From 1 Shop to 650: Crash Champions’ Epic Growth Story | Matt Ebert DSH #1352

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Speaker 1 There's a good living to be made at the blue-collar stuff. And so we're really on a campaign to talk about it because college isn't for everybody.
And I get the incident gratification, but

Speaker 1 I feel like, take for example, collision repair. There's nothing better than a wrecked vehicle.
I mean, there is real satisfaction in seeing the work that you've done.

Speaker 3 All right, guys, Matt, founder of Crash Champions here in Las Vegas. About to be a fun week, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. We've got WrestleMania.
Fun, fun event, right? I've never been.

Speaker 1 I've never been alive either.

Speaker 1 So be excited to see it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we'll see what happens out here.

Speaker 3 Could you talk about Crash Champions? Explain for people that don't know what that is, your company.

Speaker 1 Sure, collision repair company.

Speaker 1 You know, I was, I'm the founder, so been at it really my whole life.

Speaker 1 Started with one shop and then in the last five years, grew it across the country. So today we're 650 locations across 38 states.

Speaker 3 That's impressive, man. A lot of collisions these days, right?

Speaker 1 Always, you know, everybody thinks that the cars are getting better and not going to wreck anymore, but they still do.

Speaker 3 Man, I've seen some crazy ones lately in Vegas.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I think Vegas is, I just saw this article, the most expensive state to own a car.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow. Because of the insurance and everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's definitely something to cities where you can,

Speaker 1 a lot has to do with speed.

Speaker 1 So like the number one, the number one kind of metro as kind of accident per individual or driver is like Portland because it's a metro, but also can get up to pretty decent speed around there. So

Speaker 1 combination of a lot of cars, congestion and speed usually equals lots of accidents.

Speaker 3 That makes sense. What's the most repaired vehicle you see at Crash Champions?

Speaker 1 Toyota Camrys are the one we see the most. And I think that's probably because it's the most sold in the U.S.

Speaker 1 It makes sense. So the top three kind of go that way, Toyota Camry, Honda Cord, F-150,

Speaker 1 those are the most sold too every year.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that makes sense from a sheer numbers point of view. Yeah.
What about electric vehicles? You see a lot of those?

Speaker 1 We do.

Speaker 1 Thing about electric vehicles is they're

Speaker 1 might not know everybody might not know this, but they're a lot heavier.

Speaker 1 Kind of laws of physics, when they get in a wreck, it's usually more damage because they're they're a lot heavier.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that yeah the weight of the batteries mostly you don't have the engine and the drivetrain but the batteries weigh so much so um

Speaker 1 you know anything heavier hitting hitting something causes a lot more damage that makes sense just being totally objective we don't have to piss anyone off here but who gets in more accidents men or women just based off your statistics and data the stats say men okay And it's probably because the other stat is men drive a lot more miles.

Speaker 1 So the odds go way up because of men. Yeah.
So it doesn't mean men are worse drivers. Okay.

Speaker 3 I like that you added that in there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Now, if you ask my wife, I'm definitely a worse driver and she's probably right.

Speaker 3 Really? You're worse than your wife at driving?

Speaker 1 Well, I got in the collision industry because I can't drive very well.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, and I can't see out of one eye.
So

Speaker 1 death perception is kind of bad.

Speaker 1 That makes it hard to drive. A little bit of ADD.
So yeah, I'm not a great driver.

Speaker 3 What's the

Speaker 3 okay? Do the colors of the car matter? This is kind of debated online, I see. Like, do red cars get more accidents?

Speaker 1 I always thought it was red. I think red cars get stolen more.

Speaker 1 But dark cars, dark colored cars get in more accidents, especially at night.

Speaker 1 It's like about 40% more likely to wreck

Speaker 1 a dark car.

