In this episode, we’re focusing on the scale option for shops in their path forward to talk about how shop owners can grow their operations strategically to compete in today’s collision repair landscape. To help us navigate this topic, we’re joined by Thomas Goforth, who you may remember from all the way back in Episode 3 as the owner of the growing Absolute Collision.

You know, you can’t dip your toe in it. It’s either you’re diving in the pool in the deep end or you’re going to just, you know, stay outside the pool. But I would say is having that team around you and those resources can be from a job or they can be from, you know, a CRM, they could and I would get a mentor, somebody to help.

Cole Strandberg: Thomas built Absolute Collision into A7 Store MSO in less than four years, creating a strong culture, developing a robust acquisition pipeline and spoiler alert, ultimately selling the business to one of the national consolidators in late 2024. He’s, in my opinion, one of the best operators in the industry, and today he will share insights into scaling a business, building a winning culture, and navigating the sale of a rapidly growing MSO. If you’re considering growing your business, selling it, or both one day, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. Enjoy the show.

Thomas Goforth, welcome back to another episode here on the Collision Vision. My friend, how are you?

Thomas Goforth: Good man, Good welcome. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me on for it’s been a couple years since the last time I think.

Cole Strandberg: Yeah, by the time this thing airs, we will be right around two years ago. So a lot of evolution on the collision vision, a lot of evolution on the industry, and a lot of changes and good progress and evolution for you and absolute collision over that time as well. So very excited to dive into that. Before we do, though, it’s been a long time since our audience has been acquainted with you.

Would you go ahead and tell us your story and introduce yourself in your own words?

Thomas Goforth: Absolutely. And congratulations on the upcoming two years. It’s been awesome. So I think I’ve caught 99% of those, those podcasts.

So I might have one or two might have slipped by so.

Cole Strandberg: Greatly appreciate it my friend. I appreciate your friendship.

Thomas Goforth: Oh absolutely, same here brother. I’ll give you high level 50,000 foot view because God knows I can squirrel off you know? Started a friend of the family when I was 12 years old, you know, just helping out, clean up, etcetera. Went on to a regional MSO will burn auto body.

They got acquired by Abra, which obviously today is caliber. Got recruited by a dent wizard and I’m trying to think when that was, I was opening up shops for them pretty much in a East Coast basis. And you know, we had some about 3, I want to say, you know, we’re three sales. So you know, we went from three different PES, great time there and then decided it was go back to, you know, back to the true Body Shop world.

Dent Wizard was a little bit more of a hybrid and that’s when we started looking for what was the absolute collision. So we, we ended up getting our first two stores May 2020, which I don’t recommend anybody buying stores in COVID, but that’s, that’s.

Cole Strandberg: Amazing, amazing timeline, absolutely crazy. And that leads me to my favorite phrase that you use with some some pretty good regularity, which is.

Thomas Goforth: Risk oblivious, buddy.

Cole Strandberg: I love it man, applicable and more and more as I’ve gotten to know you. I so much appreciate that about you. But you still think about things in the right way. So I do want to get into the creation of Absolute Collision and you started with two stores, which I think is really interesting, but start at the beginning of the Absolute story.

What inspired you to go out and begin the journey? That would become Absolute Collision.

Thomas Goforth: You know, it was, you know, my past have had the, you know, work for some great companies, some great people, but it was just that, you know, that burn. And I think you can relate a little bit that entrepreneurial drive to do it on your own. And so was just starting to look around and you know, so happened to, you know, and next colleague of yours, Nancy Roland has some 2 shops for sale in my area. So that’s kind of, that’s kind of how it started.

And it, you know, I was looking for one, but it was a smaller MSO and, you know, West of Charlotte. And that’s where we started.

Cole Strandberg: Love it, man, Very, very cool. And I think you probably even surprised yourself with what the organization would become. And I want to get there eventually, but I want to talk about the steps along the way first. So you start with two stores.

Talk me through the adventure from there in terms of adding more stores, building a team around you, because something that Absolute really had, I think was very, very solid leadership at the top and, and building that culture that if nothing else or, or on top of everything else, rather I I think it’s something you’re uniquely gifted at.

