How to develope Rent to Own leaders for success (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 2 of this conversation with 23-year rent-to-own industry veteran Jason Winters, Pete Shau and Jason dig into the economic forces reshaping the RTO industry right now — and what rent-to-own operators, district managers, and store managers need to do differently to stay ahead of them.

The episode opens with a frank discussion about inflation, rising housing costs, and how shifting customer spending habits are changing the rent-to-own customer base in real time. Jason's take is counterintuitive but grounded in experience: economic downturns and tighter household budgets have historically pushed more customers toward RTO, making the industry more recession-resistant than most — but only if operators stop waiting for foot traffic to return and start going out to find customers where they actually are.

From there, the conversation gets into one of the most important and underserved topics in rent-to-own store operations: RTO delivery driver compensation. Jason makes the case — backed by examples from Bucky's and Amazon — that the rent-to-own industry is consistently undervaluing the one position that has the most direct customer contact. If the delivery tech is now the face of your store, the last person in the customer's home, and the individual responsible for explaining the rental agreement, setting up the merchandise, and making a lasting first impression, then paying that position at the bottom of the market is a direct investment in higher credit, worse Google reviews, and lower customer retention across your entire rent-to-own portfolio.

Pete and Jason also explore how automated RTO collections platforms — like the one introduced by Payd at RTO World 2023 — fit into this evolving landscape, not as a replacement for human relationships but as a tool that frees up store teams to focus on growing the business instead of chasing payments. Jason draws the comparison clearly: there are no more Blockbusters, no more Red Boxes, and the RTO operators who treat new technology as a threat rather than a tool are already falling behind.

The episode closes with a conversation about what great rent-to-own leadership development actually looks like in today's market — investing in the people around you, raising the minimum standard, and building teams where every person, from the delivery driver to the district manager, understands why the work they do matters.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 1:14

