Gain Traction

Mike Lusso is a seasoned engineer at Coats Company in Nashville, Tennessee, specializing in tire changers, wheel balancers, lifts, and alignment machines. A lifelong gearhead with a passion for modifying cars, Mike channels his love for the automotive...

Show Notes

Mike Lusso is a seasoned engineer at Coats Company in Nashville, Tennessee, specializing in tire changers, wheel balancers, lifts, and alignment machines. A lifelong gearhead with a passion for modifying cars, Mike channels his love for the automotive space into leadership roles, most notably as Chair of the WTSBC, a leading automotive industry council under SEMA. Through his volunteer work, Mike helps shape best practices and raise industry standards across the wheel, tire, suspension, and brake sectors. In this episode… 
If you’ve ever wondered what real influence looks like behind the scenes of the automotive aftermarket, look no further than the automotive industry council known as WTSBC (Wheels, Tires, Suspension, Brakes Council) under SEMA.
In this episode of the Gain Traction Podcast, host Mike Edge sits down with WTSBC Chair Mike Lusso to unpack the vital; yet often overlooked role that industry councils play in shaping the future of auto repair and tire service. From data access to networking, from fitment guides to leadership opportunities, this is where real progress happens.
Mike explains how he first got involved (spoiler: it starts with a free lunch ticket), and why shop owners, engineers, and suppliers alike should consider participating. It’s not just a resume booster, it’s a direct line to decision-makers, early tech adopters, and industry-shaping initiatives.
Whether you’re running a five-bay shop or managing dozens of locations, joining an automotive industry council gives you the insider edge you can’t Google. What You’ll Learn in This Episode 
  • [01:37] How Mike was recruited into the WTSBC at a trade show
  • [03:29] Why every shop owner and tire dealer should consider joining a SEMA council
  • [05:51] Examples of the educational resources the council provides (fitment posters, torque specs, bolt pattern data)
  • [06:40] Mike’s leadership timeline: From co-chair to chair
  • [07:30] Strategic goals for the WTSBC in the next 1, 3, and 5 years
  • [10:15] How to sign up for the council through SEMA or Gain Traction
  • [13:07] Mike’s background in engineering and the automotive aftermarket
Resources mentioned in this episode: 
Why Join an Automotive Industry Council? 
Joining an automotive industry council like WTSBC isn’t just about “giving back”, it’s a competitive advantage.
Members gain:
  • Early access to emerging tech like ADAS calibration trends
  • Networking with top leaders from SEMA, MIMA, and major aftermarket players
  • Tools that improve service accuracy like fitment charts and torque spec guidelines
  • Exclusive access to Detroit Garage and SEMA Data resources
  • Brand visibility through leadership opportunities and public representation
And the best part? Membership typically costs less than $100/year and offers a return on investment many times over. Quotable Moments 
  • “You’re not just getting information — you’re getting access.”
  • “We’re not just supporting SEMA — we’re shaping what comes next.”
  • “Smaller shops have just as much to gain — the value is tenfold.”
  • “If you want to grow, you’ve got to plug into where progress is happening.”
Action Steps: 
  1. Visit Gain Traction’s WTSBC Page to find the direct council link and learn more.
  2. Apply for membership via the SEMA Council Portal, it takes just a few clicks.
  3. Leverage your membership by downloading fitment guides, attending council meetings, and volunteering on task forces.
  4. Connect with other leaders like Mike Lusso and your regional reps to maximize industry relationships.
  5. Promote your involvement on your website, social media, and customer channels, it boosts credibility.

What is Gain Traction?

The Gain Traction Podcast features top tire and auto repair professionals, shop owners, industry executives, and thought leaders.

Hey folks.

Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business.

I am Mike Edge.

Your host Mike Lusser is our guest today.

He is engineer with Coates company in Nashville, Tennessee.

As many of you know, they produce the tire changers, wheel balancers, lifts and alignment machines.

Mike is also co chair of the WTSBC of sema, which stands for Wheels, Tires, Suspension, Brakes Council, which is also a major committee that serves our industry within sema.

So we're proud to have him today.

But before we get started, this episode is brought to you by Tread Partners.

Tread Partners is the digital marketing agency that specializes in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops.

Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations, down to five locations.

Get a professional review of your digital marketing structure from an agency that works exclusively in this industry.

Let trade partners take a look at under your digital marketing hood today.

To contact tread partners, visit treadpartners.com my past guest shout out today is for Logan Leslie.

He's also the founder of Main Street Auto.