Thomas Goforth: Thank you for that. But yeah, cultures, I think it’s key. You know, sometimes it’s used as a buzzword, but I do think it’s instrumental in any organization, whether it’s body shops or, you know, whatever the business might be, to create that culture. But it was, you know, there was a lot of trial and error.

There was a lot of sleepless nights. But we started with those two and that was, like I said, May 2020-2021. We bought 3 stores out Eastern North Carolina, Wilmington area 2022. Let’s see, on 2022, we’ve bought another store or we outgrew one of the stores we originally bought in 2020.

And then we bought, we started at Brownfield Charlotte, which was more of a fleet operation. And then we bought our 7th store January of last year, January 24.

Cole Strandberg: From zero to seven stores in four years, that’s not a story, not a story you hear very often. And I’m sure that was not an easy, easy path, but I’m sure it came. I know it came with a number of real milestones. When you look back on that story, are there any key milestones or turning points that jump out in your mind that helped you and the absolute team achieve the rapid success you ended up achieving?

Thomas Goforth: It’s a, you know, it’s an army. Not one person can do it. It’s, you know, it’s from the store level, from the, from the detailer all the way to the top. I think we had some key partnerships.

We used CCC’s consulting service, Elevate. I think they were instrumental to help us out in this day and time. It’s as you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s more than a full time job to make this work, especially when you’re competing with strategics and just the industry in itself. We partnered with a phenomenal jobber blue rose color company, Blake Harris, the owner there.

You know, they have some great things to help with their success. And then I think just building, again, the stores were phenomenal, but building a corporate probably before I need it. It’s kind of one of those things, a castle built on sand. You got to have that foundation.

So you know, we’ve ended up having centralized parts procurement. We have centralized review, reviewing the estimates. We had a Director of operations, Matt Green, whoever saw all the stores and the GM level. So I think it was just having those corporate pieces that didn’t make sense financially at the time.

But as we grew, we were more of a proactive approach versus reactive. So obviously there’s the growing pains, cash flow in those positions. But in the end, you know it turned out to be a good thing.

Cole Strandberg: We mentioned culture and it’s such an important piece of, I think, who you are as an entrepreneur. I don’t want to brush over it too quickly. Talk to me in real terms how you think culture made an impact on the absolute story and how others can kind of follow in your footsteps and build that great culture tactics they can use to emulate what you did.

Thomas Goforth: So you know, we were spread office was centrally located in North Carolina just north of Charlotte. So we had stores, Shelby, Forest City, which is the western part of the state to Charlotte, to Wilmington, Leland, Hampstead, which you know, from One Direction to the others over six hours. I think it’s just, you know, doing what you say and following through. But it was just caring.

You know, it’s showing because anybody in this industry or in Indian industry can go get a job, but showing that you actually are more than a number, you know, showing that you care. It could be simple things as you know, we always had if it’s somebody’s birthday is a card cake and a gift card. Every year we had a annual banquet where we brought all the stores together and their spouses and that, you know, one year was in Wilmington, then it was in Charlotte. So we just bounced back and forth the state because some of these people have never even met each other when you’re 6 hours away.

So it’s just taking care of the people. Honestly, you know, we’re all going to make some mistakes. There’s the stresses of the job day in, day out, and that’s, you know, whether it’s dealing with customers, whether it’s just dealing, again, the stressors of the job. I think it’s just letting them know they’re cared for and you know, just, it’s more than words, it’s just actions showing them that you really do care.

Cole Strandberg: Absolutely. And I, I’ve had the good fortune of meeting a lot of your team and they can tell you care. I mean, it was an authentic way of building a culture and it was very, very cool to see in an industry that’s traditionally been very challenging to build that culture. Talk to before we move on to kind of the growth piece of our conversation and the scale piece of our conversation about your leadership team and its composition and how you ended up deciding when the right time was and and how you ended up identifying the talent.

