By Kara Sherrer
“It blows my mind that my check engine light comes on in my car, and I don’t get a notification (on my phone). And then I can’t click on that notification and do anything about it…That should exist in today’s world.”
Michael Dean (EMBA’17)
Michael Dean (EMBA’17) likens getting your oil changed to going to the dentist: it’s a hassle, it takes you away from other activities you’d rather be doing, and it’s often an unpleasant experience. That’s why he launched a new mobile oil change business, Auto Ninja, on January 1 of this year. Customers can schedule an oil change (plus a few other basic services) online, and Dean will come to their home and take care of it while they go about their day.
“I enjoy cars, and have loved them for a long time. I’ve been changing my own oil for a number of years,” he said.
Dean credits the Executive MBA program with equipping him with the tools he needed to start his own business; he originally fleshed out the concept through Michael Burcham’s Launching the Venture class. But the road to launching Auto Ninja has been much longer than that.
Getting Back to Business School
Dean started out his career in the non-profit sector for 10 years, including five years working abroad in Germany. He originally decided to get his MBA to help him make the transition from the non-profit world to the corporate world, not to start his own business.
“As I started looking at other options besides non-profit, I felt like I needed a catch-me-up. That was the main reason why I went to business school,” he said. “I think, in the back of mind, I hoped that something like this would happen, but I didn’t know what that would look like.”
Dean and one of his friends came up with the idea for a mobile oil change business back in 2014, before he began the Executive MBA program. While Dean knew how to change his own oil, he didn’t know how to start his own business, so he continued mulling over the idea — until he began taking business classes.
“I didn’t really have the tools to think about how to do certain projections and how to strategically think through how we cut costs and maximize revenue and margin and profits and things like that. The program really equipped me well with those tools,” he said.
When it came time for the Launching the Venture class, Dean proposed the mobile oil change idea to his teammates. They were immediately intrigued by how the project would allow them to apply other topics they had covered in past Executive MBA classes — including operations, marketing, and finance — and decided to make it their class project, dubbing the idea Oil Ninja.
Going through Launching the Venture helped the team identify critical parts of an early stage business, such as possible revenue streams and key customer personas. At the course’s final presentations, judges voted their concept the best in the class. However, the group decided to take a break after graduation to focus on their families and full-time jobs. But Dean couldn’t shake the idea of starting a mobile oil change business.
“I started to think, ‘Wow, this could actually be something more than just a class or an idea. This could be a thriving, successful business,’” he said. “The class, and the program in general, woke up this desire to start something and to build something.”
Launching the Venture, For Real
With the blessing of his former teammates, Dean decided to finally launch the business with the start of the new year. The first step: Changing the name from Oil Ninja to Auto Ninja, to reflect the broader range of vehicle services he hopes to offer in the future. “The idea behind the name Auto Ninja is that we’re in and out quickly, you don’t even know we’re there,” he explained.
Dean may be a one-man show for now, but he plans to expand after the initial three-month, proof-of-concept period. He wants to hire mechanics so Auto Ninja can offer oil changes on more days and seamlessly refer customers to shops for more intensive jobs like brake replacements. After all, he’s still working at his full-time job as Director of Business Development at Juice Analytics.
Balancing a job, a family, and a new business is a lot to handle, but he says he’s used to it after getting his Executive MBA degree. “Doing the EMBA program prepared me really well for basically doing two jobs,” he said. “It’s early mornings and late evenings and some on the weekends, but it’s nothing I haven’t already done.”
I have the (Executive MBA) program to thank, in a lot of ways, for growing this idea. -Michael Dean
Looking forward, he hopes to build out a proprietary app that could interact with Bluetooth sensors on a car, notifying Auto Ninja automatically if the car needs to be serviced. He’s added this same sensor to his own car already, but the existing apps have clunky interfaces and are difficult to use if you don’t already have technical knowledge about both the apps and cars.
“We need to develop a platform to connect car users with car trouble to mechanics and mobile services without them having to look them up and pick up the phone,” he said. “It needs to be seamless.”
Dean has lots of potential ideas, but for now, he’s focusing on proving his concept, and he’s already signed up 41 paying customers in just a few weeks. He might not have gotten his degree in order to start this business, but he says it’s been indispensable in helping him launch.
“I have the (Executive MBA) program to thank, in a lot of ways, for growing this idea, and for nurturing me professionally to a place where I could feel comfortable launching a business and managing all the pieces of it,” he said.
To learn more about the Executive MBA program, please visit our program page.
