Why Your Goals Aren't Working

What separates the managers who hit their numbers from the ones who keep falling short? In this episode, Danny and Pete break down their personal approach to goal setting — and it goes a lot deeper than writing a number on a whiteboard.

They dig into why most people are actually chasing the wrong goals, how to structure your ambitions so they build on each other over time, and what to do when life, your team, or an unpredictable market throws a wrench in your plans. There's also an honest conversation about the mindset work that most managers skip — and why skipping it might be exactly what's holding them back.

Along the way, they share some real stories from the store floor that illustrate just how powerful the right environment, the right visibility, and the right kind of team buy-in can be. One story in particular — involving a whiteboard, a competitive sales assistant, and a mid-year ranking reveal — is worth the listen alone.

Whether you're a store manager building toward your first big milestone, a district manager trying to get your team aligned, or just someone who sets the same resolution every January and wonders why it never sticks, this episode has something for you.

Danny and Pete don't always do things the same way — but they always end up in the same place. This episode is a good reminder that the destination matters more than the route.

Visit us at www.TheRTOshowPoadcast.com

Transcript

Danny Lastra 0:07

And welcome to the RTO show with Danny and Pete. I'm your host, Danny.

Pete Shau 0:10

And I'm your host, Pete. And today we're going to be talking about goals and how to achieve them. And right now my goal is to find out what how was your how was your vacation, man? How is that that time away from everything, including me? Much needed. Much needed. Yeah, I need to get the hell out of here.

Danny Lastra 0:29

You know, um, you know, we're talking about like the family effect show that we did last season, but you know, it's it definitely puts things in perspective. It was relaxing, it was much needed family time. Definitely feel energized. I feel low stress. I feel motivated, inspired. Come back, kick some ass, you know, at work, this podcast, you know, get with you. Let's make this thing bigger and better. How was your how was your holidays, man? Yeah, I worked the whole time.

Pete Shau 0:57

Both divisions, just so you guys know how it works. Because Danny and I are in the same company. I cannot take a vacation at the same time as Danny, and then Larry goes on vacation at the same time. I have no way to get away from it right now. So my vacation is coming up. I did have a chance to get a lot of things done, uh, just to kind of breathe a little bit because you know having the podcast is is it takes time and it takes focus. And it was a little, it was nice to be able to get away a little bit and kind of just focus on the family a little bit and uh do some family events. We had like three Christmas parties that we were a part of, so that was great. And then, of course, spending time with the baby and just kind of remembering all that. But uh nope, my vacation is coming up soon, so I can't wait for that. And then, of course, Vegas, baby, Vegas, Vegas, and then, of course, uh, after that, if you guys don't know, meetings of the minds in Georgia, uh, Atlanta, Georgia, we're gonna be there or B Square because we we're gonna be a part of, well, I mean, we're gonna see what's going on over there. Hopefully, maybe have more to do.

Danny Lastra 1:54

Man, that's two shows we're already attending in 23. I I want to say we're hitting some of our goals that we that we set in motion.

Pete Shau 2:01

Uh see, you saw that? You saw that coming? We are hitting goals, guys. This is 2023, and we had some goals last year. And part of goals, you know, you have to really take a look at what you want. When you set goals, the idea is to understand exactly where you're going. And you have to put down some good thought process on what it is. What exactly do you want? Not just the end result, but how to get there. So you have to understand what you want to get out of your goals and the goals themselves.

Danny Lastra 2:28

And then once you understand what it is that you want, what your goal is, you have to decide right then and there. Is that your goal? You have to choose. It's a it's a conscious decision. This is what I want. This is what I want to go after. You have to decide what your goal is going to be.

Pete Shau 2:44

You know, I was thinking because sometimes people set their goals as something and they don't realize that maybe the goal is something else. And I know it sounds crazy, but if I wanted to buy a house and I wanted to buy a car, I could say, hey, this is my goals, right? So if I'm in a store and I could say I want to grow customers or I want to increase my rental revenues, that itself is the end result. But what is going to get you there? Is it learning something new? Is it training yourself? Is it taking courses? Is it understanding your management style better? Is it understanding your sweet spot? Is it going to your guys and kind of being more open about it and training a little bit better? So the the end result of the goal is yes, the big prize. But then the goal should be steps. There should be steps, right? You should know what it is that's going to get you to the end result. And that's by that's how you understand first and foremost when you're making a goal, what it is you want to attack to get to where you got to go.

