How to create success from single store ownership

     You don't have to run the world to be a major player in the RTO industry. Premier Franchise owner Chad Fosdick explains why empty file cabinets and new beginnings are the best way to help you make your mark in the community you live in. He also explains his seats on both APRO and TRiB Boards and how they affect the industry today. Of course nothing comes easy whether its the change from one RTO giant to another or stepping back from running a region to just one location his insights are informative and directional. Leaving a good quote or some words of wisdom on your local social media page doesn't hurt either, specially when you have 26% of the community as followers. Luckily for us Chad is open to giving us the inside scoop on just how you can have single store success for yourself as well.

Sponsored by APRO and VOX-pop-uli

thertoshowpodcast.com
pete@thertoshowpodcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome to the RTO show. I'm your host, Pete Chow. Today we're talking rent to own with Chad Fosdick all the way from Nebraska. I have to say, one of the one of the flyover states that I've never stopped in, and now I'm going to have to go see you. Chad, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I'm great. I'm great. You know, it's funny, you know, with some of my close friends, when we go to these conventions and we're kind of out and about on the town, I tell people I'm from Colorado because most people are like, what? Like I've never met anybody from Nebraska. So it turns into this whole thing. So uh, but yeah, yeah, we uh we're getting after it out here in the Midwest.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So I was looking at a map not that long ago because I wanted to take a real good look. And I think if I threw a pin at the very center of the United States, Nebraska would be very, very much there, just south of South Dakota. And the only thing I'm thinking is how cold is it out there right now?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

We get all the seasons, but I'm on the western side of Nebraska, so we get more Colorado weather, which is which is really good. I mean, we don't get the humidity and yes, but it we get some pretty, pretty rough winters up here.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

I can only imagine. So what we wanted to talk about today, everybody, is single store success. Now, Chad's been in a rent-to-owned industry for a while, but the main part of it is it really doesn't matter where you are, including the state of Nebraska, you have the ability to make things happen. And one of the reasons that we're talking about Chad, not does he only have a rent-to-owned history, but he has a normal person's history. In other words, it wasn't all rent-to-owned. There was a lot of life that happened before that that situation. Then he turns around, he makes it happen. He's on the board for April and Trib at some point in time in his career. He opens up some other opportunities to make his presence known in the town. How did that happen how did it all happen? Where did you start? First off, where did this great story start?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yeah, no, it's it's so it's so crazy. I mean, even just the things I get to do today. You know, I, you know, fresh out of high school, joined the army, uh, graduated in '99, was one of the first basic training classes uh of the 2000s. Thought I was going to make that my career, had uh had a pretty successful run uh that ended pretty abruptly, unfortunately, for me. Uh so I was able to, I was in Fort Hood, Texas, got selected for uh a peacekeeping mission in Kuwait called Task Force Warhorse, was there April to August of 2001. As we all know, the very next month of 01 was when the uh September 11th attacks happened. I just got back to the United States when that occurred. Uh of course, the mobile, you know, the military got mobilized at that point. But the the the military is a machine that just keeps running my unit that I was reattached to when I got back to the states, uh, got orders for Afghanistan. Uh, but for whatever reason, orders for me came for Korea. So I was kind of disappointed. I tried to get get you know to to go with my uh my my team, but um ended up going to South Korea. I was in Seoul for about a year, a little over a year maybe. And uh yeah, I took some missteps while I was there, got to got to restart my uh my career. Uh so moved back to Nebraska. That's where my parents had had moved to. I grew I had grown up in northeastern Colorado. And yeah, I just was uh I was pretty passionate to to make right some wrongs that had occurred and um wanted to get my life kicked back off again and uh ended up starting with Rentway in 2005.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Now, the Rentway story is a big story, not just in your situation, but everywhere. Rentway was a a huge company that had you know some acquisition situations happen with Rack, and so it would ended up being encompassed in Rack's huge overall dominance in the United States. But they had their share of successes. Don't don't get me wrong. That was actually a great, great company. And throughout the years, and including some of these podcasts, a lot of people that I spoke to that have had some really good successes in their rental own career actually started in Rentway. And it's one of those things where I feel like you're part of that story. So you go to Rentway, you're there for a while, but then you ended up at Aaron's for a while. How did that transition happen there?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, yeah. So, and I've I've said this and I'll say this forever. If I did not start with Rentway in 2005, with the in the district I started with, in the store I started with, it's tough for me to say that I'd still be, you know, that I would have tried to make a career out of it. Uh, I realized pretty quickly that I was working in a high performing store in a high performing district in a time kind of of rebirth a little bit from Rentway from some missteps that they had had uh a few years prior to me starting. Uh there was a pretty big scandal. Uh CFO ended up going to prison for a little bit. Whoa. Yeah, but uh it was kind of during that Enron time. There's false reporting or whatever that stuff was. That's above my pay grade. But yeah, so I was starting my family. Um my wife, uh my wife was pregnant, and so I, you know, I was looking for a career. Um stumbled upon rentway, uh, was introduced that they have this fast track store manager program. Uh, loved the culture of it. You know, it was welcome, wanted, and important was the Bill Morganstern mantra every day. And that was everywhere. It was everywhere that we touched that that message of welcome, wanted, and important. And that still sticks with me today. We still talk about it in our businesses. And yeah, I got an opportunity to get my first store about 11 months after I started and uh moved to the far western uh into the panhandle of Nebraska and to Scotts Bluff, truly middle of nowhere up there, even farther than than where we're at today. But took over a fledgling store in May of 06, and by December that year, I think we were because it was in like the bottom of like 740th in the country, and by the end of the year, we were number 72 in the country. And you know, I really just cut my teeth on that grind and that first store. And also in that time is when we were acquired by Renaissance. You know, and you know, you wake up one morning and you get to put on a different shirt, although you were competing with them that you know the day before. So that was a that was an adjustment. Um, I got reorganized into the Wyoming district, and uh I you know, I kind of lost that that connection with those those guys that I had originally started with. And so um we wanted to get back closer to my wife's family back in uh central Nebraska. And so um a store for Rena Center was opening, the store manager was retiring, and um I was approached to see they knew my my DM knew I wanted to get closer to central Nebraska and asked me if I'd uh I'd come uh take that store. We did and had had another round of success this time with Rena Center and another and the Aaron's franchisees were kind of starting to open beyond Omaha and Lincoln and making their way out to this part of the state, if you will. And um we had a a manager for Rack in our region that was uh he left to go open one of the first Aaron's franchises out in this neck of the woods, again outside of the metro Omaha and Lincoln area. And so we moved uh again, uh got towards uh closer again towards my wife's family and ran that Renaissance store. During that time, my um my superiors, unbeknownst to me, were were in the process of of leaving their job and getting their first premiere store open um in another city. Uh, of course, so then I had some transition uh above me. Um, and I really, really loved working for the guys. You know, we kind of followed along each other, you know, for those first handful of years. And so then quit my store manager job and went to be a delivery driver for them, which was uh interesting. You know, I've taken a couple of big uh monetary steps back in my career, all you know, hoping for maybe a better you know time at some point. Had about a 90 90-minute commute every day back uh both or one way or both ways, I'm sorry. Helped open that store from the ground up, got got back off the truck, became the store manager of the store and ran it for a couple years, and uh really got kind of stuck in my career at that point. I I wanted to climb the proverbial ladder and saw an air another Aaron's franchisee was opening a rash of stores throughout Nebraska. Spoke with them, ended up going to open, uh I helped open one store, opened another, ran it for about a year for them, uh became regional manager for the Nebraska South Dakota region. And uh that's I mean, so that's the I guess the longest version of how I ended up out with an Aaron's franchisee.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