Obviously, you mentioned Matt, you had Diovan as as CFO, just a really, really good team that was well equipped rather to handle the growth you had and and then some.

Thomas Goforth: Yeah. So we, my theory on it always was I didn’t want to hire reactionary and just hire that person because it the seat need to be filled at the time that could, you know, lead to a bad hire to lead to rush decisions, whatever the case might be. So I thought it was, you know, instrumental to always hire them in my mind 612 months before you needed them to build that foundation and to ease them into that role. But like you said, we had a phenomenal CFO Devon Matt over operations George and centralized review.

You know he was worked for several consolidators. Kevin did centralized parts. Never in his life he had the aptitude, but never in his life had he done centralized parts, which you know that was instrumental. We had Justin, Brandon, Bryan, just a bunch of key people that have been in the industry, whether it’s from consolidation, whether it was from crossing paths and you know, previous, previous lives.

That was just, it was just it clicked. It was great all together. So you know, I said it before, it takes an army to do this when it’s hard enough to run 1 store, much less when you’re running 7. And like I was ambitious and knew we were going to grow.

Did I think it’d be seven to four years? No, what I say everybody, Oh yeah, we’ll have seven to four years. But deep down I was like, no, there’s no way we’re getting this many this quick. So.

Cole Strandberg: And paint a picture with seven stores. Roughly how many employees is that the cross organization?

Thomas Goforth: So obviously we had absolute at its core and then we had a company IBS Innovative Diagnostic Solutions who did our ADOS mechanical work and all that, but we were total 135 employees.

Cole Strandberg: Man, that we had big time. And I notice you keep referring to the organization in past tense. And we’ll get to that everybody. And it’s a very happy ending in advance.

Not to not to spoil the the ending, but awesome, awesome stuff ahead. And, and just all the more reason to take in what we’re hearing here and, and doing your best to emulate. If scale is the ultimate path for your organization, Thomas, obviously you can’t scale from zero to seven stores without having, barring some crazy other abilities and access to greenfields and brownfields, an acquisition pipeline. And I think that’s something that you did really well with.

What made your approach unique in M&A compared to other Ms. OS you might have been competing with out there in the marketplace?

Thomas Goforth: So I probably, there’s probably people listening to this that took my call and they didn’t want to, I just did a lot of cold calling. You know, it was our map is what you see behind us was kind of the southeast, if you will, you know, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee. And so there’s just a lot of cold calls and just, you know, whether it’s from, you know, different industry, trade shows, etcetera, meeting in person, calling, shooting some emails. But I think if there was a relatable, they got me in the door 9 times out of 10 as you know, a shop owner and knowing the stresses that what’s going on day-to-day.

And that doesn’t take away from any other MSO or anything like that. It’s just but working and breathing it day-to-day and, you know, trying to grow it. And, you know, we had common, you know, commonalities and things that we could talk about discuss of what was going on in the moment versus from just a strictly whether it’s a M and a side or, you know, a lot larger scale. I think it’s just the I was one of them.

I’m I was just blessed enough to or crazy enough, depends how you look at it to have seven of them so.

Cole Strandberg: Rapport certainly goes a long way. And I think that’s something that that you had a ton of and you could talk to talk you lived their life, albeit maybe scaling a little bit crazier, but that goes a long way. At the end of the at the end of the day, sales, M&A, any, anything, it’s a people business and that’s something that I’ve always found you being very good at. You can make friends pretty easily and that goes a long way in this world and and well beyond From an identification standpoint.

How did you kind of dial in on what your acquisition targets would be? What were the criteria and kind of walk me through that checklist with what others should be looking at when they consider growing via acquisition?

Thomas Goforth: So I think I had a Target list. I believe I shared this with you, probably 60 stores. So I did a lot of cold calls and you know, it was in the beginning, it was who’s going to sell. So that’s how we went from, you know, Western North Carolina six hours away over the here.

That’s that’s how it was sale. There was no plan of, you know, hey, we’re going to Wilmington after Shelby and Forest City. It’s you know, it’s no, we’re going to buy these stores because the answer he’s for sale. But I, you know, look at things that that fit our core business because everybody there’s different business models in this.

