A conversation about hiring technicians and the mindset behind success. Someone bet to hire eight technicians in 45 days and nearly pulled it off. The key insight: try five or ten different approaches instead of waiting for the perfect one. Fear and complacency keep managers stuck; relentless action moves the needle.
To hire eight technicians in 45 days.
Roger, you kind of went over this really fast, but.
I think. And I. I'm not. I'm not bringing this back up for any other reason, that I think that the lesson is the important thing in this, and you touched on it when you're saying mindset. But the bet that we had about hiring text. So that bet, I. You gotta help me, because I don't remember, but I think it was eight texts in 45 days.
I remember it like it happened yesterday. It was eight texts in 45 days.
You got seven. You actually, I think you had eight. But one toolbox, one guy showed up in the service manager told the guy.
I mean, the. The. The lesson in that, too, is we were doing it for the manager. He wasn't really vested in the outcome. Right. So he told the tech that his toolbox was too big and ran him out because of the size of his toolbox, not his ability to turn wrenches.
Ouch.
So you lost it by one.
Yep.
Am I remembering that right?
Yep. That's almost exactly how it happened.
Yeah.
Crazy. Crazy. But the thing that I think you said there is. It's like, at the end of the day, people perceive it to be magic or a unique ability, but really it's just doing it.
Yeah, you say it all the time. It's the rule of 5 or 10 is better. And that's truly. You know, there's no one thing that you can do. And I say it all the time, if you want to go fishing, you got to fish with different baits, and, you know, you just got to try different things. And if that doesn't work, try something else.
It's funny, when people ask us, they're like, well, how do you. How do you do it? How do you hire techs? And I'm like, I don't know. We just do. Like, it isn't. There is. There's. Everybody wants this magic pill. And the. Like, you said, the most important part is stop saying you can't. And then you got. You know, you got to start doing stuff. But too many people out there, like, oh, I ran an ad. It didn't work. And it's like, well, where'd you run the ad? Well, on, indeed. And it's like, you know, there's other place. There's, you know, there's a hundred different ways to do things. But if it's not working, then you would change the way you. You would think you would change what you're doing. But it. It's easier sometimes to just say, oh, I tried. It didn't work?
Yeah, for sure. You know, I used. I. I just looked this statistic up this week because I was, you know, I was talking to a service manager. So there's seven. Over 17,000 new car dealerships in the country. And I just asked them, do they have service departments in the back of them? Do they have technicians working in them? Why are they working there and not here? Like, you just got to think differently right there.
There.
There's people out there, and the good ones aren't looking. You know, that's the thing. The good ones aren't looking. You got to go find them.
What do you. What do you think happens with.
With service managers that they sort of get, In a sense, what it feels like from the outside is they're paralyzed with fear of change or paralyzed with fear of doing something wrong and making a mistake, and so they choose doing nothing.
I think you have that hit right on. Right on the head. I think it's complacency also. They just get complacent and say, this is all we could do. Times are changing, and this is all we could do. But, you know, I never subscribed to that. You know, as far as doing something. Doing something wrong, I'm always the guy. I would rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission, you know, because there's. There's the worst thing can happen if you just have to say, hey, it didn't work out and I'm going to do something else. Right. You know that. That's the. All right, let's just try something else and figure it out. But, yeah, I would. I would agree with you 100%.
Well, I think that a lot of managers, though, go to the other end where they're. They're only focused on the. If it doesn't work out, that they're gonna lose their job or they're gonna get fired. Like, they never even think for a second, well, what if I try it and it works? One thing that I'll say about Roger that's very, very unique in relation to him versus some of the other people that we've worked at is Roger has, like, this really relentless pursuit of goal. And you can put in whatever you want. You can put in technician hiring, you can put in gamification, you can put in customer experience, but the thing that Roger brings to the table is that he's relentless. So I think that that's probably one of the things that you might be glancing over in terms of a skill set that's important for service managers coming up or intuit or if you're stuck, you have to adopt that relentless attitude that you're not going to lose. And I like that competitiveness. And I think that that's something that is a lesson for a lot of us, is that you're not going to do things one way. You're going to go through every door, every window, dig a hole, whatever it is, but you just don't quit till it's done. And I think that's, that's probably a really good lesson for technician hiring, plus a bunch of other stuff.
But do you, do you think, Roger, that that's something that you learned, or do you think that that's something that you sort of always had?
I always had the mentality that I always wanted to win. I never knew what I was winning, but I just wanted to win. You know, I always had that mentality, you know, coming up in the game probably, you know, I probably had that little fear when I, you know, first started out, like I think we all do. But I quickly realized that on the other side of that fear was the, was the reward. So, you know, I started to push through that. And, you know, I, I just as, as, you know, again, momentum in that this starts right as you, you start to just, you know, shoot them off the barrel, if you will, the things that you're going through. And I use that too. Like I'm gonna get, I tell people I'm gonna get done whatever I want to get done. Through you, over you, under you, around you, however it takes, I'm gonna get it done one way or the other. And if I have to do it myself, I'll do it. Doesn't matter. And maybe that's, you know, just my, my drive just takes me there.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333-ASK-SD and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333-ASK SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
