480: Matt Ebert—The Billion Dollar Car Wreck

Summary

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The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Episode 480: Matt Ebert—The Billion Dollar Car Wreck

Date: April 21, 2026

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Overview

In this compelling episode, Mike Rowe sits down with Matt Ebert, founder and CEO of Crash Champions, a national collision repair chain now valued at $3 billion with over 650 locations. What begins as a story about the “most profitable car wreck in the history of the world” unfolds into a classic American tale of persistence, hands-on learning, entrepreneurial risk-taking, and relentless growth in a changing industry. Ebert’s journey from a small-town kid who wrecked two cars to running an industry-leading, AI-proof company offers both inspiration and a frank look at the skilled trades pipeline crisis, the reality of low-margin, high-volume businesses, and what it takes to build a people-first national brand.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Accidental Origin Story (00:11–13:44)

• Matt’s Start:
  After wrecking two cars as a teenager, Matt avoided an insurance disaster by learning how to do bodywork on his own “out of desperation, not passion”— and discovered he loved seeing the physical results of his labor.

  “I didn’t want to lose the freedom... so I was desperate to make sure I could still drive that car the next day.” — Matt (30:43)

• Mentorship:
  A local body shop owner, Ray, taught Matt the basics and let him hone his skills (sometimes poorly, by his own admission).

  “To be clear, I wasn’t good at it... if it looked good, it was because Ray cleaned up after me.” — Matt (27:54)

2. Small-Town Work Ethic and Risk Appetite (16:28–41:05)

• Entrepreneurial Spirit Early:
  Matt hustled as a kid, mowing lawns, delivering newspapers (and, humorously, selling magazine centerfolds). He credits his early “risk gene” for later boldness.

  “My very first ridiculous entrepreneur adventure... I was some kind of 5-year-old porn king.” — Matt (41:22)

• No College Path:
  College was never part of his family’s plan, which made him double-down on learning through doing and persistence.

  “It was probably more frowned upon from my family... I just wanted to make money.” — Matt (34:09)

3. Learning to Lead and Building the Business (41:05–55:04)

• From Worker to Owner:
  Matt rose from shop grunt to writing estimates to eventually running shops and, after a franchise detour (owning several Subways on credit card advances!), partnered with a body shop owner.

  “I cash advanced 100 grand in credit cards and grabbed a partner and opened a Subway business…” — Matt (44:55)

• Going Solo and Scaling:
  After 15 years as a minority partner, Matt bought out his partner in 2014, rebranded to “Crash Champions,” and embarked on a growth journey.

  “650 locations... it’s a $3 billion company... It was an industry record—$60 million to $2.5 billion in three years.” — Matt (61:34)

4. Branding, Marketing & the Role of Authenticity (50:49–70:20)

• On the Name:
  The unique “Crash Champions” name was developed with an ad agency; the strategy included giving superhero capes to customer’s kids (“10-year marketing plan”).

  “As soon as I heard it... I said, that’s the one.” — Matt (51:33)

• Advertising Philosophy:
  Crash Champions is a low-margin, high-volume business; broad advertising is unaffordable, so Matt focuses on internal marketing — making employees feel engaged and aligned.

  “The differentiator for us is the team... the team to be awesome... I need your help to get my message to the team…” — Matt (82:47)

• Consumer Trust & “Grudge Purchase”:
  Most customers don’t plan for collision repair; they trust people (technicians, owner stories) over brands.

  “Nobody really plans for [collision repair]... Nielsen says 88% of consumers trust a person over a brand.” — Danny (71:11–71:58)

5. Culture, Recruitment & the Skills Gap (81:00–96:15)

• Current Hiring Needs:
  Crash Champions could hire 400–600 people tomorrow; entry-level positions are plentiful, and technicians can earn six figures without a college degree.

  “We could probably easily hire 400 people tomorrow... It’s a six-figure job, and can be with a two-year certificate.” — Matt (83:10)

• Trades Pitch & AI-Proof Jobs:
  Matt voices the urgent need to correct public misperceptions about skilled trades: the work is sophisticated, pays well, and isn’t threatened by AI anytime soon.

  “Robots won’t be fixing wrecked cars anytime soon.” — Matt (85:27)

• Pipeline Shortfall:
  The industry needs 100,000 new techs in 7–10 years, but trade schools graduate only 3,500 per year; internal apprenticeship and mentorship are critical.

  “Five retire, two come in... It’s not a myth. The skills gap is a thing.” — Mike (95:28)
  “Trade schools do a great job at pre-training... the issue is a mentor problem.” — Matt (94:00, 95:25)

6. The Challenge of Scale and Staying Ahead (55:04–92:29)

• Why Grow?
  Matt saw scale as a necessity — to survive in a consolidating market, to have negotiating leverage with insurers, and to keep up with costly new technology.

  “It was pure survival... If the big guy makes a better offer than I have... it could be gone tomorrow.” — Matt (57:04)

• Private Equity and Massive Growth:
  With the help of investment bankers, Crash Champions exploded from 13 shops to over 550 in three years (2020–2022).

  “That’s an industry record... from $60 million to $2.5 billion in three years.” — Matt (61:34)

• Future Threats & Opportunities:
  Autonomous driving, rising repair costs, and shrinking accident rates are reshaping the field — but the need for complex repairs keeps the business robust for years to come.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Persistence as Superpower:

  “I know if I stick with it long enough, I will get good at it... that’s my superpower.” — Matt (36:32)

• On Debt and Risk:

  “I’m already in a tent eating beans... honestly, what’s the worst that can happen?” — Matt (64:11)

• Why Scale Is Survival:

  “A good big man will beat a good little man any day. It just simply doesn’t matter.” — Mike’s mentor (59:02)

• On Business Being Personal:

  “What do you trust more? Do you trust a brand or do you trust a person?” — Danny (71:55)

• Honesty and Customer Relations:

  “What are you trying to accomplish? I can do some work for free or discount... but the whole scam you’re trying to run is not going to work.” — Matt (79:01, 79:14)

• AI-Proof Jobs:

  “Robots can build cars today... but everything we do is unique to that one event. It’s going to be a while.” — Matt (86:55)

• Miracles Still Happen:

  “Miracles can still happen in this country to people who put in the work and who are too stubborn to quit and too curious to do anything but.” — Mike (04:00)

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Important Timestamps

• Accidental Business Origin: (12:48–15:38)
• First Entrepreneurial Hustles: (41:05–42:45)
• No College, All Work: (34:08–36:18)
• Buying (and failing with) Subway Franchises: (44:49–45:53)
• Solo Shop Ownership & Rebranding: (49:46–51:52)
• Massive Scaling with Private Equity: (61:34–62:58)
• On “Grudge Purchases” and Consumer Trust: (71:03–71:59)
• Recruitment Crisis in Collision Repair: (83:10–85:27, 94:00–95:28)
• The Skills Gap’s Reality: (95:28–96:03)
• Future-Proofing in a Changing Industry: (86:55–92:22)
• Family and Team Building: (79:40–82:47)

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Conclusion

This episode encapsulates the classic American “rags to riches” arc, with Matt Ebert’s remarkable trajectory from small-town misfit to industry leader. Key themes of resilience, learning from mistakes, the value of trades, and the essential truth that “miracles still happen” are woven throughout. At its heart, the conversation is a pitch for the dignity and opportunity in skilled work— and a candid reflection on building (and sustaining) a people-focused, future-ready business in a world obsessed with tech and scale.

Listen if: You want inspiration, practical entrepreneurial insights, or a blueprint of what it means to “outpersist” the competition in the real, tangible economy.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

The Way I Heard it, Chuck, it's entirely possible that a guy can just be driving down the road, you know, 17 years old.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

In his beloved car. Yeah. And lose control.

[C]

16, I think he was wreck it.

[B]

And then be worth a billion dollars as a result.

[C]

Is that what you heard?

[B]

That's. That's what I heard. I heard the most profitable car wreck in the history of the world is the story we're about to share on this episode of the Way I Heard It.

[C]

Yes. It sounds exactly like the conversation that we just did. Yes.

[B]

Although I don't think we connected the dots. No, not the way I just did. I mean, I just talked to a guy named Matt Ebert. Matt Ebert is a guy who bought me dinner a year ago. And not just me. I was at SkillsUSA with a room full of people in a private dining room. I was speaking there, this thing. Right. And they invited me in and somebody picked up our whole tab. Right. And then the waiter gave me a note. And it was a nice note from a guy named Matt who said he admired what we were doing at microworks.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And he would love a chance to talk and share some of what his company was doing to help reinvigorate the trades. Yes. I Google him. His company's called Crash Champions. Turns out this guy didn't go to college, just worked in an auto body shop because he wrecked his car and then he wrecked another one. Yeah, right.

[C]

It was the second one that led to it.

[B]

Right? Yeah. And so he's suddenly like in the business of repairing his own cars, and he realizes he kind of digs this, and so he finds a passion. And by his own admission, he wasn't very good at it. Yeah. Yeah. But the son of a gun sticks with it. And flash forward a few decades and he's got a $3 billion company called Crash Champions that is doing everything different in the automotive repair game. So I learned all of this kind of a year ago from a quick Google search after a stranger buys me and my friend's dinner. And I said to his cmo, I guess it is some guy named Jake. I'm like, you know what? You let that Matt character know if he's ever in town. I would love to talk to him. Folks, that's what happened today. This is one of the greatest rags to riches success story. I'm so happy for his success, and I'm so delighted to tell you that he's hiring to the tune of five or six hundred people right now. AI proof, six figure jobs. Yeah. I mean, it Just checks so many fun boxes for me. And he just struck me as utterly authentic.

[C]

Super authentic. A really sweet guy, really nice guy. And driven, for sure. He wants to be bigger and bigger and bigger. And I think he has like over 650. Was that the number?

[B]

650 locations across the country. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting too. You know, I've been in, talking to Damon John. Yeah, the shark.

[C]

Shark tank. Yeah.

[B]

And Damon, through some weird circuitous connection, reached out to Matt a couple years ago and helped him grow, like, really threw like rocket fuel on this thing. And so this is really a conversation about connections and about patience and about diligence and about humor and about modesty, humility, and reward.

[C]

When he talks about his first entrepreneurial job, really interesting. He said he'd never mentioned it before. I won't spoil it, but it's funny.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, this is a conversation that I think will stick with you because we don't hit anything too squarely on the head, but it all kind of adds up. And what you're left with, spoiler alert, is just the undeniable fact that miracles can still happen in this country to people who put in the work and who are too stubborn to quit and too curious to do anything.

[C]

But, yeah, yeah, this conversation is right in your wheelhouse.

