Matt Ebert - Crash Champions Founder & CEO | He Crashed His Car at 16 and Turned It Into a $3B Company With 650 Locations

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Do you think that there's a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs that want to build in the trades, that want to start their own shop?

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There's money rolling up those industries similar to what we're doing in collision repair.

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So if you have one of those businesses or start one of those businesses, the great thing is you know that there will be a buyer for it one day.

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Today's guest is Matt Ebert, founder and CEO of Crash Champions.

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He started with a single auto body shop in 1999 and grew it into one of the largest collision repair businesses in the United States with more than 650 locations.

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Known for his entrepreneurial mindset and focus on building strong teams, Matt is dedicated to creating opportunities in the skilled trades.

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In this episode, we explore overcoming challenges, making smarter business decisions and turning setbacks into opportunities.

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What was the best strategy or the best way to do a deal?

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What was the worst way to do a deal that you would recommend nobody ever do?

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You can't fall in love with any deal.

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There is wisdom in not doing everything.

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Over your 26-year journey, what has been the hardest lesson you've ever had to learn?

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The one that I've struggled with the most is moving on from leadership when they hit their ceiling.

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My fitness pal is a success story partner.

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Now there's something that stops a lot of people from doing the one thing that would help them feel better in their day to day.

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Give them more energy, make them sharper, help them sleep better.

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I think we all want these things, right?

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It's tracking your food.

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It's not rocket science, but tracking your food.

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Tracking what goes into your body is the single best way to feel better, to live a better life, to have more energy, to show up better at work, better at home.

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And tracking your food is not weird.

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It's not obsessive.

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It's not something that only fitness influencers do.

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Because when you first hear, I track what I eat.

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It can sound like somebody who weighs every grain of rice and is panicking about a slice of pizza.

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That's not what this is.

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That's not what I do.

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And I use MyFitnessPal.

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What I do is I log what I eat and it shows me what's going on with my food.

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And there's this misconception that if you log your food, it's gonna take up an hour of your day, no.

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They've nailed it.

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And I've been using for context the MyFitnessPal app for years now.

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It's one of the first tools I've ever used, first apps I've ever used when I was on my own health and wellness journey.

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The reason being is because it's so simple.

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So they have a couple different ways to log food.

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Barcode scanner that handles any packaged products.

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You just scan it, it'll log it.

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They have voice logging.

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So I can say what I ate out loud.

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They'll log it.

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There's also meal scan where I can point my camera at my plate and it figures out exactly what's on my plate.

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And here's where the premium version of MyFitnessPal comes in.

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It breaks down my macros by meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, all separate.

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And that's valuable info because the distribution of my food across my day matters just as much as the total.

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So if most of your protein is at dinner and you're running on coffee and carbs until 2 p.m., well, your body is going all morning and most of the afternoon without what it needs.

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So if you feel like garbage around 3 and 4, it's going to show you that.

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So MyFitnessPal gives you meal by meal breakdown.

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And the premium also has a food analysis that shows patterns across the week where you're consistent, where things start to shift when life gets busy.

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So all of a sudden, that mid-afternoon crash is no longer a surprise.

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You understand what you ate and you understand what you feel like garbage, or rather you understand what you didn't eat.

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It also connects with 40 fitness apps and wearables.

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So if you use a smartwatch or a workout app, your nutrition and your training are all in one spot.

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Think about it this way.

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You wouldn't call someone obsessive for checking their bank account, for paying attention to their expenses, for making sure they're not overspending or have all these subscriptions that they're not using if they're trying to save up to purchase a house, right?

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It's smart to have the right data and people that check their bank account, they just want to know what's going on so they can make good decisions.

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This is the same thing.

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It's information about the one thing, food, that affects how you feel more than anything else.

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Because food is a foundation for your energy, for your sleep, for your weight, for your recovery, for your performance at work and at home.

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And you don't have to overhaul how you eat to get value from this.

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This is not about restriction or dieting.

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It's about having information.

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So do yourself a favor, start paying attention to what goes into your body.

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Go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott.

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That's S-C-O-T-T, all uppercase letters for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium.

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One more time, that is podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott.

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I saw a line, I guess a tagline on your site.

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The gold is on the other side of what went wrong.

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Explain what that means.

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You know, what that comes from is, for a long time in my life...

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I wish things could get easier.

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I wish struggle to go away, right?

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Like I remember going through some self-help stuff or whatever and like what do you want to get rid of in your life?

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And I'm like struggle.

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It would be, you know, my number one on the list.

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And I think what I came to realize finally is struggle is where all the opportunity is.

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And so if you quit trying to avoid it and embrace it, it's really...

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the solution to the struggle is where the gold is.

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And so I guess it's just changing, you know, a little bit of attitude toward what happens to you, right, is where it's all at.

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But that's what I finally figured out.

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Like, struggle's going to come.

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There's always going to be a hurdle.

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There's always going to be a challenge.

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There's always going to be problems.

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Rather than wish it away, I'm going to be a challenge.

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finding the solutions to those problems is where the, where the opportunity lies.

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How long did it take you to figure that out?

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Oh, 40 years.

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Like I'm a slow learner.

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Sometimes I think, um, yeah, it, it, I say that,

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Maybe I'm still figuring it out.

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Obviously, it didn't take completely 40, but to just step back and say, what does this all mean?

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So pieces of it may be what I would say, like in my childhood, I was never really...

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I haven't found it yet.

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If I have some God-given talent, I don't know what it is.

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Because I was terrible at sports, right?

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Take basketball, for instance.

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I remember being in gym class, and I'd be the last one picked, right?

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Sometimes they'll take the girl before me, or the really good captives would be like, we'll go shorthand and you take Matt.

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Like, that's how bad I was, right?

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So, yeah.

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But I'll own it.

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Like, I'm just not that good at it.

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So...

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Even in business or even getting in front of a camera, what I've learned for anything is that

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I can figure it out and I can get better at it over time.

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And so it kind of became a little bit of the blessing in disguise or the superpower of, I figured out that if I, if I really, really want to accomplish something and I apply myself and learn and study it, practice it, whatever you can get good at it.

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And so the gift of not just being easily good at something was, I'm going to have to figure this out, but the,

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If I do figure it out, I'm going to get there.

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And so it's kind of a gives you that superpower of persistence, stick to it, of this and just your own confidence that even though the first time you try it, it wasn't amazing.

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It's not the time to give up.

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It's not the time to quit.

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It's the time to just apply yourself and you can get there.

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I think it's that's it's it's so important to drive that message home.

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Yeah.

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Although I never applied it to basketball, by the way.

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You figured out a much better way to apply it.

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Maybe you could have.

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Maybe you could have.

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You never know.

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But in all seriousness, the first version of everything sucks.

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It always sucks.

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So before we press record, you were talking about we were talking about, you know, you're asking me when did you move down from from Toronto down to Miami to Florida.

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And I just keep thinking every time somebody asks me that, especially because we were just about to do a podcast, I keep thinking of how far the podcast has come since then and how absolutely horrible those first couple episodes were when I was sitting in a second bedroom in our condo in Toronto on Zoom.

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And I've said this story a few times, but just to give you context about how ridiculous this setup was, I...

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I was my laptop was on Gina's vanity makeup vanity, like where she gets ready.

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And it was sitting.

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So you can't see the vanity.

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You can't see the makeup.

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You can't see like her purses and shoes, which on the other side of the room, it's just the laptop facing me.

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And then there's like a white wall behind me.

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And that's where I started.

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Yeah, that's where I started the podcast.

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That's where I started.

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And I mentioned some of the names, like it was Grant Cardone, Scaramucci, Guy Kawasaki, Patrick David.

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These are big names.

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And these are the guys that I got when I first started out.

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No idea what I was doing sitting in that second bedroom, nervous as shit.

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And now since then, they've all been on again.

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But the point is, like, that first version was so horrible.

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And I don't think people understand it when they look at a podcast or whatever.

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the incredible business you've built with Crash Champions, 650 locations, like just enormous.

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The first version of Matt.

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Oh, it was a disaster.

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Which is, I think that's what's so important.

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It's like the prerequisite for success.

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It's not like, hopefully it's not good.

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Hopefully it's good.

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It'll never be good.

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It'll never be good when you first start.

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Yeah, it's...

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it'd be crazy to think it.

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Like, how could I just be awesome out of the gate?

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And we all wish we can, and I think we all try to be awesome out of the gate.

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It's just not reality.

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Like, that's what I've learned.

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Even in trying to...

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buy the right things to support the business or something.

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What I've learned is first you get the, can I swear?

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First you get the shitty one, then you get the okay one, and then you get the best one.

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And you're trying to get the best one out of the gate.

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It's rare that it's like a lightning strike if you actually get it right the first time.

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You said growing Crash Champions was more of survival at first.

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Uh, so cars got complicated, equipment got more expensive.

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Um, one shop couldn't carry all of it.

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Like explain, explain how, uh, survival actually led to, uh, it becoming successful.

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Sure.

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You know, that comment came from the conversation of, uh,

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People will ask, was it always your goal to run a national company?

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And that would be great if I could tell the story that way.

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But it really wasn't true.

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I was, I wanted to grow.

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I was one shop for a long time with a partner for 15 years.

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And then I was really anxious to grow.

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But to grow to me was just grow some more locations in Chicago.

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And then trends in the industry started shifting.

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industry was consolidating, there were bigger and bigger companies coming along and those bigger companies were getting a lot of the referrals from insurance companies, et cetera.

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And so it's kind of a world where people are getting big around you and that's where all the work is kind of going.

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And so it was survival.

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Like I basically was looking at a world where I said, it's going to be hard to survive being small.

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And so if it's going to be hard to survive being small, I got to get big.

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That's literally how much thought went into it.

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It wasn't a big dream to like go be in X number of states.

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It was realizing that the market is shifting, that a national company is where the future is in the industry.

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And so how do I how do I start to do that?

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And it didn't even get to that at first.

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It was like I need to be a substantial player in my market.

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And then it went to bringing in investors.

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And then the idea went to an opportunity came along to buy another company a little bigger than us that would give us some size in two markets.

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And then COVID came.

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People were told not to stay home, so nobody's driving, our business goes in half.

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And then all those trends of more and more being sent to bigger national partners because insurance companies didn't want to send out adjusters.

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They were trimming their staff.

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So administratively, the national companies were just more efficient and able to handle more.

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So that led to kind of reading the tea leaves, reading the room and saying, we need a race to create a national footprint.

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Yeah.

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So it really was survival mode more than a dream.

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Now it's kind of shifted to dreams of becoming the best and the biggest in the industry.

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But it didn't start that way.

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It really was, how do I stay alive?

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I'm curious, even before you started, was the first iteration of Crash Champions, was that

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not a business dream to stay alive and to, and to be relevant and to future proof and to make sure that, you know, your future of the business is secured, but before you even started, it was the same mindset applied to you as a person trying to sort of secure your own future.

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It's exactly what it was.

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Look, I grew up in a, in a small town, the town I lived in in grade school had 150 people in it in central Illinois.

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The town, you know, my mom and stepdad moved to in high school was a whopping 1,400 people.

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Oh my God, these are small towns.

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And my stepdad was a rural mail carrier.

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My mom was a stay at home mom.

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So there was a big career planning going on in my upbringing.

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I really didn't know what I was going to grow up and do for a living.

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I wrecked my car, needed to learn how to fix it.

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Got somebody to teach me and ended up loving it and figuring out, hey, maybe I can do this for a job.

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So it all came, even for me, it was a problem solution.

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Now I got, and it started out with just the way to make money.

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And then even in going into business, like I wanted to go into business for myself, but it wasn't dreams of getting rich or something.

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It was, I wanted to own my own business.

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I wanted to help people.

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I wanted to, I wanted to.

218
00:14:38.826 --> 00:14:43.459
own my own shop, but the first goal was just to make a paycheck.

219
00:14:43.780 --> 00:14:46.968
It wasn't the bigger, the thinking bigger,

220
00:14:48.104 --> 00:14:55.870
which is necessary for what, what I want to do and what I spend most of my time getting my team to do is think bigger.

221
00:14:55.910 --> 00:14:57.811
Now that came much later.

222
00:14:58.072 --> 00:15:03.816
I didn't, I needed some mentoring and reading and learning from other people to think big.

223
00:15:04.256 --> 00:15:10.081
I was merely just thinking of how to put food on my table, how to live.

224
00:15:12.384 --> 00:15:17.947
For the first, you know, say 30 years, you know, I mean, from till I was about 30.

225
00:15:18.108 --> 00:15:21.550
And then I started thinking about how do you do?

226
00:15:21.830 --> 00:15:22.090
Yeah.

227
00:15:22.410 --> 00:15:24.271
How do you do more than just survive?

228
00:15:24.311 --> 00:15:24.632
I guess.

229
00:15:25.332 --> 00:15:30.275
There was always a little bit of courage, but it was really just, I need to figure out my life.

230
00:15:30.595 --> 00:15:31.516
This is a way to do it.

231
00:15:32.162 --> 00:15:42.539
Yeah, I think even what I have learned about myself is I have a huge risk tolerance that doesn't seem to be normal.

232
00:15:43.575 --> 00:15:46.878
I don't know if that just came from nothing to lose.

233
00:15:47.358 --> 00:15:56.085
I mean, you know, when I got into my first business, I cash advanced 100 grand on credit cards, which is funny because I don't even know if I could do that today.

234
00:15:56.525 --> 00:16:04.651
But I had saved up, you know, I had applied for and amassed like, say, 10 credit cards with cash advance limits and then hit them all in one day to get 100 grand.

235
00:16:04.751 --> 00:16:08.815
And that seems like crazy probably to a lot of people, but I had nothing to lose.

236
00:16:10.255 --> 00:16:13.397
and I wasn't doing it like I don't have to pay these back.

237
00:16:13.477 --> 00:16:17.999
I absolutely was going to pay them back, but it wasn't in my mind.

238
00:16:18.959 --> 00:16:27.523
The risk was either I don't ever get to do anything or I take this risk because the money's not going to fall out of the sky.

239
00:16:27.783 --> 00:16:31.885
So if I want to own my own business, there's no choice but to take the risk.

240
00:16:32.285 --> 00:16:37.207
So I'd love to say I gifted with this extreme courage, but it really was like,

241
00:16:38.548 --> 00:16:42.398
given A or B seems logical, let's do it.

242
00:16:42.879 --> 00:16:44.463
But I do know now that,

243
00:16:46.714 --> 00:16:49.156
I do have an appetite for risk that most don't have.

244
00:16:49.876 --> 00:16:54.700
Did you have people around you that were entrepreneurial, that have built businesses?

245
00:16:54.740 --> 00:16:59.964
You have a reference that you looked at and you said, I know this person has built it like this, so that's what I'm going to copy?

246
00:17:00.584 --> 00:17:01.605
I had a partner.

247
00:17:01.745 --> 00:17:06.549
So you take on partners because you need money or you need somebody to run it, right?

248
00:17:06.689 --> 00:17:08.010
Or you need the skill they have.

249
00:17:08.410 --> 00:17:14.294
So I was, I mean, that was a blessing that came along as I ended up working for a gentleman that...

250
00:17:15.535 --> 00:17:17.417
we went and opened a shop together.

251
00:17:17.537 --> 00:17:28.769
And so I did have him to learn from for running, you know, of course, now that I've got much bigger, there's other mentors and stuff, but for getting started, that's, that's a great thing.

252
00:17:28.789 --> 00:17:30.871
He was, you know, almost 20 years older than me.

253
00:17:30.971 --> 00:17:33.273
He had an established business, a couple of shops.

254
00:17:33.974 --> 00:17:37.998
Um, and so it's a little bit of, I just had to learn and listen to him.

255
00:17:38.598 --> 00:17:55.670
Yeah, I think that's because I always try and figure out when somebody doesn't have, like, for example, parents who are entrepreneurs, or I always try and figure out, okay, because a lot of people who listen to this, they want to build something from scratch, but they don't have that person that they can learn from.

256
00:17:56.110 --> 00:18:04.636
And I think that I want to help people find that person, that partner in their life so they can learn from that person, have more courage to take more risk.

