Why you need a Monday Morning Mind Set

Danny and Pete break down how they each approach Monday — the day they both agree is the longest and most important of the work week. The episode covers the GM level, the DM level, and what each position on the store floor should be doing to set the week up right.

Danny's GM routine started before anyone else arrived. Driving to work he was already mentally setting goals for the week — sales targets, credit close numbers, revenue for the week. First thing in the store: check time cards from the prior week, review the daily activity planner for scheduled deliveries, and walk the showroom floor with a to-do list forming in his head. By 9:15 his whole staff was in a Monday morning meeting, usually 30 minutes, covering last week's numbers, what needs to improve, and any tension that needed to be aired out. He also used the meeting to give his assistant something meaningful to say in front of the team — not as performance theater, but as genuine development for the day the assistant has to run the ship alone.

Pete's version was built around what he called the 50-50 mindset: half the day looking back at last week, half planning the week ahead. He ran off a printed meeting sheet covering sales, credit, customer growth, and what was coming up on the calendar. His biggest reminder to himself and to the room was balance — too much defense, meaning collections, without enough offense, meaning sales and marketing, will grind a store down. He made it a point not to do letters on Mondays because too many payments came in that day anyway.

At the DM level, Danny's Monday became almost entirely administrative — pulling overs reports from every store with detailed notes, balancing inventory across the division, reviewing vehicle maintenance checklists, and going through each store's prior week marketing activity. The vehicle maintenance piece gets a particular callout: without working trucks, nothing else matters.

For the credit team, Monday is broken commitments first, then one-to-sevens, with selective field runs kept to first payment defaults and priority accounts. For sales, it's the planning day — mapping out where flyering and door-tagging will happen, when business-to-business visits are scheduled, and setting up as many Friday commitments as possible so the weekend has a foundation. Assistants should be reviewing files from the prior week's sales so the GM has them by Tuesday and they can be filed by Wednesday.

Transcript

Danny Lastra 0:07

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

Pete Shau 0:11

And I'm your host, Pete. And today we're talking about those crazy Mondays that get you started and what we do on our Mondays to get our week started. Because Danny, I know you had a ritual, and I I had a ritual, and our rituals never saw face-to-face. I don't know. I don't know if they ever matched. But uh I was always a Monday morning meeting guy. It was always reports and Mondays, and I went and kind of reviewed over everything. When we're talking about Mondays and you get set up for your work week, what does your Monday look like?

Danny Lastra 0:37

Are you are you asking DM Danny or are you asking GM Danny? Because those two Mondays are too totally different.

Pete Shau 0:43

I think today we're gonna go back and because I know my DM schedule is way different than my GM schedule, right? I think this is more of like if we were in the store, what would your Monday look like as a GM or as assistant or whatever? How like how would how would that go down?

Danny Lastra 0:56

Okay, so I guess as a GM, I'll I'll talk on that for a second. The way I used to do it is driving to work, I was already pre-planning the week in my mind. So obviously you can't forecast how many sales you're actually gonna get or you know, credit, but you can have goals. So I would always have my goals in mind for the week, how many sales I wanted for the week, what I wanted my credit to be down by Saturday, dollars revenues that I wanted in for the week. And the first thing I always did is when I got to the store on Mondays, the first things I did was a check the time cards. That was number one, make sure my guys' hours are correct from the previous week, double check that, make sure they're gonna get paid correctly. Second thing I did was look at my daily activity planner or what we call the DAP or our delivery book. What's going on for today that's already scheduled? Things that are going out, are they tagged with a going home tag? Do we know what's going out, etc. etc.? Then I would walk my showroom floor, and this is all before my staff even got to the to the store. This is just me. This is early warning stuff.

Pete Shau 1:56

This is like you got in early and you're just handling business.

Danny Lastra 1:58

Yeah, you know, because I'm getting the day started, walking the showroom, seeing what needs to be tagged, what does you know, what needs to be merchandised, and I'm making, I'm already making like a to-do list, you know, bathroom needs to be cleaned, the vehicle inspections. I'm I'm I'm making a to-do list for all my staff, even though it's probably should already be routine and they already know. I still did this as part of my routine is write a little to-do list of what everyone needs to do before they actually start their day of their priority job descriptions. After I did all that, as the staff is rolling in, I always, always, always had a Monday meeting to let them know, review last week's numbers, our performances, where we're at on the month, how do we drop the ball? Where can we improve? Did anything crazy happen last week and how it can be avoided? I even did a powwow sometimes of just letting them vent. If there was tension between a couple of employees or issues they had with me, bring it to the table. Let's talk about it. Let's have a little therapy session. Whatever it takes, let's get it out in the open.

