Pushing Boundaries In Car Design With Nikita Bridan

Ever wondered what fuels the future of automotive innovation? Buckle up as we dive into the exhilarating world of car design with Nikita Bridan, co-founder and CEO of Oilstainlab, a visionary car design strategist. With 15 years of experience shaping the aesthetics of giants like Lyft, Cruise GM, Toyota, and Genesis, Nikita now steers his own automotive design consultancy and custom vehicle manufacturing company. This episode ignites with Nikita's insights on cutting-edge electrification platforms, the dynamic evolution of automotive design trends, and the sheer passion that drives the creation of truly boundary-pushing vehicles.

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Pushing Boundaries In Car Design With Nikita Bridan

Introducing Nikita Bridan & His Early Passion for Cars

It is my honor to introduce to you my guest Nikita Bridan. Nikita is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Oilstainlab, a car design strategist with fifteen years of OEM and startup experience. He has worked with world renowned brands, including Lyft, Cruze, GM, Toyota, Genesis, One, and more on electrification platforms and strategy. In 2019, he co-founded with his twin brother, Iliya, I hope I pronounce his name correctly, as an automotive design consultancy service and playground and developed into a boundary pushing custom vehicle manufacturer.

Lives as fast as his cars he builds. He was once pulled over at 140 miles per hour in Arizona and got off with a warning which is remarkable. Nikita earned a bachelor's degree in transportation design from the Istituto Europeo di Design in Italy. Hopefully, I got that one right as well. The ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he now serves as the instructor to the next generation of designers. He currently lives in Long Beach, which is also where their company is incorporated and is operating. I'm thrilled to welcome you to the show.

Thanks for having me. You did great with the names.

Good. This particular one really challenged me, so I appreciate that. We're going to have a great conversation as we do on these shows. What we do is we explore people's journeys to getting to what they're doing in the world. I love what you're up to now, but I am so looking forward to sharing with people the journey that got you there. The flashpoints, as we call them, are the moments in our lives that have ignited our gifts into the world. As you're sharing these moments, it's a pause along the way. We'll see what themes are showing up and just dive in, and we'll see where we go. What do you say?

I look forward to it, man. It should be fun. There are plenty of flashpoints.

It's not easy doing what you do. Let's dive in. Go ahead and start us off.

I was born in Ukraine a long time ago. I was still in the USSR at the time. Basically moved to Canada when I was 2 or 3 and grew up in a very rural part of Canada. It would seem impossible to get into the car industry from there. There was no car culture there or anything. No premium cars. No expensive cars. Everything's very run of the mill, pick up trucks and stuff. It was just a childhood full of art, drawing a lot of spaceships, dinosaurs, stuff like that. At some point became obsessed with drawing cars, probably around like 6 or 7 years old, I guess.

The parents say they still have all the sketches, and they keep them, and they're terribly embarrassing at this point. That started a little bit of this car passion, which eventually led us to my twin brother and I dropping out of high school at thirteen, doing some SAT exams, and then getting accepted to university in Italy at fourteen. Luckily enough parents, they thought we were crazy. Of course, everyone's parents want them to be a lawyer or a doctor or something stable. They were kind enough and supported us.

Of course at fourteen moved with us to Italy to have a support system there because you cannot do anything when you're fourteen. That started our car design journey. Spent a year and a half there and then moved on to California at Art Center, finished our studies there. My brother and I both became car designers at Toyota to start, then quickly moved to Honda and then the rest of the career followed. Oilstainlab was founded in 2019 as a design automotive consultancy and then grew into what it is today, which is boutique manufacturing and our crazy HF-11 project.

The Sacrifices Of Success

You touched on a lot of different things. First of all, it is really remarkable to hear that your story is not about like it was driven by a passion and then it was fostered by your parents, which is wonderful. Most people think, “Didn't finish high school and therefore you went into this mode of like.” What am going do next? Yu had a plan, and you followed that passion all the way to Italy, and it was fostered by the people around you, which is wonderful. I think what's atypical about that, there's many things that are atypical about that, but is that most people would be forced by people around them to say, “Follow the court. Stay in school. Do the things.” Passion is not really where you make money, but lo and behold, this did become something.