Hello and welcome everyone. Here at the RTO Show, we are pleased and proud to have April as our premier podcast sponsor. So if you're listening, then I know you care about Rent Zone. And no organization cares more about this industry than APRO. Since 1980, April has been championing America's RTO businesses by providing them with legislative representation, essential education, news and information, market research, and awesome meetings and events. Find out what April can do for you today by checking out their website at rtoh.org. That's rtohq.org. Now onto the show. And now part two of leadership development with Jason Winners. Now I wanted to talk about what's here and what's upcoming. Because right now, here is we're fighting inflation in a way that we haven't fought it in the last 20 years. We're also fighting some economic changes where you know some people are getting raises, but it's not keeping up with inflation. So I think as people were like, well, we know that they're getting paid more, but it's not keeping up with what their expenses are. Housing has gone through the roof, especially in the Florida market. Tampa has been a threshold of I've gone on $500, $600, $800 in some cases. I've had a lot of customers tell me, let's say five or six live in an apartment complex. They sold the complex. The whole thing is now under new management and they've moved everybody out. You're like, that's crazy. So they're renovating 120, 140 apartments. But then when you move back in, it's not the same 800 or 900 or 1,000. Now you're talking about $1,700, $1,800 because they put a fancy washing machine in. So now your housing is not incremental to the same percentage it was before. So your income is going a lot more to groceries and a lot more to your housing. Where does that leave rent to own?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Um, it could be very advantageous for us, right? It's yeah, I mean, anytime the economy takes a turn down that way, it's usually just going to put more customers into our customer base, right? So it's that's one thing that was attractive about this industry was that it was almost recession proof at the in the long run, because if the war the the less people that have access to credit, the more people that become you know available for you to become your customer, right? So in that regard, I'd say, yeah, I mean, bills are getting higher. Now, is it gonna help their ability to pay the bills? Probably not, right? But thing is, like, there's there's just so many people out there that need so many things. And uh, if more of their money's going to essentials, there's gonna be less disposable income, which probably pushes them more towards us, right? So in the long run, I think it's gonna be you know, we're gonna be able to get by, right? We should be able to. The worst thing you gotta fight with it is the excuse makers. You know what I mean? People are gonna jump on an excuse if you if they're able to, and if you if you'll accept it. And that's great if that's the reason. I'll take a reason all day long. I'm not gonna take an excuse. So if it's uh, you know, if you can demonstrate, okay, well, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I've increased my marketing, I've increased my my getting out there into this into the world to bring customers in, you know. But as far as I think the biggest the biggest impact it's gonna be is for our coworkers, right? And just the changes that have happened over the years, just as much as the economy is more about COVID kind of scaring customers out of the store, or just being accustomed to what would they do? They went to Amazon. What does Amazon do? Uh, you pick it out on your phone, it shows up in a couple of days, pretty easy peasy. You don't have to talk to anybody, you don't have to see anybody, you don't have to do anything. Well, that really just kills everything we used to do. And there's too many of us just sitting there still trying to do that old stuff, and it doesn't happen, right? Like now, before the customer would come into the store, they walk around, they pick something out. All right, great. You know what I mean? There then you would sit down with them and go over the contract and go over the agreement and say, Well, you know, when the payments do, you have three options. You can either continue renting it, you can pay it off, or you can give it back. That's all the three things that we have. There's no C, the E, you know, there's just one of those, right? And we can freeze your payment and you can pick it up where you left off, and we can give it right back to you. But that's that's how we do things here. And I think the first people to forget that they're in the rent-owned business is us. Because they talk, you call, well, you're late on your payment. What payment? There's no payment, it expired. You just you chose not to renew the agreement on the day that it was due. If I had a bounce house for my kid's birthday and we just had such a great time bouncing our butts off in that thing all day, I decided, well, I'm gonna keep it for two more days. That's not just not how it works, right? This is rent, and if the the quicker that the customer understands rent and the concept of rent, the easier everything gets. Because then when the phone starts ringing, they don't think, oh, I gotta avoid that person. They go, Oh, that's John. He's calling because I didn't do A, B, or C. And the only thing left he's got is C is to pick it up, and I don't want him to pick it up, so I need to talk to John. And if I can talk to John, he's gonna treat me like a human being and maybe listen to my fourth dead grandmother or whatever I'm gonna tell him about the excuse of why I didn't make the payment, then that's cool. But at the end of the day, I understand the contract. The the guy that we hire at the lowest amount, right? That that's the person, the one representative from your company that likely that will see that customer will actually interact with ever. And that's today. So the guy showed up and doesn't even have a shirt yet, showed up in his polo or t-shirt and basketball shorts. That's the guy that's basically the face of your company now. And that's the guy that was thinking, yeah, I'll take 13 or 14 and $15 to carry these heavy boxes of furniture, carry heavy furniture up three flights of stairs in the hot floor of the sun. And then, oh, and I'll deal with, you know, sometimes the stuff doesn't come back as clean as it was when it went out, and I have a I'll clean that up and I'll deal with all the the critters and everything that come with our business, right? Like all that stuff. We got to get the person that's gonna think, yeah, I'll do that for that amount, right? You're at April, right? And you saw the presentation, the keynote speaker. What was his name? Joseph Copser. Right. That was a great presentation I saw on day one. You see the sign that he put up from Bucky's. Yes. I've actually posted that picture in our company chat before, like because if you don't know what we're talking about, if you've ever been to Bucky's, Bucky's is fantastic. It's like a Walmart and a gas station had a baby, right? Yes, yeah. So they have like a hundred gas pumps and a hundred toilets, right? And then you know, they know what you're looking for on the side of the road. Not only that, they are they go out and they pay the entry-level co-workers. It's $17 an hour, is the the smallest number on this chart. And it's called the Bucky's minimum wage. So it says Bucky's, you know, it's 17 bucks to be a cashier or to sweep up the parking lot, right? And then they get the gas station at uh thing, that guy's $19 an hour. And then you go to if you work in the restaurant, it's $20 an hour. If you go all the way up, and I would go, we was we used to live right next to Bucky's in Daytona. And sometimes when I would run out of half and half in the morning, that was the closest place that had it where I could get it quickly, and I would go into this Bucky's, and there was a line of eight to ten people standing right in front of the half and half, because that's where the office was in the corner of the store where the HR person was doing interviews.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Really?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

