of fun on the automotive side. Cars were tools. I don't know where I got it or why, but there's just something about cars ever since I was small that I just loved.

[00:08:53.540] - Big Rich Klein

What was your first car?

[00:08:57.220] - Sean P. Holman

My first car was a 1987 Honda Cord LXI with pop-up headlights. It was my dad's car. He got himself a new car. When I turned 16, they gave me his Honda. It was great because that was the loaded version. I had air conditioning, and I had pop-up headlights, had the moonroof. In that year, only the LXIs were fuel-injected. It was fuel-injected. That was my first foray into modifying cars. I put some Honda Civic VX, super lightweight inky wheels on it and some different tires and put a CD player in it and some better speakers. I dabbled with it a little bit. Sort of my first foray What can I get away with before my mom would get mad at me for spending money on something that probably didn't need to have money spent on? She's always said, I'm like a cat. She's like, You can't just buy a car and leave it alone. You're like a cat. You have to on all of them. I guess that's true. I haven't owned one car that I haven't done something to. I've owned all sorts of different stuff. I worked through auto shop at ROP, so I worked at the local Ford dealership, and I worked at the local Honda dealership, and when I was 17 years old.

[00:10:22.560] - Sean P. Holman

I realized when I had my Honda, the way to get discounts was to go to the parts counter on Saturday morning when the parts manager wasn't It was just the counter guys, and I'd bring them a box of donuts. I realized it's really cheap to buy a box of donuts. But if you bring the parts guys on Saturday as a box of donuts, they'll give you their 20% discount. And so anytime I needed stuff, and I just started hanging out there a bunch. Eventually, one of the guys says, You're here so much, why don't you just apply for a parts driver job? I was like, Well, what does that do? He says, Well, we need you on Saturdays. You're already here on Saturdays. They said, Come in Monday. Here's an application. Meet our boss and bring your driving record. I went in on Saturday, sat down with a guy who had the name of Mike Rickets. Mike, he said, Well, your driving record is pretty clean. I said, Yeah. He goes, You're either a good driver or you're lucky. Which one is it? I said, Good driver, sir.

[00:11:23.430] - Big Rich Klein

Good call.

[00:11:25.350] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah. He asked me, he goes, Well, do you know how to drive stick? I said, Yeah, absolutely. I had no idea how to drive stick. He said, Do you know your way around town? I said, Yeah, I have a Thomas guide, so I'm old enough to remember those. He said, All right, we start Saturday. My first day at the Honda dealership I walked down to the warehouse. They handed me the keys to a 1990 Toyota pickup truck, white, no right mirror, no radio, no air conditioning, vinyl seats with a stick, loaded up with parts. They handed me a clipboard, and the clipboard I had all the stops I need to make to deliver the parts. So we're in the back of the pickup. And the parts guy said, Don't speed, but time is of the essence. Have fun. So I got in. I rode the clutch all the way out of the warehouse on the Beach Boulevard, and of course, popped it and did a big one wheel burn out right in front of the dealership on my very first day. And taught myself to drive stick that day. When I came back for lunch or to refill the truck, what was that all about?

[00:12:27.340] - Sean P. Holman

You can't be doing burnouts in front of the dealership. I'm like, I wasn't used to that clutch. All right, well, don't let it happen again. And from there on, everything I've owned and bought new has always had a stick. In fact, I've got a Wrangler 392 now. It's the first vehicle in my entire life I've ever bought new that was not a manual transmission.

[00:12:48.000] - Big Rich Klein

Wow. Okay. And when was your first foray into off-road?

[00:12:59.720] - Sean P. Holman

So I worked the summers at a Boy Scout camp down in North San Diego County. Anyone in Southern California who's a Boy Scout, especially in Orange County, would have heard of Los Valley. Los Valley was at the end of a 14-mile, for me it's 11-mile dirt road. It was very remote. It was this 1400 acre valley. Super awesome, super secluded and ultra rural. We started going there as kids, and then eventually, I guess when I was about 13 or 14, I got on staff and stayed on staff until I was 17. It was three or four summers. All the guys there had four-wheel drive pickup trucks, or they had Jeeps, or whatever. We would pile out our days off for Saturdays, and we would pile out on our days off, and we would go into Temecula, which was the nearest town, to go have a day off, get supplies, get whatever we needed. We did things where... Keep in mind, this is a shelf road that has sheer drop offs, where when you were riding the big yellow school bus as a kid, if you're in the back row of the school bus, the rear of the bus overhung the edge of the road.

[00:14:18.330] - Sean P. Holman

That was always the fun place to be because you can look over and the overhanging school bus was off the road. When it got on staff, we would close down the road and we would race and see who could have the fastest record on the road, which I think was, I don't know, 10 minutes or something like that, which is stupid, stupid fast for a bunch of idiots. But we would all... Everybody's driving in a four by fours. And then a lot of times there'd be like a four wheeling trip on a Saturday. And I had a buddy with an old vintage Dodge Power Wagon. I had a buddy with a YJ, a CJ7. And that's when I first started riding in the backs of the Jeep with no tops on it on this dirt road. I'm like, This is It was amazing. It really started there. With some friends that I met from there, I got into some off-roading where we'd go out to the desert and we'd start going spelunking. We'd find old mines, which, of course, are all covered up now. But we used to rappel down into them and go walking around underground.

[00:15:18.260] - Sean P. Holman

It usually took a four-wheel drive to get there. That was the thing. It was get a four-wheel drive, get some buddies together and go explore. I set my sights on getting my own four-wheel drive.

[00:15:34.200] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. And what was that first four-wheel drive?

[00:15:38.460] - Sean P. Holman

It was a 1994 Ford Ranger Splash. It had the cool sports seat It had a four liter, so it had the better engine. This was early, so it was the push rod, not the overhead cam. And it had a stepside bed because it was a splash, but it had the off-road package. So I had the deer hoof wheels on it and the two-speed transfer case with the auto hubs. I ended up putting a James Duff lift kit on it. That was my first adventure machine. My dad and I took it all over the desert to go camping and to go places. I with some friends and by myself just exploring and taught myself how to drive off road. I fell in love with it because offroading was like freedom. You were away from the road. You're out in the There's no street signs or anyone telling me what to do. You're like man and machine against nature. It was one of the things where you're just like, there wasn't a better place to be free and away from people. Then I found this thing that if you are out West or especially in Southern California, called the Mojave Road Guide.

[00:16:51.730] - Sean P. Holman

The Mojave Road Guide was written by a historian by the name of Dennis Caesbier. Basically, it was the original wagon road Southern California that started at the banks of Colorado River and ended up in Barstow. It was 138 miles long. In his book, he goes mile by mile. As you're driving the Mojave Road with the guide, there are no signs or anything. You marked by rock herons and things like that. He's telling you the flora, the fauna, the history as you're driving along the trail. You have to be really precise with your mileage so you don't miss anything. It was the first time in my life that the two things I really love the most, which were history and off-roading, melded into one thing. That really got me interested in exploring ghost towns and mines and Mojave Desert history and things like that. But I used to take my ranger out there and it was great.