257
00:18:05.056 --> 00:18:05.196
But

258
00:18:07.674 --> 00:18:16.631
for yourself when you're first starting out, how do you know who you should listen to, who you should trust, who you should bet on so you can sort of take those big bets on yourself?

259
00:18:17.303 --> 00:18:20.964
Those that are successful at doing what you want to do.

260
00:18:21.144 --> 00:18:22.205
It's as simple as that.

261
00:18:22.585 --> 00:18:23.805
I mean, that's the safe bet.

262
00:18:24.265 --> 00:18:36.189
I mean, if you and I are buddies and we're talking about doing something and neither one of us have done it and we're going to grind it out together, figure it out together, that's nice and that's support and it's a partnership.

263
00:18:36.949 --> 00:18:38.510
Two are stronger than one, I'm sure.

264
00:18:38.530 --> 00:18:38.630
Yeah.

265
00:18:39.490 --> 00:18:47.734
the safer, smarter play is to find somebody who knows what, you know, if I'm going to open a restaurant, I should find somebody who knows how to cook as an example, right?

266
00:18:48.034 --> 00:18:52.556
Like me and you thinking our mom's chicken recipe is going to be golden.

267
00:18:52.916 --> 00:18:54.337
It's probably going to be a tough go.

268
00:18:55.257 --> 00:18:56.538
So yeah, the hack to it is,

269
00:18:58.127 --> 00:19:00.449
Learn from those who have done it, who have proven it.

270
00:19:00.649 --> 00:19:03.490
And then that's, that's, what's worked for me.

271
00:19:03.831 --> 00:19:12.856
You know, one of the, one of the things that you said, which is it's, it's so crazy to me, considering the scale of what you've built, but you said that when you started, you never imagined the size.

272
00:19:12.876 --> 00:19:15.778
He said, I had to learn to think like that big.

273
00:19:16.839 --> 00:19:16.999
Um.

274
00:19:20.567 --> 00:19:24.312
How do you get yourself to believe in what you're building before it gets there?

275
00:19:24.332 --> 00:19:28.498
Like, how did you shift your thinking to think big, to see the opportunity?

276
00:19:28.518 --> 00:19:30.260
If you said when you started, it was out of necessity.

277
00:19:31.302 --> 00:19:35.708
And then eventually it turns into not just necessity, but okay, where can we take this thing?

278
00:19:36.228 --> 00:19:47.153
And I think that being able to think big and to sort of remove the ceiling, like the ceiling, like what you think the business can hit, that's so tough for people.

279
00:19:47.614 --> 00:19:53.577
It's so tough for people in all parts of life when they're building a business and it's making more money than they've ever seen in their life.

280
00:19:53.977 --> 00:20:00.600
It's very hard for them to imagine it any bigger than this when they're, I mean, even when they, even when they, I've thought about this a lot.

281
00:20:02.337 --> 00:20:13.607
When your parents make so much money per year, for example, I think it's really hard for people to think for a moment, wow, that could be what my business makes in a month or a day.

282
00:20:14.528 --> 00:20:18.571
I think that's really, really hard to reframe.

283
00:20:19.432 --> 00:20:21.254
How do you think bigger?

284
00:20:21.454 --> 00:20:25.658
How do you imagine things that you've never built yourself before?

285
00:20:26.839 --> 00:20:27.159
So...

286
00:20:29.363 --> 00:20:31.844
Started reading, you know, I didn't go to college.

287
00:20:31.924 --> 00:20:40.427
So I always, you know, in my business lifetime, read a lot of books and, you know, yeah.

288
00:20:40.567 --> 00:20:43.088
And then took some seminars and things.

289
00:20:43.568 --> 00:20:44.189
It's interesting.

290
00:20:44.249 --> 00:20:51.931
Like I talk about the book Think and Grow Rich, for example, which is recommended by, you know, you just start learning stuff and Think and Grow Rich comes up.

291
00:20:52.552 --> 00:20:55.593
And, you know, what that book did for me is.

292
00:20:57.231 --> 00:21:03.774
It basically, the simplest, it taught me a ton of things, but the first thing I learned is it starts in your mind.

293
00:21:03.854 --> 00:21:09.196
Like, it's how you think matters.

294
00:21:09.916 --> 00:21:11.337
And I never knew that until then.

295
00:21:14.847 --> 00:21:19.290
Going back even further, it's interesting because I haven't, I actually haven't talked about this.

296
00:21:20.851 --> 00:21:27.996
There was a seminar, a gentleman named T. Harvaker did, and I don't even know if he's in business anymore.

297
00:21:28.016 --> 00:21:33.699
And I know that that first company isn't, but he was on CNBC one morning pushing his book and seminars.

298
00:21:34.099 --> 00:21:36.001
And his book basically pushed his seminars.

299
00:21:36.461 --> 00:21:39.223
But it was a millionaire mindset thing.

300
00:21:39.383 --> 00:21:40.664
And he on CNBC, he,

301
00:21:41.244 --> 00:21:44.466
in this interview, heck, this would have been 20 years ago, maybe 15.

302
00:21:44.706 --> 00:21:44.906
Yeah.

303
00:21:45.026 --> 00:21:50.790
20 years ago, at least said, I can talk to you for two minutes and know your money blueprint.

304
00:21:52.130 --> 00:21:55.072
And he described it as a thermostat, which I still use that phrase.

305
00:21:55.592 --> 00:21:59.995
If your thermostat is set to here, that's where you're going to be for the rest of your life.

306
00:22:01.276 --> 00:22:08.400
Take, take some bill, take, you know, Donald Trump, if he were worth like a million dollars, which some people would

307
00:22:10.556 --> 00:22:14.218
strive for and think is amazing, he would feel like crap.

308
00:22:14.458 --> 00:22:14.859
Yeah.

309
00:22:15.039 --> 00:22:24.404
Like if he was worth a million dollars, he'd be like, this is not... Like Damon John says it, like if Mark Cuban had my money, jump off a building, right?

310
00:22:25.084 --> 00:22:25.905
So, so...

311
00:22:27.073 --> 00:22:30.556
Those are the things I started to hear and learn.

312
00:22:31.176 --> 00:22:42.226
And I actually took his seminars, and that's where I started to think and understand that if my thermostat is set to here, if I only think here, then that's where I'm gonna be stuck.

313
00:22:42.726 --> 00:22:51.090
And so now I've flipped it to why not, you know, if you're shooting, if you're, if you're shooting for the stars, you might get to the moon.

314
00:22:51.130 --> 00:22:53.691
If you're only shooting for the horizon, you're not going to get.

315
00:22:53.891 --> 00:22:54.831
You're laying in your backyard.

316
00:22:55.592 --> 00:22:55.892
Right.

317
00:22:56.012 --> 00:23:00.614
So it, it, it took those kinds of mentors and reading from others.

318
00:23:01.934 --> 00:23:04.796
Magic Thinking Big was a book I read way back in the day.

319
00:23:06.236 --> 00:23:09.718
And so how we think matters, it really does because.

320
00:23:11.269 --> 00:23:12.730
It's the driver of our actions.

321
00:23:13.110 --> 00:23:19.793
When was, you know, you asked me earlier, like, when was the moment I knew the podcast was going to take off?

322
00:23:20.253 --> 00:23:23.394
When was the moment you knew that this was actually working?

323
00:23:25.474 --> 00:23:26.035
Interesting.

324
00:23:26.195 --> 00:23:36.863
So the first shop was working, but it had those years where I took like a $50,000 a year paycheck.

325
00:23:36.923 --> 00:23:41.066
I never took a ton of money out of the business because I always wanted to invest back in and grow.

326
00:23:41.506 --> 00:23:48.572
But I would have those years where I got that $50,000 a year paycheck and couldn't cash it because it was a lot of years of struggle.

327
00:23:48.732 --> 00:23:48.952
But

328
00:23:51.797 --> 00:23:56.001
Once I was able to, my partner financed the buyout, right?

329
00:23:56.141 --> 00:23:58.703
And we had done some real estate together, towing company together.

330
00:23:58.743 --> 00:24:00.224
He financed the buyout of it all.

331
00:24:00.704 --> 00:24:02.846
So that was a great leg up and a help to me.

332
00:24:03.106 --> 00:24:10.232
But when I started growing and got location number two, location number three and four, I did them really fast, like within a year.

333
00:24:11.693 --> 00:24:15.296
And one was like a greenfield where we started from scratch.

334
00:24:16.076 --> 00:24:20.220
One was a struggling business where I knew I could bring accounts to it.

335
00:24:20.740 --> 00:24:28.624
So I bought the building and the business for cheap, basically a little more than the value of the real estate, and then knew I could bring accounts.

336
00:24:28.964 --> 00:24:36.888
And then out of nowhere, my partner called me with some guys that were landlords of a body shop and said, hey, they want to just...

337
00:24:37.956 --> 00:24:39.357
sell this for the cost of the equipment.

338
00:24:39.377 --> 00:24:41.699
If you want to take, it seems like you're growing a body shop.

339
00:24:41.719 --> 00:24:42.380
You've won a third.

340
00:24:42.540 --> 00:24:44.722
If you want another one, I got an opportunity for you.

341
00:24:45.082 --> 00:24:48.565
So now I got from, from one to four, like overnight.

342
00:24:49.525 --> 00:24:52.648
And the one that I had originally is making money.

343
00:24:54.249 --> 00:25:01.355
The second one is breaking even the third one getting close to break even in the fourth one, losing money.

344
00:25:01.755 --> 00:25:03.437
So now all combined, like,

345
00:25:04.649 --> 00:25:08.311
I'm break even at best, but it's more stress and break even.

346
00:25:08.371 --> 00:25:08.731
Oh yeah.

347
00:25:09.351 --> 00:25:09.711
Oh yeah.

348
00:25:09.952 --> 00:25:10.772
It's, I have no doubt.

349
00:25:10.812 --> 00:25:25.099
It's a lot more stress and it's almost a house of cards because, and so I was scared to death for number five, because if number five didn't make money out of the gate, it's over.

350
00:25:25.919 --> 00:25:32.162
Like, so it was when number five came in, which coincidentally was, uh,

351
00:25:33.927 --> 00:25:34.611
my partner's

352
00:25:35.966 --> 00:25:38.907
first shop that I was a manager of before we opened ours.

353
00:25:39.627 --> 00:25:41.027
And he financed that one too.

354
00:25:41.067 --> 00:25:42.748
And it was, it made money.

355
00:25:43.268 --> 00:25:48.229
And so that fifth one I could do with confidence because I knew what it was, was my partner shop.

356
00:25:49.109 --> 00:26:03.933
And so, you know, credit to him for this thing all getting started because he never wanted to grow it this big, but without, you know, his mentorship in the beginning, without the arrangements he made with me, without shop number five being the one that

357
00:26:06.473 --> 00:26:07.853
make sure that it was going to do well.

358
00:26:09.514 --> 00:26:13.394
After that is when I started to get some confidence.

359
00:26:14.175 --> 00:26:27.737
Now, I was a typical entrepreneur who couldn't leave well enough alone and continue to put the business at risk for a while because I rushed open then number six and number seven.

360
00:26:27.757 --> 00:26:29.677
You do have a high risk tolerance.

361
00:26:29.697 --> 00:26:29.938
Yeah.

362
00:26:30.018 --> 00:26:32.318
So I was constantly teetering on that

363
00:26:34.699 --> 00:26:38.640
waking up at 4 in the morning to see how many checks are going to bounce if I don't move money around.

364
00:26:40.120 --> 00:26:42.801
So if I had to win a little slower, it would have been smarter.

365
00:26:42.981 --> 00:26:47.003
But number 5 was where I was pretty confident that this was going to work.

366
00:26:47.383 --> 00:26:50.644
Because then number 2, 3, and 4 got to making money too.

367
00:26:51.144 --> 00:26:53.785
So then you have 5 that are making at least a little bit of money.

368
00:26:54.925 --> 00:26:56.846
That's when I knew it was going to survive.

369
00:26:58.266 --> 00:27:00.407
So 5 in, you knew it was going to survive?

370
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:09.222
That's so at this point and all the different body shops you're building at this point.

371
00:27:10.923 --> 00:27:17.905
They're all the way that you grew them, the way that you're growing them is all a little bit different because some of them like they're really not doing well.

372
00:27:17.965 --> 00:27:19.105
Some of them are doing OK.

373
00:27:19.525 --> 00:27:26.247
So you're worried about like, you know, five different strategies to make each one successful.

374
00:27:27.783 --> 00:27:28.404
Yeah.

375
00:27:28.504 --> 00:27:33.008
And it doesn't that doesn't obviously to a degree, it must have stressed you out.

376
00:27:33.929 --> 00:27:34.550
Oh, um.

377
00:27:35.130 --> 00:27:35.451
Or no.

378
00:27:36.972 --> 00:27:38.753
Again, not too much to lose.

379
00:27:40.855 --> 00:27:45.659
It's not like I had some massive net worth or something at this time.

380
00:27:45.719 --> 00:27:52.244
I had enough to do okay, but it wasn't in my head at that time.

381
00:27:52.344 --> 00:28:01.070
I remember starting to think this would have been 10 to 15 years after I started reading these books and going to seminars and starting to think bigger.

382
00:28:01.150 --> 00:28:03.732
And so to me, it was just simply the path.

383
00:28:03.812 --> 00:28:05.454
It was what I was going to need to do.

384
00:28:06.054 --> 00:28:07.115
So I never doubted.

385
00:28:07.155 --> 00:28:14.882
I never, it was very, you know, I talk about appetite for risk, but I wasn't like an idiot.

386
00:28:15.783 --> 00:28:17.205
I was very calculated.

387
00:28:17.285 --> 00:28:27.234
I knew the math, you know, what I think I was naive to that fortunately I didn't have happen in that time was...

388
00:28:28.355 --> 00:28:35.302
Something goes wrong in the world where the whole industry goes backwards 20% or something, because I really couldn't.

389
00:28:35.963 --> 00:28:40.147
If I had taken that 20% backwards hit, that would have been devastating.

390
00:28:40.568 --> 00:28:47.975
And I was looking back pretty naive to that being the case.

391
00:28:48.055 --> 00:28:49.397
But by the way, that's what led.

392
00:28:50.940 --> 00:29:07.916
That decision and then finally figuring out, again, survival mode was why I ended up bringing in a private equity investor because I did get to in a quick amount of time where I'm like, look, if I'm going to grow this thing, I need to protect it.

393
00:29:08.556 --> 00:29:11.417
I can only go so far with my own debt.

394
00:29:11.577 --> 00:29:15.879
And I mean, I had grown it through literally SBA loans, which I had maxed out.

395
00:29:16.359 --> 00:29:18.800
I got to the limit of what SBA loaned one person.

396
00:29:19.441 --> 00:29:21.542
I had seller financed, right?

397
00:29:21.582 --> 00:29:23.983
My partner financing and other sellers financing.

398
00:29:24.003 --> 00:29:24.563
Yeah.

399
00:29:24.923 --> 00:29:29.127
And then vendors even giving me rebate early and stuff.

400
00:29:29.147 --> 00:29:30.708
So basically vendor financing.

401
00:29:31.109 --> 00:29:41.978
So I had, you know, I used banks to borrow on the real estate, used sellers to borrow, used equipment loans to start a shop from scratch because you can finance equipment that's brand new.

402
00:29:42.318 --> 00:29:44.060
Can't finance use equipment, but new.

403
00:29:44.520 --> 00:29:49.825
So I had creatively found money in any way I could to open those locations and

404
00:29:50.833 --> 00:29:54.979
Now it's like, okay, what do I do to continue to grow and what do I do to protect it?

405
00:29:55.740 --> 00:30:04.492
And I had also, in the insurance industry, which is the referral source for us, I basically had like two accounts.

406
00:30:05.543 --> 00:30:08.004
And one of those accounts happened to be Geico.

407
00:30:08.604 --> 00:30:11.125
And remember, there's these big national companies now.

408
00:30:11.765 --> 00:30:22.248
And my thought process was literally this, like one big body shop company breakfast with Warren Buffett could totally change the way Warren Buffett does business.

409
00:30:22.868 --> 00:30:28.850
And then I got half of my business out the, or 40% of my business, whatever it was, is out the window tomorrow.

410
00:30:30.444 --> 00:30:36.476
again, let me bring in an investor to protect this, not just grow it, but protect it.