If you haven't listened to that podcast, you can find it@gaintraction podcast.com welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business.

I am Mike Edge, your host and I have the privilege of interviewing the tire dealers, shop owners, counter sales reps, technicians, industry executives and other thought leaders of our industry.

So let's get started.

Mike, we finally did it man.

Welcome to the Gains Action Podcast.

Well, I appreciate the invite and appreciate the opportunity to really talk to you and your, your audience.

Well, we've talked about doing this for a while and I think our big goal today is just to let people know what the council's about because it affects all of us and SEMA does too, and what they, what the council does.

And I don't know, let's just backtrack a little bit and talk about how you got involved in the council.

Oh yeah.

So about six or seven years ago, I was walking, you know, just participating in the show like many of your audience members do.

My company of course, setting up a booth and I ran into an old high college buddy and he was handing out pamphlets.

It's Greg Parker with Wegman Automotive.

And he was just like, hey man, what's up?

And he was mentioning, he was hanging out, you know, free lunch tickets.

And I was like, well, I'll definitely take that.

But then I was like, why are you handing out lunch tickets?

And then of course he gave me the spill like, you know, being Part of what was at the time wtc, which is the Wheel and Tire Council.

And I was like, oh, that's cool.

And he says, why aren't you a part of that?

And I was like, I don't know anything about it.

And then he says, well, actually, I think your company's part of it.

You need to talk to whoever.

And, you know, so I started really digging into it when I got back.

And then, and then I got actually, you know, invited to a bunch of their, I say volunteering, you know, task force, talking to them, got to invited to a couple of, you know, like, you know, meetings both online and at the locations.

And I was like, oh, wow, this is really something to be a part of.

And I was like, why am I.

Why is my company not part of this, being part of the wheel and tire industry?

So I got more and more involved into it, but that's where I kind of started off is just running into an old college buddy.

And, you know, it was like, you know, it's kind of like, hey, this is what I need to do.

But it really pulled on our heartstrings, especially for my company and my brand to be a part of the Wheel and Tire Council, which.

Which now is part of the breaking suspension as well.

Well, you make me think of something too.

A lot of our listeners are tire dealers, auto repair shops as well that obviously sell tires and wheels, et cetera.

Should they be part of the council?

Yeah, absolutely, they can be a part of the council.

A council is a growing membership.

Then you got your select committee members that will help represent and then kind of disseminate the information back down to you guys and then help find ways to.

It's kind of like the old voice of the customer.

Like you guys can bring up, you get educated and then we can educate you back so, you know, and get more information to you.

So, yeah, each one of the independent wheel shops, they have an opportunity to be there.

Your, your custom manufacturing, your custom wheel shop suppliers, tires companies, they.

We do have some so example of discount tire, which is a larger tire dealer, but they are part of it, the council.

But we have others, other groups that are definitely a smaller group that can definitely be a participation.

Well, and I think it's just safety in numbers.

Again, it's.

You know, I had Mike Spagnolo on here from SEMA and we just talked about.

SEMA is more than the show and people need to realize that.

And this, and this council is just a division within SEMA that allows you to kind of Nest with the people and collaborate with the people that are, you know, associated to your specific industry.

Within SEMA and protect those people as well, because.

Absolutely, yeah.

The biggest thing is each one of the councils supports SEMA in its nature.

So there's different councils for pro installers, there's stuff for the emerging trends and technologies, which is more.

A lot of the engineering folk go into that side of things, but anybody that's really into the new technology and trying to grow that, there's also other.

The future leaders and then there's the whole business for the women's business network too.

So each one of those councils and networks, along with wtsbc only supports the project, the strategic priorities of sema.

So, yes, it's more than a show.

We're doing stuff with, we say is more than.

More, three, more than 365 days a year, you know, so it's just not a show.

So the councils are part of that.

That leg and that arm.

And some of the things that we do is we provide education content.

We provide.

We take information from like.

When you say education content, give me an idea.

So, yeah, so there's.

We got like, for one thing that we have is the will and tire install poster that we've had around for a few years there.

So people can have the proper techniques and not just for measurement.

The also the right type of bolt pattern, you know, and the right size of, you know, the lug torque that needs to be applied.

So each one of those things are just techniques that are best practices out there.

And then we try to do that with.

We're actually going to be doing stuff along that line with suspension and brakes and best fitment guides.

So that way you're not just trying to always rely on what Joey from the automatic, the, you know, somebody, you know, told you, it's.

You actually got some information that's for the industry.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

So you've been in.