There was resistance with the parents for sure. Obviously, no one's parents want them to become a starving artist. Especially if they don't come from a super wealthy family. Like attending these design schools is really expensive, particularly in our centers case. It's a huge commitment. I think one of the reasons we did end up going to Italy first was that it was just much more affordable. It was a nice test bed, and I'm sure the parents were like, “They'll get tired of it. This isn't really their career. They'll grow out of it, like video games and stuff like that.” They were wrong. My brother and I were very stubborn.

It's good to be stubborn with something that's important to you. You're willing to be committed to that path, which is not easy. One of the things that I had a conversation a while back with this amazing person, Dr. Marcus Collins, and he talks about this idea of like passion requires suffering. People often think about this idea of, like, passion being such a fun thing to follow, but sometimes there's a bit of suffering along the way, some challenges that you have to overcome. I'd love to hear a bit more about how did you stay the course and how did you ensure that you were like, “Is this the right thing for me and not just what other people expected?”

Great question. I certainly agree with that. As cool as it was to be in Italy at fourteen, all my friends in Canada were playing hockey on a pond and my brother and I were stuck inside doing lots of homework, trying to catch up and try to basically be the best in the world. There was a lot of sacrifice in terms of like those activities or let's say a more traditional childhood experience.

We made up for that later on when we had fun after we got our degrees. The suffering or the sacrifice, I think it's made easier when there's two of us. I think my brother and I are each other's enablers. In many ways, it's good, and it's bad. There are plenty of days when I don't want to get out of bed and put in the hours or the work, but I see him doing it. He feel like a little guilty. You're like, “This guy, he's doing it.”

I got to do it, too. I don't want to let him down. I think we also enable each other's bad ideas. We'll often do things that are extremely ambitious because there's two of us, like we can get it done. We put ourselves in these positions where, yeah, you do sometimes need to work an eighteen-hour day or for three weeks solid. All of that improves the skills and sets you up for future success. Certainly, it's not as easy as social media makes it look these days.

No doubt. What I'm really appreciating for what you shared is this built-in accountability partner that we often need. We need people to hold us accountable to like, “You said you wanted to do this. Now let's make it happen.” Also, someone who can see you and understands, “Maybe he's in over his skis, or maybe there's something we need to do a little different to get where we need to go.”

Exactly. Sometimes that person could also be like, “Don't stress out. That's not the end of the world. Like go take a golf trip or something, just relax.” It's good and bad.

Tell me about what happens when you start to get into this world of working with other organizations, which are really robust, huge organizations like GM, Toyota, and Honda. How did you find yourself in those rooms? What caused this to happen for you?

Breaking Into The Automotive Industry & Early Career Challenges

I think my brother and I had a fairly good education at our center, got a pretty good reputation. Had quite a few job offers to go work at companies. We were always very much on the more advanced side, conceptual side, strategy side. It's interesting because when you graduate, your whole world and your whole ego are basically tied to getting a job at a prestigious car company. You're going to change the world. The problem with these car companies is that they haven't hired you. That's like a young person's mentality to it.

Over the first 2 or 3 years, very quick realization that if a car company struggling has nothing to do with the designers, it has nothing to do with like the people in the organization, it's the actual organizational structure. That can shade people, or it just opens your eyes to the idea of how do you manipulate this entire huge organization to achieve what it is that you're trying to achieve. You'll never achieve a hundred percent, but if you can just steer the course a little bit.

If a car company is struggling, that's nothing to do with the designers and the people in the organization. It's the actual organizational structure.

