Tectonic CEO Dusty Gulleson on Leading RTO Teams Without Micromanaging

Half of new platform rollouts fail, and the software is rarely the reason. Dusty Gulleson, CEO of Tectonic, joins Pete Shau to explain why so many RTO dealers buy a CRM, POS system, or routing app their teams never use, and what to do before you sign the next contract.

Dusty built a 100-person technology company over 27 years with no outside capital and a team that tends to stay for more than a decade. He walks through his people, processes, and platforms order of operations, how to read a vendor pitch before you ask a single question, why the red light in your reports usually points somewhere other than the real problem, and how decentralized leadership and a fair approach to mistakes keep good people in the building even when a competitor offers more money. It is an outside perspective that lands squarely on the operational challenges rent-to-own operators deal with every day.

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What You'll Learn

• Why leadership, and rarely the tool, is the reason a new platform sits unused
• What to listen for in a vendor pitch before you ask any questions
• How one-on-one interviews and a scored survey tell you what your stores actually need
• A way to hold people accountable for big mistakes without shaming them out the door
• Why a healthy work environment keeps employees when a competitor offers 50 cents more

Guest

Dusty Gulleson is the CEO of Tectonic, a vertically integrated technology company he founded 27 years ago that now serves roughly 400 clients across strategy, digital, managed IT and security, higher education software, and AI and automation. He has grown the company to 100 people with no outside capital.

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Transcript

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Welcome And Guest Setup

Pete Shau 0:08

Hello and welcome to the RTO Show Podcast, the award winning podcast as of RTO World 2026. Can't complain about that. You guys are all dialed in, but I want you to remember go to the website, the RTOShow Podcast.com, go on there, subscribe to the newsletter. We do talk about things on there that we do not talk about on the podcast. That is a lot more technical stuff. It's a lot more history stuff. It's a lot more what's going on today. You don't want to miss that. And make sure that if you want to sponsor the show and see better things like this, please go again to the website, rtoshowpodcast.com, go over there and be a sponsor because then you get to see more things like this. And my guest today, you know, Dusty, I like we have so many guests on the show that are so related to RTO. And today it's nice to be able to talk to somebody outside who can still relate to a lot of the things that we do and rent to own. And it's very, very important because, you know, I like to see things from the outside and not just inside out, right? Sometimes you get a different viewpoint and it makes a difference. So my guest today is Dusty Galton. He is the CEO of Tectonic, and he has a kind of particular way of looking at things, a transformation of how we start to where we're going and the processes and procedures that kind of get us there. So Dusty, how are you doing today? Doing great. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on the show, Pete. So one of the things that kind of stood out as we were setting this up was that you have original, a very original start to your life and how you got to where you are. And the creative ways that you decided to come up with these processes and this new way of thinking is really what kind of stood out to me. Because a lot of the guys that I meet, a lot of the guys in our profession, they have come from all kinds of different walks of life. And when you get stuck in rent to own, when you come to rent to own, it's like it calls you. If you really want to stay, it calls you. And we'll talk about tenureship later because the longer you're in it, the more you love it. But until then, it's getting your feet wet. It's finding out what we do. It's getting, it's, it's getting to a point where you understand what you're doing. And sometimes that takes a year or two. And we're going to figure out if Dusty can give us a roadmap to make it a little bit easier from point A to point B. So, Dusty, do me do it, do me in the favors, the listeners a favor. How did you get started

From Indonesia To Tech Consulting

Pete Shau 2:12

in all this? And where is the talk of India? Where did where did India come from?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

It's actually Indonesia, but very similar. I'm sorry, Indonesia, let me get that right. No problem. No problem. Well, Indonesia is where I was born and raised. So my parents were missionaries. So I grew up there from age zero to uh 18, which was a great experience, wonderful experience. Really loved it. Um, in fact, I'm going back to Christmas, taking my family there to show them where I grew up and all that good stuff. But um, yeah, we grew up in Indonesia, came to the States, and long story short, uh, you know, after I got married, moved to DC because of the Y2K incentives to do that with banking and some friends. And after six months, I realized, you know, that's not for me. It didn't work out. So I started doing some consulting one-on-one with nonprofits and associations, and one thing led to another. And we built some software content management systems early on when there weren't very many of them, and uh built those for a lot of the nonprofits. And from that, we built another division. And long story short, we're now 27 years old and we have five divisions. We serve about 400 clients nationwide, worldwide actually. And uh, we're a vertically integrated technology company. What that means is we do everything from the strategy to digital to infrastructure to DevOps to support and maintenance. So we're a mile deep with our clients as a partner, and that's given us a unique ability to see the whole life cycle of an organization growing as opposed to just doing one niche thing where you develop, you know, you're developing something and delivering one product for one specific transaction. We're seeing the whole life cycle of how the work we design and build for our clients actually helps them grow and transform. So that's been the history.

Feral Kid Lessons In Entrepreneurship

Pete Shau 3:56

Okay. So there was a there was a nickname given to you as you were younger called the feral kid. How did how does that how did it affect you then? And how does it how did it help you become to who you are today?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

You know, I I have no problem with the feral kid. When I grew up, uh, you know, my parents would take me out of the house when I was younger, about eight o'clock, you know, go do something and I'd wander from village to village and hang out with kids and you know, fend for myself, albeit not in a in a violent way, but just, you know, had to go figure out how to get my own lunch because I'd be 10 miles away from my house because I had to walk somewhere.

Pete Shau 4:31

Wow, 10 miles.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

All right, you know, I'd always bring a bag of marbles because kids back then and these villages loved playing marbles, and that's how I'd win a game and then get some money and go or trade some marbles for some lunch back in the day. So early on, I was very entrepreneurial, even as a kid from five years old on. And as I grew up too, you're not very rich as a missionary kid. And uh I started my own businesses, did a lot of tutoring, I did some product design for some folks when I was before I graduated. And then once I graduated, I came to the States, and boy, States makes business really easy. So it's really easy just to jump in and start.

Pete Shau 5:10

You know, some things about I've I've learned a lot when you talk to people about their younger lives, and if they had the opportunity to be out, to be open, play sports, talk to a lot of people, it really helps them later on in life because they're more open. They're more open to speaking to almost everyone, that kind of laid-back approach or that kind of segmented approach where it's like, I just don't, I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't, I just want to do this. And I went, that doesn't work for being an entrepreneur. It doesn't work for when you hit you know the boardroom and you have somebody to talk to.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, I think it's also, you know, when you're younger and you have more landscape to see patterns, your pattern recognition ability grows really rapidly. Where if you're just in a small niche suburban community with only a niche group of friends, only with a niche uh group of experiences, you don't see patterns that are outside of yourself, right? And I think growing up the way I did, the way my parents allowed me to grow up, uh gave me the ability to experience all kinds of things. You know, I remember in high school during the summer, my parents asked me what I was gonna do. I was like, well, I'm gonna go to Bali and go surf for the summer. All right, bye. And this is before cell phones, you know. I'd pack up and fly with my friends and live at a hostel and surf for, you know, a month and a half and then fly home for school. But these are the things that we did because I didn't know any different. My parents were very much not, they weren't very controlling. They were very much, oh, figure out things.