You have your DRP, you have your certification. There might be a fleet side or whatnot. So just identifying those jobs that were similar to what we were doing and you know that have the equipment in place, have the people in place. You know, I wasn’t looking to go and do turnarounds.

You know, we did capital improvements rebranded, etcetera, but it wasn’t looking to do that. And then, you know, something that I saw some growth potential in that, you know, whether the owner was tired or it was just, you know, they’re absentee on or whatnot. I don’t want to buy anything at its peak because there’s only so much you can make something better like you can, it’s, there’s going to plateau, there’s going to be a ceiling at some point. So I was looking for the ones that, you know, had a little bit that we could, you know, put our critical mass together, you know, scalability and take advantage of that.

Cole Strandberg: Let’s get a little granular on some of your criteria. Were there revenue or EBITDA or square footage kind of hard limits or it was case by case?

Thomas Goforth: It was case by case, market by market. We’ve, you know, obviously looked at some smaller stores, looked at stores that, you know, we’re doing close to a million a month. But it was honestly, I would say the, the bread and butter of what we found was in that, you know, 2 hundred 250,000 a month, if you will. So you know, put that at 243 million gross annual revenue.

It’s kind of where we were looking for because we knew relationships we had that we could bolt on instantly. And you know, kind of again, that critical mass helps us get to that next level.

Cole Strandberg: So when you think back to 2020, remove the pandemic from the equation and you picture yourself in that position for others who might be in that position right now with zero stores, one store, two stores who say, man, this Thomas guy sounds like he crushed it. I want to do that too. What advice would you give that entrepreneur who’s looking to scale the way you scale?

Thomas Goforth: You know you can’t dip your toe in it. It’s either you’re diving in the pool in the deep end or you’re going to just, you know, stay outside the pool. But I would say it’s having that team around you and those resources can be from a job or they can be from a, you know, a CRM. They could, and I would get a mentor, somebody to help.

I think that’s one of the things that our industry, and maybe this is me being naive, is I think everybody thinks there’s a secret sauce or scared to share information. We’re doing the same thing at the end of the day, fixing cars correctly, taking care of the customer. And I think, you know, it’s, it’s good to talk through the challenges and have that person that’s been there. So instead of hitting potholes, you know, you’ll, you’ll minimize that and hit some speed bumps.

And I think that’s one of the the things that I would say is just get with somebody that’s been there instead of trying to recreate the will. Just, you know, Tulsani that’s already got the will and can help you through it because there’s plenty of people out there that will.

Cole Strandberg: It’s something I think our industry is getting better at, but we still have a ways to go. I think podcasts like this are evidence of it. These twenty groups and, and, and then some, I think we’re getting it that at the end of the day #1 priority is that we’re doing the work the right way. And to do that we all got to work together.

So I, I’m with you. The mentorship piece I think is extremely underrated and of, of tremendous value for folks. Get somebody who’s done it before. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but figure out how it’s been done and maybe do it better, but at least do it the same.

What were some challenges you encountered, Thomas, during your rapid growth, whether it be acquisitions, certainly I know there was some ground, a brownfield, Greenfield component to your business as well. But what? What were some challenges that you came across that you might not have expected?

Thomas Goforth: You know, the in in any industry, especially blue collared plumbing, welding, auto body, there’s going to be staffing challenges, but I think that’s always been that way, always will be that way. So I don’t, you know, I’ve never used that as an excuse why we couldn’t grow. You know, a lot of it was I will say is just getting from, you know a lot of our pain was a brownfield and Charlotte permitting took forever and Leland, you know we had a shop out there at Greenfield that we built 30,000 square feet. It was and you know this coal was from the day we broke ground till we moved in.

It was a little over two years. So the acquisitions we were blessed to do well with. We had great employees. You know, attrition was low.

I would say the biggest thing is honestly getting the, getting the buildings up and going and getting the, you know, when we’re trying to grow or you know, we’ve outgrown a site, try to get to a new site or build a new one, permitting construction that, that was out of everything. That was my biggest headache, to be honest with you.