Pete Shau 2:55

Now, when you did those come to Jesus meetings, did you do that in a group setting? Or did you guys did you did you take them off into the side and was like, okay, you know, Bob and Joe or Billy and Sue or whatever, you guys tell me what's going on, or did you guys like, all right, we're all sending it to table. We're all, you know, we're all as a last supper. Let's just get it all out. And now a word from our sponsor. Unlimited Marketing Solutions is a social media marketing company that can market directly to your specific customer base and provide solid and trackable results. Unlimited Marketing Solutions are also extremely flexible to meet your unique needs and budget and are currently running a promotion for 10% discount off your first six months of marketing. When you mention the code RTO show, that's R T O S H O W when you call them at 352-553-3245. You can also email them at unlimited marketing solutions LLC at gmail.com. Now back to the show with Danny and Pete.

Danny Lastra 3:46

It all depends on the severity of the situation. If it was like little nitpick and stuff, like, oh, so and so is complaining about doing third floor deliveries, oh, so and so doesn't want to come out of the back room, help out with sales. Those were things I would address to the group. So I wouldn't pinpoint anybody out. I wouldn't say, hey, Pete, you know, so-and-so is telling me you don't want to help out in sales. I would just reiterate how the importance of everyone's got to be involved in sales. So, hey, Pete, if you are in the back room and so-and-so and so-and-so is busy up front, the phones ring. I need you to handle that sales call for me. And if I had to address like third floor deliveries or adding on deliveries, that's one of the biggest complaints I remember of a delivery driver is we have the schedule, sales are coming in, and I'm adding to the book, and they'd get a little frustrated because I'm adding to the book. Hey guys, understand the business. I'm good, there's going to be add-ons, especially during the busy season. You know, you got to roll with the punches. It's not an everyday thing, but we need a positive attitude. You're the last face. So it all depends on the severity. If it was like real tension between two employees, no, I wouldn't do that in a group setting. I would bring them to the side, and it would just be like the three of us.

Pete Shau 4:51

Now, when did you have your Monday meeting? Because you know, certain stores, and I'm I'm sure that most of us have an average around time of nine or ten o'clock. I know most of the rental-owned companies that I know of open at 10 and roll forward then. So if you're talking about a Monday meeting and you're getting you're getting, and I like that. I like not, you know, pointing out, hey, this guy said this about you and this is your fault, and you guys, you know, have to hash this out. You know, I I try to do that myself is kind of generalize it and say, hey, this is what's going on, and this needs to happen from all avenues. But when did you try to generally do that? When was your when did you set it up for? And how long did your meetings kind of go for?

Danny Lastra 5:27

So understand this is also pre-pandemic. So this is when I was running a store back in 2016, 2017.

Pete Shau 5:32

Dude, you getting you getting old, bro. You're getting old, man.

Danny Lastra 5:36

So so back then, all my guys got to the stores at 9 a.m. And by 9.15, we were having the meeting. And it usually lasted about 30 minutes, 9.15 to 9.45. No more than 30 minutes, because then we got to get the day started and 15 minutes before we actually opening the door, last minute cleaning, last minute tagging, wherever the case may be.

Pete Shau 5:54

So what do you So now that we're like post-pandemic? Because I'm agree I agree with you. I was I was a pre-pandemic GM. I don't know what it is exactly like in this environment. But now that we're running on a shorter schedule, how do you what do you what do you think is a good time to do it? Is it it would do you think it might be better to do those meetings one-on-one throughout the day so you don't have to have them there earlier? Or you think, you know, let's come in earlier, let's hit it all together, and then I'll make up the time or cut the time at another area.