It teaches you a little bit about negotiation, a little bit more about compromise and politics. Again, as a young designer, that was crazy. I was eye opening. Just really lucky to at Toyota and do almost a personal project for Akio Toyota himself. It was to develop this car for young people to make young people enjoy cars again. It was very advanced conceptually, but that got us started in doing these skunkworks projects with like CEO level guys or director level guys.

That just continued throughout the career for myself and for my brother. It was very cool. You get to learn about the business side, the engineering side, the really big picture stuff. I think a lot of designers are really focused on like, “Let's create like a new headlight shape.” It's so much bigger than that. We were just lucky to experience that literally at the start of our careers.

It's so interesting because here you are, you're getting the opportunity to learn from the big boys, if you will, but also not have to be stuck in, let's call it the bureaucracy of what an organization can sometimes be. I just wrote an article about this in fast company, about how oftentimes companies say they want creativity, they want these things, but then they put things in place that actually stifle the very thing they're looking for.

I think that is what you just got into is this element of you wanted to be able to bring some fresh perspective, bring some things that they haven't had before. It's not because there are bad people in the organization. It's just that we start to get stuck in patterns, and we start to force down efficiency and how do we get the bottom line? Sometimes, we've got to break things up.

A perfect example of that during my career. I ended up at Hyundai Genesis for four months, and it was an absolute horror show for me. I think because I was spoiled early on in my career, having very few layers above me, despite being a junior. By the time I arrived at Hyundai, you would consider me a senior and just I had like an American boss, a Korean boss, American boss, and just the layers of different bosses and the approvals that needed to happen to even print like an 11 by 17 sketch off a printer. I'd literally quit after four months. I couldn't take it. It was just an organization that did not fit.

It's really interesting what you're sharing is this element of like, we need to make sure we're not getting stuck and allowing yourself to say, “It's time for a change. It's time for a pattern interrupt. Let's do it.” I think in many ways it teaches you a lot of things about yourself too, to say that like, who am I as an individual in these organizations and in this field? How do I make sure that I'm doing what is going to be most meaningful to me but also serving the people I'm working with? Tell me more about some of these lessons you've learned for yourself around this journey.

I like the angle that you're talking about there in terms of the disruption or whatever. I think part of my career was always I think it's easy to get jaded and bored, especially for me. In these big organizations, I'd often do like switch roles or something. I'd stop doing like exterior design and go do interior design and start doing that just to get the mind to think differently, but also work with a different team, different priorities, get a different outlook.

Eventually pivoting into other roles where it's more like design strategy or technology strategy. Where do we need to be in fifteen years so that we're not obsolete as a company and just all those skill sets. They build on themselves, but also just disrupt, like you said, the patterns. My brother and I, both love patterns in our daily lives. We like stability. We wake up at the same time every day. We go to bed at the same time every day. We're very ritual in terms of that because it makes it easier to put in the hours.

You just get used to it. We do love disrupting it with like these shock events. The same thing when we're working on projects. We oftentimes like to structure the creative process so that we create one proposal or one strategy that's very expected. We like to blow everything up and go completely off left field and just throw something out there, like a little grenade into the concept room and see what happens, create some chaos. Again, not great in a corporate environment, but for what we do now, it's fantastic. It's really an advantage.

I do want to lead up to the work you're doing now, which is just really remarkable. We're going to talk about your, I cannot remember the name of the car, but the one that you just launched, what was it? A year ago or a little less than a year ago?

Building Oilstainlab & The HF-11 Supercar

In October of last year, we launched HF-11, which builds on what we've been doing with Half-11 now for 3 or 4 years. Same thing. That project originally started as a business card for Oilstainlab. It was never commercial in its intent. We wanted to basically blow up the way stories are told around the creation of cars, the process. We did like a full alternate history for our car as if it had existed in the ‘60s and the ‘70s created all these images of it racing back in the day against the cars and the drivers that we idolize.

It was a really good way for us to, I mean, first of all, get engagement on social media. I think we live in very blase conditions. Everyone's just scrolling. This actively forced you to interpret what you were seeing or like, “Is this real? Why have I never seen this?” You want to dig deeper. It also begins to build a cult. It's like, if you consciously accept that this is cool, you accept that this might've been real. You're automatically like building these positive ideas and concepts around this project.

