The lobby inside Phoenix Auto Repair is immaculate. The black polish on the front desk, almost blinding. Along the walls hang pictures of vintage cars.
“I’ve never been the guy who says, ‘I see a mistake coming I’m going to go over here,'” said shop owner Ryan Masterson. “I’m always the guy who says, ‘Oh man, that didn’t work out how I thought it was going to work out.'”
Judging by the shop’s meticulous appearance, one might not think anything had ever been out of place for Masterson, but as they say, looks can deceive.
Masterson grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. In his youth, he was a wrestler and loved playing baseball. Like many kids, he dreamed about playing in the major leagues.
In the classroom, he had a hard time staying interested, struggled with behavioral issues, and dropped out of high school his freshman year.
For all his academic difficulties, working with his hands came more instinctively.
As a toddler, he retrieved tools while his dad repaired his mom’s ’68 Camaro. His grandpa had an area with a large shed in his backyard where his relatives worked on sand rails, dirt bikes and cars. Masterson and his relatives regularly rode and explored the extensive open space where they lived. He vividly remembered his grandpa’s frustration the day his uncles returned grandpa’s sand rail with a seized engine.
“It was exciting to hang out with my uncles and my grandpa and to see the joy when they fixed something, the satisfaction that came from repairing something,” he recalled.
These experiences became the nuts and bolts of his career as a mechanic, the only work he felt he could do to make a decent living.
“For a long time, the stigma was that if you didn’t have a college degree, you weren’t worth a crap,” he said. “I put my money in my tools and learned on the job.”
In his twenties, Masterson moved to Colorado. It was here that he met and married his wife Jenn, started raising a family and began establishing himself in the trade.
He spent his early career as a heavy machinery field technician. Repairing dozers and scrapers, he would often roll around in the dirt, lie on his back and spend time in extremely uncomfortable positions. The tools and parts were heavy; the machines, heavier.
Even bigger was Masterson’s struggle with drug and alcohol addiction, something that began in his younger years and by his mid-30s left him unemployed and in a homeless shelter. In the spring of 2014, Masterson sought the help and the support he needed. Looking back, he regretted waiting so long and the time he lost in his marriage and raising his kids.
Masterson said that if he could give his younger self advice, he would tell him, “Accept help sooner. You don’t have to turn your entire life into a dumpster fire to get help. Don’t be so stubborn.”
As the grueling work took its physical toll, he noticed many older mechanics who could barely walk. Seeing the writing on the wall, he returned to school with a newfound purpose and took courses in business administration.
“At that time, I was trying to progress my career on a corporate level. Jenn had talked to me about starting my own shop. I didn’t know if that was the route I really wanted to go. I just knew that I wasn’t going to get any further without some sort of school behind me,” he said.
In July of 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Masterson opened Phoenix Auto Repair, a nod to his hometown as well as the mythical creature eternally reborn from the ashes of its former self, and his life journey.
Over the last four years, as the business has grown, it has produced many lessons along the way. One of the first was how to keep high standards while controlling costs. When he first started, he hired less experienced technicians to save money, a mistake that soon caught up with him.
“We were redoing a lot of work which was doing two things: Not only was it costing me the actual dollars, but it was also costing me reputation dollars. When you are brand new starting out, your reputation is all you got. If you don’t do quality work, that word is going to travel much faster than if you do quality work.”
Integral to producing quality work was taking accountability when things go wrong.
“[The technicians] want to create quality work because if a vehicle comes back not only do I not get paid for it, they don’t get paid for it either. If the technician is responsible, that’s on the technician to repair and I can’t go back to my customer and ask for $700,” he said.
In the same way honesty and transparency were essential during his addiction recovery, so too in business. In a profession where bad news was expected, good communication with customers was essential, whether it was explaining when multiple steps were required in figuring out a particular problem or presenting the worst-case scenarios from the start.
“I would rather be the bearer of bad news up front than on the back end,” said Masterson. “I hate calling customers and telling them it’s going to be more money unless they have already been prepped for that.”
As his business grew, he also learned to trust his employees and let them develop on the job.
“I believe we learn from making mistakes,” he said. “I’ve had to let them not only fail but succeed at the same time.”
Today, Masterson employs three technicians and sees them as partners as much as employees.
“If we can act as a team, we can get a lot more done than if you have a bunch of individual contractors,” he explained.
As owner, he decides which tools to provide his technicians. Each technician has his own toolbox, but the shop also carries shared equipment. One of his most recent purchases is a wheel alignment machine.
“I got tired of depending on other shops and having the alignment come back and it being off, and so we bit the bullet and bought this,” he said.
Some tools make more sense for his technicians to purchase themselves. More than just a cost control measure, in his experience, company-bought tools are generally not taken care of as well as personal ones.
Masterson takes pride in looking out for his employees. He monitors their workload and doesn’t take on more jobs than they can handle. He provides funds towards continuing their education, including paying for everyone to attend a yearly industry conference together. The results have been gratifying.
“Watching them succeed is probably the greatest joy, watching these guys grow in their positions and become successful in an industry that quite frankly was looked down upon not so long ago,” he said.
Masterson referred to the stereotype of the dishonest, uneducated mechanic and a general condescension towards the trades, something that he has seen change in more recent years. In his opinion, there’s a growing need for younger workers entering the trades, and he believes with the increasing complexity of newer cars, the demand for those with the knowledge base and initiative to stay on top of changes will increase.
Now at age 46, he sees how society’s overemphasis on certain forms of education influenced him while he was growing up, but which he now sees in a more balanced light.
“We’re all necessary. I was just on the phone with the IT guy this morning. [I told him], ‘I don’t have the skill set, or the patience … to figure this out, so I need you to figure it out.’ Last week, he was here with his ’96 Mustang and we were working on it. It’s just different skill sets … not that one is more important than the other.”
On the back wall of the waiting room sits an encased autographed baseball from a customer, Major League Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher and local native Goose Gossage, the owner of a 2008 Chevy Suburban. Along the same wall hangs a sign: WARNING, WATCH FOR FLYING TOOLS.
It’s a reminder that no matter one’s life path, amidst our dreams, dangers abound. Some we narrowly avoid while others we must experience. What matters most in each instance is how we choose to respond, which brings us back to one last lesson from Masterson the mechanic:
“The only true mistake is the one you don’t learn from.”
If you go:
1125 Pecan St, Colorado Springs 80904
Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
719-473-0900
ryan.phoenixautorepair@gmail.com
PhoenixAutoRepairco.com