Danny Lastra 6:20

The the latter. I personally still believe in Mondays being the early bird. I if I was running a store, I would have everybody still come in at nine, and it would be the long day of the week. So that would be a nine to seven with an hour lunch. And then on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that's when I would have the employees just come in an hour later. So instead of working 10 to 7, they would work 11 to 7.

Pete Shau 6:38

So, like you, you so you're doing all this pre-planner, right? You get everything ready, you got this Monday morning meeting, we're hashing everything out. But let me ask you a question, because sometimes I think we forget about this. We have an assistant. Is there a role for the assistant to play in the majority of this Monday meeting? I mean, Mondays are such a pivotal day, in my opinion, as far as the work week and as far as setting up for rent-to-own. What does the assistant do? You got all this thing on your shoulders, right? You you come in early, you're checking tags, you're checking showroom, you're checking this the schedule, whether it's, you know, you guys call it the DAP, we call the daily activity planner the DAP. What is what is the role of the assistant at this time?

Danny Lastra 7:12

As the GM, I have to empower that assistant. So I have to involve that assistant in the Monday morning meetings. Do you have anything to bring to the table? Do you have anything you need to address? And honestly, that's probably something I used to do as well is I would actually talk to the ASM before the meeting started. And if they couldn't come up with something, I would actually give them something to talk about. So that way it kind of sounded like it came from them because I need to train and develop them to be the leader for the next available slot.

Pete Shau 7:37

So, what's an example of that? What's an example of something that, you know, you're you're saying, hey, I'm um, you know, we got to move this set out to the back because it's gonna leave and we got to put something in the you know in that hole. We got to fill it up, we got to take care of this, and this is the scheduling for this week. What do you have? And they look at you in the deer in the headlights like, oh my god, Danny, I don't know what to say. What is something that you would give to them that they can kind of put together in a short period of time, 15 minutes or so?

Danny Lastra 7:59

Well, even smaller than that, I always have them address the small stuff like, hey guys, yeah, it's ASM Danny. Hey, just want to reiterate, guys, listen, at the end of the night, we have to empty out the trash. I know sometimes we're in a rush to get out of here, but a couple of y'all have left without doing that. We need to empty out the trash every night before we leave. We got to make sure the floor is clean. You know, also a couple of times I noticed on the busy day Saturdays, not everybody's greeting the customer. I need everybody to greet the customers. Those were announcements I would have my ASM make, even though it's coming from me, because I told my ASM to mention this at the meeting, but I wanted it to come from them so that way it gives them uh a power of authority so that my staff knows they have to respect the ASM. That's my right hand. And if I'm not here, if I'm absent or I'm on vacation, whatever the case may be, they're running the ship and that they're also holding everybody accountable to my standard.

Pete Shau 8:47

Now, let me ask you a question, because this is turning into the Danny hour, and I'm I'm I'm over here interrogating you and I love it. But so you're on vacation, right? You're out, you've been doing this stuff. Now, I know for time's sake, especially uh post-pandemic, it's a 40-hour work week in most cases. And and some some of us have gone back to 42, 43. I've even heard of 45. I think that's a little bit crazy nowadays. But it if it works for your company and it keeps you guys afloat, right? That's what matters. But when do you train for that Monday morning meeting? Right? You're you're gonna be gone, you already know this, you put, you know, you put it in, I don't know, six weeks in advance. When do you train them on the Monday meeting? Is that a sit-down thing? Like when you train them for the Monday meeting, like, hey, when I'm having the Monday meeting, you sit next to me and you kind of like shadow me. But then as you're going to go on vacation to make sure that they do it, do you kind of sit down with them and say, hey, this is what either I expect from you or I want you to put together?

Danny Lastra 9:38

Uh probably more of what you said as far as having them shadow me. Like the more meetings I have, having that individual sit next to you and just watch how you conduct the meeting, where do you get the numbers from? I think that's more of the training. It's like, this is where I get the numbers from. This is the reports you need to go over when it's your turn to do the Monday meetings. But as far as the actual discussion, they're gonna have to learn that their own style, how they want to present the meeting. They're and that's why it's important for me to include them in every Monday meeting to have the courage to speak up during that meeting. So when I'm on vacation, they know how to conduct the meeting, they'll do it in their own way, but at least they'll get the right facts and numbers from the reports I taught them where to get it from. But then how they present it to the group is how they're going to present it comfortably from their personality.