So you start with Went Ray, you go to Rack, go to Aaron's, now you're sitting there, you figure out what's going on, you've got a good taste of it, you've run stores from all the way being in the truck to moving your way up to running stores to running a region. And then after you make it all the way up there, you say, I think one of these days I'm just gonna run my own business. So you make it to the top and you're like, all right, let's ride that fire pole down and let's see how far we can get down there so that we can start building it up for ourselves. So as you heard that they were doing this premiere thing, right? As you heard that they're saying, hey, okay, so I got a couple guys over here who have what I'm doing, but they're gonna leave to go do this. What made you decide that opening a premiere franchise was what you wanted to do?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Well, you know, again, I was very fortunate to have been part of that initial opening of that first premiere store here in Nebraska, you know, really from everything from setting up the workstations to, you know, moving in the payment counters and, you know, all the things it takes from fresh, you know, drywall on the wall. And, you know, I just love that. I I had a couple of very interesting kind of aha moments in that time. Because as we all know, you know, we could walk into really any mature store right now, and no matter if it's, you know, if it's flailing or if it's uh solid or whatever, whatever it may be, there's there's a place we can always go to go kick some growth into that store, and that's the inactive file cabinets, right? I mean, I I'm disgusted by how many inactive files I have in my store, you know, and um, but that's a place of rejuvenation if we want to go kickstart some growth. When you're opening a new store, and I I remember this distinctly, we were dollying, I was dollying in an empty file cabinet, and I put it down in the office and I look at and and I gotta I gotta give a shout out. But Mike Schuler, he's he's a gentleman that I'd mentioned a few times that I've worked for and great mentor for me, still talk to him to this day. Very, very one of the best operators uh in the industry that I've ever been around. He he held some pretty high positions within Rentway before the acquisition. But you know, I I dropped the the file cabinet down and I walk into his office and I'm like, okay, we got a problem. And he's like, What's that? And I'm like, we have no files. Like, there's no, like it just dawned on me that this thing was empty. And um so then that got me into the planning with him. You know, he had you know, he walked me through how we're gonna plan on going out and getting these new, you know, from no files in the filing cabinet to how do we fill up three files of active customers. And so I just loved that. That was awesome. Um, I hate it. I just I absolutely love being a regional manager, every piece of it, except for the travel. Of course, as I think we uh prior to this, we were talking, I was seven hours from one store and seven and a half from my other edge of the region. And so uh a lot of phone calls, a lot of conference calls on the road. Used to joke, I'd get visitation with my family on the weekends, and you know, and at that time I had you know a newborn and uh, you know, three or four-year-old. And so that wasn't fun. And so once in, you know, I I knew I didn't really want to go back to to that Renaissance world or or whatever. And yeah, I just just kind of started that process. It took me about three years to to put it all together and moved we moved out here to North Platte and um got opened in January of 2014.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So you go out to North Platte, you find this spot, you open it up, we've got empty file cabinets, and we go from that to a thriving location. And I was taking a look at the Facebook and and the Instagram situation that we had talked about. 71,000 people reached in a month. You've got a ton of followers. I mean, we're talking over six thousand Facebook followers, six hundred and twenty-one Instagram followers. That's a not a close second, but it's a second. You're killing it on the Facebook things. Matter of fact, I've seen you on some videos. How do you go from one to the next? I mean, that's the biggest question that I have right now. You go from managing all of these stores in a huge amount of area. You've got background and going back and forth and different uh first off, I gotta ask, how instrumental did it really play a big role in how you run your store, being able to go through these different companies and see how they do it? Was that a was that a great way to maj what Chad knows about rent to own and put it together to put it to use for how you do things?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I've I've always said that uh Rentway kind of gave me that culture piece and that that you know we had we had local decision-making power in our hands for our customers. Um obviously we had numbers to hit and we had ways things had to be. And in my brief stint in the military, I mean it's very regimented. There's standard operating procedures, and I saw how organized Rentway was with they had a binder system, and um, I think uh some guys still carry that on today. And then, you know, Renaissance are really taught me about the business, about the financial side of it, you know, pencils and projections, and we're we're budgeting out for the year, how many, uh, how many rolls of toilet paper we're gonna go through. I mean, so very, very detailed and uh absolutely love that. And you know, Aaron's business model was so different than the the traditional weekly. I was um, you know, I was pretty mesmerized by kind of how they had differentiated themselves as as the actual business model. You know, they of course were sales and lease and doing monthly. And um, so yeah, you know, we really just tried to, I tried, you know, there were also things that I hated that were done, and I was like, okay, well, if I ever had my own, we won't do that. Uh or I was trying to test also to see like what, you know, um, I don't I don't know if you're I'm sure you guys do it to this day, but five of five down's been a staple of the rent owned industry.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Yep. You know, but for me, all I ever saw was either delivery drivers having to lie that they did it, or uh store managers barking at them because they did didn't do it. It was like, you know, we got these heavy couches, we're taking up three flights of stairs. It's hot outside, you're you're sweating, you know, you're laying down, hooking up this dryer. And the first thing the store manager says is, hey, did you put your flyers out? I, you know, I just I've always felt like that was um it created distance between that that team, which is already a tough enough team to be able to get that delivery team out in the field. They walk in, you know, they see the CSR and the account manager and the store manager, you know, standing in the air conditioning, you know, kind of eating their little snack in between their call-through, and they're like, Well, you guys don't even do nothing in here. So that was one of the first things I wanted to eliminate. I wanted to see if the benefit of the strength of that, you know, delivery team and and store personnel would outweigh putting 10 flyers out or you know, the drivers having to make up a story as to why they didn't. So that was one of the first things. And um, so yeah, definitely we, you know, we really tried to test and we're we're we stay in a testing environment because you know, there's principles that we have to follow that have proven to be successful, but we never know where there might be the next slight advantage. So absolutely, I learned so much. And then, you know, obviously helping open that premiere store kind of lit my fire to try to help put all together when we did ours.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