411
00:30:36.576 --> 00:30:37.979
And after the...

412
00:30:39.962 --> 00:30:45.305
Again, just describing the journey of like, it was a long time before it wasn't survival mode, can I?

413
00:30:45.845 --> 00:30:46.005
Yeah.

414
00:30:46.025 --> 00:30:53.349
But the survival mode, it's interesting because- With a goal to thrive, by the way.

415
00:30:53.469 --> 00:30:54.810
Survival with a goal to thrive.

416
00:30:55.110 --> 00:31:04.315
But I think it's so smart because you have, I keep thinking, oh, you know, he has such a huge appetite for risk, but not really.

417
00:31:05.420 --> 00:31:06.121
It's calculated.

418
00:31:06.141 --> 00:31:07.101
It's calculated.

419
00:31:07.161 --> 00:31:13.086
And you actually just see that there's actually very little downside when you're first starting out if things don't go right.

420
00:31:13.106 --> 00:31:23.294
I think a lot of people, even if they have nothing to lose, they overthink how bad something can turn out if it goes wrong.

421
00:31:23.815 --> 00:31:25.576
Yeah, I would encourage them to not.

422
00:31:26.037 --> 00:31:28.999
Because, like, I see it all the time.

423
00:31:30.040 --> 00:31:30.901
I've had to learn it.

424
00:31:32.035 --> 00:31:43.061
As the company grew and I started to get CFOs and like real decision makers, I would scare them to death because I didn't know how to communicate that I wasn't going to drive the company off a cliff.

425
00:31:43.341 --> 00:31:47.343
Now I know how to communicate, hey, if this doesn't go right, we're going to do this.

426
00:31:47.503 --> 00:31:49.505
And then if that doesn't go right, we're going to do that.

427
00:31:49.945 --> 00:32:00.390
And so, you know, I had to learn to communicate to others all the intuitions and all the strategy that if this doesn't go exactly what we think, here's what we're going to do.

428
00:32:00.410 --> 00:32:01.251
Yeah.

429
00:32:01.491 --> 00:32:06.133
where when I was small, I just went, you know, I knew it in my head, but I didn't know how to communicate it to others.

430
00:32:06.493 --> 00:32:15.938
But yeah, I see so many people for fear of failure, for fear of loss, or even I talked to business owners that are kicking ass that

431
00:32:17.287 --> 00:32:18.767
don't want a single dollar of debt.

432
00:32:19.208 --> 00:32:28.030
And their companies could be 20 times what they are if they just smartly use debt, but they're afraid of debt, so they'll never do it.

433
00:32:29.571 --> 00:32:32.872
No matter even if I encourage them, they're just not built that way.

434
00:32:33.172 --> 00:32:35.674
Life at the Speed of Play is a success story partner.

435
00:32:35.714 --> 00:32:38.676
Now, this is a book by Mark Pincus, the guy who founded Zynga.

436
00:32:38.696 --> 00:32:39.857
I've actually had him on the show.

437
00:32:40.157 --> 00:32:45.941
I met him in person and Reid Hoffman wrote the foreword, calling him one of the best idea people in Silicon Valley.

438
00:32:46.141 --> 00:32:49.804
The book is Life at the Speed of Play, Launch Products People Love.

439
00:32:49.864 --> 00:32:51.285
About 170 pages.

440
00:32:51.565 --> 00:32:53.066
It's already a national bestseller.

441
00:32:53.346 --> 00:32:59.551
It's his framework for figuring out whether an idea is actually worth going after before you put serious time and money into it.

442
00:32:59.731 --> 00:33:01.252
not theory, the way he actually does it.

443
00:33:01.312 --> 00:33:03.354
And he's repeatedly built successful businesses.

444
00:33:03.634 --> 00:33:05.395
On top of that, you can read it in a weekend.

445
00:33:05.575 --> 00:33:08.638
It can change your entire life and give you the right direction if you're an entrepreneur.

446
00:33:08.658 --> 00:33:13.822
So right now, if you go to getmarksbook.com slash success, you get two copies for $32.

447
00:33:14.062 --> 00:33:15.323
That's $16 each.

448
00:33:15.683 --> 00:33:22.028
Mark is paying for the second copy himself because he wants you to give it to somebody, a friend who's been sitting on an idea, someone who needs to push, whoever.

449
00:33:22.288 --> 00:33:24.910
That's getmarksbook.com slash success.

450
00:33:25.290 --> 00:33:26.951
Mark with a K. Buy one.

451
00:33:27.171 --> 00:33:27.812
Second one's free.

452
00:33:28.012 --> 00:33:29.833
My fitness pal is a success story partner.

453
00:33:29.893 --> 00:33:34.454
So people always ask me how I have time to track what I eat daily podcast newsletter.

454
00:33:34.634 --> 00:33:35.854
I run a full marketing agency.

455
00:33:35.874 --> 00:33:38.735
My days are super full and honestly, that's exactly why I do it.

456
00:33:38.835 --> 00:33:43.397
See, when you're running that many things, you can't afford to have your energy be inconsistent.

457
00:33:43.617 --> 00:33:48.338
Food is a foundation for energy, for sleep, for your weight, for recovery, for performance.

458
00:33:48.738 --> 00:33:51.441
And the days that I'm not paying attention to it, I feel it.

459
00:33:51.621 --> 00:33:54.624
The MyFitnessPal app makes tracking what you eat a non-issue.

460
00:33:54.644 --> 00:33:55.626
It removes all the friction.

461
00:33:55.786 --> 00:33:56.927
I just say what I ate.

462
00:33:56.967 --> 00:33:58.429
I can voice log it and it's done.

463
00:33:58.729 --> 00:34:02.353
Or I can point my camera at a plate with MealScan and it figures out what's there.

464
00:34:02.373 --> 00:34:04.014
I'm not sitting around entering ingredients.

465
00:34:04.315 --> 00:34:05.696
The app does the work for me.

466
00:34:05.937 --> 00:34:08.279
And it connects with over 40 fitness apps and wearables.

467
00:34:08.539 --> 00:34:10.041
So my training, my steps...

468
00:34:10.241 --> 00:34:12.042
my nutrition, it all goes to one place.

469
00:34:12.282 --> 00:34:16.485
One picture of what's happening instead of having to piece everything together or just go by feel or vibe.

470
00:34:16.525 --> 00:34:18.566
See, the whole thing takes seconds, not minutes.

471
00:34:18.846 --> 00:34:24.550
So go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott, all uppercase, for 15% off My Fitness Pal Premium.

472
00:34:24.850 --> 00:34:28.192
That's podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott.

473
00:34:28.392 --> 00:34:30.053
HubSpot is a success story partner.

474
00:34:30.213 --> 00:34:35.056
Now, every entrepreneur, founder, CEOs listening right now needs to pay attention.

475
00:34:35.396 --> 00:34:36.137
I have a question for you.

476
00:34:36.457 --> 00:34:44.082
When a buyer asks AI for a solution or a product that your business sells, does your business come up?

477
00:34:44.362 --> 00:34:47.203
The answer is that most companies have no idea.

478
00:34:47.523 --> 00:34:54.344
They don't know if their name shows up in any of the AI tools, chat, perplexity, Claude.

479
00:34:54.744 --> 00:35:01.325
And by the time they find out, they have lost tons of traffic and tons of deals to someone who did show up.

480
00:35:01.705 --> 00:35:03.226
HubSpot AEO.

481
00:35:03.706 --> 00:35:10.987
It helps you show up in those moments with the right answers that your customers and your buyers are looking for when they go type in a question.

482
00:35:11.227 --> 00:35:12.428
It's before the first click.

483
00:35:12.468 --> 00:35:15.251
It's before they fill out some form on your website.

484
00:35:15.752 --> 00:35:19.535
That is the moment that HubSpot AEO is built for.

485
00:35:19.916 --> 00:35:25.602
So if you want your company to show up in AI searches when your customer is looking, check out HubSpot.com.

486
00:35:25.962 --> 00:35:29.646
They are the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

487
00:35:30.126 --> 00:35:36.389
All the different shops you first bought, like out of those first five and all the different ways you finance some.

488
00:35:36.809 --> 00:35:39.110
And you're just doing deals left, right and center at this point.

489
00:35:39.130 --> 00:35:43.331
Like you're trying to figure out any way to get money possible, any way to get a shop possible.

490
00:35:43.672 --> 00:35:50.474
What was, looking back, what was the best strategy or the best way to do a deal?

491
00:35:50.514 --> 00:35:54.396
What was the worst way to do a deal that you would recommend nobody ever do again?

492
00:35:56.274 --> 00:35:57.355
Good question.

493
00:35:59.636 --> 00:36:03.118
You can't fall in love with any, any deal.

494
00:36:03.238 --> 00:36:03.739
I did.

495
00:36:05.019 --> 00:36:09.302
What I did in the early days is make, make a bad deal.

496
00:36:09.362 --> 00:36:12.444
For example, overpay would be a bad deal.

497
00:36:13.625 --> 00:36:17.646
And I just worked my ass off to make it a good deal or a good decision.

498
00:36:19.266 --> 00:36:25.588
I could have walked away from some deals.

499
00:36:27.888 --> 00:36:42.092
So I don't know if, again, I don't know if it's a bad thing, but I have learned that not just because the way I'm wired as an entrepreneur, missed opportunity is a loss in my mind.

500
00:36:43.593 --> 00:36:47.998
Other people don't even, don't, we don't have to eat everything.

501
00:36:48.278 --> 00:36:50.301
Just because it's a buffet don't mean you need to eat it all.

502
00:36:50.601 --> 00:36:52.603
And I'm like, no, it's there.

503
00:36:52.663 --> 00:36:53.444
It's for the taking.

504
00:36:53.484 --> 00:36:55.246
We need to eat it.

505
00:36:55.466 --> 00:36:55.947
And so...

506
00:36:57.688 --> 00:37:02.350
The smart, there is wisdom in not doing everything.

507
00:37:03.110 --> 00:37:04.070
But you figured it out.

508
00:37:04.511 --> 00:37:16.195
In fact, I would actually, now understanding a little bit more about the early days of the business, I would say that by doing a bad deal and figuring it out, it probably made you a better entrepreneur.

509
00:37:17.115 --> 00:37:21.237
Yeah, you learn the lessons and you learn how to make things work no matter what.

510
00:37:23.358 --> 00:37:26.819
The big hack in it all, too, was I got lucky with people.

511
00:37:27.959 --> 00:37:29.300
you can't do this on your own.

512
00:37:30.301 --> 00:37:40.290
And I got some really good, I was always finding a manager who had run something a little bigger, you know, when I was four shops, I hired somebody who had ran eight to come in and help me operate it.

513
00:37:41.571 --> 00:37:47.396
So that was the other kind of thing that I figured out, surround yourself with smart people.

514
00:37:47.796 --> 00:37:52.020
And I honestly figured that out from, you know, there's a time in my life where,

515
00:37:54.102 --> 00:37:55.483
I wasn't up to any good.

516
00:37:55.663 --> 00:37:57.804
You know, I was unhappy in my first marriage.

517
00:37:57.824 --> 00:37:58.625
I was drinking too much.

518
00:37:58.645 --> 00:37:59.786
I was hanging around with people.

519
00:38:00.406 --> 00:38:01.947
They just weren't going anywhere, right?

520
00:38:01.987 --> 00:38:02.327
We weren't.

521
00:38:03.228 --> 00:38:07.911
And my partner would say to me, hey, if you surround yourself with better people, your life would be better.

522
00:38:08.371 --> 00:38:15.296
And so at an early age, I learned, you know, that doesn't just apply in your personal life, but it definitely applies in business.

523
00:38:15.636 --> 00:38:19.858
Surround yourself with smart people, good people, and it makes it a lot better.

524
00:38:20.079 --> 00:38:23.601
You mentioned that, you know, everything that you built is because of people.

525
00:38:26.043 --> 00:38:27.744
how do you find good people?

526
00:38:27.784 --> 00:38:31.687
It's something that everybody needs, every business owner needs, but it's something that everybody struggles with.

527
00:38:31.707 --> 00:38:36.130
So how do you find the right people to build a brand, build a culture, et cetera?

528
00:38:36.831 --> 00:38:41.214
Sometimes, well, you're looking for the resume first, right?

529
00:38:41.274 --> 00:38:41.414
And...

530
00:38:42.315 --> 00:38:44.657
And sometimes you get it wrong sometimes.

531
00:38:44.698 --> 00:38:46.880
I got it wrong plenty of times.

532
00:38:47.200 --> 00:38:51.244
What I've learned is you want somebody who's smarter than you.

533
00:38:51.344 --> 00:38:54.167
You want somebody who's been through what you're about to go through.

534
00:38:55.608 --> 00:38:59.432
But the magic is when you get along with them too, when you like them.

535
00:38:59.852 --> 00:39:10.479
So it's way funner if I would, if I gladly sit down and have a beer with you, um, then if, uh, personalities don't click at all, cause you're going to spend a lot of time together.

536
00:39:10.499 --> 00:39:11.399
You're going to work hard together.

537
00:39:11.419 --> 00:39:14.901
There's going to be difficult times and that's way better.

538
00:39:15.182 --> 00:39:17.303
And the team's way stronger when the team gets along.

539
00:39:17.323 --> 00:39:22.146
If you like who you work with and you're all good at what you do, like that's where the magic is.

540
00:39:22.186 --> 00:39:27.990
And I've gotten lucky enough for long enough periods of time that I can say that's been the case.

541
00:39:28.010 --> 00:39:28.070
Uh,

542
00:39:28.830 --> 00:39:34.933
I've also introduced somebody that the whole team, and it's great now because the team will reject them quicker than I will.

543
00:39:35.733 --> 00:39:37.774
The team will run them out of the room so fast.

544
00:39:37.834 --> 00:39:42.276
If I bring in a clown, so to speak, the team, the team will hate them.

545
00:39:42.796 --> 00:39:50.259
And, and, and, and he'll be rejected by the team quicker than, than even if I want to be patient with them, the team will look at me like, what are you waiting for?

546
00:39:50.299 --> 00:39:51.879
This is, this isn't going to work.

547
00:39:52.440 --> 00:39:53.080
Um, so yeah.

548
00:39:56.188 --> 00:39:58.270
Smart people, but people you get along with.

549
00:39:58.430 --> 00:40:01.312
And I just say that basically nice.

550
00:40:01.812 --> 00:40:04.994
Like nobody wants to hang out with or work for an asshole.

551
00:40:05.014 --> 00:40:09.418
Like it's not and it's not that hard to to not be one.

552
00:40:10.158 --> 00:40:14.441
So that's that's the very it's a very low bar, but it's true.

553
00:40:14.821 --> 00:40:15.702
Well, none of us are perfect.

554
00:40:15.722 --> 00:40:16.743
We're all going to make mistakes.

555
00:40:18.332 --> 00:40:19.893
Everybody's going to... People disappoint.

556
00:40:20.353 --> 00:40:23.575
Even the people you love, I disappoint.

557
00:40:24.136 --> 00:40:27.938
There's no way that people are going to agree on 100% of things.

558
00:40:27.958 --> 00:40:31.080
There's no way that people are going to see every situation the same.

559
00:40:31.100 --> 00:40:32.941
There's no way you don't disappoint somebody.

560
00:40:33.782 --> 00:40:37.424
So you just need to have the common goal.

561
00:40:37.464 --> 00:40:37.985
You need to be...

562
00:40:38.565 --> 00:40:44.031
If you're passionate about what you're trying to accomplish, respect each other's gifts and what you bring to the table.

563
00:40:44.372 --> 00:40:49.097
When the bad times come, if you've got personalities that work and you have fun together, it helps.

564
00:40:49.518 --> 00:40:55.585
And when you do all these, and when you do acquisitions the way that you've done acquisitions, especially when you're first starting out,

565
00:40:56.919 --> 00:41:06.547
Before you have a playbook for it, because now you've done so many times, it's probably a little bit more concrete how you acquire a shop, how you onboard the people.

566
00:41:07.368 --> 00:41:16.556
What are some of the lessons that you learned from doing those first few acquisitions on how to bring people into the culture of the company when they haven't necessarily been hired into it?

567
00:41:17.658 --> 00:41:22.520
What I've learned is it's hard because you have to get them to buy in.

