Josh and Michelle Fuller are the husband-and-wife team leading Fuller Collision Group, a 111-year-old independent business in Massachusetts. In a time where consolidation is reshaping the industry, the Fullers have doubled down on what makes their group strong.
They appeared on a recent episode of The Collision Vision podcast, driven by Autobody News and hosted by Cole Strandberg, to talk about how they are marketing their powerful family brand with a purpose, and using exit planning to set the stage for future growth, even if they never sell.
Josh is the CEO and fourth-generation owner and operator of Fuller Collision Group, which has been serving its community in Auburn, MA, since 1914.
“We've done everything over the years, through gas stations to used car lots to OEM dealerships, to aftermarket manufacturing and sales distribution companies,” Josh said.
In the last two decades, the business focus has shifted to automotive mechanical and collision repair. The ramp up has included expanding the original shop, acquiring a second shop in nearby Spencer, and founding a dedicated ADAS calibration service, ADAS Diagnostic Solutions, which now has two locations.
Josh and Michelle met while they were both juniors in college — Josh at Bentley University in Massachusetts, Michelle at Penn State University — studying abroad in London.
After returning to the U.S., Josh earned his degree in finance, then went to work in corporate America, but found he didn’t like the limits potentially posed by that world. He came back to the family business, working his way up from a car washer to an appraiser and learning the ropes of the whole operation.
“Through a level of efficiencies, in relationship building and building culture, we were able to continue to grow the business,” Josh said.
Michelle earned her degree in marketing and international business and then got a job with UBS, leading to a career in wealth and asset management.
“Our careers ran parallel, not very much involved for a long time, even through 12, 11 years of having children,” Josh said.
Two years ago, Michelle obtained her exit planning advisor certification, which allowed her to “combine my experience with finance and my experience being married into a family business. When two worlds collide,” she said.
In September 2024, she took the opportunity to step away from the corporate world and join the family business too.
“I'm able to offer a very unique perspective to the organization, and it's been a wonderful last seven months, an interesting last seven months,” Michelle said. “I touch every part of the business, whether that be strategic, operational, marketing, human resources, you name it. I've really delved into each part, and it's been just an amazing experience to help out.”
Marrying into a fourth-generation family business brought a sense of pride, commitment and pressure, Michelle said.
“Interestingly enough, 90% of businesses in in the U.S. are either family owned or controlled, which is a staggering number in and of itself,” she said. “But 30% make it to the second generation, 12% make it to the third generation, a mere 3% make it to the fourth generation…I think those numbers really emphasize just how amazing it is to get to this point.
“We're super excited to see where this continues to go, because it really is just an amazing feat and one that we don't take lightly,” she added.
With more than a century under its belt, Fuller Collision Group has developed a reputation for being committed to its community, Josh said, which acts as a launchpad as it has started expanding beyond the original shop in Auburn.
However, it is also important to stay ahead of the curve, because “if you’re not growing, you’re dying,” he said.
Every generation of ownership had added something to the business, based on their own unique abilities, to catapult the brand forward. “It's like building a house. You start with a solid foundation and then you go from there,” Josh said.
Fuller Collision Group has faced the same disadvantages as any small to medium-sized business in the collision repair industry, like finding the financial and human capital to keep up with the technology, equipment and training needed to fix increasingly complex vehicles.
“Navigating through the changes has been obviously super challenging, but it's also been a lot of fun. And that's where we've been able to find consistency and comfort,” Josh said. “Between our people and our drive and our commitment to the community and our reputation, we'll find a way, and we'll continue to grow.”
Customer expectations have also evolved.
“Ten years ago, I remember when you first started hearing, ‘You're now in the age of the Amazon customer,’” Josh said. “Immediate gratification. Get it tomorrow.”
It’s no longer acceptable to not contact a customer for three weeks between drop-off and delivery, he said, so Fuller Collision has invested in technology to facilitate regular updates during the repair process.
Are You a Lifestyle Owner or Value Creator?
Michelle said there are two ways to grow as an independent shop — organically, using what you already have to attract more customers, and inorganically, through acquisitions and scaling.
Owners need to ask themselves: are you a lifestyle owner, or a value creator, and which do you want to be?
“A lifestyle owner is essentially where a lot of owners see themselves,” she said. “They're maintaining a business to support a lifestyle they've built…Their focus is income generation. Maybe some freedom. I want to golf when I want to. I have work-life balance, whatever it is. But they really see the business as their personal income source versus something that is a living, breathing asset per se.
“They're involved in the day-to-day task of the organization. They're not necessarily focusing on scalability or even transferability,” she said.
“A value creator is someone who's really looking at scaling their business. They're thinking about the transferability of their business,” Michelle said. “What am I going to do with this business 20 years from now, 40 years from now? Am I going to hand it to the next generation? Am I going to sell out completely? Am I going to transfer it to internal employees?
“These are all things that we have to be thinking about as business owners, but a value creator is again thinking more along the lines of long-term growth, increasing enterprise value,” she said.
One is not better than the other, but it informs the business decisions the owner should make.
Those who choose to be value creators need to focus on building efficiencies, marketing and acquisitions, Michelle said.
When Josh decided he wanted to be a value creator about two years ago, Michelle said, “then it was like, all right, game on. We are growing this thing.”