What was the most successful thing when you're talking to Mike? You have the file cabinet, you're walking in there and you're going, Mike, if I had any more hair, I would pull it all out. We've got nothing going on. What was that process like? Where did you target? What was going on in that room where you said, okay, this is probably the best place to start working on finding brand new customers, not customers that have known us, not customers have been around, not customers that have been referrals from other customers. We are brand new to this. How do you start getting them to come in the door?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Well, I mean, websites weren't really a thing at that point in time. This was 08 for for especially for rent owned. But if they were, you were pretty cutting edge, and we didn't have one. Of course, Facebook was just uh profiles at that time. So of course we set up our you know our friends as we get customers, we would bring them in. But you know, it was just all traditional. It was um, well, I can't say it was all traditional. A lot of street, you know, just knocking on doors. We go to where we thought people might be and knock on doors and flyer blitzes, you know, put a couple hundred flyers out in an hour. And the radio was big. Radio really works well for us here. I believe radio actually really works anywhere, but maybe people approach radio wrong. I I have pretty strong feelings around marketing, but again, it's not about like I know for certain this is a thing. But I so radio has always been a staple even back then. And then, you know, really just making sure that every opportunity was uh like we succeeded in every if somebody walked in, I mean that that we had to get it. And you know, we we had the course numbers to hit and we had things to do, but we had to get every single sale, and then from that sale, we tried to get a couple more people and um just hustling. I mean, really, that's that's always a that's what it's always ever been is just hustling.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Now taking a look at the history that I've seen that you have, you've done something either others can't do or others haven't tried. And so as you opened up your premiere location and you're starting brand new, 15 months later, in the end of 2015, closer to the end of what, 2015, early 2016, you opened up a glass doctor?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Um well, actually, we opened Mr. Appliance first.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Mr. Appliance. So so the end so 2015, end of 2015, early 2016, you open up a Mr. Appliance, which I saw was probably an amazing thing to do. Now, of course, I've got to ask, do they go hand in hand? Does the appliance center fix your appliances and how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah, uh well, and we started down that road because we couldn't get anyone to service our our appliances from our rental store, of course. And we had all this under warranty product, and just this market had self-servicing dealers only, so they would only work on the products they sold. And so, you know, we navigate, you know, I went down the road to become a self-servicing dealer as well. But then I'm thinking, like, well, where is the rest of this community getting their appliances repaired? And so ended up with Mr. Appliance, which has been been phenomenal. And yes, uh, but it's it's oddly like, you know, when when our premier staff calls our Mr. Appliance office and tells them, hey, we've got this service, it you know, because we know each other and we're so close, we don't treat it sometimes like it's a real customer. And so that's been an odd, like, hey, no, they still need attention. Like you can't put them on the back burner. And so, but yeah, it's been it's been so helpful to be able to service our own. Because, well, I mean, instead of sending our delivery team out to a known issue, like the the it the dryer's not drying, well, our delivery team isn't equipped to repair that. So, and and so we're saving a trip. We're not even bringing a loaner, we're just sending our Mr. Appliance guys over and they're fixing it. And then we pay, of course, our Mr. Appliance folks, or you know, the the businesses pay each other. So um, it's been phenomenal, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