568
00:41:23.080 --> 00:41:28.622
And, you know, I talk about Danny, our CMO, when I hired him.

569
00:41:29.422 --> 00:41:33.944
The conversation wasn't to come and advertise the company to the public.

570
00:41:34.484 --> 00:41:39.246
It was literally, hey, I want to take your skills and learn how to promote marketing.

571
00:41:39.906 --> 00:41:43.147
what Crash Champions is all about to all these new team members.

572
00:41:43.527 --> 00:41:46.008
Because I can't personally touch everybody anymore.

573
00:41:46.648 --> 00:41:47.868
How do we build a culture?

574
00:41:48.008 --> 00:41:48.568
And to me.

575
00:41:50.389 --> 00:41:52.069
That was going to be a sales process.

576
00:41:52.649 --> 00:42:00.011
We were going to have to sell our own team on how what we believe we're going to need to define what we believe, what we want to do, what are our values?

577
00:42:00.351 --> 00:42:02.072
How do we not only figure it out?

578
00:42:02.392 --> 00:42:06.153
How do we articulate it and how do we get people to buy into it?

579
00:42:06.353 --> 00:42:06.713
And then.

580
00:42:08.293 --> 00:42:09.715
That's what we've been doing.

581
00:42:10.155 --> 00:42:14.160
It's... Every time you hire somebody new, you got to do it all over again.

582
00:42:14.280 --> 00:42:16.583
And it's 11,000 people now.

583
00:42:16.663 --> 00:42:20.347
I promise you, we have some people on the team that suck.

584
00:42:20.367 --> 00:42:22.009
We have some people on the team that aren't nice.

585
00:42:22.049 --> 00:42:23.090
That's just reality.

586
00:42:23.491 --> 00:42:24.752
We just try to...

587
00:42:25.553 --> 00:42:34.642
You know, we train for culture first with our management team, then we train for kind of day to day of the job, and then we train for the people skills.

588
00:42:34.662 --> 00:42:40.829
Like we teamed up with Dale Carnegie, built special training for our company, because all of those skills are needed for our team.

589
00:42:41.369 --> 00:42:43.231
So it's a constant effort.

590
00:42:43.712 --> 00:42:45.373
What I what I.

591
00:42:46.254 --> 00:42:49.118
have learned is keep it simple what you're about.

592
00:42:49.138 --> 00:42:51.581
So for example, we're helping people in a time of need.

593
00:42:52.022 --> 00:42:54.064
It's easy to understand that easy to get behind that.

594
00:42:54.965 --> 00:42:59.111
And we're helping people in a time of need in something that they don't face very often.

595
00:42:59.992 --> 00:43:02.134
And they're going to need to trust us.

596
00:43:02.715 --> 00:43:14.579
And so we believe the difference is trust is something that came from that, which is every time we interact with each other, every time we interact with a vendor or a partner or a customer, we have a chance to build trust or tear it down.

597
00:43:14.959 --> 00:43:16.960
Let's act in a way that we're going to build trust.

598
00:43:17.300 --> 00:43:21.061
Let's be transparent and remember that we're helping people.

599
00:43:21.582 --> 00:43:27.984
And so start with simple things like that, that nobody's going to argue and say that I can't, you know, you're not going to hire somebody and have them hate that.

600
00:43:28.004 --> 00:43:28.464
Yeah.

601
00:43:28.690 --> 00:43:30.451
They're not going to say, oh, I can't get behind this.

602
00:43:30.492 --> 00:43:31.492
This company sucks.

603
00:43:32.053 --> 00:43:36.717
Now, not everybody's going to... What's the right word?

604
00:43:36.757 --> 00:43:37.497
Nobody's going to...

605
00:43:38.523 --> 00:43:46.107
evoke it to the degree that I would love them to, but it's an easy, it's an easy cultural thing that people can understand.

606
00:43:47.088 --> 00:43:49.850
People aren't going to argue with and say your culture is stupid.

607
00:43:50.490 --> 00:43:58.134
Well, like I think people overcomplicate culture and then they have this like list of values sitting on a, on the wall somewhere.

608
00:43:58.995 --> 00:44:04.818
And then the team's like, well, I don't even see the CEO doing half of this shit.

609
00:44:04.998 --> 00:44:05.379
That's right.

610
00:44:06.019 --> 00:44:07.020
So why am I going to?

611
00:44:07.100 --> 00:44:10.182
And I think it's partly because, you know, it's overcomplicated.

612
00:44:10.242 --> 00:44:14.366
It's because you want to have all these different things your company stand for.

613
00:44:14.386 --> 00:44:15.927
But if you're not even living them yourself.

614
00:44:15.967 --> 00:44:19.830
So you live it yourself and then you also simplify it.

615
00:44:19.870 --> 00:44:21.031
So it's easy for everyone else.

616
00:44:21.511 --> 00:44:21.812
Yeah.

617
00:44:22.092 --> 00:44:24.514
And and so in every acquisition.

618
00:44:27.016 --> 00:44:31.259
It's been choppy because everybody has when you acquire something, you might have people.

619
00:44:31.359 --> 00:44:33.301
It might be a bigger business or a smaller business.

620
00:44:34.165 --> 00:44:36.367
But they've been part of building that business.

621
00:44:36.387 --> 00:44:39.749
They really believe that they did great things.

622
00:44:39.809 --> 00:44:42.291
And I obviously thought they did great things.

623
00:44:42.331 --> 00:44:43.272
I paid for it, right?

624
00:44:43.633 --> 00:44:54.881
Or like, you know, so it's a fine line of acknowledging the greatness of what they built and what they did and saying, okay, but now together becomes this.

625
00:44:55.542 --> 00:44:57.804
And I'll be honest, like, as it got bigger...

626
00:44:59.420 --> 00:45:02.123
we bought a company bigger than us that was bankrupt.

627
00:45:02.243 --> 00:45:03.584
So we were 200 shops.

628
00:45:03.604 --> 00:45:05.405
They were 350 and bankrupt.

629
00:45:06.126 --> 00:45:13.593
And I would have thought like getting them to vibe with our way, which is being successful would be easy.

630
00:45:14.093 --> 00:45:16.315
I can tell you that that team loved the,

631
00:45:17.429 --> 00:45:19.650
what they did, even though it didn't work.

632
00:45:20.231 --> 00:45:22.892
And I thought, you know you were bankrupt, right?

633
00:45:23.353 --> 00:45:24.934
Why are you defending this stuff?

634
00:45:25.514 --> 00:45:26.135
It didn't work.

635
00:45:26.335 --> 00:45:28.596
But they were part of building it, right?

636
00:45:28.656 --> 00:45:29.297
And they had...

637
00:45:30.210 --> 00:45:32.331
They were there for the good times of the company too.

638
00:45:32.591 --> 00:45:36.473
And some of the decisions that led to the bad had nothing to do with them.

639
00:45:36.553 --> 00:45:42.935
It was leadership decisions at the top that they were just, so it was, it was difficult.

640
00:45:43.075 --> 00:45:48.217
It took a long time to, to unite the team and, and it's a constant effort.

641
00:45:48.958 --> 00:45:52.719
You just have to, you have to communicate it well, keep it simple.

642
00:45:52.779 --> 00:45:53.960
And I haven't always done that.

643
00:45:54.520 --> 00:46:19.687
um i've learned through trial and error a lot of error to to make it simpler um and and keep it crystal clear it's hard when you're when you're growing fast but that's that's what you have to do but also i mean you do such a you're very humble you are very humble and i know like a few times you said like you know we we we screwed it up before we got it right but i mean

644
00:46:21.792 --> 00:46:26.016
I think that I'm going to segue into another idea that I want to go into.

645
00:46:27.798 --> 00:46:36.687
I think you do it so right because I just learned before we pressed record about how a lot of your C-suite and the people that are now running the company.

646
00:46:37.267 --> 00:46:39.107
are people that were in the shop at the beginning.

647
00:46:39.968 --> 00:46:55.951
So, I mean, there's something to be said for being able to not only acquire multiple shops successfully now over, you know, 650, but also like nurture people from the trades and in the shops into like these high level executive positions.

648
00:46:56.511 --> 00:47:03.412
So you understand, like you understand how to bring people up and how to train them and how to and how to get them on board with like what your vision is as well.

649
00:47:03.855 --> 00:47:07.119
And I don't know, is that the, I'll ask, because I don't know the industry.

650
00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:15.831
Is it the norm to find somebody who is working in a shop and then eventually the career path is executive C-suite for them?

651
00:47:15.851 --> 00:47:17.373
Yeah.

652
00:47:17.652 --> 00:47:19.835
It has been for us now.

653
00:47:20.676 --> 00:47:25.002
I mean, outside of you, I don't... Yeah, good question, because I don't know.

654
00:47:25.683 --> 00:47:27.345
It can be done this way, though.

655
00:47:27.425 --> 00:47:28.086
I can tell you that.

656
00:47:28.226 --> 00:47:29.428
So that's exciting.

657
00:47:29.468 --> 00:47:32.011
And that's what I talk about when I'm talking about the trades.

658
00:47:32.092 --> 00:47:33.253
I tell people, look, like...

659
00:47:34.074 --> 00:47:37.655
Learning the trade is awesome and nobody could ever take it from you and you can make a good living.

660
00:47:38.055 --> 00:47:42.077
But by the way, there's a ton of big companies, not just in our trade, but other trades.

661
00:47:42.137 --> 00:47:43.877
And so there's a whole career path to be had.

662
00:47:44.377 --> 00:47:47.738
And only 15% of our team is college educated.

663
00:47:48.539 --> 00:47:49.759
Most of us came up to the shop.

664
00:47:50.179 --> 00:47:50.859
I'll say this, though.

665
00:47:50.879 --> 00:47:52.060
You have to apply yourself.

666
00:47:52.100 --> 00:47:52.940
You have to learn.

667
00:47:53.320 --> 00:47:58.782
It's not just like it won't work if it's just you're next in line so you get the job.

668
00:47:58.802 --> 00:47:59.362
Yeah.

669
00:47:59.560 --> 00:48:04.886
like the executives have sought out training, education, mentoring.

670
00:48:05.226 --> 00:48:06.548
They've applied themselves.

671
00:48:07.168 --> 00:48:13.715
What I do tell everybody is, look, care and effort is where it's at.

672
00:48:14.136 --> 00:48:16.959
We can teach the skill, but you have to have the will.

673
00:48:17.459 --> 00:48:21.504
And so if you have the drive and the ambition and are willing to work hard at it,

674
00:48:22.873 --> 00:48:24.094
I think the sky's the limit.

675
00:48:24.214 --> 00:48:28.456
You know, the next CEO of Crash Champions might be a detailer in one of the shops today.

676
00:48:28.616 --> 00:48:29.217
I don't know.

677
00:48:31.578 --> 00:48:34.519
There's, I believe there's potential in everyone.

678
00:48:34.660 --> 00:48:37.301
How ambitious they are is up to them.

679
00:48:37.981 --> 00:48:42.264
And then making sure we recognize it is our job.

680
00:48:42.324 --> 00:48:45.786
It's our job to recognize the talent and reward it.

681
00:48:46.566 --> 00:48:53.610
and bring people the training that they need to take advantage of whatever gifts they have.

682
00:48:53.850 --> 00:48:56.732
I mean, that's how we went about it.

683
00:48:59.173 --> 00:49:03.155
And you don't always see the potential immediately.

684
00:49:03.355 --> 00:49:04.816
Sometimes it shows up later.

685
00:49:04.836 --> 00:49:05.956
It might take a minute.

686
00:49:06.397 --> 00:49:16.142
But I'm going to make an argument that if the next CEO of Crash Champions is a detailer,

687
00:49:16.722 --> 00:49:24.031
I feel like that person knows exactly what every single customer went through and what they expect and what they love and what they hate.

688
00:49:24.511 --> 00:49:37.026
Versus if you just went to go find some Ivy League exec ex consultant and drop them into the company, I think that would probably be not the best fit.

689
00:49:38.680 --> 00:49:38.980
Yes.

690
00:49:39.480 --> 00:49:44.582
So I say I have an advantage and that is because I've done all, I've sat in every one of the seats.

691
00:49:44.802 --> 00:49:55.986
It's been a long time since I touched the car, but decades ago, I, I, so I tend to not make decisions that are going to make the team's life hard.

692
00:49:56.526 --> 00:50:03.669
Or I try not to like when it's a bad idea that I know is not going to work and they're going to hate it and it's going to make their life hard.

693
00:50:03.789 --> 00:50:04.889
It's easy to squash it.

694
00:50:05.489 --> 00:50:06.130
Um, where, um,

695
00:50:07.510 --> 00:50:12.513
another outside CEO might not understand the effect that's going to have.

696
00:50:12.533 --> 00:50:14.254
So that's that little bit of advantage that I have.

697
00:50:14.554 --> 00:50:25.719
Now, I would say, though, outside ideas applied to our industry are also awesome.

698
00:50:26.059 --> 00:50:33.623
So if I had it to do over, for example, our middle management is all from the industry.

699
00:50:35.198 --> 00:50:37.619
And our executive team isn't.

700
00:50:37.799 --> 00:50:39.079
We've got a hand.

701
00:50:39.479 --> 00:50:40.119
It's a mix now.

702
00:50:40.459 --> 00:50:50.642
Outside, you know, CFO from outside, CLO from the insurance side, some coming up from the industry, CIO not from the industry originally.

703
00:50:50.722 --> 00:50:52.302
So we've got a nice mix there.

704
00:50:52.482 --> 00:50:57.703
Middle management, though, it's 99% from the industry.

705
00:50:58.143 --> 00:51:02.965
If I had to, like, craft that perfectly, I would probably look for, like, a 70-30 mix of...

706
00:51:05.967 --> 00:51:18.168
middle management that came from big companies and know what big company looks like compared to just we know what body shop looks like because I think the mix is important and we're having to teach and learn the hard way what big business looks

707
00:51:19.315 --> 00:51:41.050
operates like and how to be successful at that where if we had a mix in the management team that might go easier now maybe that wouldn't i haven't done it that way so i can't i can't say i did it both ways and this way was better but in my head if i had it to do over i would have i would have shot for like a 70 30 mix and you can still aim for that i think that i think that

708
00:51:42.219 --> 00:51:52.108
I think the reason why you're successful, ironically, is because it's like a it's it's so heavily weighted towards people with like car, like body shop car.

709
00:51:52.749 --> 00:51:54.750
They've touched a car at some point in their career.

710
00:51:54.770 --> 00:51:56.072
I think that's actually why successful.

711
00:51:56.552 --> 00:51:58.013
I'm just thinking of customer experience.

712
00:51:58.033 --> 00:51:59.255
So, yes, for sure.

713
00:51:59.635 --> 00:52:05.260
You know, maybe you lack a little bit of the big company experience, but sometimes a big company experience is what fucks up a company.

714
00:52:05.600 --> 00:52:05.780
Yeah.

715
00:52:05.800 --> 00:52:06.301
Yeah.

716
00:52:06.671 --> 00:52:12.014
It's important to remember that we're helping people and how do we do that well.

717
00:52:15.907 --> 00:52:19.049
What I'm describing is, look, we know how to fix cars.

718
00:52:19.149 --> 00:52:20.690
We know how to take care of people.

719
00:52:21.310 --> 00:52:24.312
We don't necessarily know how to manage people well.

720
00:52:24.752 --> 00:52:33.617
And that's hurt us because we've driven away good people at a shop level with bad managers because they knew the business, but they didn't know how to lead people.

721
00:52:34.237 --> 00:52:39.160
So we've also done a ton of training, training our team how to lead.

722
00:52:39.701 --> 00:52:41.341
And that's a constant effort to...

723
00:52:44.011 --> 00:52:46.332
Unfortunately, when you grow fast, that's what happens.

724
00:52:46.412 --> 00:52:50.913
Like you don't have a perfect leadership team, but you're striving for it and you're training for it.

725
00:52:51.413 --> 00:52:52.593
How fast have you grown again?

726
00:52:52.733 --> 00:52:54.994
I don't think we actually spoke about it on this podcast.

727
00:52:55.034 --> 00:52:56.774
We're talking about it before.

728
00:52:56.834 --> 00:53:06.136
So just to walk through the timelines, you went from one shop to like five, six shops and then financing everything.