To do that, the company focused on marketing initiatives like geofencing campaigns and SEO, choosing the right tagline and branding, and measuring the ROI on all of its spending.
Value Growth Advisors
Fuller Collision works with a value growth advisor, Greg Maddox of Cultivate Advisors. Michelle recommended any shop owner who wants to be a value creator should do the same.
Maddox addressed the “four intangible capitals that really drive 80% to 90% of the value of the business,” Michelle said: customer capital, structural capital, social capital and human capital.
Human capital is the people working for the organization.
“Do we have a leadership team? Are every one of techs where they need to be? Are we establishing mentorship programs? Do we have an apprentice program? What are we doing from an employee recognition and career path perspective? All of that makes up your human capital,” Michelle said.
Customer capital is “the diversification of your customers,” she said.
Structural capital is standard operating procedures (SOPs) and efficiencies.
Social capital is “your brand. That's your reputation,” she said. “That's who you stand for in your respective communities.”
Maddox helped Fuller Collision get into the “nitty gritty” of each of those to “build a more valuable, transferable company,” Michelle said.
Josh said working with Maddox to become more of a value creator, as opposed to a lifestyle owner, “took us to the next level.”
He learned how to “decentralize” himself within the daily operations. “What I quickly learned is that the quicker I can get out of the way and let our people lead, then that's where we're going to continue to grow and grow the fastest,” he said.
That required building the right structure and providing the tools to let employees do that.
“As an independent owner, a lot of times, you bear the weight on your shoulders every single day, and you're often challenged with outside influences that are beyond your control,” Josh said, like new regulations or a downturn in the economy, which tend to drive fear.
“Fear is one of the biggest things that pauses growth,” Josh said. “Getting beyond that has been huge.”
Standing Out Among Big Consolidators
Customers only think about collision repair shops when they need them, Josh said. The trick to marketing a shop is to make it that customer’s immediate first choice.
Whether a shop chooses to do that by enhancing SEO to come up at the top of Google searches, going after insurance company referrals or paying for billboards or radio commercials, it needs to closely track the ROI, Josh said.
“You've got to budget a certain percentage of your income to say, ‘We're going to allocate to these six marketing initiatives that make sense this year to get us out in front of our customers the best way,’” Josh said.
Delivering a superior customer service experience is the best way to market an independent shop, he added.
“Do a good job. Update your customer. Do what you say you're going to do. That's your marketing campaign right then and there,” he said. “They become our best referral source, and then continue to drive our growth.”
The shop’s website is its “digital doorstep,” Michelle said. “It's the first thing that our customers see when they come to visit us.”
That meant making sure Fuller’s website has effective SEO to bring in customers searching for nearby body shops, and it’s easy to navigate when they do find it, with the ability to start an estimate and contact the shop, even outside business hours.
The website also incorporates testimonials from satisfied customers, which means the business works to make sure happy customers leave reviews. “It is social proof of the quality of what you're about to buy,” Michelle said.
Fuller Collision is also working with Stratosphere Studio and Capture the Keys, which is handling Fuller’s social media presence and launching a geofencing campaign.
Michelle said she recently floated the idea of email marketing after reading about how just reminding past customers of the shop could lead to a word-of-mouth referral if someone they know needs a repair.
Exit Planning as a Strategy
Exit planning as a strategy doesn’t automatically mean the owner intends to sell the business, Michelle said.
Even if an owner is hoping to pass it down to, say, a fifth generation, “it helps you prepare for so many things that come,” she said, like a great unsolicited offer from another consolidator, or if something happens to the owner, like death or disability.
“You will be prepared so that you're not caught on your back foot,” she said. “You have your financial orders in a row, and you're ready for pretty much anything that's going to come at you.”
Josh agreed: “I believe what really is the goal of most business owners is, I want options…What can you do, as a leader in your organization, with your leadership team, to make sure that you've got options at any point in time? Nobody says you have to execute on those options, but it's good to know that you've got a choice.
“And what I’ve found has been one of the best things about it is, by decentralizing myself, I've gained the freedom to do what makes me happy,” Josh said. “And by doing what makes me happy, it makes me a better leader. Because I'm not a pain in the ass. I'm not micro-managing people. I'm letting them do them. So if I'm happy, they're happy. And guess what? If your people are happy, your customers are happy.”
Parting Wisdom
Josh recommended shop owners find a performance group to join to learn from other successful shop owners, or reach out to a consultant like Collision Advice or Elite Body Shop Solutions.
“There's so many strong independents and so many strong MSOs out in the country that I've really made it a point throughout my career to learn from them,” Josh said. “What you like to say is you do a lot of research and development, or rip off and duplicate, however you want to define it. There's somebody out there that's doing something really awesome that you potentially want to do.
“So getting in there and listening, just being a student of the industry — that's one of the big reasons why we're at where we're at right now,” he said. “That is probably one of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give to other independents or growing MSOs.”
Michelle said in her time with Fuller Collision, she’s learned “you can’t do it all yourself.”
“You have to outsource where it makes sense,” she said. Fuller is outsourcing its marketing and human resources, “leveraging outside expertise to help build what I'm calling our core office. Once that core office is set, then we can operate more effectively, as in almost like a hub and spoke.
Abby Andrews