Danny Lastra 3:33

No, for sure. But right before you do that, right before you break down your steps, which is a very important part of setting your goals, but I think there's two things you want to do before you break it down. One is write your goal down. Quickly write it down. You know, Pete, you and I, we do this all the time. Anytime we have a brainstorm session, specifically in the training room, what do we do? We get up, we go to the whiteboard, and we start writing things down, whether it's store numbers, whether it's managers' names, whether it's goals, whether it's rental revs. And then you also want to increase your goal by by smidgen just a little bit. Put it a little bit further out to reach, you know. So if you want to increase your customers, let's say 50 customers, shoot for 75. You want to increase your rental rev for the year by 10,000, go for 15. You always want to go a little bit higher, shoot for the stars, and you'll land on the moon. Write your goals down, put it somewhere on display so where you can see it almost on a daily basis. But I think you're right. But then that's where now once you write the goal down, and then you break down from long term to short term, what's your year-long goal? What's your quarter goals? What's your month goals, and what's your every week goal? Because by hitting those margins, when you look back at the year, you're gonna say, okay, we made it. And we made it by by week after week after week hitting our mark.

Pete Shau 4:47

I call those the stair step goals, right? You you're you're walking up a set of stairs, you're not to the top, you're not at the bottom, but each step you take is in the right direction, right? You take it and you as you take these steps, as you look at it, what are you doing? Are you marketing better? Okay, that's one step. Are you having better customer attention? That's one step. Are you making sure that you focus on your payout customers as well as your returns? Or are you trying to prevent payouts? That's a step. Are you engaging with your employees to make sure that they understand what it what it really means to hold on to those customers and not just get a new customer because you can have Ms. Jones who leaves and Mr. Jones who comes in and it's a wash. So, how do you grow those customer steps and how to get the people that you have with you involved in that so that they understand that there's a process? That's a step. And then you start adding all these together, those little wins, those little, I made this part of my goal. Now it's time to move to the next. I trained them on this, now it's time to move to the next. And those little steps will put you to the second floor. And the second floor could be a third of the way, could be a quarter of the way. Now what else do I have to do? Well, let's go back to marketing. Am I marketing with the right materials? Do I have the right EDDMs? Do I have the right, am I flyering the right places? Am I calling the right people? Or maybe it's just, I'm not even calling the right way. I'm I'm doing all this work and I'm just treading water. I don't even know what I'm doing. Maybe a goal is to have better sales training, not just training as in why do we want to keep the customers that we have, but sales focus retention training and saying, are you even saying the right thing? Are you just calling up and saying, hey, I want you back? Oh, you don't want to come back? Oh, that's terrible. Well, just give me a call when you want to. That's not sales, right? So then you you take these small baby steps to get to where you want to be. And eventually you'll be on the third floor. And then the third floor could be you. The last floor could be you. Are you training the right way? Are you doing the right thing? Have you looked at your numbers? Do you even know what numbers we're talking about? Have you looked at your trends and said, you know, my three-month trend is this, or my 13-week trend is this? Or am I going into the summertime and my expectations are crazy unbelievable? Or is this a time that I set down roots so that they can sprout for fall and winter? But it's it's a lot of different things to take into account, but those stair step goals are super important. So you want to set goals in a way that will get you to where you want to be. All your baby, all your baby goals, your baby steps should lead you from one small goal to another small goal to the end result. And they should all go in the same direction. Something built on something else.

