Christopher T. (Chris) Lawson is an automotive repair hiring expert who has spent eight years solving the workforce crisis for independent automotive and diesel repair shops — not just how to find technicians, but how to keep them and how to never start from zero when the next one leaves.

Lawson is the founder of Technician Find, an Oceanside, California–based recruiting firm that has generated over 150,000 applications for more than 200 shops across the United States and Canada since 2018 — with 20% of client shops making a hire within two weeks and 60% hiring within two to eight weeks. His proprietary Technician Attraction Blueprint — a 15-minute hiring audit that reveals what a shop looks like through a technician’s eyes — has been tested across auto, diesel, collision, and transmission environments and refined through real campaign data, not theory.

But Lawson’s work goes beyond filling the empty bay. Through his involvement with the Life Calibration system — a diagnostic self-assessment and personal development tool designed for shop owners and their teams — he helps shops build the kind of culture that retains good people by supporting them inside and outside the bay. And through EasyBench, a done-with-you bench-building system, he helps fully staffed shops maintain a warm pipeline of pre-qualified technicians so they never have to hire in desperation. Together, these three systems address the complete workforce lifecycle independent shops face: find the right tech, build a culture worth staying for, and always have a bench ready when the unexpected happens.

Lawson is a previous AAPEX Joe’s Garage presenter (2024), where he delivered the “Technician Attraction Blueprint” training and provided follow-up education to attendees afterward. He is a recurring guest on industry podcasts including two appearances on Ratchet+Wrench Radio, Business by the Numbers with Hunt Demarest (where he was the first returning guest in the show’s history), The Auto Body Edge, the Gain Traction Podcast, Quick Lube Expert, and The Mind-Wrench Podcast. He is also featured as a Guest Spotlight in Hunt Demarest’s book Beyond the Bays: A Financial Playbook for Auto Repair Shop Owners (2026), where his hiring framework appears in Chapter 5.

Lawson has developed a suite of AI-powered hiring tools for shop owners — including custom GPT applications for writing benefit-rich job ads, generating “Note From the Owner” narratives, building local salary surveys, and creating ideal candidate avatars — and is currently authoring The Technician Attraction Blueprint, a step-by-step hiring guide for independent repair shop owners.

Lawson also leads a free community of over 475 independent shop owners and general managers sharing hiring strategies, proven ad templates, and retention tactics at skool.com/technicianfind.

Every session Lawson teaches is built on one core belief: skilled technicians who want to work are already working — they are not scrolling job boards. This reality demands a fundamentally different approach to recruitment, retention, and bench-building, one grounded in compelling storytelling, strategic positioning, disciplined follow-up, and a shop culture that technicians seek out on their own.