Brian von Tress: "We Burned the Ships and Said We're Doing This"

At 53 years old, Brian von Tress cashed in his retirement, walked away from a COO role at a 19-shop chain, and opened his first body shop with no private equity and no safety net. "We burned the ships and said we're doing this."

In this episode, I sit down with Brian von Tress, the Founder and President of Collision Pros Inc., a 13-location MSO spanning Northern California and Nevada with 170 employees. Brian's collision career started at 15, sweeping floors and washing cars to earn money for his first car. He went on to earn his MBA while working full-time, spent time at Caliber Collision when they had just 15 locations, and climbed to COO of a 19-shop chain before betting everything on himself.

Brian breaks down what it really takes to scale a bootstrapped MSO, including why the jump from four to six shops was a nightmare and what infrastructure he had to build to get through it. He shares his acquisition playbook and how it's shifted from buying small underperforming shops to buying market share. We talk about the devastating Camp Fire that destroyed his Paradise location and displaced eight employee families, and how he kept every one of them on payroll. Brian also gets into why he still sends handwritten birthday cards to all 170 employees, what Tesla certification actually costs and how it's changed, and how independent operators can compete against PE-backed consolidators through what he calls guerrilla warfare.

Whether you're running one shop or thinking about your tenth, Brian's journey is one you need to hear.

The BodyShop Leaders Podcast is powered by BodyShop Marketing, the agency helping collision industry leaders grow smarter and lead stronger.

Transcript

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It's that drive, that entrepreneurial drive, and to be there and we are not gonna fail. We're gonna do this no matter what it takes, and all in, and we're gonna be better every single day we're there. Welcome back to Body Shop Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Burkholder, and today I'm sitting down with Brian Vontre, the founder and president of Collision Pros, a 13-location MSO across Northern California and Nevada. Brian started in a body shop at 15 years old, earned his MBA while working full-time, spent nearly two decades climbing to COO of a 19 shop chain, and then walked away from it all to build Collision Pros from scratch. He's bootstrapped a business to 170 employees, earned an Inc. 5000 ranking and holds OEM certifications for Tesla, Ford, GM, and more, all without a dime of private equity. Brian, welcome to the Body Shop Leaders podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time and I'm excited to hear your stories. So, Brian, you started working in a body shop when you were just 15 years old. Take us back to that first shop. What was it about collision repair that hooked you? I'm not sure it was ever so much that I wanted to be in the body shop business or that was what I was pursuing. I was trying to earn a few extra dollars to buy a car. As I grew up in this business, he was a state farm adjuster for most of my life and really all my life and until he retired. Anyhow, he had a friend that was in a body shop that wasn't too far from our house. And so after high school, I would go over to there and work and to wash cars and sweep floors and whatever it took to earn a few dollars. And it was no real intention that this was going to be the industry I was in, which I think is a really common story in this industry. Not many people got up and said, hey, this is really what I want to do the rest of my life. It was more of a just a stumbling block. And I got into it while I was going through school. And then I guess I was really interested in painting cars and learned to paint. And then when I was going through college, I painted on the side and did different projects and stuff to get me enough to get through college. And then once through college, I started looking for other avenues. I still wasn't committed to being in the body shop business. So I started looking at other avenues and different things I wanted to do and wasn't getting a lot of responses on resumes I was sending out. And then until I mixed the body shop with the degree, and all of a sudden, paint companies and other vendors and things like that are interested to hire me. So I went to work for Sherwin Williams Paint Company. It was actually the Martin Senior division and selling it to body shops and did that for a couple of years and then got promoted over into the management on the Sherwin Williams side. Did that for seven years. I thought that's when they were coming out with the business development managers. And I thought, what a great job to have just to be the know-it-all guy who goes around and tells everybody has no responsibility for anything. So I thought that was a perfect job. So I went back to school and did an MBA. I thought it would at least carry me into management with Sherman Williams. But once I did, I started getting calls from a brand new company that was starting out called Caliber Collision. So I worked in the very, very early days with Caliber when they had, I don't know, 15, 17 locations, something like that in Orange County. So and then from there, my wife, we had relocated to there. And she got homesick once we had our first child, and I was working all the time and gone, and saw the writing on the wall that it's probably a good idea for us to move her back home. That's when I started with BodyCraft. Very interesting. So you worked for Caliber, and they had like 15 locations. They hired me as a regional manager in Orange County, and then it quickly changed up to the LA County. And that was part of the problem, I was driving so much. I could be in the