Pete Shau 10:22

So, how important is, in your opinion, do you ever just think it's time to sit back? Right, you're you're you're not on on vacation right now, you're just a regular time. How often do you think it would be good to sit back and let them conduct a Monday morning meeting with you just kind of I'm playing a backseat today, guys? You know, Billy, Sue, Joe, Bob. I try to come up with as many names as randomly possible, but you know, and then you have the Monday meeting, and I will just sit back and kind of chime in when I think it's necessary, or you know, you're you're probably saying something that's a little crazy. I gotta kinda gotta straighten things out. Is is that something that you would do as well?

Danny Lastra 10:59

Yeah, normally, depending on the longevity of the ASM, how long they've been conducting meetings already with me, and also the performance of the store. If the store is underperforming, no, I'm handling that meeting. If we're top-tier performing, yeah, I'll let the ASM handle that good meeting and still address certain issues that we have to correct. They get the cherry on top, right? Right.

Pete Shau 11:21

No, I think that's important, dude. I think that's a I think it's a good idea when it's time to uh take names and and kick butt that sometimes you gotta be the one to just handle that business. Well, what about you, Pete? Mondays to me was always a 50-50 day. I always called it my 50-50 day in my mind. I never really said it out loud, but a 50-50 mindset, um, you look at last week and you look at the week ahead, right? So you spend half your time kind of going over where you came from, and that will help determine where you're going. And the only probably weak difference that there was in there was if it came from like the end of last week was a different month. So, yes, it was where you were going, but it's not necessarily a direction of this month because I always consider a week is a new week, a month is a new month, a quarter is a new quarter. You know what I'm saying? It's like that your direction is a little bit different. But I did do that. I always, you know, walk the floor. But when I came in, I usually printed out all my reports. That was the first thing I did. I come in, I print out all my reports, I kind of highlight, take a look, and everything. And I always made sure that I had a relevancy of what's going in my mind as far as how do we perform as how many agreements or how many items that we put out, how much money do we do we take in? Where was the mindset on the collections and how well we did? Do we get our marketing done? You know, I also took into account something that I really didn't tell, I don't tell my guys this enough, and maybe I should, but you know, I take the notes from the conference call and I would usually incorporate them into my Monday morning meeting. So I created a Monday morning meeting sheet because I'm I'm just that type of way. I like to have these numbers set up, and sometimes I want to keep it as as solid and as normal as possible. So I try to make it so that's like a set page that I go over. Now, of course, it it changes and what's in it, but like how many sales were last week, how many sales goals we have this, what was our credit close, and what do we want credit to be at? Um, what was our customer growth or loss, and what do we want our customer growth or loss to be? How do we mitigate these changes? How do we handle collections, sales? And then at the bottom was kind of like what's coming up, right? Like, so St. Patrick's Day is coming up, Fourth of July is coming up, Christmas is coming up, and how we're gonna tackle it versus a really normal week where it's just Monday through Friday any given week, as opposed to, hey, this Monday we're gonna talk about Black Friday, which is gonna be on you know Friday or Christmas or New Year's or whatever. But I try to do that, and then as the guys were funneling in, that's when I would walk the floor, kind of get things going, and let them sit down and kind of you know sit there. But I had that sheet um made up because I thought that it would be good for my assistant. You know, when you're trying to train them, what guidelines do you have? And at least I knew that if I wasn't there, if I if they printed out the sheet and they just followed the notes, you can see this is where we were, this is where we're going, this is the ideas that you know we want to put down, and then going forward we do that. But you know, I I I think I always did a like a 50-50 because back in my back in my mind, when I first started the business, I I always thought of like how can I get better? And I had a DM who sat down with me one time and he's like, Look, P, when it comes to what you're doing, you have a lot of fires. You're not taking care of the large fires, you're pissing on on the small fires. You're putting out the small fires, and that's keeping you busy all day long. And if you don't get ahead of it, you will constantly be chasing that trail. And it took me a little while, and something I've always told myself, and I tell my kids, I probably don't use as much as work as I should, but you take the next five minutes to plan the next five hours. You just take this time to kind of look at it and decide where you're going. And I think that was always the mindset on my Monday meeting is like I take this one day to plan the next five. And it doesn't always go to plan, right? Sometimes it goes to seed, sometimes you have great busy days that you can't do as much credit. Sometimes you have uh credit days because you don't have any sales, sometimes you you're doing back and forth, your truck breaks down, whatever. But the goal was to kind of always see where I was and then see where I'm going. And I always used to use the notes from like, let's say, last week's conference call or something that came up and kind of try to incorporate that, like try to remind myself this is the direction that I also need to get going. Because man, you know, sometimes as a GM, you get the tunnel vision and you this is what I want to get done. And sometimes you forget, nope, this is coming up, or I have to prepare for this, or this this big Ashley order is coming in, or this big furniture order is coming in, and I've got to incorporate that on my day, and I gotta block this off. And but uh Mondays was really important to me. Mondays was I knew it was gonna be my long day as a GM. I would try to come in early, I knew I would leave late. Um, I would try to make up for that some other day where I could leave right at closing and let my assistant close or let one of the other guys close. But I knew Monday was gonna be my long day. Monday was like my review everything day, you know. But I think Monday was so important because in essence, man, it was like that reset. You could just hit that reset button last week, just stunk, or it was great, but it's just reset, you gotta put that trophy back on the shelf and just keep on working towards it. I think that's why it's important. I think that's why we're talking about Mondays now, guys, because Mondays is gonna set you up for success, and it's so important. But now's the bigger question, Danny. You haven't been doing the GM role for a long time, you're doing something else now. How do you handle Mondays as a DM, as a district manager? How do you handle Mondays now? Because it's so different when you're talking about your four walls, but now you're talking about 24 walls, you know, or 30 walls. What do you do now? Well, as opposed to what you did as a GM.

