Hey folks! I'll be hanging out with my Dad at SEMA today so no EasyBench call. Members, continue putting out those fires! Reach out and make those contacts to keep your bench warm.

A decent tech applies on Tuesday. What has to happen before Friday, or he’s gone? Marcus Cudd asked me that on The Dispatch Podcast. Be honest. Could you answer it? Most owners can’t. Not because they don’t care. Because they don’t have a hiring process. They have a hiring reaction. Tech quits Friday. Panic Monday. Ad goes up Tuesday. Thursday: “Nobody good applied.” Now, The Dispatch is a heavy-duty show. Marcus co-hosts with Buck Monson, President of TruckShop411 and owner of Monson Truck & Trailer Repair. So why am I posting it in a room full of mostly auto shops? Because I work with both. And here’s what most people don’t expect. Different vehicles. Different hours. Road calls at 2 AM. The hiring mistakes? Identical. The diesel tech Buck wants and the A-tech you want work on very different equipment. But neither one is looking. Both are working. And both are watching your shop. What we got into: → Why most tech ads lose the right guy before the third line → Who should make the first call, and who most shops hand it to instead → How a six-bay independent goes up against a dealer’s sign-on bonus → Why good techs leave in the first year, and why they won’t tell you the real reason 🎧 Apple: [The Dispatch Podcast - Finding & Keeping Technicians] 🎧 Spotify: [The Dispatch Podcast - Finding & Keeping Technicians] P.S. Run a heavy-duty shop? TruckShop411 is free for independent truck shop owners. The full video is in their library, and I’m leading a group there on hiring and keeping technicians: TruckShop411.com

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.