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The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Ever wondered how a $8.5 billion industry keeps millions of Americans lounging in style? Step into "The RTO Show Podcast" – where the mysterious world of Rent to Own furniture finally spills its secrets! Your host Pete Shau isn't just any industry veteran – he's spent 20 years in the trenches, collecting the kind of stories that'll make you laugh, gasp, and maybe even rethink everything you knew about that couch you're sitting on.
From wild customer tales to industry shake-ups that'll knock your rented socks off, Pete brings the seemingly mundane world of furniture financing to vibrant life. Warning: This isn't your typical business podcast – expect real talk, unexpected laughs, and "aha!" moments that'll have you looking at every lease agreement in a whole new light.
Whether you're an RTO pro who knows your depreciation schedules by heart, or you're just curious about how that fancy sectional ended up in your living room, Pete's got the inside scoop you never knew you needed. Tune in and discover why the furniture business is anything but boring!
The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
"Grow your business in 40 flushes!" with book author John Preston
What separates successful business owners from those who struggle despite their technical expertise? John Preston tackles this question head-on in this eye-opening conversation with Pete Chow on the RTO Show, introducing his unconventional business guide "40 Flushes to Grow Your Business."
Preston shares a fundamental truth that many entrepreneurs aren't ready to hear: your skill level has surprisingly little correlation with business success. "A bad plumber who knows how to run a business is going to be much more successful than a great plumber who doesn't," he explains, challenging listeners to shift their focus from technical expertise to business acumen.
The conversation explores five critical metrics that determine business profitability: lead generation, conversion rate, frequency of use, revenue per transaction, and profit margin. Preston emphasizes that pursuing volume (more customers) rather than profitability is a common mistake that can sink a business as quickly as having too few customers. He provides practical frameworks for understanding which of these metrics needs attention in your specific business situation.
Perhaps most valuable is Preston's insight on separating personal finances from business finances—creating what he visualizes as a brick wall between two piggy banks. This separation not only leads to better business decisions but also provides emotional stability at home. "Your personal expenses should not dictate your business decisions," he warns, explaining how "lifestyle creep" during good times creates vulnerability when inevitable business fluctuations occur.
The discussion takes a surprising turn when Preston reveals that internal struggles—self-doubt, fear, and decision paralysis—often prove more challenging than external business obstacles. His simple experiment with random alarms throughout the workday reveals how much time is spent thinking about work rather than doing productive work that moves the business forward.
Ready to transform your approach to business? Visit 40flushes.com to get Preston's book, or check out his free course on handling customer objections at ihateobjectionscom. Subscribe to the RTO Show for more insights that will help you keep collections low and sales high.
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Hello and welcome to the RTO show. I'm your host, pete Chow, and today I have a special guest that's going to talk to us a little bit about business, but in a very unique light. Now I have John Preston here, who has actually released printed media. He's got a book. He's got some great things to talk about, but the book that we're going to talk about today, and how it's going to affect you, is the 40 flushes to grow your business. It's an actual. It actually caught me by surprise. It was something that I heard. I was like you know what? That is very interesting. So, mr Preston, john, how are you doing today? I'm glad that you're on the show. Why don't you tell me where did you get this idea from and how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Well, actually it's an idea that's been brewing for a long time. You know, I work with a lot of business owners over the years, and one of the things that I've seen across all industry types is people are very good at what they do, but they're not so good at running a business doing it. You know, there's no requirement out there that says I need to know how to run a business before I start a business. So so often somebody is very good at what they do Maybe they're a good plumber and they think, well, I want to work for myself. So they start a plumbing business, but they never learned how to run a business, and the reality is, as much as we wish it was otherwise, is that how good you are has very little to do with whether you're going to have a successful business or not. A bad plumber who knows how to run a business is going to be much more successful than a great plumber who doesn't, and so I've always wondered how can we get an education to some of these business owners about some of the basics in a way that's not intimidating and doesn't take up a lot of time, because you know when you're running your business let's say you're a roofer.
Speaker 2:You get up six o'clock in the morning, you get everything ready, you go meet your crew at eight. You get up on the roof. You're working all day long. You come in at six, you collapse, eat supper, collapse on the couch. There's not really a window there for learning and in addition to that, at some point some people may not even realize they don't know you don't know what you don't know. And some people are intimidated by some of these big books or these courses or anything like that. And I've just spent a lot of time trying to figure out what tool could I create that would break that barrier, that would get through to those business owners in a way that was unintimidating, and that's kind of how the bathroom reader came along.