[00:17:45.600] - Big Rich Klein

So did you ever, while out exploring, I would imagine you did it a lot on your own, just one vehicle. Did you ever have a stuck situation or breakdown where you were All right, I'm on my own. How do I get out of this?

[00:18:04.130] - Sean P. Holman

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think anybody goes off road, especially when you're young and you're pushing your own limits. I never really got stuck a lot, but I had a few fairly catastrophic issues. I remember one time we got a inch and a half in diameter branch through the sidewall of the tire, but it wasn't losing air that fast. My dad and I were about 150 miles from home, so we drove it all the way home with this giant stick sticking out the tire, and it lasted the whole way home. That was funny. I've had it where we did a diff service and the diff plug fell out of the back of the diff off road. And fortunately, I caught it in time. I had a buddy of mine who went to shop, came out of the trailer in gear lube, and got me home. One of the worst ones was my dad and I were out with a small group in Death Valley, and I had my 2002 I had a FX4. I was the prototype for the RCD kit at the time that removed the torsion bars and put in Bilstein coilovers in the front.

[00:19:10.260] - Sean P. Holman

And this truck eventually was built up in Four Wheeler magazine as Project Range Runner, with the Dixon Racing long travel kit and all that stuff. But we were in Death Valley, and I was coming around a corner, probably a little too hot, and there was a Boulder that had fallen off the side of the road or had fallen off the side onto the road. And it was, I'd say it was probably like two and a half, three feet tall and pointy. And I slammed into it really hard with my front right wheel. And I thought for sure I blew my tires. I was like, Crap, now we have a flat in that valley. This isn't good. When I got out, the tire was fine. And I was like, okay. And then I look and it was a puddle of power steering fluid underneath. What I had done was shove the tie rod through the case, cracking the case. And it was shattered. The whole case was shattered and leaking out fluid. I'm like, Oh, this is real bad. I mean, nobody's carrying a spare steering rack or anything like that. This is probably dumb, as most things we often do are.

[00:20:20.920] - Sean P. Holman

But I figured I got in and it would still steer, so mechanically, the steering wheel wasn't straight by any means, and the tie rod was bent, but the truck would steer. It was just super, super heavy, like 800 pound drille heavy. But what we ended up doing is I tried to bypass the power steering pump so that it wasn't pumping fluid anymore and just go full manual, and that didn't work. Then we tried to do a couple of other things to bypass the rack. Then what we ended up doing is just cutting the lines. I had some tease on me, and I just put the high pressure side into the low pressure side. It fed itself, put oil back in, and the pump just recirculated the oil, but it didn't go to the rack anymore. We were 400 miles away from home, I think. Might be maybe 350, something like that. We drove home the whole way. We left as soon as we could, and we started heading home. That thing should have broken on the freeways and sent us tumbling into traffic or something. But from some miracle of God, it didn't break. The steering was so bad that on on-ramps, even if you have a manual steering vehicle, the faster you go, the easier it gets to steer.

[00:21:44.970] - Sean P. Holman

This was still difficult to steer. I had to have my dad lean over from the passenger seat and help me steer around freeway on-ramps. That's how bad it was. But we made it home, and I still look back at that and I'm like, I have no idea why we made it home, how we made it home, especially when we pulled the rack out and I saw how it was all shattered. The whole case had cracks through it all the way around, and that thing held together. To this day, I have no idea how we made it home or how it held together, but that was probably one of the bad ones. Of course, all my years at Fourwheelers magazine, we had all sorts of things, stock vehicles break off road. We blew transfer cases. We had drivers crash into the back of other drivers. We had vehicles disabled from jumping them for that perfect cover shot. So all that stuff happens, too. And then, of course, all the stocks that just come with regular travel. But I think I can count on one hand or less how many times I've been stuck And with the advent of traction boards and tow straps and all that stuff.

[00:22:52.780] - Sean P. Holman

Usually, I was the one extracting other people, but I haven't gotten too stuck where I wasn't able to self-extract.

[00:23:00.030] - Big Rich Klein

So do you have an idea of how many vehicles that you've owned?

[00:23:08.830] - Sean P. Holman

It's probably not as many as a guy like Freiburger, Pewe, or any of those guys. But I I started out with my '87 Honda Accord, had my '94 Range or Splash. Then it went back into the Honda world, and I had a 2000 Civic SI, which was a really awesome car. I love that thing. Then I had my I had a Wraps cube, a ranger FX4, and then I had a... What came after that? I had my '51 flat fender, my Willys CJ3A. Then I had a JK manual four-door. And then I had another JK manual four-door, but it was a 3.6, not a 3.8. And then I've had my 20 JL manual that got supercharged. I've got my JL 392, and I also have a 67 F100 that was still born when the magazine went away, when Trucking magazine went away. That is in some weird form right now. That is like 80% complete, and who knows when it'll ever drive again. Then I've got a 1942 Ford GPW, and I've got a 1960 Volkswagen Beatle that's also in various states of disrepair. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of different kinds of stuff.

[00:24:36.330] - Sean P. Holman

All of it cool, I think.

[00:24:38.090] - Big Rich Klein

Right. But you're not in that 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 range on number of vehicles you've had?

[00:24:47.640] - Sean P. Holman

No, I was always jealous of the guys I worked with because they always had some property or they were commandeered somebody else's property where they could store all their vehicles. I lived in suburban Orange County. I We had a two car garage and a driveway, so I had no place to put anything. And so I always had the one vehicle at a time, and that ended up being my project. As I've gotten older and gotten more space, my collection of things that I wanted or tinkered as grown. But through job changes and a little bit of mission creep, they're nowhere near where I want them to be right now. Right.

[00:25:25.990] - Big Rich Klein

So you said you had... Was that your first job the car dealership, Running Parts?

[00:25:32.840] - Sean P. Holman

No, my first job was out in the oil field. So you know anything about SoCal, Huntington Beach, big oil town, oil boom town, back in the early 1900s. But My dad worked for a division of Chevron. I was a homebuilder. And so he put me... They concocted some scheme for me to work when I was 14, I get to work from it because I always wanted to work. That was my thing. I always wanted to get out and do stuff. My mom, I think, probably had some concerns and wanted me to be a kid for a little while longer. So one summer, I was 14, they said, You're going to go out and do weed abatement for minimum wage out in the oil fields. So my job was to go around every oil or every oil pump and all the oil rigs, the things that look like a horse that are going up and down. The jacks, yeah. And then basically take a weed Whacker and weed whack all the weeds through the Bolsa Chica wetlands on Chevron's property. And they put me under a guy named Roland, who was a complete total asshole. And after about day one, I wanted to quit.