[B]

It's called the Billion Dollar Car Wreck, because that's basically what it was with Matt Ebert right after this.

[A]

Dumb.

[B]

So the Microworks foundation has set aside $10 million this year to help train the next generation of skilled workers. And I'd like to encourage you to go get some of that money or let people know that the money is there. I know I talk about this a lot on the podcast and all over the place, but the headlines really have caught up with America's widening skills gap. Everybody is paying attention right now, and my foundation has been made relevant in ways that, frankly, I never imagined. So we're setting aside a big chunk of money. There are hundreds of thousands of open positions right now in this country that don't require a four year degree. They require training. That's what Microworks does. Apply for a work ethic scholarship today, you got to jump through some hoops. You know, you got to make a case for yourself. But the application isn't that complicated. It's right [e-mail] go fill it out. $10 million waiting to help train the next generation of electricians and plumbers and H Vac techs and welders and ship builders and linemen. The list goes on. The money is there. Microworks.org apply today. Good luck. Are you doing a podcast? Like, do you host one?

[A]

Yeah. Wanna come on it?

[B]

I'll see how this goes.

[A]

Whenever. There you go. Are we good?

[B]

We're up. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. All right. If you. You guys are welcome to hang, but you're going to get bored standing there. It's going to go for a while, so do whatever you want to do.

[A]

They do it every time I do one. You want to talk about boring?

[B]

Look, man, we've done hundreds of these. Nobody's ever come in with cameras before. What are they doing? Is this an attempt to just accumulate evidence before the trial or what do you. It's.

[A]

It's great. It's an attempt from somebody who's not good at camera stuff to follow me around at certain times and probably for hours to get like, a couple minutes of usable. Couple minutes of usable stuff. Yep.

[B]

Well, look, man, I. I get.

[A]

Because you can't reenact it, like, so you got to get it in real time.

[B]

Well, the tragedy is you can reenact it, but everybody today knows it. People can smell take two. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I just think authenticity is so in demand right now that people's meters are so finely tuned. Like, they can see a performance, they can see a second take. They can see anything that feels, I don't know, deliberate.

[A]

Well, especially from somebody like me because I can't act. And. And even the camera stuff is not my comfort zone. Probably. Well, I actually know probably to it three years ago is when we started doing camera stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was just internal for our own team. And Mike, I was so bad at it. We did, like, seemed like a thousand takes, but it was probably like a hundred.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you know what they did? They took the audio and made a cartoon. That's how bad it was. Yeah.

[B]

Or how good.

[A]

Unusable. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, look, I think we're entering in this phase now where, you know, the more artificial, the more AI grabs hold everything, you know, the more suspect people are going to become or the more curious they're going to be or maybe skeptical, like it's going to be. I think it's going to be very refreshing to see people on camera who are uncomfortable, or at least not terribly interested in, and doing it in a produced way. That is you, man.

[A]

There's people saying that. That however many years from now, people will pay you for, like, a real human experience, which I. That's pretty wild. Transformation of the world, but, like, where you'll crave a human experience so much you'll pay for it. That's pretty wild.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's. I think it's all coming. Okay. So we met. Where were we?

[A]

It was usa, about almost a year ago.

[B]

And what was that? In Nashville? Was that Atlanta? I was in Atlanta.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So just some people I remember because it was hot.

[B]

It was hot.

[A]

And my guy, that convention center went through several buildings, and our guy there decided to show us the shortcut, which was around all the buildings, when there was clear inside, like, you know, the walkways over the roads, inside air conditioned. And yeah, he thought the great ways

[B]

to run around the building.

[A]

Well, look, I tease him about that all the time.

[B]

Full disclosure, people buy me drinks once in a while. Every now and then, somebody will buy me dinner. No, nobody ever bought the whole room full of people dinner before.

[A]

Oh, you're talking about how I actually got to meet you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, great story on our side of that. We're sitting there at. Obviously because of your message, which you've been at for decades, like, it resonates with us. So you. You're on a list of people that I would have loved to meet, my team would have loved to meet, because we're preaching the same thing only a few decades later.

[B]

Sure. Right.

[A]

And so we're sitting there kind of planning out what we're gonna do tomorrow at dinner. And in you and your group walks and walks right by us into a private room. And I look at Danny and I said, all right, well, who's going in there? Which we do know etiquette. Like, you're in a private room for a reason. Right. So as much as I tried to force them to go in there, like, we knew better. So my game plan was, all right, I can't leave here and not try something. So went up to the hostess and I said, hey, I would really like to buy. I saw Mike Rowe walk through with his group. I'd really like to buy him dinner if I can leave him a note. And they said, okay. So, you know, we even took a picture of me handwriting the note gave you. Mike told you what I was up to, the contact information and.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And then that was that. And the next day we were having lunch together. So good old fashioned kind of guerrilla marketing kind of still works.

[B]

No, look, it was, it was.

[A]

It worked out for me anyway.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, never mind the agenda. Like, from my perspective, it was. It was brilliant. I knew a little bit about Crash Champions. I knew that you had exploded, and I knew that You.

[A]

Well, that's cool that you even knew that. That's awesome.

[B]

I did. I knew it had something to do. Like there was a shark tank thing that had happened and there was some relationship. I didn't realize it was Damon John at the time, but because I was at SkillsUSA and because I've been there many times, you know, I know a lot of people who run companies like yours, they go there to recruit, not just to support. Like you're there looking for potential employees.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Which, by the way, I mean, is there a better kept secret in the country than Skills usa? Like in terms of youth groups, in terms of employer employee readiness, you know, it blows me away every year.

[A]

That was the national competition. So honestly, those are even your leaders.

[B]

Yeah. Did you make offers on that trip? Did you hire to find people?

[A]

Yes. Yeah. Now, I didn't meet them individually. I had a whole team there. So what came out of it, I can, I can report back, but yeah, we're there to recruit and yeah, higher for sure.

[B]

So it was. And that clearly wasn't your first trip.

[A]

No, it was mine. My team goes all the time. It's getting to be such a big deal that I decided to make the trip myself that time and just see the potential there.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm with my team, you're with your team, you buy us all dinner, you leave a note, I call, some guy named Danny answers. I think we have lunch the next day and we say, look, at some point somewhere down the road, let's pick each other's brain and see, like, if they're. If it might make sense to do something together. Because I didn't know your story then, but part of the reason I wanted to make sure we had a chance to do this with microphones and cameras is because I think your story is really important. I mean, it's entertaining as hell. It's interesting. You basically built yourself an empire, if I remember right, as the result of an accident, like a literal accident.

[A]

Yeah, I wrecked my car when I was 16. It was actually like the more details of the story, which I haven't told before. It was really my second accident, my second car, and the first one totaled. And so I had already had one insurance claim and scared to death to make another because as a 16 year old kid, I probably wasn't going to be insured anymore. And for me at that time, the car was more than a car, it was freedom. I still remember the first time getting in a car by myself and realizing, like, this could take me anywhere. Right.

[B]

What Was the car.

[A]

It was the one that I wrecked and fixed was a Chrysler Laser, which is like a Dodge Daytona. That's the one that I fixed.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I don't know how many of them they made, but it's basically a Chrysler version of the Dodge Daytona. The one I wrecked and totaled was a Ford Exp, which was like a two door Escort, kind of little sporty Escort kind of version.

[B]

Where do they get these names, man? Right, And a Escort.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, that goes straight into the oldest profession in the world.

[A]

At least they're creative, though. I mean, it's not like it's, you know, the model one or two or three or.

[B]

No, no, that's for sure.

[A]

A or B or C. So at least there's creativity to it.

[B]

Remember the Probe?

[A]

Yeah. I don't know if that's the best thing.

[B]

If you get the Probe together with the Escort, you know?

[A]

Yes. Putting that together now. It's not a great name, is it?

[B]

What about the Dart, man? I remember that. That was one of my first ones. My granddad had a Dodge Dart.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And it had.

[A]

My dad was a big Dodge guy.

[B]

Yeah. Well, the Dart, well, I think it was like in the Swinger, they had a. It was a slant six, okay. Engine. Right. And the things like they ran like. You didn't have to change the oil. They'd run 350,000 miles. And the bodies would like literally fall apart around these things.

[A]

I was gonna say if it was a Dodge, something had to go wrong.

[B]

Oh, yeah. But it was never the engine. You know, amc, like, I remember the Javelin.

[A]

My stepfather was into the AMCs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Those were ugly cars.

[B]

They were hideous. But 390, big block.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Absolute garbage frame. And, you know.

[A]

But they also made like the Gremlin. Right?

[B]

Like the Gremlins.

[A]

The Wayne's World car. The Wayne's World car.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Yeah.

[B]

Horrible, man. It really is amazing when you think about the way style and fashion impacted the automotive industry. And the look. You're talking about freedom, you know, the thing that the car represents, but it all just everything about it. The look and the name and just like, I don't describe myself as a car guy. I know a lot of them, you know, let's kind of go there. How do you become a car guy?

[A]

Well, you know, I happened to grow up in a time when cars were cool, too. Like, as a kid, you couldn't wait to drive, or at least I couldn't. And I also couldn't wait to open the hood and take it apart or Put a jack under it and take the wheel off of it. It was a lot simpler back then. Now it's a little scary if you don't know what you're doing. Where'd you grow up to jump into it? So few towns throughout Illinois. My mom and stepdad moved me first in. I don't know, it must have been about four or five or even younger. Actually, three or four to a town with 150 people in it. Literally 150. And then for eighth grade, they moved to a town with 1400 people. So big city, sure. Hated all of it. And then came running up and lived with my grandparents right after high school, so.

[B]

But you had nothing to compare it to. It's not like you left a big city for a small town. That's all you knew.

[A]

That's all I knew. Right? Yeah.

[B]

Okay, so now the freedom thing starts to make sense. How are you going to get out of these little vils? You know, you need wheels.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. And my stepfather credit him. He raised the family on. He was a rural mail carrier. But, like, big ambitions weren't. Weren't part of the family language. Right.

[B]

So you said it's a mail carrier. Mm. So he traveled extensively with the government.

[A]

Yeah. Right. Oh, Same route every thousands of miles. Right. Same route every day.

[B]

What did you take from that? I'm only asking you this because you're. I mean, I'll clear this up in the preamble, but you're like, you're an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. You built something out of. I don't know what exactly. I guess we'll find out. But to have a front row seat to a guy in your life who does the same thing every day, day after day after day, you know, did that inspire, impact, motivate, frighten? Cautionary tale? How'd you think of work at that age?

