Ellie Pentland came to the automotive aftermarket in June of 2000 and has spent more than twenty-five years in it since — a run that includes Heartland, Full Throttle and NGEN. There is not much about this industry she has not already seen from the inside.
She and Sean Porcher met at a JLAF tradeshow in Las Vegas in 2002, under circumstances Sean did not choose. Sean had a reputation for being hard to reach — vendor calls redirected to gatekeepers, that sort of thing — and he was working the show floor accordingly: power walking the aisles, badge flipped backwards, eye contact strictly avoided. Ellie stepped out of her booth, planted herself in the aisle in front of him, and turned his badge back around.
Cover blown, Sean listened. He had never offered engine or fuel treatments in his stores and frankly did not believe in them. Ellie talked him into giving the products a shot. That one moment in a Las Vegas aisle produced two things that still matter twenty years later: Sean’s belief in the fuel and engine treatment category, and a bond between Ellie and the Porcher family that never really went away.
For the next decade she was, on paper, the competition — from 2012 to 2022 she carried other brands while Throttle Muscle grew. Nobody ever treated her that way. She was family in every respect except the paperwork. So when she went looking for a company she could see herself growing with, Sean and Cody did not have to think it over: Ellie joined the team on April 1, 2022, and became a part owner.
She loves people, and building relationships is her favorite part of life! Her specialties are training, problem solving, hugging, and talking (just ask anyone who knows her)! Ellie is a faith first kinda girl!
Fun fact — She is known as a “stalker for life” in this industry — a reputation she earned honestly, as the badge incident above will attest — and she loves to do singing telegrams and write silly poems for people. She is also an avid Detroit Lions fan, and would like that on the record. Go Lions.
Cody Mead was sixteen years old and giving up his summers away from high school when he first joined forces with Sean. That was almost twenty-five years ago, and he has been in the automotive aftermarket ever since.
He has done just about all of it: running a supply business out of the attic of the corporate offices at his brother’s Jiffy Lube franchise, slinging tires in the tire shops, and earning his SMOG Repair license along the way. So when we say Cody knows this environment from top to bottom, we mean he has personally worked most of it.
He is one of the founding members of Throttle Muscle, and his appetite for building genuinely cutting edge products — rather than one more ordinary treatment in one more bottle — is a big part of what has driven this company forward. He is also one of the hardest workers and nicest guys you will ever meet. (No, he didn’t write this! lol!)
Fun fact — Cody is also known as Sean’s LITTLE brother — and yes, the attic in question was Sean’s. He played competitive hockey in his younger years but holds no team allegiance of any kind — which, in a company containing a Lions fan, a Broncos fan and two Raiders fans, is arguably the most defensible position on the roster.
Timothy Jarnagin joined Throttle Muscle in 2025 — but he was family long before that. He spent six years running our products in his own store before he ever joined the team, so he came in already knowing the line inside and out. Timothy has managed in the quick lube industry for several years, most recently running a $2 million location, which means he knows what a bay actually needs because he has spent his career standing in one. When he relocated with his family to Monterey, California, he wanted to stay tied to the Throttle Muscle family — and we were not about to let him get away!
Fun fact — He is happiest on two wheels or four — biking and offroading in his time off, and building projects for the Throttle Muscle off-road racing team. He is also a diehard Broncos fan, which puts him and Sean on opposite sides at least twice a season.
Jack Porcher
Product Transition & Rollout
Jack Porcher grew up in this business. He spent his childhood on the road with his dad, working their markets from California to Eastern Washington and Montana, and he earned his stripes the honest way — washing windows, vacuuming cars, and manning the MDA summer camp booths for the Throttle Muscle team. Jack joined the team officially after his stint at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, where he studied international management. Today he is helping drive our product transitions and the rollout of a new customer-experience app in the shops.
Fun fact — Before coming home to the family business, he played professional soccer in the UK for i2i International Soccer Academy. These days he follows the UFC, the Golden Knights, the Dodgers and the Raiders — the same three teams as his dad, which makes game day at the Porcher house considerably less contentious than it is at the office.
John Shutt
Brand Ambassador
John Shutt and Sean first joined forces in 1993, both of them bay techs at the San Luis Obispo Jiffy Lube. That is more than thirty years of working together — with one memorable interruption.
John left for a spell to install overpriced car stereos with removable faceplates, a line of work he has never fully justified, and then, believe it or not, became one of United’s shortest long-haul flight attendants on record. He and Sean rejoined forces in 2005, when they opened their eighth Central Coast Jiffy Lube in Paso Robles.
John spent several years with Throttle Muscle and opened our first office location in Phoenix, Arizona. He has since moved back to the Central Coast, where he holds down the fort for Sean as District Manager across the Jiffy Lube locations. He is not on the Throttle Muscle payroll these days, but he has never stopped being one of our strongest advocates — and along with Cody, he is still behind most of what ends up in our Other category.
Fun fact — On those long-haul flights he often had to stand on the seats to help passengers get their bags into the overhead bins.
Sean Porcher is an entrepreneur, automotive-service operator, and one of the founders of Throttle Muscle. As president of an eight-location Jiffy Lube franchise group on California’s Central Coast, Sean has spent years learning what drivers need, what service teams can actually use, and which automotive products deliver more than an impressive label and a cloud of marketing smoke.
Throttle Muscle grew from that real-world experience. Sean wanted straightforward products that technicians could confidently recommend and customers could easily understand — because maintaining a vehicle shouldn’t require an engineering degree, a decoder ring, or a 45-minute sales pitch.
Known for setting ambitious goals, challenging conventional thinking, and occasionally displaying the patience of a man stuck behind someone driving 54 in the fast lane, Sean brings equal parts energy, accountability, and humor to everything he builds.
Fun fact — Away from the business, Sean can usually be found exploring the desert in his SPEED UTV, hunting down flawless graded gold and silver coins, following the Dodgers, Raiders, and Golden Knights, or planning his next trip somewhere with beautiful scenery, exceptional food, and a properly cooked steak.
“Create products that work, build a brand people can trust, and never confuse complicated with better.”
Not on any org chart. Absolutely load-bearing.
