SoGal Waterloo: Founders Chat with Stefanie Bruisman | Miss Mechanic

Two weeks ago we sat down to chat with Stefanie Bruinsma, the founder and CEO of Miss Mechanic, an online and on-call automotive service support system providing car repair advice by women, for women. Stefanie started Miss Mechanic in 2020 as a means of increasing the personal agency and knowledge of car owners. With a focus on women, she hopes to empower them to make informed decisions about vehicle ownership and repairs. Learn more about her work here!

While she’s not running her boss-ass business, Stefanie is also a full-time student at UWaterloo. She’s enrolled in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) degree, which she will complete in June 2021. She’s also a Concept $5K and APEX pitch winner, with Miss Mechanic in the active beta pilot.

Unique Waterloo Experience

Stefanie’s undergrad experience was very different from that of her classmates. At 21 years old, Stefanie transferred from a trade school into UWaterloo for mechanical engineering. Being a mature student meant that Stefanie had different responsibilities going into her post-secondary education. She was working part time, owned a house, and was re-learning how to be in school again.

“It was tough. I barely made it through.”

And when Stefanie got pregnant at the end of her first year, she felt like a big wrench was thrown in her plan. She comes from a family of nine, and was the only one pursuing a post-secondary education, so she knew that financially, she had to be independent. School programs aren’t often structured to be supportive for the kind of circumstance she was in, but ultimately, Stefanie found support in people who wanted to see her succeed, and the university helped her through her journey as a mature student and as a mother.

Work-Life Integration

Balancing her responsibilities as a student and a mother was not easy. Before having her son, she worked as a bartender, which meant she was commuting from Etobicoke, where her second co-op was, to Waterloo every Thursday and Friday. On Thursdays after her day job, she’d do the 1.5 hour drive, work her shift until 1AM, drive back to Etobicoke again, and repeat the next day.

After having her son, she realized these late nights were not possible to keep up. Talking about work-life balance, her biggest piece of advice is to think about solutions that can fulfill multiple goals or needs at once. In Stefanie’s case, she needed to keep up her financial responsibilities, but she also needed a job that would allow her to be there for her son. Being a strong athlete in her earlier years, Stefanie decided to become a fitness instructor, which allowed her to bring her son to work. An added bonus: because Stefanie loved fitness so much, she was also able to merge responsibility with joy.

Starting Miss Mechanic

Miss Mechanic was born from frustration of not seeing female representation in the mechanical industry. Stefanie remembers browsing youtube and never seeing any female mechanics on the site. This was compounded by her years of being met with surprised faces whenever she was introduced as a mechanic, despite the fact that was certified as a licensed Automotive technician in 2007.

Miss Mechanic started as a social project and has now evolved into a message about representation. Stefanie wanted to show that she could like wearing lipstick and picking cute shoes and fixing cars all at once.

“I can be whoever I am and I can still fix cars.”

She’s always loved building and challenging things. From noticing the number of women in her engineering classes, to then noticing the number of women at the table during business meetings, Stefanie started to think about the systems in place that reinforce these gender norms in our society. And more importantly, how could she change the narrative? All of this motivated her to start something to tackle the problem.

Challenges and Balances

There are two major challenges that Stefanie faces with Miss Mechanic.

There’s never enough time: Miss Mechanic is something that Stefanie is working on in addition to having a full-time job and being a single mom. But like her Zumba fitness days, she’s trying to find ways to blend these two together. Right now, she works from home in her garage, which allows her a more flexible schedule.

She’s still working on her insecurities: Introducing something new to an established industry ultimately means that her ideas will receive pushbacks, either indirectly through societal norms or directly from criticism. While these factors can cause doubts, Stefanie also talks about the power of having a supportive community. She credits the power in finding people who not only believe in you, but who can also help you find reasons to believe in yourself as well.

Three Essential Skills to Build a Startup

First, you need passion. If you don’t care enough, you likely won’t put in the work required. When thinking about what topics you’re passionate about, Stefanie shares a great tip: think about what makes you angry; this something should make you want to stand up and do something about it. For her, this was when she was told parts of her identity didn’t fit the picture of her being a female.

Second, you need a desire to learn. If you don’t have a willingness to learn, you’re never going to get better. And even worse, if you’re overconfident and think you’ve already learned everything, you’re not going to improve your skills.

And finally, you need resilience. Stefanie warns that you’re going to be told no, and that doors will be shut, but trying again is the only way to open more doors for yourself. Being resilient will allow you to meet new people and new opportunities will pop up.

Competition Fun

As a Conrad student, Stefanie had opportunities through her program to practice and apply for pitch competitions. But having gone through (and won!) the recent Concept $5K competition, she notes that it’s not as intimidating as it may seem. Most applications are simply web forms. The hardest part is the pitch, but she gave us a hot tip: keep a document of all your responses to the form. The questions are usually similar, and this allows you to not only reuse your responses, but also iterate on it and constantly improve how you tell your story.

Most of the problem pitches will want to know what the problem is, what kind of market it lives in, why you’re the person to solve it, and if you’ve tried solutions, what kind of traction you’ve received. When going into these kinds of competitions, Stefanie emphasized the importance of a properly-defined problem. Make sure you know your problem space! She recommended checking out Concept $5K, APEX, and March Madness.

❓ Pitch Competition — Events where budding entrepreneurs can pitch their business ideas to judges, investors, and other professionals to explain why it can be successful.

Diversity and Inclusion

Did you know that of the Canadian mechanic program graduates, only 4.7% were female last year? Stefanie shared this statistic with us when we asked about what diversity and inclusion meant for her and her entrepreneurial journey. Diversity for her meant seeing more women, and partially more women of colour in the automotive industry. Being a white female and being challenged every step of the way, Stephanie acknowledged there are barriers that women of colour face that she can’t begin to imagine.

Thinking about inclusion, Stefanie highlighted her hope for the realities of being a female to be acknowledged. As a mom, Stefanie experienced first hand that the automotive industry wasn’t a friendly environment for having children. She wants to challenge the lack of systems in place that would support families and parents needing to take time away for their children. Part of her work at Miss Mechanic is introducing more systems that have compassion for families and flexible hours of work, and she hopes more of these practices can be introduced into the industry.

“There’s more to a person than their work.”

What’s Next?

That’s all for this recap! Follow Stefanie on twitter, instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date with what she’s up to. And check out her startup, Miss Mechanic! ⚙️

SoGal Waterloo will be hosting our end of term event on ❗️April 15th❗️Come hang out and meet the organizing team! 😊 Stay tuned for more details.

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