[A]

Yeah. So I viewed things completely different. I saw, like, so much opportunity out there, and I don't know if I was like, why not me? That probably, maybe came later.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I did see an abundance of opportunity. Maybe was jealous of it, maybe craved it. I don't know. But it seemed like in that small town, the whole goal was maybe, like, retirement. And I don't. However, I'm wired. It's not that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So hence the reason why I left right after high school and didn't want to. Want to stay there. So a very different mindset and probably felt like nobody really related to the way I was thinking. Yeah, I don't think I felt that way. I think it was that way. Like most of the people around me, did not relate to the way I was thinking at all.

[B]

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[A]

fell asleep. I don't remember what story I told. I probably lied about it and said I swerved to miss something, I'm sure, but. Oh, sure, yeah.

[B]

Like an orphan.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I had. I had left it right or some animal right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I was in high school and I was working after school every day. Would work till about midnight, one in the morning. Were you doing work on the weekend? Working at McDonald's? I didn't mind that job actually, as a. As a kid.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, and I also did like, entrepreneurial stuff like mowed grass all around the town and things like that. So a lot of working, not much sleeping. Had drove up to see my grandparents and my dad and then was on the way home. And on the way home, middle of the afternoon, just on the way because I needed to work that night, actually fell asleep and rolled the car over by Yourself. Yeah.

[B]

Lucky.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, lucky because those were the days where you didn't wear seatbelts either. So actually it came too like hanging out the sunroof and the car would. The car would have flipped over. One more roll would have been way worse.

[B]

But it have been two mats.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

Wow. So how old were you?

[A]

Thankfully it wasn't 16 then.

[B]

And which car was that again?

[A]

That was that Ford Exp.

[B]

Okay, so you total the exp. You're 16.

[A]

Y.

[B]

How long till you get your next ride?

[A]

Oh, good question. Some months. Because I needed to save some money. Yeah. So then I think I got a car in the middle that was a car that I wanted. I think it was an AMC actually. I don't think I know it was. Remember I told you my stepdad was into those?

[B]

Yeah. And then could have been a Pacer, could have been a Gremlin.

[A]

Right, Right. Then I bought that Chrysler. Right.

[B]

And now you're 17.

[A]

Yeah. So I always tell the story. I was 16. Erect my car, now that we're getting really accurate with it, when I really learned to do bodywork was 17.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So we just cleared that up on good TV.

[B]

We are here. Look, this thing is called the Way I Heard it, so you can tell me any story you want. But people do watch this, so that's great. You have to live with it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What was the nature of the second? Was that just a fender bender? Not. You didn't total it.

[A]

Yeah, of course. Teenager heading to work in the morning. Snowy day. Bridge, you know, it's always slicker on a bridge. Went to pass somebody on the bridge and kiss the guardrail.

[B]

Round.

[A]

Round you went. Yeah, well, I didn't go around. I just kind of raked aside and.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Got to still drive to work and then just had to. Had to look at my car. Not looking like I wanted it to.

[B]

So where'd you take it?

[A]

That's where I knew the gentleman in the town that I worked in that did body work. Had a job during the day, did body work in a garage at night.

[B]

What's his name?

[A]

His name was Ray Heck. I haven't talked to him and maybe 30 something years. So I don't know where he's at today. But he showed me how to fix that car and then. And then started working with him on other cars. My senior year I would go to school for half a day. I was in a work release program. Went to McDonald's and worked say from noon to like six and then went and worked on cars with him from like Six to midnight, got up in the morning, did it all over again.

[B]

So you're cutting lawns, you're slinging fries, and you're pounding out, you know, fenders and whatnot.

[A]

Yeah, all that for probably a few. Few hundred bucks a week.

[B]

What did you like, you know, as a teenager, what made sense to your brain about working on a car? I mean, specifically, I guess bodywork, right? That was your thing.

[A]

Well, it's rewarding because you see the transformation of something. So I've done a lot of construction in my life, too, you know, as like, side, you know, real estate investments and stuff. And some of my favorite parts about that are, say, landscaping because, like, overnight you take what's just dirt and you make it beautiful. Collision works pretty much similar. Like, it might not be overnight, but within a matter of couple days to a few weeks, you take what's a disaster and you transform it. It's pretty rewarding to see, like, work of your hands come together.

[B]

Well, people ask me all the time, you know, what was it about Dirty Jobs? Why do so many people on that show seem to be having such a good time? And I can't speak for anybody but me, but it sure seemed like over the years that the thing they all had in common was that they always knew how they were doing in the course of their work.

[A]

Because you can see it.

[B]

Yeah. You didn't need a supervisor to tell you anything because the progress. You can see it, you can touch it, and you're your own evaluator, essentially. So that made. I mean, that was going on.

[A]

So you saw that over and over and over.

[B]

I saw it constantly, but you know what I mean, what is cutting the lawn but for constant feedback? You know, it's tall now, it's short. See the grass blowing outside?

[A]

The lines look like this.

[B]

The lines are straight. I'm doing it like I'm doing it. I can see that I'm doing it. I just think that's such a. It's such a simple thing, but for the last 30, 40 years, so many good jobs, you don't have any visual cues to know when you're done or how you're doing. This place looks pretty much the same at 10 at night as it does at 10 in the morning. No matter how many people I interview, it always looks the same.

[A]

It's good insight. Yeah. A lot of people are looking at

[B]

a computer screen, right? Oh, well.

[A]

Or spreadsheets or you name it. So it's tough to, you know, you see it maybe in financial performance or efficiency, but you don't see the product of your hands.

[B]

Well, I definitely want to get into this with you vis a vis AI and what it's going to do to your industry. But I kind of want to walk my way toward it a little bit because right now I'm thinking of a guy named Ray. You remember his last name?

[A]

Lazarek.

[B]

Ray Lazarek. I don't want to make a meal out of it necessarily, but I mean, you're not sitting here without him.

[A]

Yeah, that's probably very true. That's not probably true. That is true.

[B]

Yeah, there's no Crash Champions without him.

[A]

No. Now, interesting why I clarified that is it's really probably a unique scenario. My. I ended up working at a, you know, different body shops, but the one that I ended up partnering with and open a body shop, his name was Ray also and. And his last name was Zarek. Now, pure coincidence that the name, like two totally different people, not even similar at all, but the names were pretty similar. I don't even know if either one of them know that. Now. The Ray that I was a partner with, like, we're still, we're still friends. I'm so busy. I don't see him much, but the gentleman from a teenage years, I'm not sure where he is.

[B]

So how long did you work with that Ray Lazarek fixing cars under his.

[A]

Just a couple years. All right, but so it's pretty quick.

[B]

What did you learn during that period that, you know, informed whatever was next?

[A]

I learned enough to love the industry. So from really like not just the reward of seeing it, but I love the smell of a body shop which people walk in there, probably be revolted, like, oh, what's the smell? Right.

[B]

Describe it.

[A]

It's painting smells like paint less today than back then. Back then you didn't have boosts that filtered the air. I mean, you were hanging fans outside. You're hanging fans in the window and blowing it outside and doing it without a mask and.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Picking whatever color paint boogers out of your nose for the next couple days.

[B]

Like, that's literally never thought about that. Yeah, I mean, look, it's purple. Yeah, purple snot.

[A]

But I imagine there was probably a little bit of a buzz to it and.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

So you felt that and saw the reward and it was a little bit of a high for a teenage kid.

[B]

So under Lazarek, you learned to love the work. Like, you learned to appreciate it.

[A]

Now, I wasn't, to be clear, I wasn't good at it. I was a teenager. Like, if I saw the job today. If it looked good, it was because he cleaned up after me. Like, you know, he would spend 10 minutes fixing whatever I did and probably made it look great. Whereas my work in itself probably wouldn't stand the.

[B]

That's. I just think that's important.

[A]

I mean, I was a dumb kid. I made dumbest mistakes. Like, the first job he got me, that shop did a lot of, like, big equipment too, not just cars, but I made dumb mistakes. Like they sandblasted there. And so picture a tow truck with the boom on the back, right?

[B]

Which.

[A]

Which extend way out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They had sandblasted it and now it was my job to go and bring it in the shop and sand it. And I mean, I had 300ft to walk out and get in the tow truck. The boom standing straight in the air.

[B]

And you don't put the boom down.

[A]

I don't put the boom down. Drive right into the building. I mean, I did all kinds of dumb kid stuff.

[B]

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that it's really.

[A]

I still remember the front of the truck pops up. Everybody's looking at me like, what did Ray say?

[B]

Like, how does he.

[A]

Oh, I'm sure he was. He wasn't happy. Like, I embarrassed him, right. Because I. He's the one who brought me in there.

[B]

But he kept you.

[A]

Well, I was beyond him at that point. He wasn't the employer, so. But I don't know if he. He might have saved me. I don't know. But look, I had to go in the next day and apologize.

[B]

Well, I guess, yeah. But the important thing in all of this is what you just. I mean, it's literally a confessional. To be clear, I wasn't good at it. No, no. And. And I. I mean, not to belabor the point, but I'm so sick of books and autobiographies and, you know, people looking back, you know, because a lot of people are. I'm sure they've already asked you, but you're going to spend a lot of the rest of your life telling people how you did it, because people are desperate to understand the playbook.

[A]

You think so?

[B]

I mean, walk through.

[A]

I guess you've been telling people stories for a long time, huh?

[B]

I've been telling a lot of stories, but I'm talking more about the questions like the as you succeed and all you have to do is walk through a Barnes and Noble, if they still exist, and just go down like the self help aisle and find the how I did it section and it's going to Be filled with books by billionaires who tell you, you know, this is. You know. And they're going to say things like, oh, yeah, I followed my passion. Or I knew early on that I was good at this. I took my competency and I leaned into it. And it's all the same fricking story. I love the idea that you wreck two cars and you say, look, I learned to love working on them. But you weren't good at it yet.

[A]

I didn't want to lose a vehicle. I didn't want to lose the freedom. I was a pretty restricted childhood. We didn't have any money. The last thing I wanted to do was lose the freedom. So I was desperate to make sure I could still drive that car the next day. So I don't know if it was leaning into any passion or anything. I was good at it was not wanting to lose the freedom. And then, like. But I did love. I did love the product of the business. You're.

[B]

I mean, you're a teenager with a short attention span who stayed there under Rayla's Eric for two years.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Presumably getting a little bit better at what you do when you're not driving tow trucks with the boom extended into the bay.

[A]

Yeah, good enough, good enough.

[B]

So where do you go from there? Did you work that job through high school?