And now you're the co chair.

How long you been co chair?

No, I'm actually chair.

Yeah.

So I've been chair for two years and then I was actually co chair for two years.

So now this July actually I move into what we call IPC or immediate past chair.

So I'll spend two more years for that.

So it'll be a total of six years of in the leadership position.

But I've been a part of WTC and WTSBC for the last seven.

I think it would be total.

And then next year, next two years, put in for almost eight years.

So.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And tell the audience real quick who is our next chair?

Our next chair is going to be Brett, Ken's father, he's with Shop Monkey.

And then you got Dan Geer from Keystone Automotive that will be taking over as co chair.

That's awesome.

Where do you see the organization going in the next, you know, let's just talk first year goals.

What's the one year go maybe and then three year go, five year go of the, of the council itself.

Okay.

So just last year we actually rebranded to the break and suspension.

So that's the first and foremost that we took and we, then we've already tried to bump our membership.

That's one thing we're trying to, is just kind of diversify ourselves.

Within the brake and suspension group.

A lot of those companies have been a part of what we call another Network Torah, which is the Truck and Off Road Alliance.

But we're trying to bring them into, you know, some of the, not competing with that group, but necessarily working within that groups because other people from your company, each one of those companies can bring, come over and then support each one of the councils.

So we're the biggest and the foremost is bring like you said, growing numbers, membership and having the right volunteers to do this.

Because this is a volunteering position.

You're not being paid for this, but you get to participate in the industry and help do two things, the industry as a whole.

And then I mean if you're bringing out there, you're going to have your brand is going to be in the, you know, in the forefront.

So you're going to be a speaker, you're going to be a leader, you're going to show some initiative there.

And so that only helps brand your company as well.

So you get it double ways.

No, that's great.

And just for our audience's sake, for full disclosure, our podcast gained traction as part of the council as well.

And when we joined, for the reasons that Mike just listed there, I mean it's just important to be involved and if you're going to make the industry a better place, you just got to know what's going on and it helps a lot being involved in this council.

It also, it's a great networking opportunity.

I mean you just get to know people, right.

And yeah, so there's definitely opportunity.

So there's going to be, I mean I've met some of the leaders just at the gala and just invite speaking and just recently or was at the first annual first ever ADAS Synaposium at Detroit Garage just a couple weeks ago and There was about 65 leaders in the industry that were leading in.

In various ways of manufacturing sensors technologies.

Both SEMA and NEMA were there.

So that right there was some of the.

Just being able to rub elbows with some of those leaders and then some of the things that are going to be coming out to help the both aftermarket and into some ways the OE world and safety and you know, from the adas is going to be something that's going to be great.

So just being a part of that and then talking to those people and networking is great.

Yes.

No, that's fantastic.

So real quick, if somebody is thinking about it right now and they're sitting in front of their computer just like we are, what if they wanted to find out more about it?

Where.

Where do they go and then how.

How could they sign up for, you know, being a member potentially?

Well, yeah, so you can contact me or you can contact some of our liaisons, Nicole Brattle, but you could.

There's some links that's.

What do you call it on the.

The SEMA website.

Yeah, you can also.

I'm sure you'll probably share those links as well.

Probably somehow.

Well, and I.

You just reminded me, I forgot we.

We've got a link on the gain traction podcast.com website.

So you can go to the gain traction podcast.com website and it'll link directly to the council inside SEMA here, what we're talking about and you can find out more information also contact anybody there that if you want to, you know, Q and A with somebody.

Yes.

That's off.

Yeah.

So if you do that and then we'll definitely reach out to you, somebody from our membership, if not only it might even be me, then I can give you a rundown and then, you know, everybody's always asking like, well why should I?

And I 100%.

We've already named it the first and foremost the networking opportunities.

You're going to learn and you're going to gain insider information for the education and the content and the expertise that you're going to gain.

And then you have there's, like I said, I just mentioned Detroit Garage.

That is a resource within sema.

But being part of that council and that committee, you get free access to go there for fitments.

There's other data that you can get, you can download.

So from SEMA data, I mean there's so many things that you get from just being a member that pays for itself, which is not more than about 100 bucks per year.

So I mean in reality that just pays some of the paperwork and budget that we do just for meeting.

But the return on investment is tenfold or if not more than that.

But you know, it also fits something else that I learned from a mentor of mine years and years ago goes, look, if you want to be good at anything, you gotta continually acquire information and you gotta always do your homework and you can't get lethargic or complacent or whatever.

And if you're gonna be the best in your sphere, then you know, work at it.