Danny Lastra 16:26

So it is a lot more administrative, it's a lot more reports for me now on my Mondays. And unfortunately, my day actually cannot start until every single GM sends me the reports that I need for my Mondays. The crucial thing I look at every Monday is I look at the overs report from every store, what were the overs at, how high are they, detailed notes of what's going on with each account, so we can keep get that in line. Do I need to get involved? Et cetera, et cetera. Second most important thing is we have something called inventory checklist, and that's something so for me to inventory balance my division. If store X has 10 laptops and store A wants to order laptops, no, get five from Store X. So that's a huge part of my Monday is the inventory balancing between my division. Me and you do a good job of that as well. Sometimes we even converse with each other, like, hey man, I'm sitting on a lot of these. Do you need any for your division? Yes, no, maybe so. Okay, I'll have this store come get it. Can we meet halfway? Whatever the case may be, because we're looking out for the best of the company and save money by not purchasing new when we have pre-lease out there, or maybe somebody is sitting on a lot of brand new and they're just overstocked, it happens, and we need to spread the wealth out. So a lot of reports looking vehicle maintenance, you know, the stores they do it, they do all these reports, but they submit it to me for a review. Are we taking care of our vehicles? Is it all changed due? Is there a tail light out? And it's just a little bit of accountability to remind you like it's a little stuff that we take for granted, but it's so important to take care of because vehicles, without the vehicles, we're not going to do any deliveries, returns, services, collection visits. You got to take care of the vehicles, so somebody has to be reviewing the vehicle maintenance checklist.

Pete Shau 18:07

We did, you know, we did the that episode on how important a delivery person was. And I will tell you that they are far more important than anybody gives them credit for. But you know, the number one thing besides having a roof over your head when you're selling in a store, that brick and mortar, is your vehicles, man. If you don't have, it doesn't even matter if you have a delivery guy. If you don't have a vehicle to deliver in, your business is done. I mean, you might be able to get away with a day or two with just having the phones and doing stuff in there, but you can't go out flyering, you can't do deliveries, you can't do pickups, you can't do services, you can't, you can't get anything done, right? It's it's hard to go to the bank, you don't you gotta do that personal vehicle. Yeah, I don't recommend that. So it's like that those things are so important. And you probably don't know how important it is until you become a DM and you have that one store that just, you know, guys, I'm not gonna say that there's that one name or that one store. I'm never gonna pick it out. But anybody who's in a higher level or multi-level or multi-unit store function, they know they they didn't kind of check on their vehicle like they should have. It's Monday morning, you're in that MADIC Monday mode, and then boom, you get that, oh, you know, my my truck is out. I can't I can't do this. What? Like last week you sent me that report. It says everything was fine all of a sudden in seven days, and you know, and you know it's not a seven-day thing. I'd always recommend everybody, especially GMs, go out with your guys, check your vehicles. But vehicles are so important. I can definitely see why that would be a part of a DM checklist, you know, a DM, a DM lookover on Mondays.

