Ben charges $120-160 for oil changes, but shops sell them for $60-120.
He can’t compete on price.
He’s a mobile mechanic in Flint, Michigan with three years of experience.
Ben knows he’s good at basic maintenance but feels like an imposter when customers need complex repairs.
His business is barely covering his bills.
He’s stuck between two problems: not enough customers and not feeling qualified enough to market himself confidently.
Then we dig into who’s actually buying $160 oil changes.
The answer changes everything about his business model.
What if the problem isn’t his prices?
What if he’s targeting the wrong people entirely?
By the end, Ben’s thinking about a completely different type of service.
One that could charge $500 for what used to be a $100 job.
But can he find customers who would actually pay that much?
FULL RECAP
“I think a good order to tackle these things would actually be to start from the second and then move to the first, because if you are walking around with, like you said, imposter syndrome, then everything you do in terms of marketing, getting the word out, getting people to be interested in you is going to be tainted with that, because it creates this sort of timidity in us.”
Ben, who runs Wrench Wagon LLC, a mobile mechanic service in the Flint, Michigan area, had come to me with two problems: not getting enough customers to make ends meet, and feeling like an imposter compared to mechanics with 20 years of experience. Like many entrepreneurs, he wanted to jump straight to marketing tactics. But I’ve learned that when someone is walking around feeling like they need to hide something about themselves, no amount of marketing strategy will fix the underlying issue.
“So the things that I know I’m absolutely confident in are oil changes on just about any vehicle, any American, Japanese, most European. I can do brakes on American cars, Japanese cars, without issue, and most European, those are a little spotty, because some of the German engineering gets a little crazy, but for the most part, brakes. As well as diagnosing engine problems, I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting and addressing the concerns with engines, or at least finding and separating out the more simpler repairs from the things that need to go to a real engine specialist.”
I noticed something interesting as Ben talked through his competencies. His voice became more confident when discussing oil changes, slightly less so with brake work, and noticeably more tentative when he got to diagnostics. This wasn’t about his actual skill level - it was about his certainty in different areas. And that certainty, or lack thereof, would come through in every customer interaction.
“If what you proposed you did to people was oil changes while they’re at work or otherwise busy with their lives - you pick up their car, you do an oil change, you return the car, they pay you, that’s it - would your imposter syndrome come into play at all?”
“No. Not a lot. I feel that confident.”
This was the moment I saw Ben’s shoulders relax. When we stripped away all the complexity and focused on what he genuinely knew he could deliver flawlessly, the impostor syndrome evaporated. But I could sense resistance building.
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“My big no is the fact that for what I want for my business, if I were to just focus heavily on oil changes, regular shops like your regular mom-and-pop shops, or places you go to get your oil changed, even the dealership, they specifically make oil changes, they sell them at a loss, a small loss, or a break-even point. So they can bring their prices down to a point where I could not compete.”
This is where most business conversations get stuck - in the weeds of cost-plus pricing and competitor analysis. Ben was thinking like someone who had to compete on price, but he was offering something fundamentally different. I needed to help him see that.
“An oil change happens, what, once a year, twice a year?”
“Two to four times a year.”
“In practical dollar terms, the difference between a $100 service once a quarter and $200 service once a quarter would only be significant for a person who really makes very little money. It’s within the realm of going to a restaurant with the family, right? It’s not a crazy difference.”
I was watching Ben process this. He’d been so focused on the shops selling oil changes at cost that he’d forgotten his service was completely different. He was solving the problem of time, convenience, and hassle - not just automotive maintenance.
...
“At the low end, pricing is about whatever services and products you provide, plus a little bit of a margin. But at a different point, at a different price point, it’s about the value that the customer gets. You have a very specific thing. You drive around, you pick up the car, you do the work, you get the car back, it’s completely transparent to them, they waste zero time on it. And that is the key, the core of your service. It’s about convenience.”
This is one of the most difficult transitions for people stepping into business - moving from cost-plus thinking to value-based pricing. Ben was still thinking about what his time and materials cost him, rather than what the solution was worth to his customers.
“Let’s look at a lawyer, right? Somebody who charges maybe $1,000 per billable hour. If they don’t need to go have their car oil changed, and they don’t need to send their assistant to go have their oil changed, that might be worth a lot more than you’re considering to them because of convenience.”
“Funny enough, what you’re pointing out is actually something I’ve been planning. I’ve been working out pricing and planning of a subscription service, because I see how much would someone who has more expendable income value just not having to think about their car, because there’s probably a lot of people that don’t want to have to think about their car.”
Now we were getting somewhere. Ben had been thinking about this subscription model but hadn’t connected it to his imposter syndrome issues. The beauty of a retainer subscription service is that it detaches the amount of work you do from your revenue - you get paid to care about the car, not necessarily to do specific work.