Why He Quit The COO Role

Pete Shau 6:32

Open fun. So, Dusty, I heard at one point in time you were the COO of a company and you walked away and ended up waiting tables because of of certain things. What did that teach you? What and why walk away? What was what was it that caused you to, you know, trail that path somewhere somewhere else in a different direction?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Uh you know, if you're not able to flourish somewhere and you're not able to see eye to eye with the purpose and the vision of the folks you're with, you shouldn't proud to be there. And it just caused a lot of distress for me personally. And I'd rather wait tables than uh work there. Uh there there's other things in there, but that that's a long, long time ago. And my intention is not to disparage that organization, but it was good that I saw what I saw when I when I started. But I have always waited tables. That was my fallback job back in the day. When I was young, I was 23, 24 years old. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. So I waited tables from like, I don't know, five o'clock in the evening, four o'clock in the evening to about two in the morning. Got home and then woke up the next morning and then I hustled and starting, it was e-resources, it's now tectonic back in the day. And uh it's a lot of hustle, a lot of uh long days. I think it took me a year before I quit my waiting my tables job, and then it took me another couple of years before I stopped working seven days a week.

Pete Shau 7:51

Was that something early on that that you were able to see, you know, that this isn't working out for me and being able to detach yourself from I am a COO, this is a great position to be in, even though I don't see eye to eye with somebody. Was that something early on that you were like, you know what, regardless of the fact, if I if I not, if I don't like where I'm at, this is an opportunity for me to do something that I still can do?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yeah, it's funny. I really don't care about titles too much, even in when we started our company, my own company here. About for the first 10 years, we all had business cards with no titles on it because I don't believe in them. I believe we have roles and we have functional roles that we deliver our services in, but I felt titles are are pretty much meaningless. And I knew for myself that title CO meant nothing. Uh, if you don't have the authority or the responsibility in what you're supposed to be doing, you don't really have the title then. It's just, you know, it's a garnish at best. And so I really don't care too much about that. And it's always it's just a thing when we do job descriptions now, we'll have a title, but we'll have what is your deliverable. That's the most important bit.

Pete Shau 8:55

Well, the reason I say that now is because now, you know, Tectonic is a hundred-person, $14 million company plus. You've got zero outside capital. I mean, for guys now that hear these numbers, they're ready to go. They're

Slow Growth Beats Hockey Stick Hype

Pete Shau 9:09

ready to grow. Is there something to this now where you've gotten from where you are to where you are now? And is it a slow-to-grow, or do you think burning it at both ends is the right way to go?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Uh, you know, I I don't think there's any one right answer. Everyone's different to a certain degree. But I think the hockey stick mentality is really detrimental to your mental health. Um, because it's not real. Even if it's real and you're you're using someone else's money to get there, it's not going to be sustainable for the long term. I think very few hockey stick companies be very sustainable unless someone's pouring tons of cash in for, you know, years of loss. Um I I think slow to grow. It's a decision between whether you want to be a sustainable substitute company or you're trying to make money for the sake of making money. So you want to make money for the sake of money, making money, you can do that. You can throw up a widget and sell the hell out of it, right? And get out of there. But if you try to actually build a business where you're creating value and you're investing in people's lives, investing in long-term growth, that takes hard work. Um, and it's it's not easy. I think burning your candle at both ends is very detrimental to your personal life, to your marriage. It was very difficult for mine early on. So I think there's a balance somewhere in there, but I'm much more of a slow growth with good quality. Quality is going to be kept more contracts. It always does. You do a good job, you'll get another job. That's not you know, people say, What's the best marketing? I'm like, just do a good job on the job you have. It's the absolute best marketing you can possibly ever have. Uh, because you will get another job. People are trying to just get a bunch of projects in. And I'm like, are you able to do those well? That's the question. Because you know, over time, people burn your name.

Pete Shau 10:52

Right. Right. I mean, RTO is a very relationship-driven business, and that's why I ask. And I'm glad that you said that. Can you explain to us a little bit before we start going into the uh people, processes, and platforms? Can you tell us a little bit what

Inside Tectonic’s Five Divisions

Pete Shau 11:04

exactly is Tectonic?

SPEAKER_00 11:05

So Tectonic is a I use the word vertically in a great technology. So we have five core divisions. We have a strategy division, we have a software web digital division that builds websites, content, structure, SEO, all the things that you need to be operational and successful digitally. We have a uh MSSP, if you're familiar with that term. We're a managed service security provider. So we manage the infrastructure, uh, help desk, and then you might have operationally in your organization that's non-digital. Computers, you know, printer, servers, data centers. Um, then we also have uh a SaaS product for higher education. All of them actually we deal with automating uh certain functions in higher ed for uh accessibility management and non-standard process automation. Um and then lastly, we have a well, not lastly, we have uh marketing and digital. Well, the marketing digital is part of our strategy as far as how we position you. But the last one is AI and uh automation, where you do a lot of work clients trying to help them transform. And honestly, the nexus with all this comes back to strategy. These all of these other divisions are supporting the initial strategy planning, structure, road mapping that we're doing. Then we have

Start With People Not Platforms

SPEAKER_00 12:23

other ancillary, smaller divisions like staffing, et cetera.

Pete Shau 12:26

With that many arms, I can definitely see why people, processes, and platforms are super important, especially to what you do. So there's a failure at first, I would imagine. How why is that?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Well, platforms don't take account on the structure of a company and how it operates successfully. Platforms come to you with a straitjacket of what size, the process, how it works, everything. It dictates that. Instead of actually you should be starting at people, how do they operate? And even further back, you know, you you had to ask me a question before the show, which is an important one. Why do these things fail and how to make them work? If you don't start with people, especially the leadership giving a good explanation of why you're doing what you're doing, everything else from that is not going to work really well. So your people have to understand the objective where you're going. Platforms don't. People have to see the value of what you're doing. Platforms don't. They don't care. Processes are important to see how things go from point A to point B. Platforms don't care. They just want the data when it gets there. Right? However, it gets there, they don't care. And so starting with platforms will not solve your problem. I mean, many organizations think they're gonna go out and get Salesforce, or they'll go and get HubSpot, or they'll go get a new website. Those are all wonderful if they actually support the objective of the why and that the people are bought into it and it the processes can feed into that platform. So yeah, the uh platforms is the absolute worst place to start when you're trying to transform a company.