And, and part of that I've always found to be like in these positions of being able to, you know, join organizations where you're gonna do basically self improvement within the industry.

And this allows that.

Yes, and that's, this is just one avenue to achieve that because just we meet monthly and then each one of the task force meets once a month after that.

And then you're doing a little bit of extra work, just like I said, volunteering.

But each time is a touch point with it and you're learning and growing within the industry each time.

So.

Yes.

That's awesome.

Well, Mike, give everybody a little bit about yourself some.

Where did you grow up and how'd you get into this industry?

Okay.

Yeah, so I've got to live the life of the military life without being in the military.

So I kind of grew up in Siena, Vella, California.

I lived in Kansas, Fairbanks, Alaska and I grew up a good portion in Kentucky.

So my dad worked for like Dyn Corp. Aerospace then.

So then I went to college at Austin Peay.

So I lived in Tennessee.

And then I've, you know, I've always wanted to be in the automotive industry and was able to come back from working down in some which was another company, a strong company, Viking Range.

So I was in the appliance world.

So I got to finally get my hands into the automotive world that way, you know, coming back and working for coats.

But I mean I've always been around vehicles and building, modifying vehicles.

With my father back, you know, growing up, some of the things he was building, putting his hands onto, I've got to rebuild, you know, a 454 engine.

I got to do a, you know, stroke out a 350.

So I mean I've been around vehicles and motors and just all my whole life.

So it's just being another kind of Touch point from our side without necessarily being an OE manufacturer.

It's.

It's definitely a blessing.

That's awesome.

Well, on a just like a little personal level, what's your favorite food?

What do you like to eat?

Oh, really?

Spaghetti.

You know, like, it's the easy one for me.

You know, anything Italian I can definitely dive into without.

Without hesitation, but, you know, definitely.

You like.

Have you ever been to St. Louis?

I had the toast at Ravioli.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

Yeah, that's gonna be.

That's good food right there.

Yeah, yeah, you can't beat that.

So you're in that.

The Nashville market.

Just curious.

Where do you like to eat down in Nashville?

What's one of your favorite hot spots?

So now I'm gonna go take a twist here, but Martin's Barbecue.

I mean, some.

You're not gonna miss barbecue down here in Tennessee.

I know everybody, you know, you got Memphis, you got.

You got Kansas City.

Everybody thinks they have their.

Their, Their barbecue, but I'm gonna tell you right now, by far, Nashville's barbecue.

Some of the best out down here.

Even some of the.

I mean, you can go down any street and, you know, another block, and then someone else has got a little makeshift barbecue pit, and you can't go wrong.

But Martin's Barbecue has been around for a while.

They've got a couple of setups and.

Yeah, I kind of frequent their way too much.

Well, I'll.

I'll give them a plug as well.

I. I met a tire guy down there.

One of the guys, actually, I had interviewed on here, Logan Wilkes out of Alabama.

We went to Martin's and I had their.

I don't know if they call it their barbecue chicken or they call it their smoked chicken.

But I'm not lying when I say, you know, how chicken's a gamble, right?

I mean, it can be dry, right?

And you're always worried about it.

It was as moist and the flavor in it was so smoke filled that I didn't know it was possible to make every bite.

You know what I mean?

Like, you get to the interior, you.

You think that's.

No, the whole thing was all.

My meal was awesome.

But I'm glad you brought that up.

Next time.

Yeah, that's where we need to go.

If I come down to Nashville and.

See you sometime down there.

Oh, yeah.

And then, of course, the, the ambiance.

The, The.

The.

The music everywhere.

They have.

Everybody has some.

There's loud music in just about every one of the restaurants downtown.

So you can't go wrong.

That's fantastic.

Well, hey, folks, again, if you want more information on this, go to the link.

That's the WTSBC link on the Gain Traction podcast.com website if you want to find out more information.

And I think Mike's information will be in that link as well.

If not, Nicole's is.

And Mike, I can't say enough, but I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

Oh yeah.

And I look forward to just anybody that's looking for more information.

And being part of this council would be great.

Awesome.

Well, to all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of a podcast.

You know, we love you.

See you next time here at Gain Traction.

To all our listeners, thank you for being part of the Gain Traction podcast.

We are grateful for you.

If you'd like to find more podcasts like this, please visit gaintraction podcast.com if you'd like to make a guest recommendation, please email me@mike treadpartners.com this episode has been powered by Tread partners, the leader in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops.

To learn more about tread partners, visit treadpartners.com.