[A]

So the job came right after high school, and then I moved to my grandparents, which was. So. Picture central Illinois. The town that I worked in was 45 minutes north and, like, south suburbs of Chicago is another hour north. So from where I was living, got the job with him pretty, pretty quickly within months. Went to live with my grandparents and just flipped the commute from heading north to work to south to work. Got tired of the drive and got a job at a body shop closer to my grandparents. So I worked there for a handful of years. That's where I lost touch with the gentleman who introduced me to the trade because I had moved away, and then I had gotten a job, you know, as a not so good auto body technician in a small body shop by where my grandparents were and ended up kind of growing a little bit of my skills and ended up. That's where the owner there introduced me to the office where I started to interact with the customers, write estimates, et cetera.

[B]

No college. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. As a rule, I don't gamble. I. Not in casinos anyway. But I'd bet real money that public education is going to change radically in the next few years. Transformational change is inevitable, beginning with New approaches to career readiness like K12's career and college prep program. This is tuition free online public education that prepares students for lucrative careers in construction, healthcare, cybersecurity and so many other fields that are expanding every day. K12's career in college prep prepares kids for the industry certifications they'll need and it allows them to earn college credits along the way. Whether they want to head to a university or jump straight into a high demand trade, K12's career and college prep give students something a diploma really can no longer guarantee. Gives them a head start. It's practical, it's smart, it's long overdue. Don't gamble with your kid's future or wait for public education to change. Give your student the opportunity to explore the right fit for them right now with K12's career and college prep. Go to k12.com roe and learn more. That's the letter K the number 12.com roe the letter K the number 12.

[A]

No college.

[B]

No thought of it.

[A]

No thought of it. Remember from the family I grew up in, it wasn't really ever set as a goal. In fact, it was probably more frowned upon from my family arrangement to go to college. So there was never ambition to go to college. I did really well in school from a, say, grades perspective, but by senior year I just wanted to make money. So that's why I was in that program to get out of school half a day and go to work.

[B]

What did you learn from interacting with customers?

[A]

Again, I'm an awkward little kid from small town Illinois. I learned I wasn't good at that either. But what I did learn is when the owner because again, so picture the situation. Small shop, say there's five or six of us in the back and there's the owner's wife in the front. The owner had given me that opportunity and whenever him and his wife could go on vacation, all I knew is I wanted to do better than he did when he was there. And I'm just a kid and there's no way he's gonna think I did better. But in my head I'm gonna do better than he did when he was gone. So better than he did means get work out and get work in. So I was pretty stoked and pretty motivated to get that customer to trust me and leave their car to let us fix it. And I was pretty motivated to get the few guys around me in the back to let's get some cars out clean up. I want the shop empty and spotless and a whole bunch of new work sitting outside for when the owner gets back. Like, that's the way I always thought. I always wanted. I always felt I wasn't good enough. So I was always, I think, a little bit in those days, trying to prove it. I would do stuff like punch out. Like, I was on hourly pay then, so I would work late, say I'd work to, like, seven. I'd punch out and work another three hours thinking that I'm gonna look a lot better than I am, because I knew I wasn't that good. So my method of looking better was I'm gonna get, you know, another three hours worth of work in and only get paid for the couple so that I look a little better than I.

[B]

So, yeah, work them. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

So you're not good with people.

[A]

I wasn't naturally good at much of anything.

[B]

Right. You have no appreciable talent at all.

[A]

Thanks for pointing that out.

[B]

Clearly I didn't point it out. I'm just repeating it.

[A]

But I. But here, Mike, what I do tell. I tell my team. What that did for me is create what I think is my superpower now, and that's the persistence and the. And. And the will to figure it out. Because I know if I stick with it long enough, I will. I will get good at it. I won't be great at it the first time. I won't be great at the second, third, or fourth. But I know that if I stick with it long enough, I can figure it out, so.

[B]

We offer work ethic scholarships through my foundation. Yeah, that's what we call them.

[A]

I didn't know that. Yeah, I knew about, like, your sweat.

[B]

Yeah, we do a sweat pledge. That's that thing on the wall over there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, but.

[A]

Great, by the way.

[B]

Thanks. Thanks.

[A]

Not that you needed to know that from me.

[B]

No, no, but it is great. Look, from all people. I mean, look, we. We talked a lot of different people here, but. But the. The thing. The thing I like about you most is that it's. I don't think work ethic is enough in and of itself. At some point, you need a mix of competency, charm, creativity. You can't just. Nobody wants to spend their life making little rocks out of big rocks. And, you know, so you need these other things, but there's a column of things you can't choose to do. It's just a card you get.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And then there's a column of things that are absolutely in your control and showing up early, staying late, taking a bite of the shit sandwich when it's your turn. Right. That these are choices. You know, gratitude's a choice. You can choose to be grateful. You can choose. Right. So I'm always interested in finding people who a agree with that. But also, you know, how did you figure that out? Like, how did you get to that place? And that's obviously what we're, what we're talking about now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, I mean, your team today knows it. But at some point in young Matt Ebert's life, probably in his early 20s, he start to realize, I can't out think. You can out test, you can out competence you. Maybe I can outwork you.

[A]

Yeah. I think there was no, like, gift coming my way. There was no. Even though there was. Right. Like, somebody actually showed me a trade. So in hindsight, like there were, but I didn't understand that at the time. I was a 16, 17 year old kid. Yeah. Like, and I thought I was working for him for free. Right. And I was. But I was also learning on his dime and I got my car fixed. So what it was for me is like, there's no savior coming to like, deliver the lottery ticket. If there's people around me doing better than me, there's people around me in different circumstances, how do I go create those circumstances?

[B]

So funny you put it that way. You literally use the word lottery. Very first tenet on the sweat pledge says, I believe I have hit the greatest lottery of all time. I'm alive, I walk the earth, I live in the United States. Above all things, I'm grateful. Right. For sure.

[A]

Just think of how lucky we are to have the health we have, live in the country we live with, the opportunity we have.

[B]

Yes. A thousand times, yes. The problem is, you know, not to go off on a tangent, but how do you, like, nobody wants a lecture, nobody wants a sermon. You can't tell people. Think about how good you have it now. Feel good about it. You know, sometimes you gotta wreck a car or two or three.

[A]

I was my own best customer for a little while, not gonna lie.

[B]

All right, so get me to the place then. Where? Like, when does the entrepreneurial thing afflict you? Because it must have. Right? I mean, at some point you're not. You're sick of being hired. So when do you.

[A]

Oh, I always had it. I always had it. I don't know why or how. Like I said, I was pushing a lawnmower around town when I was 12, 13 years old, getting paid five bucks to mow somebody's lawn in that small town because I, I knew that was a Path to get money. I was delivering papers, which was effectively buying papers from the newspaper, paying them a couple months from now, Collecting the money from the people now.

[B]

Keeping the difference.

[A]

Keeping the money. Keeping the difference. Spending the money in the meantime. Just need to get it back before I got to pay the bill. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Carrying those papers around heavier than I could carry, Hide them in the bushes in the halfway point and get it done. A little embarrassing, but. You want to know what my really first entrepreneurial thing was?

[B]

Take a wild guess.

[A]

Ridiculous.

[B]

Yeah, I do.

[A]

Of course, this is ridiculous. I would from my buddy, buy a like a naked girl magazine for say a dollar. And then I would tear out the centerfolds and try to sell the centerfolds for like 50 cents. And there were like three of them in the magazine. I'd make like 50 cents. Right. This would have been as a super young boy. It's ridiculous when I look back on it and it didn't last long because I think a buddy ratted me out like after like two weeks. So my very first ridiculous entrepreneur adventure was some kind of porn king of this like ridiculous 5 year old porn king.

[B]

Great. But.

[A]

So look, I only told that dumb story to say, I don't know, it was in me somehow, like I think. And it's that, it's that risk gene.

[B]

Yeah, it's.

[A]

And look, look at it like I knew if I got caught doing that, there was nothing but trouble to come from it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But I saw the money opportunity and I want me some money. And I didn't believe in stealing it actually. But not that pedaling porn was any

[B]

better, but, but reselling a thing, I mean, actually you know what, it's the newspaper. I didn't know it worked that way. I never had a paper route. But you're basically buying wholesale from the company.

[A]

As a 12 year old kid, I didn't know that's what they were teaching me.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And now I think looking back on it, the newspapers taking pretty good advantage of some 12 year old, you think,

[B]

well think about, I mean, to bring it back to your world now like the original taxi model, like that's what that is, right? I mean my buddies in New York, they would. Who drove a cab. You basically rent the thing for $200.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And you drive it all day for

[A]

that medallion to use it.

[B]

The first 200 is for the company. Yeah, yeah. And then you keep everything you make after that. So how long is your shift? How long you want to drive that thing?

[A]

Hey, it's the same thing in the Business I run today. The first X amount goes to pay everything else.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you happen to do over that, you get to keep it. That's the way it still works.

[B]

So what the hell happens, man? You're just, you're. I mean, right now we're halfway through your 20s, and it's. It's pretty clear you're in the vocation you want to be in.

[A]

Except for the problem with collision repair and a kid from a small town. Like, how am I going to get anybody to come? And if I open up Matt's Auto Body.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How am I going to get a customer?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because there's 10 other body shops in this other. In this small town, like, and there

[B]

are 1400 people living there. How many accidents can there be?

[A]

Well, I had moved up to a little bigger by my grandparents, but still, like, my real thing was I don't know how I'll get any customers I can't go into. Even though I'm half like an assistant manager at this one shop, I didn't have the boldness yet to think that I could get any customers to come. I was confident I could run one. I didn't know how I could finance one or get customers. And I really wanted to own my own business. So I kept studying like franchise magazines. And Subway had a very small franchise fee for a reason. They're not.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's not a business you want to be in. Sorry for any Subway franchise owners out

[B]

there that are Jersey Mike's is killing, on the other hand.

[A]

Yeah. And this was pre Jared before Jared was a child molester.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That was an unfortunate turn.

[A]

Then he was a health guy before they got excited about the Jared lost a bunch of weight eating.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Turkey sandwiches early Jared. So I had saved up a bunch of credit cards with cash advance ability. Never used them because I someday I had no money. How am I gonna get money? So I cash advance 100 grand in credit cards and grabbed a partner and opened a Subway business which wasn't making money, and then opened a second one, a third one, and a fourth one and ended up having to at the same time as keeping those businesses. I had to go back to work to actually make money and got a job at a body shop.

[B]

Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You got 100 grand out on credit cards and you're buying Subway franchises?

[A]

I don't know, Mike, if I could do that today. Like, I don't know if I have a limit on a credit card that would allow me to do that today. But I had, I didn't use the debt. I just kept applying and increasing the ability to get it and kind of wrote all those cash advance checks all in the same day. Hit them all at once.

