Larry Sutton: The founder of RNR Tire Express whose motto is "Serve not Service" and whose purpose driven stores bring quality tyres to consumers regardless of financial circumstances.

In this episode we are celebrating the career to date of Larry Sutton.

Larry is the founder and CEO of RNR Tire Express. Larry established RNR Tire Express in 2000 in Tampa, FL as a company that gives consumers access to quality, name-brand tires regardless of budget or financial circumstance. It’s since grown to over 190 locations in nearly 30 states with many more stores planned.

Larry’s been interested in sales since high school, when he sold inventory from his uncle’s TV and appliance business to his teachers.

After a short stint in college, and a short-lived path down business ownership, he was introduced to the rent-to-own industry.

In our conversation we talk about how he didn't really have an appetite for school but had a work ethic and discovered that sales was a route to make money for a car and to help his mother. Larry admits that the first time he had his own business to run he didn't have the business acumen to make it succeed, and he explains how he then got a job and learned how to help the dealers he was selling to run their businesses. We discuss how he applied that learning when he got his next opportunity in business ownership. That allowed him and his partner to build up a chain of 30 stores which they eventually sold out to a larger group and Larry shares his experiences back as a corporate employee. Let's just say, I don't think I've heard anyone laugh so much about being fired before.

And of course we talk about building RNR Tire Express, how Larry came across the opportunity somewhat by chance and how he was able to bring his experience of Rent to Own in consumer appliances to the tire and custom wheel business. He explains why he didn't set out to become a franchisor and how he and his team have set about creating a common culture across almost 200 locations as a purpose driven organisation.

I loved this conversation with Larry and I am delighted to have this opportunity to share his life and career story. I look forward to hearing what resonates with you.

If you're listening for the first time, hello, I'm Andy Follows. I'm a trusted advisor to senior leaders in the automotive industry. I work alongside them and their teams to enable Fulfilling Performance. If you'd like to know more about Fulfilling Performance, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. In it you will find easily digestible ideas on how to increase levels of performance and fulfilment for yourself and those you lead and care about.

Website: RNR Tire Express

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Episode recorded on  4 April, 2024.

Transcript

Larry Sutton: 0:00

They were buying a lot of companies for just stock, they were just giving them stock. Well, I wasn't going to do that. What I did was worked out a deal where they gave me half of the money upfront. And the other half was a note payable that was convertible to stock. So that if they win, that money can get more valuable. If they lose, I don't lose anything, I get my money. So that's the way I structured my deal. And so, so I did that for three years, and found out right away, that I was not going to be a good corporate citizen.

Aquilae: 0:42

Welcome to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers to share insights to help you with your own journey. Here's your host, Andy Follows

Andy Follows: 0:56

Hello, listeners, Andy here. Thank you for tuning in. We appreciate that you do. We're also very grateful for our guests who generously joined me to create these episodes so that we can celebrate their careers, listen to their stories, and learn from their experiences. In this episode, we're celebrating the career to date of Larry Sutton. Larry is the founder and CEO of RNR Tire Express, Larry established RNR Tire Express in 2000 in Tampa, Florida, as a company that gives consumers access to quality name brand tires, regardless of budget or financial circumstance. It's since grown to over 190 locations in nearly 30 states with many more stores planned. Larry's been interested in sales since high school where he sold inventory from his uncle's TV and appliance business to his teachers. After a short stint in college and a short lived path down business ownership, he was introduced to the rent to own industry. In our conversation, we talked about how he didn't really have an appetite for school, but had a work ethic and discovered that sales was a route to make money for a car and to help his mother. Larry admits that the first time he had his own business to run, he didn't have the business acumen to make it succeed. And he explains how he then got a job and learned how to help the dealers he was selling to run their businesses. We discussed how he applied that learning when he got his next opportunity in business ownership. That allowed him and his partner to build up a chain of 30 stores, which they eventually sold out to a larger group. And Larry shares his experiences back as a corporate employee. Let's just say I don't think I've heard anyone laugh so much about being fired before. And of course, we talk about building RNR Tire I'm coming to you from beautiful Tampa Bay in Florida. Express, how Larry came across the opportunity somewhat by chance, and how he was able to bring his experience of rent to own in consumer appliances to the tire and custom wheel business. He explains why he didn't set out to become a franchisor and how he and his team have set about creating a common culture across almost 200 locations as a purpose driven organisation. I love this conversation with Larry and I'm delighted to have this opportunity to share his life and career story. I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. If you're listening for the first time. Hello, I'm Andy Follows, I'm a trusted adviser to senior leaders in the automotive industry. I work alongside them and their teams to enable Fulfilling Performance. If you'd like to know more about Fulfilling Performance, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. In it you'll find easily digestible ideas on how to increase levels of performance and fulfilment for yourself, and those you lead and care about. Go to Andyfollows.substack.com, or use the link in the show notes to this episode. Hello, Larry, and welcome and where are you coming to us from today? Great to have you thanks very much for joining me. I'm excited for our conversation.

Larry Sutton: 4:16

You're very welcome, I am too.

Andy Follows: 4:17

I know little bits about your business just from what I've picked up from the internet. But I'm really looking forward to hearing your story. So as I do with all my guests, I'd like to ask you Where did your journey start? Where were you born?

Larry Sutton: 4:29

I was born in a small town in Oklahoma, a city called Ardmore, Oklahoma in 1951.

Andy Follows: 4:36

Tell me a little bit about that. Then what was life like when you were growing up? What sort of jobs did you see your mum and dad doing? Start with that?

Larry Sutton: 4:45

Actually, you know, I don't remember the first couple of years obviously. My real father actually and Mother separated when I was very young. I think I was two years old. And so I didn't really grow up with him. didn't know him. In fact, I didn't know him or meet him until later on in life. But my mom married a my stepfather. When I was about four. He was in the Navy. And so we ended up moving to Shreveport, Louisiana. We were there for a while, because he was in the Navy. We actually went to California for a couple of years. We went to Tennessee for a couple of years, got in the navy life, you got to travel around and do different things like that. I had an older sister, Judy, her real name was Vicki, and we all would call her Judy. It's a funny story how that happened. But and then later, I had a younger brother, who was his father was my stepfather. I was very much into sports. loved baseball. Actually, my most memorable time was in a town called Arlington, Texas. We lived in Arlington, Texas, from fourth grade to the seventh grade in Arlington. And that's probably one of my fondest memories of childhood because I was on a really good baseball team. Won a city championship I really, really remember that a lot because that was a that was a formative years. I would spend every summer growing up out at my grand folks in a place called Cordell, Oklahoma, and they had a farm every summer without fail. I would go out there and spend the summer and that's pretty much where I got a work ethic installed in me because on a farm, you don't mess up. You do everything you're asked to do. And if you don't you hear about it. I chopped cotton one year I pulled cotton one year, Bale hay one year, you always had daily chores. You were slopping the pigs and milking the cows and doing all the farm stuff. That was probably the most formulating times of my of my life. Yeah, I learned a really good work ethic at a very young age, which is served me well.