Danny Lastra 19:33

Absolutely. Um, one of the last things I also look at as a DM is the previous week's marketing activity that the store has done. So they send to me every all marketing activities they did the the week prior, whether it's door hangers, flyers, sending letters, calling, paid and fools, digital marketing, email blasts, whatever they've done, they have a marketing checklist that they send to me. Which I'm gonna go back to the GM role. And I think that's why it's so important for Mondays to plan for your week because for your marketing, I think you should plan in your daily activity planner. What days are you gonna fly or what days are you gonna call paid in fools? You gotta have a plan to attack. You can't just wing it every day because there's so many different areas of marketing you need to touch, whether it's digital or gorilla grassroots. You want to touch all aspects of marketing and you want to do them throughout the week. And what day of the week is the hot week? What day of the week should you fly? Is it Saturday mornings or is it Wednesdays on the slow days? You have to know your store, you have to figure that out, and you have to play around with a little bit. But if you don't schedule it, it's most likely not gonna get done because you have wrenches getting thrown your way all the time. I find if you schedule it in your daily activity planner, you see it every morning, what needs to be done. You're as a GM, you're gonna make sure you execute and get that done as a priority.

Pete Shau 20:45

Yeah, I I completely agree. The other thing I noticed that, you know, when 50-50 always meant to me on Mondays, uh, there was a lot of 50-50, right? And one of the other 50-50s was we always have credit as a staple in the industry, right? And everybody knows this, everybody knows credit gets called especially heavily more on Monday because you have Saturday dues, you're trying to get that down, you're worried about the one to sevens, not just your overs. So you have all this collections going on, but if you don't take the time to be 50-50 on your approach, on your offense, and your defense is just too much, man. This is unfortunately it's not like a football game, right? You can't have too much defense because defense wins the game. Not every time. You have too much defense in a rent-to-own store and you don't have enough offense, man. Like you said, you got to schedule it. You've got to make sure that somebody's working as hard on that offense, on that sales tip, on that sales approach, on that customer service as you are about having somebody literally call two times a day, six days a week, right? On and and you know, it it's one of those things like you cannot overstate it enough. I see a lot of stories that they're just they're pivotal on our collections, and you should be. And then they just kind of well, we we kind of did the sales, we kind of did that. We we kind of we kind of called, we kind of did some door hangers, we we kind of sort of sketched some time in there. No, man, it's it's it'll. Kill you. It'll kill a business.

Danny Lastra 22:01

Another thing I used to do as a GM on Mondays. GM on Mondays, it was my follow-up day. So I followed up with I first started to follow up with collections. Anybody that had a broken commitment personally with me, I actually was the one to call them. There's not a lot, maybe three to five. I'm not calling the full route. I have account managers to do that. But if there was like three to five customers that actually made a commitment with me personally, and they broke that commitment, I'm actually the one that's calling them on Monday following up. So that way they know the seriousness and the severity of the matter. Following up with sales, I do that as well. If there was somebody that called the store and I didn't close the sale over the phone, or my salesperson didn't close it, and there's a note to follow up on Monday, I would be the one to call. Make sure to get this, try to close that sale. Uh, service issues, follow up Mondays was huge for me to follow up on services. I want to get them taken care of as fast as possible, get them a loaner, or let them even know what's going on with their product and why it's still in service and why I can't or cannot get it fixed, and maybe we just need to do a swap out of this time or whatever the case may be. But following up on Mondays, that was a good third of my day. Just following up, following with employees, following up with customers, following up with tasks. It was follow-up day.