Speaker 1:Well, that's actually what really caught my eye, because I can't tell you how many times that I've seen that there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the rent-to-own space that are like I know how to do this, I know how to rent and I know how to collect, and those are the two main things. What they don't understand is there's payroll, there's leasing, there's insurances, there's all kinds of things that come along with that, and then on top of that, you can't run your business and be in your business. You have to do one or the other, and so if you're the best salesperson, you're not leading the show. That really makes it difficult to kind of happen. So as we stumble across this, I see 40 flushes on how to grow your business, and it really got me thinking. Where did that idea for 40 flushes come from? Is that like a bathroom reader that'll put me in the driver's seat on how to handle my business?
Speaker 2:It actually is, yeah, and in fact every day is broken down into a flush. So on the first day of reading the book, you've got flush number one. And flush number one, I think, is directly, right out of the box, relevant to what your guys do. When you look at it, the very first thing that a business owner has to recognize is how important it is for them, to be a business owner, to wear that hat. You know, when you're a small business, there's a lot of hats to be worn. There's the technician that needs to fix everything, there's the person running the floor, there's inventory management.
Speaker 2:If you're the person on the floor handling the renting and dealing with customers, you've got certain expectations and certain needs and certain risk levels that are involved with what you do. If you're the person managing resources, if you're the one keeping the books, you look at things differently. It's all about conserving, it's all about keeping this small area in control. But if you're the business owner, you have to look at it and say what do I need to do to get my business from where it is today to where I want it to be 10, 20 years from now? And that requires an entirely different hat and a different way of thinking, and what happens too often is business owners don't put that hat on often enough and they get caught with the other roles which they're not looking. Those roles are designed to get you through today and they're not looking into the future.
Speaker 2:So, right out of the bat, the very first flush takes a look at all of these different hats you're wearing and it does so in a fun way. That's the thing about the book is I want it to be very unintimidating. I don't want it to be something that challenges people's worldview to the point where they're like, oh, I'm just not going to learn that. I want it to kind of slip in in a fun way and just makes them think about their business. So, like on that chapter, for example, that flush at the end of it, as with all the flushes, there's a series of questions where you can take that day's lesson and reflect on how it affects your business and how it can relate to your business. Now, odds are, all 40 flushes aren't going to be something you can directly implement or directly do with your business, but I'm hoping if you can get 20 to 30 of them that do make you look at your business in an entirely different way that you've got a much better chance of surviving.
Speaker 1:So when you say 40 flushes, somebody is going to sit down and the idea is, in 40 flushes to have a better business acumen than they did before. The first flush, now flushes, we're saying chapters and they're going through. Now these flushes, how long does on average do they take?
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing we all know that all of our bathroom visits are varying lengths. So if you're somebody that gets in and out quickly, you're going to be able to handle that flush in probably five minutes. I mean, it's about a 300 word narrative that explains that problem or that issue or that concept. You've got a cartoon which kind of marries with the narrative. That's fun. You've got a joke relating to that which makes it memorable.
Speaker 2:You've got a little haiku that I write just to kind of get catchy in your brain, and then a poem, and so all of that can be really looked at in three to four minutes and really absorb the concept. The real time variable there is the reflecting on your business and taking that concept and putting it against what you're currently doing and what you've thought in the past and figuring out is there some way I can make changes in my business that reflect this lesson, that will make me more competitive in the market or will increase my sales or will allow me to keep my expenses down or will affect the brand in the community and the way people see my business, and that, obviously, if you're a real introspective person, you could spend hours thinking about most people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, won't, but you could, yeah, so what could I expect to see inside that? I mean, obviously the first thing you start off is you're right, just because I'm good at something doesn't mean I'm good at running it. I think that's the first thing that some people don't understand is that just because you do it well doesn't mean that you can manage a business well. So let's take that aspect and say, okay, within 40 different chapters or different time frames, I'm going to get better. What is something that somebody would come across in these series of flushes that you know you think is going to be paramount to get them from point A to point B?