[B]

God. So you had four Subway franchises at one point? Yes, but you're not, are you making money? You're not making money.

[A]

I wasn't making money. And so I went and got a job running somebody else's body shop. And then Jared came along and actually started to make a little bit of money. And I told Ray the gentleman I was working for running his body shop that I hey, I've got this business, I think I should go run it. It's starting to show signs of making money. And he basically convinced me, like, what are you doing? How much money are you going to make making sandwiches? Anyway, why don't we open a body shop together? And so.

[B]

And now you're what, 20?

[A]

It would have been mid, mid to early 20s, 23 to 26. Somewhere in there.

[B]

Okay, then what?

[A]

We partnered up on a body shop together. So he had two at the time. This was number three. So I had 45% of one body shop with a gentleman that owned two other ones and he had opened a third one as well.

[B]

And you were getting the business, though

[A]

your earlier point, he was getting the business. Like you need a partner for two reasons. You need somebody to run it or you need money. He had the money and I could run it because I had been running his. But he also had the contacts to be able to.

[B]

But what about the other problem? It's like the curse of retail, especially for an entrepreneurial hustler who's willing to tear the centerfold out of a girly magazine and sell it at 2x.

[A]

I've never told that story, by the way.

[B]

Well, yeah, believe me, it's going to get passed around now. Retail is so passive. Like you have to wait. You got your brick, you got your mortar, you got your service, you got your four walls. And then you sit there and in your case, like Subway, you wait for somebody to get hungry. That happens all the time. Three times a day at least. Here you got to wait for somebody to roll their car over, you know, unless you're you. That doesn't happen all that often.

[A]

Create your own business. Yeah, well, so. Because accidents are pretty rare. So it's really like a once in every 10 year event probably for average consumer. A lot of times when they're calling their insurance company because that's the first thing you do when you have an accident and the Insurance company ask, you know, do you know where you want to fix it? Most people don't. And so the insurance company will make suggestions to repair shops. So my partner had those connections and did work with those carriers. So he was able to then say, hey, I'm gonna open another one. And he got one or two insurance companies to recommend us when, when people would have an accident. So there was a source of work to get it started.

[B]

So when do you go out on your own?

[A]

14 years. Remember, I was the minor partner. He was 20 years older than me and he didn't have to run it right. And we didn't make a lot of money. You don't make a lot of money on each car. We only make a couple hundred bucks. So, you know, we make money now because we fix a whole lot of cars. So, you know, that business for him was, you know, something he started, I ran. It wasn't trouble for him and he wasn't ready to retire. So it was really 15 year partnership. And probably the last few years I was kind of getting to where I hope he retires soon because I, you know, I was watching other companies around me. The industry started consolidate and in fact, at the time, Chicago was the most consolidated market in the US So I thought I was missing all this opportunity where everybody around me was killing, starting to build big companies. And my partner didn't want to grow anymore. He didn't like the industry anymore.

[B]

So you're what, 40?

[A]

Yeah, 2014 was when I bought them out. So, yeah, trying to think 72 to 40. I would have been 40. 42, right.

[B]

42 years old.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's funny. That's when I sold dirty jobs.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Okay. I only pointed out you're a very different person at 42 than you are at 22.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You've learned some things.

[A]

Yeah, I had done a lot of book reading. I had done a lot of going to, you know, seminars to learn. My partner would give me a hard time. I didn't have to do that to do. Okay, like, well, I need it.

[B]

You wanted to.

[A]

Yeah. Did.

[B]

Were you doing it because you thought you wanted to arm yourself for prosperity reasons or were you curious fundamentally?

[A]

Both. Curious. Knew I wanted to do something bigger even for a time. Maybe thought collision repair wasn't going to be it. Yeah, yeah. So I was searching.

[B]

Okay, so you buy them out. You've got a couple of shops now under your name that you wholly own.

[A]

I just had a half of one. You had half now I had a whole one.

[B]

I got a Whole.

[A]

And I started growing.

[B]

Yeah, but how do you start growing?

[A]

I mean, one shop at a time.

[B]

What's it called at this point? What do you call?

[A]

It was New Lenox Auto Body. So I had to rename it. So hired a couple of ad agencies to give me some name suggestions. Went through hundreds of them. Hated them all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then the one agency came in and interviewed me and my. I only had a handful of employees, but interviewed a couple of us to see what we're all about. And so they came up with, like, what we're really doing is helping people in a time of need. So they came up with this concept of, hey, you're kind of a hero in a time of need for a customer. The logo's a cape. We give away capes to all the customers. Kids, you know, which is like a 10 year marketing plan for, you know, every kid wants a cape, and in 10 years, they're gonna drive. Let's. Let's give them.

[B]

That's a long tail, but that's smart.

[A]

Hope they remember us.

[B]

So it was an agency who had the Crash Champion.

[A]

Yeah, they came up with it. And as soon as I heard it, I loved it. And I had asked my wife, now, who is my girlfriend at the time, all our customers, everybody was doing little surveys on what would be a great name, and then threw away what every feedback gave me. When I heard that name, I said, that's the one.

[B]

Which now makes me sound really smart for starting our conversation with the Probe and with the Pacer and with the Grem. Like, names matter.

[A]

They do. And I thought, this is a name that I could be proud of. And I thought it was a name that stood out. So surveys say, actually, when it comes to vehicle service, a year later, the consumer doesn't remember the name of the place they had it done. You'll remember the person that you dealt with. You'll remember I dealt with Matt or I dealt with Joe, and you'll remember it was the building next to McDonald's, but you won't remember the name of the service facility. Only 1% is what data says.

[B]

Unless it's a franchise.

[A]

Even then. So I thought Crash Champions was unique enough I had a chance now from 1% to a hundred. No way. But I felt it was unique enough that if I heard it, it wasn't a generic name.

[B]

That's interesting.

[A]

I certainly wouldn't want to put it on an airplane.

[B]

No, but like, where did Midas come from? I mean, I know King Midas, but how does Midas become ubiquitous for mufflers. How does Jiffy Lube like, I mean. Yeah, I can't believe the word.

[A]

Maybe the biggest in the first, right?

[B]

Maybe, maybe. How big are those companies today?

[A]

What, Midas?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know. I very much sometimes still too much focus on what I'm doing rather than what others are doing. But they're big enough to be a household name where Crash Champions is not.

[B]

Yeah. How come? What are you waiting for?

[A]

Well, we don't have the money to advertise, so especially when you think about a grudge purchase and then every 10 year event, like the odds of like putting your name out there enough for people to know it and remember it when they actually need it are pretty slim. And advertising is pretty expensive. So that's one of the reasons why putting me out there as the founder on social media is our effort to be able to afford to get our name out there smart or even doing this.

[B]

That's why you got a guy following you around with a camera.

[A]

Yeah. Just for those two minutes of like footage out of a whole day. Yep.

[B]

I love that. But you know, I think people, I don't. How many locations now?

[A]

650.

[B]

You have 650 locations all over the country. Yes, but advertising is too expensive.

[A]

Yeah. We're a single digit margin business, so there's not much to spend.

[B]

Back to the point where the average repair is a few hundred dollars and the only way it repairs a lot

[A]

more, the profit is just.

[B]

The profit is a few hundred dollars.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So the only way to make a bunch of money is to fix a lot of cars.

[A]

So I say you got to fix more cars next year than this year to make more money than this year. That's the only way it works.

[B]

So.

[A]

But I mean there's a lot of high margin businesses out there, but there's a ton of businesses just like ours that are low margins, lots of volume.

[B]

Okay. I mean I.

[A]

We don't have to go through where you make money.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You got two levers more revenue or

[B]

cut cost, like right margin or volume.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

So when do you decide it's really going to be a volume game? And how do you like, how did Shark Tank fit into this and where does Damon John fit into this?

[A]

Oh, great question. It actually came in way later. So size came in because remember I said a lot of the work that we got was recommended recommendations from insurers because consumers just don't know where to go. And so I had just two accounts at the one shop that were insurance companies that referred work to me, because there was a bigger company around that surrounded me that had already got like the referrals from all the other companies, so they didn't need me. And then Chicago was the most consolidated from what I would call national companies. And so they would also get the referrals from the insurers. And so I was just the one shop with two accounts and then grew to like eight shops with two accounts. And I was nervous that, for example, one of my accounts was Geico. And I was nervous, literally, that one lunch or breakfast presentation to Warren Buffett from a big national company of how much better they could do for them than all the little guys across the country would take away, like half of the business that I have. And so it was a little bit survival when a little bit survival. It was pure survival. And then the other component was the vehicles were starting to transform. So for decades, like, vehicles were the same. I mean, we added, you know, a third brake light and we added airbags. But now, like the technology, when I started, I tell the story at the time when I started, the technology was you had an AM FM radio with cassette. If you were really fancy, you had some digital dashboard. LED digital dashboard. Right. Like, not led, but like the alarm clock kind of LED dashboard. And you had. If you left a key in it, it would ding. And if you left the key in it and a light on, it would ding louder and faster. Like, that was the technology.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Today, you know, there's. To put in perspective, there's like 14 million lines of code in a 77, 777 airplane.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

There's 150 lines of code to power an automobile. That's how crazy complicated they've gotten. Now this would have been. It was 2019 when I went and sought money to grow it. So. But I saw that coming and I knew that as a small guy, like investing to keep up with the equipment, the technology, to train, it was going to be hard. And I was literally again worried about what happens if the big guy makes a better offer than I have. And then, interestingly enough, I watched at the same time, while I'm debating this, I watch a miniseries on Netflix called Peaky Blinders. Sure. I don't know if you've watched it.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

They were like gypsies kind of gangsters. Right. And they hadn't, in the one season, they had run a gambling operation. And so they had a rigged fight going on upstairs and a character named Alfie Solomons downstairs talking to Tommy. The lead character, Cillian Murphy, yeah. And he's got cancer. Right. So he's sick, and he's telling Tommy he needs some time. He's going to take some time. And he talks to him about how the world really works and what's going on upstairs. And he says this sentence, and he says, you might have to beat this out, but this is what he says. He says, big, small. And then he says a few more sentences, and he says, big, small, always. I don't know about you, but I don't like getting. So it's a little bit like, I felt it as necessary to survive. This is where the world is going. This is where my industry is headed. There's no way I want to stay small because it could be gone tomorrow.

[B]

Well, the way my mentor put it, who happened to be a music teacher, Chuck and I both, we went to high school together back in the day. Yeah, that's Chuck. Yeah. Fred King used to say, here's the thing about size. A good big man will beat a good little man any day. It just simply doesn't matter.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

If the basic talent is the same, then it does come down to size. You know, Goliath would have beat David if everything else would have been equal. But it wasn't equal. It wasn't equal. But because your industry is so teachable, because it's so tactile, you know, there's no great mystery. Right. In repairing an automobile. The mystery is in the willingness to do it consistently again and again and

[A]

again and again until technology. It's actually a mystery now. It's really hard.

