Staying relevant in an age of adaptability in RTO

The rent-to-own industry is changing faster than ever — and the operators who don't see it coming are the ones who will be left behind. In this episode, Pete Shau sits down with Joseph Kopser, keynote speaker at APRO's RTO World 2023 in San Antonio and author of Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World, for one of the most forward-thinking conversations ever featured on The RTO Show Podcast.

Kopser brings a rare perspective to the rent-to-own industry discussion — 20 years as an Army Ranger, a career in transportation technology that led to a rideshare platform acquisition by Mercedes-Benz, a run for U.S. Congress, and years of building and advising companies through his firm, Greyline Group. When he speaks about adapting to rapid change, navigating disruption, and building agile organizations, it's not theory — it's lived experience across some of the most demanding environments in the world.

Together, Pete and Joseph dig into what it really means for rent-to-own businesses to be both adaptable and agile in today's market — two concepts that sound similar but demand very different skills from RTO store managers, district managers, and company leadership. They explore why challenging your assumptions about your customer base, your business model, and your competition is the most important strategic exercise any RTO operator can do heading into the next 12 to 18 months.

The conversation gets into the future of brick-and-mortar rent-to-own retail, the growing role of online RTO platforms, the shift in walk-in customer traffic, and why emerging RTO technology — including automated collections platforms like Payd — may fundamentally change how rent-to-own businesses manage customer relationships and grow their portfolios. Pete also draws parallels between the evolution of RTO payment technology and the broader lessons of companies like Kodak and Blockbuster, which failed not because the technology beat them, but because their leadership refused to adapt.

From cross-training RTO store teams and empowering frontline employees to think beyond their job title, to identifying untapped customer segments like college dorms and military barracks, this episode challenges every rent-to-own operator to stop assuming the future will look like the past — and start building for the customer base that's already forming beneath their feet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Hello and welcome everyone. Here at the RTO show, we're proud to have April as our premier podcast sponsor. April has always had its finger on the pulse of America's rent-to-owned industry, including up-to-the-minute news and information, fun and valuable events, and even its legal hotline. April knows what's going on in the rental industry and how to help you navigate it. Don't miss April's best of RTO World webinar coming up on Tuesday, October 10th. Learn more and register today at rtohq.org. That's rtohq.org. And now to the show. Hello everybody. It's Pete at the RTO Show, and I'm here with the one and only Joseph Copser, who was the one of the keynote speakers at the RTO World 2023. Joseph, how are you doing today? How's everything going?

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Pete, it's good to talk to you. I am back in Texas after a little bit of travel since the April conference, and it is still hot in Texas, over 100 degrees again today. So was it Scotland? Was it Scotland? It was. Yeah, yeah. You probably saw my social media posts. I was part of a part of a leadership group that uh I've been following for a long time. A former boss of mine, he loves to take people on and do real-world life experiences on sites of things like Selma, Alabama, Little Bighorn, Gettysburg. But when they announced that they were going to go to Scotland and walk with William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, and oh, by the way, stopped for a few rounds of golf to include St. Andrews, I said, sign me up. So it was one of those bucket list trips, and I'm really glad I did it.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

How can you not do that, right? And now help me, because I don't 100% remember this, but wasn't golf invented in Scotland?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

It was not only invented in Scotland, but it was invented at St. Andrews, which is the birthplace of golf. So not only did I get to go there and golf, which was bucket list, but the weekend before I flew in a day early to go to Liverpool to see the Beatles, which was quite literally, yeah, quite literally the birthplace of Beatles. And then I stayed a day extra and went to Edinburgh, Scotland, which is where Adam Smith, who if you follow business or capitalism in the history and the science of it, he was the first person to ever really talk about business beyond the days of like feudal lordships and you know, castles and knights and how people can actually create and own and run their businesses. So I got to see the birthplace of the Beatles, the birthplace of golf, and the birthplace of business as we know it today, all in one week. And it was incredible.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Talk about multitasking. So one of the reasons that I have Joseph on the show is because he has a book out called Catalyst. And going through the RTO world for the last 20 years, I can tell you that one of the main mindsets of the book is that not only has change come, but change in its cycles comes faster and faster with the onset of technology and innovation and things that we're going through in this day and age. And I would tell you, when I started in the 2000s, early 2000s, this is not the same show that it was. This is this is a whole different rental owned industry, right? And I can say, you know, for the first seven, eight years before the bust in 2008, there was a certain way we did things, and I want to say another 10 years after that, uh, it was about the same. Then, you know, 17, 18, we start getting into a different mindset. Social media is playing a big, big role in what we do. And then all of a sudden we have the change. And when I called it the change, guys, you called it COVID, I'll call it the change and change how we did everything in Rent to Own. Not only how do we approach, you know, our customer base, but how we did business with our customer base. And so when I when I started reading catalysts, and when Joseph was talking, we were talking about these onsets and these differences, and looking at them and being able to spot what these catalysts are and being able to transform yourself to be able to take advantage of what's going on. And I said, Well, there's there's no better time than this. There's a literal show called the RTO show that's a podcast on the rent-to-owned industry that's never been done before. We've got social media out there and portraying a way how we sell and interact with our customers like never before. Uh Joseph, you're probably the only person I know that could probably talk on this better than anybody. But a little backstory on Joseph, and I'll let I'll let him tell the story. Have you met two or three presidents?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