Speaker 3 That's way higher. Yeah.
So stick with white then.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I don't understand at night because it's basically you see the lights anyway, right? But

Speaker 1 i wish i knew the science behind that because i think if you can't see the car except for the lights what's it matter what color the car is but um dark cars are definitely 40 more likely yeah and the age of the driver matters too right

Speaker 1 teenagers i'm sure you see those a lot in the store yeah it's a i mean selfishly as a collision repair company i'd like to start a national campaign and give 14 year olds licenses and

Speaker 1 14 year olds with a license and a cell phone probably be good for business.

Speaker 3 That's a good combo. Some states are like...

Speaker 1 I don't want to see anybody get hurt. Don't get me wrong, but it would be good for business.

Speaker 3 Some states are like 15, right? In the south, 15.

Speaker 1 Are they now?

Speaker 3 15, 16.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that. So

Speaker 3 I think in Jersey it was 16 for permit and then 18, 17 or 18 for license where I grew up.

Speaker 1 So I grew up in Illinois and

Speaker 1 we got our permit at 15 and then license at 16. So I damn.
I kind of assumed every state was that way, but it's not ever.

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Speaker 1 Yeah. That's interesting.
18, huh? Before you could drive.

Speaker 3 Depends on the state. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 3 I mean, even 18 is young though our brains are still forming till 26. that's true you know uh what's the most expensive vehicle you've repaired

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 so most expensive repair

Speaker 1 uh last year i think was a rolls-royce that was over 90 000 to repair it

Speaker 1 yeah now the value of vehicles like I mean, there's, believe it or not, some million dollar, $2 million cars out there, but they might not have,

Speaker 1 you know, they might only have a few thousand worth of damage. So it depends how you want to look at it.

Speaker 3 Did you see what happened to Tate's car, his CONAS seg?

Speaker 1 I heard of it.

Speaker 1 And that's like a $10 million ride, I think, right?

Speaker 1 First day.

Speaker 1 How bad was it? I didn't see the pictures. I heard about it, but...

Speaker 3 Probably six figures if I had to guess to fix it.

Speaker 1 Oh, I imagine.

Speaker 1 Is it fixable?

Speaker 3 I hope so. He just got it.
First day, drove off the lot.

Speaker 1 His fault or?

Speaker 3 Who knows? You know,

Speaker 1 i don't think anyone will ever know yeah it's that's a that's an awesome car though have you driven one of those no i haven't you know i those those

Speaker 1 those cars are all really cool and i coming up i never really bought a bunch of cars um you know being said that that's what i do for a living a lot of you know shop owners and stuff that i know collect a lot of cars I never I never did collect them because I was always funneling the money back into the business.

Speaker 1 If I was spending money on cars, I wouldn't be able to grow the business, is how I always thought about it.

Speaker 1 And now, I mean, I'm over 50 now, so I feel if I get in those, I'm afraid I'm going to look like the midlife crisis guy if I get in one of those like fast sports cars and drive it around.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if I'll ever do it, but they're really cool cars.

Speaker 3 It's an expensive hobby collecting cars.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 1 the thing is, you got to drive them too, or else

Speaker 1 stuff goes bad when it just sits.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 1 so busy with work and family and everything else, like I don't really know how often I would even get to drive them. And so that's, that's part of it, too.

Speaker 3 So you're still super busy, huh? Yeah. Damn, you're not stopping at your age.
I feel like I'm 28 now.

Speaker 3 I'm still grinding really hard, but I don't know if I could do that in my 40s and 50s, if I'm being honest. Really?

Speaker 1 We'll see.

Speaker 1 Some of it is, I don't know.

Speaker 1 If you're wired to do it as hard as you're grinding now, it doesn't, I bet you if you took a month off and didn't do nothing, you start to get an itch, maybe.

Speaker 3 I think I'll always have the itch, yeah, but just the energy. Cause I look when I grinded when I was 18 and I worked like 16, 18 hours a day.
I can't do that right now. You know, I need my sleep now.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Can you get it though? Yeah.

Speaker 1 See, no, my problem is I know I need to sleep. Like, I watch podcasts and see, I don't know

Speaker 1 for,

Speaker 1 I don't know, medically myself, but you know, I saw a podcast and they talked about

Speaker 1 anybody really is not wired to live on less than seven hours a night worth of sleep. And

Speaker 1 in fact, I think he said if you the number of people that really can do it and round it up and the number is still less than zero. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I'm thinking in my head, man, I've been like decades of like an average of four to five hours of sleep a night.