car five hours a day. So just because of the traffic there. That is very fascinating. I think that's the first person I've talked to that had worked for Caliber when they were so small. That is pretty amazing. It's kind of like I guess somebody that worked for Sam Walton when he was studying Walmart or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So then I came up and I worked for BodyCraft for they had three stores. So Bruce Mackey, who owned Bodycraft and Nels Wiegan, they had sold to M2 in the early days. So I had heard their names, but I wasn't really sure who they were. After they sold, they came and started up in Sacramento and started with two locations, but I knew what they wanted to do. So anyway, it worked out. I came and met with them and we started, and then that's the store that grew out to 19 stores. Gosh, yeah. I only oversaw uh 14 of them. The others were in Orange County, and then eventually they sold to Caliber, and I just didn't know if I wanted to do that. It's a long story, but wasn't really my thing. At that point, I would have been 53, and I was like, Yeah, I don't know if I want to work for a consolidator at this point in my life. So that was kind of the change in direction. And I had some money saved up. I had all the contacts, plenty of experience. So I'm like, if I'm ever gonna do this, I can't wait much past 53 years old. So we sold off some things we had and cashed in our retirement and basically burned the ships and said, we're doing this. I was super excited and fast forward six months or a year, and I'm pulling my hair out. I never said in any of the stuff in my experience that I was ever a body shop manager or an estimator. So when you change jobs, it was a very different awakening. Like this is a lot here I don't know that people work for me and knew, but I didn't know. It was a big learning curve. Very interesting. So, Brian, I had a question for you around that kind of that journey of going from almost like not corporate, but managing to walking away from all of that and betting on yourself. Is there any words of wisdom that you have for us around that? I know you said you burned the boats and you just went all in. Any words for the audience of words of wisdom of things you learned around that? I think you have to really know yourself. And it's not easy. So, like I said, I had money, I had contacts, I had plenty of experience, book experience, all those sort of things. And it's still not enough. It's that drive, that entrepreneurial drive, and to be there, and we are not gonna fail. We're gonna do this no matter what it takes, and all in, and we're gonna be better every single day we're there. And that's not for everybody, I don't think. But it sure has been exciting for us. Amazing. I love that. And as you mentioned, you started Collision Pros with your own money, no private equity. You just bet on yourself and on your family. And you've said that going from one to three shops felt pretty manageable, five to six was a nightmare, and then seven plus just started getting easier. Can you break that down for us? Like, what made that middle stretch hard? And what did you build to get through it? So you go from three stores is just basically one person in your corporate office and yourself, and you know everything that's going on and have a good handle on things. But then there's a point where all of a sudden you're like, I need more help. I can't do all this myself. Particularly our stores, our early stores, had quite a bit of mileage between them. So then you're in the car all the time instead of being in the store. But it's really the infrastructure and building the infrastructure, and when you add certain parts, and the person you probably need in accounting in to have one or two or three stores is going to be very different than the person you need when you get up to be 13 stores. You're adding HR and you're adding adding uh operations manager, and then we just added regional managers, which Jason's my partner. We brought him in like in the third or fourth store, and then we've kind of grown out from there. And he runs operations and does a magnificent job with that going. But he and I worked from back in the Bodycraft days, and then people went over to Caliber, and then it wasn't necessarily cut out for him. And I said, Hey, I'm struggling over here. Why don't you come on and we'll be partners and grow this thing from here? He came on and we sat down. We actually went to the coast for a weekend with our wives and wrote a whole business plan and how we were gonna do it. We were gonna grow one store per year. Um, and I think we've already hit what we had planned, which is rare, right? That you have a plan and you stick with it and it carries all the way through 13 years later, and now we're sitting with 13 stores and it's been good. Amazing. So, like you mentioned, grown to 13 locations and largely through acquisition, if I understand right. What do you look for when you're evaluating a shop to acquire? And what's your advice to someone that's maybe on the other side of the fence thinking about selling their shop? So what we look for is probably different today than what it was when we started, for one thing. We could only afford so much. And then on top of that, the market has really changed. We used to buy stores that maybe the owner couldn't sell it or hadn't sold it and it wasn't doing as well as it once was, and just needed to kind of come in and shine it up and add some new equipments and some training, polish it up and get two or three DRPs, and then we're off and running. The market has changed, and now it's slowed down so much that it's really hard to get DRPs. So it's difficult to start with that small store that you want to add to, or even uh Brownfield. So we're targeting more the A-type shop that has market