Andy Follows: 7:01

That's really interesting. I was going to ask you because with your stepfather being in the Navy and all those moves? Yeah, I was gonna ask you, how did that affect you? Did it affect you all those moves changing schools? I imagine quite a lot

Larry Sutton: 7:13

You know you would think so. But I don't remember being really unnerved about it. It was just like, that's what we're doing. You know, okay, new school, new friends, more people to create in your life and more opportunities to meet more people. I mean, I didn't obviously think that way. You know, doing it just was naturally was the way it was. So I don't recall that. Most of the drama, in my childhood, my stepfather was actually an alcoholic, and also an abuser. He never abused myself or my siblings. But he abused my mother terribly for years. And that's why when they separated when I was 12 years old. And so that's when we moved back to Oklahoma. And I was in Oklahoma again until I was going to my sophomore year in high school. And then my mom decided we were going to come to Florida because her brother had a business here and wanted her to come work for him. And I had actually come out the year before I had a summer and had worked at his business. So when it was time to move again. Now that move, I didn't want to do I had I had gotten into music and started playing in a band. And of course, every 13 year old thinks he's gonna be a rock star when he's in a band so that I thought my future is this, this is where I'm going. But we moved because that's, that's what you do. And I immediately got in a band here. In fact, I was in two or three bands before it all came clear that rock stardom was not was not going to be my path

Andy Follows: 8:54

a different type of rock stardom was in store.

Larry Sutton: 8:58

Yeah, there you go.

Andy Follows: 9:00

That's really fascinating. Thanks very much. So I also noticed you had that stability, that consistency of going to Oklahoma to stay with your grandparents every summer. So there was that? Yeah. And perhaps also, if you're good at sport, and you come across anyway, as I'm speaking to you now, and in the videos, I've watched a very positive, outgoing friendly guy. So it sounds like do you find it fairly easy to make friends when you move to different schools?

Larry Sutton: 9:25

Of course, making friends is the easiest thing. It really is easy for me to do. I'm somehow was born with this eternal optimism that everything's always gonna be okay. I'm the guy that I can distinctly remember this. When I changed from Little League to the next league up. I was on a horrible team. I went from a championship team to being on a horrible team. And I was playing third base. I distinctly remember a game. We started off in the first inning we were down like 15 runs and Coming into the last inning, I think we were down about 18 or 19 runs. And I'm on third base going, come on guys, we got this, we can do this. They're all looking at me like well, what are you talking about?

Andy Follows: 10:16

Even I, with a very limited grasp of baseball can tell that's probably not going to happen.

Larry Sutton: 10:22

Exactly. And again, it's it's not a skill. I think I was born with it. I think God blessed me with it. And that was, you know, we all get different blessings. And I think that was my blessing is that I got eternal optimism.

Andy Follows: 10:36

I'm just curious. It sounds on the face of it a fantastic blessing to have, have you, you know, can you think of times during your life when that has just energised you through really difficult times?

Larry Sutton: 10:51

Absolutely. Many, many, many, many times.

Andy Follows: 10:55

Yeah, everything's gonna be alright. Nice. Staying at school. We know you're good at making friends. You've got baseball, in the band, what was your role in the band.

Larry Sutton: 11:06

In the first band I was in I played bass guitar, and and sang backup vocals. That was the band that was in in Oklahoma. And then we moved to Florida. I joined a band, but they already had a bass player. So I became the lead singer in that band. I was in that band for a couple of years. And then another band was getting put together and they call me and I went over met the guys. I really liked them a lot. And so they wanted me to come be their lead singer. So I joined that band was in that band for probably three years. And nothing ever big. I mean, we played teen clubs and had battle of the bands and parties and stuff like that. The first band I was in in Florida, we actually cut a record that made it as far as the local jukeboxes, but I don't think it got it got outside of Tampa.

Andy Follows: 11:55

So we won't be able to find that we won't find

Larry Sutton: 11:58

I wish I had a copy. Like I tell my kids about that. it. They're looking to me like sure dad. Where is it? I don't know.

Andy Follows: 12:09

One last thing then I guess about school? What about subjects? What about the academic side? How would your teachers have described you?

Larry Sutton: 12:17

As a brown noser, probably, yeah, I think I managed to talk my way into more passing grades that I ever studied my way into, perfect example, my uncle had allowed me to get on the sales floor at the TV and appliance store he owned. And in my senior year, I think I sold every teacher something, they either got a refrigerator, a washer or dryer or whatever. So I had a great relationship with my teachers. But I'll be honest with you, I was not a good student. I didn't like to study. It just seemed like a waste of time. I wanted to go do other things.

Andy Follows: 12:57

Right now. That's interesting segue if you like, so school wasn't the route to what you wanted to do. School was something you had to get out of the way before you could, you'd be allowed to go and do what you wanted to do. Yeah,

Larry Sutton: 13:08

pretty much was my thinking. That's not necessarily always correct thinking. But that's pretty much the way it was. I hadn't heard it described like that. But I love that description.

Andy Follows: 13:19

And this is the uncle who'd brought your mum down to Florida, you'd already worked for him for a year. And that was your first job was that?

Larry Sutton: 13:28

Well no, I my first job was a busboy at a Pancake House in Oklahoma I was 13 I think it was making like 75 cents an hour or something like that. That's my first job if you don't include paper routes, because when I was growing up, you could get a paper route when you were 10. And so I had a paper route in Texas. So I guess that was really my first job. But officially it was it was probably the Pancake House. And then when we were moving here, the expectation was that I was going to work for my uncle, which turned out to be another blessing because he really became my mentor in business. And that really got me to the place where I could you know, figure out what it is I'm gonna do.

Andy Follows: 14:14

Yeah. Now we know how the story is at this point. We know that it's gone phenomenally well, we know you have a very successful business. At that age, though. When you were first starting out. What were you looking for from work? Did you have an ambition to build something really big? Or were you looking for something to pay for your fun time so that you could play music and

Larry Sutton: 14:36

honestly, I wanted to make money. But the purpose of that was because I wanted to get a car and I wanted to help my mom because she's a single mom with three kids, you know, trying to make it so it was twofold. Both of those things were probably the driving motivation.

Andy Follows: 14:51

Sounds pretty wholesome Larry.

Larry Sutton: 14:53

Yes, it's probably sounds more wholesome than it was. Be be an artist. The one was a responsibility. The other one was work.

Andy Follows: 15:05

yeah, sure. And you'd already started selling to your teachers. And I read somewhere that you really liked selling when you first got into selling, so I guess this is, as soon as you got into that environment, you know,

Larry Sutton: 15:19

oh selling was like when I learned how to sell, that became my road to everything, it was like, Oh, you can really make a lot of money doing this, and, of course, a lot of money at that time was I can make as much as $25,000 a year if I sell Yeah, we're on the delivery truck, I'm gonna make it back then four bucks an hour, three bucks an hour, when you sold you got on commission, you know, you control how much you made by what you sold. And I kind of really got a hold of that concept. And what this is good, I've got a, I've got a road map here that could get me to do what I need to do. As matter of fact, I went to college, but only for about three months, I got registered, I got classes paid for. And then I found out that a couple of my classes were during Prime selling time at the store, prime selling time where the most traffic was gonna be and the biggest opportunity to make money. So what do I do I start skipping class, so that I could be on the sales floor and make more money. And I did that for about the first three months and then realise that college was not really my kind of, again, education, to me didn't seem like the road to where I wanted to go. I just wanted to do what I do well. And so that was my brief college career.

