GROWING up and standing at just over five feet tall, Kat Cassidy (29) always knew she wanted a hands-on job and knew she wanted to work with motors.

She spent a number of years getting pushed back by others – especially men in her industry who deemed her ‘too small’ to work in a body shop – but Kat got the last laugh as she now operates her own busy body-shop, KLC Wheel Refurb, in partnership with her husband, Niall, in Killadeas.

Kat said: “Growing up, I was a tom-boy, I was more like a wee cub than a wee girl!

"When I went off to secondary school and went to decide my occupation, I didn’t want to go off and do hair and beauty or [train to] be an architect – I just wanted to be in a hands-on job.

“I was really good at art, so my teachers tried to push me down that route, but my gut told me I didn’t want to do that."

Kat looked up to her dad, with the pair sharing a love of motors.

Kat said: “My father was a big inspiration for me, and I thought to myself: 'I love cars, and I love motorbikes – I want to go down that route'.”

After some push-back from educators, Kat enrolled as a mechanic. She said: “I enrolled to be a mechanic and my mum and dad were big supporters of that.

"I did that for about two years, but I figured it wasn’t really for me because it was quite heavy work, and I’m just over five feet tall, so I thought, 'Well, I like art and I like cars, so maybe I’ll go and do body work'.”

Kat began working in the industry more than 10 years ago, and admits it was a tough time for women in the industry at the time.

She said: “It was very hard to get apprenticeships back then, especially being a woman, so it was really hard to get in to body shop [work]."

Kat eventually secured apprenticeships and worked with garages across her native Omagh. She was then encouraged by her husband to open her own body shop.

At the time Kat was apprehensive to take on self-employment. She said: “I didn’t think I was confident enough to have my own body shop, so I started doing wheels to dip my toe in, and now that's all I do now. I’m blessed. because it just took off.”

Kat worked as a sole trader for several years, but then incorporated her husband into the business, and now the two operate as a partnership. However, some of her customers don’t always realise she is in charge.

“People still think that I'm the receptionist, or people think that I work for my father or my husband!”

Kat doesn’t find it difficult to be her own boss, in terms of her work, but she finds some opinions can be difficult.

However, she said: “I’ve developed a thick skin over the years. If I let every comment get to me I’d have been closed years ago.

“When I first started, no one would look at you [doing this line of work] because 'you're a woman', 'you're too small' and ‘you wouldn't be able to lift anyway’. There was a lot of sexism when I was first doing my training 15 years ago.”

Every single day before she starts work, Kat says a mantra to herself, "I can do this".

She admitted that when she first started the job, she felt like some judged her as a woman in the industry.

However, the determined businesswoman said: “Each day I have to prove to people that a woman can do this job,” with the success of her business, to date, ably proving just how capable and good she is at her work, and in her line of business.