Speaker 2:I tell you there's going to I mean different businesses are going to come across different things that affect them. I mean there's nothing in there that gets really into the technical aspects of your specific business. So a lot of that is reflection, but there are some basic fundamentals of business that really haven't changed. You know, everybody thinks all the time we're in this fast changing world and we are but what's changing are the tools, not the concepts, so the tools we use to implement that. So in this there is a lot of marketing, because marketing is an area where logic doesn't always apply. A lot of people have beliefs about marketing, beliefs about how advertising works, and they're just wrong. Marketing beliefs about how advertising works, and they're just wrong. That common sense would tell you it does this, but that's not the way it works, and so there's a lot of that marketing that comes into play, and one of the things I spend a lot of time on is helping business owners understand that their goal in business is not to have a lot of customers, and that's an area that a lot of people fall short on, because they operate their business for volume and ultimately, the goal of the business should be for profit, and not always are those two the same? Sometimes they are, but most of the time they're not. In fact, there are almost as many businesses in the country every year that fail because they have too many customers than fail because they don't have enough. Because if you've got a lot of customers but they're not profit generators for you, they end up creating more work and expense in smaller margins. So you want to make sure, as you plan out your business, that you're recognizing that not all customers are created equal, that there are customers that produce profit, and then there are customers that produce profit, and then there are customers that produce overhead and work and so. So that's a real key theme in there is to be able to honestly take a look at your business and say here are the changes that I need to make to drive my profit and here is the marketing strategy I'm going to use to make those changes. Here is the marketing strategy I'm going to use to make those changes.
Speaker 2:You know there are five metrics that come into play with every business that determines its profit. I don't care if you're Walmart or Lisa's Lemonade Stand. It's first of all, how many leads does your business have? How many people know what you do, know about you and know they need or want that service. That's the first thing. How many people are in that group? And that's your number of leads. And obviously some campaigns will increase your leads and that's a great use of advertising. But that's not the only use of advertising and sometimes you may have all the leads you want but you don't have. The second of those components is conversion. What's your closing rate? How many of those leads do you convert to customers? And so you know, maybe you've got a bunch of leads but they're all going to your competitor or something else. So what's your conversion rate there?
Speaker 2:The third thing is how often they use you. Does somebody use me? If you're a rent to own, let's say it's a big screen TV or whatever, whatever the product is, does somebody use you once and then next time go to Walmart? Or do they love the service you offered and they come back to you for all their needs? How often do they use you? Now, when you look at those three and you combine them, that gets your total number of transactions as a business. The fourth element is what's your revenue per transaction when somebody decides to do business with you, how much money do they give you what's your total revenue? And then, once you figure out the total revenue, the fifth one is what's your profit margin? How much of that money that I collected from customers do I get to keep?
Speaker 1:Now do you break that down per transaction? You're saying that not only to know on a monthly basis or whatever the case is, but you think you're saying that not only to know on a monthly basis or whatever the case is, but you think you're saying that knowing the profit on a transactional period or-.
Speaker 2:Not on an individual transaction, but on the aggregate, on your total. I mean, if you look at mathematically now, I don't know, I tried to stay away from math because a lot of people go glassy-eyed when you start talking math but when you look at it, if you take your total number of leads and multiply by your conversion rate, that tells you how many customers you have. If you take your customers and multiply that by how often they use you, that gives you your total transactions. If you take your total transactions and multiply that by how much the average transaction generates in revenue, you've got your total revenue. And then you take your profit margin against that and that tells you how much money you get to take home at the end of the day. And what most people don't realize is you can use marketing to drive any of those five metrics. So what you can do is if you take a look at your business and you kind of now, you're not, it's not an exact science You're not going to be able to say I have exactly four thousand two hundred and twelve leads right now, but you can have a ballpark in terms of how familiar you are with your, how familiar the community is with your business and then you look at that and you do all that, you can say, hey, everybody knows who I am. I've been around here for 20 years. Everybody knows who I am, they know what I do, they know what services I offer, but for some reason they're going to somebody else for these needs.
Speaker 2:Well then, your campaign needs to focus on giving people a reason to use you instead of somebody else. So your strategy targets that. Or maybe you're a business you've got plenty of customers, but they only think of coming to you for certain items. So your campaign in that regard could actually target your current customers and help them realize that, hey, I'm glad you come here for this, but guess what else we offer that you could come here and use? And often that's the fastest route to growth because you've got customers who already trust you. So you've got that.
Speaker 2:Or maybe you realize my gosh, people keep coming in here and getting these low-end, cheap items and my margin's not very high on there. What if I focus on marketing just my big ticket items? So now I start to manipulate my revenue per transaction and then on profit margin, there's things you can do there those require a little bit more creativity. I don't know that it would necessarily apply to the rent-to-own world. But say, for example, I'm a heating and air company and my marketing consists on advertising on the nearest big city's TV station. Well, I'm suddenly reaching customers who are three and four hours away from me.