Andy Follows: 16:43

Yeah, no, that makes absolute sense. So you had the incentive. Now you'd seen the commission structure, you see what you could make from selling. You had the work ethic from being on the farm, all those times and you had strong reasons to want to support your mom and get the car. So a good recipe for you wanting to lean into sales. When you figured it out the Larry Sutton formula for selling what would that be?

Larry Sutton: 17:10

Well it's a process at first, you have to learn to listen, I now know today and knew at some point that you could listen to your way into more than you could talk your way into. But I learned that the hard way because I was in the store one day when I was in my last year of high school. And my uncle called me up. He called me Sutton. He called me by my last name. Sutton, yes, sir. Hey, I just want to let you know, I had a good friend of mine, called me. And they told me that you might be the best salesman they ever met in their entire life. And I went really awesome. I'm really glad to hear that. He said, but then I asked him if they bought it. And they said, No. And so I asked him why. And they said, I don't remember him asking us to buy. And at that point. He blows up into this, you dumb ass object, and he just racked me over the coals. It says, When are you going to learn to shut up? And listen? Because he said, You know, I know you know everything about that refrigerator, I know your product knowledge is immense. They don't need to know all of that. They just want a refridgerator. And that was a very valuable phone call that after that, I started to learn a few more skills. At first I was just all about, I would study the product knowledge and tell everybody how great it was. And that was working for me most of the time, people would be like, Okay, sounds good, let's do it. But then I found out that not everybody is that way there are people you have to listen to find out what are their needs? What is their motivation? What is their fears, and find a way to solve all of that had been asked for the order. And that's a process that it was just, you know, you learned it as you go kind of thing. And then once that kind of all came together. And again, I had a great mentor in my uncle, because he had already learned all of that and he was passing it on to me whether I wanted it or not.

Andy Follows: 19:15

So at first your methodology at first of understanding all the products and talking to people about that worked. That worked for a certain number of customers, certain proportion of the customers would say thank you, but then you realised that there's other groups of people who I'm going to have to do differently. It sounds like you you worked that out fairly quickly. With your uncle's help.

Larry Sutton: 19:34

I got all the help I wanted learning that.

Andy Follows: 19:38

And how long did you stay working for your uncle?

Larry Sutton: 19:40

At 20 years old, my uncle came to me and said, Hey, I'm thinking about buying this little store up in Ocala, Florida. And I think you should be my partner in the store. And I said well, what's that look like? He said, Where are you gonna go run it and build it up and then you know, you'll have up percentage of ownership and I said, Alright, so I moved to Ocala. At that point, I was great at selling. But I didn't I was gonna ask how did that translate? know a thing about running a business. So I sold a lot, but I just didn't know all the other aspects of running the business. And so that lasted for a couple of years. But then he kinda got frustrated, wasn't making a lot of money and he, and he said, Hey, we're gonna close that down. And he said, so you can either come back here, and do you know, go back on the sales floor, or I have a company that's looking for a really top salesperson that I think a really big opportunity for you. It was a television manufacturing company by back then the name of was Curtis Mathes. And it was a brand name. He said, you'd be like over most of Florida, you'd be selling to dealers, and blah, blah, blah. He said, are you interested in that? And I went, Yeah, so he got me in an interview, the interview went well, and I took that job and became a territory sales manager for this company. And then really did well at that, again, I it's easy for me to make friends. So going into dealers and doing that. The education I got there was amazing. Because most of the at that time, most of the TV and appliance dealers were just good repair man that became a business or they but they weren't business educated. So what Mathes did was their philosophy was to teach us what we needed to teach them about running a business. So they literally kept sending us to seminars, put on by SMU, Southern Methodist University. And we would go to these two or three week seminars and learn cash flow, financial statements, the difference in cash flow and profit. And, and it was just amazing. I mean, all of a sudden, your eyes are just open to this, this whole new world of information that you didn't have. And so my job became not just selling my dealers the televisions, but sitting down and making a business plan with them and doing it. So it was that was just a really, really neat education time and learning time. And so I did I was with Mathes for probably four or five years. At one point, my boss called me and said, Hey, I got an opportunity for you. And I said, What's that, and he said, but I forgot to say, like a typical company back then you got paid the most commission after you passed your quota. So every year they would adjust your quota, and adjust your territory. So if you massacred your quota and made a fortune, the next year, you had a smaller territory, and the quota didn't change. So I ran that game about three or four years in a row, I kept doing it, even under those circumstances. And I was getting kind of like, they're going to limit how much money you make, you're not going to make over$80,000, because we're going to change your territory and so forth. So one of my dealers in Central Florida was changing careers. He wanted to close his doors and get out of business. And he wanted to go into some other financial he was a stockbroker, or something like that. And so they were a pretty good size dealer for me. So I went over to my biggest dealer in Florida, in South Florida. And I pitched him on the idea of opening a store in this new market. And he said, Well, why don't we do it together? And I said, Well, what do you mean, do it together? So we'll be partners. He said, I'll, I'll put up the money. You do all the work, and hire the people train, get it ready to do everything. Bah, bah, bah, owner, and I said, Okay, well, what would that look like? He said, Well, I would own 51%. And you would own 49. He said, What do you think of that? And I said, Yeah, I said, 49 sounds like a job. And I already have one. So no, he went really? I went, yeah. Okay, so I said, but I'll go ahead and get get the store open. I'll find the location I'll get all that done. And I will do that because I want that stores open so I could sell put TVs in it. And so he's okay. So we do we got like we get the store open we find a location like we get it rented. I hired the manager, I get everybody trained, we open the store, and it just takes off like crazy, but really, really good results. And Bill, Bill was the guy's name. He comes over for a visit. And he sees all this. And he's just delighted. I mean, he's just over the moon. And he's like, this is really great. He said, You've done an amazing job and and so we got had lunch. And he said, what's keeping us from being partners? And I looked at him right in the face and I said, 1% He looked at me and said, You mean, if we do 50 50, you'll do it. And I went, Yeah, stuck his hand across the table and said, Okay, 50 50 I said, Okay. And so we've that day, we formed a partnership with no papers. I resigned from Mathes and gave them two weeks notice, and then took over then we opened a second store. We had three stores open before, we had the legal documentation about the partnership, because it was just trust. You know, we trusted the speed of trust. Yes, yes. And that became a 30 store, group of stores that was very successful. And, and sold those for a lot of money, when when we when we sold those that was, so it was a really, really good partnership.

Andy Follows: 25:53

Okay, I'm gonna jump in there. Because there's a few things you've said that I'd love to explore with you. So when you were at Mathes, and you went to that education process there, where they were teaching you how to help your customers run their businesses, at school, you hadn't been that interested, hadn't seen the point. This wasn't gonna be the future. At this point, you could see the point when you were learning this, yeah, all of a sudden, this became interesting.

