BEP / 1977 –
My life
from a dream
to an enterprise.
2025 was the 20th year of operations for Enthusiast Companies and one that changed our future. I'm an operator working on distributed power, natural hydrogen, and the chemistry that connects them. My work runs through three operating subsidiaries out of my small office in Liberty, Missouri. I hope you'll take a little time to learn about me and what my companies are up to.
I had a dream, and I've chased it ever since.
I was an immensely curious kid. I read a lot, loved science and shop class, and played with remote control toys and engines as my hobby. I had a dream about a huge engine that was running on a clean gas from the ground when I was ten. I didn't understand what it meant when I woke up, the feeling I had never left, and the geometry I saw stayed with me. I've spent my life chasing that dream.
When I got older and began to understand how the dream worked, I formalized it on paper in 2004 and built the first prototype shortly after. The fuel I believed was coming from the ground was hydrogen — but it didn't exist as a real resource back then; it was a manufactured chemical. I shelved the engine and went to work on other things.
What followed was two decades of me forming companies and operating others across automotive, insurance, broadcast, chemistry, and electronics. The work was cross-disciplinary, small, and mostly quiet. The engine and vision work ran in parallel the whole time.
In 2017 hydrogen pioneer Roger Billings challenged me to rethink my engine geometry. He was my mentor for about six years on hydrogen and other things. The rotor architecture we have today is what came out of that work and challenge.
In early 2025 the USGS published the first comprehensive federal assessment of naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen. The resource my engine had been built to run on stopped being theoretical. Around the same time, genealogical research surfaced that I'm a relative of Charles Fletcher Peck — Nikola Tesla's first investor and business partner. Things got really interesting really quickly in 2025.
The answer I'm working on is a system to combust methane today and hydrogen tomorrow that is based on that 40-year-old dream. A small modular generator that runs on gas at the wellhead or on a pipeline at a facility that is cost effective to operate and relatively affordable to produce against the current marketplace. Chemistry that uses both methane and hydrogen to create ammonia, methanol, and sustainable aviation fuel sits behind it on a longer horizon to complete the vision. Three subsidiaries, one operating enterprise, the same long arc that started on a notebook page in 1987.
I'm dedicated to creating the ending of my dream. I hope you'll join me and Enthusiast Companies as we build our future of clean energy and chemicals for generations to come.
Write if it's relevant.
I read every message personally. Operating questions are better routed to the relevant company or our corporate site but questions about my work overall, my family, or anything else can come here.