Matt Ebert

Matt Ebert learned to fix cars because he could not afford to file a second insurance claim. He now runs a collision repair company with more than 650 locations.

Ebert came on the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast and Brad Banyas opened by confessing that at 18 he had driven a Volkswagen Fox up his father's front porch and into the house, and been put on a Greyhound back to Knoxville until Christmas. Ebert pointed out that his own story was smaller and more consequential. He was 16, it was his second wreck, and he had already totaled the first car.

He grew up poor in a small town in Illinois, and the car was not a car, it was freedom, so another claim and losing his insurance was not an option. He asked a man in town who worked collision by day and fixed cars in his own garage at night to show him how to do it himself. He never left the industry. He started in business in his twenties with a partner and stayed at what he calls half a shop for fifteen years, bought the partner out, and only then started growing. Crash Champions runs on about 11,000 people now, and he says that is the whole thing. Most of his management team came up through the shop, which means they know how to fix a car and have to be taught how to lead, so the company trains for that as hard as it trains apprentices.

The twenty five years underneath the last six or seven were not comfortable. There were years, he says, with a fifty thousand dollar paycheck he could never cash, because every dime went back in. He did not go to college, so he read and went to seminars to learn the parts he was missing. By the end of 2018 he was at eight locations with deals on three more, and had maxed out his SBA borrowing, his seller financing and his vendor financing. He went to an investment banker looking for expensive debt and got pushed toward private equity instead, four or five years after he had finally gotten rid of one partner. Part of him said absolutely no way. He did it anyway, because the cars were getting complicated, the industry was consolidating, and one decision at one of his two big accounts could have taken a large piece of the business overnight.

He got in front of a camera for the same practical reason. The company outgrew his ability to drive to every location, so he started a podcast to stay connected to his own team, and describes himself as still closer to the disaster than the master of hosting it. He has two young kids and says the thing he worries about most is being a bad father. The reason the company gives for existing is one line: the difference is trust.