The other thing is just the level of disinformation that we were dealing with in 2020, which is nothing compared to, but we already saw it happening. We wanted to play with that idea of like, what's real, what's not real. That whole project basically grew into this monster of a thing and a monster online presence. Eventually, it led to our production car, which is the one we introduced last year in October. Effectively, it's the world's first power train agnostic I guess, super car platform. We're both gas and EV. We call it Thunderbolt.

Super lightweight and has 1960s-inspired styling, a lot of magical design features, and a lot of hidden things. You don't really know how a lot of it works, but it works. A lot of these things that we were chasing in the OEM space, but just couldn't do because of either management or cost concerns or whatever. We call this the no excuses car. It's the car we want to build, no excuses. If you need more money, go find more money. If you need more technology, go find the technology. It's the best that we can do, obviously a moment in time. We hope the next one's even better. That's the project.

It's really remarkable. Love that your process of getting here, this idea of going back and recreating that a history of sorts that really builds up to what you've built. Also, I want to talk about the problems you've had to solve along the way, which is not an easy thing. How do you get this real amazing piece of machinery, this car, how do you get it to be able to perform at where it's performed? That is remarkable.

Before we do that, I just wanted to also tap into this idea that like, what an amazing way to build a business, having something that you can concretely point to that we built on our own, and then allow other people to see, “We do this for you too. We also will help you think about ways to solve your problems to get to where you need to go.” I may have spoken out of class there, but you tell me if I'm on the right.

I think so. I think it is very accurate. The way my brother and I were raised is like, you got to go, and you got to do it, and you got to show people. I think too much of culture these days is put a pretty picture online and then ask people for millions and millions of dollars with like no actual passports. Again, we started at non commercially. It was a real passion project. We love telling stories. I think stories unite generations.

Stories unites generations.

If you look at stories throughout the millennia, there's a basic framework there that always resonates on a human level. For us, that was really important to build community, to build a humanity to the project. I think it worked well. Obviously raised a lot of people's eyebrows and started that thought process. It's a crazy project, self-funded. The car got to Goodwood last year, which is like the pinnacle for cars to be invited there. It's only basically 200 of the world's best cars. It's in England. We have to ship the car by plane. It's a crazy ordeal. It just honestly just pinch me moments.

No doubt. Let's talk about the business itself. What are some of the things that you struggled the most with in terms of building a business? It's not an easy thing to do. Obviously, you're building it from your expertise and your passion that you've gotten here, but there are a lot of things that happen along the way that make running a business a little bit harder. Tell me about that.

I think maybe most people do not have a ton of business experience early on. I'm trained as a creative, which is honestly the enemy of business in many ways. Before we started this endeavor, both my brother and I were doing some deep studying into business startups. How learning the lingo, learning the processes, learning the key players, and doing a lot of history research. How did people do it in the past?

The Challenges Of Running A Business In The Automotive Industry

History has a way of repeating itself patterns. I think we spent a good three years before committing. Obviously, the design consultancy was running successfully. That was its own thing, but to build cars is very capital intensive and super high risk. We did like three years of prep work beforehand to organize it in such a way that it could work in a very lean way. Built the business first, built the strategy, the model, built out what the team would look like. It's very difficult.

As a creative or someone who's a maker, you want to make things and get it out into the world. Oftentimes, you can shoot yourself in the foot because if you don't have a model or a strategy or any viable path to make this thing scale, then what are you doing? You're just wasting your time. You can waste a lot of money. Get to market, and the market can just be like, “Yeah, that was stupid. Why'd you do that?”