729
00:53:06.476 --> 00:53:07.877
When does private equity get involved?

730
00:53:08.957 --> 00:53:11.939
How fast did you go from like the one shop to the 650?

731
00:53:11.979 --> 00:53:12.159
Sure.

732
00:53:12.179 --> 00:53:16.762
So from 2014 to 2019, went from one to eight and had three lined up to go to 11.

733
00:53:16.782 --> 00:53:17.983
And then I started looking for money.

734
00:53:25.433 --> 00:53:31.135
I was just going to do it with debt again, but the investment banker I was talking to encouraged me to talk to private equity, so I did.

735
00:53:31.535 --> 00:53:39.798
So we brought them in at the end of 2019, and we exited 2019 with 13 locations, probably $50 million in revenue.

736
00:53:40.578 --> 00:53:50.662
And then by the end of 2022, so three years later, we were almost 600 locations and, say, $2.6 or $7 billion in revenue.

737
00:53:51.202 --> 00:53:52.582
So super fast.

738
00:53:52.742 --> 00:53:54.323
So talk to me, first of all,

739
00:53:54.723 --> 00:53:55.584
Which was a thrill.

740
00:53:55.984 --> 00:53:58.765
You still have some hair, so it's going okay.

741
00:54:00.086 --> 00:54:01.427
But that's really fast.

742
00:54:01.687 --> 00:54:02.988
Yeah, it was awesome.

743
00:54:03.468 --> 00:54:08.851
I don't think there's other, not a lot of examples of companies that have grown that fast.

744
00:54:09.391 --> 00:54:10.372
Yeah, I'm super proud.

745
00:54:10.452 --> 00:54:15.895
I think it's a record in our industry, and I don't think it'd ever be touched.

746
00:54:16.175 --> 00:54:20.438
From a percentage of growth, I don't know what the math is, but it's thousands.

747
00:54:20.478 --> 00:54:22.539
The Kager's like a thousand or so.

748
00:54:22.619 --> 00:54:24.300
I don't know what exactly, but it's big.

749
00:54:24.580 --> 00:54:27.603
But you also were doing okay during COVID.

750
00:54:27.783 --> 00:54:36.091
So during COVID, you weren't growing at this speed, but it was almost like you survived and thrived during COVID, and then on the back end of COVID, it was just like an up and to the right.

751
00:54:36.972 --> 00:54:42.157
Because what we did during COVID is, well, first –

752
00:54:44.351 --> 00:54:50.655
First thing during COVID is business went to 50% immediately because everybody was told to stay home.

753
00:54:51.475 --> 00:54:53.976
I mean, we were, this is one thing I'm proud of.

754
00:54:54.177 --> 00:54:55.577
We were a necessary business.

755
00:54:56.078 --> 00:54:59.920
Like we, so I use that as a point of pride to our team.

756
00:55:00.040 --> 00:55:12.007
Like if you ever think or are embarrassed about what we do, like we're necessary to survival for the society in a time when everybody else was able, not everybody, but a lot of people were able to,

757
00:55:12.767 --> 00:55:13.307
stay at home.

758
00:55:13.948 --> 00:55:20.290
And, and so, um, from a business perspective though, couldn't get any worse.

759
00:55:20.330 --> 00:55:24.192
50% of the revenue is out the door and we have a really small profit margin.

760
00:55:24.392 --> 00:55:28.774
We're losing money at way sooner than 50% of revenue.

761
00:55:29.194 --> 00:55:36.518
And so the great thing about bringing in money at that time is they pushed me to lay off people and,

762
00:55:37.567 --> 00:55:41.550
And the good thing is that we didn't term them.

763
00:55:41.610 --> 00:55:46.533
We just laid them off and the government gave them a bunch of money to stay at home, which was good.

764
00:55:47.194 --> 00:55:53.659
But if it were me on my own without the institutional money and experience partnered with me,

765
00:55:54.579 --> 00:55:59.984
I know I would have hung on too long because of, I valued the people so much and I know how important they are.

766
00:56:00.605 --> 00:56:02.206
I would have not wanted to lay them off.

767
00:56:02.246 --> 00:56:06.330
I would have tried to pay them and I would have made the, put the business in it.

768
00:56:06.750 --> 00:56:08.772
It would have been in a bad spot.

769
00:56:09.112 --> 00:56:09.312
Now,

770
00:56:10.133 --> 00:56:16.255
Because I had an investor, I couldn't benefit from all the money that the government did to support businesses.

771
00:56:16.275 --> 00:56:18.336
So maybe that would have kept us alive.

772
00:56:18.396 --> 00:56:23.217
But I know from my own mistakes, I would have hung on to people when we couldn't afford to.

773
00:56:23.957 --> 00:56:26.058
The PE group forced me to lay them off.

774
00:56:26.498 --> 00:56:31.340
So that got the business able to survive.

775
00:56:32.160 --> 00:56:35.721
Then, you know, a few months in, we got comfortable with, look,

776
00:56:37.630 --> 00:56:39.872
the world is going to be a while before the world's normal.

777
00:56:39.972 --> 00:56:41.893
I will say we kept thinking it's going to be another month.

778
00:56:41.953 --> 00:56:47.798
It's going to be another month until, but we waited say three or four months in when we felt it wasn't going to get worse.

779
00:56:48.398 --> 00:56:52.021
And revenue at that time was maybe 65 to 70% of normal.

780
00:56:52.701 --> 00:56:55.463
And we got aggressive then.

781
00:56:55.984 --> 00:57:05.531
So rather you kind of had two choices, wait it out or now there's a bunch of people that would gladly sell their business because they're struggling to have,

782
00:57:07.352 --> 00:57:11.154
We got aggressive when everybody else was kind of sitting on the sidelines and it paid off.

783
00:57:11.794 --> 00:57:13.515
So there's a little bit of that risk reward.

784
00:57:14.356 --> 00:57:17.518
There were plenty of companies that took the strategy of wait it out more.

785
00:57:17.578 --> 00:57:19.499
We got aggressive when everybody else was waiting.

786
00:57:20.039 --> 00:57:22.940
And then after COVID, what do you think?

787
00:57:23.140 --> 00:57:29.864
I mean, aggressive and 650 locations over $2 billion in revenue are two different things.

788
00:57:30.224 --> 00:57:33.046
There's a little bit aggressive, but then there's massive scale.

789
00:57:33.606 --> 00:57:38.651
So what do you think and what did you do after COVID that allowed you to scale so quickly?

790
00:57:40.613 --> 00:57:50.782
Well, remember I've talked in the beginning about seeing the train has left the station on more and more work going to national companies.

791
00:57:51.143 --> 00:57:53.064
And so figuring out that

792
00:57:54.322 --> 00:57:58.584
our strategy as a regional company isn't really going to work or even a multi-regional.

793
00:57:59.844 --> 00:58:11.168
And what happened for me to realize that is great relationships that I thought I was performing really well and kicking ass for came and said, Hey, we've made a deal with the big company.

794
00:58:11.448 --> 00:58:12.669
We're going to send them to work now.

795
00:58:13.529 --> 00:58:16.491
When I thought like we were, they loved us.

796
00:58:16.531 --> 00:58:20.993
They were like, we get so much better performance from local MSOs rather than the big companies.

797
00:58:21.333 --> 00:58:23.815
And then during COVID instantly went away.

798
00:58:24.215 --> 00:58:25.015
We made a deal.

799
00:58:25.055 --> 00:58:26.156
It's going to the big company.

800
00:58:26.616 --> 00:58:29.578
And so that's to me, like, we need a race to be a big company.

801
00:58:29.598 --> 00:58:30.918
Let's form a national footprint.

802
00:58:31.259 --> 00:58:31.859
So we started.

803
00:58:32.539 --> 00:58:38.883
And by the way, we were, the two states we were in heavy were Illinois and California, which were.

804
00:58:40.263 --> 00:58:41.704
two of the biggest lockdown states.

805
00:58:42.204 --> 00:58:48.608
So it was a little bit of like, hey, we need to get in some other, we need to get in some red in the map where people are moving around for our business.

806
00:58:48.668 --> 00:58:50.309
We needed people moving and driving.

807
00:58:50.670 --> 00:58:52.251
And so it was that too.

808
00:58:52.311 --> 00:58:56.433
It's like Illinois and California are gonna be shut down hard for a while.

809
00:58:56.974 --> 00:58:58.375
We need to pivot the strategy.

810
00:58:58.935 --> 00:59:01.877
So again, it was really in response, like,

811
00:59:03.574 --> 00:59:13.802
It was both strategic as where's the industry going to be and where do we need to go, but also now what's not working about a strategy and what should we do different immediately.

812
00:59:14.002 --> 00:59:20.087
So it's a little bit of both, reactionary and set up the business for the future.

813
00:59:20.788 --> 00:59:20.968
And...

814
00:59:23.809 --> 00:59:26.571
waiting it out seemed like a terrible, terrible idea.

815
00:59:26.972 --> 00:59:29.854
When you scale that fast, how do you make sure nothing breaks?

816
00:59:31.035 --> 00:59:32.216
It does, quite frankly.

817
00:59:33.216 --> 00:59:33.897
Stuff breaks.

818
00:59:34.137 --> 00:59:38.521
You fix it when it does.

819
00:59:38.721 --> 00:59:44.565
There were plenty of times, I mean, where stuff broke.

820
00:59:45.026 --> 00:59:50.450
The great thing about our business and probably any business,

821
00:59:51.857 --> 00:59:53.697
You don't get it right every time.

822
00:59:53.777 --> 00:59:55.918
Like you do have an upset customer every once in a while.

823
00:59:56.518 --> 00:59:58.458
So let's just take something simple like that.

824
00:59:58.598 --> 01:00:00.759
Like the customer's upset.

825
01:00:01.119 --> 01:00:03.899
They're unhappy with the way the repair looks.

826
01:00:04.319 --> 01:00:09.600
Or we told them we were going to be done by Friday and we took two weeks longer than we told them.

827
01:00:10.240 --> 01:00:14.241
Or there was a misunderstanding in something and they're upset.

828
01:00:14.901 --> 01:00:20.462
Well, the great thing about that is they've told you and you have a chance to make it right.

829
01:00:20.482 --> 01:00:21.102
Right.

830
01:00:21.371 --> 01:00:32.391
So whatever it is they're mad at you about, as a business, you can ignore them, tell them that's what they, you know, not care about your reputation, or you can...

831
01:00:33.835 --> 01:00:34.575
Try to make it right.

832
01:00:34.595 --> 01:00:35.795
Do everything you can to make it right.

833
01:00:36.316 --> 01:00:40.777
And what I learned in that is those are the customers you win for life.

834
01:00:41.617 --> 01:00:50.919
They'll be more loyal than the customer that had a perfect experience because they had something go wrong and you actually cared and you actually did something about it.

835
01:00:51.279 --> 01:00:53.159
Well, just apply that principle to everything.

836
01:00:54.579 --> 01:00:56.860
In a business, something's going to go wrong.

837
01:00:58.345 --> 01:00:59.446
You can't be a victim.

838
01:00:59.486 --> 01:01:00.847
You can't blame other people.

839
01:01:00.867 --> 01:01:02.289
You just, you fix it.

840
01:01:03.169 --> 01:01:06.933
You take action to make sure it doesn't happen again.

841
01:01:07.393 --> 01:01:10.456
And you take action to like make it better going forward.

842
01:01:11.417 --> 01:01:14.900
And that's little, to me, that's with little things and big.

843
01:01:15.461 --> 01:01:23.708
And the other thing is, is what's been, I think, powerful for me is transparency, right?

844
01:01:25.560 --> 01:01:35.567
When you try to hide, take for example, we got cyber attacked and that's a terrible thing because we're dealing with insurance claims and stuff.

845
01:01:35.927 --> 01:01:40.390
We're contractually obligated to protect information like and now you're hacked.

846
01:01:41.993 --> 01:01:44.234
Well, first, you don't know how bad you're hacked.

847
01:01:44.254 --> 01:01:45.895
You don't know if information's out or not.

848
01:01:45.915 --> 01:01:46.876
You got to figure that out.

849
01:01:47.316 --> 01:01:50.858
But you can also, like, do something dumb, like try to hide that.

850
01:01:51.499 --> 01:01:56.341
Or you can start to call partners and customers, et cetera, and say, hey, this is what's happened.

851
01:01:56.361 --> 01:01:56.442
And.

852
01:01:57.602 --> 01:02:05.368
This is what, you know, if you know what went wrong and be transparent, own it has worked for me.

853
01:02:05.829 --> 01:02:07.150
Noom is a success story partner.

854
01:02:07.370 --> 01:02:09.712
Now, here's the thing that nobody tells you about losing weight.

855
01:02:10.152 --> 01:02:11.613
Losing it isn't the hard part.

856
01:02:11.974 --> 01:02:12.794
Keeping it off is.

857
01:02:13.095 --> 01:02:20.280
Almost anyone can white knuckle a few good months of diet and exercise, but then work gets crazy and routines break and it all comes right back.

858
01:02:20.420 --> 01:02:23.002
I have built my entire career and my life around one idea.

859
01:02:23.022 --> 01:02:23.443
One idea.

860
01:02:23.943 --> 01:02:27.324
Systems beat motivation and weight loss is no different.

861
01:02:27.604 --> 01:02:30.485
You need something that holds up when life doesn't cooperate.

862
01:02:30.705 --> 01:02:32.466
And that's exactly what Noom is built for.

863
01:02:32.866 --> 01:02:36.007
Noom is a health and wellness app that combines GLP one medication.

864
01:02:36.287 --> 01:02:41.869
That's the weight loss medication that everyone's talking about with behavioral support to the medication kickstarts the weight loss.

865
01:02:42.229 --> 01:02:49.111
And then the psychology side, the daily lessons, the food logging, the real coaching that builds the habits that make it stick.

866
01:02:49.512 --> 01:02:50.792
Even if you stop the medication.

867
01:02:51.112 --> 01:02:51.612
And it works.

868
01:02:51.852 --> 01:02:55.013
People lose 37% more weight with Noom than with GLP-1 alone.

869
01:02:55.373 --> 01:02:57.193
Noom helps you lose weight and keep it off.

870
01:02:57.453 --> 01:02:58.294
And that's the difference.

871
01:02:58.494 --> 01:03:00.774
The Noom GLP-1 program starts at $39.

872
01:03:00.914 --> 01:03:02.974
It's delivered to your door in as little as seven days.

873
01:03:03.014 --> 01:03:05.815
So start your GLP-1 journey today at Noom.com.

874
01:03:06.075 --> 01:03:08.256
That's N-O-O-M.com.

875
01:03:08.656 --> 01:03:08.876
Noom.

876
01:03:09.236 --> 01:03:10.136
Lose for keeps.

877
01:03:10.576 --> 01:03:15.857
Initial one-month subscription from $39 plus tax and $99 plus tax per month thereafter.

878
01:03:16.257 --> 01:03:17.718
Cost of medication not included.

879
01:03:18.078 --> 01:03:19.998
Final pricing depends on program selection.

880
01:03:20.138 --> 01:03:30.293
Results based on a January 2026 analysis of 14,203 NoomGLP1RX program members who logged weight over a 40-week period.

881
01:03:30.794 --> 01:03:33.918
Higher app engagement was associated with greater weight loss at 16 weeks.

882
01:03:35.080 --> 01:03:36.321
NetSuite is a success story partner.

883
01:03:36.521 --> 01:03:38.041
Now you probably know NetSuite already.

884
01:03:38.061 --> 01:03:45.485
It's a software that a ton of companies use to basically manage everything, their finances, their inventory, their HR, it's just all in one place.

885
01:03:45.705 --> 01:03:47.706
Now they just came out with NetSuite Next.

886
01:03:47.906 --> 01:03:50.607
This is the AI version of all of that.

887
01:03:50.627 --> 01:03:55.250
So now you can ask it a question the way you'd ask someone on your team who just knows everything about your business.

888
01:03:55.590 --> 01:03:56.490
It gives you the answer.

889
01:03:56.770 --> 01:04:02.473
It keeps you up to date on all the things you need to know about your company and your business without you having to go digging for them.

890
01:04:02.713 --> 01:04:08.337
And it has these AI agents that take care of all the routine work in your business that eats up everybody's day.