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“One of the things I think you’ll be getting paid for here is to just completely eliminate any thinking they need to do about this. Ever. At all. Like, the idea that they would never need to take their car to the shop, they would never need to go and wait anywhere, they would never need to figure anything out, and if any kind of light pops up or anything weird happens, they just text you, and you deal with it.”
This reframe was crucial. Ben wasn’t selling car maintenance - he was selling peace of mind. And peace of mind is priced based on what your clients are doing with the rest of their time, not on your cost of materials.
“Your distinction then becomes, instead of being the best mechanic in whatever the county or the state, you’re the most conscientious, nicest, easiest to work with, and delivers the best kind of service in the relationship sense. Not in the mechanic sense. And that, just from talking to you, sounds like it should not be a problem for you to stand out on that.”
“That’s something that I, in my current marketing, try to push. I have good communication. Whenever I get people who ask for quotes, I’m usually the person that gets a call, and I have a quote to them in half an hour. Sometimes an hour, if I need to shop parts. But I try to keep it very tight communication, very good, make it as frictionless to work with me on the communication side of things.”
Ben was already doing the relationship part well - he just hadn’t recognized it as his primary competitive advantage. Most shops optimize for scale; he was optimizing for the relationship. These are different businesses entirely.
...
“I think maybe, in general, slicing your clients by gender could be useful.”
“It could be. I can see that, possibly.”
“I think men tend to pretend they know more than they do, which makes it hard for them to purchase a service that is sort of predicated on the fact that they have no idea what they’re doing. But women seem more willing to accept that, hey, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know, and there’s Ben, he will take care of it, and that’s it.”
This was admittedly not the most politically correct observation, but it reflected a real market dynamic. The ideal client I was imagining was someone with disposable income, a car, but no desire to understand or deal with the car in any way - and that profile skewed in predictable directions.
“I can definitely see how that could be at least framing my marketing a little bit more tinted towards, especially if I’m to possibly do this monthly subscription maintenance program. This could definitely be something I could see possibly appealing more to a woman demographic who is more willing to acknowledge, hey, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just know he takes care of the car, and it runs well.”
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“Before you dive into marketing of this, my question is, because marketing is an act to scale an existing thing, something that already works - can you find a couple of old ladies with cars that you could pitch without doing marketing, just through whatever, friends, family, community, something like that?”
“I’d say a definite maybe. I think I could probably find a few people, whether old ladies or whatever, just a few people who could see who would see the value in this, and be willing to pay to not have to think about their car anymore, as far as the maintenance and taking care of it.”
This was the practical test. Before Ben spent time and money on marketing campaigns, he needed to validate that this repositioned service actually resonated with real people willing to pay for it.
“We need to be providing services to people above us. That’s the trickle-down economy. You provide a service to people who are above you in the social or financial ladder. And you trickle their funds down to you by providing them a service that they need. And therefore, if you try to apply your perspective onto what they value, you are by definition going to be off. Because it’s a different perspective.”
“That’s a valid point. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Definitely a mind shift to have to break that, or I guess, not necessarily break it, but separate it from me as the business owner, getting out of those mindsets aside and trying to think from the perspective of, as you said, the lawyer who’s making $1,000 a billable hour. Obviously, he’s not going to give a hoot about how much it costs.”
This was the breakthrough moment. Ben realized he’d been projecting his own cost-consciousness - born from his current financial situation - onto potential customers who had completely different priorities and constraints.
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“Overall, I do feel some change in my mindset regarding how I need to look at who my customers really are, and maybe slightly shifting my services. I guess where my concern is, if I’m doing these maintenance actions, but then they do have something break, making sure that I can take care of that for them, whether it’s I go out and figure it out and fix it, or even if it’s something bigger, making sure my customer’s taken care of, and they still feel they still are getting that worry-free car experience.”
“This would be a better problem to have in your business. Building a business is not about running out of problems or challenges at any point. It’s the progress of moving from one problem to the next. Now, this problem will arise if you have a significant amount of these subscriptions, and this starts happening. And you’re not quite sure what to do with it. And then at that point, it makes sense to think about how to fix it.”
I wanted Ben to recognize that he was now thinking about a completely different class of problems - good problems that come from success, rather than the problems that come from struggling to get started.
“That’s a fair point. You make a lot of sense, and I appreciate it, because I see I kind of have to shift, because it is a very different problem, but I think it is a good problem if I’m having enough subscriptions to the point where I’m taking care of their cars, maintaining their cars, I’m getting paid fairly handsomely for it. And then if something comes up, I either just handle it, or I handle it for them, or I outsource it to someone who I know can handle it, just kind of keep that worry-free experience for my customers. Which is definitely a better problem to have.”
In the span of an hour, Ben had moved from wondering how to compete with shops that sell oil changes at a loss, to designing a premium service for professionals who value their time more than money. More importantly, he’d moved from feeling like an imposter to recognizing his genuine strengths and building a business model around them. Sometimes the best business advice isn’t about new strategies - it’s about seeing what you’re already good at from a completely different angle.