[00:26:40.480] - Sean P. Holman

And they're like, Well, that's life. You got to figure it out. Not everybody's going to be nice. I found out later they had him riding me a lot. He wanted me to learn my lesson a little bit.

[00:26:53.510] - Big Rich Klein

An intentional asshole.

[00:26:55.360] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, build a little character. It was actually fun. We would go to work in the morning, three across in a little square-body Chevy. They'd drop me off. They'd come pick me up for lunch. They'd drop me back off. They'd come pick me up at the end of the day, we'd go back to what we call the tank farm, which is where everybody worked out of. I would just be out there all day in the sun, summertime, just weed-whacking away. And taught me how to drive out there a little bit. It's like, Hey, move that truck around. Okay, cool. Just It was my first time of just being around guys who were guys and didn't care that a kid was there, and all the things that come with that.

[00:27:40.000] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome. And then the auto dealership? Kind of run through what your job history was before you got into the magazine industry.

[00:27:49.580] - Sean P. Holman

Oh, yeah. It's all over the place. So, yes, I worked there. And then I worked at a Sport Chalet, which was a sporting good store because I had a buddy who had it in there. And That place was horrible to work for, especially after the original family sold it. And while I was in high school, one of my dad's friends from high school, when he was there, had a little BMW Porsche Mercedes shop. I ended up working there for a few years as a service writer and customer service. I would pick up, deliver cars so that we detail their service. I'd write up tickets and sell jobs and all that stuff. That was actually really cool because I got to a lot of really rich people and saw how the value of money was a little bit different. Got to drive a lot of really cool cars, Porsche Turbo wide bodies, Porsche 928, We had customers that had... One had a Porsche 356 B. We had BMWs, 8 Series, 7 Series. We had a 840 CSI customer, 850 CSI customer. Bmw M3. This is when the E36 first generation BMW M3s came out to the US.

[00:29:09.730] - Sean P. Holman

So I got to drive a lot of really cool stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to experience. And I got to experience a completely different side of people and what their sensibilities were. So it was a good lesson. So I for three years. Then I had always wanted to be in law enforcement. When I was going to college, I went for my degree in criminal justice. A friend of mine was a police cadet for a local city and ended up applying there and then working there for three years, went through the police academy, graduated seven or eight out of 72 in my class, and then got broiled in politics that had nothing to do with me and ended up not getting hired on Then I worked at Boeing for a little while doing fire and security. I was working Graveyards, and I had another friend who I knew who was getting in the magazine world. He was like, Hey, I need a freelance writer. Do you want to write some stuff for me? I would work at night doing fire security, and then I'd go shoot a feature or write a story during the day and turn it into him and make a little side money.

[00:30:21.970] - Sean P. Holman

Then I met a friend of mine, Allison Harwood, who was at Truck Trend at the time on an event. Her and I hit it off. She's like, We need some people. This might be a good job for you. I'm like, Really? This is the kid that got 13 magazines every month. I had never envisioned being part of a magazine crew. I remember reading Car Driver where Cheva Cheva said back in the day in a letter to the editor how hard it was to become a magazine writer and that most people wouldn't be good at it. You should write it off unless you have an engineering degree. Of course, I had none of those things. But Allison calls me and she says, Hey, I know you really wanted to get into the off-road side. We don't have any openings there, but we have an opening at Trucking magazine. Maybe you should go there and earn your way up. I was like, Okay, well, that sounds interesting. I did that. I started at Trucking magazine, worked my way up to Trucking, and eventually, I was able to transfer over to Four Wheeler, where I was the tech editor at Four Wheeler for seven years.

[00:31:28.280] - Sean P. Holman

Then I went to I was the editor-in-chief of Diesel Power magazine. I ran a bunch of SIPs, like 4x4 garage, and then got control of the truck group, which was Truck Trend, Trucking, Mini Trucking. Diesel Power, and then eventually took over the Off-Road Group as well, which is Four Wheeler, Peterson's Four-Earn Off-Road, JP. Then at the end of my career there, I had been there for 20 years, and I was overseeing all the truck and off-road magazines on the editorial content side when they decided to disband or dissolve that part of their business, which is still sad because Four Wheeler was one of my favorite magazines growing up. I spent more than a decade on the magazine, and I oversaw the 60th anniversary, which is one of my favorite issues I think we've ever done. And at the end of that year, they pulled the cord on it, and that was tough.

[00:32:29.920] - Big Rich Klein

So going through the amount of time that you were there, you saw a lot of different owners.

[00:32:39.990] - Sean P. Holman

Seven.

[00:32:40.710] - Big Rich Klein

Seven different owners in 20 years.

[00:32:43.120] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah.

[00:32:44.290] - Big Rich Klein

What was it like every time that you had a new regime come in and somebody else sign in a paycheck? What was it like? What was the head trip like?

[00:32:58.480] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, we used to joke around because we couldn't remember. Somebody go, wait, what owner was it? So we used to call it Pepsi 10. So it was Primedia, EMAP, Source Interlink, the Enthusiast Network, which is known as 10. And that's how we could remember the different owners. But it was Peterson, EMAP, Source Interlink. And then there's also the Orange County magazine, McMullen Argus, that got sucked into that as well. And then 10, then the Enthusiast Network. Then we got bought by Discovery in a joint venture. It was crazy. We used to joke. I think it was Johnny Hunkins, who if you are in the magazine Fandam, you knew Johnny from Hot Rod and a bunch of other car magazines. I think he said it best, We have the best job in the world one day at a time. That was really the sentiment was this could end at any moment. People used to ask me, they go, Do you worry about your job? I'm like, Yeah, only every day. I was one of the fortunate ones to have a lot of longevity in there, along with the Rick Pewes and Christian Hazels and Fred Williams and Ken Brew-Bakers of the world.

[00:34:10.700] - Sean P. Holman

We formed, I think, a pretty tight friendship most of us over the years. But it was tough. Every time, it was like, Oh, boy, here we go. Because every year and a half, two years, we were back off to the races. Every time somebody bought us, it was over leveraged again. That meant cost cutting. When I started, Trucking magazine was making more than a million dollars an issue in ad revenue. We were rolling in money. You couldn't do anything wrong. Our expense accounts were stupid. We'd go somewhere and we come back with $10,000 or something, and they didn't even look twice at it. Toward the end, you'd have to justify every gallon of gas you put into a tester. And so seeing the erosion of financial security over time was tough. But the thing about that place is even though the owners changed, and a lot of times the technology they tried to change or the way they delivered things tried to change, the people were always the same. And that was the one thing to hold on to, is we had really great people. And It's one of those things where I look back and I'm so fortunate to have friendships and know all these guys.

[00:35:21.860] - Sean P. Holman

And we went through the Ringer together a lot of times. It wasn't as much fun as we had and as cool as the things we had to do. We didn't get paid very well. It's a lot of toll on your family because there's a lot of travel and places you're expected to be. There's days where you'd grind and you may work 20-hour days for two weeks or be on the road. I don't think people understand. They get the glamor side of it. Like, Man, that's so cool, which it was. Don't get me wrong. But it also took a little bit of a human toll, too, because we were doing it for the love of it, certainly not for the money of Right.