A few. A few. I've had a lot of fun in my military career as well as in my public sector career to meet a couple of folks along the way. It's been fun.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So 20 years in the military, you have a lot of accolades to say that came along with that. And then after the military, and you were a ranger, correct? That's right. And then after the military doing your 20 and a couple tours in Iraq, you went into the private sector, but then you kind of also did the government sector and transportation? Yes, that's right. So the transportation sector, and we're talking uh with the government on that, and then you go into a again back to the private sector where you you create rideshare, which is very much like Uber, right? Is that a best a good description?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah, it's a good way that what we did was we we were just trying to solve our own problem of trying to get to and from work every day. And so the the vision what we had was how do you combine all the options in one place? So think of it like Google Maps meets Waze, meets Uber and Lyft, and mash them all in together. Oh, by the way, sprinkle in some taxis and car share and bike share, and our timing was great. That's when Uber and Lyft got big, and all the car companies were concerned about their own change and their own adaptation to accelerating and rapid changes in technology, and we just happened to have the right technology at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

So then Mercedes comes along and they said, you know what, we like that. We want that, we don't share very well. So they come in, they do you a favor, right? They come in and they buy, and I'm sure that they had a lucrative offer, and that gives you time to start looking how to develop on a bigger and broader scale, which which you ran for Congress. Um then after that you go into the private sector again where you're doing the gray line. Gray line, yep, gray line group. Can you describe to us what Grey Line Group does in a nutshell?

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah. So if you go to the gray line group.com website, you'll see all the fancy talk that we use. And on there, we talk about using data and working with teams and people to create change and be able to help them adapt to change. That's what we say. But what we realize really along the way is Greyline Group is really nothing more than just a front for what we really like doing, which is just creating and building companies. You know, it kind of feeds our addiction of creating startups and solving problems. The last three or four companies that we've either spun out directly from Grey Line or helped others build their ideas were problems brought to us that we said, ooh, that is a really cool and crunchy problem. Let's dig in and roll up our sleeves. And then as we got into it, we realized, holy cow, this is much bigger than just one particular problem set. This is a company and this is an opportunity. And so uh you'll see on our website if you go there today, you know, there's four or five different companies that we work with, for example, that are in some ways, we were either at the beginning stages, the forming stages, the co-founder stages, or we were lucky to be there with them when they were born. So uh we're just addicted to building companies, solving problems, and creating jobs.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

