I handed two rooms of shop owners the same 10-question hiring scorecard last week in Vegas. About 15 owners the day before AAPEX. Then my AAPEX session. Not one owner scored an 8 or better. Most landed around a 4 out of 10. Then I asked everyone to take out their phone and apply to their own shop. Ninety seconds. Start to finish, the way a tech would. Nobody did it. Afterward, one owner told me he’d spent over $80,000 in the past year on job boards and recruiters for his two shops. Top dollar. Full benefits. He didn’t have much to show for it. He wasn’t cheap. He’d done everything he knew to do. In a podcast interview that week, I put it this way: You can’t outspend the dealerships. But you can out-culture them every time. Pay still matters. You have to be close. Once you’re close, money stops being the tiebreaker. The proof was on stage. Community member @Bill Nalu was named AAPEX Shop Owner of the Year. Here’s the part you might have missed. The first-ever AAPEX Technician of the Year, back in 2020, came out of his shop. Norm Schultz. He was driving 86 miles each way to work there. 172 miles a day. He picked his own diagnostic equipment. He signed his crew up for training. This year’s Technician of the Year, Matt Wagg, has talked about being coached by community member @Bill Haas before he became a coach himself. Both winners had somebody invest in them. The dealer can match your wage by Friday. He can’t match that. Bill Nalu told me something back in 2023 that stuck: “We have a shop owner creativity and competence shortage.” I’d put it softer. Most owners were never handed a system. Nobody in this industry teaches one. So let’s start with the ninety seconds. This week’s challenge: 1. Apply to your own shop from your phone. Start to finish. 2. Come back and post how long it took, and where you’d have quit if you were the tech. 3. Took the scorecard? Drop your number too. No judgment. The average is a 4.

We just hit 600 members in the Technician Find Skool Community! 🎉 600 shop owners and managers in one community, working to solve some of the same tough problems. Anyone who's run a repair shop knows that finding good technicians is only part of the challenge. Keeping them, building a solid team, and running a profitable shop takes work. That's why this community exists. It's a place to ask questions, share what's working, learn from other shop owners, and celebrate the wins along the way. And with 600 members, there's a lot of experience in this group. Thanks to everyone who's helping make this community worth being part of. — The Technician Find Team

I've told shops to pay a $500 referral bonus for years. It works. Sometimes. This morning I found out I was thinking way too small. I was walking my dog and listening to Alex Hormozi on a podcast. He told a story about a business owner who grew 40X by changing one number. The owner paid his agents $500 for every new agent they brought in. His mentor asked him, more or less: "What does one productive agent make you in gross profit?" "About $250,000." "So you'll spend $500 to make $250,000? What would you pay to make $250,000?" "I don't know. $50,000?" "Then start your bonus at $25,000." He did. $500 to $25,000. His business went from $10 million to $400 million. I'd never once thought about a referral bonus that way. I sat with that number. Then I ran the numbers for our industry. Hunt Demarest is a CPA who works with auto repair shops. When I was on his podcast, he walked through what an empty bay really costs on average across hundreds of shops: $29,500 in sales per bay, per month. About half of that is gross profit. About $15,000 a month. About $175,000 a year. Not revenue. Gross profit. Out of your pocket. His agent was worth $250,000 in gross profit. Your empty bay costs you $175,000 in gross profit. Smaller number. Same math. So let me ask you. Would you pay someone on your team $10,000 to bring you a good tech? $15,000? If your gut just said "no way," mine did too. Then I dug deeper into the math. $10,000 is about three weeks of that empty bay. $15,000 is about one month. You're already paying it. You're just paying it to nobody. So why is $500 hit or miss? Because $500 gets your crew’s attention. It doesn’t get their effort. With $500 on the table, a tech waits for a name to fall in his lap. A buddy mentions he’s fed up with his shop. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, he forgets the bonus exists. With $15,000 on the table, he goes looking. He racks his brain for every good tech he’s ever worked next to. He scrolls his phone. He makes the call he’d normally never make.

"He has brought on 2 techs since starting." That landed in my inbox Monday night. From a shop owner. "He" is their new Service Manager. He'd been in the building about 10 days. We'd helped them find him. His ad went live less than two weeks before he started. Those two techs weren't strangers off a job board. They were guys he knew. The next line of the email asked us to take down all of the ads "for now." Hold onto those two words. We'll come back to them. Most owners read the first part and think: must be nice. It wasn't luck. It was a window. You get one every time you hire somebody. Most shops leave it shut. Here's the pattern. Your new guy doesn't show up alone. He shows up with a phone full of people he's worked next to. Some are good. A couple are really good. And he knows exactly which ones. You don't. Neither does Indeed. The good ones aren't looking. They're working. You can burn months of ad money trying to get in front of them. Your new hire already has their numbers. So why doesn't this happen in every shop? Because owners ask the wrong question. Most ask the new guy: "Do you know anyone looking?" He says no. And he's telling the truth. Everybody good he knows is busy working. Ask this instead: "Who's the best tech you've ever worked next to?" The first question searches the job market. The second one searches his memory. Only one of those has names in it. Then narrow it down. "Best diag guy you've worked with? Who would you want on a car you actually cared about?" Ask about a specialty and he pictures a face. Ask about "anyone" and he pictures nothing. That phone full of names has a shelf life, too. Right now his old crew is still texting him. "So how's the new place?" Give it a few months and the texts slow down. His story is old news. That conversation is happening this week. With you or without you. And whatever he texts back is the most believable job ad your shop will ever run. You don't get to write it. You earn it.

Your best tech is going to read your next job ad. Probably before the guy you wrote it for. He'll read the pay first. Then he'll hold it up against his own check. Then he'll hit the next section. Sign-on bonus. Every job ad has two readers. The tech you want to hire. And the techs you already did. Most owners only write for the first one. The second one reads closer. Here's what goes through his head when he hits that bonus. The loyal guy starts doing new math. He's been with you six years. He likes the guys. He isn't looking. Then he sees you offering a stranger money just to walk in the door. And for the first time in a while, he wonders: If my boss will pay somebody to leave his shop, what would another shop pay me to leave mine? A sign-on bonus can turn a loyal tech into a job shopper. Not because he's greedy. Because you just reminded him his skills are worth something outside your four walls. The underpaid guy hears a verdict. He's been asking for a raise for two years. He keeps hearing "money's tight." Then he sees a bonus for a guy who hasn't turned a wrench for you yet. No script fixes that one. The fair-minded guy gets it. And still feels lousy. He understands exactly why you're offering it. He still feels lousy about being the guy who didn't get one. And he won't say a word. Not because he's fine. Because he likes you. You can win the argument and still lose the tech. So before you say anything to your crew, make sure you need a bonus at all. If a lot of the shops around you are offering one, you need one. If they aren't, you don't need to start. I've never seen a bonus pull in a better class of tech. Or a worse one. So your offer has to win without it. Some owners go bigger to get more applications flowing. That's your call. Just know a giant number doesn't buy belief. Techs have told me they laugh at the $15K and $20K dealer bonuses. They know about the strings. If you do offer one, pay it out over time. A shop owner I know used to pay it up front. Then he'd let a guy go two weeks later, and the money walked out the door with him. Now he spreads it over the first three to five checks. If it doesn't work out, he's not chasing anybody for money back.