[B]

Well, that's what I want to get into now. So it's like, okay, the rules change, but now you're big enough, so, you know, do the rules impact you differently when you're big? And don't forget about Daymond John. He comes in here somewhere.

[A]

Yeah. Great. So literally, though, that's why I went. I had just gotten rid of a partner. Right. Even though we're great friends, I had just kind of got free from the partner, felt a little bit caged. Now I'm growing, but I had maxed out, like, the SBA and any other way to continue to grow my business. And so I looked for an investment banker. I had three shops I wanted to buy and looked at all the options. And because of all those things, private equity was the route for me because I figured, like, this is going to need capital, I need to grow. And so that's what really started it. And just to be clear, like, we didn't just grow a little, like, we were 13 shops heading into so January 1, 202013 locations. By the end of 2022, over 550. So I'm pretty proud of that. It's an industry record. It'll never be touched and I'm pretty sure most industries. So you're talking maybe like a $60 million business to a two and a half billion dollar business in three years. Pretty great. Pretty great. Like business kind of high. It was. We had to take a couple of years and we can talk about that maybe more since then we had to like slow down the growth a little bit and get better. And we've spent the last few years getting really, really good at being big.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And implementing processes, etc. Damon came in because of again, can't afford to advertise. When I recruited Danny, my cmo, my interview with him was, wait, can you

[B]

really not afford to advertise or are you just cheap in that way?

[A]

No. So, okay, here. Single digit profitability. And to be a retailer, our target is 10. So if you're at 8, trying to get to 10, what kind of money would we have to spend in 38 states to get like household name recognition enough that the one in every 10 year event, the person comes our way.

[B]

100 million a year.

[A]

Yeah. There would be half of our profitability gone.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And by the way, it's not like the profitability is going in my pocket. Remember advancement in the vehicles and we're trying to make the body shop stereotype of old. Like we want our shops to be beautiful and inviting and well equipped.

[B]

Surgical base.

[A]

Yeah. It is a heavy capital intensive business. Like no money leaves the business. Everything that we make goes back in. Everything we can borrow or raise goes back in. So yeah, there, there isn't money. It would be hard to justify and hard to like give it enough Runway to show the return on investment to make it make sense.

[B]

Were you nervous about taking that large of, what do you call it, a loan or that much of giving away that much equity or whatever you had to do. Did that feel like, all right, this big step?

[A]

And remember, I came from nothing. To me it's go big or go home.

[B]

Well, big, small. I remember, but I'm thinking more in terms of the guy who borrows 100 grand on those credit cards. Right. I don't think I could have done that. I take different risks. I look at the world a little different every now and then. You know, you gotta go all in. But I'm so debt adverse.

[A]

I read that in your.

[B]

Yeah, that's number Six. Yeah. I'd rather live in a tent than eat beans, than pay for a lifestyle like I can't afford.

[C]

Live in a tent and eat beans?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, what I say then eat beans.

[C]

I'd rather live in a tent than eat beans.

[B]

Oh, well, you know what? To be honest, I don't really like beans anymore. And the tent thing, it was great while it lasted, but the Boy Scouts are behind.

[A]

Okay, Can I tell you how I think?

[B]

I prefer to keep this on me for a bit?

[A]

All right, let's do it.

[B]

No, man, Tell me how you think. Tell me how you think about.

[A]

I'm already in a tent eating beans. Okay? So, yes, could the debt. Honestly, what's the worst that can happen? The debt's gonna lead me to not making it, going bankrupt and living at 10 eating beans. So, honestly, my route just gets me to where you would rather be in the first place. That's how I view it. Now, I'm not saying that's the right way to view it, but I see it, like, in a 10 eating beans because of this, or in a tent eating meats because of that. Why don't I go for the reward?

[B]

Why not? Okay. All right.

[A]

That's how my mind works.

[B]

So you make the big deal. You grow like crazy. And today as you sit here, you've got 650 of the. Are you in every state?

[A]

Yeah, but I thought you want to make about you for a minute. What were you going to say?

[B]

I was just kidding. Dude, I'm so sick of me, man.

[A]

I wanted to.

[B]

Everywhere I go, there I am. No, no, look, I'm kind of an open book with all this stuff, but I'm very curious to know, like, once you commit to growth, because, look, man, I look around, I struggle with the same thing. I've got a core group of half a dozen people, and that keeps me up at night. I worry to death about that. And so I'm constantly given opportunities to. I mean, bigger must be better, right? I mean, if you're helping. If you can help, you know, 2,000 kids last year. Wouldn't it be great if you could do 4 or 8 or 16 or. I'm worried that it's got to be more than size. There's nothing inherently good or bad about big, but that's my world. That's my business. I think yours is different. I think you were right when you said, unless you want to be Ray.

[A]

Either way, you know, well, the one did pretty good for himself, and the other one may have two.

[B]

Sure, that's really the point. Like you get to decide what success looks like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You've decided.

[A]

Yeah. My partner definitely was a success.

[B]

Right?

[A]

He just decided he was done.

[B]

So what does success look like for Crash Champions now? Do you get to 1300 great questions? The only kind I ask.

[A]

Mike, I really gotta pee.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. I don't want to do the potty dance.

[B]

No, no, we don't edit. Just go right around that corner right there. No, no, look man, we'll. Hey, Danny, come. Danny, come in here for a second while he pees. Yeah, yeah, come in. Yeah, this is Danny. Danny is the. The CMO that was.

[C]

You've been replaced.

[B]

Matt.

[A]

He.

[D]

I'm a younger.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And I got more hair. Matt Ebert today, so.

[B]

Well, look, he mentioned your name earlier, so. So how long you been with him?

[D]

Early 21.

[B]

Early 21. Where are we now?

[D]

26 or in 26. Yeah.

[B]

You come from a more traditional business background.

[D]

I actually started fixing cars right out of high school.

[B]

What? You're the same people.

[D]

I am the same people, yeah.

[B]

How did he find you?

[D]

So he found me. I worked for at the time it was like the second largest collision repair shop.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

It was called Service King. I left there in 21 and I went off to go build my own agency. So I was doing marketing, advertising. I left and at the time Matt had a CEO and a chief client officer that had worked with me at Service King. They're now working at Crash Champions and they're like, hey, Danny's a free agent. You should have a conversation with him. So Matt's like, I don't know this guy from Adam. He calls me up one random day, comes into Dallas, we have dinner. It was supposed to be a 45 minute dinner.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And it turned into like a four hour drink session. So that is unbelievable. And at that point I remember going home that night. Well, during, during our dinner.

[B]

Matt, take a load off. I'll talk to him for a minute.

[D]

At that point I remember Matt asking me like, hey, I want to grow my business again. He's, he's like 60 shops at this point.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I'm coming from a collision repair company that has 350. Right. 350 locations, $2 billion or whatever. And he's like, hey, I want to, I want to grow my brand and I want to do all these things. And again, I'm trying to connect with him. Much smaller collision repair shop to where I came from. And I gave him the pitch of like if I was, you know, 60 locations, this is what I would do with your business. And I remember him stopping me in my tracks and says, danny, you're not thinking big enough. And I said, matt, you're insane. Like, what do you mean I'm not thinking big enough? You're 60 shops, you're like fifth or sixth, you know, in the ranking of collision repair companies. There's no way you can grow as big as you're saying unless you're going to grow at, you know, just massive scale.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So he's like, again, I need you to think bigger because I want to do bigger things. Again, I walked away from that conversation. I remember going home that night and my wife asked me, well, how did it go? And yeah, my immediate words to her is, this man's insane. He is literally insane. There's no way he's going to get from here to here.

[A]

Right.

[D]

So, yeah, two days later, Matt gives me a call, make sure the date went well or our interview went well. And I was super intrigued. And he sold me on a bigger vision than I'd ever thought about or been part of.

[B]

I get it now. The guy who can't afford advertising hires an ad man.

[D]

Yeah, 100%. But his, his goal there was again, I was running advertising at a much larger scale. But he's like, danny, I need you to take your skill set and flip it on its head. And what that meant is like, I need. Because we're. When you're growing at the rate Matt was growing, you're acquiring legacy, you're acquiring cultures, you're acquiring all these different things from all these businesses. So he's like, I need you to take your skillset and not put it external to consumers. But, but I need you to advertise to our own people and build awareness. Talk to them about the vision, the mission, the why, the how, what we're trying to accomplish. So that's what I did. I took my external advertising skills and I placed.

[B]

Turned them inward.

[D]

Absolutely, yeah.

[B]

Was it your idea to get the cameraman to follow him around?

[D]

Well, it was his idea originally, so. Well, the idea was to grow to do advertising a little different. So we do, we do well, we tell a lot of stories from our team members. Right. So we realized quickly we're a grudge purchase.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Nobody plans for collision repair.

[B]

Yeah, he used that expression before. And I didn't want to sound ignorant by saying, what are you talking about? What is it that means the transaction is rooted in some level of pre existing resentment?

[D]

Well, let me ask you this question. If you got in an accident tomorrow Would you know where to take your vehicle if you've never been in one before?

[B]

Oh, no, of course not.

[D]

Absolutely.

[B]

I don't even know where to get an mri. My knee hurts and I got to do research.

[D]

Well, that means you're just. Well, you've been healthy this long, so good for you.

[B]

It's all falling, so.

[A]

Yeah, it's.

[D]

Nobody plans for collision repair. You only need us when you need us. And typically a consumer will call an insurance carrier.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And at that point, the insurance carrier will make recommendations. You have a B and C shop. Now, to be on that a B and C shop, you have to pretty. Be pretty good with quality and, you know, metrics and taking care of customers and so on and so forth. But yeah, it's like nobody really plans for it, so. And when you think about the auto body shop of old, like, you're thinking of somebody who's, you know, busted knuckles, smoking a cigar, you know, fixing cars. And so there's a. There's a big trust factor when it comes to doing, to doing business or choosing to do business.

[B]

Say it plainly. You know you're going to get ripped off. You're just not sure how bad because they got you. They got you over a barrel.

[D]

Absolutely.

[B]

And they're going to tell you you can trust them, but you can't. Not really. Yeah. So somehow or another, you've got to build a reputation.

[D]

Yeah. What do you trust more? Do you trust a brand or do you trust a person?

[B]

You trust a person.