[00:36:01.230] - Big Rich Klein

But that's what makes it special.

[00:36:05.310] - Sean P. Holman

Sure.

[00:36:05.860] - Big Rich Klein

If you're at a job or you're doing something that the money is just stupid, and I don't think you appreciate it, the experiences that you do when you toil, but you're doing it out of love of it. That's how my career has been. And anytime I made a lot of money, I hated it. And I walked away from a really good possible career. It was a great job. It was a possible career. And I just said, to hell with it, through keys on the desk and walked out and started putting on rock crawls, just because I hated myself. I hated what I was doing, and I hated everybody around me because of it.

[00:36:54.960] - Sean P. Holman

It's tough. People don't realize that side of it. And then as time went on, the corporate Corporate policies got tighter and more restrictive, what you could say, what you could do, where you could go. And the freedom wasn't there anymore. And that's everywhere in corporate America anymore. But it was especially noticeable in this role just because we had a lot of autonomy and we were allowed to experiment and do a lot of different things. For a long time, we couldn't do any wrong. It was a lot of fun. I I think people appreciated what we did. Some of those guys went on to be stars with TV shows and things like that. Some of them quietly went off into the night and you don't really hear from them too much anymore. Everybody's a little bit different. But we really had it good. We had a great time. The amount of industry friends or people I run into even now who are like, Man, I love reading your stuff, blah, blah, blah. That, to me, is always such a nice compliment to hear that somebody remembers your byline because it's really easy to read a story and go, Oh, it's Four Wheeler, or it's Petersons, or it's JP.

[00:38:06.550] - Sean P. Holman

But it's another thing when they remember, Dude, I look for Kappa's story every month. I look for Hazel's story every month. I like that person's writing style. To me, having your own fans because people recognize the difference of what each of us brought to the table through our own experiences. Kappa is super opinionated, and he would fire a lot of people up. Hazel is super knowledgeable. Really?

[00:38:27.300] - Big Rich Klein

I never noticed that.

[00:38:29.740] - Sean P. Holman

Hazel is super knowledgeable, right? He's an encyclopedia of information. Verne is like the mad scientist who is putting Toyota axles on their Jeeps doing weird stuff because he's got some hair brain scheme. Then it works out and you're like, I can't even... How do you even think about that? Pewe, obviously, is a Pewe and has a gazillion years and it knows flat fenders inside and is another guy with lots of knowledge. It was a really great experience from that standpoint. I always just, again, loved hearing when people said, Man, I look for your stories, or I've been reading you for 20 years or whatever. You helped me on a project, you didn't even know it. I love that stuff. Right.

[00:39:23.130] - Big Rich Klein

One of the things that the editorial staff, like you were talking about, was It was just phenomenal. And it hooked a lot of people into the world of off-road before they actually became true enthusiasts. Somebody may have had a Jeep or a four-wheel drive truck or whatever. And the writing captured something in these people that drove them to the next step. And one of the things that I always realized is that when I saw the downfall of the large publications was the change in that editorial page where you turn to it and it says who all the writers are. And then above that, it lists the CEO and all the lawyers and all the accountants. And when that list got bigger than the editorial staff, you knew the writing on the wall. And I hated seeing that.

[00:40:32.680] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, that's the good old mast head. And you could see, and a lot of times we shared resources between titles to try and keep a smaller title propped up longer. But to your point, that's how I got into it. I got into it because I was reading things from Rick Pewe and Cole Quinnell and some of those guys, and Jon Stewart, and Ned Bacon, and all people I I actually either became friends with or colleagues with. That's how I got into it. The romanticism of off-roading started for me in the magazine. I think one of the worst things that we did, we had a president, and it was the time social was starting to take off. I said, We really should be putting the writer's social handle next to their buy-line. The company didn't want to do that because they felt that the company was going to help build this person's personal account, and then they were going to leave. Now, in retrospect, who cares? But at the time, there was this big idea of protecting the brand and protecting the IP from the people. I'm like, Nobody wants to leave. Most of these guys have been here 10, 15 or more years.

[00:41:51.820] - Sean P. Holman

The problem is, is we used to be the influencers before there were influencers. By not promoting ourselves when social was growing to get a following, we weren't able to defend our position as the influencers. What I hate about the influencer side of the game now is anybody can self-publish, anybody can call themselves an influencer, anyone can buy followers. It's really hard to find the authentic people I think that's what the magazine offered is. The magazine was a gateway to make sure that professional people who had some decorum or etiquette, knew the ways of the world, knew the ways of the industry, were going through and doing it the right way. Yeah, there's a few things that slip through There were a few people that were bad eggs that came through and took advantage of it. But overall, we were the original influencers, and we were the voices that you could trust. By not growing our personal socials, It was huge of a sake because basically the pendulum swung on the magazines. If you remember back in, let's say, the '80s and the '90s. Oh, my God, that's David Freiburger from Petersons or Hot Rod. That's Rick Kway from Petersons or JP.

[00:42:58.120] - Sean P. Holman

That's Christian Hazel. That's Fred Williams. But now, as time marched on, the brand became more important than the people. You'd go, Oh, I think that guy works for Four Wheeler. I don't know who that is. Is that guy a writer for one of the magazines? You took the celebrity status out of it. You took the influencer status out of it. You whitewashed that, and you made the brand of the magazine important to where you lost the personalities that built that brand or made that brand the way it was. I still look back on my career, and that was the biggest mistake that I can think of in a litany of mistakes. It's hard when you've got shareholders and people who don't understand the business trying to figure it out. But to me, that mistake was big because Again, we didn't defend our position as the original influencers. We let people who have no business being experts in to take our lunch, and they grew these audience. And now the barrier to entry for trusting someone was the audience size rather who the person actually was. I think we struggle with that today as an industry where there's a lot of people who claim to be an expert in something, and clearly they're not.

[00:44:09.600] - Sean P. Holman

You don't know who's getting paid and who to trust or even who to trust who's getting paid. I mean, there's a lot of guys out there who love a brand, work with a brand, build stuff with a brand. The brand's like, Hey, we'll pay to do some social. I'm fine with that as long as it's authentic to that person and authentic to that brand. I think that's where the decline of magazines really started was when we didn't jump in the sofa right away and promote our people.

[00:44:35.950] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And that whole influencer thing is one of those things that drives me nuts. If you have to tell people that you're an influencer, are you really an influencer? The magazine industry was not... You guys were influencers, but you weren't out there telling everybody you were an influencer.

