Service Drive Revolution — Episode #380

Official Full Transcript

Host: Chris Collins

Guests: Adam Krey and Chris Hogland

Published: October 19, 2026

Duration: 50:02

Listen on Apple | Listen on Spotify

Continuing our deep-dive into dealership culture, fixed operations growth, and shop floor execution, Service Drive Revolution — Episode #380 tackles two major industry roadblocks: why dealerships struggle with technician recruitment and how the future of transportation will completely reshape fixed ops. Host Chris Collins, alongside guests Adam Krey and Chris Hogland, breaks down the mindset shifts required to recruit top-tier technicians, why generic job ads fail, and what autonomous vehicle trends mean for service department profitability. This article explores the root causes of dealership staffing failures and how to build a reliable talent pipeline.

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Key Takeaways & Highlights

• Embracing the Hard Things: Finding and recruiting technicians is difficult, but treating that challenge as an unfair advantage over competitors who give up too early changes everything.
• Stop Writing Boring Ads: Most technician recruitment ads on Indeed are boilerplate descriptions asking mechanics to bring their own tools; successful hiring requires storytelling and highlighting true shop production.
• The Rule of Five in Recruiting: Dealerships that struggle with recruiting usually rely on a single failed ad, whereas successful managers maintain a dynamic list of multiple active hiring strategies.
• The Shift in Vehicle Relationships: As cars increasingly handle their own navigation and driving, consumer perception of transportation is shifting from a stressful chore to automated utility—impacting future service interactions.

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Why Traditional Technician Recruitment Fails

Many SERVICE MANAGERS and fixed ops directors complain that a good technician is impossible to find, blaming their local market or general labor shortages. However, the root cause usually lies in outdated recruiting methods and weak departmental culture.

1. Generic Job Descriptions vs. Storytelling

When technicians scroll through job boards like Indeed, they are often looking to escape a toxic shop or poor management. Reading a generic description of responsibilities and tool requirements does nothing to convince them your service drive is better. Dealerships must tell an authentic story about why top mechanics will make more money and thrive in their shop.

2. The “We Tried That Once” Trap

A common pitfall in dealership management is trying one recruitment trick—like posting a single classified ad—and giving up when it doesn’t immediately flood the desk with applicants. Building a reliable technician pipeline requires persistence, multiple concurrent channels, and absolute accountability.

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Financial & Operational Impact of Strong Recruiting & Shop Culture

When you fix your recruiting mindset and build a high-performance shop environment, departmental performance stabilizes:

Performance Area	Operational & Financial Outcome
Hours Per Repair Order (HPRO)	Increases as skilled, fully staffed bays process work efficiently without bottlenecks.
Technician Retention	Rises when mechanics work in clean, organized, high-production facilities with strong advisor support.
Effective Labor Rate (ELR)	Protected because fully staffed shifts eliminate the rush to discount labor just to move cars.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Final Thoughts

Recruiting top-tier technicians isn’t about finding a magic shortcut; it’s about embracing the complexity, upgrading your storytelling, and refusing to quit after one failed ad. Run your shop like a high-performance production facility, and good mechanics will want to be part of what you’re building.

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Actionable Takeaways

• Audit your job ads today: Look at your active recruitment postings on Indeed or Craigslist through the eyes of a frustrated technician—rewrite them to highlight real earnings, strong shop hours, and culture.
• Implement the Rule of Five: Build a list of at least five different recruiting channels to test concurrently rather than relying on a single stagnant source.

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Ready to Strengthen Your Fixed Ops Systems?

Achieving and exceeding your goals is possible with the right systems in place. With Service Drive Revolution OnDemand, you’ll gain access to the proven systems that have made thousands of SERVICE MANAGERS IRREPLACEABLE. Start transforming your department today!

Need help updating your playbook? Let us know how we can support your team’s growth.

Book a 15-minute strategy session with our team. We’ll explore how to unlock your dealership’s real value.

