Rutgers alumnus draws 3.9 million subscribers with car repair YouTube channel
Rutgers alumnus Chris of ChrisFix, a popular self-help auto repair YouTube channel, has approximately 3.9 million subscribers who, if they saw him in broad daylight, would only recognize him by the sound of his voice.
In an interview with The Daily Targum, Chris said he keeps his name secret and never shows his face in videos — a little known and mildly mysterious fact about him.
Chris graduated from the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in 2012. At the time he went by Chris Fish, a nod to his passion for fishing, boating and anything having to do with water.
“People use to call me Chris Fish in elementary school because I knew so much about fish,” he said.
During his time at Rutgers, he was deeply involved with extracurriculars and internships that intersected his love of oceanography with technology. He even focused some of these interests into a Youtube channel in 2008.
“Mostly, I made short films of fishing with my friends for fun, and it wasn’t until 2012 or so that I put car fixing videos on the channel which was, again, just for fun to help people,” he said.
“I decided that fixing cars was going to be the focus on my channel. That is when I created the name ChrisFix stemming from ChrisFish … ,” he said.
Chris’s channel started attracting attention in 2015 when he said more and more people showed an interest in learning how to fix their cars themselves. He saw the 50,000 subscribers he had at the time and took it as an initiative to start consistently posting videos.
He posted two videos every week for a year and after six discouraging months of not seeing results, his subscriptions doubled. It was then that he realized YouTube-ing was something he might be able to make a career of.
As his popularity has continued to grow — currently sitting at approximately 3.9 million subscribers and more than 500,000,000 overall views — he takes pride in keeping his videos consistent.
“The goal was to make a clear, concise and easy-to-follow video so anyone watching could fix their car. If you need brakes, instead of spending $800 plus at the shop, I could show you how to buy brakes for $120 and replace them with some common hand tools,” he said.
Chris draws from his Rutgers experiences when working on his channel. He attributes late nights studying for classes, time management skills and an appreciation for science essential to his success as a Youtuber.
“I think of each video like a thesis, similar to the honors thesis I did on the Cold Pool. You do tons of research, pour your heart and soul into the production of the video content, and create a polished finished product that you are proud of and will showcase for the world to see,” he said.
Despite still working with concepts he studied in school, Chris joins the population of college students who stray from a traditional career in their field.
“Did I have to go to Rutgers to learn how to fix cars? Well, not really. But the skills I learned here and the experiences the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences allowed me to do more than just fix cars. Rutgers helped teach me skills that I use to be at the top of my industry and help people on a worldwide scale rather than a local scale,” he said.
