As a mom and nurse looking for ways to make money and spend more time with her kids, Desiree White turned to an unconventional side hustle: She began buying and reselling used cars.
In her first year, she sold 36 vehicles out of her driveway.
But she quickly learned that she could improve her profits if she bought cars with minor issues and fixed them up. The only problem was that initially, she didn’t even know how to change her own oil.
“I started researching. I would Google, I would YouTube. I was looking online for any kind of detailed walk-through, step-by-step, on how to diagnose an issue, and then what I needed to do,” White said. “It was kind of like working on a patient: I diagnosed. I fixed the issue. We performed surgery.”
Only 2% of automotive service technicians and mechanics are women, making it an occupation with one of the smallest shares of women nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
So White began filming everything and sharing her journey on social media — from the first time she and her son took out a transmission at home to cars she worked on in driveways and parking lots across metro Atlanta as she launched a mobile mechanic service. The self-taught mechanic now has more than 150,000 followers on TikTok, where she goes by SheMechanic.
Today, White owns Crown’s Corner Mechanics in Conyers with four other employees and has created a nonprofit to encourage more young people to explore careers in the trades.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Edited for length and clarity.
Q. How did you get from YouTube tutorials to a mobile mechanic business?
A. I pulled the curriculums from the trade schools around us and Georgia Tech, and I started reading all the textbooks that they were teaching. Then I kept practicing, buying cars that I could play with. Then I started taking the engines apart — all the way apart — putting new parts in, putting them back together, and what wasn’t running is now running, and much more profitable.
I found that that was like a calling. I loved it so much, I had quit my nursing job … and for a year and a half I did nothing but sell and fix cars.
Everybody kept coming to my house. They’re like, ‘I’ve seen you on social media. I know you can fix my car.’ But I wasn’t comfortable with it yet. I wasn’t confident in what I was doing, although I was doing a great job.
I spent tens of thousands of dollars that I had been saving on equipment, diagnostic computers — everything that the dealerships and the major auto repair shops use that you need in order to fix a car appropriately or diagnose the issue. I bought all that, and I trained myself on how to use that, and I packed up my trunk, and I started going all around Atlanta. (Georgia doesn’t require auto mechanics to be licensed or certified.)
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Q. Why did you start posting about your work?
A. There were no women that I could find videos of doing the same thing I was doing. So during that journey, I started recording everything I was doing and posting it online.
Everybody from the very beginning was very hard on me. I had to fight for every job that I had … I wanted to show that I could do this from point A to point B, and it was very successful. But even with the videos, if I showed up to a job and they weren’t expecting a woman to be there and I got out of the car, it was a whole scene: I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t going to take care of them, I was an idiot, you know. It was like that for probably the first six months of my mobile mechanic business.
Q. Were you able to connect with mentors?
A. There was nobody that I could meet up with and ask questions. All I had was social media, and it was all males. It was all men shop owners. It was all male mobile mechanics. There was nobody doing what I was doing as a female, and that made it very, very, very hard.
(If I had a mentor,) I feel I would have been much further along. I wouldn’t have made as many mistakes as I did, even now as a business owner.
Everything I have done from this point of making the decision to quit nursing to right now — I have had to make all those decisions with my own thoughts and not any kind of mentorship, and that is very hard, even still today.
Q. Are you working on changing that for the next generation?
A. I ended up starting a nonprofit called ProTech Pathway, and that is going to house our internship program. It’s going to be a four-month program that we can take into even the middle schools.
We used to have an auto shop when I was in high school. I built a nonprofit, and the reason I did that is because I went to (the SkillsUSA Championships). These kids were competing (in skilled trades), and they were so passionate about it, and you could just tell they were going to be so successful. But where are the programs that are giving them the opportunity to do this?
I need more business owners to come on board and agree to help with our next generation that’s coming up. We have the standard outline of how it would work, no matter what skilled trade it is.
Q. How important has your social media following been to the business?
A. That’s how I was able to get the shop, the brick-and-mortar, because of my social media. I got the shop, a 9,000-square-foot shop, that one of my customers helped fund me to get into, because she was so supportive of what we were doing.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
When I was recording, from the house to the mobile mechanic business, my business tripled in one year. That’s a lot of income. That is the only reason I was able to make this transition.
We almost did a million (dollars) last year. We’re an auto repair shop, you know what I mean? But that is because of my social media, and how much I am out there, how much I share. Not everything is beautiful that I share. Some stuff is a little crazy, but that’s because I’m showing you what we’re dealing with; I’m showing you the dramatic moments. You get the whole shebang with me, and they love it.
AJC Her+Story is a series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlighting women founders, creators, executives and professionals. It is about building a community. Know someone the AJC should feature in AJC Her+Story? Email us at herstory@ajc.com with your suggestions. Check out more of our AJC Her+Story coverage at ajc.com/herstory.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