A line of people that I couldn't even get to the half and half in the case because all these people knew, like, look, this place pays, this place is gonna give me a wage that I can support my family on. When I quit those three jobs, I wasn't doing those jobs for fun. You know, I had bills, I had responsibilities, I had, you know, babies, I had this and that, right? I was there to feed my family, and you said you came along at the same basic time. They were offering a wage that you could provide a living with your family for what you were paying the upfront coworker, the first person. And then that's why you were in the truck, guys like you that were you know had had a lot of potential in you, Paul Mative, myself. A lot of people came to Iraq at that time, right? Now they're paying 40 hours a week, and they're wondering what what's different. I don't understand. I'm gonna tell you right now, that eight hours that made a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

It was the whole check huge difference because for eight hours I was making like time and a half, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

So and you were able to pay your bills. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? So Bucky's is able to get the cream of the crop of the people that are working. Uh, Amazon, for example, everybody's fighting with Amazon. Amazon, you pay $18 to drop boxes on doorsteps. There's no cleaning, there's no dissembling, there's no clicking, there's no one cursing you out because you're calling them because their payments late. There's none of that stuff that you have to deal with in our company. There's no bedroom sets on the side. There's no bedroom sets, right? None of that stuff happens. But at 18 bucks an hour, they just go drive a truck. Yeah, they got a tight schedule, and yeah, they got to go quickly and they got to get the job done. And I think it, I think they work until they're done or something like that. Look, there's ups and downs to everything. But the bottom number that the care about the coworkers care of, you get what you pay for at the end of the day. You want people that are trying to support their families, that are trying to make these higher rent payments, that are trying to keep their you know, you know, food on the table, then you're gonna have to provide a position for them that pays enough for them to be your coworker. And you're gonna get a responsible person, you're gonna get someone that's gonna think this is a fantastic job. I'm gonna bring my friends and family with me to this job so that because it has it provides a good living. Now, the other thing you can do is hold people accountable. Because at Bucky's, if you don't say, Hey, good morning, welcome to Bucky's, to every single person that walks by, they just get rid of you and put someone else in there that will. And that's the way it is because they can't, because of the line of 10 people sitting there every single morning trying to get hired there, because they found the sweet spot of that starting payment. Now we keep trying to get cheap co-workers up front, and that's gonna be the only person that might interact with that customer. Are they gonna be able to explain the contract? Are they gonna be able to tell them the cheapest and easiest way to get out of to pay it off is is you know with as little investment as possible? Are they gonna make sure that the TV works and that the PS5 is hooked up and that the game system, that the beds put together properly so they're not back there in two weeks? No. They're gonna be the guy.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

You know what's funny is I'd say maybe maybe almost a couple years now. Danny and I were taking care of something in home office and and we were talking to Chris Kale Sr. who was there, and one of the things that he said, because he he we never had like these really long grand talks. It's everything he said was to the point, and it really was like, wow, everything he said, it was always something that I took out of it. But one of the things he said was, you know, guys, in the next couple of years, now he's he's since retired from Rent King, but he said in the next couple of years, the most important, most integral job I'm starting to see in these stores is probably gonna be the driver's position. And of course, at the time we're looking at each other like, what? Uh no. Fast forward two years, and we're on the same page. You and I are seeing it the same way. If that guy's the guy talking to you at your house, if that's the guy that's gonna leave the last impression, if that's the guy who's leaving the furniture without the Jeff Up storyline and you're not taking care of him, let me tell you, they're gonna see the difference between the guy you are taking care of and the guy that you're not. That's right. And then that and that all translates, even if it's not the case, even if you have a great manager and you have a great account manager, you have a great salesperson, that guy was in my house. I'm not gonna think about what you're doing in your job. I'm thinking about what he did in my house. Exactly. And I will treat you the way you treat me. Are you taking care of me? Are you setting it up right? Are you covering it? Are you going over this the right way? Are you telling me all the options?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