So one of the things that I read in the book was your particular viewpoint on solving problems and how you look at it to get an answer to manifest itself. And I thought, with all the changes that are coming in the rent-owned world, with this being one of the most exciting, largest, um I mean I have every vendor that I talked to telling me that this RTO world was an exceptional RTO world and compared to others. Now, but then a little backstory, right? We go into the year, the year hasn't been as great as it normally is. I think everybody kind of held back, and now we're going into the fourth quarter and they're all in. Everybody's all in. And when you had that topic, when you're talking about the change and how to recognize it and how to go forward with it, I said, Man, who better than to really kind of give some guidance as to if I'm trying to work the RTO industry to follow where it should be within the next two, three years to make sure that we're not going left when everybody's going right, that would be you. I and I and I believe that totally. How would I go about, how would the industry go about taking a look at what has happened in the last 20 years and applying that to some type of map for the next 12 months, 18 months? How would I figure where we're going?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Well, first of all, I love the way you set the question up because it's the right question to ask. And that's where a lot of companies, a lot of organizations that I go in to help with and speak with them at their events or meet with their companies and their leadership, is I first ask the question you just gave, which is, hey folks, what happened in the past that you think is going to be the same or different as you're trying to create your strategy? And the very first number one thing I do to ask every group that I'm with to say is look at the assumptions that you are making about and upon which you're building your plan. So let's just take, you know, your industry is a perfect example. Okay. We assume that the same amount of people or that their buying or spending habits will be the same because what? What makes you think that? I mean, we just went through the big event, COVID. It just completely disrupted the way a lot of people think about a lot of different things. And so you say, is that going to be true going forward? And just kind of think of it like a uh, you know, a math problem from high school where you've got all the different variables that are in it. You got, for instance, the target audience. That might be one. But inside the target audience, you just assume that the audience is going to be the same what that you're doing, the same age group or the same income level. But what happens if either A, they decide not to come back or not to come back in the same levels, or B, if you've got a whole nother audience that's out there growing that you're not paying attention to. And that's just one example. So, you know, what we're saying in the book, what I say to audiences, go back to the assumptions. Because if you're just assuming it's business as usual, that's where people get messed up. Challenge all your assumptions, ask about, you know, what am I missing? And I thought that the speaker before me up on stage earlier that morning at the nine o'clock session said it well when he said, Well, you know, what are we doing with college dorms? What are we doing with community colleges? What are we doing with military leadership? He didn't say military barracks, but that's immediately what came to my mind. I'm like, oh my goodness, the military barracks crowds, they have changeover and turnover all the time. They'd be fabulous RTO customers. And so that's what I would tell people is start with your assumptions and make sure you're not taking for granted a change that's occurring underneath your feet.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Well, I'm going to agree with you on that. Kevin was talking about that, and you also mentioned that there are so many other companies that have seen the light of rent to own and they're starting to do those payments where it's, you know, it's coming, and I've seen it. I've seen it at Lowe's, I've seen it at Target, I've seen certain things online where you can buy it now, you're not going to make a whole lot of payments, but you can split it into, let's say, four payments, and it'll be a little bit easier to buy now, pay later. That's it, to get what you want. And so I'm looking at the rent-to-own mindset and I'm saying, okay, we usually go for the larger items, and that's usually why it takes a lot longer to pay off. But is there a group out there that maybe want to pay it off in four payments or maybe six payments? And I know everybody's going to say it's the same as cash group. I I don't know about that, guys. Not always is it the same as cash group. We have other people out there that are looking to make larger purchases and purchase a little faster. And if we use same as cash, great. But what about the small things? That's what I'm thinking. You know, usually when we talk same as cash, we're talking about living room sets, we're talking about bedroom sets, we're talking about entire pieces because those add up. But I they're they're not doing that online. They're not delivering bedroom sets online. What they're doing is they're taking shoes, they're taking clothes, they're taking backpacks, they're taking things that they wouldn't normally pay maybe$50 to$150 for and dividing that up into payments. And are we missing the boat on that? And like you said, the college dorms, the barracks. I mean, are is this the time for the catalysts? This is the time for the paradigm shift and rent to own. And I, you know, I'm wondering if if I'm starting to look at that now, and and I would like to be able to eyeball it and say, yes, and this is the direction that we better keep an eye on because otherwise we're gonna miss the boat in 12 months, it'll be too late.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah. And so the to go back to your question, how do you think about creating that strategy for the next year or 18 months, whatever it is? So the first part of it, the easy way to describe it is look at your assumption. What are we assuming? And then the second, and this goes to where data and keeping track of events in the store and events on your spreadsheets matters. Because then what you want to do is let's say you are going to take one of those lower dollar items that you just said, hey, look, let's just assume that the big high dollars are no longer gonna be your mainstay. What happens if we go smaller? So then try it. Just try it. Take the risk and study by looking at the numbers. Put something out, let it go for months so you can accumulate enough data and let the data speak to you and not just give it up because you have a hunch that says, ah, this isn't gonna work. Because usually when people make a hunch, it's from their perspective, and their perspective is based on their age, their stage in life, their buying habits, which might be missing the mark on a whole new demographic that might be coming in and grabbing those high dollar basketball shoes like you're talking about, and it could be a whole new audience.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Now, when we're talking about these changes that are coming up that are more frequent because of technology and the way that customers use that technology, and then we apply it to the past, how fast, in your opinion, do you think that these changes are going to start coming? And in a realistic tone, can at some point companies like the rent-to-owned industry keep up with the amount of changes that are happening?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Well, so the first question is how certain or how much do you have to be wedded to the idea or the definition or the stereotype of who you think you are as a business? If you're willing to change, if you maybe the name stays the same on the front, but what's happening inside with your business model and how you're engaging with customers and making money, if that's changing, that can be okay. But there's a lot of people who want to be doing business the same way they've always done it. They got their clipboard, they put it up on the wall, they pencil in the numbers and the changes, and none of that data is ever shared with anybody on the team or other stores. That's where people get into trouble. As long as you're willing to adapt and move with the times, I don't think that there's any worry about what that timeline is as long as you keep your radar up and looking around. It's just people who are unwilling to change, people who are unwilling to look for change. Those are the ones that are going to be impacted whether the change happens in six months, two, two years, or ten years.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Now, when you're talking about being in the military for 20 years, right? I've been, and I I'm not comparing the two. I'm saying I've been in rental owned for almost 20 years. You've been in the military for 20 years. How did that affect you and your leadership and coming up with this specific way that you look at a way to solve a problem?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Oh no, I didn't mean to cut you off. I know it's a great question. It's just how how how did it how did that come about? Because you know, I'm I'm thinking I've got to go back in my 20-year stint and find out what that created for me to get to here and how I can utilize that for me to come up with my way of digesting rent to own in the industry and as a you know, as a company man, as having you know the seven stories that I have, how do I make them better? How do I use that? How did you use your experiences to come up with this unique way?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, okay. So I I've got so many things to say to that. We don't have enough time in the show, but I'll try to boil them down to two or three examples. So let me give you one example. We help we often in the military use a phrase mission first, people always. And what we mean by that is look, your mission is to do X, Y, or Z. It's to take the hill or it's to cross the desert. Whatever your mission is to do, you want to focus on the mission. How you get it done is less important than accomplishing your mission. And so a good example might be, and this is just I'm oversimplifying, but if your mission is to take the hill, you could drive up the hill, you could fly in a helicopter and be dropped off on the hill, you could shoot it from a great distance and you know, destroy or blow up everything that's there, and then you just walk up the hill without any of your combat vehicles. Like it's less important how you get up the hill than it is that you achieve the mission. Mission first. And then, of course, always, people always. So you can't do anything that's illegal and moral and ethical. Uh, but but and while you're taking care of your people, you got to accomplish the mission. And the best example I love to give is the difference between being adaptable and being agile. So adaptable just means I can do a lot of different things. So think of a Swiss Army knife. I got a Swiss Army knife, it's got all these different tools. I could use a screwdriver, I can use the knife. Uh, I had one that even had, you know, a fishing hook, I had one that even had toothpicks, I had tweezers, like that's adaptable. But agile, agile is what's really hard to teach and develop. Agility is the ability to say, look, I got something, a tool that was supposed to be used for something like cutting or sawing or tweezers, but agility says, wait a minute, I'm in a new context, in a new situation. And the favorite one I love to give is the example of a soldier being in the situation where he's meeting with an example I remember was that of an Iraqi police captain in Iraq. And in this particular situation, it was very customary to give gifts, but the soldier found that they showed up to a meeting and they didn't have a gift to give. And rather than skip a beat or sweat it or worry, oh, I don't have a gift to bring, they reached around onto their belt where they keep their Swiss Army pocket knife and they pulled it out and they offered the knife as a gift. So suddenly you go from something that's supposed to cut, twist, turn, do whatever it's adapted to do, but you as the individual were so agile that you decided, forget about cutting and poking and doing whatever the Swiss Army knife does. It's now, its role now is that of a gift. And I'm giving it to this local Iraqi police captain to keep the custom, you know, the custom, the tradition, and to build that trust. That's what the military is so great at teaching people, which is, you know, mission first, people always, but also the understanding being adaptable and agile and being both. And then the last thing I'll say, uh, you know, kind of related to that, is we learn not to take ourselves too seriously. You know, we save them serious times for combat when people are really shooting at us. And if we got to raise our voice to say, get your head down, we do. But we generally try our best to not take ourselves too seriously. So when we're in peacetime or we're in a business meeting or we're in a group huddle and somebody screws up the PowerPoint font or whatever it might be, as long as they weren't being intentional or evil or negligent, you just work with them, you teach them, you coach them, you mentor, and you don't take yourself too seriously. You take your job serious, but not yourself too serious. And so those are the three major things that I love sharing what the military taught me.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