Cole Strandberg: I know that part of the world and that can be absolutely brutal and it often times there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s it’s up to the city or the municipality and it’s very, very frustrating. Two things you touched on here that I want to dive a little bit deeper into. The first one is the talent piece.

I always felt, at least from the outside looking in, that not only did you have a really good team, it seemed like you always had people sort of wanting to break into that team and work for the absolute organization. What do you think the key to that type of culture and internal brand that allows that to happen?

Thomas Goforth: So a couple things. I think the the culture did help, you know, we’ve the benefits we had, you know, we have to be competitive with the, you know, the, the larger groups out there. But then also we had AI truly still believe this. We had a different pay plan.

You know, we weren’t on flat rates with all the safety and the complexity of even writing an estimate, getting the OEM procedures, the the A dots, the calibration. It’s just that everything that goes into fixing a car now, it’s not like when I started and you know, people are putting on used quarters and things like that. It’s I think the culture and then the pay, like I said, we were either hourly or salary and you know, did team bonuses. Like it was everything was a team instead of and I was a team.

So I think that helped where people felt apart and because everybody likes to be a part of a team and I think that was key, honestly.

Cole Strandberg: I love it. And the annual banquets you put on were legendary too. I almost made it, but as you like I did, man, I was dying. I wanted to be there so badly, but you’re lucky I was not.

It would not have been a fun time. The other point before we move on to a couple other topics here that you touched on were avoiding some pitfalls in acquisitions. And so taking your experience out of of your acquisitions that you made because it sounds like those largely worked out very well. When you’re considering acquisitions and when others are considering acquisitions, are there any major red flags or potential pitfalls that you’d suggest they look out for?

Thomas Goforth: If they don’t have, and I was blessed to have a little bit of background, if they don’t have an M and a background or a good team around. And whether it’s, you know, an accountant that’s familiar with M&A, whether it’s a, you know, brokers, I you’re, you’re handsome self right there with a focus attorney that’s familiar with M&A is, you know, finding those resources that can help you and making sure it doesn’t matter if it’s going to be an SBA loan, if it’s going to be some seller financing, seller note, whatever the case might be, is just make sure at the bare minimum, you know, when that owner walks away that you’re acquiring from that is still going to cash flow because that you know that this is a cash, cash intensive business. And you just want to make sure. And I don’t want to go into bore everybody and all your listeners into EBITDA and valuations and how you can look at that.

That’s a another time, another podcast, but just to make sure that you’ve got some experts, if it’s not yourself that can walk you through that to make sure that you’re going to have the cash flow to support that business and that growth. Because the growth can be messy and it can be sloppy and it’s not always going to workout like you think it is.

Cole Strandberg: A lot of truth there and I appreciate the kind words. But to your point, a deal team is the quickest way to make or break a deal. Specifically an attorney comes to mind, bad non M&A attorneys trying to work M&A deals are one of the quickest possible things to kill a deal. So something to be on the lookout for for sure.

So I want to, I want to move kind of into more of an operational discussion as it relates to scale. Obviously scale of the kind that you did requires a lot more than just making acquisitions and throwing it into the fold, that mixing it into the fold is very challenging. What operational strategies allowed you to manage the rapid growth that you guys had? Is there a secret sauce?

Thomas Goforth: I don’t think it’s a secret sauce. I think it’s just. At least I don’t think it is. It’s so you’ve obviously got the corporate staff that’s helping in the field to help operations.

Like I mentioned earlier, you got the store level, which you know, they’re the ones that are really making it happen, both the admin and the the text in the back. But is I don’t think as you grow people understand the importance of having a good back office. You know, at our peak, I have a CFOI had a controller and I had three bookkeepers arap on the HR side, I had payroll HR manager and then recruiter, HR generalist. So you know, you take your day the day that you’re running a store and you’ve you’re at one store, then you go to two stores and three stores.