That is the number one problem in 90% of the stores. I agree. If they don't deserve the money, they don't get the money, then that means the credit's gonna be high, the collection's gonna be high. But the first thing you need to figure out is I don't know, did we show up on time? Did we do everything that we said we did? Did we approve them with the little bit of information that they got? Did we make sure that they've got the one that they wanted and with the price that they could approve? Did we do everything we promised to do before you did the one thing that they were supposed to do is make that payment on time, right? We have a bunch of stuff we gotta do, right? We gotta make sure it works, and if it doesn't work, we gotta take care of it, we gotta fix it, we gotta fix it right away, we gotta, you know, and yeah, we're gonna work with them from time to time when things get tough. No one's gonna pay our time every single time, and if they do, that's awesome. But you know what? It's not always the case, but it is the case more than you think. There's a lot of brainwashing that goes on, and we can talk about that another time, but I mean there's a lot of brainwashing that goes on in collections, and that's on our side because we spend 80% of our time spacing chasing the 20% of people that don't have any money, and we think everyone that walks in is that guy. We don't even start where we should start, and that's a whole other thing. As far as the the face of your company is now becoming that car, that's the person that needs to that, and maybe we don't need with all the tools that we have now with the CRMs and the and the and the online payment and the collection call robot you're gonna talk to me about.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