Pete Shau 23:13

Now we're approaching it as GMs, we're approaching it as DMs. I'm a sales guy, I'm a credit guy, I'm listening to the show. Might not have as much to do with me, you know. I'm sitting in the I'm sitting in the meeting and then I go to do the job that you kind of laid out for me. But as an assistant, I'm kind of following that lead, so I won't say that. But as far as a sales and a credit, now they have their own kind of duties that they need to kind of get done on a Monday, right? And I think I think sales set up on Monday is just as important, right? I think credit on a Monday, um, and and honestly, this is something that I'm gonna, you know, everybody can be different. I actually didn't do letters till Tuesday because Monday was like if you get a lot of people come in, you're gonna create a lot of letters for no reason, right? So Monday would being a big collections day, you know, I didn't want anybody to have to overwork for no reason, right? I don't want to make 10 letters and five of them got to go in the trash. It's a waste of money, it's in a waste of time. So I did everything on Tuesday. But sales setup on Monday, like you said, when you're doing a DAP and stuff, you know, that's a good time to have your salesperson look at the map and say, back in the day, guys, it was it was a paper map. We did a paper map. But if you guys want to go on Google Maps or set up something like that, you know, I'm gonna say I'm I'm still an advocate for paper maps because you really get to see the whole thing at one time. And if you guys haven't tried it out, try it before you you don't like it, just try it. I'm telling you, it's better than Google. But you know, you you put you put a layout, and on your Mondays as a salesperson, you can kind of say, okay, we've been here, we've been here, we've been here. Where haven't we been? Or where is hot? I've been here, and all of a sudden I think we're getting an uptick in sales. Maybe this is a good area to bomb again or door tag again, or go on another street in the same neighborhood and try that again. Um, and kind of differentiate the different ways of sale. When are you gonna do your business-to-business marketing? When are you gonna do your door knocking uh or your door tagging, however you guys want to call it? When are you gonna do any kind of community events, or when are you gonna go out and and see those uh let's say payout customers or whatever the case is? When you're gonna when are you gonna go talk to them? Um, and that's a good day to plan that as a salesperson too, kind of take that avenue of going, okay, I'm gonna take the next 30 minutes and kind of come up with a plan. I know that they've blocked off these time frames, and I know these days we're gonna try to do this, but what am I gonna do as an individual that's gonna set my store apart or give my store the edge or give me? Honestly, it doesn't even have to be an edge. You don't have to think that far outside the box and just get regular marketing going, right? That's a great day to get it done. But what about credit? If you're in a credit department, is there anything different that you do on a Monday when you were coming up? You know, you you're there, it's a Monday, you just got through with your meeting. What is the first thing you do as a credit guy?

Danny Lastra 25:47

I think the first thing you do is start calling your past dues, but the one of the first things we did was again call the broken commitments, those are the first people you want to call. And then I want to say you you you focus mainly on the one to sevens because they just became past due, and that's where your money's gonna be at the most. A lot of them just forgot. It happens all the time. You get a lot of Monday payments from people that are just due on Saturdays. So you call the one to sevens, you get your letters for your eight to fifteens and your 15 pluses. It's it's a lot of office work on Mondays, in my opinion. Maybe, maybe you do chase a couple first payment defaults, but you want to keep your guys in the stores as much as possible because it's a busy day. Mondays and Saturdays and Fridays are your busiest days. That's where a lot of calls are coming in. Texas are coming in, emails are coming in, web leads are coming in. So I think the objective, whether it's credit or sales, is you want to set yourself up for the weekend because majority of people, let's go for credit, are gonna give you a Friday commitment, right? Eight out of ten times. They're gonna give you a Friday commitment because a lot of people get paid on Fridays or Thursdays, bi-weekly, weekly, whatever the case may be. Same thing for the sales aspect, they're not gonna get paid to the end of the week. So that they'll give you the, oh, I'll be in by the end of the week to take a look at that TV or that living room set. I think you want to set up as many commitments, sales and credit-wise, for that Friday to set you up for an outstanding weekend for dollars and revenues and for sales and rents.

Pete Shau 27:08

Now you're saying that Mondays is a big credit day, right? It's an important day. I'm an eager credit guy. Do I run on a Monday?

Danny Lastra 27:16

Yeah, I I mean, get with your GM, but I think you want to do your first payment defaults and broken commitments. I don't I don't want you running all day, but if there's a few priority people, then yeah, absolutely, because you want to set that standard immediately.