share or that we can work with now. So that's kind of what we're after. So the second part of your question was you know, what do we look for? So you know, you'd be shocked at the wide array of things that I find when I look at shops. So the most important piece, I think forgetting the most you're gonna get out of it, the shops is have super clean financials. The financials that you could pull up. Somebody says, I need this, and by tomorrow, maybe in the next four hours you could pull up exactly what they need, all the financials, good tax returns, good month-over-month financials that show that you've got steady earnings. And then I think it's really important that an owner has a strategy around taxes, particularly if you're in California. You have to know what you're gonna wind up with at the end of the day, I think, in order to plan your retirement. And you have to get your mind around that. And then probably surrounding yourself with experts, and that includes your tax person that is probably your estate planner, and most importantly, is somebody who can give you some direction on the value of your business. Because showing up and having no idea what it's worth is probably a waste of everybody's time. So you don't have a clue if you're getting a decent offer or not. And I hate to sit in a building where we've gone through two or three hours of a discussion and you want three times what business is worth, whether you think it's worth what Microsoft trades for. And it happens regularly. I think a good understanding of what it's gonna be, and you'd be shocked at how good information like Chat GPT can walk people through and stuff. So it's probably not the place to go to figure out what totally your business is worth, but a good place to start. Certainly farther than most owners are. That's great advice for anybody that's maybe thinking of selling, Brian. I appreciate you sharing that. And just a cool little side note there is yeah, just go to AI and start talking to AI about what your shop might be worth. And like Brian said, it's a good starting point, probably not like a final number. I wouldn't bet your life on it, but don't bet your life on it or use it for legal. But hey, it's a good starting point. That's a great point. One thing that stands out, Brian, about you is you send birthday cards and gift cards to every single one of your 170 employees, and you remember their anniversaries, their birthdays. Why is this so important to you? And how do you keep this up at scale? Do you have a little secret for us? I don't know if I remember anybody's birthday. I have a hard enough time with my wife's and my kids, but we have them all calendared in our uh HR stuff. That and then it used to be that I looked them up and handled it all myself, but now I have somebody who who once a month brings them in to me that it brings in anniversary and then birthday cards, and then I fill them out and try to do a somewhat of a personal message in each one and just thank you for being part of the team. I started this over 20 years ago back in the bodycraft days. I thought that it gave a real genuineness, and it's funny that the closer I am to them, the less it means to them. Interesting. But when I'm farther away and they're a new employee and they think it's really amazing and they they like it a lot. But it's part of what we mean when we say we're a small family business, even though it's gotten up to be a little bit larger, we still feel like we're a small family business and those things matter. That's incredible. So I can totally understand that. I can barely remember my own family's birthdays, but at least you have put a system in place to do this. And I hadn't thought about that part that maybe it's the new guy on the detail department that thinks it's pretty cool when the CEO writes him a handwritten birthday note rather than like somebody that's closer to you. That's pretty interesting. It's one of those culture is such a subtle thing. You can do all these little things and people just love their job, and then somebody does something stupid somewhere else, a new boss or something like that, and kind of wipes out all that culture. And I suppose it's just because it's genuine. I do appreciate people and the employees, all they do for us. That's outstanding. You keep that up because there's a lot of shop owners that aren't doing that. So anybody that's listening, definitely take a note from Brian here. Step up your game. So let's talk a little bit about back in 2018. You had one of your locations get destroyed in a fire, and it displaced a number of your employee families as well. And you gave each family a thousand dollar gift card, kept everyone on payroll, mobilized your community to help. How did that experience change you as a leader? I don't know how big Paradise Fire was outside of California. They have Netflix, a couple things on it, I think, out there. And it was a big deal, Viru. And it didn't just burn down like you think a few houses got burned down. This burnt down an entire community. I think when it first hit, my first thing is I got the call about, hey, there's smoke out in the distance and employees want to go home. And I'm thinking, and those cars really gotta go. Do we have to so my first reaction was really, is this that big of a deal? And then as we've seen, that that fire swept through so fast. I have pictures of a wall of fire, probably 30 foot tall, that's just racing right at the building. So it burnt the building down. There were eight aluminum F-150s in there that just burnt up to a puddle. And so it took out not only the people that maybe burnt their houses down, it maybe damaged their houses, or they just couldn't get back in there. So we had eight people that lost their houses in some fashion through that. So they couldn't go back in there. They