There, I said it! The applicants aren't usually the problem. I know that isn't what you want to hear. But nearly every time an owner tells me the candidates are garbage, we find out nobody ever opened them or at least never reviewed and processed them correctly. I've written about this before. I'm writing about it again because I watched it happen twice in the last two weeks. Two shops, both ready to blow up a campaign that was working fine. This one keeps costing people hires. So we're going to cover it again. Here's how it sounds when it starts. "Nobody qualified is applying." "No one wants to do this kind of work anymore." "I've exhausted all other options and I don't know what else to do." So the ad gets changed. Then changed again. Then the pay goes up. Then the town takes the blame. Sit with this one for a second. "Nobody good is applying" is a check engine light. It is not a diagnosis. You would never quote a customer a repair based on how he described the noise over the phone. You'd get hands on the vehicle. You'd pull codes. You'd watch live data. You'd verify before you replaced a part. Hiring is the one system in your building where you accept the phone call description and start throwing parts at it. WHERE IT ACTUALLY BREAKS Most owners are judging applicant quality from email notifications. The automatic ones. A name. Maybe a resume snippet. Often nothing you could make a decision from. The notification is a window. The account is the shop floor. You are standing in the parking lot deciding whether the bay is clean. Last month an owner told me his campaign was dead. Nothing coming in. Ready to pull it. @Christi Warren on my team got on a screen share and opened the account with him on the phone. Twenty-two applications he had never opened. Three he would have hired. Now here is the part that stings, and it's the reason I keep writing about this. The owner usually isn't the one reviewing. He handed it to a manager. A service advisor. His wife. Somebody who has forty other things on the list.

Not a little stumble. A full send. Went down hard enough that my phone left my hand, cleared two steps, and kept going. I watched it bounce away like even it didn't want to be associated with me. Hand torn up. Leg torn up. And the first clear thought in my head, before any of the pain registered, was not "am I hurt." It was "how many people just saw that." The answer was a lot. The beach was packed. And the stretch right in front of me happened to be a row of very attractive women in bikinis, because of course it was. That's just how the math works when you're bleeding and trying to locate your phone. I'm not gonna lie to you. The version of me from a few years ago grabs the phone, does the fake "I'm fine, totally meant to do that" wave, and speed-limps straight to the car. Workout canceled. We don't talk about this again. But I'm standing there doing the math on the slink-away, and it just hit me that walking off bleeding would somehow be more embarrassing than what already happened. Like the fall was an accident. Quitting would've been a decision. So I got up. Wiped the blood on my shorts. And finished the run. In front of everybody. Looking exactly as graceful as you'd imagine. Anyway. We've all got a moment like this. Fell flat, whole world watching. What's yours? Tell me I'm not the only one. P.S. Phone lived. My dignity did not. Pics below after I got home and swabbed the wounds with iodine, you're welcome.

Let me tell you a quick story. A few months back, I got a text from Jeff Lee. He and his wife Amy own J&R Service Center—three shops, including a motorsports division. His message? "That ad got five responses in one day. Between 15 and 30 years of experience. You might wanna spread that around, bud. It definitely hits the buttons." Two minutes later, another text: "Two more just came into the inbox. That's seven. Over 10 years experience." Now look—that doesn't happen every day. That's an outlier for sure. But here's what's NOT an outlier: Ads that stand out get responses. Ads that look like everyone else's get ignored. Go search Indeed right now. Type in "automotive technician in [your city]" You'll see 380+ jobs that all look EXACTLY THE SAME. Same boring headlines. Same "requirements first" structure. Same invisible, forgettable copy. Meanwhile, the techs you actually want? They're scrolling past all of it. So I put together something special for you. Inside the classroom, you'll find: → A 16-minute video walkthrough showing you exactly how the ad that got those 7 responses was built—section by section → The actual swipe-and-deploy template you can customize for your shop → A custom AI tool (Mini Travel Brochure) that writes the relocation section if you're open to hiring outside your area → Another AI tool (Tech Ad Tuner) that diagnoses what's wrong with your current ad and shows you exactly how to fix it Your ad is usually the first impression a technician has of your shop. It's the highest-leverage thing you can work on if you're serious about attracting real talent. Go grab these tools and write something that makes a tech stop scrolling. 📍 Find it all in the classroom under "Grab a technician ad template that works!" Remember—techs aren't reading every word. They're scanning. They're deciding in seconds whether you're worth their time.

I'm about to hop on a plane after two amazing shop visits in Washington and I got this text from a shop owner in Iowa. Just a reminder of the power of a well-written ad.

Ask it what a 15-year diagnostic specialist costs in your market. It won't hand you a useless "average." It hands you the floor, the ceiling, and the number to actually put in the ad. That's the new Technician Find Co-Pilot. As of last week, it's live for every EasyBench member. Last Thursday's clinic was a working session — how to put it to work, plus a second tool for resurrecting the candidates you already paid to find. Here's what we covered: → The Technician Find Co-Pilot — a 24/7 recruiting strategist that lives on your phone and knows your shop. It doesn't spit out generic advice. It asks the questions a sharp hiring partner would ask before answering, then hands you a play built for your bays, your market, your situation. → The 5 questions that teach it your shop's DNA — your hard numbers, why you got into this and where you're headed, your real answer to "I've got two other offers, why you?", a profile of the best tech who ever worked for you, and the one I like most: what your top producer would say if I secretly asked them why they really stay. Answer those five and the Co-Pilot stops guessing. → A live salary run — Augusta, Georgia, unicorn tech. The Co-Pilot walked through why the "average tech wage" you find online is worthless for that hire — it lumps the lube guy in with the 30-year BMW master — then gave the floor that gets him to pick up the phone, the ceiling that signals you're serious, and the range to advertise. The line that landed: a guaranteed pay plan with no flat-rate trap is your sharpest weapon against every dealer in town. → A live growth-roadmap build. A tech asked his owner for a path forward. That's not a headache. It's one of the strongest retention signals you'll ever get — he's telling you he wants to build something, not collect checks until something better shows up. We built the answer: skill milestones on your shop's standards, a pay number attached to each one before the conversation, and an honest ask about whether he wants a role beyond the bay. One page. Three columns. Worth more than any bonus you could hand him today.