Speaker 3 And I remember a really viral interview I saw when I was younger because I used to be a huge fan of Shark Tank. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Was with Damon john yeah and the guy asked like how often do you how many hours do you sleep he's like four to five a night so there's a lot of people in this in the same boat but medically they say it's pretty bad for you terrible but that's the sacrifice we take right

Speaker 1 yeah um but it's not just to being busy i honestly even if i have a day off it this i struggle to stay i i struggle to stay asleep that's just me personally you're just wired Yeah, I wake up and then the mind starts going.

Speaker 3 You've been like that, huh?

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So.
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Speaker 1 Anything that wakes me up and then the mind starts going and then there's, you know,

Speaker 1 could maybe try to go back to sleep, but that might take like an hour. Yeah.
So then you're just like, let me get up and get going.

Speaker 3 And for you, that's your comfort. And then other people see that as like, you're crazy, but like you're comfortable in that, in that setting, just working hard and working a lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So I

Speaker 1 think, you know,

Speaker 1 a work ethic that gets you working those hours that you described is going to still be in you, but we'll see. We'll catch up and

Speaker 1 we'll catch up in a decade and see if you if you slowed down or not.

Speaker 3 I mean, physically, I know I've slowed down because I play basketball a lot.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 When I get injured now, it takes a few days to recover.

Speaker 1 Wait till you're 50.

Speaker 1 Wait till you're 50 and see how that goes.

Speaker 3 I mean, when I was 18, I would roll my ankle and play the next morning.

Speaker 1 Next morning. No issue.

Speaker 1 You know what happens is

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 you're about to get married right soon? Yeah, a few months. So if you guys have kids, then that's a whole new world too for sleep.

Speaker 1 Oh, not for that part, but yeah. Yeah, my son was up every like hour and a half for the first couple years.

Speaker 3 So you got a nanny though, right?

Speaker 1 No, no.

Speaker 1 My wife, my wife stopped working and gave up what she was working at to make sure she was home with the kids because

Speaker 1 who's going to be better for them than their mom? And I agree with that. And she's got.

Speaker 1 She don't just trust anybody. So like it's,

Speaker 1 you'll see, I imagine that's true for everybody too. The moms are really, I mean, I've protected them with the kids too, but according to her, I'd leave them with anybody, which I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 But compared to her, like, she's really got to trust them before she lets somebody motherly instinct.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Women are good with that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just reading people, man. Yeah.
I've had my fiancé read some, not even just like potential business partners, potential friends, and spot on every time. Yeah.
It's crazy, that instinct.

Speaker 1 As to who would be good with the kids and who wouldn't. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Not even just kids, just like in business and life, personal, business.

Speaker 1 So you're talking about like a read on people. Yeah.
Yeah. And I agree.
Um,

Speaker 1 I always kind of

Speaker 1 would look to her a lot of times in a circle of new people and

Speaker 1 ask her to give me their read on them on the way home, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, she's spot on, right? Yep.

Speaker 1 And I'll be like, really?

Speaker 3 Six months later, you'll find out.

Speaker 1 I didn't see any of that. Really? Like, no, they seem like really good people.
And she would be this and that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then usually she'd prove to be right sometimes as men were just too logical right yeah

Speaker 1 she's got that emotional instinct that um i mean i i've worked really hard at becoming emotionally intelligent because we've got 11 000 employees at crash champions you have to have some sort of emotional intelligence to to deal with the team but uh

Speaker 1 it it's definitely for me work right to understand people and understand uh those kind of things where it seems for her it comes kind of natural.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's insane. That's a lot of employees for someone that didn't go the traditional education route, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 There's really no way to do what we do without people. And so it's just a necessary thing.
And I think it's a great thing because

Speaker 1 You know, if you think about a world where everybody is excited and nervous about AI and where the world's headed and what jobs it's going to replace or what jobs it's going to enhance or what what we definitely see is in a in a service industry like ours or many others like there's just not a world in in the near future where ai or robots are going to take over those those jobs and so it i it's kind of exciting in that um

Speaker 1 the our ability to do well is basically the quantity and quality of our people. We don't have enough people.