So you have a rent-to-owned business, you start it from the ground up, you take a look and say, you know what, there's some things going on here that aren't right. I need to get an appliance business going. So you get Mr. Appliance, and then like in 2020, that's when you do the Glass Doctor.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Where did that go? How did this? I'm I you got my mind blown here. How did that all come together?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

I, you know, I well, so neighborly is the um the parent company to Glass Doctor and Mr. Appliance, and they have 15 or 18 home service brands, uh, plumbing, electrical, painting, house cleaning, like all that type of stuff. And so, well, when we first opened, my my hope and kind of plan, if you will, was I wanted to open a series of premiere stores. Um, unfortunately, geographically, that would put me back on the road as I was, which I was trying to get away from, um, so I could, you know, be around for my children, you know, coach my daughter's softball and coach my son's basketball and just, you know, being present and not on the road all the time. And so I I quit pretty quickly put that to bed of additional rent-to-owned stores. And so then we just started looking in our local market of where, you know, I guess, you know, where could we breathe some life uh and some enthusiasm into we already had done it with the appliance repair. And um, so over the years I had just looked at the other brands that they had to offer, and um Glass Doctor seemed like a good one. You know, of course, we compete with Safe Light and the you know, the local glass shops and contractors that are doing showers and um made a really good friend. I I got to serve on a on another local board called the Nebraska Land Days Board of Directors. Nebraska Land Days is the official state celebration of Nebraska. Four nights of rodeo, two nights of concerts. But I made a really good friend during that. That was a five-year commitment, and uh had approached him to see if he'd have any interest in uh helping us get Glass Doctor open. And thankfully he said yes, and he's still with us to this day. And he, you know, I'd say glass doctor pie, you know, because it's a very I mean that's you don't just learn how to do a shower door or you know, you need some some pri prior knowledge. So it's definitely not me doing the windshields or uh or doing the the actual thing. Um I'm just you know, and really the vein that I think runs through all of it that we're where we're at today with it is as we all know, it's the people and it's If I did have a big, you know, I I try to look back and say, you know, how did like how did we even get here? But um, or what prepared me to get here? And I think that move to regional really helped me prepare me to become a business owner and then to operate these multiple because I bound to me pretty quick that the customers were no longer my customers, they were this, they were the staff's customers. And now my customer became the employees. And you know, no different than working with the customer. You know, there's there's ways to go about it um to get the the appropriate behavior that we want, whether that's making on-time payments or buying another agreement or referring people, whatever it is. And um I I feel that same way with our staff. And so um I try to come through for them. I try to be the uh the best version I can for them. And we're currently going through a little bit of uh a rebirth, if you will. You know, we just passed our 10-year mark for having our premiere store open and four years now for Glass Doctor. Obviously, that was a bit of a catastrophe because my team and I were getting ready to fly to Charlotte to go do our certification training to open. And the week prior to our flights was when the airline shut down for COVID. So we stumbled our way through that first year and still standing, but it uh was not not the most pleasant experience.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

You know, sometimes those knocks are the experiences that we use to step up to the next level. Absolutely. I can I can always say that I don't want those trials and tribulations, but I don't not include them in the success story that you have. So I am curious because as you're going through this and you know that you have a couple of people, and we're gonna step back a little bit. I know that you have a couple people that you know that were ahead of you in the errand side that they decided to go to the Premier franchise. What made you decide that Premier was a franchise to go to? Like there are other franchises out there. What about Premier was like, you know what, I'm gonna follow in that type of footstep. I'm gonna go with Premier because I think, you know, point A, point B, and point C is really what I want to happen. What was it about Premier that really set you off in that direction?