Speaker 2:Well, look at the added overhead that comes with that travel and wear and tear on vehicles and housing and per diem with your crew and all of those things where I may want to shift and market closer. So I don't have those overheads and that will affect my profit margin. So I could actually develop a strategy that brought my expenses down. And you know, those are the kind of things that most business owners never think about and my goal with 40 Flushes is just to introduce them to those ideas. So if they are applicable to their business, then they've got a better way of looking at it and a better chance of succeeding.
Speaker 1:Is there a set of any part of this 40 flushes, Because it does all those things are definitely important, but those sound like they're for people who are just really kind of getting into it, maybe don't understand their business as much. Is there any set in the 40 flushes that might pertain to people who understand a little bit more? Or do you have, is this preliminary, like the 40 flushes, and then they can move on to another set of of uh business strategy that you have that says, okay, you've kind of got through this. Now you're on level two.
Speaker 2:Um, there's not. Currently I am working on 40 more flushes which will be coming out. Coming out, uh, probably in the spring. So that is on the works. But but really and truly, um, my hope is with this now some of the flushes do get into a little bit more advanced stuff, but my real hope with this is to get people introduced to the concept that there are things that they can learn to make their business better.
Speaker 2:I think people get into ruts, they get into habits, they get into routines. They can often fall into that. I know everything I need to know and I think even the most seasoned of veterans will learn something about that. I can tell you when I start going over you know some of these elements of profits or some of these how to, how to market yourself or how to decide when it's time to hire new people, I mean, and those sort of things in terms of using your assets. I think even your most advanced I know this stuff person is going to have some aha moments throughout the book and my hope is to give them enough aha moments so that they do look to see beyond that.
Speaker 2:I know what can happen in your industry. You know, as a business owner. You know, I would say I'm a business owner myself, of a different kind. I know how easy it is to wake up in the morning thinking about your business. You're eating your breakfast thinking about your business. You're at the office thinking about your business. You're sitting on the couch at night watching TV thinking about your business. You're at the office thinking about your business. You're sitting on the couch at night watching TV thinking about your business. And the last thing before you close your eyes to go to bed, you're thinking about your business. And it can be easy to think that the rest of the world is thinking about your business as well, because it's consuming you, thinking about your business as well because it's consuming you, and so it's very important to remember that most of the rest of the world doesn't even know you exist. They're not giving four moments of thought a year to your business, and recognizing that and helping put things in perspective is, I think, very powerful.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I talk about in one of the flushes is market research. Now here's the weird thing. When you hear that phrase market research, my guess is that you immediately started seeing flow charts and spreadsheets and all these numbers and demographics and all this stuff. That probably made some of your listeners pee down their leg. Well, the truth of the matter is there are some things that can give you great market research in your own community that costs nothing and are very simple. For example and I have my clients do this all the time Next time you're in Walmart, standing in line at Walmart, turn around to the person behind you and say, hey, I was just wanting, I'm considering buying this, but I was thinking about going to a rent-to-own store.
Speaker 2:Who would you recommend and see what happens. See what they say. Hey, I'm thinking about going over here to Joe's Rent-to-Own. Do you know anything about them? And see what they say. I'm thinking about going over here to Joe's Rent to Own. Do you know anything about them? And see what they say.
Speaker 2:You know you encounter people every day who are your potential customers, when you're standing in line at the grocery store, when you're at the bank or when you're walking in the park and just take that moment. But most business owners will never do that because they're afraid of what they'll hear, and the reality of it is you need to hear what people are saying about you. You know we talk all the time about branding and so many times people think branding takes part, takes place in the eyes of the person transmitting the signal. Well, you know, I know what my brand is, I know what my message is, I put it out on this. I did this commercial blah, blah, blah. But branding takes part on the receiving end and if the people you're trying to put your message to aren't seeing your business in the same way that you see your business, you've got a disconnect there that is stopping you from being as effective as you can be.
Speaker 1:That's actually so true, John. I couldn't argue with that at all. I think your brand is the perceived value of all the interactions that you're having every day with your brand. So out of the 40 flushes, let's say that we wanted somebody to really kick off. What do you think is one flush from your book that listeners can implement very quickly after reading it? And saying this will make a decent difference in what I do today.