I want to lean into that for a second because there's something about you shared, which is there is this like, “We need to put a prototype out and got to get something going because otherwise we're going to have this issue where are we building for the right thing or do we have enough money to even sustain this?” I think there's something to be said about what you did is this idea of slowing things down a little bit and saying, “Let's get clear about what we're trying to build. Let's try and see if we can get an understanding of what's going on here before we rush a hundred miles an hour towards putting something out in the world.”

It's interesting. When you're dealing with cutting-edge technology, maybe it's a race to the market. You got to build a prototype first or something. If it's really cutting edge and has transformational potential, but oftentimes the iPhone wasn't the first touchscreen. It wasn't.

I hear you.

People forget that. Oftentimes, the first mover isn't exactly where you want to be. The other advice for startups is that your lowest burn rate is when you're not building stuff. I'm talking about, obviously, hardware manufacturing and stuff. The burn rate comes when you have a factory and you have employees and you're manufacturing, and that's when mistakes also become super costly. They're 10 X.

Your lowest burn rate is when you're not building stuff.

We took our time for two and a half years developing the product, making sure we work out all the kinks digitally with prototyping, etc. You keep the burn rate really low, which keeps your risk low, which then enables you to take more risks because you're not financially pressured into getting something into the market that isn't finished. It worked for us. Wouldn't say it was stress-free, but definitely worked for us.

I like that you bring up this idea of risk because I mean, it's so important to take calculated risks, but like you want to move forward at the right times, the right places, but you also want to make sure you don't limit yourself in terms of what you can build and what you can create. You have to have that really good vision for the future and what you see, but also know that along the way, you need to potentially take times out and say, “What do we do next? What's the next right move for us here? If we get too far ahead of us, we might end up putting the whole thing at risk.”

The Importance Of Testing Concepts Before Market Release

Great point. I think what's interesting working with my twin brother, we know that, basically, if we both agree, then we're in a pretty good position. That's probably not fail-proof, but it's probably the right decision. I think a lot of founders get so excited about their idea, and they work on this prototype, and then they launch it. Oftentime,s the reaction they get isn't what they expected. I hate to say this, but the user can be wrong, and they can use the product wrong, and the product doesn't fit. We like to do these float these balloons where we throw something into the public, and we use social media a lot for this.

We'll throw a concept out there. It doesn't reveal what we're doing or anything, but we can measure the temperature in the room, and it saved us so many times where we've pivoted because three people on Instagram were like, “That's disgusting.” We don't have a lot of ego with it. We're just like, “They're not understanding it. We need to make them understand because the client ultimately is right.” You don't have to destroy your product or dilute it. It's the opposite. You're distilling it so that it's unmistakable. People will understand it intrinsically. I think that's important and something we value in our process a lot.

It's something that you connected back to, and just what you described is this idea of like, it's building a story, and the story is not always one that is easy for people to understand. You have to take a moment and say, “Maybe they don't quite see what we're building. Let's give them a different way of entering this space in ways to come on board with the story that we're developing.”

I think we struggle with this a lot, and it's basically like in an email. It's almost impossible for us to control the experience. For us to control their reaction, it's just too short. The medium doesn't fit. If I can get someone into the room with me for ten minutes, we can control that experience with a slideshow and some music. We can get people to feel what we want them to feel, and it basically always works. The email is the one that's such a struggle because what we build is very emotional. It's not saving the planet. It's not saving lives. It's ultimately a luxury toy. It's very difficult to connect with people by email. That's a big challenge for us.

No doubt. You recovered a lot of ground so far, but I think there's one thing that I'd like to know is like, what happens now? What are the things that you're leaning into as you think about the evolution of what you've created, and what do you think will be the thing that keeps you energized in this space?

Another good one. We'll always be energized just because we love this more than anything in the world, but what's interesting has been the way we've transitioned. Obviously, we've got to get this car onto the market and have a successful launch and all that. That's what keeps me awake at night. The transition from a younger designer sixteen years ago to the person now.

