OM DENNE EPISODE
Jonathan Ward ended up on Broadway at seven years old by complete accident. His mom signed him up for an open audition on a trip to New York, mostly just to kill time, and he landed the part in Peter Pan. That turned into a full childhood acting career — Charles in Charge, his own show on Fox called Beans Baxter, and the lead role in Fern Gully next to Robin Williams. He was never actually famous, in his words, just famous enough to get a stalker, which is ultimately what pushed him out of the business entirely.
Cars had always been the real thing for him. He'd been restoring them in a one-car garage since before he had a license. In 1996, he and his now-wife quit their entertainment jobs on a whim after a trip to South Africa and started TLC — short for Toyota Land Cruisers — with a dozen trucks, a $10,000 loan from his sister-in-law, and a website he traded a truck for because he didn't know what a web designer was. The neighbors in his industrial park ran a betting pool on which month the business would fail.
Years in, Toyota's then-chairman personally called his shop and asked him to prototype a modern FJ40. Jonathan built three versions, Toyota's board picked one, and that work eventually shaped the FJ Cruiser. He took the money from that job and used it to build something fully his own — a ground-up, computer-designed version of the FJ40 with a modern V8, instead of the junkyard-parts approach everyone else was doing. Mickey Drexler, the guy behind Gap and J.Crew, told him not to cut a single corner to hit a lower price, and bought the first one himself. That truck became ICON.
Years later, Ford's CEO — someone Jonathan had known back when he worked at Toyota — personally called and asked ICON to build a one-off Bronco to tease the model's comeback. Ford's own engineers didn't think it could be done. When it showed up at SEMA, Ford's team pulled it straight onto their own booth. TLC eventually got sold off so Jonathan could focus entirely on ICON, which now builds fully bespoke Broncos, FJs, and classic Chevy trucks — and has a customer base loyal enough that over 30% of owners come back for a second, third, or fourth vehicle.
Make sure to check out ICON at: https://www.icon4x4.com/
Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX
Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO
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