Matt Beenen – founder of BuiltRight Industries - has been named YEN’s member of the month. Beenen is also YEN’s Chair-Elect and plays a vital role in developing programs and resources that bring value to YEN membership. Learn about what keeps him in the industry in his interview with SEMA below.
 

SEMA: What is the best advice you have ever received?
Matt Beenen: The best advice I've ever received is that it's important to understand when to say, "good enough, keep going." My experience has been that people (me) often have a tendency to seek 'perfection' in discrete tasks instead of 'perfection' on a larger scale, which is time consuming and expensive. My philosophy when it comes to business and product design is that a perfect project or product is the result of stringing together consecutive 90-95% wins. I've learned that nobody is willing to pay for 100%.

SEMA: What keeps you in the industry?
MB: This industry is situated right where my passion for modifying cars and trucks meets with my passion for engineering creative solutions. There's nowhere else I'd rather be!

SEMA: Where can you be found on a Saturday?
MB: To stay sane, I do my best to keep Saturdays for my family or personal hobbies. These days, that's an early morning drive or a day at the beach with my wife and daughter. I usually pay for it on Monday but taking time to disconnect a bit is important.

SEMA: How do you prepare for an important meeting?
MB: I'm not very good at preparing for important meetings. I could probably improve here. I think setting aside 15-20 minutes before a meeting to clear your head and review the topics you expect to cover is a good practice when the alternative is scrambling to do/learn/lookup anything last minute.

SEMA: If you could go to lunch with one industry leader, living or dead, who it would be and why?
MB: I think lunch with Jessi Combs is probably the next best thing to having her around as a role model for my daughter. We've all heard the amazing stories about her industry days from friends and family, but I'd love to hear more about the path that she took to get there and about what she'd do to encourage other young girls to chase their passions like she so clearly did.

 

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