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Well, I'm pretty I'm I don't know for a fact, but I'm pretty sure there was no availability to purchase any Aaron's territory. Buddies at the time was on a meteoric rise, but I had no familiarity really with them. And I was very familiar with Premier. I, you know, again, when I say my mentor, he he brought me along to some conventions, let me get to know some of the other franchisees and corporate, and got to see a little bit more of the inner working. So I'd say the familiarity for sure. I mean, I'd done it once as an employee, and so coming through to do it again, I figured I'm doing it for myself and my family this time and the people around us. I'm probably, you know, I need something, you know, and Trooper has been a just a really good mentor for me as well. Now, um, I've spent quite a bit of time with him. Just uh, you know, he's a very, very intelligent businessman. And as we were going through the process, and because we originally weren't going to move to North Platte, we did not really enjoy our time here the first time we were here because we lived here once before to run a Renaissance under. And but as he had told me, and I'll never forget it, you know, your first business you open, it has to be a home run. You can't you can't survive with it being a single or a double or even a triple. It's gotta, you have to knock it out of the park. So North Platte, I felt, was ripe for that. And um yeah, so that's how we ended there.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

So how big, and when we're talking about population, how big is North Platte in Nebraska?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Um, 26,000 people, roughly.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

So you service all of them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yeah. Our our market that we that we actually cover is probably about um 40,000, but that's uh that's 50 miles east and 50 miles west. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

So is Premier a monthly model? I was taking a look at the website, and I was kind of doing a little bit of homework, a little bit of research, and I was like, I see a lot of monthly prices. Is Premier mainly a monthly model or is that you?

SPEAKER_01 26:06

That is primarily me. Um, and again, that goes a little, you know, that strikes a little bit of that errands now. And now actually, though, I mean we're well, I don't know, we're only 27% monthly, you know, you know, so we're primarily weekly, bi-weekly. But that's more of a strategy on pricing, like in the store for me, because it, you know, sure, a hundred bucks a month is still the same as 25 bucks a week. But if we, you know, if we present it at 100, then we get to start talking into their actual frequencies. It just it just feels like it's not as expensive. Um, so no, that's that's me. Uh, I think most most uh premiere stores you'll find would market a weekly rate.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

So basically you're putting your best foot forward on the website.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Yeah, well, and we price in the store monthly as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Gotcha. Okay, so I was just checking that out because I wasn't sure if it was actually a monthly model or not. And I I saw it and I was like, well, maybe they are. I didn't realize that it was a possibility to go that route. And I like that idea as well. I mean, of course, you always want to put your best foot forward and say, this is the possible you know, price point that you can get it at, and I can service you at that price point. And if not, we can always make it happen at whatever price point is good for you on the frequency that you need. Yep. So I gotta ask, you're in Nebraska. What is it that you would sell in Nebraska that I wouldn't sell in the Tampa Bay area? Tell tell me about I there's gotta be something on your product lineup that I would go, I would never have that. And that's really awesome to see.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Wow. Um You know, we're probably, I mean, we don't do good with leather-like material for whatever reason. Um, I think that probably strikes to the agricultural nature of this area. You know, Union Pacific, the largest rail yard in the world, is here in North Platte. That's what we were formerly known best for. Of course, we got a lot of cattle production and farm ground. And so, you know, the cowboys and cowgirls and mechanics and and uh you know rail car operators, they're not coming to, you know, they're not coming to sit on that that leather like set. So that that that would be the only real thing is I we just don't do a lot in that line. But other than that, you know, I mean, we're we're pretty straightforward with our products. You know, we're we try to stay focused on the core. And um, so I don't think you find our showroom much different than maybe what you'd see there, other than that kind of like that leather deal, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

So I'm gonna I'm gonna mention a couple products. Number one, do you sell heaters by themselves? And I'm not talking about something that has a little fireplace in it that you can kick on with the heater, because we do have that in Florida, believe it or not, for the uh six or seven hours that it actually gets cold enough to use a year. We do have that. But do you sell heaters by themselves?

SPEAKER_01 28:47

We well, so sun heat is a um I'm sure they've they've actually showed it a couple trip shows, not recently, actually, and now that I think about it, but um, they're actually out of Nebraska as well, and they produce space heaters, but like infrared space heaters and you know, we've dabbled in it. Um, again, as we all know, the the complexities that exist in a rental store and at in in any single store to to do it at a high level, I try not to um I try not, you know, I mean, we got to get really good at selling that Amana or at selling that 18 cubic foot top mount or that Darcy or you know what that Queen mattress or you know, whatever it is. And so we will dabble into some some different stuff, but I really tried to keep it because you know I'd rather I'd rather our our team be really good at you know and really knowledgeable and really focused on that that king mattress or that twin mattress.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

That core lineup.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yeah, without really trying to introduce too much that you know, we've of course we hit the streaming box market hard when uh when that was out in CTV and Stream Smart. Uh we tried to jump back into it again. I wasn't able to attend the session that was at uh at this recent meeting of the minds. I really wanted to, but so we've, you know, the stream boxes we've tried to get into again. But yeah, we just tried to stay to the core.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