Danny Lastra 7:04

You touched on something, and really I can't believe I didn't write this down to begin with before we started recording. Managers, we we need to work on ourselves, we need to better ourselves. Where training is also an internal thing, too, as individuals, as human beings, as mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, friends, uh, employees. I I want to say another good thing we can do is probably read some books, read some successful biographies, read some how-to books, how to win friends and influence people. You know, I'm I'm in the middle of a book right now called The The Power. It's the second book from The Secret. I'm a big believer of this, I'm gonna get a little spiritual for just a second. But it goes down to the goals because it it's it's the law of attraction. You're manifesting it, and you have to subconsciously believe that you're going to hit this goal and you have to already act like you're receiving it. Like you can't say, all right, in 12 months I'm gonna be here. No, you're already there now. You have to act like it, you have to believe it, you have to walk in this path that you are already there at that goal. So you're manifesting it and it will attract into your life. It's a great book. You have to read it. I pete, I keep telling you, read the secret, read the power. I'm really recommending it. And it also helps you as an individual so that way it can inspire you to be a better leader, be a better manager for your employees. So you can't expect to continuously always train your employees to be better if you're not training yourself to be better. And I think that's important. So to read on some leadership books, you know, Larry always says that all the time. He's always saying, read some books, read some books. I've been trying to do better at that, especially um when I went on vacation, I started reading some books. And I think that's gonna help you reach your goal in the end, is if you're bettering yourself, if you're looking at all this other stuff, all right, are we marketing better? Are we closing sales better? Also, what am I doing better for my team? I think that's an important factor. I think you hit, I think that was a good topic, good subject point right there that I didn't write down. I actually wrote it down now as we were talking about it.

Pete Shau 8:54

Well, I always feel like goals are like, you know, and I try to use a lot of metaphors because sometimes I can swallow it easier that way. And a store to me is it I always I always had this from some of my DMs that taught me in my regionals, and you kind of like in a car, you know, and you're the guy driving. You're the guy driving, and there's everybody with you. There could be a navigator, could be the you know, a sleepy head in the back. But if you're not a good driver, you're not gonna get to where you want to be. And you want to get there faster, you just got to be a better driver. And to be a better driver, you got to be a better leader. And to be a better leader, you've got to read, you've got to self-invest. One of the things about goals that are gonna take you anywhere, especially in a rent-to-owned industry, is you have to understand you have to be better than the guy you were yesterday. There's no way that you're gonna get to the future if you're not better than the guy who was in the past. You know, if you're a driver for a year and then you take on an, you know, let's say a role of account management or you take on sales, you can't be the driver in sales. You just have to be the guy in sales. And then when you're in sales or you're going to accounts, or accounts are going to sales or going to assistant management, you can't be that person. You have to outgrow the person that you were before because you're not going to be able to succeed doing what you did previously. It's impossible.

Danny Lastra 10:03

You actually just read my Facebook profile quote. That's exactly what it says. It says, Daniel Asher, Danny, just some man trying to be a better man than yesterday.

Pete Shau 10:13

Is that what I did? I read the quote. Is that what it is?

Danny Lastra 10:16

Yeah, straight up. Um, what another thing you want to do is don't be shy about it. Tell someone, you know, your team, but also tell someone outside, someone outside of your circle that's that's not necessarily going to help you obtain your goal, but let them know hey, just FYI, this is my goal. You know, maybe it's a friendly competition. Maybe you call another store up at the beginning of the year and you say, hey man, great job last year. I'm coming for you this year. Like, let them know. It's not cocky, it's not arrogant. It's it's it's putting it out there into the universe, it's putting it out there with words that all right, I wrote down my goals, I got, I broke it down, I have my steps, I know what I need to do. Now it's time to tell someone. I'm gonna tell you, Pete, listen, man, I'm coming for you. My division is gonna kick your division's ass this year. I got a plan, I got a goal. Just wait and see, buddy. You just wait and see.