Larry Sutton: 26:21

Oh, yeah. Because as they got better, they would buy more. And I would make more

Andy Follows: 26:28

Finally finally, it was starting to ring your bells. Yeah, this is the. So that's just one thing I noticed, which I thought was worth mentioning. And then what was the difference than the 49? To 51? I mean, it's 1%. It makes a difference, obviously, in terms of the structure of the business, I guess, and the decisions and who has ultimate authority and so on? Yeah. But clearly, there's a was there a bit more to it than that?

Larry Sutton: 26:58

Funnily enough, given what I know, today, and had I known it then, I would have jumped on a 49 deal, you get 49% of the equity with no investment, that's a heck of a deal. I just didn't know it. At the time, I thought it was just, you know, to me, a partnership was 50 50. And anything other than that was a job. I was so simple minded, that it was just so funny, and simple minded that it is, but I ended up we ended up 50 50. And really, it would have been would have been the same thing. It wouldn't have made a bit of difference. If I was 49, or 50, I'd have made almost the same thing and that, but I just didn't know it. I guess it conceptually in my mind, a partnership was 50 50. Anything other than that wasn't a partnership

Andy Follows: 27:48

No, I love how you're laughing at it now. And I'm just imagining how stubborn he must have thought. Who is this guy?

Larry Sutton: 27:57

So you're saying one percent is gonna make a difference? Yeah. Okay.

Andy Follows: 28:04

And now you had all this learning that you'd picked up from Mathes, you're able to apply that now in a way that you hadn't when your uncle first put you into a store, right back in the day. Excellent. And you grew three stores very quickly before you'd signed the paperwork even. And then grew it to 30 stores over how long was that? Larry, I missed that.

Larry Sutton: 28:26

That was that we were probably 17 years. 16 years, right? So we we had a very conservative growth model. And what that was, was that we would never seek a new store until the last store we opened was profitable. So that way, we kept the debt down in a reasonable area. And I'm kind of debt adverse to a point probably more so than I need to be. But Bill was the same way. And we decided that we would never open a new store until the last store we opened was profitable.

Andy Follows: 29:02

So how old were you when you sold these 30 stores? I was 45. And you said you sold them for good money. And we know you had 50 You had 50% and not a lot of debt. Right.

Larry Sutton: 29:14

But I did have an ex wife that I had to split that with which by the way is not a problem at all, because she deserved every every bit of it. But yeah, so we for the first time I had a big lump sum of money. And what happened was, we sold it to a company that was doing I guess you'd call it a roll up. And they were buying a lot of other companies and trying to put this big thing together. So I sold it. But I had a three year workout agreement with the company that was buying it because they were buying businesses then bought six or 700 stores across the country. And so they wanted me to be the A VP in charge of the southeast region. And, and I had to do it for a minimum of three years as part of this deal. They were buying a lot of companies for just stock, they were just giving them stock. Well, I wasn't going to do that. What I did was worked out a deal where they gave me half of the money upfront. And the other half was a note payable, that was convertible to stock. So that if they win, that money can get more valuable. If they lose, I don't lose anything, I get my money. So that's the way I structured my deal. And so, so I did that for three years, and found out right away, that I was not going to be a good corporate citizen.

Andy Follows: 30:49

I was waiting to ask you, how did you find the transition from owning a business to being the VP?

Larry Sutton: 30:56

For six months it was fun. Because they were said, what are we going to do, we're just going to open a lot of stores, we're gonna open these guys were not debt adverse at all they lived on let's go open stores. And we we literally opened in the first year, in the southeast, we literally opened 26 new stores, and bought a whole bunch of other people that we had to convert. So I was busy, I was having fun. Until I started getting these phone calls from people I don't know, telling me that I need to do this, or I need to do that, or I need to do this. And I'd be like, No, I'm not gonna do that. They will. What? What are you talking about? And I said, That's not what I do. I do this. Yeah, but I'm so and so. And so. And so I said, I don't really care who you are. I'm telling you what I'm gonna do. And then my boss, but the big boss would call me go, why do you do this? Why do you do this? I said, Jim, this is these people are nuts. They're just nuts. They're asking me to do stuff. I said, what I do is I go to stores, I train people, I get results. I don't sit in an office and put projections down and do all that you got to you got a whole house full of accountants that do that, I don't do that. I do this. And I said, and I'm not going to do the other because it's not, that's not what I'll do. He's fine. I'll blow this over. But you got to be more agreeable. And constantly, they were flying everybody out to Texas for these meetings that were just I felt like a waste of time. And, and they were struggling because they had bought so many stores with so many different cultures that it was not working. I mean cultures over here. And cultures over here, and cultures over here. And it almost got miserable. I mean, to the point of I didn't even like going in now I'm now I'm like I went from loving what I do to just not wanting to be a part of this. But I was stuck. I had this agreement that I had to fulfil. So they owed me about $6 million in in the note. And so they kept running out of money is what happened because they were doing all this crazy stuff. And so we got we went out to this meeting. And I'll never forget it. We flew out to Texas and went to the meeting. And the CFO was announcing that they had just gotten a $20 million credit line from this people so they could start buying product again. And the guy I was with weirdly had the last name was Sutton as well. Wayne Sutton, but we weren't related. He took the same deal I did in the central part of Florida. And so he and I were like, because I kind of coached him on here's what you did, you know, kind of thing. So we were going back to the airport that day. And he looked at me and I looked at him and he said, I'll bet my note call gets there before yours. And I said I don't think so already told them to send my we got our money out because we were scared. We weren't gonna get it at that point. And he and I used to talk about how nice it would be to get fired. You know, we wanted to get fired. And nobody was ever firing us. And now we're saying, well, now they don't owe us any money, they'll surely fire us surely we'll get fired now. And so, three or four months later, I get a call from my boss, the EVP of the company says, Hey, we're going to come out and see me and this guy named Mike. He's a new VP. We just we're gonna go out and see and I said, Great. You want to visit the stores? What do you wanna do? He said No, no don't want to visit stores we just want to come and meet with you at the office. And I'm thinking, it sounds like I'm getting fired. Thank god. I called Wayne and I said, Wayne, are they coming to see you and went? Yeah, I said, buddy, I think we're getting fired. We're like, Oh, this is great. This is great. So they come in, they get into town. I pick them up at the airport. And Jim, my boss. He looked like somebody had Just beat him up with a stick. He was just all the pressure, I guess. And so I said, Hey, I'm gonna run by a store so you guys can meet some of the people. So ran by our store, took them by this house I was building showed him the house I was building and my country club, and we go back to my office. And they both look nervous, you know, and I went so what have we got? So Jim says, Well, you know, we're gonna have to make some changes in personnel. And I'm like, Okay. And what is that? He said, We need you to get rid of one of your regions. And I went, alright, I said, so I suppose you have one in mind? And he said, Yeah, we want you to get rid of this guy named Andrew. Andrew happened to be a guy I brought on, he was in my original company. And he was probably my best regional manager. And I said, I'm probably not gonna do that. They both looked at me and excuse me. I said, You guys aren't looking at numbers. I said, Andrew did this and doing this and doing this, I said, if I'm gonna get rid of a region, it's going to be one of these weenies that you made me hire from one of these other companies is not going to be Andrew, they both looked at each other and said, Okay, well give that some thought, give us a call. We gotta go back now. And, and the whole thing was like, you could have done that on the phone. You could call me and gonna have this conversation. It was just the kind of thing I was getting tired of that kind of management. And I was like, wow, how stupid was that? So I called Wayne. I said, I think they're coming to you next. He said, so we're not getting fired, I went no

Andy Follows: 36:50

The disappointment.