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Service Drive Revolution – Episode #380 Transcript

Consistent CSI In The Service Drive | SDR #380

Service Drive Revolution

Hosts: Chris Collins, Hogi, Adam Krey

In This Episode

• What AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is, and why ranking in AI search is harder — not easier — than ranking on Google ever was
• Why authenticity, taste, and collaboration beat performative content and corporate messaging in the AI search era
• How self-driving and assisted-driving technology is quietly changing people’s emotional relationship with their vehicles
• Why electric vehicle adoption and dealership infrastructure decisions are being driven by markets outside the U.S., not by local demand
• The three real reasons dealerships struggle to recruit technicians — and why all three come down to mindset
• Why “we tried that and it didn’t work” is the single biggest red flag in a shop’s recruiting strategy

Opening

Introduction

Chris Collins: Welcome everybody to the big show. Happy Wednesday. We are coming at you live. If you’re listening to this not live, we also hope you’re having a great day — but we do go live every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific. And today we have an exciting show for you. We’re going to talk about the three reasons you can’t recruit techs. This keeps coming up over and over again, and I think we have some pretty good insights into it. Some of it might hurt a little, but if your goal is to hire techs, it’s something you’re going to want to stay around for. And then we’re also going to talk about how we think your relationship with your transportation is going to change — how’s your relationship with the car going to change, and then how does that affect us in fixed ops? I think that’s a fascinating conversation.

So, I’m Chris Collins. Say hello to the Oklahoma Smoke Show, Hogi.

Hogi: What’s up, everybody?

Chris: And Adam.

Adam: Hello. Buenos días. How are you guys doing?

Chris: Fantastic.

Hogi: Good, good.

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AI, AEO, and Why Authenticity Beats Performance

Chris: I just got back from an event that was about AI and AEO. Do you guys know what AEO is?

Adam: Uh — artificial engine optimization? Maybe?

Chris: Good job. Yeah — what does that mean, though? What do all those words mean?

Hogi: I don’t know.

Chris: I hope you guys continue learning about it, because I feel like I —

Adam: Something in marketing?

Chris: Yeah. So it was — it’s a very new thing. This is only the second year they’ve had this event, and over and over again people there were saying, “We don’t really know — it’s evolving and changing so fast.” The one thing I came away from the event thinking is that we’re way ahead of most people. We’re thinking about this differently than the big agencies are, and the consensus on our team was that being outsiders — doing things the way we’ve already been doing them — gives us a huge advantage. Because, I mean, this happens in fixed ops too, right? You get a bunch of people from the automotive industry in a room, they all think the same, they act the same, and if anybody veers from the habits and culture of the industry, you don’t fit in. And that’s a dangerous place to be, because that’s when innovation stops.

So it’s kind of exciting, in the sense that we keep hearing it from clients too — “How do we rank in AI search?” Because people aren’t searching on Google anymore, they’re searching in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini — “Where should I buy a car?” “Where’s the best cup of coffee in this city?” It’s a completely different game, and unfortunately there isn’t an easy hack. You have to do a bunch of things, and you have to keep doing them continually.

One thing that came up is that a lot of the AIs have a novelty bias toward what’s new. So maybe in early 2026 you were posting a lot and getting press — that’s not going to carry you three or four months from now. Somebody else could pass you just because they’re newer. So it isn’t something you can sleep on.

One point — and I have no idea if our audience really cares about this, so tell me to shut up if I’m getting too deep — but something that came up over and over is that in the 1950s and ’60s, media was controlled by networks, and the barrier to entry was really high and really expensive. If you had a business and wanted to advertise on TV, radio, or in the newspaper, you had to already be making a lot of money to be relevant. Then we came into the internet and social media age, and it got really cheap to advertise — you could just be a personality. Our YouTube channel here, besides production costs, we don’t pay to be on YouTube or to create content. And now it’s flipping back — the barrier to entry is getting really high and really expensive again. To rank and be relevant now, you have to come at it from so many different categories: you have to be in the press, you have to have people talking about you online, you have to have relevant content, you have to be offering real solutions with reviews — your reviews play a part in how you rank. The enthusiasm and engagement around your stuff plays a big part too. So the complexity and the expense are both going the other way. It’s reverting back. A lot of people miss that golden age when it was cheap to create content — now we’re in a completely different world.