So then changing that mindset to a private sector company. I love the adaptability, I love being agile, I love mission uh first people always. How would I apply that to my day-to-day world? How do I teach somebody to be adaptable in an environment that's not as to the point? And the reason I say that is, you know, you take the hill, that is very to the point. That there is a mission to behold. We have to do that. And it's I don't want to say it's black and white in the sense that it's easier. It's just black and white that you can physically see it. Sometimes in the RTO world or any business world, you're saying it, but you're saying it in a theoretically. We need to go out and tackle more customers. We need to open up that avenue and get more customers. And being adaptable and agile in both cases can work. But how do you teach that? I I one of the problems I'm coming across is the critical thinking. I think that we are we are moving away from critical thinking because we have easier handheld devices or we have things that give us answers a lot quicker than what we used to, right? We used to have to go to class and we have to do it a long, you know, long form, and a math teacher said, I it's not important that you got the answer right. It's important how you got there. And now we have phones and computers and things that kind of give us those quick answers. And I think we're forgetting the critical thinking, and now we have problems that we can't solve because we're just not trained to. How would I get my guys to train to think agile and to think adaptability?

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Well, uh, I'll start with the adaptable part first, because that's the easiest for all your listeners to you know relate to. And so the first example I would give, and many of you all talked about it, the conferences, and when I was at the keynote at the Buddies Conference in Orlando, one of the things we talked about is making sure that all the team members in a store are adapted, adaptable, and can fill any of the roles. So it might be one day that account is gonna drive a truck. They're gonna help lift heavy furniture and bring it in. It just so might be that we're gonna pull somebody from sales because we've got to be able to work through a whole bunch of paperwork that is going on over accounts, or they themselves might be driving a truck. That's adaptable, but everybody on the team has to be cross trained to know all of those. And you guys talk about it, so this is nothing new. In terms of agile, in terms of agile, again, I'm going to just exaggerate for proof of point. Say you've got a salesperson who's Been told, okay, you're in the store from X hour to X hour. Let's call it, you know, 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock on a particular day for a particular reason. Got to have some deliveries. The, you know, the general manager's got to be out for something. And then the salesperson happens to be the only person left in the store on that particular day. And again, this is exaggerating to prove my point. But across the street in the parking lot, unbeknownst to anybody, there's a pop-up venue, a pop-up sales, a pop-up food truck experiment. There's a pop-up something that wasn't planned, that came up, and now suddenly you have hundreds of people all in the parking lot, across the street, all there for whether it be a high school fundraising, booster club, they're all meeting there for, you know, congregating for, they all go in cars down to a certain event. Whatever the reason, you can use your imagination. If they have the confidence of the general manager, the training to be agile enough that says, look, if you see a pop-up opportunity, you need to close our store like a lock to the door, bring all of our sales, brochures, and literature, go across the street to that target-rich environment and just start passing it out like you're doing door knockers from door to door, and just start working that crowd. Do not hesitate for a second. Because as you know, there are a lot of people who run their ship so tight, who run their organization so disciplined without any room for leeway, they might have a sales banter who looks out at that and says, gee, that sure would be a great place to be. But I've been told I gotta be at the store from 10 to 2 and nobody else is here but me. Does that make sense, Pete? I I know it's an overly simplified example.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