[00:44:58.050] - Sean P. Holman

No, we just went to work every day. When I tell brands now, in one of my companies that I own now, I advise brands. And so when I'm advising them, when it comes to influencing type arrangements, I'm like, I don't like the term influencer. And I feel like there's a market difference between a brand ambassador and an influencer. And I always tell brands, you don't want an influencer, you want a brand ambassador. And the distinction in my mind in the way that I talk to people in the industry, as I say an ambassador is the guy that is always going to be with your brand, whether you pay him or not. An influencer is somebody who's getting paid and is looking for the next paycheck. So go find that guy that you know has been a proponent of the brand for 5, 10 years, runs your stuff, was a customer, worked with you. Go pay that guy. Because you know what? When the paycheck runs out, you're probably still going to run all your stuff and still talk about you. But if you can have a relationship in the meantime that makes sense for both of you, go after that.

[00:46:00.580] - Sean P. Holman

Don't worry about the guy that has a million followers paid for by the Bolly, paid for and got from the Bollybot farm. Engagement is so much more important than numbers in terms of overall audience. I think brands are starting to figure out that people with lower audiences, but higher engagement is a way better play than somebody with a lot of people that aren't their customers. I just think that the brand ambassador thing is a distinction that matters.

[00:46:29.020] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, digital The whole digital world. I was a commercial photographer back in the '80s, early '80s. And as digital started to come in, I fated out because I was filmed. And what I saw is that as I was putting together brochures and catalogs for people and advertisements and setting up in a studio and shooting Polaroids to begin with and making sure the lighting was proper and done right, that these companies would just go out and buy a digital camera and hand it to somebody in there and say, here, go put this on the workbench and take a picture of it. Yeah. And it was like, okay, you guys have just... You're not presenting your product to the fullest, all that stuff. But it was cheaper. And so everybody became a photographer because of the digital and the computer. Digital and the computer.

[00:47:33.060] - Sean P. Holman

Well, and I remember when we started the magazine, we had film, and we were doing light tables with loops. I mean, we had to wait for the film to come back from a big show that we were at, and we were sitting at the light table to see what our depth of field and sharpness was. And when we went to digital cameras, our first digital camera company-wide was a Canon 10D, which was a nice SLR, but it didn't have the processing power, and the sensor wasn't enough to pull out anything from the shadows, so you would lose the thread inside a wheelwell, or reds came out orangey, so they need color correction at the end. But that was our first foray, and from there on, we stayed digital. And I remember being a part of what we called the Digital Implementation Committee. And there were some good things about it. Obviously, the price of film and developing was a line item that could just disappear, how fast you could get your photos turned around, faster for stories. So there's a lot of convenience that came with it. But once the iPhone cameras started or the cell phone cameras started getting as good as they are with 10 plus megapixel sensors and things like that, I remember the first time that we were able to shoot a cover on an iPhone, and it was an action shot that came out really good.

[00:48:45.970] - Sean P. Holman

We're like, Can we blow this up? Because we were using a program, I think, called Genuine Fractals, where we could upscale something that was good enough for the print quality. You couldn't tell that the photo had been upscaled. When that technology hit and we could start doing covers, we were grabbing all sorts of interesting shots that came from a cell phone. That changed everything.

[00:49:08.610] - Big Rich Klein

Right. But you guys were still... You still had an eye for what you were shooting?

[00:49:14.790] - Sean P. Holman

Absolutely. Yeah. No, you have to have an eye. Lighting still matters. Position of the vehicle still matters. High noon versus golden hour still matters. There's still tenets of photography that iPhone can't fix, that you still have to understand. Studio and all that stuff. Absolutely, that never goes away. But the technology made it more accessible to anybody. Again, it goes back to self-publishing. You can self-publish your picture, you can self-publish your article, you can self-publish your expertise. But there wasn't a gateway anymore of who the experts could be. I don't mean that. I don't want that to sound like sour grapes. I'm not saying, Oh, Oh, Joe Bloc has nothing. No, there's a lot of great people out there who self-publish, have a YouTube channel or whatever, who are phenomenal. But we're talking about be one percenters. There's a lot of junk out there and crap from people who clearly who are not be dolling out advice who are.

[00:50:17.350] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Exactly. What we do is, especially for our feature stories, not so much tech. Tech, I've got a really good tech writer, somebody that knows what they're doing, has around it forever, and as one of the disciples of a payway in that whole Arizona crowd. But the storyline stories that that enthusiast involvement, going to trail rides, that stuff. Obviously, I can't do it all. So we use the enthusiasts that are that are out there, and we say, hey, you're going to this event. Do you want to shoot it and get it in the magazine? Do you want to write it? And they're always like, well, yeah, okay. How do I write? And I said, write from your heart. What is it that drives you to be at that event? Give me your passionate view of it. And what was it like in those early days when you were writing for Trucking or before? How was your writing style? Has it always been the same or was there somebody out there that said, Hey, think about this and do it this way?

[00:51:35.410] - Sean P. Holman

No. No. Honestly, writing has always been a strong point. I think just because I read so many magazines growing up, I had an idea of how magazine writing should be. So I never had an issue. In fact, I was always the one helping other people clean up their stuff. I oversaw freelancers for a long time. And you know what it's like overseeing freelancers? Every freelancer thinks that they're the world's best, and they've been published 400 times. Then you get their rough work and you're like, Oh, shit, I got a lot of work to do here. But I mentored a lot of people in writing. I, from the beginning, never had an issue with that, personally. It was always a strong point in my mind. Even when I worked for the police department, Writing reports and stuff was in the academy. They were like, Well, one of the things that is hardest is to learn how to write a good report. I would help people write their reports and stuff like that, too. It's funny because I'm not in every way I'm an English major or that I love writing. I don't necessarily love writing. I enjoy it.

[00:52:36.850] - Sean P. Holman

It's something that I think I've built a career out of and I'm good at, but I'm not looking to be the world's next novelist or anything like that. I just have a really good knack for re arranging sentence structure, making things flow, building a narrative, making the narrative make sense so it flows through for the reader so that there's no jarring echoes, or there's nothing that brings you back to three paragraphs before that you're like, Why is this sitting here? So I always understood that, but I really think it was just from being from the student of reading the final product from all those magazines I got as a kid.

[00:53:15.580] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And what would you say? I know you said your favorite issue was that '60th. What was your favorite story that you ever worked on? Or was there something that just stands out in your mind?

[00:53:35.370] - Sean P. Holman

I would say probably the original raptor, because there's a whole story that goes along with it. If it weren't for Essentially, partially my responsibility, raptor is even a thing today. That sounds like, Oh, yeah, right. Sure. Sure, buddy. You kept the raptor alive. But the story behind the raptor is back in about 2007. I had a Mr. X email me and say, Hey, you should really keep your eyes open for something from Ford called the raptor. If you remember the supercar concepts at the time, the Cobra, the GT, their code names were Dazy and Petunia. Well, apparently, Ford did that because they didn't want people looking at the global calendar and going, Oh, what car is that that they're working on? They're like, If we call it Dazy or Petunia, they're not going to think it's some rad revival of GT or Cobra. They're going to think some Ford Fiesta or something. Well, the raptor program was named raptor. There were some people that caught on early. I started Google searches and stuff set up. Long story short, I figured out raptor was the replacement for lightning. Keep in mind, this is the '08, '09 time frame when Ford was contemplating bankruptcy.