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Speaker 1 We can't get enough cars fixed. And if we don't have good enough people, we can't get enough cars fixed.
So it's really the quantity and quality of the people.

Speaker 1 And so even with one body shop or two body shops or three, it still was the quantity and quality of the people that mattered. And so that was a necessary thing to be able to

Speaker 1 have the team enjoy where they work, have the team want to work with me for me,

Speaker 1 or else wouldn't have been able to get anywhere. So I think,

Speaker 1 yeah, it's really out of necessity, but a blessing in disguise in that

Speaker 1 you really do realize how you need to get along with people.

Speaker 1 It's a key part. And I mean, it really helps you in life, I think.
I mean, to not

Speaker 1 get along with people would be a pretty lonely world. That'd be miserable.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, right now, you're seeing a resurgence, in my opinion, in the blue-collar work.
I mean, it's, it's pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 Like, my generation's not really wanting to get their hands dirty, it seems like.

Speaker 1 And why do you think that is, though?

Speaker 1 I don't think it's a laziness. I think they think they can make more money better elsewhere.
Yeah. Or am I wrong?

Speaker 3 No, I think that's part of it. I think the instant gratification.
I think there's a lot of digital jobs now. People want to be influencers and stuff.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 We're just not as hands-on. Like a lot of people my age, if you ask them to change a tire, I think more than 50% wouldn't be able to.

Speaker 1 Oh, I bet more. And I bet more my age too couldn't do it.
But, but you know what? Like it is different today because when I was growing up,

Speaker 1 you couldn't wait to get a, first of all, I couldn't wait to drive because for me, driving was freedom.

Speaker 1 Like I can still remember getting behind the wheel of a car by myself for the first time without my mom and dad in the car or anybody. Right.
Like I could literally go anywhere I wanted to go.

Speaker 1 So a car to me was like freedom. And

Speaker 1 I led a pretty strict childhood. So I got told, no, I couldn't do this or that a lot of times.
So getting in a car and be able to go was a, more than just driving the car to me.

Speaker 1 But it was also like couldn't wait to like see how it worked, to take the tire off, to change the oil, to to give it a tune up, which

Speaker 1 back then the cars were simpler. Now

Speaker 1 you, I get scared when I open. Don't worry for anybody listening, my team doesn't get scared of what the car's got going on.

Speaker 1 But if I were to open the hood and look under there, like it's so much electronics. It's so complicated.

Speaker 1 Like as a, as a young person, you just don't get in there with a wrench and start to work on your own car because they're way too hard. Yeah.
Hard to figure out nowadays.

Speaker 3 Yeah, all the old movies, that's how they showed them. They would get under the hood, good old wrench, you're good to go.
It's not like that anymore.

Speaker 1 No, I mean, because you're going to see a bunch of wires and a bunch of microchips. And I mean, here, like, there's

Speaker 1 3,000 microchips in in a in a car today maybe up to 100 computers and

Speaker 1 plus the engine and if it's a if it's a you know a gas-powered vehicle plus the engine and everything else wow I didn't know that but back to you know what you asked with um

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Speaker 1 The younger generation, I don't,

Speaker 1 I also think there's an element of they just don't know that there's a good living to be made at the blue-collar stuff.

Speaker 1 And so we're really on a campaign to talk about it because college isn't for everybody. And I get the instant gratification, but

Speaker 1 I, I feel like, take, for example, collision repair. There's nothing better than a wrecked vehicle.

Speaker 1 And then literally with your, with the work of the skill that you learned and a couple days later, you've taken that, what was a disaster and turned it back into a car, back to pre-accident condition again.

