Chris Enright Q&A

Jan 19

Chris runs his shop out of his property, so technically he “works from home” (I know right? Turns out, its not all that its cracked up to be).

Don’t get it twisted, this dude works his ass off and I was left with nothing but respect for this man because he took control of his destiny by starting his own gig.

But why take the risk?

Why jeopardize a steady paycheck for one you have to work even HARDER for?

You make how much???

This guy is one of the most upstanding individuals that I have met and he had me wanting to drive cross-country, short my turn signal relay, punch a hole in the tire and take it to him, JUST to watch a master at his craft.

Everyone give Chris a follow on his social media because his stuff is incredibly entertaining, not to mention informative @enright_automotive

Without further Ado, I give you Chris Enright

Ben: So Chris, How long you been in automotive?

Chris: So I'm going on I think like 13-14 years now, professionally. I went to UTI (Universal Technical Institute rev.uti.edu) and graduated from UTI back in 2009

B: Did you go to UTI right outta high school?

C: I took several years off actually, My father-in-law lives in California and so I started going to UTI out in California and some stuff happened,

so we had to move back. So I went from West coast to East coast, so I could finish school. I Racked up a ton of student loans from California. And so I was like, well, I don't wanna do all this work and not finish it. Right? So I finished it, finally, out in Pennsylvania.

B: Oh nice, so where did you get your start at?

C: I worked at some place that did road shows. I hated it! I got married to my wife at the time, and being gone three weeks out of the month was not fun for either of us.

So, I got a job for Napa Auto Parts delivering parts. I had a really hard time getting a job back then, which is crazy to think about because you can't find mechanics anywhere now, but that was my foot in the door for my first job as an actual mechanic

B: Was that for a dealership?

C: No, it was for an independent shop that had its one mechanic leaving and the owner needed someone to fill his shoes.

B: Jesus man, must have been pretty intimidating?

C: Oh you have no idea, as a matter of fact, the Napa Store I was working at took bets if I would last 6 months or not because the owner was so difficult to work for

B:That’s crazy! Did you last longer than that? What made him difficult to work for?

C: You just see that where they don't actually love working on cars and so he wasn't a very happy person and he was really hard to work for. Screamed and yelled a lot. Not particularly at me, but just about things in general. But I did work just over two years for him. I'd actually tried to get in at Honda. It took two years for someone to quit! Yeah so it's just crazy how quick the industry has changed just within that short period of time.

B: Wow, that's wild! Not the case today forsure. But with you owning your own shop, I would think that because of the short staffed dealerships that should drive more traffic to you right?

C: Yeah, it does. But I mean, I've been telling people all this entire year, like if a shop's not booked out for a week or two, there's probably an issue with the shop. Because Parts are on back order, short staffed, etc. If they're not booked out right now, usually, it's because they're just not a good shop or whatever.

B: Makes Sense. So what would make a shop bad in your opinion?

C: What you're seeing a lot right now in our industry is as technology advances there's a lot of smaller shops who don't progress with technology. So there's plenty of shops out that don't even have scan tools, that don't diagnose! We're getting to a point here, probably within the next five to seven years, a lot of those shops won't survive. Because they don't even diagnose, they don't know how to diagnose or calibrate or program any sort of modules or do any sort of calibrations for any of the radar systems.

B: So how much are you paying yourself through the business?

C: So it's a little hard because I've been a sole proprietor with the business. So, The business and I are basically one entity right? So it's probably like around 60kish.

Maybe a little bit more this year. I would say my tax return's probably gonna show like close to 80k or a little bit more, but I've only paid myself around 60,000. The first six months we didn't even take a paycheck at all. We just put all the money back into the business because I'm in this for the long haul. I never intended to, for the first year or two, make a ton of money. Now granted, if I was gonna stay a single man shop, I could take all the money and probably make more than what I was making before, for sure.

B: Ya I get it there is a balancing act of managing the health of the business and your family. So on a scale of 1 to 10 how much more fulfilled do you feel at your job now than you were at the dealership?

C: I would say probably like a seven. It depends on the day. Running a business is hard. I knew it was going to be hard going into it and it's even harder than I thought it was gonna be. It's very, very hard. So I want people to understand that, but it is incredibly fulfilling. The best part is the freedom when you get to the point where you can have the freedom. Cause the first year, year and a half, you're grinding. You're getting as much work as you can, trying to build that clientele base.

B: So tell me what is your long-term plan? Are you 401K guy? Are you all in on the business and then sell it at some point?

C: I do some retirement investments. Not a ton as of right now. Like my accountant said, you can't do everything all at once. For certain seasons, you have to pick and choose at some point in time. The plan is to expand to a bigger shop here shortly. The end goal is to grow the business to where I don't have to work in the business, but I can actually work on the business.

B: Now with you having the shop on your property and all how do you manage the work/life balance of it all? Are you always finding yourself going in to the shop?

C: Not so much anymore for sure. I would say like the last, this last year, I've set a lot more boundaries. We got to the point where we were getting so busy. For a lot of this past year I was booked out for over two weeks, sometimes three weeks. If my wife doesn't bring me lunch, I forget about lunch and I just work. You just grind. The hardest part I would say has always been just separating my mind from the business.

B: I asked on social media what I should ask and one of the best questions I got was what is the skill you most desire, but you don't have?

C: I wish I was better at diagnostic. So what I've found, and there's always exceptions to generalizations, but as a whole what you typically find is guys that are really good at R&R (repair and replace). And just tearing stuff down aren't always as good at diagnosing vehicles. And vice versa. The diagnosing side was something that I've always struggled with a little bit. Now granted in three years, I've made it work and I don't shotgun parts, and that's a big deal. In our industry, we always call it the parts cannon.

B: Ah man, I’ve seen that so much with a lot of people I’ve worked with. Moving on to the future of the automotive industry, where do you see it going in the next 10 years? EV’s everywhere?

C: I get a bad rap because I trash talk EVs a lot and people get a wrong idea, and I don't hate electric vehicles. I have no problem with electric vehicles. I think their great. What I hate is that they're being regulated and forced onto people. Then let the market decide. Obviously Tesla has shown the demand for their vehicle. The market has decided, we like Tesla, so we're gonna buy Tesla. Then you see Rivian and Ford Lightning having all sorts of problems. These companies are coming out with electric vehicles because they feel like they have to. And the quality is just not there.

To go back to the question, I see a lot of the DIY, like people being able to do a lot of their own work. That's gonna go bye-bye. There's gonna be a lot of programming, and people don't know how to do that kind of stuff. And to buy the equipment is ultra expensive, so it's not worth you doing it yourself.

B: I think you are awesome man and thank you for coming on and sharing your story and, I look forward to following your career and see where it goes.

C: Sounds good and thank you for the time. Have a good night man!