Pete Shau 11:06

Well, you know, sometimes when you're doing these goals, remember that not all goals are the same, right? Sometimes you're gonna enjoy completing a goal. Sometimes it's gonna be harder for some goals than others. What you need to do sometimes is so that you don't get goal fatigue, is to sprinkle them in different areas. Maybe you're more of a salesperson. Every once in a while, stick in a sales goal and then stick in a credit goal and then stick in maybe uh, you know, to learn PLs or something like that, and then stick one of your goals in there. Let your goals motivate you. Don't I won't recommend doing all your happy goals first, the ones that you want to tackle, and then all the harder goals at the end, or all the harder goals in the beginning and all the types that you like at the end. Because what's gonna happen is you're gonna create that fatigue, or you're gonna set yourself up for I did all these goals and it was really great. Now I got to face all these hard things, and now I'm gonna have three months where I'm really gonna hate my goals. That doesn't motivate you. So one of the things that you can do is find out if you make a list of five, 10, 15, find the ones that really attract you and then spread those out. You wanna be able to take it one on time, right? You take that one and yes, that's a win. All right, now I gotta learn this. It's a little bit difficult for me. Okay, I got that done, but oh my God, I am so ready to do marketing, or oh my God, I really want to get better at credit. Put those in in an order where they're gonna get you to where they're gonna be. You don't want to complete something completely far-fetched that doesn't help you, but you also want to put it in a in a way that's gonna help motivate you to get to the next day. You want to get to that next goal so that you're like, yes, I've done this, I completed this. Now it's time for me to move on to yes, planning, yes, leadership, yes, reading that book. I find I've been putting this off because I just don't have the time. But now that I've made that time, I want to read that book that Danny's talking about, or I want to read Danny's bio so that I can learn how to be a better guy than I was yesterday. Those are the important things. Make sure that you enjoy, you know, knocking those things out. Find the brighter side of the goal sometimes, because sometimes you hit those hard goals and then you're like, man, I I I just man, I I'm gonna put this one off today or I'm not gonna complete it. Find the brighter side of your goals. What is it gonna help you? How is it gonna better serve you to beat this thing, to learn this thing, to get past this thing, to understand this thing, and how is that gonna affect you in the future? You know, sometimes you don't want to you don't want to fix that flat tire. But man, do you know how hard it is to drive a thousand miles on three tires? It's not easy. So you need to focus on where you're going and the destination and how that's gonna benefit you more than the physical labor of getting that done. And when you get through that, when you see it that way, you'll say, you know what, this is the necessary evil. This is what I have to learn. Because to be on the next step, I have to go through the mud, right? Anytime that you're in military, anytime that you go through something difficult, what do they do? They throw you in the mud. That's not where you're gonna be. That's what you got to get through. And then when you're at your goal, when you become sergeant, you go, you go higher, it's like, no, I went through that. I went through that, and that sticks with you. I have completed this goal. This goal has been easier. I'm not good at credit, but I had to sit there for three months and I had to close my route. I had to learn that my open is just as big as my clothes. I had to make sure that my overs, my 15 pluses, are just as important as the one of sevens. It's just in a different way. And I had to learn it. Now that I know that, I'll never forget that. And now I'm gonna take it to my next goal. That's my next step. So you guys have to really kind of look at what you're doing and put it in perspective because that really, really helps.

Danny Lastra 14:22

A positive mindset produces positive results. A negative mindset produces negative results, plain and simple. You're gonna face obstacles. There's there are things, uncontrollable actions that are gonna be against you from the start, the moment you write your goal down. You're gonna have to learn to overcome them. It's kind of like what you're just saying. Like, but don't be discouraged, don't be negative about it, endure it. Know it's a process you're gonna have to go through, and in the end, it's gonna be so well worth it. A beautiful butterfly doesn't become a butterfly without going through the two weeks of torture and pain of being in a cocoon transforming into that beautiful butterfly. You're gonna have to go through the uncomfortableness. And outside of that uncomfortableness is gonna be something very beautiful at the end. I guarantee it. So stay positive. When you feel like how's the saying go? When the tough gets going, the going gets tough, continue moving forward. Don't give up, and you will overcome all the adversities, but it's a process you're gonna have to go through.