[00:54:50.580] - Sean P. Holman

Instead, they leveraged the Ford brand while Chrysler and GM took bankruptcy. I was at the Detroit Auto Show, January of '09, sitting across from Matt O'Leary, who was the chief engineer for the Ford F-150. We're at F150 dinner. Pat Chivoni, who was the designer at the time, the head designer on that side of the fence, comes up to me and goes, Dude, you're not going to believe what we have. I had tertiary knowledge of the raptor, but I didn't know much about it. I just heard some rumors. I go, Oh, is it the Baha truck? And he looks at me and goes, How did you know? And at that point, that basically solidified in my mind that this thing was real. And I didn't know it was real at that point. So on the back of my business card, I wrote, I know, period. I think it's cool, period. Tell me how I can help. And I slidded across the table at dinner to Matt O'Leary. He picks it up, looks at it, reads it, looks at me and shakes his head and said, No. Where I'm like, Oh, this thing's real. And all of a sudden, their PR person flies from the other side of the table over to me and says, Hey, can we talk for a minute?

[00:56:01.290] - Sean P. Holman

I'm like, Yeah. She goes, Listen, you know the rules. We don't talk about future programs. I said, Okay, I get that, but you know I know. So either let's sign an NDA right now, give me the print exclusive on it. I'll go on your timing, but you bring me in under the 10 early. They said, No, there's no way that's going to happen. We don't talk about future programs. I go, You're going to force my hand because I, as a journalist, need to talk about it. Well, you're going to have to do what you I got to do for your job, and I got to do what I need to do for my job. That's how we left. I shared a vehicle ride home with Mike Levine, who was at pickuptrucks. Com, who owned pickuertrucks. Com. He's now, I think, the head of US communications for Ford now because we were so pervasive in getting Ford information early that they just hired him, which is hilarious. But back then, he was a journalist. We shared a ride home back to the hotel. I said, Hey, I need your help on something. You're going to love it.

[00:57:04.690] - Sean P. Holman

He's like, Yeah. I go, I'm going to post something on forder. Com on Friday at 6:00 PM that you're going to want to put out on pickertrucks. Com. He's like, Really? What is it? I said, Just trust me on this. I'm not telling anybody else, this is for you if you want to jump in. He's like, Okay. On 06:00 PM the following Friday, where it's 09:00 PM East Coast time, knowing that those people are winding down for the week and probably mostly, most of them sleeping or drinking or whatever you do have an OE on a Friday night, I put a blog post on fourwheeler. Com that talked about the new Raptor desert truck, and there are eight things about it that I said that we thought were coming, like tease. It's going to have this engine. It's going to have this. It's going to have this. It's going to have it. I knew for sure I was right about three, maybe four things on that list. It turns out I was right about six. Nice. Mike calls me, he goes, Dude, are you kidding me? I'm like, Yeah, post it. So he does. So now fourwheeler.

[00:58:06.680] - Sean P. Holman

Com and picketrucks. Com have this story on Friday night that starts going viral. Within 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I had four people calling me, telling me I would never be in another Ford program ever again. How could I burn them? Never be trusted. You're dead to us. Way to go. I mean, just on and on and on. It was really bad. Then for the The next six months, they tried to fire every one of my friends in the industry. There was rumors made up about me talking to a certain shot guy in Mexico at the Baja. In a year, I wasn't even at the Baja 1000. There were rumors about me being out in the desert with binoculars. Although I knew where they were, I respected their space, and I never went out there. They had security details looking for me. It was crazy. It was crazy. I was told I would never... I was persona non grata with Ford at that point.

[00:58:59.530] - Big Rich Klein

They were to Hillary you.

[00:59:01.660] - Sean P. Holman

I think it was worse than that, other than the death part. But yeah, they were not happy. They kept telling me, I said, Listen, I'm doing my job. I'm a journalist. I gave you guys the opportunity to do this story with me. You refused? I've got to do my job. Well, you can't be talking to Ford Employees and suppliers. I'm like, Well, then maybe you need to tell your Ford Employees and suppliers to stop talking to me. And it was a big deal. A few months later, I get a phone call out of the blue from a Detroit number, a Ford number, because they're in Dearborn. So I knew I recognized the area code. And it was a gentleman by the name of Mark Groover, who was I guess, the product guy overseeing that. And he calls me and he says, Sean, Mark for Ford. Hey, Mark, how's it going? He goes, I just wanted to apologize on behalf of Ford for everything that happened. I'm like, Okay, thanks. He's like, Listen, we were able to take all the basic, and I paraphrase him, the guerrilla marketing that happened from that post. The industry exploded in such a way that at the time, RAPTRE was in danger of being killed off.

[01:00:25.790] - Sean P. Holman

And so most of the higher-ups were like, No, we I don't need a gas guzzling desert truck. It's the wrong product for right now when we're talking about bankruptcy. The Internet was so explosive over that story that not only did they get green-lit on RAPTRE, but they called it RAPTOR. It was never supposed to be called RAPTOR. It was supposed to have a different name. So they ended up calling it the code name of the program because that's what everybody online started referring to it as. And Mark calls us up and invites Mike and I to come out to Dearborn, and we got the print exclusive and the digital exclusive on it as an olive branch. That's Rapter, the legend lives on from there. Every time I see Rapter, there's always going to be a soft spot in my heart for it. But writing that first story, being the very first journalist to lay eyes on it in a studio and bring that to the masses was probably my favorite story because I was so personally involved in it. It wasn't just a standard... Lots of manufacturers were like, Hey, we'd like you guys to come out and see this first.

[01:01:27.930] - Sean P. Holman

That's always special. That'll never not be special. But this one was special because the story behind it, the cloak and dagger, the secrecy behind it, and to finally win four to over and be told, Basically, Hey, you helped us save this program. We want to give you, reward you, and make peace with you by bringing you in early. That was special.

[01:01:49.360] - Big Rich Klein

That's awesome. I remember all that going on, and I've been a Ford Raptor fan since since day one, but I could never justify owning one because of my lifestyle and the way I traveled, putting on events and on the road all the time and having to carry all the equipment. So the semi truck made so much more sense and big trailers and things like that. And in 2019, I finally was able to justify in my mind and in my wife's mind that a raptor made sense. And And I still have that Gen 1. It's a 2012, but it just turned 250,000 miles and has had no major problems whatsoever. Everybody, even the first gens, they were talking about the transmissions and all the lead frame going and all this other stuff. I've not had... I mean, I've had two AC pumps fail, or had to... Yeah, two AC pumps fail, the original and then the replacement. And so I'm on my third AC pump, but that's it. I mean, yeah, boots and and various maintenance items, but- Sure. Nothing like some people have. I don't know if I got the unicorn out there, but it's- No, I got some friends with first gens.

