PASSION AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE THE SECRET TO SUCCESS FOR CAROLINE A career in the automotive industry was not the future anyone had mapped out for Caroline Langan-Minca. Not herself — she planned on becoming a forensic psychologist. Not her parents — she came from a family of academics. And certainly not the teachers at her private girls’ school.
“I know the best auto transmission person in the industry. I know the best machinist in the industry. He knows more about machining engines and engine tolerances in his little finger than I will ever know in my lifetime. I just think people have such a wrong perception about the whole industry. I think our industry is great.”
“It was expected you would go to one of two universities and if you didn’t, you were excommunicated; you were never spoken about again,” she said.
Caroline started her career with an apprenticeship at Mazda in the Melbourne suburbs, where she enjoyed the variety of the work she was asked to do.
Caroline followed the path laid out for her, going to university in 2000 and studying a double degree in criminology and psychology. Although she enjoyed some of the subjects, the prospect of seven years of study “just killed me inside”.
“I liked the fact I could be a service advisor in the morning and deal with customers, then go into the workshop and work on the cars, then go back out in the afternoon and be a service advisor,” she said. “It meant you were never bored. You can switch hats, change roles. If you’re a person who thrives on a challenge and variety, then this is the industry for you, because it’s there if you want it.”
“I thought, right, I really love cars, I’m going to defer for a year and go and do a pre-apprenticeship course,” Caroline said. “I figured if I hated it, I’d only have wasted six months. But if I love it… well… what if I love it?” It’s not much a spoiler to tell you that Caroline did, in fact, love it. More than two decades later she runs and co-owns His’n’Hers Automotive Solutions in Kilsyth, Victoria, with husband, Craig Minca. They’ve been in business for 14 years. “I’m really passionate about this industry,” Caroline said. “I look at what we’ve made out of this industry, our little corner of it, what we’ve made for ourselves and the lifestyle we have, and our little community of customers, and it makes me emotional. “My experience is in stark contrast to what a lot of people see our industry as being. You hear people say, ‘mechanics can’t lie straight in bed’ or ‘you’ll never find an honest mechanic’. I know heaps of honest mechanics. I know so many people in the automotive industry who are really topnotch people, who are highly educated, who are passionate about their industry, who know so, so much about their field of expertise. 2 2 CAPRICORN IGNITION AUGUST 2022
It was at Mazda that Caroline met her husband. She and Craig would leave to work at other workshops for a few years, before buying Montrose Automotive Services (the future His’n’Hers) in 2008. “We were working ridiculously long hours for someone else and we thought, ‘wouldn’t we rather be doing this for ourselves?’,” she said. “We bought the business and just hit the ground running. It was a business that had a good reputation but the guy was retiring so he hadn’t done anything to build it up for about five years. He was winding it down.” At the time, the business was four hoists and two mechanics. Now, there are five mechanics (including Caroline and Craig) and an apprentice. “We could build it up more but, to be honest, we actively choose not to because running a business is really stressful and worklife balance is actually more important to us,” Caroline said.