Hogi: Yeah, and it’s like people are just now discovering that it’s a lot of work to rank in AI. I think there was this assumption that because it’s AI, it was going to make everything easier — do it for you.

Chris: Yeah. No — it’s way harder. I’ve been kind of thinking about doing some sort of mastermind with a group of dealers — maybe not even mostly dealers, maybe just a couple dealers mixed with doctors, dentists, other business owners — creating a syndicate where you’re using your media to validate each other. You kind of need a community to survive in this. If you don’t have other people talking about your stuff and sharing it on their channel — it’s crazy, on the Books That Change My Life channel, the videos that get the most views are the ones that collaborate. When we put up the interview with Andrew Bustamante about his new book, he shared it on his channel, and because he’s got a ton of followers, YouTube sees two good channels collaborating and pushes it up the algorithm, and it gets way more views that way. So collaboration and synergy are a huge part of how you navigate this.

If you’re just a car dealer trying to tell your story — and most car dealers don’t, they’re terrible at it. I can’t think of many car dealers who are actually good on social media, beyond a few funny little things — actually building a community, selling a lifestyle, engaging in a way that makes people want to come back and participate. If you’re doing it alone, without the validation and cross-sharing of others, you can’t take off in the algorithm. It actually pushes you down.

Hogi: Yeah, you’re by yourself. You need to collaborate — get together. Makes sense.

Chris: It’s funny too — the video we put up yesterday on Books That Change My Life is taking off like wildfire, but Bill Nye has fewer views after two weeks than that one does. I don’t know if there’s some kind of unofficial blacklist with certain guests, but it’s like it’s written into the algorithm who to promote and who not to. It’s nuts.

Hogi: Yeah, it’s crazy. I think dealers struggle with the social media piece so much that the last couple years they’ve just bypassed having good content and media at the store level entirely. It’s become a requirement at a lot of places now for salespeople to use their own personal social media for work, and you can see why — it’s way more common to see a salesperson, or even a technician or service advisor, have a post go viral and rack up hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok or Instagram than it is to see the business itself do that. It’s almost a report card for how the industry’s handling this.

Chris: Which is a huge mistake on their part, because if a salesperson builds a huge following, they take it with them when they leave. If the business itself doesn’t know how to market, that content also just isn’t authentic — you might get one video with a lot of views, but it’s not going to sell cars at the end of the day. The reason our stuff works so well is because it’s authentic — it’s genuinely who we are, and we’re sharing that. Love us or not, it’s real, and performative content just isn’t resonating anymore, because people are inundated with it. If you don’t have somebody who’s the face of the dealership or the dealer group telling authentic stories, sharing their life and their taste —

I was talking about this with somebody I’m in a mastermind with — a billionaire with maybe 400,000 or half a million followers across a couple platforms — and his content is starting to slide the other way. I told him one of the things we say around here a lot: you’ve got to share taste. People are more interested in his art — he’s got this incredible collection — every time I go to a meeting he’s at, I know which car is his the second I pull into the lot. Porsches, Bentleys, impeccable taste. He’s got boats, houses all over the world, and people are more interested in his taste than in the fact that he’s a billionaire — you already know a billionaire has stuff. It’s what art he collects, his mindset, the wine he orders. It can feel like showing off, but it isn’t — authentically sharing who you are pulls way better than a generic business quote that’s been recycled forever. All these self-help books here in the library say basically the same thing — if you’re in your 30s and you’ve read three of them, you’re probably good, just go back and reread one. There isn’t a new self-help book that’s going to teach you something nobody’s heard. The problem is always in the application. So what pulls better is taste, enthusiasm, and genuine love for things — not “you gotta wake up to get up” kind of motivational content. Okay, well, I’m awake — so what?

Adam: The thing about that too is — I have this dream, and there’s no evidence yet of dealers actually embracing this, but as we start to understand what AEO is and what drives it — the thing I keep coming back to is this idea of the dealership being a fixture in the community. Like a Friday night football game, throwing little footballs into the stands with “Hogi Hoagland Chevrolet” printed on them. I could rattle off dozens of car dealers across this country whose stories people would genuinely tune in to hear. They’ve got all of that sitting at their disposal, and they’re not using a bit of it.