Speaker 1 I mean, there is real satisfaction in seeing the work that you've done. Right.
You know,

Speaker 1 the social media stuff and the influencing stuff, it's not real,

Speaker 1 it's not the same kind of satisfaction. I, I, it doesn't seem to me of actually being able to see good that you did with your hands.
You can see numbers and stuff.

Speaker 1 So, what you do, you get to see how big a following you have and who likes what. And so, there is that instant reaction that you get from the people.

Speaker 3 So, definitely quicker, but it's not as, yeah, it's not like, like, well, you're, you're changing someone's life when you fix their car.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, and the message that you deliver could too, right? If, if it's something that affects somebody that way. So I think there's value in it all is what I'm really trying to say.

Speaker 1 And what I think has happened over the last couple of decades is just such a push for college and white-collar careers, which

Speaker 1 is great.

Speaker 1 But it also made it kind of to where there's a stereotype around getting dirty or some of these blue collar jobs. And people just don't know what a good career it could be.

Speaker 1 For, you know, our technicians, for example, today,

Speaker 1 our average technician makes 100 grand or more. Wow.
And they don't have to go to college and they don't have to get into debt in order to do it.

Speaker 1 You know, we have an apprentice program, for example, that,

Speaker 1 you know, within a couple of years, they're standing on their own and you get better over another year or two. But in a few years, you've got a skill that's going to pay you really well

Speaker 1 for your whole career. And you didn't have to go to college.
You didn't have to go into debt.

Speaker 1 And so I don't talk about it as

Speaker 1 to hate on college. I just want the world to know that there are other options because college isn't for everybody.
Maybe you hate school. Maybe your grades aren't good enough.

Speaker 1 Maybe economically, you're just not going to be able to pull it off. And so I think it's important that people know there are other great careers out there.

Speaker 3 What were your grades like when you went to school?

Speaker 1 I was actually pretty good in high school, but

Speaker 1 I went to a high school where there were 40 people in my class.

Speaker 1 So I think I was like second in the class because, and I hated to read at that time, which I love to read now, but at that time, so I think in English, like we had to do book reports and stuff, which I just refused to do.

Speaker 1 Oh, some of those books were terrible. Yeah, so I refused to do them.
So I think like a C in English made me not be the the smartest one in the class. But I did good in school, but

Speaker 1 in the in in in my family, I mean, my stepdad was a rural mail carrier. And so I don't know, maybe he made like 30,000 a year.
And my, my mom was a stay-at-home mom. So there was no

Speaker 1 mindset in the house for like.

Speaker 1 talking about a career or talking about it it just wasn't the way that they they lived it was almost like

Speaker 1 it was almost like

Speaker 1 money wasn't, it was bad to aspire for money almost. So I kind of like, Apple fell way off the tree in the route that I went.
But

Speaker 1 for me, it wasn't because

Speaker 1 college just wasn't an option. You know, you're dealt the hand, you're dealt and you make the best of it.
So they just never talked to me about college.

Speaker 1 And it was right in the beginning of what I would say computers, because

Speaker 1 and I was in a real small town so it's not like we were leading the way in getting computers first as far as schools and stuff so we didn't have computers in in school in my high school so the things that the world is today weren't wasn't back then so probably I feel unless you're going to be a doctor or lawyer or somebody who really needed college when I was coming through high school it was a different kind of view yeah so you picked trade school instead well I picked I i i had an accident when i was 16 i didn't want to make an insurance claim and i knew a body man in town because the town only had 1400 people so you kind of knew yeah of everybody um and he he had a garage behind his house where he did work at night after his day job

Speaker 1 and so i went over and asked him if he would show me how to fix my car and he did and then I started fixing other cars with him after school. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 And then got a job with him at the body shop he worked at right after high school and never left. Rest is history.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 What's that guy doing these days?

Speaker 1 Good question. We didn't stay in touch.
So

Speaker 1 I'm not sure, but I mean, for the 10 years after I quit knowing him, he was still fixing cars. Wow.