You know, when you say over oversimplified, it it really isn't because I can see a situation like this happening. And of course, we love to say that that's exactly what would happen. But the question is when you're not in your store and that scenario itself does pop up, have we cross-trained? Have we empowered? Have we given them the vision that they need to think outside one, not just one box, but maybe the four walls you're in? And we can call that the box and say the goal to climb the hill, to take the hill, is to get those customers, and we need to think of a way that's not going to control them to a point where they feel like I have this great idea, but I'm just not gonna implement it. And allow them to get that forethought to go, yes, this is not conventional, but if I come back with five different people, it was it worth the offset of the norm? And I think the answer is yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yeah, can you imagine a store that's open on a Saturday, it just so happens to be the Saturday that their local town decides to do their 4th of July or their Veterans Day parade or whatever, and you now have hundreds of people lined up and so they're using your front parking lot to not only park their cars but sit along the curbside. You want every single teammate, every single teammate out on the street with their flyers, going up and down the crowd, passing it out, not standing inside the store looking out the window, waiting for that bell to ding when the glass door opens, saying, Man, business is slow because that parade's out there, no traffic can get through.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

You definitely want to tackle all scenarios with the best ideas possible and uh can't be afraid to fail. And I think that sometimes we're so afraid to fail, or we're so afraid to go out the norm that what we do is we limit ourselves, and we're in limiting ourselves, we're causing that glass ceiling, and it's gonna cause some issue. And I really see rent-to-one kind of pivoting in the next couple of years, and I don't know the direction it's going in, but I feel like it's coming. I feel like online is taking foothold. I feel like our walk-in traffic is is declining, and not because we're not doing our job, just because the the way that people shop now, the way that people get their goods, the way that people are looking to continually purchase some products and and services has fundamentally shifted. And so, you know, I think that online is a great idea. I don't think it's the only idea. And I feel like at some point we're going to have to look at it uh in retrospect and go, where were the little nuances that we kind of missed that we that would now make up the difference? And I feel like that's that's what I'm trying to look for. Trying to find the ideas that maybe we left behind in a little bit because we did follow the mainstream, we're doing social media, we're online. So when I say online, meaning you can go to our website and you can purchase something, or you can you can say that you like this and start a chat. But what's in between? And I want everybody to be able to look at the what's in between and go, there's something to that. How do we discover that? There's something to that.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