Chris: Yeah, it’s crazy they’re not sharing it. What a crazy advantage, right?

Adam: Oh, man. Just look at the advantage we have from the way we’ve already been doing things. And to bring it full circle — the thing about AI is, it’s trying to read what the most authentic human thing is, and the way it reads that is through engagement and the kind of content you’re putting out. So if you’re just advertising price and the brand you’re selling, the brands themselves are going to go direct to consumer, and you won’t have any leverage in the marketplace.

We were just talking about this with dealers — I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with dealers, even decent-sized groups, sometimes just a couple stores, who are basically saying, “I don’t know how long until the consolidation machine eats me up.” And now there’s this outside chance that something’s changing — if they embrace this, they could end up at the top of the list, and the giant groups might not have all the advantages in this new landscape. I don’t know — I have a vision of what could be, but there’s no evidence yet that people are trying to embrace it. It sure seems like there’s a world coming where authenticity can’t be faked, where the person who’s still a pillar in the community, who has a real vision for their business and a family history there — like you said, it’s such an advantage. Looking out over the next few months and years, it’s fascinating what could be.

Chris: Yeah, and the thing we have to think about is: do we want to teach this to dealers who don’t care and don’t really want to do it, or do we just want to buy a dealership and do it ourselves? That’s really the question. Because it just seems like — and I go back to what I was saying earlier — people are stuck in the mode of following whatever everybody else is doing, the consensus. And the real leverage now is in being different from everybody else.

Hogi: Especially when the consensus is panic.

Chris: For sure. Whenever there’s panic, there’s huge opportunity. You’ve got to turn around and look the other way — don’t run with the crowd, turn around and watch what’s happening. Get higher up on the hill and see the game board for what it really is.

It was a fun couple of days. I came away very inspired, and more confident than ever that our team is so talented, and we’re having so much fun with this stuff. While everybody else is panicking, we’re just having a great time creating. I’m excited about the end of the year — we’ve got Top Dog next week, which is going to be a blast, we’ve got such a cool agenda. Then in November and December we’re going to have the bandwidth to create some content and test out some new things. It’s going to be really fun.

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Your Relationship With Your Car Is Changing

Chris: Now let’s talk about your relationship with your car, and how that’s going to change. What made me think about this — when I was down in San Diego, I had to drive home, a couple hours, and I remember thinking, man, I wish I had my Tesla in self-driving. And then I watched Missy — I’ve ridden around with her a few times this last week doing different things — and she’s literally not driving, because the car is driving itself. She’s getting caught up on stuff, checking email — basically working while the car does the driving. That completely changes your relationship with the car, in the sense that the steering wheel no longer makes any sense. The whole way the car is laid out, the way you interact with it, doesn’t make sense anymore if the car can drive itself.

So it’s really interesting — how your relationship with the car is going to change. I’ve thought for a while that the cars most affected by this are going to be performance cars. If you’re not driving the car, and the car is driving you, it’s just transportation at that point. There’s no connection to the engine, the speed, the feel of driving — hitting the throttle, that whole experience in a Porsche or a Corvette or even a big SUV. That already started to shift for me with electric cars.

What were you going to say, Adam?

Adam: I was just going to say — that jolt you feel hitting the throttle in a larger vehicle, something with torque — you don’t need that anymore, because you want the vehicle to do the work. You just want to get from point A to point B in the safest, most comfortable environment, and then what do you do with that time?

Chris: It would’ve completely changed my drive from San Diego home if the car had been driving itself — I could’ve had my laptop up, gotten real work done. Instead I had to drive, because my Rover doesn’t drive itself. But once you start going back and forth between those experiences, you end up feeling like driving is a waste of time.

Hogi: Yeah, I think that’s the best way to put it — driving’s a waste of time, and it’s very stressful. A couple weekends ago, me and my wife both had places to go. I’ve got a diesel truck, and diesel’s like $18,000 a gallon right now —

Chris: [laughs]

Hogi: — I had to go 45 minutes away, she had to go 10 minutes. But she’d planned on making phone calls while she was in the car — she plans things around her car trips — so she didn’t want to switch.