Pete Shau 27:28

So you you cherry pick some of the runs that you would do on Monday, but you would let them go on a Monday.

Danny Lastra 27:32

Absolutely, yeah.

Pete Shau 27:33

Okay. And then so we have credit, we have a sales guy who's gonna use an old paper map like I am, and he's gonna put pins in it, and he's gonna he's gonna highlight certain areas. Don't knock it, guys, till you try it. Um, you've got an assistant who's gonna kind of be learning the ropes and kind of figuring out how to be in that GM role, how to set up a Monday morning and meeting and kind of shout at you. I also thought, in my opinion, it was a good day to get files done for an assistant. Assistants should be doing files or at least reviewing files for them to come to me as a GM. Um, I always like to do that on Mondays because Friday, well, I'd say Thursday, Friday, Saturday are the you're usually your bigger sales day going into the weekend. It's a good thing to not let those get out of hand, jump on those things uh Monday morning. That was usually where I have my assistant, like sitting down, like you're gonna review those files. I want those on my desk as soon as humanly possible, right? Making sure you're finishing up the verifications, make sure that it's stapled correctly, make sure all the uh, you know, I's are dotted, T's are crossed, every all the agreements are where they need to be. Do we get all the thumb prints that we need and everything like that? And then get it over to me so that I can review it by by Tuesday, so that Wednesday they can get filed, you know, because Wednesday's usually a slower day, you can file them on Wednesday. But that's something that I would have an assistant do. Man ache Monday is so important, no matter how you guys look at it, because it's it's a setup for the day, it's a setup for the week. It's really important. I think that's why we want to talk to you guys about it, because it really makes a difference in how you approach everything, is if you're prepared, if you look at it with a, I'm gonna get this done, I'm gonna review what I did, I'm gonna take a look, I'm gonna get them set up, I'm gonna train, I'm gonna make sure that everybody's on the same page, I'm gonna make sure that I address everything and everything is addressed with the people that it needs to, whether it be an open-ended address or whether we're behind closed doors. We're gonna make sure that we have a plan for the week, we have a goal for the week, and then we set ourselves off the right foot, right? Because the best thing to do when you're reaching up high is to have a good base. And I think that's what's great on Mondays. I think that coming into Monday, you got to remember to take a deep breath. It was my long day. I don't know, Danny, was it your longer day?

Danny Lastra 29:36

It was always the longest day of the week. Always the longest day of the week. And then listen, if we miss something, I'd love to hear from anybody who thinks that we might have missed something, we didn't touch on it, or something to add, and maybe we could do a part two. I'm not sure because I know Mondays is just the craziest day of the week, in my opinion. So if you haven't already, go ahead and email us Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. You can email me, Danny, at the rto showpodcast.com. You can find our emails on our website at www.therto showpodcast.com. You can send us a message on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. And we'd love to hear any feedback about Mondays. What is it you think takes to set up a good Monday for the week? Did we miss something? Did we touch everything on point? We'd love to hear any feedback from you.

Pete Shau 30:20

I think, guys, what we want you to first and foremost know is that paper maps are the way to go. And if you have any questions about the paper maps, you can reach out to Danny or Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. Reach us out on the emails, call us up uh afterwards if you get our number. Let us know what's going on. Listen, anything that you guys have a question about, go to the website, buy a t-shirt, wear it around, and then uh you'll be an aficionado like we are. And then if you have any questions, you can give us a call. But you can also get the t-shirts on the on the website, www.thertoshow podcast.com. Uh, tell us your size, tell us what color you want. We'll get that out to you as soon as possible. I wanted to give a shout out to the guys at Happy's uh at the at the trip show uh not that long ago in February. They really helped represent for the RTO show. The RTO show uh member uh somebody ended up on a riding bowl. I don't know what that was all about, but that was fun and amazing. And we do that for you guys. It's an RTO show podcast uh thing. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Danny on that bowl. I wish I would have because that would have been awesome. But listen, guys, we really appreciate it. Hit us up, hit us up on email. Make sure that you follow us on Facebook. You like us on Facebook and you follow us on Instagram. We got some crazy things going on there, and we really appreciate that.

Danny Lastra 31:35

And with that being said, this is the RTO show with Danny and Pete.