480: Matt Ebert—The Billion Dollar Car Wreck
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
4.9 • 40.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 102 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matt Ebert didn't set out to build a billion-dollar business—he just wanted to fix cars the right way. Today, he's the CEO of Crash Champions, one of the fastest-growing collision repair companies in the country, valued in the billions and trusted to bring wrecked vehicles back to life.
Mike sits down with Matt to unpack what really happens after a crash, why the skilled trades behind collision repair matter more than ever, and how a kid with no grand plan or college degree wound up leading a national powerhouse. Along the way, Matt tells how he got his start in the business, proving that sometimes the road to success begins with a single accident (or two) … and a desire to fix it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The way I heard it, Chuck, it's entirely possible that a guy can just be driving down the road, |
| 0:09.7 | you know, 17 years old. |
| 0:11.7 | Okay. |
| 0:12.3 | And his beloved car. |
| 0:13.7 | Yeah. |
| 0:14.1 | And lose control. |
| 0:16.4 | 16, I think he was. |
| 0:18.0 | Wreck it. |
| 0:19.5 | And then be worth a billion dollars as a result. |
| 0:24.4 | Is that what you heard? |
| 0:25.5 | That's what I heard. |
| 0:26.4 | I heard the most profitable car wreck in the history of the world |
| 0:30.3 | is the story we're about to share on this episode of the way I heard it. |
| 0:35.8 | Yes. |
| 0:36.3 | It sounds exactly like the conversation that we just did, |
| 0:39.7 | yes. Although I don't think we connected the dots. No? Not the way I just did. I mean, |
| 0:44.5 | I just talked to a guy named Matt Ebert. Matt Ebert is a guy who bought me dinner a year ago, |
| 0:51.3 | and not just me. I was at Skills USA with a room full of people in a private |
| 0:57.2 | dining room. I was speaking there at this thing, right? And they invited me in, and somebody |
| 1:02.3 | picked up our whole tab. Right. And then the waiter gave me a note. And it was a nice note from a guy |
| 1:07.7 | named Matt who said, he admired what we were doing at Microworks. |
| 1:11.5 | Right. |
... |
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