Pete Shau 15:16

Well, Danny wants to put you in a cocoon, so you better come out a butterfly. So that's all that's gonna say about that. But then after you get everything down, you set up in an away, you're looking at them, you understand them, you understand that sometimes you're gonna have to go through something difficult. Then remember, put them somewhere you can see them. Danny's real big on vision boards, and let me tell you, I, you know, I'm a little bit different. I do love vision boards, but I like posting things everywhere. I want it on my desk. I want it in my car, I want it on my shifter, I want it in my bathroom. Now, everybody's different because of course, if we were all the same, this this world would just be unbelievably dull. So, you know, one thing that we always say, and we say it to a lot of people, and we say it to everybody, Danny and I always have the same destination, but we definitely go there through different means, whether it's through the city or through the woods to grandma's house, we go. And when we go there, we we we take different approaches, we take different ways, we look at things differently, but it's always to the same goal. So if you're doing that, you know, in my aspect, you might want to put little things everywhere. Those little reminders are where you sit and you're going, man, this is a day, and I gotta look at that and go, Yeah, no, this is for a reason. But one thing I wanted to tell you guys, because we we run a podcast, right? And of course, you're sitting there listening, whether you're driving or whether you're at office. How about this? How about take a page out of Pete and Danny's book? Why don't you record yourself? Take a 30-second snippet of what it is that you want to do. Remember that this has got to be the height of your goal setting. And as you're writing things down, write in there, I want to do this because I want to grow my store. I want to train my staff, I want to be better, I want to be a district manager, I want to take over a store, I want to be successful, and this is the way I'm gonna do it. Give yourself 30 seconds. And when you're having that day where it just sounds real, real hard, maybe you're uh maybe your goal, your goal friend isn't available. Play that stuff back to you. Play it back and just remember in the tone and in the spirit that you were in at that moment, you got it recorded. Yeah, this is why I'm doing it. This is what I need. I got a vision board, I got my little snippets everywhere. I am my own voice. I'm telling myself, dude, you can do it. Ma'am, you are there. Mr., miss, Joe, Bob, Lisa, Cocoon, let's get this done.

Danny Lastra 17:26

You know, speaking of vision boards, you know for a fact it works, Pete. You know it works, okay? So back in the day when Pete was running the brand store, he had a lot of time. Story time, story time. He store he had a very, very strong sales assistant. And I knew I knew this kid since he was 16, so I know what motivates him, what drives him. He's a very competitive person, kind of like me. And one day I walk into the store, I don't say nothing to nobody, I just go straight to this big whiteboard behind everyone's desk, and I just start writing the store numbers and what their potential rental rev are. Do do do do all the way down, all 20 locations, and I point to their store and I say, This is where you're at. This is where the next guy's at. This is where the next guy's at. This is where the next. And I think this was halfway through the year. It wasn't even the beginning of the year. I want to say I did this like in summertime. And y'all like it was summertime. And y'all passed, well, like five or six stores in those six months.

Pete Shau 18:15

We were pretty low on the list. I mean, it's not like we have a ton of stores, but we were pretty low on that list. And I, and if there's anything that anybody can tell you, I don't, I'm, I'm not super up about what I set what I want to do. I just have a goal in my head and I go to achieve it where Danny's a little bit different. He's everybody kind of knows his goal. Well, I keep mine to myself, I just I like to, I'm a I'm a quiet guy when it comes to those certain things. I just like to work hard and get it done. And so Danny comes in, he puts his thing on that board, and I'm like, no, I don't like that. I I don't, I'm not gonna be ah God, I don't remember where I was. We were pretty low at that time. I mean, I think the summertime was one of our lowest uh numbers when our rental reps dropped. And uh Christian was his name. Christian was like, you know, he was very, oh no, we're gonna beat that. And all of a sudden it came out. It came out to the open, it came out to the world. And that's why I said people, different people do different avenues. My way probably wasn't gonna work for Christian because he was he is like you and he needed to see it visually. I didn't need to see it, but once he put it out there and I could see that the excitement that it brought on, yeah, it was on. I mean, I think in six months we did, I think it was five or six stores that we passed in that six-month span.

Danny Lastra 19:18

He got excited because every time you passed up a store, he would cross it off. He did cross it off. This knockoff done. He was he was and even kind of like what you said, like it might not have been your cup of tea, but inadvertently, subconsciously, it did kind of affect you because you admitted like you hated seeing your store so low. I hate so it wasn't so for you, it wasn't so much of passing other stores up. For you, it was just more of an internal thing because you've always been a these MR4 walls is what I care about, and that's fine. But seeing your store's rental were so low, it did motivate you to be like, we gotta increase that. Where Christian was, oh, I gotta pass these stores up. Either way, it motivated both of y'all to be successful. That I'm gonna stick it to that story because that's how it went down.