Chris: Oh, you were trying to get her to give you the Tesla?

Hogi: To give me the Tesla, because I had to drive 45 minutes and didn’t want to burn all that diesel. And now she’ll just jump in the car and drive to St. Louis to her sister’s house without even thinking about it — that’s hours from Oklahoma City.

Chris: Wow, that’s such a different relationship — Missy’s always telling me I should take the Tesla so I don’t have to drive, and your wife’s the opposite, “No, you drive, I don’t want to.”

Hogi: Yeah, I need Missy to talk to Andrew and get this figured out on our end.

Chris: [laughs] That’s funny. I do think it’s interesting — the radius of where people are willing to live relative to work might actually expand, because a two- or three-hour drive won’t matter as much if you can be just as productive during it as you would be at a desk. That’ll actually get better over time.

Adam: Yeah, I agree. There’s probably an opportunity for people to keep a vehicle for the fun, hot-rod experience, but when they just need point-A-to-B transportation and want to be efficient, they’ll have that other vehicle for it.

Chris: Totally. That reminds me of friends who have private jets — they’re so much more effective because of it. When I’m standing in the TSA line and I talk to them about it, they say, “It’s expensive, sure, but what’s my peace of mind and my time actually worth?” They pull up to the plane, get on, the plane waits for them, and when they’re ready, they go. Think about how much time we spend just planning the airport part of travel — and then you get there and the flight’s delayed anyway. You have to get there early, go through TSA, it’s all stressful.

Here’s the thing — Missy and I can leave the office at the same time, and I usually beat her home by about five minutes. But I’m completely stressed out the whole way, because the way I drive is just “I want to get home” — passing people, gunning it at the light. Where she’s letting the car do the work, and she gets home in a totally different energy than I do. I’m wound up, somebody cut me off, you’ve got that subtle road rage because people are slow off the line and you’ve got to honk — there’s this whole compounding pressure of trying to get where you’re going, and she’s completely disengaged from the hurry and the rush.

Hogi: Compounding stress.

Chris: Yeah. Her energy is totally different than mine when she gets home. From the office to the house is maybe 40 minutes, and she’s in a completely different space, because she’s letting the car pick the route and handle the guy who won’t go when the light turns green. I’m the one white-knuckling it.

Hogi: Time for the Cybertruck, bud.

Chris: Oh yeah, that’d be awesome — Grok teaching her AEO while you’re still trying to find your way home.

I do think the design of cars, and our relationship with them, is going to completely change — it isn’t going to be about horsepower or torque anymore, it’s going to be about the environment, being comfortable, having a plug-in for your laptop. The Cybertruck doesn’t even have a steering wheel, and that’s going to make more and more sense going forward.

Hogi: Getting more versatile. When you guys are in Waymos and somebody has to take over remotely — which I think we established is happening from the Philippines, right? — are they using a joystick to drive it remotely? How does that even work on their end?

Chris: I don’t know, honestly — I’d be curious what it looks like for them. But think about it — a car could just have a joystick. All the room taken up by steering wheels and pedals could just be a joystick. Why do we even have gas pedals? Because it used to run on a cable — there’s no real reason it has to be where it is, that’s just how we’ve always done it. A car could drive with a joystick.

Adam: When’s the last time they even made a car with a physical throttle cable?

Hogi: Late ’90s, early 2000s maybe.

Chris: Pretty close — even the brakes don’t really need a mechanical connection anymore. The Cybercab’s a good example, no steering wheel at all. Even a while back, Mercedes had a prototype with no steering wheel, hand controls instead — that came out of research even fifteen-plus years ago on people who grew up playing video games having better reaction times and comfort with joysticks than with a wheel.

Adam: I don’t think we’re far off from just getting in the car, it already knowing where you’re going —

Chris: And if Neuralink and the rest of Elon’s stuff goes the way it’s going, you might just think it and the car grabs it and goes.

Hogi: And goes. We had a client once with a Sprinter he’d turned into a mobile office — satellite, a desk, the ability to do Zoom calls, all of it in the van.