My brother and I have gone from let's create new shapes, new body sides, new headlights, whatever to let's create products that haven't existed before and new approaches to that. Now I think we're really interested in more on a system level of like, how do we create a new system for these products to exist in? The problems get bigger, the scale gets bigger. I think that's what keeps us very excited about it. We also do want to do a more affordable car.

The Future Of Oilstainlab: Expanding Into More Affordable Cars

Our launch product is extremely expensive. It's actually a good deal in the market, but it's still extremely expensive. We want to do something for more the average enthusiast, which was how we grew up and the car that we really would have wanted or aspire to back when we were kids. Take it back to the roots. That'll be the second product. The third product is a new system for these objects to exist in. That's very much more about culture, lifestyle, infrastructure, and stuff like that. That's the next big thing that we're working on.

It's quite interesting. It's exciting. I think it's those challenges that you lay out. I think there's something about it, which is it's taking on a big, hairy, audacious goal. Also, at the same time, you're like, it'll be interesting, exciting to find out how you take some of these concepts and you make them into something that's more consumable by the more average person. I would say not everyone's going to be into this space, but I think the idea is that the challenge you're going to face is going to be a huge learning lesson for a lot of people. I'm looking forward to learn to watching this space as you continue to go down this path. That would be interesting.

No, we love big ideas, and even if we fail, we feel like we have learned so much. We're not afraid of failing. Use an expression internally. It's like shoot for the stars and land on the moon. We're still off this earth. We're good.

Shoot for the stars, land on the moon. We're still off this Earth so we're good.

Yeah, I’m still up here. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you feel like you want to share with people? Maybe it's something about the journey or story that you want to share. I just want to open the space because there are so many things we could go into, but I love what you've shared so far.

The only thing we haven't, I guess, maybe covered is a lot of people assume from our background or whatever that we're car designers, that we've been obsessed with cars, that we're drawing cars from six years old. The reality is that we liked cars, drawing cars because they were the hardest things to draw. There's like, all these intricacies, and they were very difficult to design. The challenge was that most people would be probably surprised to find out. I had no idea how an engine worked until after I graduated from design school at like 25. I had no idea what a piston was or a camshaft, like, no idea. I think you don't need to necessarily be an expert in everything to have a different idea. It's cool when you don't know everything because then you don't know what's impossible. It's like anything's possible.

That moment. It's also great because it's also leaning into the idea that it's like, “You're not just doing this by yourself, by the two of you. You're enlisting other people along the journey who are going to bring your expertise to something that you're envisioning.” I think that is really what good leaders do, they don't expect that they're going to have all the answers. It’s also knowing that because of that, you're going to be tapping into other people's ideas along the way that will be forwarding the mission.

That alludes perfectly to another internal quote that we use a lot is basically that we know just enough to be dangerous. That's literally my brother and I, and when we're in meetings, we know enough that we can carry on a conversation, but we also know not enough to say stupid ideas that like challenge people and really rethink the process. That was key to a lot of our projects is just never feeling like stupid about suggesting something and just being like, “Why don't we do this?” Kind of a child naivete, I guess.

Car Design, Corporate Constraints, And The Value Of Different Thinking

I do want to ask a question about this idea that here you are,  you're based in Long Beach, but it's not exactly a Mecca or at least as far as I know, for car designers or vehicle designers in general. Usually, people would say like, “You got to be in Detroit, or you've got to be X, Y, Z in Italy.” Tell me how has that either helped or detracted from your ability to be effective in this?

I hate to counter you here. Southern California, Los Angeles area is home to probably fifteen car design studios. In terms of head count, it's much smaller than the Detroit area, but in terms of variety, you've got Toyota, Hyundai, Genesis, General Motors, BMW, Mercedes. Everyone has a design studio in Southern California. It started in about the 1970s. Toyota was the first one to establish it, and everybody followed.

It's been amazing. That was one of the reasons we transferred from Italy to California was to be in this space, which is extremely creative. There's so much talent. We were so lucky to learn from so many talented people. It has its drawbacks in terms of every studio's advanced design. 8Q, whether it's in Detroit or Munich or Japan or Korea, they don't give a crap about what the advanced studios are doing.

