Class on Demand Report Card

News, Views, and Information from COD | June 2009

Paul Holtz Fires Up

In 1974, my dad gave my eldest brother, Steve, a cash loan to encourage him to stop riding his motorcycle and buy a car. Dad of course wasn’t so worried about my brother breaking his neck, as he was worried about the hospital costs that would surely come out of his own pocket. This would be a better investment he figured. Steve said he would only agree if he could buy the fastest production car that Ford had made up to that point. Dad reluctantly agreed (under pressure from my mom who considered all motorcycles dangerous) and Steve bought a used 1969 Shelby Mustang GT500. Two years later Steve decided fast cars were not for him, trucks were the fad and he sold the Shelby to my Dad. Dad never drove the Shelby and neither he nor Steve spent any money to maintain it and, although much of the car was fiberglass, the metal parts were rusting badly. The year was now 1977. Well I always loved that car. It was one of the coolest cars I had ever seen. I was 19 and at the time. I was dying to own the Shelby. I was a mechanic at the time and knew this car deserved a better fate than a rust bucket. I would restore it myself, I thought.  After constant nagging Dad finally agreed to sell the car to me for $4500- $1,000 more than he’d paid Steve for it!

I was thrilled to finally have the car of my dreams. As I mentioned, I was a trained mechanic and spent my days fixing GMC and Mack trucks at a garage in Chicago. At night I started to restore the Shelby. I had to sell my Ford “Grand Torino” Sport (yep just like the one in the Clint Eastwood movie) to pay for the re-paint on the Shelby’s newly installed body panels that I had pounded out by hand. The engine was an original Ford 427 side oiler,( That is 7 litres for the car nuts outside of the States) one of the most famous performance engines ever manufactured by Ford and the same engine in the famous Le Mans winning Shelby 427 Cobra’s and Ford GT40’s. I lovingly restored the car and after many years of work, the light green Shelby took a place of pride in my garage.

In 1979, I had traded my mechanics job for a field maintenance job with Xerox. Jump ahead to 1984 and the last of my Rock Bands  (I play guitar) had just broken up. We’re in a recession so I figure I’d better work harder and not be content with just the Xerox paycheck. So I decide to try this new form of portable entertainment called a” Disc Jockey”. ( hey remember this is 1984) Beside I aready owned a killer P.A. that would make a great sound sytem for the D.J. business..I bought my first Disc Jockey gear and started DJ’ing on weekends. I had a gift for entertaining a crowd (which I used to very profitable effect as a Pinnacle demo artist years later) and soon added more DJ systems – Christie Entertainment was born (named after my first daughter, Christine). By 1990 Christie Entertainment was the 2nd largest DJ business in Illinois and I decide to give up my day job with Xerox. It got too embarrassing taking more calls for me than them. As a trusted vendor, Christie Entertainment was constantly asked if we could recommend someone to videotape the parties and weddings. Again we’re in a recession, that was to last 16 months, but again we see an opportunity and we invest in cameras and S-VHS decks and start the Wedding Video production business. We’re working out of my basement and Garage, doing seven or eight single and two-camera weddings on a weekend. Turns out that people attending the weddings ran businesses, and between the Chicken Dance, best man speeches, and the cake-cutting ceremony, they talked to us about producing corporate videos and commercials. We learned quickly and became successful in these markets as well.

In 1995, I was approached by Pinnacle to be a beta tester, demo artist and evangelist for their hot new video workstation, Alladin. So started another growth period in Christie Entertainment’s history where I found myself travelling all over the world doing demos on Alladin, writing a magazine called “Alladin’s Lamp” and producing and selling transition FX packs called (sorry) HoltzFX. It was my connection with Pinnacle and the visibility at tradeshows and events all over the world that started the phone calls and emails about training. “Can you record yourself on tape and send it to me?  I’ll happily pay you for some of those tips you showed me last week at the Rocky Mountain Expo…” And so, once again seeing an opportunity, Class on Demand was born.

A year ago, someone pointed me to an article about a company that specialized in performance tuning Shelby’s. Why not, I think, after all, I’ve not done anything new with the Shelby in over 30 years. Plus it turns out that a 1969 Shelby is MUCH more valuable if the original serial numbers match between the car and the engine. I wanted to start racing it again without worrying about blowing up the original engine. I contacted one of the best 427 Ford engine builders in the business and we talked about what he can do for ‘my baby’. I decide to pull the original engine and protect it while building another engine just like it using the best technology  offered today while keeping the same look and feel of the original engine. After almost a year with an empty space in my garage I just took delivery of my “Eleanor” (a reference to the coveted Shelby in Gone in 60 Seconds). Sporting a completely new 1966 427 engine bored and stroked to displace 502 cubic inches (8.2liters) and produce over 675 ft lbs of torque at 6,000 RPM and over 635 brake horsepower she goes like “shit off a shovel.” (Imagine being able to lay down 100 feet of rubber in second gear at 50 miles and hour!) The engine is so powerful we had to upgrade the fuel system, exhaust, rear end traction unit, in fact almost everything that transferred this massive power. The new parts were all made from high strength aluminum resulting in an engine some 400lbs lighter than the original. So now the front end of the car sat too high and we had to remove some of the coils to get it to sit just right. What was great is now even better. It handles like it’s on rails and stops on a dime because of the better weight distribution!

About the same time as the Shelby went for a makeover, we made the decision at Class on Demand to again reinvent ourselves and finally deliver on our brand name – we can’t wait to unveil our shiny new on-demand platform this summer. We have also decided to extend our great brand name and award-winning (see news item above) formula to adjacent industries – this summer will see the launch of our IT training division with a series of titles that we know will hit the pain points in that industry from day one.

Steve Jobs, when asked by a reporter what Apple would do in the economic downturn, responded “Invest like crazy so we’re ready when the market comes back.”  We agree and we’ll be ready. 

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