Speaker 2:Today, I can tell you. The one that comes to mind and once again I will admit I'm not terribly intimately familiar with the rent-to-own world, so it's a little bit different, but I do know the one that I see over and over and over again across all industries is this connection that people have between their personal finances and their business finances. I mean, when you're running a business, you have to make 100% sure that there is a clear wall between those two. Because what happens and I see this over and over and over again where people make important business decisions based on personal financial struggles, and if you find yourself doing that, you're going to really struggle Because, let's say, you need a new piece of equipment, or you're thinking about carrying a new line and let's say let's say you need a new piece of equipment, or you're thinking about carrying a new line and there's going to be a little bit of investment in doing that, or you're thinking about a new marketing campaign. It's going to cost X amount of dollars. Whether or not you need a new dishwasher at home should have no influence whatsoever on that business decision.
Speaker 2:And I think about that flush in the book and the cartoon is literally this brick layer, building a brick wall between these two piggy banks to separate them, and so one of the things I encourage all business owners to do and I have to believe that this applies to your world as well is to establish a very clear salary for yourself.
Speaker 2:This is what you are going to make, whether you're having a good month, a bad month or whatever's happening in your business business, so that you have consistency at home, just like if you were working for someone else. You would have a set amount that you made that created your budget at home and allows you to live within your means. So many business owners don't create that barrier and they start to see a little bit of growth, or they have a good month, or maybe three or four good months in a row, and you have. What happens is it's called lifestyle creep. The next thing you do, your lifestyle starts to get more expensive. So you buy a new car, you move into a bigger house, you send your kid to a private school, and then your business has a hiccup, or COVID happens or something like that takes place, and you're not financially equipped for it because you based your personal lifestyle off the good times.
Speaker 1:That is exactly what I've seen happen a few times to a few people. It is hard to kind of sometimes navigate that when you haven't done it before, you see the good times, you want to know that the fruits of your labor you get to show, you get to enjoy, and then sometimes you kind of forget it's got to go back into the business or you do a little bit too late.
Speaker 2:And once again, your personal expenses should not dictate your business decisions.
Speaker 2:Your business decisions need to be made on what is best for the business and sometimes, if you've married that all together and you haven't separated that, you'll find yourself allowing your stresses financial stresses at home come in.
Speaker 2:I will tell you the other thing that separating those two does is it makes for a much, much happier home life, because when you shut up office at the end of the day you can go home and your spouse or your family doesn't have to be freaking out about the client that didn't pay or something of that nature, and you really can isolate the stresses of home or the stresses of the office from your home life because you've kept those barriers.
Speaker 2:Now, obviously, when you're first starting out, every dime of profit you go you make has to go home to pay the expenses you gotta live. But as the business grows, be aware of maintaining that fixed salary for yourself and do it just like you would in any other big company. If you were working for a big company and you were a valuable employee, even if you were the CEO, the income of the CEO of that company would be dictated by the best interest of the corporation in the company, not just on how much money that company was making. So really marrying that and separating it, I would say that is probably one of the biggest universal flushes I have in terms of that applies to every industry In creating this book.
Speaker 1:What would you say is probably your biggest lesson.
Speaker 2:My biggest lesson in creating this book and this is probably not what you're going to expect to hear to expect to hear my biggest lesson was you need to be embracing AI, if you haven't already. As I started working on this book, I used AI resources a lot for, for both organization and reviewing and everything no-transcript. A truth in today's world is businesses who are taking advantage and using AI are going to win against businesses who aren't. The speed with which you can complete stuff and tasks and the second set of eyes you can have on things that think through and anticipate problems you're going to have, or anticipate challenges. If you're not embracing AI, you're going to get left behind as a business.
Speaker 2:Right now, and in fact, one of the books that I'm working on is 40 Flushes to Incorporate AI into your Workplace, Because that's you know like I used to be very resistant to it. You know, because I was like you know what's it going to do with all the jobs, all this kind of stuff? And I came to the realization that I may not like a hurricane hitting the coast if I live in South Florida, but I can stand on the beach and yell at the storm all day long and it's coming, and it's really the same way right now, at this point in history, at this point in time, businesses who use AI have a tremendous advantage over those that don't, regardless of the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's coming. It's coming in all facets. It's already on our phones. We can access it on the computers. Honestly, if you're not using it, it's going to be easy to get left behind, not only because the workflow is going to be easier, but not understanding it also is going to set you behind.