Speaker 3 Imagine if you knew what you ended up doing. That's crazy, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'd have to figure out a way to get in touch with him. Yeah.
Maybe I'll do that for fun.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that'd be an interesting side quest, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, one of those if you could See Me Now kind of things, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He wouldn't have saw this coming. I was 16 and I was young and dumb and made all kinds of dumb mistakes.

Speaker 3 Did you pick it up pretty quickly, though, the skill set?

Speaker 1 I actually wasn't that good.

Speaker 1 I think that's how I ended up in the administrative part of the business because I wasn't that good at the at. fixing the cars.

Speaker 1 I was a better painter than I was a technician because we divide the two.

Speaker 1 Kind of for streamlining processes,

Speaker 1 the way the industry pretty much functions now is you don't take a car from start all the way to finish.

Speaker 1 It's specialized. So the guys that do the, what we would call the body work or the sheet metal part of it are separate from the guys that do the paint applications.
So

Speaker 1 at that time, it was

Speaker 1 a little bit of a mix of both where some did it all the way through and then some were going to what was the new way of doing business back then.

Speaker 1 so i did learn to do both but was better at the painting than the than the the body tech side and then really wasn't that great at either so ended up in the office well realizing your strengths that's important yeah

Speaker 1 and i i always had that entrepreneurial spirit so i always knew i wanted to own my own business as well so it was a little bit of part of that is learn learn everything to do with it and one day you know, dreamed of owning a body shop.

Speaker 1 I love it. Because, I mean, I was,

Speaker 1 I go back to like 11, 12 years old. I was pushing a lawnmower around town trying to mow people's grass and collect five or 10 bucks or whatever.

Speaker 1 So there was always that entrepreneurial want to want to run a business or do stuff for myself.

Speaker 3 I did that too, shoveling driveways in the winter, 20 bucks, 30 bucks.

Speaker 1 Do kids do that nowadays?

Speaker 3 I hope so because that's. That's like a rite of passage if you're an entrepreneur, shoveling driveways online.
I feel like you got to go through that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 my hope is that the young the young generation isn't so anti-blue collar work i think they just don't know about it yeah so i i mean there's even social media accounts of um popular people that are fixing cars that are electricians that are plumbers that are kind of videoing what they're doing every day and people are tuning in to check it out and um I think it's a little bit of the same thing.

Speaker 1 Everybody's just trying to let everybody know a day in the life of this career looks like this and maybe it interests you blue collars back man i look at what i'm paying some of my contractors for stuff around the house you wouldn't believe some of these numbers supply and demand works the roofing blows my mind how much those guys make and and here think about this did they call you back right away no right they so i i look at that stuff and i'm like man if i ran my business this way i'd be out of business You have to keep calling them, keep calling them, beg them to come out.

Speaker 1 Like, and then wait for how long did it take you to to get a roof done?

Speaker 3 It was a while. Yeah.
There's a lot of inefficiencies with the blue-collar work, too, in terms of advertising and getting their business out.

Speaker 3 A lot of them just do word of mouth, right?

Speaker 1 That, and they're in such demand. It really is this.
They're not bad business people. They're in such demand, they don't

Speaker 3 have time. Yeah, they're just non-stop working.

Speaker 1 My wife wants some work done on our house, and I've literally left messages for two or three from referrals, great contractors, and I still

Speaker 1 waiting for a call.

Speaker 3 That's a good problem for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I think to your point,

Speaker 1 the great thing is, is if our efforts to drum up interest in the industries or the blue-collar trades doesn't work, those that are in it are going to get paid a whole lot of money to do it.

Speaker 1 Because if there's a bidding work for a painter to come paint your house, I imagine the painter is going to go to the

Speaker 1 highest price.

Speaker 3 I would imagine. Yeah, AI is not painting houses yet.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We'll see how these humanoid robots do, but not anytime soon. They're in Amazon, though.
Have you seen those?

Speaker 1 There's some pretty amazing stuff that

Speaker 1 technology is able to accomplish. I haven't seen the Amazon one personally.

Speaker 3 A lot of the staff got let go because they're just doing all the packaging now. It's robots.