Pete Shau 13:59

Yeah, it's funny you say that because you know, RTO dealers, we we kind of get pitched new sales software all the time, the the newest things, you know, POS systems, voice agents, uh, routing apps, something to make sure that it's it's one way best or the other. But what what are some of the things that our owner should ask before they even get into those type of things?

Questions To Ask Before Buying Software

SPEAKER_00 14:20

I think the owners shouldn't ask any questions right away. They should listen to what they're being pitched. And if the person that's pitching them is not asking them about their business, about their problems they're encountering, what issues they're dealing with, then that's the wrong salesperson. The best salesperson, the best person or partner you're gonna have that has a platform is the one that understand your business first, and then can come back and go, actually, this platform is not for you, or here's what we'd have to customize for it to meet your needs, or here's how we solve that problem for another client. That's what you're listening for. I think folks, what's that term? Uh benefits sell, specs tell, specifications tell, right? The benefits are what's the most important part. And if you have someone talk to you about the benefits for your business, and invariably it's always they're either solving a problem you have or increasing the value you already have. And those two things aren't being talked about, then I don't think it's a good platform for you. Honestly, specifications don't do anything for any organization. And they just really don't grow it. What grows it is what the actual outcome of using the tool is. So I wouldn't ask questions per se. I would listen to what their their pitch is. If a pitch isn't bent on how to make your business better, understand your business, see things. If they're always just talking about all the cool widgets and stuff they have in the platform, probably not a good fit for you.

APRIL’s Push For Accurate RTO AI

Pete Shau 15:41

You've probably asked your favorite AI question lately. So have your customers. And increasingly, so have journalists, policymakers, and people trying to understand rent to own. That's why April launched its Generative Knowledge Initiative, a nationally recognized and award-winning effort to make sure that when AI talks about rent-to-own, it has accurate, credible, industry-authored information to learn from. Why does it matter? Because if we don't define our industry online, someone else will. But April can't do it alone. Every member website, customer story, piece of local content, and accurate explanation of rent to own adds another credible voice to the digital conversation. Ready to get involved? Visit rtohq.org forward slash AI. There you'll find April's GEO toolkit, AI best practices, AI implementation playbook, and more practical resources built specifically for rent to own. That's rtohq.org forward slash AI, your starting point to help make sure the future of RTO is informed by the people who know it best. Us. You know, I didn't really think about that because uh, you know, as we sell, we always say that, right? What how do you solve the pain points? And make that person understand that we're there to solve their problems. And I think, you know, what you're saying and the other way around, it makes a lot of sense. Make sure that they're trying to fix your pain points. If it's a platform that's out there trying to help you, are they really gonna help you the way that they say they're

Getting Buy In And Avoiding Failure

Pete Shau 17:24

gonna help you? And I like that. I like that, I like that thought process. So if I get something, let's say I let's say I settle on it. It sounds like a good idea, and I get it. Sometimes managers are like, they're just not gonna use that, right? My guys aren't gonna use that. My guys aren't gonna do that. That isn't gonna work for us. Is is as that comes along, is that a people problem? Is that a is that a process problem? Is it a platform problem? How would you describe that?

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Well, in the order you just said it, I think it's a leadership problem. They shouldn't have picked a platform until they talk to their people. It's the same thing with the salesperson showing you and pitching you a platform. Leadership should go and say, what are the pain points that you're experiencing and trying to solve the problems that you are responsible for? This, this, and this. Okay, great. How are you getting about doing that and learning the processes by how they do that? And then coming to them and say, hey, if you could solve these pain points and the process was this, would that solve your problem? And they'd be a, yep. Then great. Here's the platform that we're gonna plug into so that you can solve your problem. That's a far more successful way of doing it because 50% plus of all platform implications fail. And it's not because the tool, generally speaking, but the other 50% is because there's a poor leadership, poor execution of not putting any people first and the process is second. They've always put the platform. So when you have a platform that's delivered to your team without the team having any buy-in, it will fail. It will 100%.

Pete Shau 18:50

You know, I I I have seen that. And uh I I've seen, you know, dealers get pitched a platform and they think that it's gonna work, it's gonna solve a lot of problems that they have because they think that, you know, I've got this new shiny button, I've got this new shiny way of doing it, whether it be a CRM, funnel system, whatever you want to call it, uh, and it comes through and the execution on it is not there. And then we think that it's gonna be there because it has everything like that. They got a good pitch, it seems like it's gonna solve all our problems. And then, you know, it gets down to the bottom line, and the guys don't use it like we we would expect them to or hope them to, you know, and it's it's it's the buy-in that would be uh abnormally great on everybody's level. So so what you're saying is talk to them, bring that down, talk to your people, and then see if you can marry those two together to see if we can have a good dance.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

I I think a lot of leadership, we spend a lot of time with clients. Um understand how they say we w we need a new website, we need this, and I'm like, okay, let's step up, take a step back, we facilitate the process of what are you trying to accomplish as a leader to want. You you obviously are panicky about something, or you want to solve this problem, or you think this will do it. Tell me why. And really, they're when they tell you why, they're telling you what the real problem is. And they're saying, and it has nothing to do with the platform. They're like, we need increased sales. Okay, why do you need increased sales? Because we're not hitting our our metrics, we're not hitting our board requirements, we're not whatever it might be. So you have to get down to what the leadership, sometimes the leadership is in a reactionary mode, and it's a really tough place to be if you're leading. And so we try to solve that problem, and then we outline, okay, now that we know this, let's talk to your folks and see if they can align with that. And they'll be like, okay, great. You know, and then you bring in your folks, you get them buy-in. And so everything has to be basically cascading for that leadership, why and the need, and everybody aligning. So if you can align your team, and then you can go out and find the platform. That's the easiest part. The hardest part is the alignment and people buy-in early on.

Pete Shau 20:53

You know, getting those things to line up, and and I'm curious, if you have quite a few, right? Some of our RTR dealers, they're one two-store operator, sometimes three-store operators. It might be a little bit easier. When you have stores that are spread out, let's say I've got uh I'm a 20-store operator, but that can encompass, you know, 15 different towns. You know, maybe some towns have one or two or three of them in it, but for the most part, it's one, unless you're talking about a big or an urban area like, you know, Tampa, Orlando, whatever the case is. But some of the smaller towns, it's just gonna hold one, right? Because you might have competition, you might have two or three dealers in there. Having two is just gonna be, you know, it does it defeats the purpose. How would you get how how do you say to a dealer that's looking at some of these new platforms and saying, I want to implement this and I do want to get the feedback from my people, but they're scattered over many different markets, over many different, you know, geographies. How how would you do that?