Larry Sutton: 36:51

They're gonna ask you to get rid of somebody. And I'm gonna guess it's Pete, who you brought with you? And he said, Oh, well, I'm not doing that. I said, Yeah, that's what I told them, just tell him you're not doing that. So if you just rolled through to another eight or nine months, they needed to get rid of it. And a guy I knew that was building another company, big company, decided he wanted to buy it. So they come in, and they make a deal. And they buy it. We all fly out to Texas. And we're all getting our time to go in and talk to this guy named Bill Morgan started, who was the president of that company, and a longtime friend of mine, who we'd known each other a while. So I go into my meeting with Bill and Bill, start saying, Hey, man, I'm so glad to have you on board. We're, just really jazzing me up. And here's what I have in mind. And I said, I said, Bill, let me let me stop you. I already got my money, you know, we already got our notes. We got our money. I said, I gotta tell you, buddy, I said, I've spent the last year and a half, two years, going to stupid meetings with no purpose. getting calls from strangers telling me how to run my territory. When I said, horrible buys, without due diligence, I said, I'm really not gonna be a good guy for you. I'm done. They've worn me out. They've taken my joy away from this, this kind of thing. I said, I'm just not going to be I'm not going to be good. He said, Well, I was thinking, you know, this, and this and this. I said, Bill, I'm just not there. And he said, All right, well, what do you want? And I said, I don't want anything. I just want out of my contract. And he sits back true story almost sounds unreal. You can't make this stuff up, sits back and he goes, how about I pay off the balance of your contract, and invest, all your options? That sound good. And I'm looking around the room. Like I said, nothing. You just gave me $700,000. I think I'm in the Twilight Zone. I think I'm in The Twilight Zone. I'm like, okay. That's when I learned. I almost detest public companies for a reason. And that's one of the reasons everybody gets a golden parachute, because they're protecting themselves for when they go. And I thought he could have gotten out of that for nothing. And he gave up 750 I'm like, that's what I don't like about what I deemed to be the big corporate thought processes. But anyway, I walked back outside, Wayne said, How'd it go? I said, trust me, tell him you want to leave and tell him you want nothing.

Andy Follows: 39:44

Wait for it to happen.

Larry Sutton: 39:46

It's crazy. It was crazy.

Andy Follows: 39:49

And I can imagine him now saying that Larry Sutton's a tough negotiator. Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by ASKE Consulting who are experts in executive search, resourcing solutions and talent management across all sectors of the automotive industry in the UK and Europe. I've known them for almost 20 years and I can think of no more fitting sponsor for CAREER-VIEW MIRROR. They're the business we go to at Aquilae when we're looking for talent for our clients and for projects that we're working on. ASKE was founded by Andrew McMillan, whose own automotive career includes board level positions with car brands and leasing companies. All ASKE Consultants have extensive client side experience, which means they bring valuable insight and perspective for both their employer and candidate customers. My earliest experience of working with Andrew was back in 2004, when he helped me hire regional managers for my leasing Sales Team at Alphabet. More recently, when Aquilae was helping a US client to establish a car subscription business, ASKE Consulting was alongside us helping us to develop our people strategy, and to identify and bring onboard suitable talent. Clients we've referred to ASKE have had an equally positive experience. Andrew and the team at ASKE are genuinely interested in the long term outcomes for you and the people they place with you. They even offer the reassurance of a two year performance guarantee, which means they have skin in the game when working with you. If you're keen to secure the most talented and high potential people to accelerate your business and gain competitive advantage, do get in touch with them and let them know I sent you. You can email Andrew, the team at Hello@ASKEConsulting.co.uk or check out their website for more details and more client feedback at www.askeconsulting.co.uk. ASKE is spelled a s k e you'll find these contact details in the show notes for this episode. Okay, let's get back to our episode. As you were telling that story, Larry, I'm thinking how carefully you and your partner had set up the 30 stores, you'd taken them when when the next one was profitable, then you move on to the next. And I imagine you were getting pretty good at hiring for those very good at training the people putting in the professional management disciplines. You wanted them to have to make you money. And then all of a sudden that just gets swallowed up and dumped with another five or 600 stores.

Larry Sutton: 42:26

Yeah, it was a culture shock.

Andy Follows: 42:28

Yeah, you mentioned the different cultures. And I want to go there, but maybe we go there as part of when we get a bit later in the story. Because I want to ask you about building your current business. And I want to ask you about how you create a culture across 200 stores. And so but but before we go there, let's go back to that meeting. So your walk out slightly bemused, puzzled by the negotiation, you've just inadvertently done and walked away with the $750,000 you hadn't expected. So what happened after that?