[D]

Nielsen says that 88% of the time, a consumer is more likely to trust a person over a brand. So what we did is extend, you know, we talk about collision repair, we talk about what we're doing, we talk about our technicians. But ultimately, if we could put a human face in front of the brand, we're going to win. Nielsen also says that you're 44% more likely to engage with a human over a brand.

[B]

So you're a data guy. You look to the data.

[D]

Absolutely.

[B]

Is Matt a data guy, too?

[D]

Oh, he's 100% a data guy. Yeah, he's a numbers guy because he's

[B]

like, he's hitting me with this all shucks kind of thing. I'm just a simple boy from a small town. But it can't be that. It can't really be that.

[D]

He's very humble in his approach and he's always been like. He mentioned his superpower. His superpower is connecting with people. You think about a technician, a technique. I was a tech for shoot 10 years I worked on cars for 10 years. I don't know anything outside of my bay. I know a car's coming in. I know I'm going to fix a vehicle, and at the end of the day, I'm going to feed my family. That's it. The faster I fix the car, the more money I make. And so when you think about connecting with a CEO who's too big or too much or doesn't think about, you know, the overall business, I can't connect with a person like that if I'm a technician. Again, all I know is my location, and all I know is the next vehicle coming in.

[B]

Last question, because he's off the ball now, and I don't want to get you fired for you. You went home, your wife asked you, you said, look, I think this guy's crazy.

[D]

Insane.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Insane is gonna say yeah.

[B]

And yet you go to work for him. So, like, did you surprise yourself when you made that call? Or was what. What quality does Matt have that actually trumps his clear insanity?

[D]

So I would say he challenges you to think bigger every day. So whatever number you have in your head, he's going to challenge that by 10x. And he pushes you, make sure that you. That you complete that goal overall. So, again, I've never saw myself where I currently am working for a $3 billion company again. 25 years ago, I was turning wrenches. Mike.

[B]

It's just. It's $3 billion today, all right?

[D]

And today I'm the CMO of the third largest collision repair shop in the country.

[B]

All right, get out of the chair.

[D]

All right, thank you.

[B]

She's back. Matt, come back here with you. All right, You're.

[D]

I'm going to use the restroom now.

[B]

You know what? He warmed it up for you. So I thought for sure, do whatever you need to do.

[A]

I thought for sure you'd edit that out. I'm good with not.

[B]

But let me tell you something.

[A]

Like, I didn't see any point in finishing the interview. Uncomfortable.

[B]

No, no.

[A]

And see, Chuck, that's how you get some camera time.

[B]

That's exactly.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You just got to feed, like, a lot of. You got to feed Mike a lot of water.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

Into it.

[B]

No, look. I mean, look, Very few. Okay, that's instructive. I mean, lots of people have sat here and talked, and lots of people have had to go to the can who never say anything. They'll sit there with their bladder distended.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they'll do the best they can. Right. The minute you Gotta go. You just say, I gotta go. You just get up and go. I mean, this is so. That's worth pointing out. If I could bring it back to me again for just a moment. You know, we did the same, like the big construct on Dirty Jobs, and my listeners are probably sick of hearing about it, but we, you know, I insisted on a behind the scenes camera.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I called it.

[A]

Was that unique at the time?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, some productions would have one, like on Gay on HBO would always film the making of the show. So later they could show you, after the Sopranos was a big hit, what it looked like when they were shooting it.

[A]

Like, I watched the show. I just didn't remember if it was unique or whatever at the time.

[B]

Well, what was unique was we cut that footage. Like we weren't getting footage from that camera to use in a later show. We were using that footage in that show. Yeah. And so what you got maybe the

[A]

first reality tv kind of.

[B]

Honestly. Yeah. Because the only reality shows that were on at the time were Survivor, which was a competition show, and Jesse James, who was building motorcycles right in his garage.

[A]

Yeah, that's right.

[B]

Monster garage. That was it. So I thought that, well, hell, I mean, if it's really reality, let's let the viewers see what it looks like to make the sausage. Because my crew was going headfirst into the same pits of despair I was. I wanted people to see the truth of a thing, is my point. Do you do that as a CEO and do you, like, welcome your customers in? Are you as transparent with your customers as you were with me just now when your lower GI track demanded attention?

[A]

I'm very much a cards on the table guy. Maybe in earlier life I tried to out think it or try to do it different, but what's worked for me for a long time is just here's where I'm at. Talk about where you're at. How can I. And here. Maybe it's because of the collision repair industry that helped me to get there. Because I'll be honest. Like, customers aren't honest.

[B]

Patients aren't honest with their doctors, even.

[A]

Yeah. Which is crazy to me because that guy's gonna help me get better. If I'm gonna tell anybody what I'm not doing. Right. Health wise, I should tell him.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And it's a secret between us. Like, why not tell him? But customers will be like, all this damage happened in the accident. And there's the golf, you know, there's the grocery cart that hit it and. And the curb. They hit and, yeah, and my conversation started as simple there as telling them,

[B]

look, like the antlers and the grill, what happened here? I don't know what deer.

[A]

The insurance companies are really smart. Like, they're only, you know, maybe if you got a story they're going to believe because they're going to ask you, like, how did this all. How did the back scratch on the bumper happened? From the tap in the front. From the front left, you know, So I really had to have those conversations at early stages with customers about, like, what are you trying to accomplish? I can probably do some work for free or discount some work while I'm at this. But, like, this whole scam you're trying to run probably isn't going to be successful.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And it happens often. Very, very often. To be clear, like, I don't think customers think anything of it because they think it's their insurance.

[B]

That's how the game is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. Okay. So just. Just so people following the cost of the work you do is often borne by the insurance company.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Other than the deductible.

[B]

Yeah, other than deductible. So an adjuster might need to come in and weigh and measure the value of the claim. They assign a value to it, and you have to work within that parameter. And now the customer would maybe like some extra stuff as a result, or this and this. And so. So here you are fixing cars with a unique perspective to the. To the human condition.

[A]

Yeah. Which is like, hey, how about we talk about what I can do for you? Do that. Either throw it in or do it, you know, for a great price. But, like, the whole kind of racket you're trying to run here is not going to work.

[B]

They're.

[A]

They're really, really smart at not paying more than they need to.

[B]

So let's.

[A]

So maybe that helped me with the whole transparency thing. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know how you get to where you get sometimes.

[B]

Well, you know, since he's not sitting here anymore, let's. Let's talk about Danny for a minute. Like, let's talk about your team. Let's talk, like, how do you assemble? Because clearly, I mean, you couldn't have done this without some key people, without

[A]

the team, without my wife, without people around me, for sure.

[B]

Tell me about your wife first.

[A]

All right. Yeah. Very supportive. Wishes I were home more, but for the most part is supportive. That's any natural thing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, you're married because you want to be together, and your. Your husband's gone all the time. But beyond that, super supportive. So that's great. And then the team, I mean, my hack has been bringing people around me that have been where I haven't been or that are smarter than me. So my, you know, I recruited a COO when I needed one, coming from a few hundred shops and I was only gonna, I was gonna be 39 and recruited him to come in at 39 when he had already run a few hundred. Danny told the story about what he was running when I recruited him. So a little bit of like the cheat in how our success was recruiting people who had been there, done that seemed to be the smart thing to me.

[B]

Sure. How many do you employ now?

[A]

Almost 11,000.

[B]

How crazy that is. 11,000 souls.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Danny said that part of the advertising plan was to turn it inward and

[A]

that was the plan when I recruited him.

[B]

So explain that a little bit. I think I know what you mean, but you're a consumer facing business and you depend on the consumers for your business, but most of your marketing is geared towards the people who work for you.

[A]

Yeah, because we're only as good as my team. Like I can build the most beautiful building and put a bunch of people in there that don't know how to fix cars and treat customers like crap and it's gonna fail. So it's very much a people, it's a service business. It's all about the people. So we need our team. The differentiator for us is the team to be awesome. And so when I was one shop or even a handful of shops, I knew everybody. I could go in there and talk to them and tell them what we're up to and, you know, keep them engaged, let them know they're cared about, whatever interaction should exist to, you know, for the team to be happy and excel. As it got bigger, I couldn't touch people personally and you know, we were growing really fast. So sometimes people were getting promoted before they were ready. And so now you have a management team that's coming of age, so to speak, that's not so great at the things. You need communication, sense of urgency. You need a culture. Culture trumps a lot of things.

[B]

It's upstream, right?

[A]

Yeah. And I can't go to all these locations on the daily and do it. So that was my pitch to Danny. Like, what I need to succeed is the team to be awesome. What I need is the team to be engaged. I need your help to help me get my thoughts and message to the team so that we can build this culture and get everybody engaged.

[B]

So interesting. Make the case for the job itself. Talk to the 17, 18 year old today who really doesn't know what the future holds, but you know, is open to the idea that working on cars might make sense. What's the business case for doing that? How many could you hire right now if they showed up ready for work? What's that job look like?

[A]

Yeah, we could probably easily hire 400 people tomorrow. I say 600, probably in a short amount of time.

[B]

Danny, is he serious? 5, 600 people right now? Over 650 locations.

[A]

Yeah. And the pitch? Look, I use I steal from you a lot in using the stereotype scenarios. So we're not what we're stereotyped to be from a business from decades ago. The sophistication in the cars has demanded that we get more sophisticated. So it's not the image of the auto body shop of old. You're just as likely to be holding a tablet today as you are a paint gun or a welder in your world. A dirty job, it's not easy. But it also pays way better than the world thinks. And so the reputation for decades has been you gotta go to college to get good jobs. People don't want those jobs of fixing cars. And maybe that's true, there is some physical effort in it, but it also pays a lot better than what I think people think.

[B]

Six figure job.

[A]

It's a six figure job and can be a six figure job with a two minute if you're really good.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And so you can do that without any college debt, without four years. And so actually like talking about numbers, there's some that get where you think about a decade after school, after high school, compare a doctor to a collision repair tech. A doctor who's went to all this school, all this debt, had a few years of earning. The collision tech is ahead of a doctor 10 years in now where they end up four decades later could be argued. But still in all it's a decent living. It's way better than the average American salary across the US and part of this initiative is just. And look, collision repair is obviously self serving. But all trades, which is what you've been saying for a long time, they reward better than I think people think. And people should know that because college isn't for everybody. AI threatens so many white collar jobs. The future's uncertain. But I know this robots won't be fixing wrecked cars anytime soon.

[B]

Do you feel like in the near term anyway, what you've got here are

[A]

AI proof six figure jobs for the foreseeable future. Now, whether robots can do it someday or not, anything is possible. Right?

[B]

And you know what Elon said the other day yesterday? He said he thinks, and I don't want to argue with Elon Musk, but he thinks in three to four, three to four years, there'll be more optimus robot surgeons.