891
01:04:08.597 --> 01:04:13.421
Now, the bigger picture here is that AI is starting to change how teams actually work together.

892
01:04:13.721 --> 01:04:17.504
It's happening incredibly fast, and most companies don't have a plan for it.

893
01:04:17.744 --> 01:04:18.404
NetSuite does.

894
01:04:18.704 --> 01:04:24.188
They have a free guide called Aligning for the Agentic Era, how AI is changing everyday work.

895
01:04:24.348 --> 01:04:29.352
It breaks down how AI could reshape the way your whole organization works and what your business should be doing to get ahead of it.

896
01:04:29.532 --> 01:04:32.253
If I needed a tool like NetSuite, it's what I'd use and you should too.

897
01:04:32.533 --> 01:04:41.475
So if your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get our free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era, How AI is Changing Everyday Work at netsuite.com slash scottclary.

898
01:04:41.755 --> 01:04:45.476
The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash scottclary.

899
01:04:45.736 --> 01:04:48.137
That's netsuite.com slash scottclary.

900
01:04:48.237 --> 01:04:49.558
Monarch is a success story partner.

901
01:04:49.638 --> 01:04:50.359
Now, quick question.

902
01:04:50.499 --> 01:04:52.461
Do you know where your money went last month?

903
01:04:52.561 --> 01:04:54.303
Not roughly, but exactly.

904
01:04:54.403 --> 01:04:55.124
And most people don't.

905
01:04:55.344 --> 01:04:56.265
And I didn't for years.

906
01:04:56.325 --> 01:04:58.447
And that is most of our money stories, right?

907
01:04:58.527 --> 01:05:02.270
When we first start our career, we have one income and one account and you can kind of wing it.

908
01:05:02.510 --> 01:05:10.378
But once you're running businesses, once you're investing, once you're carrying 50 different subscriptions that you stopped paying attention to, winging it gets super expensive.

909
01:05:10.578 --> 01:05:11.599
Monarch fixed that for me.

910
01:05:11.679 --> 01:05:14.440
It is the personal finance app that tracks everything.

911
01:05:14.480 --> 01:05:18.562
So that means accounts, investments, savings goals, spending all on one screen.

912
01:05:18.682 --> 01:05:22.384
The first week I had it, it fired recurring charges I'd been paying for months without realizing.

913
01:05:22.484 --> 01:05:28.207
And every single week, the AI recap tells me if spending spiked, if my net worth moved and what bills are coming.

914
01:05:28.227 --> 01:05:31.468
And I can just ask it, hey, can I afford this trip without touching my savings?

915
01:05:31.528 --> 01:05:34.630
And I can get a real answer based on my actual numbers.

916
01:05:34.750 --> 01:05:36.911
It is a financial advisor in your pocket.

917
01:05:37.171 --> 01:05:39.012
It costs less than an hour with a real one.

918
01:05:39.152 --> 01:05:40.934
So write your own money story with Monarch.

919
01:05:41.174 --> 01:05:45.739
Use code success at monarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50.

920
01:05:46.019 --> 01:05:49.543
That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code success.

921
01:05:50.243 --> 01:05:54.808
If people want to go into entrepreneurship, just like I asked one last thought on everything you're talking about.

922
01:05:54.828 --> 01:05:56.309
You're being very like...

923
01:05:56.990 --> 01:06:01.074
honest about the shit that's worked and hasn't worked out on this journey.

924
01:06:01.114 --> 01:06:11.165
And I think that the important lesson is if you if you choose to bet on yourself and you choose to build a business, everything you're speaking about, the good and the bad, it'll probably happen to you at some point.

925
01:06:11.826 --> 01:06:18.332
Like it's like almost it's as inevitable as the first version of whatever it is you're building is going to suck.

926
01:06:19.219 --> 01:06:21.220
It's like it's all going to happen.

927
01:06:21.640 --> 01:06:24.481
All the stress, all the headaches, hopefully no cyber attacks.

928
01:06:24.501 --> 01:06:29.283
But at some point, if you're big enough, there's going to be something that is more stressful than you ever thought possible.

929
01:06:29.303 --> 01:06:29.924
It's going to happen.

930
01:06:30.584 --> 01:06:37.567
And transparency, dealing with it head on, realizing that, you know, you're still going to be around tomorrow.

931
01:06:38.327 --> 01:06:40.708
And this is kind of what you're signing up for.

932
01:06:48.892 --> 01:06:58.139
beyond your wildest dreams, the wealth it creates, the jobs it creates, all of that, it all comes with stress, but you know what you're signing up for.

933
01:06:58.780 --> 01:07:03.143
You know, and the final piece of that rapid growth was there was a...

934
01:07:03.924 --> 01:07:10.145
There was the third largest company in the industry that was in a bad financial situation.

935
01:07:10.886 --> 01:07:19.268
I had recruited some people away from that company, so I had a little bit of idea what was going wrong, what they were doing from how they were running it and what wasn't going to work.

936
01:07:19.368 --> 01:07:29.590
And so I just, the news about their financial situation started to come out in Moody's and the Wall Street Journal, etc.

937
01:07:34.251 --> 01:07:55.684
they had some debt coming up the next summer and I knew there was no way they were going to improve the business enough to like refinance that debt and so I did some research who's the bond holder and I called the Clear Lake who's our PE partner now I called them and said look like we've grown the business enough our partner's going to want to exit next year and it looks like to me you're going to own that company and um

938
01:07:57.586 --> 01:08:09.180
I think we can put them together, form a nice, again, knowing I needed a national footprint, I think we can put them together and I have a team that can run it and we'll create a nice national footprint business, putting the two together.

939
01:08:09.220 --> 01:08:14.146
So we should stay in touch because if you end up owning it and our current PE group wants to exit,

940
01:08:14.947 --> 01:08:20.611
And I mean, to hear them tell the story, they said, I called them and said, you're going to be the dog that caught the bus and you're fucked and you need me.

941
01:08:20.891 --> 01:08:22.212
But that's not how I did it.

942
01:08:22.592 --> 01:08:32.859
But I just recognized the opportunity was going to be there and wanted to make sure I positioned my company to do something with the opportunity should have come along and ended up working out.

943
01:08:33.940 --> 01:08:35.641
So that leaped us from 200 to 535.

944
01:08:38.843 --> 01:08:44.848
And then now it's just been still, is it still at this point individual acquisition or now are you looking to buy like larger groups?

945
01:08:45.268 --> 01:08:46.068
Both, both.

946
01:08:46.209 --> 01:09:03.121
I mean, we slowed down the growth for the past couple of years because when you do take on a bankrupt company, it takes a minute to, you basically, you know, I drew on a whiteboard to the team, like a small ship with a sinking ship that's bigger and basically drew a little chain.

947
01:09:03.181 --> 01:09:04.903
I'm like, we just picked up this anchor

948
01:09:05.723 --> 01:09:09.605
And what we need to do is pull it up out of the water and then combine it and give us a nice shiny new ship.

949
01:09:10.406 --> 01:09:14.608
But if we didn't do it right, that big ship was going to drag us down.

950
01:09:15.709 --> 01:09:17.290
And so it's been a battle.

951
01:09:17.470 --> 01:09:19.071
You know, stuff is more broke than I thought.

952
01:09:19.111 --> 01:09:20.232
Stuff was harder than I thought.

953
01:09:21.032 --> 01:09:26.475
Um, interest rates went up, the market went down, insurance premiums went up, all kinds of things came our way.

954
01:09:27.035 --> 01:09:31.057
Um, so you'd buckle down and get, get better and better.

955
01:09:31.238 --> 01:09:40.122
And so we've been doing that for the last couple, we've really got a great business now and have our self position to take off with growth again, which I think it come sometime next year.

956
01:09:40.442 --> 01:09:48.667
But it, I guess I'm describing a phase of, we kind of paused the rapid growth to get significantly better, better infrastructure, better people.

957
01:09:48.687 --> 01:09:49.047
Um, yeah.

958
01:09:50.373 --> 01:09:52.734
You can't just keep going, keep going.

959
01:09:54.035 --> 01:10:00.038
If the business is, we had to prepare the business to be better and get it ready to be bigger.

960
01:10:00.198 --> 01:10:10.043
But you're so good at understanding when to put your foot on the gas and understanding when to just pause and chill for a second.

961
01:10:10.743 --> 01:10:15.105
And it takes a lot of wisdom to understand when you do what.

962
01:10:15.765 --> 01:10:20.808
Because you're very good at growing quickly and taking risks.

963
01:10:21.188 --> 01:10:34.094
And even perceived risk, I think it's like risk to a degree at a high level where you're acquiring a bankrupt company that's bigger than you, that's coming with a lot of skeletons in their closet and a lot of baggage you're going to have to figure out and deal with, right?

964
01:10:35.114 --> 01:10:56.292
so good that's risk but make the move be aggressive but then okay you could really fuck yourself over if you don't pay attention to the thing you just did and you keep going you know at full speed and so it's like this balance it's like what season of the business are you in are you in a growth mode are you in a protection mode kind of like

965
01:10:56.833 --> 01:10:57.895
All this is so crazy.

966
01:10:57.915 --> 01:11:08.556
I don't know if you ever thought about this, but all the same things that you did, like when you were like before you're even an entrepreneur, like when you're figuring out how to like, like start that first shop.

967
01:11:11.025 --> 01:11:15.189
the growth and then growth, growth, and then protect, and then growth, growth, growth, and then protect.

968
01:11:15.590 --> 01:11:18.453
You've carried, the way you operate has never changed.

969
01:11:19.094 --> 01:11:21.837
Yeah, you've got to remember the long game.

970
01:11:21.857 --> 01:11:26.001
You've got to survive in order to... Yeah, so you grow, aggressive, risk, and then protect.

971
01:11:26.041 --> 01:11:27.643
Grow, aggressive, risk, and then protect.

972
01:11:27.963 --> 01:11:28.484
It's worked.

973
01:11:28.584 --> 01:11:33.269
And I think another maybe good thing to remember is...

974
01:11:35.620 --> 01:11:37.201
you don't want to ever lie to yourself.

975
01:11:37.401 --> 01:11:43.424
Like you don't have to always advertise where you're struggling or where you, but growth can hide a lot of sins.

976
01:11:44.225 --> 01:11:47.547
And I think the important thing is that,

977
01:11:48.680 --> 01:11:50.982
you don't want to keep growing to keep hiding the sins.

978
01:11:51.262 --> 01:11:55.665
You have to, you have to not lie to yourself and say, look, like this is broken.

979
01:11:56.466 --> 01:12:00.068
Growth is hiding it right now, but if we don't fix this, it's going to show up.

980
01:12:00.629 --> 01:12:09.315
And I, I, I do see, cause I see it in the management team sometimes, like they'll use the disguise.

981
01:12:10.876 --> 01:12:16.140
And, and as an, as a CEO or any executive, I, I wouldn't,

982
01:12:17.523 --> 01:12:20.692
You want to know where your flaws are better than anybody else.

983
01:12:21.253 --> 01:12:22.517
And you don't want...

984
01:12:23.452 --> 01:12:25.473
Hiding them might be the right thing for a minute.

985
01:12:25.733 --> 01:12:27.153
But long term, it's going to bite you in the ass.

986
01:12:27.213 --> 01:12:29.274
Yeah, you've got to know that you've got to fix it.

987
01:12:29.354 --> 01:12:33.375
Like you can't keep out running problems.

988
01:12:33.415 --> 01:12:34.035
They come back.

989
01:12:34.355 --> 01:12:36.576
It's like you can't hide from an upset customer.

990
01:12:36.596 --> 01:12:37.336
They're not going away.

991
01:12:37.996 --> 01:12:40.857
Crawling under your desk when they come to the front counter doesn't work.

992
01:12:40.937 --> 01:12:42.517
Go out there and talk to them.

993
01:12:42.777 --> 01:12:44.698
But I've seen people try to do that, right?

994
01:12:45.018 --> 01:12:46.238
They know somebody's unhappy.

995
01:12:46.258 --> 01:12:49.459
They see them come in the front door and the manager running, hiding the back.

996
01:12:49.559 --> 01:12:50.080
What is that?

997
01:12:50.100 --> 01:12:51.323
This is like a life lesson, though.

998
01:12:51.343 --> 01:12:52.104
This is a life lesson.

999
01:12:52.124 --> 01:12:53.587
Your problems are not going to go away.

1000
01:12:53.607 --> 01:12:54.088
They're not.

1001
01:12:54.289 --> 01:12:55.050
Like, face them.

1002
01:12:56.032 --> 01:13:00.081
So in rapid growth, you have to know there's problems.

1003
01:13:01.398 --> 01:13:03.478
It's our job to actually dig them out.

1004
01:13:04.439 --> 01:13:05.279
What are we missing?

1005
01:13:06.399 --> 01:13:08.319
Where are we broken where we think we're okay?

1006
01:13:08.659 --> 01:13:13.820
Like you almost want to be relentless at finding your own flaws before they show up in a bad way.

1007
01:13:14.300 --> 01:13:17.641
Have you thought about where this will end up?

1008
01:13:17.781 --> 01:13:24.002
I mean, you're now, you're turning into that national.

1009
01:13:24.502 --> 01:13:26.162
You are that national company now.

1010
01:13:26.722 --> 01:13:29.883
So have you thought, you know, as a founder, where you want to take it?

1011
01:13:30.743 --> 01:13:31.983
Do you want to IPO?

1012
01:13:32.003 --> 01:13:39.025
Do you want to... Not in and of itself, but I think a business gets so big, that's the only way.

1013
01:13:39.065 --> 01:13:39.786
But you never know.

1014
01:13:40.846 --> 01:13:43.967
There's a lot of big companies out there with a lot of money.

1015
01:13:44.047 --> 01:13:51.409
So maybe somebody who doesn't do collision work that's already a public company wants to partner a collision company with the one.

1016
01:13:52.209 --> 01:13:54.090
None of those conversations are happening right now, but...

1017
01:13:54.890 --> 01:13:58.836
I think my goal is to become the biggest and the best.

1018
01:13:58.956 --> 01:14:03.102
And, of course, the biggest in the industry might laugh at me saying that because I'm a third their size.

1019
01:14:03.162 --> 01:14:06.507
But, look, combined, the top three are only 25% of the market.

1020
01:14:07.168 --> 01:14:09.471
Oh, it's still fragmented to a degree.

1021
01:14:09.491 --> 01:14:10.353
Very, very much.

1022
01:14:10.433 --> 01:14:10.653
Yeah.

1023
01:14:11.474 --> 01:14:14.617
To me, we very much can be the biggest and the best one day.

1024
01:14:14.677 --> 01:14:17.040
And that's who wants to quit at number three.

1025
01:14:17.120 --> 01:14:17.520
I don't know.

1026
01:14:18.341 --> 01:14:19.682
So that's where I'd like to take it.

1027
01:14:19.763 --> 01:14:26.009
And then as far as like public or whatever, that's just eventually investors need to get the return on their money.

1028
01:14:26.049 --> 01:14:27.610
So you have to do something.

1029
01:14:27.630 --> 01:14:28.832
But there's other things.

1030
01:14:30.323 --> 01:14:34.346
You have to be prepared to go public, I think, but that's not what we talk about.

1031
01:14:34.406 --> 01:14:39.970
We don't even think in that way right now because it's not on the immediate horizon.

1032
01:14:39.990 --> 01:14:42.752
There's so many other things to do in the meantime.

1033
01:14:42.932 --> 01:14:47.094
What I have learned is a great business, money has show up.

1034
01:14:47.134 --> 01:14:52.258
If you have a great business, you'll find investors, whether it's public or private or another company that wants it.

1035
01:14:52.938 --> 01:14:59.663
Our job is to build a great business that everybody wants, and then you have people knocking at the door with money.

1036
01:15:02.740 --> 01:15:04.101
And that works if you're small or big.

1037
01:15:04.121 --> 01:15:07.285
If it's a great business, people will knock on the door with money to buy it.

1038
01:15:08.266 --> 01:15:11.349
At this stage, I guess two questions.

1039
01:15:11.709 --> 01:15:16.374
Did you ever think it was going to get this big when you first started your first... No, no.