Interview And Survey Your Front Line

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Well, I mean, it from a leadership standpoint, I think uh sometimes leaders are tainted with their objectives when they try to get a platform. So they're they're always asking leading questions. Sometimes it's good to find a partner that understands. How to suss out a good platform. And so hiring a consultant is usually, I'm not very big on always hiring a consultant, hiring someone that understands technology, understands people, processes, and saying to them, hey, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. The way we accomplished it is he applied our own process for this to the RHP, whatever the leader might be. Um we do a lot of uh one-on-one interviews, and they can be remotely, it doesn't have to be. We talk and we start the conversation, tell me about your job. What are you doing? How are you doing it? What's going well, what's going bad? And you're basically just having a one-on-one conversation. And then we follow up after we do those interviews, we create uh synthesis of some of the feedback we got and create a survey then. And we want to create an objective survey that we can score objectively, and then we send it back out to those folks and go take the survey, let us know what you think. Those surveys then inform what the specs that we need to find in a platform, because in that survey you figure out what the processes are and you also do that in the interviews. And then you have a better job of actually finding a platform or sussing out if you found a platform X and it's the right platform, it'll validate that. And that way it's easier to come back as a leader and go, hey, you all said this. This is what you think is good. This is what this platform will do in order to address these things. And when you do it in that approach, it works quite well.

Pete Shau 23:23

Okay. I mean, I'm definitely interested in in seeing the feedback and how it relates to some of the things that we do. A lot of the times, and I think in in I don't want to say it's just our business. I would just say in business in general. We look down from our 30,000-foot view and then we go, I see these deficient areas. So I want to get a platform that fixes that. Like you said, whether whether it's the CRMs that you mentioned or some other ones, and you think you throw it in there, and for whatever reason, there's it's choppy up front, it doesn't solve the problems like you think it is. And then you get worried because you're spending that monthly fee on whatever it is per location to get it done, and it's not working out. So now you feel like you created kind of two issues out of one. I'm still not getting out of it the first issue that I need to create, and now I'm paying for something that's not working. And so it comes across, and you know, doing that and having the surveys is it's it's a great thought. I never really thought about doing it that way.

Signals Vs Root Causes In Operations

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Well, you want both the subjective data and the objective data, right? The subjective data is the story. It's really important to hear people's stories because that's really where the actual part of the matter is. And you know, you talk about the 30,000-foot view down. When you're up at a C-suite, you're you're actually digesting signals. You're not digesting actual sources of those signals, right? You're you're you're going, oh, I see a blinking red light here and a yellow light over there and a green. And you're like, I got to fix that red light. So let's fix that red light. And you're trying to fix a signal instead of actual the source of the problem. And so one's in one's a far away problem and it sees differently. But when you get down in the weeds and you actually talk to, say, the manager in that location or the team in that location, you start going, the problem's actually really this. That's what's impacting. So it might be, you know, sales might be low, but it might be because you have poor morale because you have a cancerous employee in there that's causing people not to want to come to work every day. Right. That the signal is not the problem. The signal is a signpost for you to go and figure out the problem. Um, and it takes time to do that sometimes. What it really takes is listening, asking the questions, allowing people to express their honest answer to it without any sense of retribution. And it might be, you might find out, well, hey, we don't really feel motivated because you guys seem so detached because you keep pushing platforms on us and it's exhausting.

Lead Without Consensus Using Objectives

Pete Shau 25:37

You know, switching a little bit, but but asking a question in that direction, because I want to talk a little bit about, you know, leading without consensus. But as you're listening to your people, let's take an issue from three different directions. You got a store manager, assistant manager, an account manager, and they kind of see the same problem in a few different ways. How do you make a call when nobody fully agrees? And I know that from a top down, you make the call that you feel is right. But when you have those three different situations, what what would you say is the right way to come up with a good answer that would satisfy the situation in the right way? Well, I'm a big Jocko Willink fan. I listen to a lot of his feet. I love I love Jocko Willick. I love, I love him. Extreme ownership is one of my as a matter of fact, the last newsletter that I put out has extreme ownership, as are our book club book of the of the week.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

So Yeah, it's it's it's great. One of the things he always preaches, and I agree with this, is that you should have decentralized leadership. Decentralized leadership looks like this. We have a common objective, not a singular uh team member that's important. It's the objective that's important, not the individual. And so when you talk about uh getting people to make a decision, I would get those three people account manager, the sales manager, and uh whatever location manager in our room, and I'd be like, here's our objective we're trying to accomplish. How can we achieve this objective? What what do you think your your contribution to this objective is? And if it's account manager, he's like, well, I can if it's increasing sales, I can go back and look at our existing clients and see ones that have more opportunity to buy. Sales manager might be, hey, I can join whatever. You know, and the the location manager might be, hey, how can I support you by showing up at these things? And so you you try to work the problem together. You don't work it from, why is account management doing this? Why isn't sales doing this? It's not about pointing a finger, it's about saying, what can we do to win together as an objective? And usually if you have good decentralized leadership where you say our objective is this, and they're already driving towards that objective, you're gonna have that collaborative buy-in already in the organization if you constantly reinforce, hey, we're objective-based. We're we're about the team succeeding together. Um, you know, I I love that's why I didn't want titles when I talk about titles on on um business cards. And one of the things I always tell our clients, it's just like uh I think it's Home Depot says it or Lowe says it, we work in all aisles. So, you know, if you happen to be at a client site and you're there fixing a computer and someone asks you and says, Man, I'm having such a dang time getting my bill correct, you go, Well, don't say go count a call accounting. You're gonna say, hold on a second, and you go and call whoever and say, Who can I put this person in contact with and let them know that they're having a problem right now? And then you get that problem solved. You don't just say, I'm sorry, go call accounting. I don't ever want to hear that.

Pete Shau 28:37

Right, right. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

So we work in all aisles, we solve problems.