So let me let me give some uh an unsolicited answer to a question that you're you're kind of hinting at, but you you didn't say that I heard all over the conference when I was there, which was as more online occurs, what does that mean for our brick and mortar stores? And whether you're an individual store owner, you own multi-stores, whether or not you're multi-industry or you're part of a franchise, it doesn't really matter long term if your mindset is I'm here to solve problems, create a business, make a profit, and create jobs. Like if that's your first goal going in, then you're gonna be just fine in this transition. So you kind of have to scratch your head and say, well, if it's going more online, then what can I do with this footprint of a store that I own? What can I do with a footprint of what I'm looking at long term? And I'll give you a similar industry so that we can move a little bit away from RTO so that uh we don't step on any toes. Let's look at autonomous vehicles. Uh you know, car makers make vehicles and car dealerships sell vehicles. But what happens when you play the long game and autonomous vehicles make it so that nobody has to actually own a vehicle anymore? If autonomous vehicles are here, I might just decide to stop buying cars and I'll only call up a car, come to my house when I need it. If I need it for just me, I'll get a small car. If I'm gonna take my family, I'm gonna take a four-door, I'm gonna take a group of 10, I'm gonna dial up a 10-passenger van. Okay, so that's all great and well, but what happens to car dealerships? They used to make money selling cars, and if fewer people are buying cars, what do I do with this massive real estate footprint that I have? Well, my answer is very simple. Raise your hand, car dealership, and say, I'm gonna be more in the service industry of cars than I am trying to sell cars. And you can imagine a scenario where I shut down my showroom, or maybe I make my showroom just one-tenth the size it used to be, and I use all that available nine-tenths, 90% increase in space to create more bays to service more cars. Because here's the good news autonomous vehicles are going to drive more than current cars almost 24 hours a day, and therefore their weigh on tear is gonna be more, and they're gonna be in the shop being repaired more. So don't think about selling cars, think about servicing cars. And that's my piece of free chicken for the RTO industry to think about what it might mean towards the industry or individual owners of brick and mortar going forward.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Well, that does give definite food for thought. If if anybody got something out of that, I know that my mind is now reeling into a couple of different directions, whether it be service or how-to service. I think there is going to be a little bit more that we're gonna have to offer coming in the future, uh, not just to stay viable, because I'm not, I'm not saying that you know the furniture mindset of the furniture model is going away. It's not. It right now furniture doesn't last as long as it did. People are changing the you know the interiors of their home a whole lot faster than they used to. I remember uh, you know, 30 years ago you would have the same sofa for 20 years. Now I think it's an average of four to five uh before it either needs to be changed out or somebody's looking for a new a new look. I definitely see the college and the military dorms being a beginning of exactly what you were talking about. Um it's a service industry, not necessarily a rent-to-own industry. It's a rent-to-rent maybe industry that sometimes we forget about, um, and and tackling that as a service and as a service to the community. But I think that we're going to I think we're going that way, whether we like it or not. I think I think that steering wheel is just going in that direction after a certain amount of time, you know, the tide, whatever the case is. I think looking forward is something that if we don't start now, I think that catalyst, again, pun intended, is already started. And if we don't start putting putting our eyes on the future, we might just end up in a past.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Well, somebody, but but here's the good news you have so many talented and smart people in your industry, they're going to be the ones that survive and create the next evolution of RTO, and it's going to be those that say, nope, this is the way I've been doing it for years, this is the way I'm going to continue to do it, that uh, you know, they might see other opportunities in life, or those other opportunities might be presented early to them.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Now, in your opinion, and this is uh strictly in your opinion, because you have you have different types of people in the world, right? So when a new technology comes out, you have those who fully embrace it. They are all over it. And you got those naysayers that are like, listen, I don't care. That donkey's gonna be my mode of transportation to the day I die until you see the four-wheel car or the four-wheeled car riding by, right? So how quickly does a company latch on and how does that change the outcome? Is it have you seen in your past, and maybe that in your opinion, the faster that something is adopted, the better it is? Or is there a, you know, is there a bell curve? Like, yes, there are people that jump on it, and yes, there are people at the end. But there is kind of like a sweet spot where you don't jump on it right away because you don't want to alienate everybody who's still doing business with you the way they are. You don't want to not do it because, of course, at some point in time you will eventually be at the end of the line instead of the head of the line. How long does it take for a business to kind of start working their way and transitioning to a new mindset, to a new technology, to a new innovation? Hello and welcome everyone. Here at the RTO show, we are pleased and proud to have APRO as our premier podcast sponsor. So if you're listening, then I know you care about rent-owned, and no organization cares more about this industry than APRO. Since 1980, APRO 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 on to the show.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Well, that all just depends on the leadership. It starts at the top, simply put. If the leadership at the top take an attitude toward developing leadership and strategy in an ever-changing world, in a rapidly changing world, if they have that as their going-in assumption that every year is going to be different, then you're going to survive and you're going to do great. But if the leadership at the top resists change, well then boy, I can give you, as we do in the book catalyst that you were talking about in the green room with me when you were reading it, that you know, history is just covered in the names of companies that resisted the change. I mean, literally Kodak, Kodak, the people that we assume, you know, assume to be uh, you know, synonymous with the film industry, they invented digital cameras, but they had leadership back in the day that said, no, no, no, we are a film company. We make the actual chemical film, those reels uh that they were in those little tubes back in the day. For those of you among your listeners that remember, we're a film company. Even though somebody smart on our team invented the digital camera, why would anyone ever want to take a picture with a digital camera? Look how bad the quality is. Well, yeah, no kidding. In the 1970s, the quality was bad. But as the technology improved, it got better and better. And I haven't touched a piece of film in probably 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

I think when I went to Iraq in 2005 or six was the last time I took a film camera with me. I remember that during that time we had those disposable kodaks, right? Like you would buy one off the shelf and you would wind it and take a picture. You took the whole camera and they they kind of just did the film, they broke it apart and did the film and all that. That's the last one I had.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Yep. Yep, yep. So that that that kind of ties to your point, which is how companies adapt and how they choose to adapt will decide whether or not they are going to be in the graveyard along next to Blockbuster, whether or not they're sitting right next to Nokia, Blackberry, whether they're going to be sitting there next to Kodak. Uh it just all depends on leadership. And it starts at the top. And frankly, and this is for our listeners, again, for companies or stores or industry itself that have leaders that are resistant to change, it's going to be their first line folks that see the change first, who are going to try to tell their first line supervisor, hey boss, hey, people are using this new thing. It's pretty cool. What do you think? And if the boss is resistant to change, then it won't be long before that that that person exercises their right to walk out the door and go either A, join that other company, doing it more efficiently, more innovatively. But that's why I say in the industry, those in RTO that adapt are going to be just fine. And those that choose not to adapt, well, you know, the market will sort itself out.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