[01:03:17.580] - Sean P. Holman

I'm happy with it. Yeah, with that 6.2, and they love it. Now, it's funny because the 5.4 was never supposed to be a raptor, but the 6.2 was called the hurricane. No, I'm sorry. That was called... Was it the Hurricane? Can't remember. I think it was the Hurricane was the name of it. And then Katrina hit and they thought, Oh, that's not good. And they shoved that engine for a while. And then when they revived it for raptor, they had to pull it back. And so it wasn't ready in time for when they wanted to launch Rafter. So RAPTOR launched with the 5.4, and the shock tune wasn't very good on that because it was rushed. And then when the 6.2 came out, it was like, Oh, this is how the RAPTOR was supposed to be. And in fact, Mike and I, one of our things, I think the thing that maybe put Ford over the to offer him a job was... I just had the RAPTOR R drive a couple of weeks ago. We were laughing about this, reminiscing. But Ford messed up in their scheduling, and the RAPTOR 6.2 hit dealerships before the media drive.

[01:04:14.730] - Sean P. Holman

It was embargoed. Well, Mike and I paid a dude who just bought one. We're like, Hey, can we borrow your truck for a day? Do you do a photoshoot? Drive across the desert. He's like, Yeah. Can I come along? It ended up being one of the readers of pickuptrucks. Com. We met him out in the desert, and he I did our review on the 6.2 raptor before the media had a chance to drive it. And Ford lost their minds. You can't do that. It's in the wild. What are you talking about? So anyway.

[01:04:43.940] - Big Rich Klein

It's not like you stole one from the factory.

[01:04:49.220] - Sean P. Holman

The dude owned it, and we were smart enough to go pick it up. And so anyway, but the raptor is always going to have a little bit of a special... It's always going to be special to me.

[01:05:00.390] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, and I'm sorry to all you raptor Gen 2 and Gen 3 owners. What makes the Gen 3 special is the R package. But the Gen 1 is still the best-looking truck ever built, in my opinion.

[01:05:17.630] - Sean P. Holman

The Gen 1, imagine seeing that for the first time in the studio, right? And it was that orange color with the digital mud graphics is what they called it on the side. That thing was unbelievable to look at that truck for the first time. But yeah, you're right. I think Gen 1 is the best looking, although I will say I just got back from that raptor drive in the R. The thing I didn't like about the second Gen is with the EcoBoost, there's a lot of power, but for a novice driver, it can bite you really fast. When there's turbo's light, it's also really skittish across the top of the whips at certain speeds. There's definitely things about it that aren't dialed. They added live dial that helped a little The new one, the raptor R with the V8, which, by the way, if you're not into it, it's super docile. The power delivery is unbelievably linear, and it's got gobs of power, obviously 720 for this year. Gobs of power when your foot's in it. With the five link in the back and live valve on both the compression and rebound side, to me, that is the best raptor.

[01:06:26.220] - Sean P. Holman

I like it way more than the Turbo V6. And it's not because it's the power, it's the power delivery and how balanced it feels compared to the other ones. It's the first one that I've loved, probably as much or more than a 6.2 first-gen. The 6.2 first-gen is such a great truck. They nailed it. The interior design on it has aged really well. The platform was really overbuilt. Yeah, it doesn't have as much wheel travel, but outside of that, there's a lot of really great stuff on that truck. Any speed rear locker, those big massive aluminum control arms. It's just a great-looking truck. It's super capable. But yeah, that Gen 162 is definitely one of my all-time favorite pickup trucks.

[01:07:11.010] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. I'm always amazed at when I go through any drive-through, whether it's coffee or in and out or whatever, and there's kids that are working there, male or female, look over and say, wow, that's a really gorgeous truck. Yeah. And it's always great when there's an 17, 18-year-old female that goes, oh, I love your first-gen raptor. It's like my wife looks at her and goes, oh, you're going to be a Good woman.

[01:07:45.790] - Sean P. Holman

It's funny.

[01:07:48.740] - Big Rich Klein

It's always funny. So then did you know Cliff? Irie from Ford? Yeah.

[01:07:58.020] - Sean P. Holman

Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:07:59.860] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. He's a good friend. Ford won't let him do the interview, though, do the podcast. Oh, really? Yeah, because he's one of their gurus for... He cruises all the social media to make sure that the right information is out there.

[01:08:15.960] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, I haven't seen him in a number of years, but he'll know who I am. I think Cliff was probably well aware of the raptor issue back in the day, too.

[01:08:24.620] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Oh, yeah. So what doing now? Let's talk about that. Yeah.

[01:08:33.390] - Sean P. Holman

So back in January, well, I guess it would be November of 2022, we're at SEMA. And there's been a lot of scuttlebutt. There's been a lot of scuttle, but there have been some corporate changes and things as usual. But we went to SEMA with Motor Trend and Hot Rod on the banners, but no four-wheelers. So I said to an executive, Tell me you're getting rid of my business unit without telling me you're getting rid of my business unit. No, no, you're good. So I knew the end was near. Sure enough, Friday afternoon after SEMA, I got a meeting invite for a strategy meeting Monday morning, so I knew I was getting laid off. That happened. We came in Monday, brought my laptop in, and they said, You won't be needing that. I went, Okay, all right, because I know what we're doing here. They wanted me to stay on for a few months that I'll wind down the business. I was able to negotiate the guys that were with me, staying on through the holidays with me and not being laid off right away like everybody else. That was nice. Tried to take care of my guys always and was able to take care of them on the way out.

[01:09:34.570] - Sean P. Holman

And then I also was able to get the Truck Show podcast, which I launched and started at Motor Trend. And as part of me staying on, they signed that over to me. So I own that wholly now, which is great. So we're in our sixth season, going into seven. And we've got just short of 2 million downloads in about 350 episodes. And we do it bi-weekly right now. So we do a long form on Monday and a short form on Thursdays. I do it with a buddy of mine who was in radio. He was at 1067 K-Rock here in Los Angeles for 26 years, something like that. We basically talk about everything truck. So Lifted, Lower, classic old news, a lot of interviews with executives or a guy who's building a widget in his garage or somebody who went on a cool trip, all sorts of stuff. It's really wild. We just had Douglas Brunt on last episode, who is Megan Kelly's husband. You might know her from the political side of the fence. But he's a novelist, and he just wrote a book called The Mysterious Death of Rudolf Diesel. So for all of you guys up there who are Diesel fans, it might be a fun one for you to listen to.

