We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jimi Kim a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jimi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

I would tailor the educational system to provide more valuable skills to the students based on the their goals and aspirations. I feel that certain courses or curriculum is important, however, some are not focused on what is valuable to the student in aligning them with their career goals. Food for thought, but if a student only had 1-2 years, rather than the 4 years in high school, to learn about the many careers and opportunities he or she could direct their energies towards I believe this would tremendously save much wasted time, money, and energies rather than passively partaking in a curriculum some may find valuable.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m like any regular person who put off their passion for many years. It wasn’t until there was a fork in the road where I had to make a decision based on a question I once heard… “What’s the risk of NOT doing it?”. It was possible to pursue my goals as technology of racing simulators has tremendously increased and a market was born around it. Frankly, the high dollar cost in motorsports is what turned me away, but with simulators anyone could be that race car driver or drive the car they’ve always wanted, and experience it first hand rather than see it in magazines or the latest YouTube videos. Amazingly, drivers could build a skillset that was once financially burdening and only available to the wealthy.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

This is an interesting topic to most small business / entrepreneurs because it’s probably the most inhibiting aspect of a business. When I initially began my journey to build my business I started looking at Small Business Loans provided by the government and serviced by select local banks. However, I quickly realized that the criteria to receive a loan meant putting down a large percentage of equity to qualify, and that’s IF you qualify. In my case, because my industry was so new banks didn’t like the idea of loaning money to me because of that fact – they could not assess if I was able to pay their loan back. As a safe-guard for the banks, I was offered a much smaller loan at a much higher interest rate. I ultimately opted to NOT take any loans from banks and self fund.

Funding my own venture meant steering my expenditures from personal hobbies into the small business I was starting. I first began with a minimal viable product or MVP, to test my idea. This allowed me to identify the demographic, the location, and find partners who were passionate about the automotive industry to then scale up my business. Currently, I continue to fund my own equipment and slowly scale up, however, it takes a lot of weight off my shoulders knowing that I don’t have to repay a heavy-weighted loan amount.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Creating a positive culture of trust and safety is the most important aspect of any team or organization. Be sure to take your time to hire someone as they must be a good fit for the culture, but also, be sure to know that there are those who are not good fits. Hiring is important as is letting people go. A managers job is to provide a safe and inclusive environment and lead by example, not through intimidation or bullying.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tracksidesimracing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracksidesimracing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557376692593
• Other: Google: https://g.co/kgs/N78znqR