I'm just gonna say that's actually coming off the hangs. What am I talking about?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yeah, I mean, with those kind of things, maybe we don't need two assistant managers, maybe we need three really good delivery drivers and an assistant manager to kind of cover for the manager or be that second in charge. Maybe we don't need three. We need we need three of these guys that we pay a decent wage to. Maybe we eliminate that one position and make three well-paid teammates that get the job done and go out and we'll do more than two or three stops a day that'll actually get the job done. And some people will push back and say, hey, we can't afford it. We can't afford that kind of payroll. Yeah, you can't with the jabronies that you're getting at 12 bucks. You can't. I get it. What are you gonna get if you take the chance to pay a little more, to be a little bit more selective, and you're gonna have more people to choose from, and you're also gonna have the ability to hold them accountable and say, look, man, if you're not here to make this money, then I know that I'll be able to get something. And I'm confident in that because a lot of people will just accept it. They just accept underperformance because they're afraid to be short-handed, and then they want to spend all their time being short-handed instead of spending their time becoming not short-handed. You know, a lot of stores, when they get short-handed, they just all of a sudden they think it's an excuse. Number one, it's an excuse to underperform. Well, I'm short that guy. Okay, great. Well, you know, you have an excuse, and now you don't have to do good. Okay, I get it. Right. But they also spend all their time, well, we have all these calls now, and I have to make all these and I have to do all that stuff that that guy's not doing. Yeah, but your number one problem, I don't care what you tell me, you can tell me, well, these sales are slow because I'm short-handed, the credit is high because I'm short-handed, the calls take longer because I'm short-handed. Yeah, what's the common denominator? You're short-handed, right? It's uh it comes back to employees. No matter what, you need to spend at least an hour or two a day to fix that number one problem. Go places like I understand the stores are strapped and then you can't just pay fortunes, you know what I'm saying? But at some point we gotta get, we gotta meet them at the middle. Someone's gotta be able to make their rent with what we pay them, or they're gonna be like, okay, well, you're getting half of me because the other half has to start driving Uber the minute I leave here in order to make my rent. That's what we're dealing with out there. And sometimes people gotta look at that and say, look, man, it's time to invest in this position. Because if you do, you're gonna have happier customers that pay you on time. They're not gonna have any excuses not to pay you or pay you on time because you're gonna make sure that you did it right. Right? Most people, and I know I saw that you're one of those green bubble weirdos that's on Android, and I have um Apple, right? So if you're not on Apple, if you are if you want, you can turn off incoming phone calls if they aren't stored contacts in your phone. Oh, really? Yeah, it's nuts. Like it doesn't ring. The phone won't ring. So if I didn't know that as an Android user, well, Android's the same, I'm sure there's something on Android because they're basically the same company, right? They're gonna do the same features. Like you guys, that's I I say you guys, like we're on some different things or something. But I mean it's Apple definitely has a call blocker. And if you're not a safe contact in your phone, phone won't even ring if you call. It'll go to the voicemail immediately, which obviously makes collection calls. Well, no one's answering. Yeah, I wonder why. Yeah, because you didn't take a minute, a second, just to make sure that that our contact information is in that customer's phone. Now, ideally, what would happen is the driver that's being well paid and paid enough to make his bills at home, right, and has pride in himself and his appearance and the store's reputation, make sure that they're in the phone and then that's hey, tell you what, call the store real quick. The customer has an opportunity to call the store and call the store with the you know, the store gets to see the caller ID on the other side. Oh, this isn't the number that we set up for you. I'm just gonna go ahead and store. Oh, yeah, it's my wife's number. Okay, great. Tell me how it how did it go? You know, how's it got the delivery go? Oh, wait, great. He just did a fantastic job. Oh, did he? Did he hook up the PS5 for you and everything? Oh no, he didn't he didn't hook up the P. Oh, can I talk to him real quick? Get over there and put up PS5. We talked about this about uh 500 times and then hey, I can't talk to him, customer again. All right, oh he's gonna hook that up for you. Did you jeff up that thing again? No, he didn't jeff. All right, great, right? So everything was fine. Well, if that was great, could you do me a favor? You know, he obviously, you know, he takes tips, but he also would love it. You know, see how I threw that in. He takes tips. But he auto, you know, he would love it if you would just give us a great review and use his name in the review because we we take care of the guys that give us good reviews, right? So I even he's gonna send you another QR code that's gonna be to our Google page, and you just gotta make sure that you get those scores up. The the key to it is if the only people that feel strongly about how your service went are the ones that are mad, you're gonna have a crappy score. Yes, you're gonna have crappy reviews, you're gonna have crappy everything. And then the people that are like, Yeah, it was pretty good, those are the ones that are gonna push that the Google star rating up, right? Because most of them have five stars. Like I've never got out of an Uber that was less than five stars. I I mean, I I don't read a lot of Ubers, but I mean it's five stars. Whatever the guy's trying to make a living, right? Right. He's taking it seriously. No, someone you know was caught the car on fire and I was getting shot at and stuff, and that you know, it was taking me some weird way. Okay, you know, I might drop that down, and that would be letting people know in the future. Hey, but at the end of the day, the customer had an opportunity. And then the other thing, hey, did he tell you about the three options when the when the payment was due? What you had oh yeah, he did. Okay, what were they? Oh, you had to make the payment, pay it off, or give it back. Right, right, exactly. Oh, did he tell you how the uh the same as cash works and how the best way to do it is? Oh, he did great, great, that's awesome. So that callback happens at the moment, so that if there is some part that they didn't do, they have an opportunity to fix that before they get to the point where they do that that callback or that customer review, and then you get the chance to ask them because I had a store in Jacksonville that was great at getting Google reviews, just great at it. People would drive all the way across town just to go to that store, you know what I mean? Because that was the one that was on top of the group. When I buy anything on Amazon, I go to the reviews and it has to have a lot of reviews and they all have and it has to have high stars. My wife is just like that. She won't buy anything that doesn't have good reviews. A lot of reviews and high stars. That's a good sample, right? So if you have a small sample and it's all bad because you don't solicit it, you don't deserve the money, then when you're calling them on that first payment, they don't even know because it was set up on the wrong day because nobody checked or asked them anything. You know what I mean? All that stuff is not that used to be done in the store, is now in the house. You know what I mean? And if it's not happening, because the guy showed up in his basketball shorts, because he just started three days ago, and he has no idea what the business is all about, because he was willing to take any job he could get because he just got fired from the last three. You know what I mean? And we he he we put him in the drug test, he had to study for it, but he got through it, right? And everything that's and you're you're right on the money on that one. But those are the guys that we got to take a little bit more time and take a little more and have hold them to a little bit higher standard, and we can't really afford to do that at a low, low rate coming on, you know, not anymore anyway.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