So no snowblowers.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

No, well, you know, because again, we get we kind of get a little bit of that Colorado weather, which uh outside of the very front range of Colorado, uh like Denver, we just don't get it, we don't get snowblower snow. I I I don't know how to put it. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Like we get snow, but it's it's not 18 inches deep every Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Gotcha. Okay, all right, because I'm I'm just I'm just telling you now because I've got a lot of people who live in areas that don't get it. Texas is a big hot bed for us, and uh Florida's a big hot bed for us. And I don't have snow like that either. So I was just curious, you know, does Nebraska get that? So a little bit about what happened. How did you know, going back to your start and getting things off the ground? How long did it take for you to be a successful single store operator? And in your mind, I mean, what was that definition of success where you sat back one day, you walked into, you know, you open a door, you kind of toss the keys to the side, and you look around and go, I think we're I think we're doing all right. I think we've turned that corner where I can say, we're doing okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

You know, we it I I threw all I you know, I had a pretty good job on for for all it was worth. I mean, I had the autonomy to to run my region as long as it was performing, of course, and profitable. You know, and then I I threw that all away basically and took out the largest loan of my life and just put all the pressure back into into the immediate future by op by going out on my own. And um, so we just again we just got after it. It was it was an interesting time, obviously. Facebook had just released pages previously, you know, maybe a year before we opened. And with that, they also it was 100% organic, right? They were getting businesses hooked on posting there because everyone was seeing it. And then around that time they went public and now they had to start really producing some revenue, so they started dropping that organic down. And you know, we we just I knew that we were gonna have to, you know, we couldn't fight through advertising or marketing like we were that you know, either Aaron's or Rack or whoever. We had to, we had to utilize every resource that we had and not try to do it, you know, it's kind of that David and Goliath a little bit when we had to so knocked on thousands of doors, um, got door slammed in my face, uh, made thousands of phone calls. Anytime we would get a new customer, it probably took us 18 months to because, you know, I mean, and that's just my point of view with all of it is you know, we didn't come there just like so hoping we were gonna win. Like we had to win for one, and two, the only way to win is to dominate. And so we were looking for total domination of the market. We, you know, I've always joked we don't want the whole pie, we just want the biggest piece. And so, yeah, probably about 18 months in, I was like, all right, we've we've got this market locked down now.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

That's great to hear. 18 months is a good time frame. I've heard stores taking a little less, and I've heard stores taking a little more. And let me tell you, when it's more, that's that's a sweat box, man. You just kind of sweat it out, and you're like, oh my God, I hope this works out. I don't want to throw in a towel. But you know, going through the Facebook situation and you're getting these followers, I see some engagement on your site. And what I noticed was you said something the other day that really caught my mind, but there were two things that I took away. The first one was what you were saying, the second thing was something that you had said while you were getting there. And the quote that I'm gonna tell you guys right now is Chad was I I believe it looked like you were in your car and you were just kind of making this video, but it said that basically sometimes nothing happens in a decade, and sometimes a decade happens in a week. And that was something that you meant to put on Facebook, and that's something that you were given to your followers and and just everybody in general. But what does that mean for you?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Man, I yeah, I just randomly it was a me or you know, quote that came across my feed, and it was just so impactful to me to highlight the the fact of you know what we can actually get done if we are focused and intentional and you know, I I know that well, so the the whole Facebook thing as well not even just Facebook, but really out externally in any form of media, if you flip it on, there's a lot of negativity. And and really negativity dominates the you know that that mind. So, you know, we've used we've used our Facebook as a way to spread positivity. Um, and so it yeah, our our posts aren't all, you know, here's our new couch. We we put that on there, obviously. Um I do feel, especially since we build such a big following, I mean, we got 24% of the population here in this in this community that follows us on Facebook, which is just tremendous. You know, I think that if if we have a if we have a public forum like that, we had we also have a responsibility to address you know community things. Our community is currently in the mass evolution where we got some big economic stuff going on. And um so yeah, we um we we try to publicly commentate it a little bit. I mean, we of course we try to stay in our lane, but so it's it's a very community-based uh page. And I don't even know how many of our customers follow us, whether it's just but there's also just members of the community that like to hear sometimes like to hear the things I gotta say, I guess. Maybe maybe I like to hear it and I just need a place to go tell it to. But so yeah, I think it's I hope we we try to be helpful. You know, we'll throw a I I threw up a post, just a a simple text post, it just said, hey, hope your day is going good. Uh I know things can get rough out there sometimes, and no, you know, I'm cheering for you. And have and people know it's coming from me, because of course I've never been too too bashful to do a live or to do a video and throw it up there. So it's uh it's great.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Well, I will tell you, as I was watching that video, I can see the genuine person coming out in that video. I can see you saying something that's uh on your mind and in your heart to reach out and to tell people. But as impactful as that statement was, that's actually not the most impactful statement I took out of that video. Something that you had said just minutes earlier actually really stuck with me. Uh let me say that minutes. It was like a minute and thirty, so let me rephrase that. Seconds earlier was yesterday's success doesn't pay today's bills or plant tomorrow's seeds. I I don't know if anybody's really listening to that, but I really want to say that again. Yesterday's success doesn't pay today's bills or plant tomorrow's seeds. Now that spoke to me. I'm not gonna say that the decade speech did not, uh, or the or the statement did not, because I definitely understand it and I definitely understand what you're saying. But this second statement that you made, that spoke to me in general for whatever reason, for whatever reasons that I have uh from the past and what I've gone through in my relationship with rent to own and things that have happened in my life and the and the businesses that I've tried to own or I'm trying to get through, making successful. And I hear that and I'm like, that is the God's honest truth. And sometimes I think we get so caught up in yesterday that we forget today. And today is the most important time that we have to make our successes worthwhile. So if you're doing single store success, be involved today. Start grassroots, reach out to the community, make your phone calls, knock on some doors, let everybody know that you're available. Make sure that your social media presence is on point, not just for your store, but for your people, for your mentors, for yourself. Be a mentor in your community. Mention things that are happening. Don't be afraid to stand up outside the box. Opening another franchise that actually works in tandem and sisterly with the one that you already own and also gives back to the community. Absolutely great idea. Have mentors that you have worked with. And honestly, I would always say this. I will say this at any point in anybody's rent-to-owned career. You need to have a mentor. You need to have somebody that you can step to. Doesn't mean that they have all the answers, but they will guide you in the right direction. And it's not about having a mentor. Sometimes it's about having mentors or people in your life that you can go to those resources and then that network to say, I am completely lost on this. Can you just give me a little direction? Can you give me a little bit of light in this dark tunnel to just go in a certain direction so that I know somebody is giving me the good advice that I need to get to where I need to go? Make sure that you have your core lineup. Don't be afraid to have the core lineup and every once in a while, maybe have the heater or the snowblower. If you don't need it, it's okay. But carry the core lineup and have your people focus on it. Create a good culture and don't be afraid to step out, even if you're on top of the world, to do your own thing. Chad, those are pretty uh pretty successful points there. Is there anything else that you want to catch up with?