Chris: I don’t think we’re too far from that just being standard in any car.

Hogi: No way. I think COVID pushed a lot of people toward working off-grid like that too. But you don’t even need a Sprinter anymore — cars are hooked up to satellite now, you can basically already do that.

Chris: I love thinking about this stuff. I think for our community, one conversation I’ve had a lot is people saying, “I’ll never let go of my V8 Mustang,” and — two things can be true at once. There’s a special place in my heart for all that too. I’ve got a super-gas drag car in my shop and I drive a diesel truck. I’m fascinated by and want to embrace all this new stuff, and as leaders in fixed ops, I think we need to realize we can embrace the new technology while still loving what came before. There’s still a bit of resistance out there, partly because the way electric cars were first introduced was completely wrong, and it created a backlash. But what’s happening with the technology itself isn’t going away. We can love what was and embrace what’s new — that’s an important conversation to keep having over the next few years.

Hogi: Yeah, I think you’ve got to separate those two things. If you have a sports car, you’re still going to drive it when it’s fun — on a Sunday, whatever — but your day-to-day commute, you’re not going to want that stress in traffic.

Chris: And I’d add — one thing we do as humans is think about everything in the context of how it affects us personally, but you’ve got to pay attention to the global automotive industry here, because a lot of what’s happened with electric cars has nothing to do with anything that happened in the U.S. When Volkswagen said 50% of their cars would be electric by 2027 — whatever the number was — and everybody made this push to electric, that was for China, because China mandated that only electric cars could be sold there beyond 2026. When you’re manufacturing millions of cars and China’s a bigger new-car market than the U.S., with a huge emerging middle class, manufacturers are going to design for that market and push it onto us too. We’re the little guys in that situation, and we think this whole move to electric was about us. It wasn’t. It was funny how people tried to make it about America when it had nothing to do with us.

Same thing applies to what I was saying earlier — if you live out in the country, like where Hogi lives in Oklahoma, you’re going to get what you get, because manufacturers design for where the population actually is. There are 18 million people in LA — more people in this one city than in, I don’t know, twenty states combined.

Hogi: Majority of states, yeah.

Chris: So unlike our elections, where every state gets representation regardless of size, this is about production and money — manufacturers design products for where the most people are buying, not for how people feel out in the country. That’s one mistake manufacturers have made — forcing dealers to install electric chargers without considering that a dealership in LA should maybe have 25 chargers, and one in Oklahoma should have one. Instead it’s “the average should be three,” and everybody gets the same allocation even though people in Oklahoma aren’t buying electric cars anywhere near the rate people in LA, New York, or Dallas are. That’s kind of the core problem with how our industry is set up — we’re not paying attention to where the population and the actual need is.

Hogi: Where the actual market is, yeah. Niching for that.

Chris: Right. So whatever your taste is, you might say, “I’ll never drive an electric car, I’ll never let a car drive for me” — well, you probably live in a town with one stoplight.

Hogi: [laughs] That’s not the experience in LA.

Chris: In LA, depending on when you go to work and come home around traffic — I’m six miles from where I live, and it can take an hour and a half.

Hogi: I’d say still try it, though — coming from a big city with stoplights everywhere to somewhere more rural, when I go back I think, man, I can’t believe there are this many stoplights. There’s just a better experience if I had something driving for me. More the concept of what you’re talking about — I’d love to do a couple-hour road trip without ever touching the wheel. Three hours, four hours — that’d be awesome.

Chris: But to your point, Adam — when you lived in Chicago versus now living in southern Illinois, your transportation needs are completely different. In Chicago you could take out a sports car and open it up and it’d be fun; that’s totally different from commuting into an office every day. But I do love the idea of having time to do other things during a longer drive.

Adam: I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but if you could actually focus your time during a drive instead of white-knuckling it — think about how many people get pulled over just for checking their phone. There’s a real safety angle there too.

Chris: Yeah, well, those laws are going to have to change eventually. It’s just natural — it’ll happen.