Larry Sutton: 43:02

Well Wayne and I rode back to the airport high fiving, and then had a drink at the airport and said, hallelujia, we're out. And we're both getting a lot of money. Then at that point, it became Okay, now what I do, took about a month and tried to figure out, what's my next move? What am I going to do? I could not open the same kind of stores. Because it was there was a no compete, obviously. And so that was not an option. So I started looking around at other things. A friend of mine from Jacksonville, Florida called, and him and his son wanted to do this smoothie franchise. It was Tropical Smoothie, today it's called Tropical Cafe. And they've been relatively successful, I believe. But at the time, they were just getting off the ground. And he and I and he said, why don't why don't we partner in that in that and we'll you know, run the business and bah bah bah. So okay, let's do it. So when up there, we got into the Tropical Smoothie business opened up a couple of locations together. And what happened there is that I found out he and his son that were not getting along. They were just like at each other's throat all the time. And we'd have meetings, and they would be like, what have you this and that and I was like, I don't like conflict. And so it was just very uncomfortable. The business model was good. But it was all built on part time teenagers who didn't show up for work and you had a short staffed and, you know, they had a couple of stores. At one point, I was literally and I've got to do have a picture of this, where I would take my kids up, and we actually dressed up as fruit. But I was I was like in a banana costume. I had my kids in a grape and a strawberry. And we would be handing out samples out on the road and stuff like that. And so I grew tired of that very quickly. So anyway, so decided that wasn't for me. So I told the guys, I said, Look, I don't want to do this anymore. So you guys take the business, they said, well, we don't know, when we can pay you back for the money that's in and all that. I'm not worried about that. I said, All I want is, if you can get me off of the bank notes that we've signed, you can pay me whenever you get the money. And it was it was about 100,000. It wasn't like $500,000. So it was like, okay, so I got out of that. And then I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. So I thought, well, let me just play golf. I lived in a golf community. So I started playing golf every day, I'd get up and get in my cart, go to the clubhouse and play golf. In 1998. I think I played golf, almost 300 days, when I started, I loved golf, and about three or four months, and I didn't like golf anymore. My old partner used to have a saying he said, If you love the beach, don't buy a house on the beach. Because it's not going to be the it's not going to feel the same to you after you've been there every day for 306. Now you go and you're like this is lovely. But when you're there every day is no longer. Oh, this is fun kind of a thing. And that's that's the concept. And I think he's probably right about that. Because when I started the golf thing, I was like a 15 handicap and enjoying the game. Six months later, it was a 20 handicap. And not liking the game. And I quit, I actually quit playing golf moved out of the community, and quit playing golf for about five years. I play again now, but I quit for about five years. At that point, I said, Oh, I gotta do something. And not just that, I realised also that I had a finite amount of money. And without high risk. It just wasn't gonna last unless I want to change my lifestyle. But I was not willing to change my lifestyle. I want to drive when I want to drive or to go where I want to go. So I said I gotta find something to do. And I was actually at a meeting when I flew to Atlanta to meet with a friend of mine, to talk about the possibility of bringing in this other business into Florida. And he looked at me and said, Have you have you seen what these guys are doing out in Texas? With tires? And I said, tires? He said yes. I said what are they doing? He said, Well, they're doing the tires on the payments, just like on your old business, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, My understanding they do quite well. So I thought curious about that. Got on an aeroplane flew to Texas, went around Texas, looking at some of their stores and talking to some of their people and, and looking at the business. And I thought this looks like could be fun. But I found out it really wasn't tires. The only reason they were doing tires because they were doing custom wheels. And about this time is when custom wheels started kinda really getting more important out there than they ever had been before. And so at that point, custom wheels was less than a billion dollars total sales in the US. But it had come from 500 to 600 to seven. It was getting more every year. And I thought there's something going on here that could be really interesting. So I love that concept. I came back to Tampa. And I said let's give it a go. So started meeting with some suppliers learning about the wholesale part of it. We found a location, old gas station. This was in the year 2000 and came up with a name called Rent n Roll was kind of like rock n roll. So I that's going back to those years where I always wanted to be a rock star rock n roll. I said no, it's gonna be Rent n Roll. Because that sounds like rock n roll. So we opened up the store, and it just took off like crazy. We had people standing in line outside the day we opened. It was just amazing.

Andy Follows: 49:16

Can I jump in? Because you mentioned my first of all, you went out to Atlanta did you say?

Larry Sutton: 49:21

Yeah, I was in Atlanta.

Andy Follows: 49:22

And if you hadn't gone you wouldn't have had necessarily had the conversation about Yeah, but have you seen what so often it's only by going out and doing things that we come across the thing that we end up doing isn't it

Larry Sutton: 49:34

It was a defining moment. You're absolutely right.

Andy Follows: 49:36

And then you mentioned that it was a similar model to the retail business. So we didn't talk about when you were doing the appliances that those were also on payments,

Larry Sutton: 49:45

Yeah, it was a business it's referred to as correct? rent to own as opposed to financing. So in a rent to own model, there's no qualifying by the customer. So everybody that So you transferred that model then into the tyre and custom wants one gets one. That it's basically how it works. As long as you know, they are who they say they are. And it verifies, so you don't actually get credit references or anything like that. It was a way of getting people quality products, that before that model was developed, they had no way of acquiring those products because they didn't have any credit, and they didn't have the cash. So it was that kind of business that we specialised in. And what I found out, was that the people in that wheel business, correct? Where it was it was it not that common venue tended to be the most honest, the hardest working, some of the greatest people on the planet had just been dealt a bad hand. They weren't taught growing up credit, they weren't taught how to manage their money. They weren't. But they were hard working. And they just, they just wanted a better life. And this was an opportunity for them to do it because it didn't require credit. That's basically the model. in that business? Well it didn't exist until the guys out of Texas started it. I didn't think of it until I heard about it. And I went, this is brilliant. This is brilliant. Because tyre, everybody needs tyres, and wheels, bah, bah, bah, bah. So this was like, Yeah, this is something I could do and get into. And that's what led us do it.

Andy Follows: 51:26

Well I only came across it yesterday when I was doing some Googling around the business and what another thought I had was, you're also not going to want to give up your tyres, and your wheels, right? Because it does affect your, if you're going to stop making payments on something, then you probably you try and keep your car, right, try and keep your car on the road, that's how you get your job. Yeah.

Larry Sutton: 51:54

As far as the wheels go, interestingly enough, they actually turn in a lot quicker. Not many people turn in tyres, they'll end up paying them off. And we try to make that as easy for them as possible. But on the wheel side, what we found, you gotta remember wheels, tyres are a need, wheels are a want. And so you get a brand new car, you drive over to Walmart, you park 100 miles away from the door, because you don't want to nobody wants to scratch the doors. So you know, you don't want to take that chance you're gonna park in the field next door to keep that car. Six months later, you go right up to the building park between two cars with the doors closed, because you don't even think about the car getting scratched. Because you've lost that newness or that feeling that you've had. Well, that happens with custom wheels a lot, most wheels will stay out, they'll go out and they'll keep them for a while and then they'll give them back, they'll either get something else, or they won't get anything. But that's okay, it's part of the model. And what we do is we'll get those cleaned up and get them back out there and get them at a heavy discount, and somebody else will put them on their car. So about 60% of the wheels come back, 40% will pay out. But 100% of passenger tyres and of course those wheels have tyres on them as well, by the way, so that's it's actually a wheel and tyre but it's not the tyre that would go on that car regularly, it's going on this bigger wheel because the wheel business is all about making them bigger. If they come in on a stock, they want 20s. Back when we first started, it was 17 was the most popular. You didn't take long for 20s to be the most popular and then 20 twos became the most popular. Now they've got 20 fours 20 sixes, they just want to go bigger, you know, and then you have to change it, obviously change your tyre on those. But at some point in that process, I had three stores. And I got a call from a friend of mine down in South Florida that was a friend of mine a long time had been in the rent to own sector for a long time guy named Mike Kit. And interestingly enough, his history was that he was on the staff of a guy named Ernie Talley out in Kansas when he invented the rent to own business. And the way he invented it is really crazy. What he had done is he had a lot of folks coming in that wanted a washer and dryer but couldn't afford it. So his first idea was to buy these coin operated machines put them in their house, and he would just go out and collect the money every week out of the machines. And then eventually, he said because you had actually pay more for the coin op machine than a regular machine. He started thinking this is kind of ridiculous. Why don't I just buy those and let them come in and pay me so I don't have to go out and get my money and that's that's kind of how the rent to own business get started. I got off the point because Mike Kit, this guy that called me was on the staff of that guy who had done that. So he called me and said, Hey, I heard what you're doing, and it sounds. I'd love it. I want to come see it. And I said, we'll come out. So he came to Tampa with his son hanging out in the stores a couple of days, got back to the office, and he said, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen, I want to do this. And I went, no problem, Mike. I said, Look, I've got policy procedures. I've got suppliers. I've got all. I'll just give you all that you can start something down there. He said, No, he said, really like everything. He said I like the name like this, I like that. I like this. And that's fine. Go ahead, use it. He says, Now I can't do that. He said, We got to, we got to have an agreement of some sort, maybe a franchise I said, Well, I don't want to be a franchisor. He said, Well, I can be a licensee. So we called our attorney. We both had the same attorney out in Texas, and talked to him and he said, Okay, he said, Listen, I've known Mike a long time. I've known you a long time. I'll let you do a licence agreement, because I know Mike won't sue you. He said, but in reality, you're a franchise, you're going to be a franchisor. So no, I'm not gonna be a franchise. I don't want to be a franchise.