I am interested in seeing how everything plays out. Maybe talking to you again and saying, Joseph, this is what we said, you know, a year ago or two years ago, and look where we are now, look what we, you know, what was applied and what wasn't applied, and look at the changes that came from that. Because I'm telling you what, I see something. Uh, one of the first things that I've got to say is paid it with their automated collections platform. I'm not saying that it's going to be the save all. I would never say that, but I will tell you, I can see it for what it is. It is on the cusp of changing things and the way we do it, and then getting to know our people a little bit better because we're not so focused on the collection aspect of it, and we have a little breathing room and kind of developing a different sales approach to the way customers are now versus with the way they were then. I see that. I see that. I see that coming around the corner. And I've said it, I'm not going to tell you to vote on it, guys. I'm not going to tell you to hold me accountable. You can probably play this back when I'm old and gray, but I will tell you this, I see it coming around the corner. And that's why I wanted to have this podcast, and that's why I wanted to talk to you, Joseph, because I see something coming around the corner. And I can't get out of my head. Now that I've picked up the book catalyst, which you guys can also do that on Amazon, I've gone, I'm looking at it and I'm like, yes, I see something coming, and I want to be prepared for it. I want to make sure that the stores that I represent, part of the RTO industry that I represent, are on the forefront. I'm not saying that we're going to dive in head first and we're the very first ones, but I definitely think that we're going to be in the spear tip of what's going on and making it change in the rent-owned industry for the better.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah. I mean, I love the RTO2 platform that Payda built. Yeah, I listened to the podcast when you were interviewing them before the RTO world show. Uh, then I got to talk to a couple of the team members at the conference, and you all, you, the industry, you all are poised to be able to do exactly what you just described, which is spend less time with the minutiae and more time with people. And when you can do that through using the tools that they're developing on their platform. And by the way, like any good company, they're going to evolve new features based on demand uh from their customers. Uh, I'm very optimistic for you and the industry with that new tool.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Well, we are going to be talking to Richard again because it's one of those things that I just I believe in it. And I believe in the future of Rent to Own is going to be embodied and it's going to be emboldened by the younger generations that are coming through. When I say younger, I don't mean younger, younger, but I, you know, there are generations that are holding on to what they had because they that's what they know. There's a concrete foothold that they have and they understand that. But I can also see that the changes I'm since I've been doing this, and I haven't been doing this as long as some have. I've seen the 40-year vets, I've seen the 30-year vets. They tell me stories, I'm like, wow. But I can also tell you, when I started in 2000, we didn't even take credit card payments over the phone. It wasn't a thing. We were still calling from Greenbar. I mean, we were literally writing down our notes. Transfer that to a few years later when we're doing it online, where we have a system that we're writing our notes on. Then we start taking payments online. Now we're taking payments over text, we're taking payments through a system. You can go to our website, which some people didn't have as a as a something that you can literally order from. You can go to the website, put something that you want, start a conversation with somebody, and never leave your home. That was never heard of in the rent-owned industry, and now here it is. They're contactless payments because we've gone through the change era or the COVID era, and it reinvented the way that we looked at things. We've had to incorporate social media into the way we work because it's so big, and it's a free platform, which is completely crazy. But this free platform can make or break certain companies, can make and break certain industries, and we had to adapt to become of that. And now that we have services that are automated, you're gonna tell me that there isn't another change coming? I see it. I see it coming.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

I mean, just look at the way you did that evolution, going from not even taking credit card payments over the phone to where we are today. Imagine a scenario where you had a store that said, you know what? No matter where you buy that bed, call us, we'll pick it up, we'll install it, and if anything ever goes wrong, we'll help fix it. All we ask is a certain fee, much lower than what it might be from the actual store itself, because what that will then give you is that relationship. They'll know that when they call you to help repair it or service it or take it back to their original purchaser, that you're getting a cut in that action. But more importantly, you're building a relationship with a customer. So maybe they don't buy the bed from you the next time, but they're buying all those other smaller dollar items that overall long-term add up in the aggregate, and that is where they could evolve or adapt. And again, I'm just throwing that out as one example because you can imagine scenario where people are buying stuff online, but they don't have somebody once it gets to the front door in a big giant box to help take it in, break it down, think about your elderly, think about older folks, think about folks that would have no capability of doing it. But if they knew that your local store not only is willing to be a part of their rent-to-own world, but they also wanted to be part of their lives and help them set up that equip expensive, heavy equipment, then you've got a whole nother branch to go down.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

So I am curious. You did mention that you spoke at the Buddies Convention, which is awesome. Now, I'm wondering if there is a common footnote in all of this. And maybe I'm saying this, maybe I'm just saying this because we're looking for the future, right? We're looking for what direction we're going in and how to visualize what direction it's going. And we want to do the right thing based on what we had behind us. Is that the reason why you actually spoke at two different conventions? Because is is the industry saying that there's something going on? Is there something you know that I don't know?