Speaker 2:I would just ask anybody right now to go visit one of those businesses that kept arguing the internet wasn't going to change things.
Speaker 1:Back in the day, I think it was Henry Ford who said if I would have asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
Speaker 1:Now that it's here. They didn't really ask for it, but it's here. But if you don't use it, you're going to be using the horse and everybody else is going to be using the carrier. It's just a big difference in how things are going, and now that we're seeing this take event and these people trying to be more of an entrepreneur spirit, if you don't take advantage of the ability to be able to and I hate to say this, because sometimes it's necessary, but you got to reduce the labor or reduce the workload so that you can do more, exactly, if you're a brand new business, it's the easiest way to get it done. So let me ask you a question, then, because it sounds like you understand this from both sides of the business what was, what did you learn from probably one of your business failures that kind of led you to go down this road and say hey, you know what I need to create 40.
Speaker 2:Fleshes for the next guy? Well, that's a good question and it's. I guess I'm probably in a little bit of a unique situation there. I guess the the what I learned ironically, the things I learned that I failed at were really more of the mindset stuff that business owners deal with. When I first started my, my business and, you know, started building magazines and creating that world, I was ill-prepared for how loud my inner voice could be.
Speaker 2:You know, we all have an inner voice and part of the language but it's a jackass. We all have it that tells us we suck, that tells us we can't do this, that we're never going to be that guy, you're never going to be successful, you're not good at blah, blah, blah, and and I wasn't ready for it. Uh, and in fact there's a lot of chapters in the 40 flushes that deal with mindset and learning to control that voice. Um, and I think that's something you know, and I think part of that voice is also the voice that tells you that you're too old to learn. And so 40 Flushes was really my way of sidestepping that voice, because you may be too old to learn, to sit down and read a college textbook and you're not too old to do that, but you may just be out of practice, it may be a skill set that you haven't developed, but to read some comics and a few short narratives and learn from that, nobody's too old for that, nobody's too hardened against that kind of stream of information. So I hope that I'm able to sidestep some of that inner voice that tells people they've worked, they've done it this way for years, it's worked for them, I don't need to learn any new things. And so that comes into play because I really, as I mentioned, I was not ready for the internal struggles that come with being a business owner. I think I was full. I was probably ready for the external ones dealing with with a lot of that aspect of dealing with customers, dealing with everything else. But the internal struggles is where the challenges were, and there's a lot of that in 40 Flushes. Because I tell you it's interesting we have a tendency to judge what's going on inside our heads against what we see externally from other people, and it's easy to think that I'm the only person sitting here struggling with this voice telling me I suck. And it's very eye-opening to realize that everyone around you has their own version of that voice that's telling them that.
Speaker 2:You know, I come from a science background. My degree was in physics. Almost I was one class short of having a physics degree, then decided I didn't want to be a physicist, but it was science. I've always been science-minded and I used to hear people talk about, you know, affirmations and manifestation and meditation, and all of that stuff seemed like hocus pocus mysticism to me. It just didn't make sense that you could say a few nice things in the mirror and, lo and behold, the world kind of changes its path to make you successful.
Speaker 2:What I have grown to learn is that all of us are right on the razor's edge of being paralyzed by fear and self-doubt and indecision, and we spend far more hours of our day trying to decide what we're going to do next. Then we actually spend doing something and as a result of that, we're very inefficient. We just don't get nearly as much done as we should get done with the hours in our day.
Speaker 2:An interesting experiment that I do with a lot of people I work with is I'll have them hand their phone to a spouse or a co-worker or somebody and this co-worker or spouse will just set 10 random alarms over the next week during working hours so you don't know when they're coming.
Speaker 2:But you're sitting there working and then, boom, alarm goes off on your phone, and I encourage people to stop and write down what they're doing when that alarm clock goes off or that alarm goes off on their phone, and then what we find is is usually, out of the 10 alarms that go off during working hours, usually they will only actually be doing something for like three of them.
Speaker 2:The rest of them they'll be sitting there thinking about work or worrying about work, or trying to decide what they're going to do next, or playing on their computer to avoid work and being aware of all of that extra time that you're you're wasting. And here's the thing worrying about work is not actually work, but it's more exhausting than work, isn't that the truth? It feels like you're doing something at the end of the day. It's why so many people get home at the end of the day and think what did I do today that moved my business forward? And they'll realize that they worked their butt off and didn't actually accomplish anything that moved their business forward. And it's because of those kinds of things and so that was my big learning experience is that everyone is dealing with that and if you can find ways and tools, affirmations, meditation, whatever it is that moves you a little bit away from that edge, so you're not spending as much time doing nothing and instead you're doing something, you'll see your business grow and move so much faster.
