Want to know the fastest way to create more emergencies in your shop? Make an emergency hire. I know. That sounds backwards. You're short a tech, the bays are stacked, phones are ringing, your service advisor is drowning, and you've got a customer in the lobby giving you the look. So you do what any reasonable shop owner would do. You hire the fastest person available. Not the right person. The fast person. And for about 72 hours, it feels like relief. Then reality kicks in. HERE'S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIRE IN A PANIC I call it The Emergency Hire Domino Effect, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. ➡️Domino 1: A gap opens. Somebody quits. Calls out. Goes on vacation. Or you just grew faster than your team can handle. Doesn't matter how it happens — suddenly the shop can't breathe. ➡️Domino 2: The pucker pressure hits. You feel it in your chest. Cars are backing up. Customers are waiting. Revenue is walking out the door. "We're losing customers every hour" — sound familiar? ➡️Domino 3: You lower your standards. Not on purpose. You just… stop vetting as hard. You skip the reference check. You ignore that gut feeling during the interview. You tell yourself, "I just need a warm body in that bay." ➡️Domino 4: You overpay, overpromise, or both. You throw money at the problem because you're desperate. Or worse, you ignore the red flags — the attitude, the outside drama, the skill claims that don't quite add up — because you "need someone now." ➡️Domino 5: They slow everything down. Wrong parts ordered. Constant questions. Sloppy workflow. Your service advisor is now babysitting instead of selling. Your best tech is picking up slack instead of producing. ➡️Domino 6: Comebacks start piling up. Warranty work eats your lunch. Customers who trusted you are now frustrated. Your reputation — the thing that took you years to build — takes hits you can feel but can't always measure. ➡️Domino 7: Your good people pay the price. Your A-tech "steps up" again. And again. And again. Until one morning they don't step up — they step out.

I stopped waking up to fires. Not because the fires stopped. They always come. But because I finally had a team that grabbed the extinguisher before I even smelled smoke. I had a hiring pipeline that didn't depend on luck, or desperation, or that sinking feeling in my gut every time a tech gave two weeks' notice. My team ran the day-to-day. Not perfectly. But competently. Confidently. Without me hovering over the shop floor like a helicopter parent at a Little League game. I made more money. And I worked fewer frantic hours. I got healthy again. Not "I'll start Monday" healthy. Actually healthy. The kind where your kids notice. The kind where your spouse stops worrying. I wasn't "trying to be consistent." I was consistent. And the weird part? None of it came from a lucky break. Or a perfect hire. Or some magical marketing campaign that fell out of the sky. It came from something so boring I almost didn't do it. THE STORY ABOVE COULD BE YOUR 2026 RECAP STORY I know what you're thinking. "Chris, it's Super Bowl weekend. The Olympics just kicked off. I've got wings to eat and games to watch. Why are you hitting me with this right now?" Because this is exactly the kind of weekend where micro momentum gets built — or lost. Stay with me. Here's the truth about most shop owners I talk to. And I've talked to over 500 of you at this point, so I'm not guessing. You're grinding. Hard. But you're not always compounding. You "do a lot." You work long hours. You put out fires. You answer every call. You stay late. You come in early. You skip lunch. You miss the game. And more often than not, at the end of the year, you look up and wonder why nothing really changed. Here's why. You're confusing motion with progress. You treat hiring like an emergency instead of a system. You let the shop's chaos steal your personal discipline. You rely on motivation instead of structure. You set goals in January… and never look at them again. Hard truth? If your life and business feel out of control, it's usually because your days are out of control.

