I read something today that honestly shook me. According to a brand new YouGov survey, 40% of Americans didn't read a single book in 2025. Not one. And here's what really got me: just 19% of adults now account for 82% of all books read. The top 4% alone account for nearly half. Reading isn't declining evenly. It's splitting into two groups — the few who still think deeply, and everyone else who's training their brain to scroll, skim, and forget. Now, you might be thinking — Chris, what does this have to do with running a shop? Everything. Think about your biggest frustrations right now. Techs who can't seem to retain what they learn. Advisors who can't follow a process without hand-holding and constant reminders of basic procedures. That nagging feeling that YOU know what you should be doing to grow your business… but you can't seem to sit still long enough to actually do it. That's not laziness. That's attention collapse. And it's everywhere. We're all swimming in the same ocean of notifications, short-form videos, and dopamine hits. Your brain is being trained — every single day — to be distracted. And a distracted brain can't diagnose consistently, can't build systems, can't train people, and can't make the kind of decisions that separate a shop doing $800K from one doing $2.5M. HERE'S THE THING THAT NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT If you can focus — really focus — for 30 minutes a day, you are already in the top tier. Not just of shop owners. Of everyone. I was in a high-level mastermind a while back with one of the top copywriters and bloggers in the world. And he said something I've never forgotten: "In the future, the ability to focus will be a superpower." We're living in that future right now. And reading is how you train the muscle. Not scrolling. Not podcasts (though those are fine). I mean sitting with a book, phone in the other room, and making your brain do the hard work of sustained attention. That's where your best ideas come from.

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.

I can't tell you how many times I'm on a call with a shop owner and they say: "I'm drowning. I think I need to hire another tech." And 10 minutes later we realize: Another tech won't fix it. It'll magnify it. Here's what usually happens on those calls. Owner says: "We're booked out two weeks. Cars stacked up. I need another tech." I ask: "How often do your techs wait on approvals? Parts? Dispatch?" Long pause. "Honestly… a lot." "Cool. Then the problem isn't production. It's feeding production." Here's the hard truth nobody wants to hear: When cars are backed up, it's usually NOT because you need more production. It's because: → Work isn't approved fast enough → Parts aren't sourced fast enough → Jobs aren't dispatched fast enough → Tech questions don't get answered fast enough → Cars and keys aren't moved fast enough The real constraint is front-of-house throughput. Hiring a tech first often makes the problem worse—because you're adding horsepower to a system that can't feed it. Let me twist the knife a little more: Every minute a tech waits is a minute you paid for nothing. When techs stand around, owners blame techs… but the shop is usually choking them. Hiring another tech doesn't fix starvation. It just adds another mouth to feed. Your techs aren't the bottleneck. Your front counter is. THE 30-MINUTE BOTTLENECK AUDIT Stop guessing. Measure it for one day. Here's how: Step 1: For one full day, track every time a tech is stopped for a non-wrench reason: Waiting on parts Waiting on approvals Waiting on dispatch/next car Waiting on answers Keys/vehicle movement Step 2: Put a clipboard at the counter. Every time it happens: hash mark. Step 3: At close, answer: What stopped tech momentum most often? What one role or process change removes that stoppage? Step 4: Implement ONE change for 7 days, then re-tally. This isn't theory. This is data. Data kills drama. COPY THIS SCORECARD TECH STOPPAGE SCORECARD (1 day) Waiting on parts: ___

A reporter is working on a story about private equity ownership in the auto repair industry. She's looking for shop owners (or people who know shop owners) who have direct experience with PE - whether you've been acquired, considered selling to PE, or watched competitors get bought out. If that's you or someone you know, drop a comment or DM me. I can make the introduction.