When Matt Ebert speaks about his car-collision restore store empire, he does so in a humble approach, like his beginnings.
The CEO of Crash Champions, which reported $2.75 billion in income final 12 months, got here from a small city in Indiana, the place incomes a university diploma was neither a given nor an expectation.
“We didn’t have a lot from a monetary standpoint,” he advised Fortune. “Faculty and massive profession planning weren’t ever a dialogue in my household.”
Ebert had an entrepreneurial spirit and began mowing lawns for folks at age 10 or 11. His actual curiosity, although, was vehicles, and he couldn’t wait to open the hood on his first automobile, change its oil, and take its wheels off.
“For me, a automobile meant freedom,” he recalled. “I nonetheless bear in mind the primary time I used to be in a automobile on my own, excited about how I may go wherever I need proper now.”
However at age 16, he wrecked his first automobile: a two-seater Ford EXP. Not desirous to make an insurance coverage declare or get his insurance coverage canceled, he visited an area automobile repairman and requested him if he may present Ebert the best way to repair his automobile. The repairman did—and that launched Ebert right into a profession of repairing vehicles.
Courtesy Crash Champions
Six-figure jobs with no diploma
Ebert took a job with the repairman after highschool, due to this fact coming “actually, accidentally” into the business. Now he oversees an organization that’s seen 130x income progress since 2019 and employs greater than 10,000 folks.
And like Ebert, 83% of his workforce doesn’t have a university diploma.
“I’ve carried out actually, rather well in life not having gone to varsity,” he stated. “And I’m not anti-college. I feel there’s positively issues that school is nice for. However I additionally know that it’s not a chance for everybody.”
Ebert’s firm is forward of the curve relating to using folks with no four-year diploma. Faculty has traditionally been considered as a one-way ticket to a profitable profession, however youthful generations are beginning to catch on it’s not the one path to success. Many Gen Zers are taking commerce jobs and aren’t burdened by scholar mortgage debt. Plus, some make greater than six figures doing so.
At Crash Champions, technicians make greater than $100,000 a 12 months, Ebert stated. Within the first quarter of 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the median weekly earnings of the nation’s 120.9 million full-time wage and wage staff was $1,194, which equates to roughly $62,000 yearly. Meaning Crash Champion staff make about 1.6 occasions that of the common U.S. employee.
“We view school as a bonus, not a requirement,” Ebert stated. After all, there are specific positions that require a selected diploma, he added, like how their controller and chief authorized officer wanted levels.
Regardless of not requiring school levels for many of its jobs, Crash Champions focuses on continued studying. It created a management improvement program centered on matters like tradition and retention, monetary and operational management, strategic management, communication and recognition, steady studying, in addition to delegation mastery and workforce employment. 1000’s of staff have participated in these applications.
Courtesy Crash Champions
“We will recruit the most effective technicians. We will practice the most effective technicians, [but] in the event that they’re working for unhealthy managers, they’ll depart and go elsewhere,” Ebert stated.
Crash Champions additionally presents an apprenticeship program the place they’ll “begin technicians from scratch,” he stated. They’re positioned with a workforce member whom they work with for a few years then are off on their very own.
Crash Champions’ progress story
Ebert credit his staff with lots of the firm’s accomplishments.
“A key to my success has been surrounding myself with higher folks, smarter folks than me, folks that have carried out issues that I haven’t carried out,” he stated.
Nonetheless, Ebert was the mastermind behind the corporate. After highschool, he moved as much as the suburbs of Chicago and stayed along with his grandparents for a few years and acquired a job at a physique store. On the time, he nonetheless wished to start out his personal enterprise, however “being a younger child who didn’t know anyone,” he knew that’d be a problem, and stated beginning his personal physique store could be “a bit over [his] head.”
With an entrepreneurial spirit, although, Ebert researched totally different companies, and finally opened his personal Subway franchise by cash-advancing $100,000 on bank cards. Though that first location didn’t make any cash, he determined to open a second “pondering that was going to be the trail to making a living.”
However he was flawed. That one didn’t generate income both. So with that, he went again to his car-repair roots, and approached an area automobile repairman, and so they opened a bodyshop collectively in 1999, when Ebert was 26. His enterprise accomplice, who was 20 years older than him, retired in 2014 and bought the enterprise to Ebert in 2014.
That grew to become the beginning of Crash Champions, which was first named Lennox after a city in Illinois. Ebert modified the identify of his enterprise to Crash Champions, which originates from the concept that the bodyshop is a hero in a buyer’s time of want after an accident.
“I wished to make the outlets good, tear down a few of these stereotypes, make it a spot that individuals would wish to come, a spot that individuals would wish to work,” he defined.
Courtesy Crash Champions
After taking up the enterprise, Ebert knew he wished to develop, and he acquired a struggling bodyshop—which rapidly snowballed into shopping for the enterprise’ third and fourth areas, all inside a couple of 12 months.
On the time, Ebert was nonetheless utilizing Small Enterprise Administration financing, and “mainly grew it so far as” he may within the Chicago space. He wished to amass extra outlets, however couldn’t with SBA financing, so he labored with an funding banker who instructed personal fairness as a substitute for debt. Ebert was initially hesitant to try this, however acknowledged business tendencies like tech developments in car restore would require extra capital. The COVID-19 pandemic compelled a shift in technique, however Ebert additionally noticed a necessity for his enterprise mannequin on a nationwide scale.
Crash Champions’ main progress got here in 2021. Service King Collision, one other giant auto physique restore firm, had grown too rapidly and made poor enterprise selections, main them to monetary hassle. Debt was coming due in 2022 and it wasn’t going to have the ability to pay. The corporate’s bondholders, primarily Clearlake Capital, would doubtless take it over, so Ebert proactively contacted Clearlake to merge Service King’s enterprise with Crash Champions to develop his enterprise.
These changed into 330 of Crash Champions’ present 650 areas, and the corporate noticed its income skyrocket from $327.1 million in income in 2021 to $2.1 billion in 2022. For this 12 months, it’s projecting round $3 billion and plans to “ramp [up] progress subsequent 12 months,” Ebert stated.
“I don’t wish to cease till we’re primary. We’re the third largest within the nation immediately,” Ebert stated, referencing Caliber Collision and Gerber Collision & Glass. “There’s a ton of progress forward for the corporate. We slowed a bit bit right here within the final 12 months or two, as a result of we grew so quick, and we wished to get extra subtle and extra able to be even greater.”