Explaining Forced Change To Prevent Burnout

Pete Shau 28:41

You know, talking about that, you know, sometimes we do have to implement things. What whatever they are, sometimes it just has to be an implementation implementation of something going forward into the future. And uh sometimes you hit that rocky road. What would you say uh when a team or something like that has been going through a few changes and the you know the team changes? Force changes, you know, they're just they're they're coming at you, something that has to happen. Yeah, but then you you know you start getting the the guys that are like, is this oh here we go with another one? Is this really gonna make a difference? Is this really what we need? How do you handle those times? Sometimes, you know, RTO in different states really, because we're we're really a lot of state statute-driven, you know, there are different things in different areas. Sometimes some people are going through it and some people are not. Sometimes we're forced to pivot whether we can or not, but sometimes the guys just get burnt out, whether it's a good reason or a bad reason, they're getting burned. How do you get people to go through those forced changes and at least get them from point A to point B?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

People get burned out when they don't understand the purpose 100%. In your own life individually, you start getting burned out when you don't see the purpose of what you're doing. In a company, it's the same exact thing. If you have a forced march somewhere because regulate, you know, regulatory changes or things like that. Communicating is so important. And when you say our purpose as RTO X in this organization here is to do why, but we have some external pressure that's not under our control that's forcing us to pivot to this point, we still have a goal of doing this. This is our why. We're gonna solve that problem. And it might take us that we have to take this piece of software that's the only thing out there, but we're gonna use it for now. But I need you to know why we're doing it and keep people focused on that North Star of their organization or what they're doing. A purpose-driven organization that understands the direction and the leadership's constantly communicating that is gonna be far more successful in situations where they're forced to pivot. If you just do it without any explanation, without any people just wonder and they lose confidence in the leadership at that point. And when you've lost the confidence of your team, it's super hard to succeed.

Retention Through Ownership And Communication

Pete Shau 30:51

I agree with that a hundred percent. Now, part of that is also having people that have been around for a while. You know, tenureship plays a big role in some of the things you do at at Tektonic and really understanding, like, hey, I know this person and we have a great relationship. We've talked about this before, and I know that if we're either making a rule change or we're we're adjusting where there's a platform, I believe it because I've been there. Not only that, I know that they're gonna come down and talk to me about it. We're gonna have that conversation. But it's not easy to keep people in it, you know, the way I've seen run sometimes, you know, I would love to say that we don't have that turnaround problem. We do have that turnaround problem in RTO. So what do you do uh to keep your retention? I mean, you you you've got a retention rate of 12 or 13 years. I would love to see that in a lot of RTO stores. Now, that's not to say they're not out there. There are guys who are they're great operators and they have them. But there are some guys that are not, whether they're new, whether they came into a bad situation, maybe they had to get, like, you know, like you said, there's somebody bad there, they had to let them go, they had a bad apple. But what is your key to tenureship? What is your key to keeping those people around for a while at Tectonic? Sorry, I call escape, but I apologize for the interruption.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

The key to keeping people I mean, I'm fortunate. I don't think I'm there's anything miraculous about me personally, but I do think one, decentralized leadership, micromanagement is not living. If you live under a micromanager and someone that's always doing something, always interjecting, always trying to tell you you're doing something right or wrong or whatever it might be, you're gonna be in a bad position with your team. People get that's the quickest way to get burnt out because they don't have a chance to own the problem. Giving folks ownership of the area that they're in is super important. So decentralized leadership leads to ownership, leads to purpose. So I'm very much not a micromanager. Now, if I you show, if you see me showing up in a meeting with you often, that's not a good sign, generally speaking, um, unless we're, you know, there to give a an award or something. But uh I I would say that's number one, giving people the ability to not just own their business, own their work, but also fail at their work. Let them fail. That's when you as a leader, that's the most important part of leadership, is not identifying the failure, but helping them work through the failure. Because it's not failing's not a bad thing. Failing is is training. You know, you none of us were successful until we failed at something. And that's the only way you're gonna get good people. So we do a lot of when people screw up, we don't make a big deal of it. We go, hey, you tried. What would you do differently next time? Right? And you try to let people own the failure and own the opportunity to do better the next time. I I say the second part of this is just communicating. I think communicate people don't realize how important it is just having conversations with people and listening to them. As a leader, I spent most of my time on the phone. You know, my wife asked me what I did all day, and I'll be like, spent eight hours on the phone. What were you doing for eight hours? Just calling different folks, seeing how they're doing, being in a meeting, thinking about stuff with them, you know, laughing about stuff, just giving people the ability to live in the company, not just the company being a grind.

Pete Shau 34:07

So, you know, part of part of holding on to people is being able to be a people person, having relationships, having real conversations, being able to see to them eye to eye. I I I do see some I like the idea of not having titles. Unfortunately, RTO is very title driven. It is very title centralized.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

I thought you have to have titles for your for your clients for sure. They need to know who to talk to, right? I've given up on that battle.

Pete Shau 34:34

But you know, I really like the idea of being able to sit down on their level, and I don't want to say on their level as in they don't the understanding, but on their level as in the position that you're in. This is what you face every day. Let me come to you, let me sit in your office, let's have a conversation about what's going on with you because tenureship is so important. I I can't, you know, a lot of people they ask a lot of questions, and one of them is always, you know, I have a turnaround problem. And then later on in the conversation is I have a cash flow problem, I have a money problem, I have a profit problem. Well, those go hand in hand because you're constantly training. It's the same problem. You're you're you're doing all this training to really get to a point, and then when you cycle somebody out, not only is that very costly and expensive, it's time draining, it's people draining, and it's resource draining because now you're not doing what you could do versus training that person. And, you know, unfortunately, there there causes burnout too. And somebody's done it for a lot of times. They've had new hires coming in, they almost get numb to it, they forget to train like they should, they don't go to the bottom line like they should. That follow-through is I just want you to go over there and I want you to do what I need you to do. Just just go over there and get it done. And before you know it, that just that's just downhill spiral. And and it's it's it's hard to see because I've seen people go through it. And you know, that tenureship is is brutally important to you know, to being successful in any means, whether it just be you know how long you're open or how well you do it. So you describe leadership as a as a coaching function rather than a mandate. You know, what does that look like on a regular weekday, Tuesday afternoon, when something goes absolutely crazy, broken, you know, not working, and it just goes sideways. You know, on this podcast, I don't just talk about any company. So when it comes to rent-to-own, we talk about what works. If you're an RTO retailer and you're still running your marketing and your CRM like it's 2020, you need to talk to WoW brands. I've had their CEO Ryan Krass right here on the show. And what his team has built is the real deal. A full digital ecosystem made specifically for rent-to-own, websites and e-commerce that actually convert. A CRM built for our industry, not just bent to fit it. Vendor inventory management that keeps your ordering and pricing dialed in. WoWBrands isn't a general marketing shop dabbling in rent-to-own. This is their whole world, just like it's ours. Head to WoWBrands.com and tell them the RTO show sent you. That's WoWBrands.com.

