Today we’d like to introduce you to Casey Cole.
Casey, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My first job at 16 was in a body shop in my hometown B. A’s body shop where I was making around $120/week while on work release through my high school. After graduating high school in 2008, I went to work for Town East Ford body shop where I worked from 08-2014 being the youngest body shop technician in the entire body shop which had over 50 workers. Climbed the ladder from 08-2013 when I decided I wanted to start my own body shop after hours when I leave town east ford. I didn’t have a shop so I used my rental house garage the first year. 2014 I started paying rent on a small pole barn to use as my business in downtown Forney. While maintaining a full-time job at town east ford and running a business after hours, I decided that I wanted to start learning paintless dent repair so, from that point on when I didn’t have a business to do after hours, I would go into the back room of my rent house where I had an old hood setup to practice removing dents. About 6 months into teaching myself paintless dent repair I started fixing dents through my business for customers at a really discounted rate to start growing that service through my company. The year 2015 I left town east ford to go work for Dent Wizard which is a paintless dent repair company. I had to fly out to St Louis and go through 3 months of training with a class of 20+ other trainees. Each week we were graded and if the instructor did not see progress, then we would be sent home. I ended up completing the training and ranked #1 in the class. When I came back home, I was now running my Bodyshop after hours when I would get off from dent wizard. I stayed with dent wizard until the year 2016 when I climbed the ladder once again becoming one of the highest sales-generating technicians. At this point, my Bodyshop is doing pretty well slowly growing, and had built a shop on my personal property to start working out of being easier to work after hours at home rather than in town. In the year 2017, I was called by my old Bodyshop manager at town east ford. It had hailed and hit the entire dealership and he wanted me to come and handle the hail work. I accepted the opportunity I was offered by my old manager and at that point went all in on Cole Automotive Repair. The hail year of 2017 made A lot of money that I used to fund the Bodyshop side of Cole Automotive Repair. The year 2017 in November my CPA told me that I was looking at owing 100k to the IRS so in December I decided to use 100k of the company’s capital to pay for a frame machine and the first-year rent on a 10,000 sq ft building that I could finally use to really scale the body shop side of our company; the Year 2018 one of my best friends started working for me in hopes to learn paintless dent repair. About mid-year 2018 we were close to constructing our office and getting all the equipment set up in the building to open for business. At this point, another one of my best friends came to do bodywork for me (we started at the same Bodyshop in our hometown years before this) while I run the front office and handle all the mobile paintless dent repair work. Everything went as planned from this point on and was able to scale the company doubling sales each year until the year 2020 when at this point I had nearly 8 employees. In the year 2020, my lease was up at the 10k sqft building and a commercial building came up for sale across the highway not even a mile from our old location that was 15k sqft. Completely renovated the commercial building by October 2020 and officially opened for business. Fast forward to 2022 and his history keeps repeating itself sales doubling year over a year nearly still growing into what we have today.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I guess I should have answered the last question a little shorter. There were lots of long nights and life lessons from failing and learning every day. I had no idea how to run a company I just knew how to fix cars so there were a lot of ups and downs too many to list.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
C.A.R started out very small as I said in the previous questions the company legally started in 2013 and it wasn’t until 2018 that I was able to move into a real deal shop that customers would trust to bring their wrecked cars in for repairs. In the beginning, the majority of my work was from friends and family that knew me well enough to overlook the poorly shaped buildings that I was in. A lot of the work initially was customizing work painting dodge vipers and big lifted trucks all the way to customizing 4-wheelers. I took in any work the customer would allow and would use that work to promote online via Facebook and Instagram. C.A.R today is well known for high-quality paintless dent repair fixing big nasty dents that most other PDR companies could not repair. This helped since I knew how to repair cars through the paint and bodywork process vs other companies that did not. C.A.R carried the custom work all the way up until this year we have had to slow down due to the demand of insurance claims we handle now. C.A.R has way more services and capability when compared to other body shops in our market. We have sent numerous trucks to SEMA shows in Vegas over the years and have several magazine coverages for cars that we have done. I am most proud to have set a goal back in 2013 and have exceeded all expectations that I originally had along with having some of my best friends working for me to this day seeing them grow financially year over year similar to the company.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
My biggest advice is to find a mentor or someone that you look up to in business and listen to them. I would not be where I am today without my mentors over the years.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.coleautomotiverepair.com
- Instagram: cole automotive repair
- Facebook: cole automotive repair
- Youtube: cole automotive repair