SPEAKER_01 39:09

No, well, yeah, I mean, I guess you mentioned that mentor thing, and I've just and I stay just like in awe. It uh what I'm finding is that you know, because I try to be grateful or gracious with my time. If anyone comes to me with anything at all, I if they think that I could help and guide it or whatever it may be, I'm I'm humble. You know, I've always been the youngest guy in the room, really. I mean, no matter where. I mean, I when I first started, I had been doing it, you know, not as long as most of them, and yeah, here I was in charge of it. And you know, then I get to get on the trip board and the April board and all these other boards, and I'm walking in these rooms, like, why am I even here? Like, I don't I don't understand like what they I you need give me some time to catch up here, but um, you know, I just the the um the graciousness uh that I find with most high performers, like they're willing to help. I you know, I had a guy early in my premiere time here, um, told me to, he said, you need to run this store like you know how for three years, or you will spend the next six years fixing it. And that was impactful for me. I'm like, and and you know, on on my drive to Albuquerque for the show, um one of the best, one of the top franchisees in the Mr. Appliance system randomly called me just to see how things were going, and we kind of talked shop a little bit. And then I get to I'm I'm about to go visit one of the top performing franchisees in the glass docker system, and he's more than gracious saying, Hey, come, you know, come do this. And I just love it. And uh, you know, there's been so many, I can't name them all here in the rent-owned industry that maybe even in passing, you know, they said hi to me once, and I'm like, oh, that was pretty awesome. But um, you know, this is uh this is the life we've chosen. And um, I love this industry. Um, I love the impact that we have for you know those hardworking men and women that for whatever reason the situation is that they don't have that capacity for credit at the moment. Um, you know, we it's funny. I um I went out on the delivery truck a couple months ago, and uh this, you know, you know, maybe 25, 30-year-old woman was there, and her little, you know, four-year-old daughter, and she's running out to the truck. What are you guys doing at my house? And we're like, oh, well, we're bringing you guys a couch. And she's like, uh, how did she put it? She said, Why aren't you guys at work like my dad? And I was like, Well, no, you know, this is our work, this is what we get to do. And so she's, you know, of course, she set the couch down and she's jumping on it, and oh mom, I love this couch so much. And and she said something like, You old guys are strong. And it was just the it was the best ever. I I like that's what I missed, you know. I I do get to miss, I unfortunately miss some of those moments, but um, yeah, it was just it was hilarious. But to see that look and know we were a small part of that, and um, you know, I I I love it, and I I look forward to to continuing it on for as long as uh as long as we can keep getting after it, we're gonna keep doing it.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Absolutely. Last but not least, I did want to talk about it because we kind of skirted over it a couple different times, and you mentioned it just now. You ended up on the board for April, you ended up on the board for Trip. What exactly what are your board uh seatings right now?