Leadership Means Showing Up In Crisis

SPEAKER_00 37:00

You know, I I I think about a situation recently. I I was Sunday, I was at church, and one of our clients down in Seattle had got, you know, failure after failure going on in their infrastructure. And uh what do you do? You're like, well, I could just tell people to take care of it, but leadership is participating. Uh, you know, empathies are all about walking in other people's shoes. And I I told my wife, I'll I'll be back when I'm be back. And I got in my my truck and I drove down there and I said, Hey, I'm not the expert you guys are. How can I help? I just became hands and eyes for the guys working on a big network for a big car dealership down there. And so I think participating in the battle is important. I think a lot of leaders think that the you know, they shouldn't go and do the medial work. I think you learn the most as a leader when you well, first of all, if you call it menial work, you're not a really good leader. That's important work. But you learn the most when you get back into doing the the grunt work sometimes of plugging in wires, sitting behind a server farm, getting sweaty, getting cold, listening to your team members fight through a problem. That's so valuable. I can't tell you how those are the most meaningful parts for me as a leader is being in the thick of the uh the battle with them and learning. Because I don't think you can be a good leader, or you can't really grow something sustainable unless you see those battles. Because then you start to understand where they're coming from. And I'll tell you, there's nothing that's gonna create bigger bonds and more tenure with your team members, is when you come alongside them during a difficult time and work through them. Not everybody, but generally speaking, people appreciate the camaraderie. So you have to model what you want to see in your team. If you don't want to model it, don't expect it.

Accountability Without Shame Or Scapegoats

Pete Shau 38:54

Absolutely. Well, you know, talking about a little bit on the other side of tenureship is there's still the case for accountability. There's still the case of somebody who's been there for 12, 13 years. There still has to be a point where we hold our people accountable because not only is that how they grow, but that's how you keep the business going in a straight arrow. And so how does that look like? And and how do you have the right accountability so that people stay, but you don't seem like the boogeyman coming around the corner. You're not the Michael Myers hiding in the closet where they if they do something wrong, you come out and you're just all over them. Because that's not going to keep tenureship either. But there has to be that level of accountability where they know they've done something wrong, but they can also get through it. How do you handle that?

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, Jock always says there's no bad employees, they're only bad leaders. Uh, I agree with that 100%. I mean, there's the outliers, of course, in that scenario where you miss something there in the hiring process, but that's fairly rare. I think the worst thing you can do is shame somebody. I think there's not I think there's a uh a therapist I I used to read about in Seattle that said people would rather die than be shamed. And I think that's true because you can destroy someone's spirit. And the key thing is on accountability. It's not about showing them where they were wrong. The key thing about accountability is showing them where they can do better. If you approach it from that angle, it's going to be far better. If you go, hey, you screwed up here. I mean, I I have a great story with one of our seniors, he's a he's in the C-suite now. But about 15 years ago, that gentleman was in our just had a tech department and he erased the whole environment for one of our clients and cost us thousands of dollars in recovery for it. And we lost a client. It was a mistake. It was a stupid mistake. And he came in one day with a letter and put on my desk and says this is my resignation. And I said, I will not accept that. I said, You will never do that mistake again, will you? He's like, never. I'm like, great. So what are you gonna do differently next time you're in this scenario? I'm gonna do this and this and this. I said, Great. I can tell that to your team. Yep. It's gonna be part of your processes now. Yep. Great. That's you're I I just paid for, you know, thousands of dollars worth of training was done right then. Is a client, sure. But what's more important that that person become a better part of your team, more constructive? You shoot, I'd be a hypocrite, but I just say I made many mistakes that were catastrophic. How come he gets fired and I don't? Right? And I'm the leader. I allowed that to happen. So what am I gonna do? I want to recover from that together. So it's not just his mistake, it's not just another person's mistake in coming. It's a collective mistake. And leadership acknowledges that mistakes made by your team is mistakes made by you too. And if you don't have that attitude, if you don't have that servant leadership mentality, you will fail your team over and over again. And you're gonna constantly have that revolving door.

Pete Shau 41:44

I say one of the best things that we can do is get to get the idea that failure means termination immediately. You know, it didn't it's just that that is something that kind of just a felony. I mean, right, right. You got to make sure that it's within reason, right? I don't want anybody doing anything crazy. But at the same time, you know, I think that does happen a lot right now, is it that that idea that if I messed up, if I did something wrong, if I didn't get it right, that means I'm completely out the door. And it's like, no, I mean, who gets everything right all the time? I can tell you right now, that never happens, especially if you plan on being in leadership, if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you're gonna be at the 30,000 feet view, you didn't get there without making mistakes. And so most often, those are the ones that make the most mistakes. And it's not really about the mistake, it's what you learn from it and how you react to it. If you can grow from that situation and you can learn, then that just makes you more tenured, that makes you more experienced, makes you more valuable in a sense, because you know the ramifications.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

I I firmly believe that. It's uh it's just unqualified, unmitigated arrogance. How dare you? You you're saying you didn't make a mistake? You're gonna treat yourself differently. So do unto others as you're doing to yourself. And that's really a good metric of a leader. Do you if you screwed up, would you want to lose your livelihood? No. Would you like a chance to make it better? Yes. Well, do the same thing for your team member. Come on.

Pete Shau 43:10

Right, right. And I'm all for, you know, I'm all for being held accountable, but it make it fair, right? I mean, if it it it's I if I didn't mean to do it, you know, if I have to clean it up, if I have to be accountable for it, great, I can do that. But it's learning from it that matters. It's being able to grow from that that matters. You know, talking about growth, talking about tenureship, talking about being around, as we're getting through that and accountability, you know, there's another side of it

Keeping Talent Without Big Box Pay

Pete Shau 43:32

too. People who stay, it it's not always because I've heard people say, you know, uh, Jim left. Why did he leave? He left for 25 cents, he left for 30 cents. I it's a bunch of baloney. But when you know, there are times that it happens. And I do believe that it falls on a leader. But what do you do when you're a small, you're a small time guy? You only have one or two stores, and you can't pay like some of the big box guys. What are some of the ways that You keep your guys without being able to pay the money that the big box you know retailers do.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Yeah, I I think it's the quality of environment that they're working in. You can't buy good leadership. You can be a good leader. So you can't buy a good environment to people. So when people leave for the 30 cents, 50 cents, whatever it might be, they're not gonna last long there anyway. Because they're not there because they don't value the organization. They just value their own personal money. And I think if you can transfer it to where you give people an opportunity to own something, own their relationship with their job, own their responsibilities, people are gonna stay. They're gonna feel more qualified. I we've had employees that leave, left, and have come back and said, you know what, I'd rather work here because yeah, they weren't paying me more, but this is a better environment because I feel like I can grow. And people will, good people, there's always, I'm not saying this is 100% true for everything, but I say the majority, the 80-20 rule works. If you create a good environment where people are respected, they're given an opportunity to own their responsibilities, to learn to grow and not be micromanaged, they're gonna like it. It's it's not gonna be stressful. And there's a certain amount of stress that comes from where, you know, if you go for more money, you're treated as a commodity. And people that uh that work on the money system are are transactional. And the people that hire them that way are transactional. So it's not gonna be a safe space for them. So create a good environment. People, people want to go to a good environment, and you want those kind of people that value that environment. They're gonna be better for your clients and customers.