Pete Shau 20:02

That's his story sticking to it. Talking about the stories and talking about success, don't forget to uh listen to our sponsor and maybe hit that up. You have to remember that not everybody goes to the same goals as you, and you have to you have to know what motivates your team and how do they get motivated. And it's not just more money or this or that. It sometimes is what type of scenario motivates is it putting on a wall? Is it talking about it every day? Is it getting hyped up? Is it getting that morning coffee and taking five minutes and sitting them in front of the goal board and going, okay, how are we gonna defeat this today? How are we gonna defeat this this week? Is it that planning? Everybody approaches it differently, and you have to be able to get into the people that you have around you, learn that when you talk about a store goal, of course you want to defeat it all yourself. Of course you want to go out there and and beat an army with, you know, that uh call of duty mentality, right? Doesn't work that way. You've got a team, and to create some of those steps, you'll do by yourself. Some of those steps you can do as a team, some of those steps are your team alone. You have to get them to where they need to be so that you can build your goals on top of that solid foundation or four or five gals and guys who understand exactly where they're headed. And if you don't do that, it won't work. Christian was a good sign of that. Once he bought in, there was nothing that was gonna and uh truthfully, I did go through a couple of employees that year. I wasn't gonna settle, but once we got a team on there that kind of understood everything. Everybody was on board. It took off. It literally took off from one month to the next. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. It just started taking off. And everybody rides and enjoys in that success. But it was part of that goal setting process. And I will say it was part of putting it on a vision board, setting it out there where somebody can see and then knocking it off as we got along.

Danny Lastra 22:20

It's also important to make sure, kind of like what you just said, but you have to get your entire team bought in. But every individual on that team has to be aware of what the goal is, what the daily goal is, what the weekly goal is. This is a personal goal of mine, is that I want to get better this year at checking in on my stores and randomly asking employees, hey, what's the goal for the day? Sure, the store manager and the assistant probably know what it is, but does the driver, does the driver know how many customers we want to open today? Does the driver know what the credit score needs to be at? Does the driver know how much deposit we need today?

Pete Shau 22:55

Listen, for everybody who's not a GM, it's okay for you to go to your GM and ask them what their goals are for the day. Exactly. It's not just top down. If you're a driver, if you're an account manager, if you're a salesperson and you don't see the goals up for today, don't be afraid to create some goals for yourself. Take them to your GM and say, hey, this is what I want to do today. Help me. Is this in it is this the right thing to do? Is this the right direction? You help me create the goals that are going to make me successful and put them in the hot seat to take out the time to show you what it is you need to succeed.

Danny Lastra 23:29

And after it's all said and done, and I think this is probably one of the most important things. I'm a big believer of this. Pete, you used to not believe in this, but now you do, thank God. Is you gotta celebrate your wins. Your small wins, your big wins, you gotta celebrate it. That's what helps motivates the team. I'm gonna tell another story time. I'm putting Pete out on blast. I don't care. Because this this this drive this boggled me. They're kicking ass. Listen, no, you guys are kicking ass. I think you got like second place of store of the month. So you didn't quite make it, but man, it was one hell of a month. So I come in, I'm excited, I'm pumped, I'm high-fiving everybody. I come to Pete and I go, hey man, you gonna get the guys' lunch? Pete's response for what? For what? For second place of store of the month, y'all kicked ass. They did their job. Nah, man, come on. He he didn't get him lunch. He got him lunch. He was he P was a great manager, mind. I'm not trying to make him paint him as a villain. He just is definitely a Gen X thing and it's definitely a generational thing, and that's what he was used to. You know, hey, you get paid to do a job, you did a job, great job. I'll give you a handshake, I'll give you a pat on the back. But to actually celebrate it, it's like, well, that's what we get paid to do. And you're right, it's true. We're all paid to perform, but you gotta celebrate. You know, even teams celebrate. Look at look at we use sports analogies a lot. You're telling me NFL players don't celebrate the wins. Look at them on TV. They get paid millions of dollars to do a job, but every time they win a game, they all huddle, they high-five, they dump the Gatorade on the coach, they go out and party, you know. And I'm not saying go out and party in RTO land, but what I am saying is have a nice store lunch, you know, give your employees a little small little gift card, pay for their lunch one week, whatever it takes, celebrate the small wins and then celebrate the big wins. Get with your DMs and regional managers. And if you get three store of the months in a row, if you get store of the year, you know, make sure, make it a huge thing. Take them out to a casino or to a top golf, which is our favorite outing to do. You gotta celebrate the wins because that's what keeps the motivational going, so you can hit every goal all the way through the end of the year.