had many of them no belongings whatsoever. I think most of them had no belongings. So, you know, the immediate thing for us is here's a thousand dollars, find yourself a place to sleep, let's figure this out. And we tried to make them comfortable as fast as we could. And that that was hard because their life was completely in disarray. They don't even have their insurance agents' names and stuff to call. Everything just burnt and gone. And so I also wanted to ease their discomfort of how do I pay my bills while while all this is happening. So I said, hey, come down to the we had a shop in Chico, which is probably 12, 15 miles away. So we moved everybody down there and said, we'll keep you employed. Saying that, and then how am I going to do it are two different things, right? So you just double the size of your shop. But the one piece I hadn't thought about that whole community had to move down to Chico. So Chico got very busy, plus, a lot of those cars are damaged within the fleet and different stuff that happened. So the shops got really busy really quickly. So that was helpful for us. And then the insurance companies now had need for more shops. Well, I'm the only guy in town who had more people, so it was kind of like a god thing that all those pieces fell together for us and we kept everybody going. And eventually we did, I don't remember, somebody in our company started the GoFundMe, and it raised to $36,000. And then we got about another $15 or thousand or something on the outside of it that people said, Hey, I'll donate the money, but I don't want to pay the fees through GoFundMe. And so it was a little over $50,000, and it was really from a lot of industry shop owners and even vendors and uh a lot of people that really helped out. And then Collision Industry Foundation showed up and brought them all kinds of things. I can't remember what it was, but held a whole event for the families. And so they all wound up with a good start to get themselves back going. And we rebuilt the shop and eventually sold it to the manager that was there. There's not enough left in the community for us, but he loved it. He'd been there his whole life. So it was really, I think, started him on a dream that he wanted, and they're still there and doing a great job. Outstanding. There's just, yeah, so much humanity in that story that I love how you guys just rallied around and kept everybody on the payroll, kept everybody working, and tried to bring their lives back together because that is so devastating. I've never been through anything like that personally. I cannot sympathize. And their whole lives up you think about the way it gets turned upside down. And I've got to figure out how to get all those things for my family. I've got to figure out how to turn in an insurance claim. And like I said, it went up and what the fine. And it's just so much. It was just it just locked people up. And it was it was amazing the um churches and the different charities that brought all this stuff in for people, but they brought in truckloads and truckloads of clothes and furniture and things like that. And they're like, Oh, I love the fact that you are giving me clothes and furniture. I don't even have a car, I don't have a place to put any of this. What am I gonna do with a bed? And so they like they just threw away tons and tons of that stuff. So it was it's just funny that you would assume that's what somebody needs, but it wasn't. They just needed a roof. Wow, that is crazy. Amazing. Well, let's shift it a little bit, Brian, in the conversation. You talked about needing an ego check as a type A personality, and that's like learning to hire people who are better than you, and then actually get out of their way. What was the turning point for you on that? So I don't know if I've always felt it's pretty easy to find somebody who's better at anything, particularly in this business than me. But I have really gotten to believe over time that it's better to take your time and hire the right person and the best possible person that it can do the job. And so we spend quite a bit of time seeking the perfect person. And the parts saying, check your ego and don't worry about hiring somebody better than yourself. That's just something I've always, even my boys that are in this industry, I've always told them, hey, one of these days you'll be in charge of something. And there is always somebody out there better than you are. And if you're intimidated by the fact that somebody's better at their job, then you you're gonna struggle forever. But I just think it's important to hire the best you can and help them succeed, and that will drive you and help you succeed. 100%. Brian, I don't know if you agree with this statement, but I say sometimes that I want to be the dumbest person in the room. What I mean by that is I just want to surround myself with really smart people. I think there's just so much value in that, whether it's mentors or employees or team members or whatever it is, you always want to put yourself into the rooms where you there's they're really smart people. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, that's probably I've never been the real innovator in this industry, but man, oh man, show me how somebody operates well and I can copy it and move on with the best of them. So really the the most stupid right what I've learned in this business is is just by working with really great people. Coyote Vision grew when I started this company. I was already had known Elena and Mike from future groups or scroups. And so I signed on with them, and it's really been helpful in that there's somebody else who's been through that journey that you're trying to go on. And you can get a lot of advice and help you, like I said, when you realize that you've outgrown your HR person or your CPA or your attorney or your accounting person in your office. When you've outgrown them and you go, I've got to have something better here, they will help you recognize it a lot quicker than you will. Particularly when it comes to those sort of things. We in the body shop business have never really how do I know when a CPA is over his head? And so on. You start getting with some brighter minds and they can go, they can really help with a lot of the sorts. That is such great advice. And this comes up other episodes as well, where it's so important to get into rooms with people that have done what you're trying to do. They can help accelerate that learning curve so much. And Brian, you just reiterated that for us again. So I would say to anybody listening, if you're struggling, don't do this alone. Get into some type of performance group or something where people can help you out. Amazing. Brian, let's talk a little bit about Tesla certifications. So you were a really early mover on Tesla's certifications. What went into earning that and how has it impacted your shops as EVs continue to grow? Your early adopter because of California. It just kind of we were growing. And as you start up these new shops, is like I said, we bought shops that had a lot of capacity. So we were always looking for capacity, whether it be DRP or a manufacturer of how are we going to put cars in there? And so Tesla helped with that. It's also the latest of the most technology. So you're training their people, and then you wind up having to have pretty good equipment in order to work with Tesla. It was a good fit. Most of these stores that we acquired had old equipment, or maybe it was a brown field and that we needed all new equipment. So if you're already buying equipment, the Tesla certification is really not that difficult. You just buy, they mostly just want modern equipment and it's probably next or $50,000 on top of that. That you have to buy a strictly Tesla type stuff. It was great for us and gave us a big boost. But Tesla now is opening their own facilities. And in the Sacramento business, I think most of us are doing Tesla's are off about 50%. So that's a little hard to hit. There's still good partners and we still do a lot of volume with them, but they've been better partners if they didn't open their own shops next door to us. They should have to have a non-compete with you. At least don't try to drive duplicate. Excellent. Brian, you've made a very deliberate choice not to try to duplicate what the big consolidators do. You lean into culture and differentiation instead. And with private equity buying up shops kind of left and right, why should independent shop owners be doing right now to compete and win? Good question. An independent that is a single shop owner versus an MSO are probably two different things, but one way or another, I think. So we do an annual planning meeting that's two days and we get off-site and and go through a whole lot of things. Part of that is a discussion is who are we and what do we do that's different than anybody else? And that caliber really can't lead us at. So it's kind of guerrilla warfare. How can we compete on the street? But I don't think we can lean into we gotta be caliber, we gotta mirror, we gotta look like them. Because they're just they just have so much deeper pockets and so much better at that. The thing we have is we have agility to move quickly and do whatever changes in direction a whole lot easier than they do. And all beyond caliber is all of the MSOs. I guess that's a bit true. So we spent a lot of time thinking about that for independence. I think long term, you know, if you're a single shop owner, you probably are going to outperform if you've been your whole life dedicated to this one store than a corporation who's bought a bunch of shops and has somebody, a manager who doesn't have much skin in the game running it. So I think just be the best operator to produce a great repair. And then it really depends on if you go down the channel of am I a DRP shop or am I more doing OEM type repairs and trying to lean into niche of dealerships and those sort of things. And I do think that's a little safer bet, but that doesn't really work out for us. Our business plan has us catering more DRPs because the speed of the growth and I can't open in a market and at 45 minutes or an hour away, and they wouldn't have a clue who we were. So we wind up tagging on with DRPs and so on. It's kind of always been the journey I've been on. But if I was in one store and we became the local expert on the correct repair and high-end repairs, it's probably a safer bet in some ways, in my opinion, even though that's not the avenue I've taken. Very good advice. Appreciate that. Brian, we ask every guest the same question at the close of our show. What does being a body shop leader mean to you? So I think it in a body shop, it's no different than any other place. And it's strive to be the best you can be every day and try to do better. But more than that, help other people get better. If you are helping the people around you become better at their career and grow through their career and feed their families and take care of them, all the other pieces fall into place. So it's, I think just helping others help you. I love that answer. Just helping others. Let's not overcomplicate this, let's keep it simple. Really appreciate that. Brian, I want to thank you for taking your time and coming here on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I love it. It was great talking to you, Daniel, and uh appreciate you having. Absolutely. So if you've been listening to this podcast and you got any value from this episode, please go ahead and share it with any other shop owners and go ahead and subscribe to the Body Shop Bleeders podcast. We'll catch you on the next episode.