Andy Follows: 56:18

Why didn't Why didn't you want

Larry Sutton: 56:20

I didn't want to tell other people, entrepreneurs how to run their business. It was in my mind that I never want to tell another owner, I have met all these business people across the States I used to, I used to be at our national association. And I would go out and give educational seminars to different states. And I met all these dealers. And I saw so many different ways of doing the same business that were all successful. Because they believed in what they were doing, right. So in my mind it became I don't want to tell an entrepreneur how to run a business, because I've seen too many people run it differently but with success. And that was my thought on franchise. So we made Mike a licensee, goes down to Miami opens up the first rent, takes off like gangbusters bigger than any other takeoff. He starts opening more stores then I get another call from a guy in North Carolina. He comes in, man, we want to do this. We want to do this. I said, I'll get you I'll make you a licensee. So call my attorney Edwin, I said Ed got another licensee for you said, No, I don't know these guys. And he said, You got to be a franchisor. I said, come on Ed. I said, Look, I don't want to be a franchisor he says, Oh, I know. And you're not going to be a good franchisor and he said, but you're gonna be a franchisor. And I said, Well, what do you mean, I'm not gonna be good franchisor he said Sutton, he said, I've known you for 20 years. You don't know how to tell people no. And as a franchisor you have to tell people No. And I went, Okay, fine. So we we started a franchise. And before you know it, like all these people from the other industry that I spent 20 years in, and who knew me started coming in and going, Hey, we want to do this, we want it and it was stopped. We started signing deals and people started opening stores and and sure enough, it was going pretty well, we got up to about 72 stores or something. And then something happened then it was we had a couple of people that just weren't doing well, they weren't making the money they should. And a couple other things happened. And I kind of took all that personally, I was like, we can't do this, we can't have failure. That's not who I am. And that's, you know, somebody loses money. That's, that's on me. It's on them. But in my mind, it was on me. And so I took that really hard. And we started looking at the model and realise that you got to a certain point with with the wheels and tyres. And they just stayed there just didn't have any upward mobility after point, we get to about three or 400 customers and just not go any further. And then the overhead would come up. And so they weren't making the money that we anticipated. So we literally started talking about what needed to happen with the model, how do we change the model. And we never, never were getting the kind of traffic we were expecting with passenger tyres, so people just need tyres they don't care about wheels, they just need tyres. So we started trying different displays and different concepts at different price points. And nothing seemed to be working as well, like we wanted it to. And I got a call one day we've been talking about this in our franchise meeting for years about we've got to do better passenger tyres. So a couple of things happened that were very eye opening concepts I wear of my R&R shirt, I'd be in a 711 or something like that. And somebody would say, are with that, that rent n roll, right because they used to call it rent n roll. Yeah. And so, yeah, I've said Have you have you been there? No, no, no. Well, why not? They said, Well, I don't really have a desire for wheels. I said, Well, we do tyres, he said, You do tyres, our identity was about wheels, our whole identity was was all about wheels, our showrooms, were all about wheels, we didn't show our bays, we hid our bays, we would have a big showroom, and the bays would be in the back. And so we started talking about these changes that would need to happen for us to be a factor in the just the tyre business. And then we looked at the sheer numbers in the past, the tyre business was approaching $20 billion in America, and the wheel business was still at five or 6 billion, well, even us, even a boy from Oklahoma can figure we want more than that's a bigger opportunity. So we kept talking about the changes that needed to be made. And I literally got a phone call from one of my franchisees one day after meeting. And he said, I've got an idea that I want to try. And I said, okay, and he told me about it. And he said, what I want to do is I want to kind of like build up not two stores, but I want to put another sign on the on the building and call it Tyre Express. And he said that that's going to be prominent, and then I'll have written RnR, we had already changed our our name to RnR Custom Wheels and Tyres was our name. Because we decided Rent n Roll was limited us too much. We were only getting customers that wanted to make payments, we weren't getting the other business that we could get as well. So we've gone through a name change already. So he says and then I want to put a really nice display of tyres, where they come in the store, and then kinda they'll walk through this pathway to get to the wheels, but first you're going to see tyres and, and he told me all about it. And I said, Man, we've tried everything else. I said, David, that sounds fantastic. I said, let's give it a go see what happened. And and then we talk through it a little bit. And so you know, the other thing we probably should do is when we're running commercials, we should just make commercials for tyres. And talk about you know that. And then when we want to do wheels, we do that separate. I said, I like that too. That all makes sense. So let's give it a go. So he opens his store of best opening we'd ever seen unbelievable opening, I mean, just the numbers were just blowing everybody's mind. And we said, wow. And then we went down the road did another one same result, best numbers we've ever seen. That was the eye opener for us. Across the country. We said, Wow, we got to change our look, we got to have a different identity. And we got to become a tyre company with wheels instead of a wheel company with tyres. And pretty much started down that path. At that point, we became RnR Tyre Express. So there's nothing about wheels in the name. And the funny thing about all that is we still do as much wheel business as we've always done. But last year, we were the 14th largest tyre dealer in the United States.

Andy Follows: 1:03:07

That's a fascinating case study, isn't it? How you inadvertently were appealing to a certain set of customers? But who weren't the ones that were in the bigger market Exactly. for everything you'd done was drawing those people in but not the tyre customers.

Larry Sutton: 1:03:25

We weren't seeing the tyre customers. Yeah.

Andy Follows: 1:03:27

And you know, as I was looking yesterday, I saw you as a tyre company that also did these amazing custom rims, and

Larry Sutton: 1:03:35

that's who we are today. Yeah, it just wasn't who we were in the in the beginning.

Andy Follows: 1:03:41

So let's talk if we may, I'm curious now about your lawyer said, Larry, you're never going to be a good franchisor because you can't say no. You've mentioned culture. So many times. Some of the things I picked up on looking into the business was there was an emphasis on culture very much the slogan you have about serve, not service. So we'll come to that. But I'm interested in to what extent you also said you didn't want to tell entrepreneurs how to run their businesses. So have you found a way to have a common culture across how many stores is it today that

Larry Sutton: 1:04:19

It's 196 open and we have another think about 200 planned openings over it with these development agreements. So somebody will come in and they'll go, Well, I want to do 25 stores in this market. And that will take place over 10 years. So we have development agreements. And then so open stores 196 and another 200 to be developed. And of course, we're still taking on new franchisees. So we believe that we'll be at 300 stores by the end of 2027. And that will bring in total revenue right at $600 million. So that will be, you know, pass that half a billion dollar mark, which is kind of our, our Golden Buzzer that we're looking at all the time like this is where we this is where we got to be, this is where we got to be. So this past year, we did 337 million. And so we're, we're on our way, we're crawling up that ladder.