So shooting back just a little bit to the paid it situation, the automated collections platform that released at RTO World 2023 in San Antonio. Is that going to be something that you think, in your opinion, you've been doing this a long time, is your opinion going to start showing up in a lot of rent owns across the country? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

I you know, I haven't been to a blockbuster lately. You know what I mean? That's exactly the way I see it. There's a lot of things out there that would point to the fact that yeah, it it could be adopted by a lot of people. And I think I could see a lot of times the customer would prefer to deal with a robot over a person. You know what I mean? Because it's a touchy situation sometimes, you know what I mean? Sometimes the reason that a customer goes past you is embarrassing for them. And that's okay. You know, and then they lie, that's okay. I don't care. That oh, the aliens took your wife and she had all the money in her purse. Man, that's terrible. When do you think they're gonna beam her down? Friday? All right, sounds good. Friday, what time? Five o'clock?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Star Trek episode five. Yeah, Friday at five. All right.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Right. So you just let them lie. Who cares? It's all right. Maybe the real reason is very embarrassing for them, and none of your business. Right? So And now a word from our sponsor.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

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SPEAKER_00 24:29

And now back to the show. But that's also a nuanced thing that comes with dealing with a lot of people over a lot of time. Like you can't take it personal, man. You know what I mean? But that's the stuff that I'm worried about losing with the pay to stuff. But I'm sure it's going to be like anything else. It's a tool, it's a hammer, it's how you use it. If you're going to use it properly, then you're going to have a great result, right? And I don't think that they would have the push that they have. I mean, they basically they were a big, a big, big sponsor of the April, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

They were actually matched Ashley's sponsorship, uh being a titanium sponsor, because they believe seriously in this product. And there's a lot of smart guys over there. Like I, you know, well, Michael Bennett was working with Richard for you know a year, which is I still find amazing because he's one of the smartest minds in rental that I know of right now.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yeah, I've only met him a few times, but he's a very impressive guy. He's a sharp guy. And he's friends with a lot of people I know that are that have a that hold him in high esteem.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Well, I think that was the best idea to put somebody who really understands Roman.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