Speaker 1:So with all this application, all this knowledge, you've kind of accumulated something a little bit different and you kind of put it out there a little bit different. Talk to me about, you know, some of the trials and tribulations that got us here and what you think are some of the good things that have happened. What's probably the most surprising success story that you've witnessed or you've heard of from somebody utilizing the 40 Flushes book?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, 40 Flushes has only been out for a short period of time and actually just FYI on the back cover. I actually promoted one of the other sources that I'm creating an online coaching platform, and so I had to get that live before I really started letting people know that 40 Flushes was out there, so we're really on the early edge of that. From a success story perspective, I can't say 40 Flushes yet has produced a great success story. It's just too new. But what I can say is, over and over and over again, I've worked with people using the techniques that I talk about in 40 Flushes to help them feel more confident in what they're doing as a business owner and allowing them to base decisions in their business on knowledge instead of gut and learning. And one of the things that I talk about in one of the early flushes in the book is make sure that you're always evaluating yourself and your success based on data and not emotion. And I've seen over and over again, once I've been able to work with people to get them in the habit of evaluating themselves on data instead of just how they feel they can really move their business forward, because our feelings lie to us a lot and, for example, I know I talk a lot about marketing, but I really do believe this is an area where a lot of business owners fall short.
Speaker 2:I've seen people that will get heavily invested in social media as their marketing tool, which social media is incredibly powerful incredibly powerful, but it can also be fool's gold, because a business owner can get very caught up in looking to see how many likes they have. For example and I know every person listening to this if they were to go to their own personal Facebook page and look at all of the businesses that they have liked over the years, they're not going to remember liking 98% of them. They're going to say I don't remember them, I don't remember them, I don't remember them. Everybody's list of places they've liked includes hundreds of businesses that they have no idea existed, don't ever remember why they liked them, they just happened to stumble across. So a business owner will look at that and say, man, I've got a thousand likes and emotionally they'll get pumped about that and feel like that's actually growing their business. But it's not actually connecting to a thousand people, because 980 of those are folks that saw you once and haven't seen you since.
Speaker 2:And when somebody. I've seen people that will get a, you know interact with a customer on social media and and that customer will become a. I mean that person will become a customer, they'll buy something from them and and they will get an emotional high because they can actually track that customer from. Here's our first interaction, here's the exchange we had. Here's their credit card information where they bought. They can get so high and think that that campaign is growing their business, but they actually needed 100 customers a month to sustain their business and that's just one of them. So you have to remember and you have to put those things in perspective, because emotionally, that customer felt awesome, but the reality was it represented 1% of what you need to sustain your business, of what you need to sustain your business, and so you have to be able to look at your business objectively from a data perspective and not allow the emotions to drive your decision-making.
Speaker 1:So if you could say wrapped up and like, let's say, three solid pieces of business advice coming into it for the listeners. What would you say those three would be?
Speaker 2:Okay. Number one is get your head right every day, whatever you have to do, so your head is in a good place when you walk in at the beginning of the day and you start your day, so you're able to make decisions rationally and not get overwhelmed by fear and self-doubt. That's number one. I don't care what your business is, you have to get your head right in order to be effective at running it, and so many people struggle with that, and so find what it takes for you personally to get your head right. The second thing is build your business based on profit and not volume, because that's a big thing. Almost every business in the world falls victim to the Pareto principle. Every business in the world falls victim to the Pareto principle, where 80% of their profit comes from 20% of their customers. And identifying who those 20% are and putting extra effort into growing that 20% to 25%, 30%, 40%, instead of trying to get volume Because when you flip that equation around, that means 80% of the work you're doing and the resources you are exhausting is only resulting in 20% of your profit Spend less time on that and more on the 20% that's producing 80%. And then the third thing is know what the community thinks about your business. Whatever you have to do to get a real assessment of what people think about your business is make sure you do that, because what you think they think about your business is never going to match what they think about your business unless you have accomplished that through a very strategic marketing plan to make that happen. So those would be the three things I would say. To really, really grow your business is make sure of that. And you know a great simple question on that one.