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The Three Reasons You Can’t Recruit Technicians

Chris: So let’s talk about the three reasons you can’t recruit technicians. This comes up over and over — it’s a gift that keeps on giving — and I think today our approach is going to lean more into the mindset side of it. When we were talking about this before we came on, Hogi pointed out that all three of these really come down to mindset, right, Hogi?

Hogi: Mhm. Yeah — I’ll go ahead. The frame up front is: our instinct is for things to be easy, simple, for there to be a hack. And I think if you want to actually get good at hiring technicians, the first step, before anything else, is accepting that it’s hard. I always think about it this way — if it’s hard, that means I have an unfair advantage in the marketplace, because everybody else is going to give up. Everybody else is going to follow the herd and quit. So over the years, we’ve been good at hiring technicians because we accept that it’s hard, and we don’t take one thing not working as proof that it’s impossible. We do a bunch of different things, try to do them well, adapt, improve — understanding that that persistence is our advantage in the marketplace. Everybody else wants it to be easy, tries one thing, and gives up.

So the first part of this is: you have to accept there are fewer technicians in the market than are needed. Now what? Competition is super competitive. Software and AI may help, may not help — but you’ve got to keep going. It’s going to be hard.

Chris: So what’s the first one on your list, Hogi?

Hogi: The first one that doesn’t come naturally to most service managers is being a good storyteller in your ad. When you’re writing your ad, just take a second — maybe start by going on Indeed and scrolling through technician ads, and put yourself in their shoes. If you’re a technician who’s a really good tech, wasn’t even looking, but got pissed off about something at work today and now you’re scrolling — what would make you want to click on your ad? It’s a basic, old-school marketing concept, but for whatever reason, when we run these ads and actually go look at them, they’re awful. They’re just selling badly. What’s the story you’re telling about why someone would want to work for you? A lot of shops have genuinely interesting stories, and those should be the headlines, the banners of the ad. But if you scroll Indeed, it’s all the same generic stuff. I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but it should be — that a flat-rate technician needs to provide his own tools isn’t something they need to learn from the ad headline. That’s not the place for a job description.

Chris: Yeah, it’s generic.

Hogi: So — what’s the story you’re telling? That’s a great place to start: what’s actually important to techs? If someone’s scrolling those ads, what makes them want to click on yours? And the backside of that is, you have to actually start building a shop and a place that top techs want to work. You want to be able to advertise strong hours-per-RO, that the advisors are actually selling, that there’s plenty of customer-pay work — all the things that genuinely matter to them.

It’s always kind of fascinating — if you sit around with a group of service people, they’re always really good storytellers. Have you noticed that? They’ve always got great stories, whether it’s about customers or racing cars. Someone tells a story, it reminds someone else of one — and then we don’t apply that same talent to the places where it would actually help us, like these ads.

Chris: And why you want to be there.

Hogi: Right. Exactly.

Chris: I’d flip that and add — the story you tell internally, through the way your shop looks, the way you treat techs, the lunch room, your appreciation and enthusiasm for running a production facility — all of that plays into attracting good technicians too. If your advisors aren’t very good, if you’ve still got an old dispatcher running an outdated system, guys don’t want to work in that environment. They want efficiency, they want things to make sense. The story you’re telling through how you actually run the business is just as important as the ad itself.

Hogi: Chris, I like what you said earlier about taste — the taste of the shop you’re running. We were talking with a client yesterday who landed technicians just in the last couple weeks, just because they had so much work in the door. That’s the thing — techs just want to walk in, get the job done, get paid fairly for it, and be in a real production facility with a good environment. We’ve talked about this before — the lunchroom, the break room — that tells people a lot about how much you actually care about your techs. It all ties together.

Chris: I always think about it when I watch F1 — the shops that travel around the world with the teams, how they treat those techs, how everything looks, the energy — all of it is something to pay attention to.

Hogi: It’s the uniform of everything. It all tells a story.

Chris: For sure.

Hogi: And then the other one I had was giving up. How many times do we hear, “Oh, we tried that and it didn’t work”? I’m like — well, it works for us. I don’t know what to say to that. Okay — so what? Now what?

Chris: Yeah, what’s the next thing you’re going to try?