He was going out as I was coming in at acceptance now, so I was I'm familiar with him as well a little bit. Um, but I mean there's some smart guys, you know what I mean? And the stuff that they talked about that the thing can do, it it seems like it's pretty appealing, you know what I mean? Which is okay, like kind of. But if it if that's what's gonna be effective and that's what's gonna make it easy for the customer to pay, okay. You know what I mean? I'm willing to use it. And if that saves me time and gives me more time to go sit outside of Walmart with my flyers or go to that, bring that cookies to that, you know, to that apartment complex, you know, employee that and then that kind of stuff goes a long way. And if if I can spend more time doing that and less time doing that and save my relationship somehow with that customer by not constantly having to be in their pocket or on their case, awesome, man. That's that's awesome. Like as long as they end up owning their merchandise, that's it's all about. You know what I mean? And if I can operate my business within the parameters that have shown over time to make money for the company and myself, then everybody wins. I hope it does, and I hope it, you know, people try it out, and if it doesn't work, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Well, I like the approach that it's a tool because I feel I feel the exact same way. I don't feel like it's inertly gonna change the way that we do business. And I don't think anybody's really gonna lose a job over it. I really feel like that we're gonna curtail what we do to that, and if we do raise the salaries of the people that are already working for us, hurrah for them. And uh maybe that will give us the opportunity to give more to the people that we do have, right? And maybe you know alleviate some of the load on that so that it's easier not only in the labor, but the PLs and the results. I think it's a tool to use. And then, like you said, if it if if you try a tool so many times and it doesn't work, then maybe you try something else. But I think it's a tool that is gonna I think it's gonna shine through eventually because, like you said, there's no blockbusters.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Well, and that's yeah, there's no the red box and then the the Netflix took over the red box. Like it's just there's always gonna be something new. Back when I was young, back in my day, my day, yeah. We used to we have people used to bring their paycheck to me on Friday night, and I'd give them the difference between what their payment was and the rest of it. I sure did. I remember those days, yeah, man. And if there was a line out the door of people waiting to pay their payment on Friday night, all right, and we had the cash available because everybody dealt with a lot of cash. And those were the good old days, and a lot of people still operate as though that's the present, and it's not. It's not, it's not ever gonna be again. Our credit standard, for example. If you were operating on a credit standard, that kind of came along at about a time that was from nine, people worked from nine to five, got a paycheck on Friday, brought it in. Saturday was a good day to have them all due because they gave them that day off because everybody was off on Saturday and Sunday back in the day, right? And now it's just not that. People get paid on the 10th and 25th and 8th and whatever, and so different now.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

I noticed that now customers, some of them can do like an app where they get paid every day. What you know, so that so they do it every day, or they can take loans from their payment because let's say, you know, on Friday they have that bill due, but right they have an app now that they need to pay something now, right? So they could take $200 out of their paycheck, or like Uber, I only work two days because I literally only work two days and I make my own schedule. And this week, you know, somebody got sick, so I can't pay the full bill because I didn't work it. And I don't have anybody to answer to. I'm not losing my job, but I just didn't do it this week, and the next week I got to double up, and there's a convention, or there's you know, a lot of people coming in at the airport.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

So I'd say the best way to track your money any day nowadays, I would have to say that the percent collected is everything, man. And it's true on the 7th, the 14th, the 21st, and the 28th of the month because you've had a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and that's seven days. So as on the seventh day of the month, you're 90% collected, yeah, you're doing pretty good. You know, using just amount enough of free time to maybe grow your business or help out customers, and a lot of times it's different amounts of whichever one you use for that. But as long as you're about 90-ish percent collected on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th, I think you're doing pretty good. You know what I mean? And if but unfortunately, you know, people that are in the higher places sometimes just think, well, back when I did da-da-da-da-da, I did it was like this. Well, yeah, that's great. Back then, that was awesome. Because you were great, because look where you are now, that's fantastic. Nowadays, people get paid, like you said, chime every day. What you know what I mean? And we would never take a daily payment before, but now you know now. I mean, if that's how they're getting your waitress, and you uh you know what I mean? Like you got you gotta be flexible what the customer can do, or you're not gonna have any customers. Exactly. Just because we're doing something we used to do something is a terrible reason to do something. You know what I mean? It's like just because we used to do it that way, cool. You know what I mean? People used to do lobotomies on everybody that had the sniffles. Like, I don't know, you know, they used to put leeches on your arm to get rid of the demons that were causing it. You know what I mean? But you gotta evolve and you gotta stay up, and that's why the paid things are gonna come along. And I think that they're gonna get tried out and they're gonna be successful. And I think the the customers are gonna change the the whole transaction of how they get paid and what they're paying in there in the household budgets, all that stuff's gonna change. We have to be light on our feet.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