Speaker 1 Robots doing it.

Speaker 3 Crazy, right? There's just a few guys like overseeing them, making sure they don't mess up.

Speaker 1 So they talk about like drones delivering to your house and stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I wonder how that's going to work.

Speaker 3 I don't know if I even need that, first of all, because I live, I get packages in two to four hours from Amazon. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 Right. From a vehicle, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I live like right by an Amazon. So they're just getting faster and faster.
I remember when I was growing up, it took like three to five days

Speaker 3 before Prime even came out. And then Prime was a big deal.
And now Prime's like four hours.

Speaker 1 My wonder about it is like if it were picture a drone bringing it to your front porch. But the drone's only so big, it's not like it can carry the truck of goods behind it.
Yeah. So what is it?

Speaker 1 Like a mothership that has to load over the neighborhood and then star wars out here right and then all the i i don't know how it how it ends up working have you seen the food delivery robots on the sidewalks in la

Speaker 1 i have and you i'm from chicago and you know what i say in chicago they'd be kicking that cooler over and taking the food that cooler no way gets to the house i've seen uh they'd be kicking that cooler over and taking the food out of it i think this every time i see one i think the same thing that some homeless guy is just gonna take it or something right i saw one get stuck there you go you know those don't seem the most efficient to me and so i asked about that and somebody told me that there's uh there's actually somebody remotely driving it really it's not like a programmed cooler going to the house there's actually somebody with a screen somewhere so i was told because i wondered like there's no way you can just program the path and this thing finds its way to the house yeah and doesn't hit a pothole does it like what if there's a homeless person sleeping in the sidewalk what's it gonna do so i was told it's literally somebody remote controlled driving it.

Speaker 3 For now, yeah.

Speaker 1 But I don't know.

Speaker 3 Well, there's, have you seen those self-driving Ubers in San Francisco? What is it, San Francisco, I think?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Those are bad for my industry, by the way. Self-driving cars will, self-driving cars that don't make mistakes won't really have collisions.
But

Speaker 1 I've seen them.

Speaker 1 I've also seen videos of people getting stuck in them where it goes in circles for a couple hours and you can't get out. So

Speaker 1 I kind of like watching that go wrong every now. I mean, I feel bad for the person stuck in the car, but as a collision repair guy, I hate to see the industry go away.
And it's not going to.

Speaker 1 If there's 280 million cars on the road in the U.S.,

Speaker 1 and so only 16 million cars a year, about new cars get sold. So like the transformation of the cars in the U.S.,

Speaker 1 it would take, I mean, I'll be retired before.

Speaker 3 You'll be chilling by then.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like it, it's very much like a evolution rather than a revolution as far as I know Elon Musk said like 50% of the miles driven in like five years would be automated.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 3 That's optimistic, I think.

Speaker 1 Well, he's always optimistic with his car. People love

Speaker 3 their gas cars. I feel like I have both.
I have gas and electric. I don't trust the self-drive on my car.
I've never used it.

Speaker 1 Never? It just feels weird.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like to drive too.

Speaker 1 And I, I, I, but I have friends that love it and swear by it really i think it's great i just feel like i like having that control like i do too that's why even flying i get a little nervous sometimes i i just enjoy driving even though i said i'm not the greatest driver i do enjoy driving yeah and i and like you said i the rev of the motor the

Speaker 1 electric is like off the line way faster i mean you're quick up to speed quick but it's just the sound of the motor and stuff that you don't have in an electric car and i mean,

Speaker 1 from what we see, the American consumer has kind of spoken. Like it's not taking off as quick as they've tried to push it.
And very much now.

Speaker 3 They're struggling now.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And there's a what's most popular right now is more of a hybrid where

Speaker 1 it's not completely electric. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I just drove one of those. It was interesting.

Speaker 1 I don't think electric cars are going away. They're going to continue to be more and more and more and more, but it's,

Speaker 1 there's such a variety of circumstances in the U.S. I mean,

Speaker 1 if you live in a high-rise condo in a city and park in a garage, do you have a place to charge your car?