SPEAKER_01 42:27

So I uh great thankfully got re-elected um for a second term on both. Um it just so happened that I, you know, however, the stars aligned that I started on both at the same time. Um it's really taken me that first term to really get my feet under me to really understand because there's so much, you know, Trib is obviously very vendor and member focused. Like we need to get these vendors and we got to get them to get good deals for the members. And then we're talking about putting on meeting of the minds, and Dennis and his team are just phenomenal. Um, and then April, of course, it's really focused on the legislative side, and but that's been my biggest learning. Obviously, I'm I don't know much about all that. We're about to learn a little bit more here, but so um I was the chair of the specialty committee for trib this year. Again, you know, Mike Tissett's our president this year. Chris Cale Jr. had been previous, Dan Fisher. I don't think Dan was uh since I've been on, but I know he has been previously. You know, currently Michael Bennett's the president of the April board. I was very fortunate again this year. Um I was elected to the executive committee. Uh hasn't really changed much of my current role, other than we do have some executive committee meetings. We've only had a couple. Um, and of course, Charles Smith herman coming, uh coming to do his thing as the CEO of April has been tremendous. I mean, I that just even those couple of webinars that him and his team have been able to put together like that AI one the other day was uh just blew my mind, and we've started really researching how could this you Why are we missing the boat on this? And so yeah, it's been uh it's it's really a dream come true. I guess and it sounds really lame to say that, but it really is it, you know. I grew up in this industry reading RTOHQ, and you know, now I get to be on the board and hopefully, you know, my first goal with anything I do is not make it worse. And so if I can make it a if I could just do that, not make it worse, and then at some point, hopefully if I have some hand in making it a little better, that's that's gonna be good. But uh yeah, I I love it. I think when when duty calls, you know, you gotta you gotta answer that bell. So it's been been awesome.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Well, I gotta say, if anything that I can say out of your career, it seems that you leave a mark wherever you go. So I I am there's no doubt in my mind that you being on either board is the right decision for them to make. I'm so glad that you were able to be on the show today. I mean, lots of words of wisdom. And the truth is, single store success, like any success, is not easy. It takes time, it takes dedication, it takes focus, and it takes drive. And if any of you guys have any questions for chat, please feel free to reach out to the show. You can reach us at the rtoshow podcast.com and leave us a message there. If you want to email me directly, it's Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. If you want to connect with us on social media, it's Facebook and Instagram, again, the RTO show. Chad, I'm so glad that you were able to be on the show and share with us. I'm I'm I'm telling you, your successes are something that I've really been looking forward to talk about. And I'm glad that you're doing this. I'm glad that you're in the industry. I'm glad I got you on the show because the truth is a lot of people know you, a lot of people care about what you have to say, your vision and your outlook on what's going on. Is there anything that you see down the road coming for rent to own that is going to change us from one year to the next? Uh so far, I've got AI on the table, and you said AI as well. Is that the next big thing coming down?

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah, well, I mean, as that gentleman said in that that webinar, there if there's going to be any replacement, it's going to be people that use AI as a skill will replace people that don't. And that that really stuck stuck with me. So trying to figure out how that you know fits into our operation. You know, it's uh we we've started to dabble. And when I when I start to dabble, that means like I'll spend like five hours doing something on it to try to figure out if it is worth, or not if it's worth, but if it if we can adapt ourselves to bringing it in. Um, you know, there's always been this like, you know, this comparison to like blockbuster video. I I find that so brick and mortar is gonna go away for rent owns, what's all digital? I gotta, you know, I again I can't get in the future predicting business. I just don't ever see how a Netflix is gonna come along and digitize the couches and now maybe parts of the transaction, of course, they are are already shifting to a digital world. And then I I heard this once, someone told me that you know, when rent own really started to take hold, the laundromat industry got scared because they thought that rent own was going to put them out of business. Like if you could put on payments a washer dryer in your home, why would you ever go to a laundromat? And so that industry got really scared with rent own. But really, if you go to most laundromats today, all it did was they had to clean their act up. They had to really get their stuff together, couldn't be nasty and funky and bad machines in there. And so, you know, I I'm again, I can't predict the future. I don't see anything coming along that you know, my brick and mortar store or your brick and mortar stores no longer exist. So I think us just getting better, you know. I've I in our way we try, you know, I really hope that we try to professionalize what we do, uh, make it a profession, make it, you know, a place to people can point to and say, you know what, I want to do that for my career. Um, so I think if that's a big challenge, obviously, because um, you know, people don't know enough about what we do internally inside of a rent-owned store until they get there. And so, yeah, um, I think AI is gonna be it's gonna be impactful for sure.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Well, I do agree. And hopefully this podcast, if it has anything to do with it, does kind of open up a couple of veils on how the industry works and what you can look forward to if you made this a career. So I I'm so glad to be a part of this industry. I never thought that I would get to where I am as far as being able to report on it and talk to the people that really help make it happen. But here we are, and here you are, and we appreciate your time. Everybody, if you have any questions, again hit us up at pet at the RTO ShowPodcast.com, send us an email, we will reach out to Chad and make sure it gets answered. And if there's enough questions, maybe we'll have them on again. Thank you so much, Chad, for being on here. And I will tell you guys, as always, keep your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.