Maybe throw a regional manager in. You’re going to because how transaction heavy the collision world is, you know, there could be 20 different vendors for fixing a car that you’re getting parts from clips from sublet, etcetera. Is having that back office support with accounting and HR is I think it’s instrumental to when you go to a certain size. I think it’s, you know, that’s just something people need to think about when you when you start getting larger.

Cole Strandberg: Well said. And we talked about that integration piece. We talked about acquisitions and integration. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about acquisitions.

What was the process of integrating a new acquisition for you guys and ensuring that there’s no harm to the reputation, the culture, or the quality of repairs that the Absolute team was known for?

Thomas Goforth: So obviously we would go on site, you know, Matt, myself, George, Kevin, the team, once we would, we’d go on site and CCC, the, the consulting side, like I mentioned before, Elevate, they would help with the whip, the work in progress, moving all the files over and everything. Because as if anybody knows me and you know me, I don’t have the patience or the, the attention span to sit there and move the work files over. But the biggest thing is to instill that culture. The, you know, or if you’ve got your KP is your SO PS is, you know, we would live there.

And when I stay live there, like when we close on the three Wilmington stores, we had a house we rented for three months. We were there day in, day out and then rotated people in and out and still rotated people. You know, it went from three months every day to every other week to, you know, once every 2-3 weeks. But you still have to show up and just make sure everybody’s doing, you know, the, whether it’s the absolute way or whatever the, you know, your MSO is, is it’s getting done.

Thomas Goforth: You’ve got a, the integration implementation is a constant thing. It’s not, hey, we’re the new owners, we’ve bought it, let’s move on. No, it’s going to, you’re going to have to pay attention to it because they were used to a different owner that was doing, you know, XYZ in their way. And not saying that was right or wrong, but to keep it consistent and with scalability, you can’t have seven different stores doing 7 different processes.

Cole Strandberg: Without getting into specific data on the absolute side, talk to me about employee retention on new acquisitions. I think that’s a fear for a lot of people when considering growing this way is man, if technician A leaves, there’s not much here. How did you guys do on on retention and how would you recommend others view keeping the talent they’re acquiring?

Thomas Goforth: I can probably from the seven, we’ll call it 6 because Charlotte’s a brownfield count on one hand who we probably lost and again, maybe that was just lightning the bottle and lucky on that side. But the, the key is, comes this up to the seller. You don’t want to disrupt that. But once you know you’ve got a firm deal and you’re just waiting on a closing date, I was always an advocate and it worked out well for us to RIP the Band-Aid off.

So we would go in whatever the, the seller would let us, you know, whatever he would agree to. But we would go in 2-3 weeks before closing, after hours, introduce ourselves and just have, you know, kind of a campsite, campsite, campfire setting of talking through. We’re absolute. We’ve got this many locations and you know, we’re going to be acquiring you On this date.

I know this is unnerving. People doesn’t don’t like change. And we just sit there and for an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, whatever it took and just let people ask questions and then we give them our number. And then about a week before close, our HR director, Tammy would come in, make sure the benefits were transferred over, get all that information and everything like that.

So just a lot of that stuff. Am I getting paid the same? Do I have benefits? You know, when’s my paycheck coming?

Is it weekly, bi weekly? However, the case might be just those Spears of the unknown. I think helped out jumping ahead. Whereas I think if you just walk in, hey, we just, we just bought you.

It’s it’s a shock either way, but I think it’s a huge shock when it’s like, oh, this owner is gone today and now you know how I always viewed if somebody’s going to leave, they’re going to leave regardless. They’re whatever happens. I’d rather them leave, not to not close on the deal, but I’d rather them leave and know what we have to replace going into closing versus get there and say, oh, we need a painter and you know, estimator now.

Cole Strandberg: No, for for sure. And I think most people or a lot of people listening now has probably been through that where their employer sold. You certainly did that multiple times. And I think the ability to empathize with your new found employees is extremely powerful and goes a long way when you’re acquiring these single store operations.

