I've always admired companies like AMS, Cobb, Turner Motorsports, Tri-Point etc and it is a dream of mine to run a company like those ever since I learned about racing. How does one go about opening a shop and gaining national recognition, and staying that way??

IIRC AMS started with Martin and 2 others...he had graduated with his mechanical engineering degree and did a build his first build on a friend's ford 2.3 turbo (svo or merkur or turbo coupe or something). Then the 2.3 platform died off and he picked up the original 4g63 in a galante vr4 and raced around chicago getting a rep and supposedly doing street tunes...from there he continued to engineer parts and they were on the front with the evo market which made them huge.

Now they have several engineers in house.

something like that...

funny i learned this after starting my company in a similar manor.

lot of technical knowledge. The shops that are well respected in their respective circles are usually run by folks who really know their stuff - either that or shameless self promoting blowhards.