Maccas and hard work serve up recipe for success

At 16 years old, Rhys Lindsay’s teachers told him he would never amount to much. All they could see was a young lad going nowhere fast, bunking off school and not attending classes.

They failed to look beyond the rigid rules of the school to recognise his potential, a teenager working 60 hours a week at Porirua McDonald’s with a steely determination to get somewhere in life, find a career, buy a house, and own a business. Ambitious goals, some might think, and ones that can take decades to accomplish. Boy, has he proved them wrong!

Five years on from leaving Tawa College school to be part of the Auto Super Shoppe Academy’s first intake, he’s a qualified mechanic, bought a house, and bought the business where he served his apprenticeship.

“When I was at school the teachers basically told me I wouldn’t succeed. I was 16 when I left and was in the first intake for Auto Super Shoppe’s Academy in 2019; it was something I wanted to do and I got it done,” he says.

Radiator caught up with Rhys at his Tawa business last month and his story is not so much one of “against all odds”, it’s an inspirational one that employers and newly minted apprentices can learn a lot from.

No dreaming, just achieving Working at McDonald’s in Porirua, surprisingly, played a part in the making of the man. He gained NCEA credits working there while still at school, toiled his way up the ranks to team leader, and what he took away from the takeaway strengthened the CV he presented to Auto Super Shoppe Tawa, where he secured his first full-time job at 16.

“I never enjoyed school, I was working at McDonald’s in Porirua and had been since I was 15 doing 60-plus hours a week while still at school”.

“I told my mum there were no classes I liked at Tawa College, but I did like being part of the Gateway Automotive course,” Rhys says. Before leaving school he scouted the business landscape in Tawa for a full-time job and found two that appealed. One was Auto Super Shoppe Tawa, the other, a classic car restoration business called The Surgery.

Kevin Carmichael at Auto Super Shoppe Tawa was impressed by what he saw and grabbed the chance to employ Rhys, sending him off to the newly formed Auto Super Shoppe Academy in Auckland for three months of in-depth training. Once back on the workshop floor, Rhys put in a mammoth effort, ploughing through his apprenticeship while still working at McDonald’s part-time.

Buying a house

Rhys worked graveyard shifts at Maccas while he completed his apprenticeship, and the extra income went to saving for his first house with partner Christal McAdam, who works on reception at the Johnsonville Auto Super Shoppe, a few suburbs south of Tawa.

It was an exhaustive search viewing 25 houses during a rapidly rising market, but they settled on a property in Stokes Valley in 2021.

“We looked for a house in Tawa, but it wasn’t feasible for our budget and we ended up in Stokes Valley, with the idea of moving back to Tawa at some stage,” he says.

Not bad for a 19-year-old.

Buying the business

Rhys gained valuable experience into the business during his apprenticeship, with Kevin trusting him to look after the business while he was away. Rhys eventually took on the role of second in charge and pretty soon the seeds of an idea to buy the business began to flourish.

“I had always been under Kevin’s wing, and I would run the business when he went away and there was always a joke about me taking over.” And what he had learned at McDonald’s helped, Rhys says: managing people and dealing with customers at the auto shop needed the same customer focus and staff management skills. It was the continued upswing in house prices that helped Rhys get into the business and after a year there was enough equity in his house to secure finance to buy it, finalising the deal in December 2022.

Apprentice Success

Motorbikes a passion, not a job

Rhys isn’t from an automotive-orientated family, and while fixing cars is a business, riding and racing motorbikes are what spins his wheels.

From a young age, two wheels captured his interest and he learned the art of fixing them with the help of YouTube, gaining enough knowledge on how to build them to take up motorcycle racing.

“I learned bits and pieces by playing around with them. I’ve done motorcycle racing for a while now and that’s what got me into the tools and doing fabrication, but I knew there wasn’t really anywhere for me to go careerwise with motorcycles, and for now I want to keep it more as a hobby,” he says.

Planning for the future

The young entrepreneur’s got plans to improve the business further and has already started putting some of them into action, keeping the workshop open over Christmas when similar businesses in the area closed and went on holiday, and the sacrifice paid off.

“I was the only workshop open in the Tawa and Porirua area and I had callouts, tow-ins and flat batteries to sort out every half hour to an hour and it kept us busy, it did suck working through Christmas, but I have wages to pay and staff to keep happy and that’s what it takes,” he says. New office staff were due to start a few weeks after Radiator visited, but in the interim Rhys was doing the paperwork with Christal’s help. And being the only one with a WoF certification, things were a tad busy, but that’s how he likes it.

“I don’t like keeping customers’ cars on site; I want them in and I want them out. We do a lot of business vehicles, and as they are needed on the road, I try and work with the owners to bring them in at night or over the weekend.”

He’s also taken a modern twist on business development, using YouTube to find ideas to increase revenue and learn better ways of working.

“To move the business ahead we can’t just stick to brakes and servicing, to expand we need to get different clients,” he says. Already he’s getting into doing engine diagnostics with new equipment.

“I like to keep pushing and see how far I can get with things. I have always worked to buy the things that I have wanted right from 10 years old, so buying a building is in the future and then there will be expansion of the business into other revenue streams,” he says.

And those teachers from his old school probably didn’t see it coming, but they’re paying the young lad who was expected to get nowhere in life to fix their cars so they can get somewhere.

Toolbox resources

Keep up with the wide range of information needed to run a business using the MTA Toolbox.

Rhys’ PiecesKey takeaways for new apprentices

“The faster you do your apprenticeship the faster you get to move on with life.”

“You have to be motivated and have the drive to do it.”

“Bosses need to drive the apprentice to do the paperwork.”

“Don’t look for a handout, do it yourself.”

“Just get it done.”

Auto Super Shoppes Academy

Auto Super Shoppes Ltd is a network of more than 114 of the very best workshops in the New Zealand Automotive Industry. The group was created in 2006 by Geoff Harper and David Storey to meet a demand for a nationally recognised brand of Premium Automotive Repairers outside of the dealership network.

The development of this training academy was borne out of the need to supply workshop owners and parts suppliers with staff members who are passionate about the industry and want to secure a career in the Automotive Industry.

Auto Super Shoppe owners are looking for people who are passionate about the Automotive Industry and want to learn from the best in the business. The unique accelerated 12-week course will prepare attendees for employment within the automotive industry. Then, with a proven aptitude and a positive attitude they will be fully supported to find employment within the industry. The Auto Super Shoppe Automotive Academy is the only pre-trade course that can claim 100 percent job placement for all graduating students for the past three years running.

preparation and construction,” he says.

“Through that I became quite a good mechanic, and I worked for the legendary Trevor Crowe when he was racing his V8 Starlet.”

At one stage he did take a brief break from fixing cars to sell tractor parts, but missed the challenge of solving mechanical problems and was back on the workshop floor 18 months later working for New Zealand Motor Corp specialising in Range Rover, Rover and Honda cars, then in 1987 he set up a workshop for South Pacific Motors, one of the early importers of used vehicles from Japan.