How Fix Auto franchisee Matthew Feehan is building a business for the next generation
Matthew Feehan spent decades growing multiple Fix Auto locations across Minnesota. Now, with his three children working alongside him, it’s a family business that he hopes will last for generations.
When Matthew Feehan walks into one of his four Fix Auto collision repair shops in Minnesota, chances are he'll run into one of his children.
His son Griffin is an estimator in Brooklyn Park. His youngest, Taggert, is a technician at Maple Grove who is mentoring his second apprentice. His daughter Sydney manages the Maple Grove location, and his son-in-law Thomas is right there, too.
None of this was accidental.
Matthew joined Fix Auto partly because he wanted his kids to inherit a business with brand recognition, insurance relationships, and room to grow. As both an owner and a father, he’s always been intentional about building toward something bigger than himself.
"I tell my kids all lessons will be repeated until learned," he said. "If you have a challenging moment and you decide to sidestep it for something easier, you will have to face it again. Better to face it when you're 20 than when you're 60."
Every lesson he faced, he faced head on. His family and his business are proof of his legacy and hard work.
A business built in the bones
The Feehan family's connection to collision repair goes back to 1979, when Matthew's parents founded American Auto Body in North Minneapolis.
Matthew grew up in the shop and joined the business full time in 1991. He eventually left to work at Abra—one of the largest collision repair networks in the country—before returning in 2006 to purchase the business from his parents and retire them in the process.
That Abra experience changed his career.
"It opened my eyes to the power of a group," Matthew said. "Being able to work and share experiences, information, data, allows you to be more agile in a market than you would be on your own."
Years later, the right opportunity found him.
A Fix Auto representative had heard about Matthew. He walked into his shop unannounced in 2018 just to meet the man with the reputation for getting things done. By 2019, Matthew was part of the Fix Auto network.
Like everything else in his life, he grew the business with purpose.
Matthew ran the Brooklyn Park store 24 hours a day, six days a week for three years. Over time, he built enough volume to fund a second location, then a third. A massive hailstorm in 2019 accelerated the timeline, forcing him to acquire additional space just to keep up with demand.
Today, the Feehan family operates four Fix Auto locations across Minnesota, including their newest shop in Monticello—a location Matthew had his eye on for nearly a decade.
Raising the next generation of leaders
Matthew was deliberate about how he brought his kids into the business. He placed each of them in separate locations, giving each space to develop without the pressure of working directly under him.
"A little space makes Thanksgiving dinner a little easier," he said.
His decision making was spot on. Eventually, all of the managers and colleagues said the same thing: his kids had the right DNA for this work.
That’s because they have their father’s DNA.
Taggert recalls late nights in the shop as a young technician, struggling with a repair he couldn’t crack, ready to give up. Then he heard his father’s footsteps.
"Here comes Dad from upstairs," Taggert said. "He stayed and battled the car out with me. It showed me the value of working through a problem when you really want to throw in the towel. That is a skill I am forever grateful for."
Griffin watched his father lead that way his entire life.
"He takes care of his employees very well," Griffin said. "You can tell it comes back in a good way. Take care of the people that work with you, treat them well. That's what I've taken from him."
For Sydney, the best gift Matthew’s given her is time.
"We get to see each other almost every day," she said. "That's time that so many other people don't have the fortune of experiencing."
The power of compounding intention
Matthew loves to tell the story of a penny. If you double it every day for 31 days, you end up with just shy of $11 million. But by day 10, you only have a little more than $5, and that’s where most people stop, convinced it isn’t working.
For Matthew, his kids are proof of what happens when you don’t stop.
"They’re an example of compounding intention," he says. "Where they are now is far ahead of people that have been doing this for 20 years. They have no idea how great they are and where they can go."
Matthew is already thinking about a fourth generation with Sydney and her husband expecting their first child this summer. And as someone who’s studied these timelines carefully, he says he has roughly five years left before he needs to step aside.
“If I stick around a little longer, I’m just robbing prosperity from my kids’ future,” he says. “The big tree needs to leave so the little trees can get the sun.”
But Matthew’s not sad about it; he’s excited.
“I have never had this much joy working in my life,” Matthew says. “It’s no longer about me. It’s about them. And that makes this a labor of love.”