[01:10:46.090] - Sean P. Holman

He was repowering a boat, learned about diesel, did a little research, found there's this mystery around the death of diesel, some controversy. He spent the next several years researching the topic and wrote the definitive book on what happened to him. It's a A lot of intrig because it's all the major players at the time, like the Rockefellers and people like that involved and the technology of diesel coming in, being used for war in submarines. It's a great podcast. So if you want to hear something fun, start there. We've got plenty of cool other stuff. Herb Helbig, who is the chief engineer of the Ram SRT-10, which was one of my favorite trucks. We've had all sorts of industry racers, Brad Lovelle, Scott Birdzall, people who are friends of ours, Erin Kaufman, who is known. So the catalog's deep, lots of great stuff in there. Check that out. So it's wherever podcasts are found. So Google, Apple, Spotify, all that stuff. And then So I was able to get that from Motor Trend Proper when I left, which was awesome. I have to say as much as it sucks to get laid off, they're very gracious to me and gave me the opportunity to go out and do my own thing.

[01:12:00.060] - Sean P. Holman

And so leading up to my layoffs, there are some other motor trend alumni who had decided that they wanted to launch an off-road magazine, and we had all launched Recoil magazine. So if any of you guys are gun guys, I'm sure you have gun guys listening, and you're familiar with Recoil, the same team that launched Recoil magazine was essentially on their own saying, Hey, let's do Recoil magazine in the off-road space. And so they launched a magazine called Outdoor Vehicle Recreation or OVR. So it's anything wheel-based adventure, activity, anything like that. And so I've been consulting and advising them for a while. And they said, come on over, come on over, come work with us. I'm like, no, I like the devil, I like having a steady paycheck. I would love to be an entrepreneur, but I'm not ready for that. So they found out that I got laid off right before the first issue was about to come out. And they said, well, when are you coming over here? What's it going to take? And I said, well, it'll take equity. And so we figured it as the last partner added. And it was to their point, the missing piece where I brought a lot of industry contacts and the editorial side bolstered that.

[01:13:13.220] - Sean P. Holman

So myself and Jerry's side, Jerry is the editor and I'm the editor at large. We've got a big freelance pool, but it's a big, beautiful magazine, same size as Recoil, rough cover, thick paper. We're available at Barnes & Noble, Books a Million. And now we're on a trial run for, I think, 46 or 50 Bass Pro shops and conbellas in the country right now. Or you can find us at ovrmag. Com. We have a new issue every other month. And then I was starting to get ready for the layoff. I started registering some LLLCs and stuff. I formed an S Corp called Use For Adventure. And so with that business, that wholly owns the Truck Show podcast and my LLLC Truck Famous. But that's my main entity. And so in that entity, I do some Marketing freelance for a lot of people. I write press releases. I do some adventure guiding for corporations, and I help with go to market strategies and things like that for companies in the off-road space that want to come out with new products, don't know how to do it, or need some advice on how to get some opinions on what they're working on before it goes out, or need help with five year plans, things like that.

[01:14:24.450] - Sean P. Holman

So I've taken my experience and parlayed it into being able to do something different every a day, which is what I love to do. So I've got three businesses and I'm insane for doing that. So it's crazy.

[01:14:38.090] - Big Rich Klein

And how about family? I know that you're sitting right now. You're staying home dad today.

[01:14:46.780] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, my wife is at work, and our youngest just graduated from kindergarten yesterday. So she's home with me. And then my oldest will be 17 next month. And she just started driving So it's crazy to have a six-year-old and almost 17-year-old. And if those parents out there know that their lives are completely different, where they need to be is completely different. And so it's crazy. I feel like I just shuttle people around all day long. So I'm really excited for my older daughter, too. I start driving, and then I coach a little league girls' softball in my free time, which I don't know if I have any free time anymore. But I definitely keep myself busy. Love my kids and my wife and able to do family stuff. My new job situation allows me to be home a lot more. I don't go into the office. As part of taking over the podcast, I actually built a podcast studio in the backyard. So I can use that as my office. I'm around a lot more now than I was when I was at the magazines. It's great because I can be there to spend more time with my kids and all that.

[01:15:51.970] - Sean P. Holman

So I'm still trying to find work-life balance, but at least I feel like it's more in my favor now.

[01:15:57.560] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. Excellent. And Any words of wisdom to anybody that wants to get into the automotive or off-road market, stepping up from an enthusiast into the profession somewhere or into the industry?

[01:16:17.720] - Sean P. Holman

I would say if you're a young person, do whatever you can. Go sweep a floor. If you are trying to get into something, go to your local shop and ask them if they'll mentor you, if you do work around the shop for free. Start doing that. Show them that you're passionate. Sweep the floor, help them out. Prove that you are worth the time it would take to teach you. And don't approach it. I think too many people We'll go to college and think, Well, I should be CEO because I have a degree. And that's not how the real world works. And you have to earn it. And you earn it by building relationships with people. And the best things that have ever come in my life have been because I built a relationship with somebody. And so build those relationships. If you're older and you're thinking career change or you want to do something different, I would say it's really easy to be safe and comfortable and take that paycheck and be the same place for 20 years like I was. But it took the universe kicking me out of the nest a little bit and saying, It's time for you to fly a little birdie.

[01:17:21.870] - Sean P. Holman

If you have the ability to take a risk, we're not getting any younger. As you get older, especially with your kids and family, things go by a lot faster, and you're going to miss that window. If you even have an inkling now and you're in the window, jump through it. Take the opportunity because those other jobs will always be there. That's why I told my wife. She says, When are you going to get a real job? I said, Well, give me a year. Those other jobs will be there. Let me see what I can do on my own. I'm a year and a half in and I'm still doing my own thing. Just believe in yourself. Believe that it'll all work out and make relationships, real relationships with people and prove that you're worthy of their time and effort.

[01:18:05.380] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. Sean, thank you so much for spending the time and talking about your life and your history, and I really appreciate it. I know that I've known your name and known about you for a long time. And just recently, we got to meet in person, and that was a phenomenal experience. I'm glad that that happened.

[01:18:32.900] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I always love doing podcasts and talking about the industry. And likewise, I've known your name for a long time, and I feel like passing ships in the night a little bit We've both been around the block in the industry for a long time, for some reason. Hadn't met until now. So thank you for the kind words and thanks for the opportunity to be on the show and be able to talk to your audience and just let them know a little bit about That's my background.

[01:19:01.840] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. And make sure you go take care of that young daughter of yours and keep the wife happy so you don't have to get a real job.

[01:19:10.720] - Sean P. Holman

Yeah, exactly.

[01:19:11.850] - Big Rich Klein

And good luck in the future. Anything that I can do to help you, just let me know.

[01:19:20.070] - Sean P. Holman

Really appreciate that. Thank you.

[01:19:21.850] - Big Rich Klein

All right. I'll let you know when this airs, and hopefully you'll share it.

[01:19:27.760] - Sean P. Holman

Absolutely.

[01:19:28.650] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. You take care And thank you so much.

[01:19:31.800] - Sean P. Holman

Thanks, Rich.

[01:19:33.180] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.