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- Growing up,
Chaya Milchtein was never driven to learn about cars.
- Chaya Milchtein: I did not know anything about cars.
In fact, I was in foster care at around, like, 17 years old,
and I told my foster parents
that I wasn't interested in getting a driver's license.
- She turned 18 and struggled to land a job.
As fate would have it,
she'd find one...
at an auto repair shop.
- I just took this as this sponge experience,
this learning experience,
where not only can I learn
everything I need to know about cars,
but I can also learn to work with people
from all different cultures and backgrounds.
- She spent time as a service adviser and in collision repair
but eventually hit a fork in the road.
- And I decided, you know what,
I need to find another way to make money.
This isn't happening fast enough [laughs] for me.
That's when the light came on.
She'd start a blog.
- And I started Mechanic Shop Femme .
There was no deep thinking or comprehensive analysis.
There was no branding.
I was just thinking,
how can I put into one phrase, what I am and what I do?
Mechanic Shop Femme became a space
for Chaya to write about her passions.
Cars, fashion, and empowerment.
- Taking control of what clothes I want to wear,
and where I want to wear it,
and how I want to be portrayed.
As a automotive consumer,
taking control of what services I want to do
and understanding what my next steps are,
and budgeting for those things.
And as a queer woman, holding my head high
and being who I am fully at every given moment.
- The blog launched her writing career.
Chaya's appeared in numerous publications.
After a while, she decided to shift gears.
I don't know what I should do next with this.
Like, I'm writing this blog; people like it.
What's the next step?
And somebody's like, you should totally teach classes.
So, I'm very excited to welcome you
to "How the heck do I buy a used car?"
I'm going to tell you how this class works.
- Now, she also teaches basic automotive education.
- So, I'm not a mechanic.
At the end of the day,
I'm somebody who has taken a lot of time
to ask a lot of questions of the professionals
in this industry.
And what I'm doing is,
I'm not teaching you how to fix your car;
I'm giving you the tools to be an educated consumer.
Full coverage insurance prices can vary...
- She hopes to help people
take the stress out of buying or repairing a car.
- They're entering a space
that centers queer people and women
and centers knowledge for people who don't understand.
There's no such thing as a stupid question.
Whatever you ask, I might not know,
but I'm going to find the answer for you
because that's important.
- Between the blog and her classes,
Mechanic Shop Femme is a hit.
Chaya says there's a key fueling her success.
- People tell marginalized people to shrink themselves
to make themselves more palatable for general society,
thinking that that's the only way that they can succeed,
but I think they're wrong.
You will find the people
who will resonate with what you're doing
if you remain true to yourself,
and that's really the main thing.
It's not the fact that I'm doing fashion
or the fact that I'm doing cars.
It's the fact that I bring my full self to my job,
I'm passionate,
and I'm true to what I do every single day.
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