Pete Shau 25:40

All right. So, you know, if we're gonna say, yes, I have grown a little bit since those situations, but my my always thing was if I missed if I missed my mark, I never celebrate it. And I will tell you guys this, and this is this is the god honest truth. You do have to celebrate the wins because there was something that I didn't realize that I wasn't giving my guys, and that was the environment. We didn't my win was just one type of win. I wanted that one win and I wanted bad. And the truth was, I didn't get my win. I didn't get my win. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna work harder this next month till I get my win. But that focus and drive, sometimes you have to remember that the people around you, you have to create an environment. You have to create the air. And the air around you has to be, I wasn't there, I was this close. But sometimes that's okay. Now I'm not saying you enjoy mediocracy. What I'm saying is if you did better than you did the month before, or the two months before that, or the quarter before that, you do have to enjoy that win. You have to say, guys, we made it this far. We didn't make it to the top of the mountain, but we're damn sure close to it, and this year ain't over with. And go at it again. And I so especially taking over a market now, it's been it's been ingrained in me that I have to really do more for the guys to understand, man, not everybody's gonna win. There's only one top spot, and there's a lot of spots underneath. Are they doing better? Are they doing better than they did? Do they really try? Are they really learning? Are they on the lower steps of their goals, but they're still trying to attain something? Or then they higher steps of their goals and they're all about to, you know, just knock it out of the park. You've got to see a win for a win. Now, I will always tell you and Ren to Own, for the old guys out there, we take that trophy, we enjoy it, and then we put it back on the shelf. We remember that tomorrow is another day, but you do have to enjoy it. When we're talking about goals and getting there and, you know, and stair-stepping our goals, sometimes you also have to remember that I'm an old guy and I'm a little, you know, I'm a little hard to change. But you also have to make sure that you can adjust your goals to things that change around you. Your goals don't have to change, but maybe how you get there. For instance, 2019 was a really good year for me. I I was I was really working my butt off. We didn't have any COVID money out there, we didn't have anything going on. We had a team that was dedicated to making it happen. And then guess what happened? 2020 came and it changed, it changed a rent-to-owned landscape. I think probably if not for the next five years, for a long period of time. We are looking at things that we're still trying to go back, that wasn't right, that wasn't normal, that was COVID, that was this, that was that. Man, that changed a lot. Did it change your goals? No, but how you get there, maybe you need to adjust how you get there. You know, you can't be successful in the same way that you could by going up and shaking somebody's hand. Well, you know what happened? The advent of social media came through. The advent of online sales came through, and I think in rent to own, we probably do that more now than we've ever done. You want to know why? Probably because of COVID. And then we had to get better at that. We had to become better salespeople over the phone. We had to become better people salespeople on email and text message. We had to get better at taking pictures, we had to get better at setting up our showroom so that we could take pictures and send it to people, you know, figure out that, man, these generations are a little bit different. They are going online, they are shopping on their telephone versus even going on a computer. And, you know, it's funny because we always talk about that. I'm always a laptop type of guy. Danny's on his cell phone. I we're just completely different people that way. But we have one goal in mind, that destination. That main goal is the same. How we get there is different. And so don't be afraid to adjust what you need to adjust to make sure that your goals are going to get you what you want. But sometimes things around you happen. Don't be afraid to adjust what you have left to make it fit to what you have available to you. Sometimes people say, I can't do this anymore. No, you can. You can always get there. Just adjust what you have around you. Whether it's the people that you have, whether it's the store that you're in, whether you're driving five minutes now or 10 minutes or 20 minutes now because you're in a further store, because COVID happens or it doesn't happen, or because you have a staff that's trained now versus a staff that isn't. All things can be done when you sit down, think about it, and make sure you talk to your goal coach and say, hey, goal coach that's helping me out, whether it's another store, whether it's Danny, whether it's the cocoon, and you say, This is what's changed. Help me to remember that. That I don't want to just sit down and not celebrate my second place win. I want to win every day. Remind me of that. And and when you do that, you can you can go so far. You can make you got to create the air around you that helps celebrate those wins.

