Local 22 Year Old Entrepreneur Follows Passion and Fun for Exhilarating Ride

From XhilaRacing Facebook page.

Looking for something different for date night? Tired of doing the same old same old? Looking for something to do with your buddies? How about a girl’s night adventure? Then give this a try - high speed indoor go kart racing.

XhilaRacing, located on Spiral Drive in Florence behind Sam’s Club, is the place. It’s a huge indoor space (39,000 square feet of racing space) that includes a game room, several party rooms, and meeting rooms.  Fort Thomas’ Kenton Noran, 22, is part owner. He comes by his lifelong passion for anything related to cars honestly. His father is a major car collector so he grew up around lots and lots of cars.  

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These electric go karts can hit speeds of 40 MPH. You don’t realize how fast that is until you are zipping around an inch off the ground on a track in a building about the size of a super sized grocery store or a big box hardware store. The cars look like mini-formula 1 cars. Kenton says, They are open wheeled cars, very quick. And this is the only indoor electric go kart facility in the tri-state. And it’s growing quickly across the country.

The business opened in December of 2014 and Kenton discovered it shortly after - first as a client, then as an employee, and now as owner for the last year. He studied the business, saw its potential, and was excited when the opportunity arose to buy in with Alex McCall, the other owner.

Kenton enjoys competitive racing. He is part of a Chump car racing team which is off road endurance racing. And, of course, there are categories to that.  It can be seven hour, twelve hour, twenty-four hour, thirty-nine hours of straight racing. We use a modified Toyota MR2. I also drag race and auto-cross. 

When I saw that this place opened I thought I would come but I came with low expectations. I was their best customer within two weeks. I was here every weekend. It was such a different experience.

Official race car greets customers in the lobby. 

They do corporate outings, private parties, holiday and birthday parties, bachelor and bachelorette parties, as well as private track rental. This would be a fun learning exercise for corporations because strategy is key to winning races.

The costs are reasonable - about $20 per race. And you can post your scores to see how you rank with other drivers. Oh, and it’s fun.

But there is more to this story. Something interesting and revealing. Kenton is 22 years old and is in his final semester of college. He will graduate in December.  I am taking 6 hours right now while trying to run two businesses.  Two? I end up working about 60 hours a week. And then he has homework.

He is also part owner of a powder coating business in Covington. It’s an electrically charged powder that adheres to the surface. It’s baked on to a surface. It looks like paint but it lasts longer and is more durable than paint. We have 400 colors. And they do wheel repair - something needed in this area with all of the road repairs and potholes causing damage to wheels.  He’s a busy guy.

Courtesy of XhilaRacing Facebook page.

So Kenton is a confident, assured, 22 years old college senior and part owner in two successful businesses. So what’s next? I am always looking. Time is my enemy. It’s trying to find more time. I am trying to hire better and better people who I can rely on more to run operations when I am not around. But I am always when there is a big problem that need handling.

You can’t help but be impressed with Kenton. His positive attitude is infectious.  People are scared to take risks. And that is something that I have been lucky enough to have the mindset to take it on because you have to be scared in order to do great things. If you are always comfortable then you may never reach goals. So from a learning standpoint…I am aways trying to learn something new. And it’s exciting to learn.

My dad likes to say all the time that I am the smartest that I’ll ever be at my age because you think you know everything. But then you hit life and then you realize how much you don’t know. I take each day and learn as much as I can and get better. 

His big lesson so far? I try to be positive because every day I have something new to learn and I have a problem to solve. If I learn something every day and fix something everyday then that’s 365 things that I have learned and problems that I have fixed. That’s a great lesson.

Want to take a risk and try something new? Then visit XhilaRacing.  You can see more on their Facebook page.

Kenton Noran at XhilaRacing.