How To Spot Future Leaders

Pete Shau 45:35

So I'm curious with everything that's going on, and and and part of or you said it earlier, part of being having successful people is that growth aspect where they can grow and and and kind of learn. What do you do when uh when you see a future leader? How do you spot a future leader? One, and two, how do you know that you're not pulling them too soon?

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Yeah. Marks of a good leader is a one that can take responsibility and take criticism, constructive criticism, that is, and go, okay, I'll change this about it. One that's willing to be teachable is a good leader. I would say that's a one mark. Two, a leader that is really good at communicating. They consistently communicate, they communicate clearly. And we have a saying in our company good communication is good documentation, good documentation is good communication. Someone that's constantly documenting the processes, how they're doing things, why they're doing that, and communicating it to others. Those are leaders. Those are the ones that are already buying into like decentralized leadership when they're explaining the objective to their team or to their colleagues, hey, this is why I'm doing this. Here's where you can find that information. What do you think about this? How would you do differently? You listen for those kind of conversations that are going on in your organization or when you're in a meeting and you're like, I spark up whatever I hear that. So I'm like, oh, that's a really good thing. I do like people that ask, I wonder why. I wonder if we did it this way, what it would look like. And they post the question in the team in this wonder kind of context to help spur other people to think about it, to wonder. And what wondering does is it creates uh curiosity. And I love people that are curious. So it's one of our core values in a company. The first one is be curious. And if you're curious, you're actually gonna get the real information. It's like that whole thing with signals and causes, right? Someone who sees a signal reacts to it, but someone who's curious is gonna go, why is that where's that signal coming from? Why? And they go look at it and they go, I wonder what would be different if we did that, you know. So I when I think about finding good leaders, I'm looking for one that communicates well, that asks questions that spur other people to think, that are curious, and that love solving a problem. And you say, hey, what you did here didn't work, how would you do it differently? And if they react and go, Yep, that's what I do differently, that's a good leader.

Pete Shau 48:04

Okay. I love that.

Transformation Theater And First Principles

Pete Shau 48:06

So help help help me a little bit because I wanted to I want to go into transformation theater. How do you define the transformation theater for someone who's never heard the term?

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Theater is a good word for it because a lot of it is getting people to act in a different way uh than they normally do. And what I mean by that is you've got to get out of the day-to-day grind. A lot of people sometimes are heads down on what they're trying to do. Transformation is to go ask that question. I wonder if we did this differently. What would it look like? You know? And so you're getting them to act in a different role, kind of stepping outside of themselves and looking at the full picture and going, this is a problem I'm trying to solve. This is why we're trying to solve it. But I wonder if we did it differently, could we get to from point A to point Z quicker? Or just helping them start being curious and thinking about that. So it is a different mindset. It's very much, I mean, if you have everyone in your organization being curious, you're gonna have a fantastic organization. Because they're gonna be like, why are we doing it this way? Is that the right way to do it? I mean, I I finished Elon Musk's biography a couple months ago. And one of the things I really like that I walked away from that, that I try to apply in our company is the whole first principles concept where why was this done this way? This is the right way to do it. What are we really trying to solve here? You know, and that's really what transformation is. And if there's anybody that's been transforming things, a big nature has been Elon. I think his first principles approach is spot on.

Fix Processes By Cutting The Extra

Pete Shau 49:40

How do you feel about you know fixing broken processes that are occurring? Are you saying the why? So if you if you find something, you go to the why, and then you find that something probably could be done better. There's a process not 100% efficient. And I would love to say all processes are 100% efficient, but let's let's change that to more efficiently. How do you and how do you fix the process without making it an entirely more complex process?

SPEAKER_00 50:02

I think, you know, this is a great segue from that last point. You go back to what are the first principles of why we're doing this? You know, you can give an example like, you know, uh, what was it today I was looking at? I had a vendor that needed me to have a bunch of signatures done in order to do certain things. And my mindset is why are we doing this? And the vendor couldn't articulate it. And I was like, I wonder if they've thought about this, that they've added these extra steps. What are the benefits to that? Have they asked themselves this? And I apply that to my own life and the work I do. I'm like, you ask your why, what am I really trying to accomplish? So it's not just asking the why, but also what is the outcome you're really looking for? The why should match the outcome. And then you can get rid of a lot of superfluous stuff in that process. Because you're gonna find out does this part of the process support the why and the outcome? Nope. Get rid of it. Uh, a really good example early on, we were doing a lot of process automation for some higher ed and associations, and they would do survey induction questions for or onboarding questions for their their users. And they'd ask all the kinds of questions. And I would always, my whole job early on when I was sitting there in a strategy search, I goes, why are you asking that question? You know, and I'll I'll be hyperbolic here and just say, for instance, they would ask, what color pants do you like to wear? And I'm like, how is that germane to what you're doing? Well, we'd like to know, but why do you want to know? And so we found a lot of organizations just clean collecting data for data site because they're curious, but it didn't really meet the objective of what they were trying to solve. And so I see that in a lot of groups where they have this cumbersome process, they haven't really gone back and re-engineered it and cleaned it out and gone back to first principles.

Pete Shau 51:53

Yeah. No, I agree. Uh, you know what? I I love the idea of the why. Simon Sinek has a book, Start with the Why. And it really cut me started thinking of, you know, that's such an important question. It seems small, it's a three-letter word, but it's probably one of the most profound questions that you can ask to be successful is what am I doing and why am I doing it? It's so important to figure that out. And I love, I love the idea. I've always been fascinated with

Lightning Round Advice For New Managers

Pete Shau 52:16

that question. So I'm gonna go into closing. I'm gonna throw some questions at you that are a little bit different. These are a little bit random, but I I kind of just want to get your thought on them. So, what's the most common leadership mistake you see from good operators who are working hard but are still stuck?