Danny Lastra 30:06

We'd love to hear from everybody what their goals are or how they set goals. If if you want to share with us your goals or how you do set it, uh please email us. You can email me at danny at the rto showpodcast.com, or you can email Pete at Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. If you want to be a guest on our show, you can email us directly, or you can hit me up on Facebook and Instagram at the RTO show. We are gonna be doing a lot of interviews in this new season. We already have one. Uh stay tuned next week. And I think Pete, you have some calendar dates for us?

Pete Shau 30:37

Well, I mean, if you look about it, the end of this month is gonna be amazing. Um, we're actually going to be in the Las Vegas show this month, uh, the end of the year. Um, but January 14th also is the 2023 Premier National Convention. On the 29th of January starts the 2023 Winter of Las Vegas market. Then February, February 25th is the Trib Group 2023 Meeting of the Minds Expo. That's going to be in Atlanta, Georgia. On March 6th, we have the Rent One annual meeting. And then on March 25th, the nationwide primetime education expo. That's also coming from the RTOHQ.org website, the upcoming events. Just if you guys want to, you can click on the calendar there. We'll probably share some of those events on our website at www.therto showpodcast.com. Uh make sure that you guys are getting your shirts too, because listen, guys, when you go to one of those events, there is nothing wrong with wearing a shirt on your off time to show your love for the RTO show. Uh, what we want to do is make some more brand recognition. Listen, we need, we want everybody to listen to the RTO show. We want everybody to suggest what's going on and maybe a topic or something they want to discuss. And like Danny said, be a guest. Be our guest. Be our guest. Put our service to the test. And we want to have you guys a part of that. And then, and then we might have actually been in a magazine. Is that right, Danny? We are actually uh we might actually be a little bit of uh, you know.

Danny Lastra 32:07

If you haven't already, if you haven't already, go go to the April website and you can subscribe to receive the RTO HQ magazine. It's a quarterly magazine every every season. And uh, I believe we are in the winter edition. It was from our Indiana trip last year in was it August, September? How to manage in a post-pandemic. There was also a big shout out to Chris Kale Sr. Shout out, Mr. Cale, uh, for winning The Lifetime Achieve. Correct. And so, you know, you got some ranking representatives in there. But uh, I think that I think from what I've read, they did a great job of breaking down our presentation into steps and to help motivate and inspire managers to be better managers. So uh give it give it a read. Let me know. I'd love to hear any any kind of constructive criticism or any input, positive inputs. And again, feel free to reach out to us if you want to be a guest. We are taking applications now for this season.

Pete Shau 33:04

Also, don't forget if you want to sponsor the RTO show, hit us up again. That's Pete at the RTO Showpodcast.com or Danny at the rtoshowpodcast.com. We love to talk to our sponsors. Listen, this is something that we have to put on ourselves. If you guys want to help us out with that, be a sponsor. We love to have you guys on the show. If we have any vendors that want to go on a show, and it doesn't have to be a vendor that just you know does everyday thing. As a matter of fact, we're going to be meeting with a lot of people in the next couple of months that do RTO in one way or another, whether it's skip trace, whether it's going to advertising and doing it the right way, whether it's new vendors coming up with new products. There's a lot of different things going out there. Pete, be part of the RTO show. Hit us up. You can be a sponsor, we'll put you on, and we'll get you to a different audience. Audiences that love RTO and the RTO show because we're, you know, Danny and I are really likable. With that being said, guys, this is the RTO show with Danny and Pete.