Speaker 2:I love asking business owners this question and it always astounds them. It always astounds me the answers I get Is I love asking a business owner why would I choose you over your competition? Why would I, out of all of the plumbers out there, why would I choose you? And what you're going to get is two different responses. You're either going to get a long list of awards they've won, skills they have, qualifications they've done. You know all of this is going to be this long litany of reasons why they should be chosen, and in which case I always just remind them. Well, as a customer, how do I know that if you don't tell me? Because no one else is going to tell me all that stuff if you don't Right. So having those reasons does no good whatsoever if the customers don't know them.
Speaker 2:The second thing is and this is the more common reaction is, it'll be deer in the headlights. They actually do not have a legitimate, valid reason why you would pick them instead of their competition, and that happens all very often because it's just something people don't think about and, in fact, because of imposter syndrome, secretly they're thinking well, I would probably use Ted myself over here because of that, and so in that case you really need to think what can you create as a business? That is that point of difference why people would choose you instead of your competitors.
Speaker 2:Now, one of the things that comes to mind in specifically in your industry and rent to own is the concept of rent to own in and of itself, that is a concept that you need to market, because I can tell you, with the disposability of goods nowadays and with sites like Timu and things like that, where you can get dirt cheap versions of something, people need to be sold on the idea of rent to own on things as opposed to just buying some very, very cheap version of it, and so that's one of the things that I think needs to be a centerpiece in the marketing there is selling people on the values of the rent to own concept, as, in and of itself, it goes back to what I talked about about leads being one of the components of that generates profit leads.
Speaker 2:The first thing of leads is do people know what I do and why they should use my service? Do people know what I do and why they should use my service? And I think that should be a centerpiece for your industry to remind people that there are huge advantages in the rent-to-own world as opposed to buying some cheap piece of something on T-MU. Well, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I believe that we're working on that. We're trying to make that happen. Yeah, I love the book. I love the idea. I love some of the concepts that you're talking about In closing. Where would I go? This is something that you said you started. You've got this book. Now it's out, it's new, but you've got some other things going on. How would somebody find you If they say you know what?
Speaker 2:John. I really liked this. I want to keep on going. How are they going to find you? What information can you share with us so they can keep on following you? Well, I can tell you. The first is I'm doing an aggressive social campaign across five platforms LinkedIn, facebook, youtube, tiktok and Instagram. So look up the JP Business Academy on any of those five platforms and you'll find a lot of my stuff. The book is 40flushescom.
Speaker 2:One other thing right now that I'm really focusing on that people fall short on is sales training. A lot of people don't have good sales training and there's really not sales training available for a lot of folks in terms of you know, you can obviously pay thousands and thousands of dollars for top level teachers and stuff like that, but even those tend to focus more on gimmicks rather than making you an actual, better salesperson. So I have a new site out called the Sales Success Society, which, for a hundred bucks a month, you get access to a bunch of courses, support groups, everything else. I would encourage you to check that out, the SalesSuccessSocietycom. But I'm also offering, if you just want, something that will have an immediate impact on the way you interact with customers and understanding customers the way you interact with customers and understanding customers.
Speaker 2:I have a free course available on handling the objection I need to think about it. This is what really throws a lot of us for a loop. We've really talked to the customer, we're convinced they're ready to buy and then the last thing they do is they throw us a curveball by saying, hey, I need to think about it. And that really almost never results in a sale. So I have a free course available to anybody on handling that objection, how to prevent them from getting to that point in the first place, how to recognize what they really mean by that objection and how to get past it and close more deals while the subject is still fresh on their mind. To take that course, go to IHateObjectionscom.
Speaker 1:I like it. I think you got the right name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ihateobjectionscom, because that's the objection that leaves most sales stomping the ground and scratching their head because you thought you had a sale and then suddenly they need to think about it. So if you can learn to handle that, you can improve your sales overnight.
Speaker 1:That's it. Well, listen, john Preston. I do appreciate you being on the show. I really have taken a lot of pointers actually out of what you said because I really think it is important. Listen. If you guys want to hear more, he's giving you the information. Go see it. If not, you can always come to see me. You can email me at Pete at the RTO show podcastcom, or you can go to the website at wwwthertoshowpodcastcom. Listen to this. You can also listen to it on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple podcasts or anywhere that you get your listening things. Remember that you go onto the site to get some of your swag. We definitely want to sell you a shirt so you can look as good as me day to day and show the show. Show, john, your love. Make sure that you click and subscribe and I will tell you guys, as always, keep your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one. Thanks, pete.