Hogi: Right. One thing we teach is the rule of five. All it says is — if you’re actually embracing the complexity of this, it’s really apparent, because when you ask someone who’s good at tech recruiting what they’re currently doing, they rattle off several things without even thinking. “Oh, we’re trying this new thing with Instagram, LinkedIn was working for a while and then it stopped, and you wouldn’t believe it, we went back to Craigslist a couple months ago — those two guys I just introduced you to, that’s where we got them.” They just keep doing the thing. We’ve joked internally for a while — people who say they’re bad at tech recruiting, 99% of the time, if you ask them what they’re actually doing, it’s “well, we ran an ad and it didn’t work.”

That’s the clear distinction, and that’s the spirit of embracing complexity — it’s intentionality, it’s will. I was watching something a while back that reminded me of a conversation I saw you have a couple years ago, Chris — somebody was asking this guy about something that was wrong in their business, and his response was, “Okay, if you had to get that thing fixed or it was going to cost your oldest child’s life, what would you do?” And the guy says, “Oh, tomorrow I’d do A, B, C, D.” And he goes, “Okay — go do that.” It really does come down to intentionality, embracing the complexity, and realizing all these little things matter. This could easily be a list of seventy things instead of three.

It amazes me, even in our own recruiting process — when we’re hiring for our team, people compliment us constantly, even candidates we don’t end up hiring, just for how we ran the process, because everybody did what they said they were going to do. The bar out there is just really, really low.

Chris: You know what that reminds me of, Hogi — that scene in John Wick where they kill his dog, and then think about everything that follows. He didn’t just do one thing. Hell and fury was coming — you killed my dog.

Hogi: [laughs] Right. It’s like, “Okay, we tried that, it didn’t work” — well, good news, bad news. It’s not about giving up, it’s a mindset of “I’m going to.” That’s the difference — our mindset is “we’re going to do it,” not “we tried a couple things and they didn’t work, so okay, it didn’t work, now what — could we do it better, could we try it again, how could we change it?”

So yeah — most of the reason you’re struggling to hire techs comes down to your view, your mindset, and your commitment to it. If you need help with it, reach out to us — we’re good at hiring techs. We can fill your shop.

And the other funny thing, to close it out — people think their market is a disadvantage. “Oh, well, I’m in West Texas.” It’s like — great barbecue and music, man. That’s a story too.

[A comment comes in from a viewer: “Hogi, know of any advisor positions in OKC? Currently looking.”]

Hogi: There’s a place in Charlotte, if you’re open to relocating.

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Wrap-Up

Chris: Okay, well, thanks everybody for hanging out with us. We’re going over to the Academy side of things now, going through how to have consistent CSI — that’s coming up here in just a couple minutes at the top of the hour. If you’re not in the Academy, go to ChrisCollinsInc.com and apply, inquire in there.

Hogi: The conversations in that group are really cool.

Chris: Yeah, it is. Really great. And today’s going to be fun, taking a deep dive on consistent CSI — great conversation coming up.

Okay, thanks, gentlemen. Everybody have a great week. We’ll see you soon.

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About Service Drive Revolution Academy

I know from experience that a lot of dealer owners won’t invest in training for fixed ops — but eight SERVICE MANAGERS in our coaching group have been promoted to general managers. That doesn’t happen enough in our industry. It’s proof that when you’re given the right tools and the right mentorship, you can do amazing things.

I’d like to personally invite you to something that should exist already, but unfortunately doesn’t: a live Fixed Ops Academy — a mentorship, a community. It’s a Service Drive Revolution Academy. Anybody can afford it; anybody who wants to invest in themselves can join. We teach what we know about running a healthy fixed-ops service business. Our average coaching client performs well above the industry average, and a handful are in a league completely their own — if I told you their numbers, you wouldn’t believe it.

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🔗 Related Resources

• Explore traffic strategies: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Service Drive | SDR #379
• Master leadership transitions: Making the Jump: What It Really Takes to Go From Service Advisor to Service Manager | SDR #378 
• Fix underlying systems: You Don’t Need Advisor Training | SDR #377 

Feel free to explore the linked articles above for deeper insights into each strategy. If you have any further questions or need additional resources, don’t hesitate to ask!