Alabama's Morning News with JT
Matt Ebert on the Blue Collar Boom
Hey there, it is Ryan Seacrest with you. You wanna make this summer unforgettable? Join me at Chumba Casino. It's this summer's hottest online destination. They are rolling out the red carpet with an amazing welcome offer just for you. So don't wait, dive in now and play hundreds of social casino games for free. Your chance to redeem real prizes is just a spin away. Here to join me. - Sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary. VGW Group, void were prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. - Joining us now, Matt Ebert, who started his career as a technician and built a collision repair empire. It started out as just a local shop center and has now got over 600 locations, 37 states. He is the CEO of Crash Champions to talk about the big boom with blue collar instead of spending all that money at a four year college program. Let's get back to trade schools. Matt, welcome in. Thanks for being here. - Thanks for having me, how are you? - I'm doing fantastic. Yeah, the debt that kids graduate with now in student loans is astronomical. It's a major problem. Student loan debt is actually starting to surpass credit card debt in this country. And families and kids are starting to look at other options and based on what you built in your model here, well, you've got some of your technicians, you know, making between $100 and $200,000 a year. These are good options. - Yeah, we believe so. It's just options that people probably don't, we feel don't know about as much as they should for many years now, you know, college and technology, careers and things like that have been the big push. And there's a lot of blue collar work out there, including industries like ours that have shortages of people. And we think that it's important for people to know about those opportunities because college is it for everyone. - Yeah, and I've heard it a hundred times, I'm sure you have to learn a trade, have a job for life, we're always gonna need, you know, blue collar workers to, you know, keep the country rolling here. So tell me a little bit about your story, how you started from one single local repair center now, 600 locations. - Yeah, I've been in the industry since I was 16 and wrecked my car. A family friend showed me how to fix it and I worked with him, you know, after high school and on. Really, there was a need for national companies to offer consistent quality repairs across the country. We're the third largest in the industry now. So really just a big opportunity to create a national platform as we just sit over the years and we continue to grow. - Well, with your business model and starting from the ground up literally and learning how to do this at 16 years old and now with these hundreds of locations, where did you start and how did you grow your business model? As far as what part of the country? - Yeah, so it's just started in south suburbs of Chicago and grew to 11 locations there and then saw an opportunity to come together with some other what we call multi-shop operators joined with a group of 23 shops in California. We put the two together and then along the way, we've opened shops from the ground up but a lot of opportunity for shop owners that have a baby boomer age that are ready to exit their business, that we're looking for someone to turn it over to. So we've done a lot of that across the country. - Well, Matt, congratulations on your success and boy, the job opportunities you've created for others as well with all these different locations and you can make a lot of good money. As you said before, these folks are making $100 to $200,000 a year depending on their situations but it's not like you're making $15 an hour doing this. You get into fields like this, there's great opportunity financially. So congrats and thanks Matt for being with us. I sure do appreciate you. Judi was boring. - Hello. - Then Judi discovered Chumba Casino.com. - It's my little escape. - Now Judi's the life of the party. - Oh baby, mama's bringing home the bacon. - Whoa, take it easy Judi. ♪ Chumba chumba ♪ - The Chumba life is for everybody. So go to Chumba Casino.com and play over a hundred casino-style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. ♪ Chumba chumba ♪ Chumba Casino.com. No purchase necessary for your provided by law, 15-plus Terms and Conditions Apply, see website for details.