SPEAKER_01 43:06

No, I I think it has to do more with the fact that I speak at a lot of different industry. In fact, if any of your listeners go on my LinkedIn website, there's a little line there at the top. You can click a button and see all the different conferences that do damn near 300 over the last 10 years or so. And really, really what it speaks more to do with the fact is you're led by exceptional leadership. You know, Michael Bennett, who leads uh Buddies, has also been for a very long time a member of the executive board in various leadership roles at APRO. Uh, and I think perhaps it was just the fact that he saw or or or felt something about the way I was presenting the information that might be helpful to not just help buddies, because he is a team player in the industry and said, Joseph, please come to APRO and share much of that same stuff with us. So I think that might be part of it too.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Well, I gotta say, Michael Bennett is doing an amazing job with the foresight of helping out the paid guys with the the automated platform and the RTO platform. Yep. Having you speak at not only uh, you know, the APRO RTO World 2023 in San Antonio, but the Buddies Convention in Orlando. It was Orlando, correct? That's right. Yeah. So Buddies in Orlando, I I think he's a forward-looking gentleman as well. And I think that we as a group see that. We can see that he's forward thinking, and a lot of what we're going in the direction that we're taking is going to be from forward-thinking individuals that are high up that can see it and go, there is some changes that we're going to make. And not only are they going to prosper, but if we plant them deep enough, by the time that they give us fruit, we're going to be able to eat on this for a while. And I really like that idea.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

And don't forget Buddy's University and what they're doing to invest uh in those human and people skills for their teammates that go well beyond the paycheck that someone receives, but they feel a part of that team. And that investment in people also is a distinguisher.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Actually, that's not the only company that has some type of university. Uh good. Magic Rentals in Pennsylvania also has a Magic University, which I had just had the uh opportunity of talking to somebody over there on that one. I don't want to kill that podcast, but Joe Luxig did a great job of explaining some of the uh magic universities. So that's great. That's also coming up in the future. But Joe, I really appreciate you being able to sit down with me and kind of just explaining to me where you've been and where you're going and how to look at these ideas and giving us the mission first people always kind of idea, you know, the idea to be adaptable and agile. And cross-training, of course, is something we do talk about. If you guys aren't cross-training, you're not going to be around for much longer. You have to have a versatile team. And when we say that, yes, are you doing the title of your job? Yes. Is that the mainstay? Yes. But that is not the only thing. You've got to have drivers who think like salespeople. You have to have salespeople that think like collections people. And if everybody's well around it, maybe the next time you have something going outside your door, your people are going to take advantage of it.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

Yeah, you know, and and that is not only the right perspective to have on it, but you know, think about why. I enjoy uh so much being a part of these opportunities in this podcast today is because you know, for the first 30 years of my professional life, I was the one in the trenches with the team, helping and building and pushing ideas forward. And then I got to that transition point here the last few years where I realized, wait a minute, I'm probably better positioned now as I've gotten older and seen a wide range of sectors to help others build their dreams, to grow their companies, to build their businesses. And that's why I love traveling and being a part of your event uh at April, being a part of this podcast, being with Michael and team down in Orlando, uh, because that's kind of the age and stage I am like. So if any of your listeners want to reach out, uh I'm happy to get in touch with them. You know, my website, josephcopster.com, and my email is joseph at grayline group.com. And uh I also appreciate the shout-outs to the book catalyst uh during the conversation. So let me know if I can help. And I'd love to come back, like you say, in a year to look at some of our predictions and see where the industry's going.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Absolutely. If you guys didn't catch that, rewind it. But if you do have any questions and you don't reach out to Joseph and you just want to talk about the podcast, you're more than welcome to hit me up at Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. If you have a question for Joseph that you didn't reach out to him directly, please feel free to send it to me and I will get a hold of Joseph and we'll knock some out. If we have more than enough questions, maybe we'll do another comeback and we get those answered for you. If you want to go to the website, it's www.theartoshowpodcast.com. And if you're interested in a book, I know you can go to Amazon. It's Catalyst, Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World by Joseph Coppser and Brent Boyd. Those are the things that I'm going to tell you today. We are looking forward to the future. Joseph, always a pleasure to talk to you. I'm so glad that you had the time to put aside all the multitasking of seeing the first birthplace of quite a few things. All right. And spending some time with us here because I love the Beatles, I love golf, and I love knowing that business is on the right track and seeing where it all begins and seeing where it all starts is how you do it. So I thank you so much for coming to the show. I thank you so much for talking with me. And hopefully we'll be doing this again in a year and we can look back and say, we said, right? And this is this is our idea for the future and where we're going from here.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

And congratulations and kudos to you, Pete, with the podcast and your new partnership with uh April. I think it's great for the industry, and I think they'll benefit from all the learnings and all the conversations that you've been doing for the last few years and into the future.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Thank you so much, sir. We do appreciate your time. And I'll tell you guys right now, keep your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.