Your potential best recruiter already knows which technicians in your market are about to quit. He sees inside 20-30 shops every single week. He knows who's miserable. Who's underappreciated. Who's one bad Monday away from walking out. And nobody's asking him. I'm talking about your parts delivery driver. Here's what most shop owners don't realize: That guy dropping off your filters and brake pads? He's a mobile intelligence network. He hears the complaints in every bay. He sees which shops have angry techs slamming hoods. He knows who just got passed over for a raise. And right now, he's sitting on information that could solve your hiring problem—while you're posting another job ad that 75% of technicians will never see because they're not looking on job boards. The math is brutal: For every shop desperately posting on Indeed, there are dozens of wanna be techs who see the ad and very few serious technicians even scrolling. And those very few serious techs who actually see your ad? They're probably just checking what their skills are worth so they can negotiate a raise where they already work. So while your competitors fight over the same 25% of the talent pool, the delivery driver knows about the other 75%. The question isn't whether this approach works. The question is: Why haven't you bought that guy/gal a coffee yet? What's your experience with parts drivers or tool truck guys? Have you ever gotten a lead from one of them? Drop a comment below—curious if anyone's already tapped into this.

We’ve all mastered the art of ignoring "Unknown Caller" or "Potential Spam." But what happens when the phone rings and the name and number on the screen are real? With the constant stream of dark web data breaches, hackers have more than just our passwords; they have our contact lists and professional networks. This allows them to "spoof" local businesses, friends, or family members with terrifying accuracy. My "Uncanny Valley" Moment I recently received a call that appeared to be from a local business. I picked up, and for the first few minutes, everything seemed normal. However, my gut started telling me something was off. The responses weren't quite hitting the right beat—there was a tiny, unnatural delay and a lack of human nuance. I realized I wasn't talking to a person; I was talking to an AI. I ended the call and blocked the number immediately, but since they can spoof any digits they want, blocking is just a temporary fix. The "New Rules" of the Phone Because AI voice cloning and number spoofing are becoming so sophisticated, I’ve had to change how I handle my phone: - The "Foggy" Rule: If a call feels even slightly "foggy" or "off," I let it go to voicemail. - Verify via Text: If I suspect a spoof, I’ll send a separate text to the person or business to see if they actually tried to reach me. - Trust Your Gut: If the voice sounds like someone you know but the request is weird (like asking for money or info), hang up and call them back directly. Has anyone else noticed an uptick in these "hyper-realistic" spam calls lately? How are you vetting your callers?. It is unsettling how convincing these scams have become. By combining two distinct technologies—Caller ID Spoofing and AI Voice Cloning—scammers can create a "perfect" illusion that you are talking to someone you trust. Here is a breakdown of how they pull it off and how you can stay safe. 1. How They Fake the Number (Spoofing) Scammers use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services to manipulate what appears on your screen. This is often called "Neighbor Spoofing" or "Contact Spoofing."

Yesterday I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. (786) 481-4680. Miami area code. The message? "Hi Christopher, right?" Three words. That's it. My first instinct was to reply. Be polite. Say "wrong number" and move on with my day. I didn't. And that split-second decision might have saved me thousands of dollars. Here's what I almost walked into. That "innocent" text is the opening line of what the FBI calls a "pig butchering" scam. Weird name. Devastating consequences. HERE'S HOW THE SCAM WORKS They send thousands of these texts. "Hi [name], right?" They're fishing. Waiting for someone polite enough to respond. If you reply—even just "wrong number"—you've confirmed two things: 1. This phone number is active. 2. There's a real person here willing to engage. Now you're a qualified lead. The scammer apologizes. Strikes up a conversation. Maybe mentions it's "fate" that you connected. Over the next few weeks—sometimes months—they build trust. They become your friend. Maybe more. Then comes the hook. A cryptocurrency opportunity. A trading platform. An "investment" that seems too good to pass up. By the time you realize what's happening, your money is gone. And I mean gone. Think I'm being dramatic? Last year, text message scams cost Americans $470 million. That's five times higher than 2020. These aren't Nigerian princes with bad grammar anymore. They're sophisticated operations using AI to manage conversations with hundreds of victims simultaneously. The Miami area code on that text I received? Spoofed. Could have come from anywhere in the world. The fact that they used my first name? Probably pulled from a data breach. Or my LinkedIn. Or anywhere else my info exists online. This isn't random. It's targeted. It's patient. And it's designed to exploit the one thing most of us were raised to be: Polite. So here's what you do when you get one of these: Do NOT respond. Not even "wrong number." Silence is your best protection.