Specifically, how much operational and technological improvement was there for you guys to implement and improve the business rather than I know we talk so much or I do guilty of the the ability to grow if for no other reason than the multiple arbitrage. But obviously with integrations and process improvement, there’s a whole lot more to scale in M&A than multiple arbitrage.

Thomas Goforth: No 100% because you know, that was kind of one of our we had a due diligence checklist when we do site visits. OK, we know we’re going to have to replace the sign, but it’s and you know, it’s I guess it’s my OCD. OK, we need to order five desk. These two computers are old.

This resistance welders old booth needs a new makeup unit. You know, they don’t have the eye wash station. So we would just make kind of a list of what we need to do to go in to up fit. And then a lot of times it was a 30 yard dumpster and me throwing away a lot of stuff because there’s a no offense to any of the old school Body Shop owners.

There’s a there’s a Tennessee, the hoards and stuff. So we there’s a lot of spring cleaning that we did as well.

Cole Strandberg: Oh, yeah. No doubt, No doubt. And I think just given your track record, did you see by becoming a part of a larger platform that these locations began performing better or having more capacity or or growing more quickly than they had under previous leadership?

Thomas Goforth: We did and that’s no, that is no shot to any previous owner, any owner that you know, somebody might be talking to is they’ve probably owned this store for 1520, thirty years. And you know, it’s kind of what we competed with and we’ll get into a little bit is we kind of had regional contracts. So versus they have local contracts and then you have your strategics to have national contracts that I think it was it helped that we already there’s a need. We had already have those conversations with whether you’re ADRP, which we did DRP work, whether you have your OEM certifications, talking to the dealers around there for for referral work, etcetera.

If it’s a fleet based type, talking to the fleet companies, whatever your business model is, those lines of business is having that kind of talk before you close. So you know that that works going to be there and it and again, it’s scaled. We’ve we doubled, tripled, you know, quadrupled revenue at some locations.

Cole Strandberg: Having that road map to success for both growth and then integration once you’re going ahead and adding in these stores, I think served you guys really well. And the consistency in which you and your team delivered was very, very cool to see. So getting to kind of the final chapter of the Absolute Collision story, we’ve we’ve buried the lead a little bit, but a lot of changes in in your life and in your business since you were on this show almost two years ago. Obviously you sold Absolute Collision late last year to a national consolidator, a major milestone, a major Congrats, a major success story.

What factors influenced your decision to sell?

Thomas Goforth: There was, there was numerous out there. We had grown and as everybody knows this is a capital intensive business. And I was looking at it as we’re at 7 stores and you know you, you get the four stores then you’ve got this profit then five and six a little bit lower than 7. It makes sense is we were going to have to go in with a consolidation as everybody knows across the country, you know where we want to go truly into Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee and go from 7:00 to 10:00 to 15 to 20.

Or was it time to kind of step back and you know especially the markets, we’ve not the markets, but our line of business would be in DRP etcetera. Was it time to step back and instead of competing against national contracts and I had just had regional contracts to you know let somebody take it over and ultimately that’s the decision we did. We like you said September we sold to a classic collision. We had a great group.

You know, our attorneys, our accountants were great. Obviously you were great focus and you know you helped with that deal. So it’s kudos and appreciate the help still to this day with with that deal. But it was just for where we had went and what we have done was great.

But where we’d have to go in the future, I didn’t know if that’s exactly where I wanted to go. Because there’s a, there’s ACEO for turnarounds, there’s ACEO for growth, there’s ACEO for stability and long holds and just my skill set. I thought it was best to step aside. And you know, there’s a, there’s some stuff coming, so.

Cole Strandberg: And we’ll, we’ll touch on that briefly without any confidential information being shared, of course, from your perspective. I appreciate the kind words and again, our friendship. From your perspective, why did you decide to partner with an investment bank and who should consider that as well when it comes time to sell?

Thomas Goforth: I don’t think you can go and say it’s one store doesn’t need an investment bank and MSO does. I think it’s really on a seller or a buyer, it’s what your needs and what you’re comfortable with. You know, I was very comfortable with our team internally and externally with what we had far as doing M and A myself for acquiring stores. But to go to market to, you know, sell 7 stores, that’s something I think you need an expert that lives, it breathes, it knows the multiples, knows the players, and I think it’s instrumental.