[A]

But he always over promises. I mean, I. I got respect for all the disruption and the way his mind works and the amazing things he's accomplishing, but he always over promises. So do you. What else is he gonna say? Well, okay, Grant, and I'm not challenging the man. I'm just saying, like. Like he does put really, really ambitious deadlines on things. And look, I was at ces, the Consumer Electronics show in January, and not his robots, but other robots were there. And like, they're far from prime time. I mean, they can dance, but ask them to go get a shirt off of a rack, and we literally did it. And then bring back rags 20 minutes later before you're still waiting for a shirt. So now I get it. Like, it's going faster and faster, but there's so many models of cars on the road. Every accident is different. Robots can build cars today because it's the same thing over and over and over. Everything we do is unique to that one event. It's going to be a while.

[B]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

Does that make sense?

[B]

It makes perfect sense. Yeah, absolutely. Because the whole notion of an assembly line is built on a predictable series of events and plans. Right. It's the ultimate. It's a love letter to imitation. I say this all the time, like the innovators get all the credit. Whoever came up with the innovation behind the iPhone gets the credit. But, like, the genius is in making this thing 10 billion times the exact same way. That's what the automotive manufacturers. That's what Henry Ford really gave us.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Your point is a wreck is utterly unique, random, and so the fix is equally unique.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And that's interesting. Do you worry about. Back to Elon? What if he's never. Never mind the robots. What if he's right about autonomous driving? What if, you know, what are the unintended consequences somewhere down the line? I don't know if it's 3, 5, 20 years, whatever it is, but when the fat part of the bat is autonomous vehicles on the road, it sure seems like accident rates go down.

[A]

They do.

[B]

What's that do to insurance companies? What's that do to your business? What's the, you know.

[A]

Yeah, the problem is, is the technology on the cars cost so much more to fix. So you know, like how big is the industry dollar perspective? We will be fixing less cars 10 years ago for more money because 10 years from now there's gonna be say 30% less accidents, but it's gonna cost more than 30% more to fix each accident. So we'll be fixing. It'll be a bigger dollar industry fixing less accidents.

[B]

So maybe less locations, maybe have to pivot.

[A]

The industry number of locations will definitely shrink because there's 30,000 of them today. Another reason to be big because I feel like the industry will be served by two or three national companies and then every industry that consolidates, consolidates out to about 65% and we're less than halfway there. But another 10 years it's probably there.

[B]

Do you feel like you're in a race?

[A]

Yeah. Does in every business?

[B]

I suppose, I suppose so. I mean you're a competitive person by,

[A]

by nature it's going to be an evolution, not a revolution. But accidents are shrinking like at a certain percent, you know, 1% a year or, or so. So like go long enough out, like that's not a good scenario. Like we will have to figure out other services to perform on, on vehicles as a company, but we'll do that in, in the appropriate time. So I, I do feel that threat is the there long term.

[B]

How do you stay in front of it? I'm just really curious, like when you and Danny are just out to you, just looking at the whole industry having a couple of pops and trying to stay ahead of it, like what do you see that you can talk about that other people are missing?

[A]

Yeah, well, again, number of accidents will shrink. But I do feel that one or two or three national companies will service the industry other than, you know, the 35% remaining independent shops because of small towns or unique dealer relationships or whatever the niche that they serve. So I intend for us to be one of those last one, two or three survivors. So that's kind of center field what we got to do. Which means we need to continue to grow and expand because we, even at 650 we don't have the footprint today that we need. And then in a few years there's what other services can we perform? And there is a buffet of them. Like I have a small towing company. Cars will always need towed there. And I'm starting to grow that now too. But my main concentration is by far crash champions. But there's windshields, there's servicing the vehicle from a maintenance standpoint, there's the calibrations that we have to do to realign all the cameras and sensors and radars and stuff to make sure the vehicle can in effect drive itself. Now is that something that has to be done in a maintenance or routine basis going forward? Maybe. I mean, if I'm going to trust it to drive me around, I'm going to want to get it checked out every, every now and then because I sure know my, my phone and computer don't, don't go without a reboot every now and then.

[B]

Who's king of the hill in the windshield space? Is that, that's safe. Safe flight repair, Safe flight replacement surely is, but an advertising works dude.

[A]

But Safelight's a friend, so I'm not. And I have zero glass business. So like I'm not a threat to them. But when you're on the top, there's only. Business is a roller coaster, right?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Like when you're at the top, there's only one place to go.

[B]

Forgive me for this, we got to start to land the plane, but I think we ought to kind of like.

[A]

And by the way, that's not where I think we'll go. There's all kinds. There's upfitting, changing a regular car into a police car, an ambulance, a fire truck, a handicap service vehicle. There's so much vehicle services to enter,

[B]

it's not going away. Look, you feel, I mean, basically, and I know this is silly, the core

[A]

of what we do today might dwindle, but there's plenty of vehicle services to do.

[B]

And again, the advantage of, you know, BF and small is because you'll be able to pivot.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

If you have the footprint, back to SkillsUSA, back to recruiting, like, what is your strategy? Because you, I mean, at some point, like if you, if you've got 5, 600 openings now, I mean, does that keep you up at night? I mean every night. Is there a bigger challenge for you right now than recruiting training?

[A]

Because here's how the collision industry has survived up till now. You had say that in a shop of a handful of technicians, you had the one technician that fixed the hard stuff. He was the.

[B]

He's your guy.

[A]

Yeah, he was the guy. Like if you wanted your car fixed or if it was really hard, he's the one. And the others were good too. But like the really tricky stuff, the problem today is everything is getting tricky. In a five year period, the car park has completely transformed. So now you know what I described as 20% could do the really hard stuff. You've got the other 80% of the industry that's to some degree got to catch up on training. And so you've got all the new people we're trying to attract to it and train and the existing workforce that needs to learn more like so training the people because I want to make sure the car is fixed right. I don't want anybody to get hurt. Like it's a major initiative and it's not a crash champions thing, it's an

[B]

industry thing that's well, so can do. To what extent do trade schools train for this work or at least pre train or pre apprentice how to.

[A]

Yeah, they do a great job at pre training is exactly what I would call it because you learn a little about a lot and now you got to learn the details about a lot. And so that takes some time. We have our own apprentice program which trains people from scratch.

[B]

What's that called?

[A]

It's called the step program. We'll take a technician from beginning to where he can stand on his own and then he still needs a couple years to learn more, but same thing a trade school would do, but they actually get the experience of working in a shop. And the trade schools are great. The issue is in our industry alone, there's a prediction of 100,000 needed in the next seven to 10 years. And that's because we're already 30,000 short. Hence the reason why I need 600 people. And then a lot of the techs are of baby boomer age ready to retire. So the numbers are about 100,000 and the trade schools are graduating about 3,500 a year.

[B]

It's just math.

[A]

The bigger companies like ourselves have to build our own programs and train, which we'll gladly do. But that introduces a whole nother problem, which is the mentor part because we've got so many guys great at fixing cars that aren't great. Teachers don't want to be bothered, just want to be. Now they're grumpy. Old men want to be left alone and do what they do. So the mentor problem, as much as like us trying to draw attention to the industry, at the same time we're trying to solve the. The mentorship and how to really convince people to take a look at it, train them to be good mentors as well.

[B]

It's a big problem, you know, I'm convinced the solution because as you know, I mean the skills gap is a thing. It's not a myth. People talk about it like it is sometimes, like, oh, all you have to do is pay these more and they'll come it's like no, man. Five retire, two come in, five out, two in. Year after year after year in virtually every industry in the trades. Jim Farley over at Ford told me last month they had 6,000 empty bays. Not for lack of cars that needed working on.

[A]

Lack of. People want that, know how to do it.

[B]

Yeah, I think. I don't think you'd mind me saying this because he's. I've heard him say it publicly recently. I think they're gonna open trade schools within Ford like Henry Ford used to do.

[A]

I think that's awesome.

[B]

Alex Karp over at Palantir, you know what that guy's up to? He's taking kids right out of high school. Smart kids. And within Palantir, he's teaching them like Western Civ. He's giving them a liberal arts background while he's putting them on big engineering projects. These kids are coming out of a two year, broad based educational apprentice program, making 250, $300,000 with no debt. And so, you know, I think you're on the right track. I think it's gonna fall to every serious company that's run by ambitious people to create something internal. That's why you should probably keep that Danny guy. I think he's right about marketing to your own people first. I think companies mess that up. Caterpillar has. It's called Think Big Internal program, you know, and, you know, they're at SkillsUSA and Komatsu is there. And I think it's standing on that competition floor and looking around at the companies who come to that event to celebrate skill. That's hopeful. And that's why it was. It was really great to meet you there of all places. You didn't have to buy me and my friends dinner. I'm glad you did.

[A]

Well, I didn't want to be rude and barge in the room.

[B]

No, no, no. But for the record, this settles the score. We're even.

[A]

All good.

[B]

Okay. All right.

[A]

Good.

[B]

Danny, you actually owe me.

[A]

I didn't even know there was a score. It was. No, there's not to do it.

[B]

No, man, look, I think this is. I love this country, and I love it because it still affords people, you know, who wreck two cars. Two cars. And shake their head at college, but who are ambitious and curious. You know, it's still a place. You can build a $3 billion company from the ground up. It's freaking awesome, dude.

[A]

Yeah. Land of opportunity for sure.

[B]

Where are you going now? Like right now. Where's where?

[A]

Gonna jump on a plane and Go to Dallas for a meeting in the morning.

[B]

All right, well, that's Matt Ebert. He's got a meeting in the morning. Danny, it sounds like his job is safe for at least another year.

[A]

You're gonna always say for a long time.

[B]

Does he have a contract with you or how's that work?

[A]

Oh, he's a free agent. We try to chain people to radiators, but that's frowned up. That's frowned upon.

[B]

Do they still have radiators in cars? I don't even know anymore. I open up the hood, I don't

[A]

have radiators, but I'm at the old radiator.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, no, no, I get it. I get it. Well, the image.

[A]

Even the electric cars need to cool cool stuff down.

[B]

Yeah. Pleasure getting to know you. Thank you for making the time and coming by.

[A]

Thanks for having me, Mike. This is great.

[D]

All right.

[B]

Adios. And if you need the bathroom again, you know, Mikase, su casa.

[A]

Appreciate it.

[B]

If you leave some stars could you

[A]

make it five and before you go could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars could you make it five and before you go could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars could you make it five? And before you go. Before you go. Could you please subscribe?

[B]

Do do do do do do do do do, do the way I heard

[C]

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[D]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for

[B]

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