SPEAKER_00 52:31

They're trying to do it all. When you're stuck, it's because you're not delegating well and you're not teaching your folks and then empowering them to do their job. I I think, yeah, I just talked with one of my VPs today, and I was like, he's like, ah, it's just this is too much. I'm like, it's too much because you're doing too much. I was like, what's your team doing? Well, I don't trust them to finish this. I'm like, well, that's a you problem, not them problem, then. You know? It's like, well, they'll fail. I'm like, yeah, maybe they will. Have you created a you know, good sandbox for them to fail? And you know, and so I think when a leader says it's too much, you know, why usually ask them why is it too much? Why are you doing what you're doing?

Pete Shau 53:15

Well, we go back to the why. You know, the why is so important. Yeah, go back to the why.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

But generally speaking, leaders that are burned out are not doing a good job in delegating, and it goes back to the people. Do you have the right people? Are you helping the people? Are they growing? Because generally speaking, you want to try to get yourself out of certain roles.

Pete Shau 53:35

Yeah, well, you want to you want to outgrow them to a sense in the in the right way. You want to you want to tackle it and move on. 25 years in, Dusty, what would you believe about running a business now that you would have argued against in maybe year three, four, or five?

SPEAKER_00 53:51

Okay. And there used to be a saying in my company that they would say, Dusty will ask you to speak to them in bullets. Bullet points. I'd always say, speak to me in bullet points. I just want to know the bullet points, the highlights so I can make a decision. And that was the worst thing I could have ever done, I think. I regret that. Because the the real issue, the real me of the issue that someone's talking about is not bullet points. The real issue is the story. And being very story-centric has changed me quite a bit. And just going, yeah, it's the whys the story tells you about the why, the outcomes, the travails, and you start to understand how someone thinks and where they're coming from. In bullet points, it's it becomes spec, you know, it's like the specs versus the benefits, right? You're just getting high level, you're not actually getting the reason behind it. You're getting you're getting the signals, but you're not getting the source. And uh stories, the source, the bullet points are the signals. And I wish I had done that earlier.

Pete Shau 54:52

I I I, you know what, uh, you called it bullets, I called it meat and potatoes. I used to say, just give me the meat and potatoes, I'll eat the veggies later, just what's going on? And I agree with you a hundred percent. Real quick, one book, one habit, and one piece of advice for our first-time store manager.

SPEAKER_00 55:07

One book, uh, yeah, we talk about Jocko. There's a lot of great books, but Jocko is very practical, and I really do believe in decentralized leadership, and that's really good examples of it. And it's like a thing I like about his books is they're high stakes, but the but they show the impact on them. So I would say let's let's add the Jocko book there. I'm listening reading Atomic Habits right now.

Pete Shau 55:30

I am about to read that. That is that is on my read list, actually. Yeah. Um I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

That's there. Just read another one on hospitality. I can't remember. Especially the U. It's the yellow cover. I'm finishing that right now.

Pete Shau 55:45

There was there was one that was extreme hospitality and there's radical candor. I know.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

I think that's extreme hospitality. That's what it is.

Pete Shau 55:52

Extreme hospitality was an amazing book that I I learned a lot about a lot in that book coming from where it was. And uh, you know, the hospitality business is not exactly what I do, but I learned a lot about being relationship. It's the same business, right? It is. It absolutely is. What would you say? That's same question. One habit and one piece of advice for our first time store manager.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

One habit that I fail at all, that that's why I'm reading Thomas Habits, is I I think your health is so important, getting good sleep, getting good, making sure you you feed your mind and you work out, get the exercise and endorphins. If you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of others. And I failed at that for many years. And uh, you know, part of my brand, you know, I worked out yesterday and I just felt great, you know. So it's it's just regulating your time for what's important so you can do the stuff at work. But if you're not, if you're not in good shape, you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of other people really well.

Pete Shau 56:54

I totally totally agree. I totally agree. I mean you got to focus on you. And and the and the thing is is that it almost sounds selfish, but it's really not. I mean, if you're not focusing on your lead, your leadership styles, if you're not focusing on your mentality, if you're not focusing on how you operate, leading others becomes that much more cumbersome. And it's just really, really hard to uh, you know, to talk to somebody about something when their mind, their body, they're just not into it. You know, and it it's it's it's hard. It's a hard sell.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

These habits cascade good examples. I'll have one more beer, I'll have one more drink, which then leads you to staying up longer, which leads you to not getting good sleep, which leads you to the next morning, being late for work, which then leads you to being irritated and irritable and reacting to someone wrong. And if you don't stop that cycle, it'll keep going and going and going. So it's it's it's really impactful and it's cascading small things over time. And I always tell our clients, you know our employees, we never lose a client from a big catastrophic event. We lose them from the drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And it's the same thing in a company. You lose people from your drip, drip, drip. And part of it is you not taking care of yourself and getting the hold of those small drips that cause people to be irritated and leave.

Pete Shau 58:09

So, what would be one piece of advice that you would give to someone who is newly in leadership, store manager, even assistant manager, maybe a district manager? What's what's a piece of advice that you would give from all your years of experience being the CEO of Tectonic?

SPEAKER_00 58:24

Talk less, listen more. That's it.

Pete Shau 58:27

I like that. That's why we're in a podcast, right? Because we want to we want to listen. We want to hear what's going on. Dusty, it's been great to have you on.

Where To Find Dusty And Subscribe

Pete Shau 58:35

Listen, if somebody wanted to, you know, find out more about you or more about tectonic, where can they get the tectonic information? What is it that uh they would look up?

SPEAKER_00 58:43

Sure. You can go to teamtectonic.com. That's teamtecto n i c dot com. Or you can go online and LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn, Dusty Gulleson. Happy to chat. I don't respond really rapidly to LinkedIn messages. I just don't have the time. Or you can just email me at dgullleson at teamtectonic.com. That's the best way to get hold of me.

Pete Shau 59:07

Well, guys, I will tell you if you want some transformation tips, if you want some just realistic, down-to-earth ways to get your team going in the direction, to get yourself going in direction, give Dusty a reach out. He's gonna have he's got a lot of practical things that he's come across. Even on this podcast alone, I think it's been a great conversation. I will tell you guys, if you guys want more conversations about this, make sure that you go to the YouTube channel, the Spotify, the Apple Podcasts, hit that button, make sure that you get notifications every time that we do it. So subscribing really does help. Make sure that you go to the website, rto showpodcast.com, go on there, you can get shirts like this so you can look as great as we do here on the podcast. And then I will tell you as always, if you guys have the opportunity, subscribe to the newsletter. There is a lot going on in the RTO industry that we don't get to talk about here, but we do have those conversations and the information coming at you for the newsletter. Dusty, I really appreciate you being on the show. I love talking to you. And guys, I will tell you at always get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

Thank you. Have a great day, Pete.