You know, if I, if I would have done it myself, it would still been for sale. So it’s, it’s just, you’ve got to have those like in anything, you know, you got a structural technician for a reason because they know what they’re doing. You’ve got a painter for a reason. They know what they’re doing.

Well, there is investment bankers that are focused in the market and that that’s the other key is there’s investment bankers everywhere. But I think I think them knowing your market is key and to you, you know you’re, you’re 100% and maybe not 199.9% automotive and collision. So I think it’s you have to have that, that subject matter experts if you’re when you’re doing it and you know, that’s, that was my choice at least so.

Cole Strandberg: Appreciate the kind words. Absolutely. And just so happy with how things turned out for you and your story. The absolute 1 is a very unique one.

It it really is different. I I remember thinking that and saying that two years ago when you were in the process of growing and coming up, I think on store number six at the time. And we’ll be sure to link that show in the show notes as well to see and hear about side to side, man. Yeah, I mean, so much, so much great stuff happening with you and I’m thrilled to see what’s next for you and your future as well.

For others who are approaching the decision to stay, to grow, to sell, what advice would you give to those stores and what are the pros and cons of each from your perspective?

Thomas Goforth: So I’ll kind of break that down in three different answers. So deciding to stay, I think if you’re a single store that you need to be in some kind of niche, whether it’s whatever that might be OEM certifications, you know, there’s there’s the fleet world, there’s specialty, some kind of specialty to stay there. If it is going to be if your business models DRPI think it me personally and not knowing all markets being a single store DRP would be tough. I think you’d have to have some some scales and critical mass like we did to get there.

If you are looking to exit, you know, I think consulting an investment banker and this isn’t a plug for you guys, but any investment banker that’s familiar with the business to just see what you know whether it’s now or five years from now is what point of sale are you using, What’s your EBITDA? Are your books clean? Have you separated a corporate versus that? You know, just getting all that stuff cleaned up, you know, how’s the shop look?

Because you know, obviously these larger strategics, there’s going to be a lot of environmental due diligence, accounting due diligence, etcetera, is I think a great firm. Can walk you through that so you’re better able to sell and get a better multiplier when you do sell because these people, you know, probably worked most of their life and this is their retirement. So why not maximize that and have a plan to do it versus just throw your hands up one day and say, hey, I want to sell. I think it’s you’re not going to have that foundation.

Cole Strandberg: It’s, it’s funny, in most conversations I have with people considering selling their business, a line that is used is you’re only going to do this once, do it right, maybe twice if you’re lucky. I think I’m talking to somebody right here who is going to, regardless of industry, build scale and sell something numerous, numerous times. So was very happy to be able to play a small role in major success number one. I’m even happier to see where you go for successes 2 plus and just really appreciate our friendship to that with what you can tell us.

What is next for you after absolute? I know you’re spending and able to spend a lot of time with your incredible family, but you’re not one to sit still for too long either.

Thomas Goforth: No, it’s, you know, one thing you don’t realize is the wind down process of just, you know, closing out accounting credits, just there’s the wind down process takes a little bit longer. I mean, here we are in January and I think we finally by this month we’ll have everything wound down from a close in early September. So that’s been a process. But no, definitely love the industry, definitely looking at some different things.

It’s going to be A, to your point of there’s, I can’t say a whole lot, but the it’s going to be a specialty niche portion of the industry and you know more to come on that is what I’ll leave it at that.

Cole Strandberg: Man, you’re speaking my language. I, I really appreciate you, Thomas, and our friendship and very appreciative for you to take some time and spend it with us here today for your second trip here on the Collision Vision. Looking forward to #3 Let’s not make it 2 years from now either.

Thomas Goforth: Yeah, we’ll do it quicker than two years this time, I promise you. And like you said, appreciate the friendship. Thank you for having me on and look forward to get on here again. So I appreciate it buddy.

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