1040
01:15:16.615 --> 01:15:20.539
I mean, I, again, didn't even know what I would do for a living when I grew up.

1041
01:15:20.759 --> 01:15:22.481
And I simply...

1042
01:15:24.025 --> 01:15:29.091
didn't want to have the answer always be no, that I can't afford it, can't do it.

1043
01:15:29.932 --> 01:15:35.359
Didn't want to get beat up for the clothes that my mom put me in and sent me to school, right?

1044
01:15:35.379 --> 01:15:37.962
So it was really like just that.

1045
01:15:40.205 --> 01:15:44.128
being able to not have the answer always be no.

1046
01:15:44.168 --> 01:15:45.769
It wasn't a big, lavish dream.

1047
01:15:45.989 --> 01:15:48.771
It's just grown over time again with the change in my thinking.

1048
01:15:49.391 --> 01:15:54.875
What lights you up and gets you excited now about the business?

1049
01:15:55.816 --> 01:15:57.277
I mean, the scale's enormous.

1050
01:15:57.317 --> 01:15:58.898
What do you get excited about?

1051
01:15:59.978 --> 01:16:00.899
Oh, a ton of stuff.

1052
01:16:01.079 --> 01:16:04.802
But probably the biggest is the growth in people.

1053
01:16:04.822 --> 01:16:06.463
The effect we've had on people...

1054
01:16:07.914 --> 01:16:10.896
Look, nobody wants to know a collision repair company until they need it.

1055
01:16:11.837 --> 01:16:14.819
And then, you know, that's the reality of it.

1056
01:16:16.160 --> 01:16:22.984
Whether you know it or not, the truth is that someday either you or somebody you care about is going to have an accident.

1057
01:16:23.264 --> 01:16:28.748
And you're going to want to go to somebody that you can trust to make sure you or your family are treated right.

1058
01:16:28.868 --> 01:16:30.589
And that to me is a great thing.

1059
01:16:30.689 --> 01:16:32.911
It's a great service we provide.

1060
01:16:32.931 --> 01:16:33.271
Yeah.

1061
01:16:34.080 --> 01:16:34.921
So there's that.

1062
01:16:35.161 --> 01:16:38.603
We're able to fix cars and donate them to people in need.

1063
01:16:39.023 --> 01:16:42.165
We're able to teach people a trade that they can make a living on.

1064
01:16:42.505 --> 01:16:48.469
But that growth in people is the unexpected thing that I didn't see coming.

1065
01:16:48.949 --> 01:16:59.776
I've gotten to see people's lives change from the career path that the company's able to give them since we've gotten bigger that I never even imagined would come.

1066
01:16:59.956 --> 01:17:01.917
So that's been really, really cool.

1067
01:17:02.838 --> 01:17:08.321
And now we happen to be in an industry that's transforming.

1068
01:17:09.341 --> 01:17:11.403
And it's transforming because of technology.

1069
01:17:11.543 --> 01:17:15.225
So think about a car just five or six years ago.

1070
01:17:15.705 --> 01:17:17.466
Now the car can almost drive itself.

1071
01:17:17.546 --> 01:17:20.647
There's all these advanced driver assist systems.

1072
01:17:20.908 --> 01:17:23.449
You know, for decades before, cars were really unchanged.

1073
01:17:23.489 --> 01:17:24.630
I mean, they added airbags.

1074
01:17:25.170 --> 01:17:27.391
Unibodies came around in the 80s, I guess, or whatever.

1075
01:17:27.431 --> 01:17:30.733
But fixing a car has been pretty much the same now.

1076
01:17:32.245 --> 01:17:33.186
I describe it this way.

1077
01:17:33.486 --> 01:17:36.529
A 777 airplane has 15 million lines of code.

1078
01:17:37.350 --> 01:17:40.113
Today's automobiles have 150 million lines of code.

1079
01:17:40.553 --> 01:17:42.135
Like they're complicated.

1080
01:17:42.775 --> 01:17:47.240
And so it's an amazingly different industry than it was just a few years ago.

1081
01:17:47.820 --> 01:17:49.482
And so that means we have to adapt and change.

1082
01:17:49.502 --> 01:17:50.222
We have to get better.

1083
01:17:50.242 --> 01:17:50.943
We have to train.

1084
01:17:50.983 --> 01:17:51.584
We have to learn.

1085
01:17:52.164 --> 01:17:53.325
And then the way that,

1086
01:17:55.965 --> 01:17:56.965
Things are processed.

1087
01:17:57.306 --> 01:18:02.348
Like, I think the industry is going to be in a big transformational period, and we get to be a part of that.

1088
01:18:02.848 --> 01:18:04.629
And so, and it's short technicians.

1089
01:18:04.669 --> 01:18:06.130
Like, all trades are short of people.

1090
01:18:06.470 --> 01:18:11.692
So we're out there talking about the opportunity, letting them know, because I think our technicians make more than people know.

1091
01:18:11.712 --> 01:18:19.036
You know, average technician makes $100,000 a year, which isn't huge money, but it's way better than the average U.S. wage.

1092
01:18:19.616 --> 01:18:21.257
And I just want...

1093
01:18:22.218 --> 01:18:29.005
Everybody, you know, like everybody's afraid of like AI taking away white collar, a lot of white collar jobs.

1094
01:18:29.365 --> 01:18:31.568
We have an industry, you can be proud of what you're doing.

1095
01:18:31.768 --> 01:18:32.889
It creates opportunity for people.

1096
01:18:32.929 --> 01:18:38.835
And maybe it's not for you, but it's been fun to like start to get the word out because it's been fun.

1097
01:18:38.935 --> 01:18:40.415
it's literally never been done.

1098
01:18:40.435 --> 01:18:43.456
Nobody's ever like said, Hey, collision repair is a great career.

1099
01:18:43.476 --> 01:18:44.197
You should look at it.

1100
01:18:44.637 --> 01:18:53.519
And I think we had the opportunity to do that, attract people to the industry because it's super short of people and a whole lot of technicians are a baby boomer age ready to retire.

1101
01:18:53.919 --> 01:18:55.160
The problem is about to get bigger.

1102
01:18:55.200 --> 01:18:56.240
Supply and demand is real.

1103
01:18:56.260 --> 01:19:00.461
So the guys are probably going to get paid more and more for what they do.

1104
01:19:00.541 --> 01:19:02.342
Cause that's just the way things work.

1105
01:19:02.402 --> 01:19:05.523
So I'm super excited about,

1106
01:19:07.282 --> 01:19:16.069
what's really our problems for the industry and all that struggle I used to run from, I'm, I'm trying to embrace it and have us as a company be a solution.

1107
01:19:16.529 --> 01:19:20.273
We set up a, um, a 501 C three because, um,

1108
01:19:21.196 --> 01:19:25.459
What if competitors and insurers and everybody, like it's a problem.

1109
01:19:26.020 --> 01:19:30.503
It's a problem for everyone that there's not enough collision repair technicians.

1110
01:19:31.043 --> 01:19:42.732
It's a problem for the consumer because if repairing a car starts to cost more and more and more because there's a shortage of people, insurance premium goes up, which then affects everybody who owns a car.

1111
01:19:43.172 --> 01:19:43.613
And so...

1112
01:19:44.663 --> 01:19:47.346
it's, it's a bigger problem than crash champions.

1113
01:19:47.526 --> 01:19:59.598
It's a bigger problem than any other one company, us figuring out how to solve it for the industry, but also for the consumer and vehicle owners is, is super kind of cool and important.

1114
01:19:59.618 --> 01:20:01.399
It's not, it's not curing cancer.

1115
01:20:01.640 --> 01:20:03.101
It's not making people live longer.

1116
01:20:03.121 --> 01:20:06.124
There's, it's not putting infrastructure on the moon.

1117
01:20:06.504 --> 01:20:07.605
So it's not as big as,

1118
01:20:08.466 --> 01:20:15.509
some companies are thinking or trying to do, but it's, it's what I've known my whole life and it's a pretty cool time period.

1119
01:20:15.589 --> 01:20:16.650
So I'm excited about it.

1120
01:20:16.710 --> 01:20:21.952
And that, uh, that I think was your question originally, maybe I kind of went on a little soapbox.

1121
01:20:22.012 --> 01:20:22.733
No, I like it.

1122
01:20:22.793 --> 01:20:25.794
It was, it was, the question was what lights you up that lights you up.

1123
01:20:25.834 --> 01:20:26.214
That's all.

1124
01:20:28.436 --> 01:20:34.740
I want to just talk about trades for a second because we've been going into the business.

1125
01:20:34.780 --> 01:20:40.264
I think people, they've learned a lot from sort of like how you've built and how you've thought through all the different stages of the business.

1126
01:20:40.284 --> 01:20:41.945
There's a lot of wisdom there.

1127
01:20:42.266 --> 01:20:54.534
But one thing that you're super passionate about and I think is something that can definitely be talked about is the trades and the fact that, I mean, ever since I was a kid, I'm

1128
01:20:56.856 --> 01:21:02.839
You know, everybody always kind of knew there was money in the trades, but I don't think a lot of kids went into the trades.

1129
01:21:02.919 --> 01:21:05.200
I don't think a lot of people are looking for that.

1130
01:21:05.220 --> 01:21:09.621
They're all going to university or college or like, especially, you know, with my with my group of friends.

1131
01:21:10.182 --> 01:21:13.583
And I guess it really hasn't gotten much better is basically what you're saying.

1132
01:21:13.603 --> 01:21:18.585
It's not like there's a ton of people going to the trades, even though they know they can make good money.

1133
01:21:18.865 --> 01:21:20.206
And now everybody's stressed about.

1134
01:21:20.226 --> 01:21:21.526
A.I.

1135
01:21:21.546 --> 01:21:22.707
taking their jobs and.

1136
01:21:23.667 --> 01:21:28.670
AI can write a legal brief and AI can do admin work better than a lot of people can do it.

1137
01:21:29.571 --> 01:21:37.616
So why do you think that, how do we get people into traits?

1138
01:21:38.017 --> 01:21:38.737
What's the answer?

1139
01:21:39.077 --> 01:21:44.921
Like why is there such a reputation or a stigma or why do people stay away from it?

1140
01:21:44.961 --> 01:21:46.042
How do we fix that?

1141
01:21:53.547 --> 01:21:57.190
parents and everybody, you know, parents want what's best for the kids.

1142
01:21:57.210 --> 01:21:58.451
I want what's best for mine.

1143
01:21:58.892 --> 01:22:08.640
And, and when the, when the world around you is presenting like college and, and white collar, whatever you want to call them, type of jobs are there.

1144
01:22:09.180 --> 01:22:11.561
are the better jobs are the better future.

1145
01:22:11.921 --> 01:22:15.922
Like that's what you start to push your kids toward because you want a great future for them.

1146
01:22:16.263 --> 01:22:23.305
And then shop class gets taken out of school and welding class gets taken out of school because the whole push is you got to go to college.

1147
01:22:23.365 --> 01:22:26.186
If you want to, if you want a great future, you got to go to college.

1148
01:22:26.846 --> 01:22:27.887
And I, I,

1149
01:22:28.840 --> 01:22:32.661
Look, I believe that there are great futures in going to college.

1150
01:22:32.801 --> 01:22:40.023
And if you're going to be a doctor or if you're going to be a lawyer or if you're going to be an accountant or a CEO, like there's there's a ton of jobs.

1151
01:22:41.263 --> 01:22:42.464
That you need to go to college for.

1152
01:22:42.864 --> 01:22:45.764
But I also believe that there's a ton of jobs that you don't.

1153
01:22:45.924 --> 01:22:47.605
And people made fortunes.

1154
01:22:49.370 --> 01:22:56.263
fixing or building homes, fixing or building cars, or any type of service around the world long before there was the technology there was today.

1155
01:22:56.644 --> 01:23:00.231
And there's still fortunes to be made in all those things.

1156
01:23:00.892 --> 01:23:01.012
I,

1157
01:23:02.558 --> 01:23:07.724
I understand how it happened and why, because we all want our kids to have great futures.

1158
01:23:07.784 --> 01:23:11.087
And for decades, that's what parents were in education was trying to do.

1159
01:23:11.848 --> 01:23:17.013
Now it's kind of over levered, which is created, which is what also tends to happen with everything.

1160
01:23:17.053 --> 01:23:17.234
Right.

1161
01:23:17.254 --> 01:23:19.276
You go too far one way and then you got to come back.

1162
01:23:19.616 --> 01:23:21.138
So now everything's went too far this way.

1163
01:23:21.158 --> 01:23:21.798
There's not enough.

1164
01:23:22.579 --> 01:23:23.760
skilled trades.

1165
01:23:23.920 --> 01:23:26.523
There's not enough skilled workers in the world.

1166
01:23:26.983 --> 01:23:30.526
And so now here's where the huge opportunity lives.

1167
01:23:30.987 --> 01:23:34.230
So it's getting out there.

1168
01:23:34.250 --> 01:23:35.230
You see it all the time.

1169
01:23:35.711 --> 01:23:36.091
You see...

1170
01:23:38.193 --> 01:23:42.474
big corporations announcing $100 million to train apprentice programs.

1171
01:23:42.994 --> 01:23:53.138
And you see, heck, I was even watching news one, and I think it was, I hope I got this right, I think it was Metallica was raising money to contribute to, like, skilled workers.

1172
01:23:53.518 --> 01:23:54.898
And I'm like, what do they have to do?

1173
01:23:54.938 --> 01:24:00.700
Like, you just, it's amazing where, like, places you wouldn't even think of are starting to, like...

1174
01:24:01.260 --> 01:24:05.543
And it's not to say don't go to college or there's not great things to do that route.

1175
01:24:05.803 --> 01:24:10.647
It's just to say, hey, in case nobody's looking, there's also great opportunity here.

1176
01:24:11.067 --> 01:24:13.889
And I think it's out there pretty hot and heavy now.

1177
01:24:13.949 --> 01:24:16.691
It's been messaged pretty well.

1178
01:24:17.511 --> 01:24:19.173
But you don't fix it overnight.

1179
01:24:19.453 --> 01:24:23.636
I mean, it takes a while to learn these trades and to learn how to.

1180
01:24:24.036 --> 01:24:26.518
And for us now, for example, we have gotten...

1181
01:24:27.755 --> 01:24:28.455
A lot of traction.

1182
01:24:28.475 --> 01:24:30.656
There's a lot of young people interested, believe it or not.

1183
01:24:31.077 --> 01:24:36.019
So there is a shift now because people are, because at the end of the day, it's like you just want to have a good career, a good life for yourself.

1184
01:24:36.459 --> 01:24:36.619
Yeah.

1185
01:24:36.919 --> 01:24:45.203
It doesn't matter if you're fixing cars or if you're writing a, you know, if you're, if you're writing a brief or something like that in a white call, it's like you want a good career and a good life.

1186
01:24:45.243 --> 01:24:45.803
That's the goal.

1187
01:24:46.624 --> 01:24:47.024
That's right.

1188
01:24:47.084 --> 01:24:48.144
And here's what I say about it.

1189
01:24:49.025 --> 01:24:50.986
If you learn a trade, you'll know it forever.

1190
01:24:51.346 --> 01:24:52.947
And maybe just do it for now.

1191
01:24:53.927 --> 01:25:03.093
Maybe you want to go to college, but how about learn to trade, get paid while you work, save your money, and don't have to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to pay for the college.

1192
01:25:04.453 --> 01:25:09.436
And I don't know about you, but I have a ton of friends that went to college and didn't do anything with it.

1193
01:25:10.437 --> 01:25:11.698
Most, actually.

1194
01:25:12.098 --> 01:25:18.402
Outside of the people that got the med school or they passed the bar and now they're a lawyer.

1195
01:25:18.962 --> 01:25:21.604
I know a lot of people that spend a lot of money on liberal arts degrees.

1196
01:25:21.644 --> 01:25:21.824
Yeah.

1197
01:25:22.765 --> 01:25:23.606
doing anything with.

1198
01:25:23.886 --> 01:25:25.848
So that's all it's about to me.

1199
01:25:25.908 --> 01:25:26.929
Like all of it's good.

1200
01:25:26.949 --> 01:25:28.390
There's opportunity everywhere.

1201
01:25:28.670 --> 01:25:31.552
That's the great thing about the United States of America.