I think the innovation part of it is so important right now because things are changing on a daily basis. Joseph Coppser mentioned it when he was talking to us that there's things changing on just a rapid pace.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

So I think the silent the silent one that's getting us that no one really wants to talk about is those is the one that he did bring it up in that speech about the pay it off in four easy payment thing, right? They're basically doing our own thing better than us in some cases. You know, if you get a big expense you gotta buy, you can break it up in three equal payments and blah blah blah. Well, yeah, customers are flocking to that, right? But why wouldn't they? And why wouldn't we have that? And we got 90 days same as cash, fantastic. A hundred now it's 180 days or whatever, and you know, I always say 90, and I'm like from the 90 days, right? That's just make that dates me alone. But it if customers are doing it, if every single time I buy something on Amazon, if it's 28 bucks and I can split it into three equal payments, it's there's something there that we need to be tapping into, right? Our price tag maybe shouldn't just say the big weekly price on it. Honestly, man, I when I started in the store, in-store sales are so good, and it's there's it's a shame that they're going away from that a lot. There's still stores that get a lot of foot traffic, and there's still a lot of customers that come in. It doesn't feel like it, but there are. And the main thing that I would always preach to my stores is to try to start off with the best and easiest and cheapest way for the customer to become homeowner.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Words of advice from uh somebody who is good at training leaders and getting things done, right? Years of experience, of course, because that always plays a good part in it. That's the only way I learned stuff, the hard way. The hard way, right? We do head first and head strong. So right now, we're going to say that good leadership comes from good leadership. Good training comes from empowering, making sure that we are investing ourselves in what we expect people to invest themselves in, making sure that we have the right payments in the right places, we pay the guys the right way so that we can get the right things out of our customers and they can pay us the right way, and making sure that we hold ourselves accountable just like we would hold anybody else accountable. I think those are definitely leadership virtues and challenges that we're gonna face coming into this new age right now, especially when we have automation right outside our door and how we're gonna utilize that as the right tool to make things and the right decisions that we need to make. We do appreciate you guys sitting with us with Jason Winners and going over these topics. If you guys have any questions, any things that you want to talk to Jason about, let us know. You can email me at www.therto showpodcast.com. You can go on there and send me a message, or you can email directly at Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. Let me know, put Jason's name in the line, ask him a question, maybe we'll have him on again, so we can just do those answering. Hopefully, we'll get some good, good information, good feedback from this one, because I know I know everybody's gonna love this one. As always, the RTO show is proud to be sponsored by the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations. April is consistently participating, educating, and watching candidly over the rent owned industry, and has been doing so since 1980. Keep track of the current and future events, meetings, and legislative gatherings by going to the website at rtohq.org. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe to the RTOHQ magazine and newsletter. Also, if you're not a member of April, find out how to become one online at rtohq.org. We appreciate you coming, Jason. What are your final words for today's podcast?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Just do the right thing, man, and uh make sure that you're always investing in the people around you. Just, you know, you can you can all get as high as you want to go, but you you're not gonna get there alone. And just be one of the people that they look back on and say, man, that guy or that gal really helped me out, um, really taught me this or taught me that. I don't I don't profess to know everything and got I mean, I'm far from that. But at the end of the day, I just want to know that I played a role in somebody's success and that they can look back and and and enjoy working with me and and hopefully I could give them something that that that made their lives a little better. Um if you're looking to hire somebody on the Absolutely Southeast or Southwest Florida side, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn. Um make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast here.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Absolutely. So you guys listen, if you guys find them on LinkedIn, great. If not, you can find us on Facebook or on Instagram. You can send us a direct message. We will get you in touch with Jason. Ton of years of experience in the uh RTO world, and from what I can tell from his podcast, you got you got a lot of things going for you. I think that might be great to put you on. So thank you so much for staying with us today. We'll catch you all later. And as usual, keep your credit low so you can get your sales high. Have a good one.