Like it's never going to be a production car. It doesn't make them any money. They give us a minimal budget, and they're like, “Go have fun in the sandbox.” You are able to do really advanced things and challenge the way things are thought about. Again, so many talented people are plugging along in the corporate environment. Just lucky to learn.

That's amazing. I said I'd learn something new every day, but that's something that's really 1970s. That's a long time for that type of an ethos or environment to be around. Yet you don't often hear about it, at least not in the public eye. I think it's interesting to hear that perspective. Knowing that sometimes you have to be in an environment where people think differently to allow yourself to have that fostered environment where it helps support you to get where you need to go.

It's funny on the corporate level. Again, what you were talking about earlier in the conversation, like corporations established these studios for different thought. As soon as they get a different thought, they're like, “No, we don't. We don't want that. Thanks, but no.”

We cannot sell that. It's been a wonderful conversation. I love what you've tapped into so many different areas about the challenges, but also the commitment that you've made to doing this work and to really push the envelope, which is wonderful. We're coming to a close through the end and I want to make sure I ask some of the key questions that I need to ask, which is the last question. What are 1 or 2 books that had an impact on you and why? Very intrigued by that.

This is a really easy question for me. Actually, I've got one book that I absolutely adore, and I haven't read it back in forever because I just I keep it like on a pedestal. Around twelve, I got a book for a birthday, and it was called American Car Design Now. It dealt with a lot with J. Mays, what he was doing at Ford at the time, how car design was about storytelling, how much influence he got from Hollywood and movies, how those are universally connecting with people, and how do you imbue that into design.

Obviously, when you're twelve, you read it, and you have no idea what impact it will leave. Looking back at our career now, having studied in Italy and learning the original car design, coach building techniques and a more old school approach. Somehow, I ended up in LA, which is basically Hollywood, and I learned the storytelling thing. Now, looking back at that book and being like, “That was almost fortune telling. That was so crazy.” Single-handedly, that book set, I think, a path. I’m very thankful to whoever gave me that book as a present.

I'm going to have go find that book because I'm intrigued. I love to hear these recommendations because it leads to little breadcrumbs. That's what that's the hope to other people to be inspired and say, “How do I get to move my own journey in the right direction? What are the things that have really got me excited? How do I foster that flame, if you will, of passion?” Very cool. Any other books that you want to recommend or mention?

No, that's the one. That's the iconic book.

I have to thank you again. This has been a wonderful conversation in terms of being able to share the journey you've been on, but also some of the amazing insights for people who are, even if you're not in the industry, the same industry, there's so many things that applicable to other industries and other ways of building companies. I think that's so many great lessons that you've shared. I appreciate that.

It's been great, man. It's a really fun chat. Loved it.

Thank you. Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where they can find out more about your work and some of the key places they should be looking.

Where To Follow Nikita’s Work

We run a fairly active Instagram, Oilstainlab, and then we've got our website, Oilstainlab.com. Those are the best places to learn about the new cars and the culture of the brand, etc. We have a lot of fun on Instagram with that.

It's awesome. I've been following the journey along, and it's remarkable. The car is beautiful. One that you've designed. I'm a big fan of aesthetics. I don't think of aesthetics as just like, “It's nice, but it's also how does it you feel?” Like, what are the emotions that get conjured up when you look at something like that? It is one of those cars that gets you thinking, “This is real.”

I take great pride in that. We worked very hard for it to connect on a human level. I love hearing that. That's perfect.

Listen, thank you again for coming on the show, and thanks to the readers for coming on the journey with us. I know you're leaving inspired and really blown away at the story that we've shared here. Thanks again.

Thanks, man.

Important Links

• Nikita Bridan on LinkedIn
• Oilstainlab
• Istituto Europeo di Design
• ArtCenter College of Design
• American Car Design Now
• Oilstainlab on Instagram

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