Speaker 1 If you live in a city street with houses every 100 feet and you don't have a garage and you have to park on the street, you don't have a place to charge your car.

Speaker 1 If you live in rural, rural America where like it gets super cold and and you need the big four-wheel drive to go through the snow is an electric car your vehicle of choice today so it's such a small it's it's only a certain segment of the population where electric is a perfect fit and then if some of those prefer gas like so that's why it's not taking over as fast as everybody'll always be a little more niched than gas that's why i stopped driving mine too the charging just was so annoying every time i looked for a station it was packed you get some range anxiety going and so you had to wait to charge and then charging takes an hour so you got to wait like an hour and a half two hours sometimes just to charge your vehicle

Speaker 1 from what

Speaker 1 i know um

Speaker 1 the first ones to grab the electric cars um were people that were pretty

Speaker 1 okay to do money-wise. So it was typically the second car.
So they also had the other, you know, so it was. That makes sense.

Speaker 1 They could drive the electric car sometimes and they could drive the other car. But I've also seen people that jumped in the electric car and then their next car is a gas car.

Speaker 3 Yep, that happened to me.

Speaker 3 Well, now the price point is so low on these things. I think they keep lowering these electric cars.
Yeah. They're trying to get as many people as possible.

Speaker 1 Yep. And by the way, I do, like I said, think that

Speaker 1 EV is here to stay. It's going to continue to grow.

Speaker 1 So this isn't an anti-EV conversation. There's definitely going to be more and more EVs on the road every year.

Speaker 1 I just,

Speaker 1 from what I see every day, it's going to be a long, long haul.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I can see that. But what's next for you? What's next for crash champions?

Speaker 1 So, you know, the industry is still very, very fragmented and businesses that start to kind of consolidate. Once that train leaves the station, it never stops until, you know, the industry's done.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 in a world where every industry kind of gets, you know, two to three national companies and then a few regional ones and then still the independent businesses, mom and pop shops,

Speaker 1 I, I want Crash Champions to be one of the last two kind of standing from a national perspective. So

Speaker 1 we got a lot of growth planned, a lot to do, and a lot to do even in

Speaker 1 investing.

Speaker 1 Really, there's so much of a need right now because of how quick the vehicles have changed. All of this advanced driver assist system stuff that's on the cars today,

Speaker 1 pre-COVID was not, it's way different today than just five years ago. So, the complexity of the vehicle has went overnight super hard.
And

Speaker 1 there's such a need for training and for equipment and everything else that's needed to keep up. Like, it's a major transformation of an industry.

Speaker 1 You know, we have plans of investing just in our existing locations today

Speaker 1 a half a billion dollars over the next seven or eight years in training and equipping to trans,

Speaker 1 you know, we're keeping up with the pace of the cars on the road, but as it all continues to evolve, so much is needed. So it's a...
It's an exciting time too, because it's a challenge, right?

Speaker 1 It's not the same as it was yesterday. And that's what makes business exciting.

Speaker 1 And that's what gives you a chance to really succeed: is when you see something changing, and you got to meet kind of the customer of tomorrow where they are. And that's what we're all

Speaker 1 full speed ahead on doing today.

Speaker 1 And AI is going to bring about efficiencies in our industry from an admin perspective that we can't wait for because most of the stuff that AI can help us with is stuff that our teammates hate doing.

Speaker 1 So they hate, you know, all the double entry of stuff from invoices to to things like that to even um sending out text messages to update customers and things like that and ai and even scheduling and figuring out the best recommendation for the customer where we can get them in and most efficiently fix their car at a time that's time and place that's convenient for them AI is coming along and really helping us be so much better.

Speaker 1 And it's not a threat to our people.

Speaker 1 It's doing all the things that our people hated doing anyway. So it's an exciting time, really.

Speaker 3 I love it, man. Well, we'll link your socials below.
Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.
We're about to do another one one of these days.

Speaker 1 Appreciate the show.

Speaker 3 Check them out, guys. I'll see you guys next time.

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