1202
01:25:31.572 --> 01:25:33.174
There's opportunity everywhere.

1203
01:25:35.455 --> 01:25:38.218
We're talking about one that I think has been overlooked for a minute and

1204
01:25:39.619 --> 01:25:43.363
So you sat down with the government and you were talking to them.

1205
01:25:43.383 --> 01:25:44.544
You did a podcast recently.

1206
01:25:44.745 --> 01:25:45.505
Yeah.

1207
01:25:46.226 --> 01:25:49.830
Tell the audience sort of like how that happened, what they were asking you about.

1208
01:25:50.030 --> 01:25:51.272
Because obviously that's interesting.

1209
01:25:51.292 --> 01:25:54.295
Like, okay, so now the government is understanding that there's an issue with

1210
01:25:54.735 --> 01:25:56.136
like lack of people in trades.

1211
01:25:56.436 --> 01:26:00.118
And they probably have an idea of what is that going to impact in the future.

1212
01:26:01.139 --> 01:26:02.660
And that was the exact subject.

1213
01:26:02.720 --> 01:26:13.425
Obviously, you know, the current administration is making changes and the Secretary of Education's job is almost to, like, put an end to her job, it seems.

1214
01:26:13.886 --> 01:26:22.891
And so, but in this whole conversation, what was great talking about with Secretary McMahon was she's trying to bridge...

1215
01:26:24.057 --> 01:26:25.078
She's Secretary of Education.

1216
01:26:25.098 --> 01:26:26.379
She's not anti-education.

1217
01:26:26.739 --> 01:26:30.802
But she realizes there's the bridge there between a career and the education.

1218
01:26:31.222 --> 01:26:32.803
And how do you bridge that?

1219
01:26:33.304 --> 01:26:40.649
And it's an opportunity for us just to talk about the apprentice program that we have and figure out how it can help, how we can make it more attractive.

1220
01:26:40.989 --> 01:26:44.852
If the government is going to do something to help people.

1221
01:26:44.992 --> 01:26:47.534
apprentices or help companies, apprentice people.

1222
01:26:47.914 --> 01:26:49.555
It's a curiosity thing.

1223
01:26:49.815 --> 01:27:01.061
Like, I don't know if any of the programs that they put in place are going to necessarily help us as a company, but they put together programs that are going to help the individuals that want to learn and states are doing things.

1224
01:27:01.581 --> 01:27:06.784
So I, it's more of a conversation for me just to get to know what's out there so that I

1225
01:27:08.040 --> 01:27:12.122
us help other people and selfishly solve a problem for ourselves.

1226
01:27:13.042 --> 01:27:14.203
Let's be transparent about it.

1227
01:27:14.903 --> 01:27:16.404
I need to train people.

1228
01:27:17.345 --> 01:27:18.925
How do we go about doing that right?

1229
01:27:19.025 --> 01:27:21.306
How do we put together a program that works?

1230
01:27:21.627 --> 01:27:23.387
How do we fund it?

1231
01:27:24.648 --> 01:27:28.470
And so that's a simple curiosity conversation probably on both sides.

1232
01:27:29.468 --> 01:27:32.531
She would like to know what companies are doing to solve the problem.

1233
01:27:32.571 --> 01:27:38.076
I would like to know what the government's putting together to solve the problem and how could we possibly work together.

1234
01:27:39.137 --> 01:27:41.519
And that's all the conversation's been about.

1235
01:27:42.380 --> 01:27:44.342
For a lot of the audience...

1236
01:27:45.343 --> 01:27:48.507
They're very interested in building businesses and entrepreneurship.

1237
01:27:48.547 --> 01:28:01.804
And I think that a lot of them gravitate towards, you know, maybe building a tech company, you know, could be like a consumer goods company, like dabbling in AI.

1238
01:28:03.985 --> 01:28:08.407
Do you think that there's a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs that want to build in the trades?

1239
01:28:08.687 --> 01:28:10.188
That want to start their own shop?

1240
01:28:10.768 --> 01:28:20.372
Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about watching the trades now is there's a lot of investment money running to them.

1241
01:28:20.512 --> 01:28:31.857
I mean, you name it, roofing companies, HVAC companies, electric companies, there's money rolling up those industries similar to what we're doing in collision repair.

1242
01:28:32.457 --> 01:28:39.902
So if you have one of those businesses or start one of those businesses, the great thing is, is you know that there will be a buyer for it one day.

1243
01:28:42.503 --> 01:28:49.948
There's I mean, the whole talk is about how much electricians are needed for these data centers and builders and plumbers and everything else.

1244
01:28:49.988 --> 01:28:52.850
So when when there's huge demand demand.

1245
01:28:53.610 --> 01:28:54.792
That's what entrepreneurs do.

1246
01:28:55.894 --> 01:28:58.478
They're solving a need or they're making something better.

1247
01:28:58.878 --> 01:29:06.150
And so if you like any of the trades and you're an entrepreneur, it's kind of a golden opportunity time.

1248
01:29:06.536 --> 01:29:10.858
One of my, I have a good friend, Tommy Mello, and he's the founder of A1 Garage Doors.

1249
01:29:11.198 --> 01:29:16.701
And he, you know, he just did a deal with KKR for a billion dollars.

1250
01:29:17.601 --> 01:29:18.382
And that's all.

1251
01:29:18.682 --> 01:29:19.502
From garage doors?

1252
01:29:19.582 --> 01:29:20.663
Yeah, from garage doors.

1253
01:29:20.863 --> 01:29:21.523
Isn't that awesome?

1254
01:29:21.783 --> 01:29:22.064
It is.

1255
01:29:22.364 --> 01:29:22.924
It really is.

1256
01:29:23.064 --> 01:29:26.926
I think that, you know, I think that too many people have this, this.

1257
01:29:28.006 --> 01:29:33.609
this very narrow vision of, to your point, like, okay, this is how we should build a career.

1258
01:29:33.669 --> 01:29:35.389
Go to college, get a white-collar job.

1259
01:29:35.410 --> 01:29:36.610
This is how we should build a business.

1260
01:29:36.650 --> 01:29:38.091
Oh, you know, I'm an entrepreneur.

1261
01:29:38.111 --> 01:29:38.591
I'm sitting at home.

1262
01:29:38.611 --> 01:29:42.633
Maybe I'll, like, vibe code some AI tool, right?

1263
01:29:42.933 --> 01:29:44.613
But there's so much money out there.

1264
01:29:44.673 --> 01:29:47.575
And whether, and I think that if you want to,

1265
01:29:48.315 --> 01:29:50.257
get a job in the trades, you can make a ton of money.

1266
01:29:50.297 --> 01:29:54.120
Like I didn't realize that everybody's making over a hundred grand, which is pretty good.

1267
01:29:54.200 --> 01:29:54.840
It's pretty healthy.

1268
01:29:55.541 --> 01:29:58.723
Um, or if you're an entrepreneur, you can start a business in the trades.

1269
01:29:59.224 --> 01:30:00.745
You probably have to know what you're doing first.

1270
01:30:01.045 --> 01:30:08.611
So you probably have to be, you'll have to be the person doing the job and then you turn it into a business, but there's also probably opportunities for acquisition too.

1271
01:30:08.711 --> 01:30:10.453
I'm assuming a lot of people are retiring and

1272
01:30:11.681 --> 01:30:12.682
Yeah, you know who says it?

1273
01:30:13.282 --> 01:30:14.803
Damon John is somebody who says it well.

1274
01:30:15.164 --> 01:30:17.185
He talks about, look, there's nothing new.

1275
01:30:17.565 --> 01:30:18.706
Look at Shark Tank.

1276
01:30:19.126 --> 01:30:21.008
The biggest deal, he says, is Bomba Socks.

1277
01:30:21.088 --> 01:30:25.211
The second best deal is The Sponge, right?

1278
01:30:25.651 --> 01:30:31.075
It's just something reinvented or a different spin on it.

1279
01:30:32.396 --> 01:30:40.642
There's opportunity in a lot of things that you don't have to come up with to change the world idea.

1280
01:30:42.062 --> 01:30:45.845
to build or start a kick-ass business.

1281
01:30:46.125 --> 01:30:53.091
And I think maybe people overthink and think they need the latest, greatest, or they're trying to do it overnight.

1282
01:30:53.491 --> 01:30:57.875
And my success is no overnight thing.

1283
01:30:58.435 --> 01:31:00.457
It's a 25-year in the making.

1284
01:31:01.638 --> 01:31:03.459
And I think that's the part that the...

1285
01:31:04.420 --> 01:31:06.843
maybe world because of social media and everything.

1286
01:31:06.884 --> 01:31:09.647
It makes things seem like it can be, it's the world we live in.

1287
01:31:10.048 --> 01:31:12.992
I mean, everything, everybody expects it overnight.

1288
01:31:14.434 --> 01:31:15.595
Heck, and that started a long time ago.

1289
01:31:15.615 --> 01:31:16.336
I mean, I mean,

1290
01:31:17.635 --> 01:31:24.161
Remember when the big thing was you get eyeglasses in an hour, you get your oil change in five minutes, like the world is just geared for you can have it now.

1291
01:31:25.542 --> 01:31:26.764
Credit cards give it to you now.

1292
01:31:26.884 --> 01:31:28.345
You don't need to wait till you have money.

1293
01:31:28.665 --> 01:31:33.230
So like, I guess it's why would it be any different for people thinking success to just be now?

1294
01:31:33.310 --> 01:31:36.653
But my experience has been it's going to be hard.

1295
01:31:38.033 --> 01:31:44.099
You've got to have the stick-to-itiveness to get there and the ambition.

1296
01:31:44.860 --> 01:31:48.404
Some get the overnight success, but I don't think it's common.

1297
01:31:49.285 --> 01:32:00.056
No, I think that actually because we're so screwed up and we think that everything is immediate, that the patience and playing the long game, that actually is the superpower.

1298
01:32:00.717 --> 01:32:05.942
that the person who can do it for 26 years, they're going to be the ones that win.

1299
01:32:08.024 --> 01:32:13.869
Over your 26-year journey, I'm curious, you've given over a lot, but what has been the hardest lesson you've ever had to learn?

1300
01:32:15.010 --> 01:32:23.638
The one that I've struggled with the most is moving on from leadership when they hit their ceiling.

1301
01:32:24.198 --> 01:32:28.425
because you've, you've kind of grown from here to here with them.

1302
01:32:28.445 --> 01:32:30.448
Um, you like them.

1303
01:32:31.250 --> 01:32:35.176
Um, and you just keep wanting it to, to work.

1304
01:32:35.637 --> 01:32:35.737
It,

1305
01:32:37.929 --> 01:32:45.793
You have to, you have to move on, recognize when people have hit their ceiling and not be afraid to move on because you're doing them a disservice.

1306
01:32:45.833 --> 01:32:46.713
They're frustrated.

1307
01:32:46.733 --> 01:32:50.735
They're not going to say it because they, they don't want to let you down.

1308
01:32:50.995 --> 01:32:52.316
Like, that's the part that I learned about it.

1309
01:32:52.336 --> 01:32:55.598
Like you feel like the jerk who's going to term them.

1310
01:32:56.618 --> 01:32:58.799
There's a level, I've seen it a few times.

1311
01:32:58.819 --> 01:33:01.601
There's a very level, a level of relief on their end too.

1312
01:33:01.621 --> 01:33:01.721
Yeah.

1313
01:33:02.281 --> 01:33:04.081
because they're trying to make you happy.

1314
01:33:04.101 --> 01:33:10.623
They're trying to, and it's just, it's gotten beyond what they know or what they know quit working, whatever.

1315
01:33:10.683 --> 01:33:14.664
But moving on from leaders at the right time, it's been the tough thing.

1316
01:33:14.684 --> 01:33:16.544
And I've heard that from a lot of people.

1317
01:33:16.924 --> 01:33:20.025
They'll say, what would you do if you had to do over and move on quicker?

1318
01:33:20.545 --> 01:33:28.547
I think that, listen, like when somebody isn't working out in the company, I don't think there's a single entrepreneur that's ever going to tell you it's easy to let somebody go.

1319
01:33:29.087 --> 01:33:30.268
It's always the hardest thing.

1320
01:33:32.753 --> 01:33:59.231
bringing on the right people and letting go of the wrong people because the business at the end of the day is just all about people that's all it is it is like the most valuable skill that you'll ever learn and it never gets easy either ever ever yeah it's been the one that i've always waited too long to do but now the company's so big and the people reporting directly to me when i wait too long i affect for that one person i'm affecting thousands and so that's what i have to remind

1321
01:34:01.092 --> 01:34:03.315
You're worried about this hard conversation with this one person.

1322
01:34:03.755 --> 01:34:06.639
What about the other 11,000 that are counting on you to do the right thing?

1323
01:34:06.979 --> 01:34:08.100
That's what I have to tell myself.

1324
01:34:09.002 --> 01:34:10.984
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

1325
01:34:11.645 --> 01:34:13.867
That's hard because I've gotten so much good advice.

1326
01:34:14.588 --> 01:34:20.075
But I think the simple one that my partner said, surround yourself with better people, your life will be better.

1327
01:34:20.575 --> 01:34:26.459
So people want to connect with you and they want to learn more about Crash Champions.

1328
01:34:28.300 --> 01:34:29.141
Where's the website?

1329
01:34:29.161 --> 01:34:30.722
They can go to all the social.

1330
01:34:31.722 --> 01:34:34.684
Also, drop your podcast as well, and then we'll put it in the show notes.

1331
01:34:34.724 --> 01:34:35.865
So all the different links.

1332
01:34:36.345 --> 01:34:36.525
Sure.

1333
01:34:36.545 --> 01:34:41.148
So Matt Ebert CC is the handle on all the social media platforms, so you can find me there.

1334
01:34:42.529 --> 01:34:45.251
Podcrash with Matt Ebert is the podcast that we're doing.

1335
01:34:47.092 --> 01:34:49.033
Way early stages compared to...

1336
01:34:50.855 --> 01:34:51.816
you're awesome one here.

1337
01:34:51.956 --> 01:34:54.978
And then, um, of course, crash champions, crash champions.com.

1338
01:34:55.379 --> 01:35:01.804
The last thing I'd like to ask, you know, you've given over all this advice and you've been in this game for so long now.

1339
01:35:02.465 --> 01:35:14.515
Um, if you could tell your 20 year old self, one piece of advice, the most important advice and you know, just that, that young 20 year old version of Matt would have heard this and it would have changed his life.

1340
01:35:14.535 --> 01:35:15.095
What would it be?

1341
01:35:15.135 --> 01:35:15.476
And why?

1342
01:35:16.453 --> 01:35:25.079
make sure and, and, and enjoy the ride because you're constantly striving after the next goal or whatever.

1343
01:35:25.639 --> 01:35:30.082
And the next goal, if you're not careful, just becomes okay.

1344
01:35:30.122 --> 01:35:30.582
Now what?

1345
01:35:30.723 --> 01:35:33.564
Like in, in, it's going to be okay.

1346
01:35:34.385 --> 01:35:37.487
It's going to be great and enjoy, enjoy along the way.

1347
01:35:38.688 --> 01:35:39.829
Don't stress so much.

1348
01:35:40.069 --> 01:35:44.832
Like it's probably impossible advice because I still have to tell myself that, but,

1349
01:35:47.908 --> 01:36:05.947
what's the worst that could happen if you're alive and healthy and I got a wife I love and supports me I got two great kids like got my health like living in a great country how bad how bad can it you know so like

1350
01:36:07.578 --> 01:36:13.083
kind of look around, you know, smell of flowers, whatever you want to say, like enjoy it.

1351
01:36:13.424 --> 01:36:15.646
And I'm learning to do that.

1352
01:36:15.666 --> 01:36:17.007
Be present.

1353
01:36:17.147 --> 01:36:20.230
Don't always be in your head for what else is going on elsewhere.

1354
01:36:20.630 --> 01:36:24.674
Like those are things that I'm learning to do now, maybe to a –

1355
01:36:25.495 --> 01:36:29.719
25% of the level that I should, but my younger self never did that.

1356
01:36:29.739 --> 01:36:40.749
It was just off to the next, off to the next, off to the next, where now it's like the other side of 50, you start to think, like, there's only so long you get, like, got to enjoy it.