Andy Follows: 1:05:19

That's great to have that context and to know, you know, the scale of the business. At the same time in this conversation your personality has come through, we've learnt, you know, fairly humble background, care about people, you take responsibility, if someone's losing money, yes, it's their responsibility, but that's on me, as well. And the way you carefully grew those 30, retail, you know, the appliance stores very thoughtfully debt averse, and how have you managed to get a culture with different franchise? Have you managed to get a common culture across the 196? Open stores, when you've got different owners, different entrepreneurs with their own ideas? How have you, you know, would I experience would I get a similar feeling? If I go in different RNR stores? Will I feel the same kind of vibe in there?

Larry Sutton: 1:06:10

It's a great, great question, because it's the toughest challenge that you have. And I would say, yes, I learned something from Richard Branson, not personally, but something that, that he said, I've been a customer focused entrepreneur from day one is like, it's all about the customer. Everything is about the customer, customer, customer appreciate it. From the moment I open a business to appreciate all over the country, when I used to travel around and talk to these groups and stuff. I always talked about the customer, customer driven customer focus. And then I heard his speech by Richard Branson one day, and he talked about, he said, Who's the most important person in your organisation? I'm thinking it's the kind of he said, most people say the customer, he said, but I say, it's your teammates, and your team members. And here's why. If they feel empowered, if they feel a part of something that they feel, they're going to serve the customer, not just service to customer gain set match for me that from that day forward, it was like, should of havd a V8? How can you expect anyone to serve if they're not being served? And so I took the organisational chart. And actually, you know, I'd love to say you come up with all these ideas of your own. But the reality is, all your ideas come from somewhere else, no one really invents an idea, you find out, a buddy of mine in the car business told me that he went to this meeting and heard about this upside down organisational pyramid. What it was was you just take the pyramid, you know, you start up here with the President, and then you get the VPS. And he said, you just take that whole thing and turn it upside down and focus your business that way. So what's my job, my job is to serve these folks. Their job is to serve these folks, all the way down to the in our business, the tyre installers, that is the last person that touches the car and sees the deal. And so I just bought into that hook, line, and sinker. When I saw that upside down pyramid, it was like, that is it. I didn't even go to the meeting, I heard it from the guy that went to the meeting. And it just, I just bought into that brought all the team together, turned the pyramid upside down and said, This is who we have to be if we're going to win. We don't call them employees, we call them team members. They're not employees, they're team members. And they're important and they need to feel important. They need to feel listened to they need to have a pathway to a better lifestyle. Now, what's that pathway going to look like when it comes to money. When it comes to income when it comes to time off? When it comes to our job becomes changing their lives. We need to focus on changing their lives. If you come in my front door, you'll see change lives on one side of this waterfall, changing lives. And so we we focus. I mean, certainly you got the product knowledge and you got the sales, you got all the other training, but we focus so much on them feeling good about who they are feeling good about their productivity, feeling good about where they're going, and feeling good about what our company is all about. We really focus on that piece more than anything else is that, you know, serve is not just a statement, what does it look like what is served mean as opposed to service. And we lay that out for them and we talk about in very simple ways. We give them examples of a customer coming in and getting it done this way as opposed to getting served. And so we get a tremendous amount of buy in from all of our team members in that concept. And here's what here's what we're doing. We're changing lives. And so that has become adopted very well and accepted by our franchisees. Now, there are different cultures, subcultures out there in almost everybody because no one's the same, right? So one of our guys in Arkansas has 30, something stores got a tremendous culture built around faith, and serve and all of those things. Another guy in North Carolina do it, but they do some fundamentals differently. And they have maybe different rules. But they all talk about the upside down pyramid, they all talk about including your team members into into these functions. Every year, we do a company picnic, and we take everybody and their families to SeaWorld, because a lot of the folks probably can't take their families to SeaWorld because it's $139 a person, they got a family of five, they're gonna spend $800 to go to SeaWorld, right. So we try to do those kinds of things, we try to get everybody focused on purpose, as opposed to productivity, because if they're focused on purpose, their productivity will follow that, as opposed to the other way around.

Andy Follows: 1:11:22

Say a bit more about that Larry, getting them focused on purpose.

Larry Sutton: 1:11:26

We have a lot of days, where we'll have company events, like we have serve days, what we call serve days. And so we'll find a school that needs cleaning up and they need, maybe soil and they need this or they need that, and we'll have a serve day. And it's voluntary, we don't ever demand anybody. But we'll take a Sunday afternoon, and we'll have a serve day. And I've had I've had shop guys drive 200 miles to come to one of those serve days. It's like, you drove all that way, I couldn't miss this. This is fun. So we we've already done some schools, there's a charity here in Tampa called New Life. And what they do is they acquire furniture from all of these resources, and then they furnish the homes of people that can't get any furniture. And we just did a deal, where we found out we got them a warehouse, and we've got, and we try to include our people, and in all of these things, so that they become more purpose driven than anything else. But the purpose isn't to do more business, the purpose is not to make more money than the purpose in our in our situation is changing lives. So you're changing lives, let's focus on that. If we focus on that, everything else just kind of comes into play.

Andy Follows: 1:12:43

I love it. Let me just play back to you some of what I was noticing there, it sounds like you've taken serve as a verb, something that you do not service, not service, a noun that is kind of inanimate, it's service, something you do, and you have elevated it to a very high position in the organisation. So it's a very valuable thing that we do. And you've made it the way you manage the business with the leaders at the bottom. And those who are doing the jobs and interacting with the customers right at the top and the customers obviously ended up right at the top of the pyramid.

Larry Sutton: 1:13:20

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Andy Follows: 1:13:21

And by then taking people out to I don't know, paint a school or the serving that they do out in the community. It's directly linked to the serving they do when they're at work when they're in the store.

Larry Sutton: 1:13:36

100 percent

Andy Follows: 1:13:37

So it's just showing them here's the most, you know, fulfilling, purposeful way of serving, obviously, if it's helping people in the community, serve it, you know, the schools and so on. You're still doing that when you put a new safe pair of tyres set of tyres on someone's car, you're serving them during your day job. Yeah?

Larry Sutton: 1:13:56

You got it. You've never even been to a meeting. That is exactly right. That is exactly right. Because in the United States right now 100 million people 100 million, almost a third have less than$500 in their bank account. That's a third of our country. They don't have $1,000 to go buy a set a new tyres. They don't have credit, they don't have any of that. But driving is important going places is important. You got to make your money to take care of your family. And they need to do it on safe tyres, not a used tyre that they bought down the street a $50 tyre that come off of somebody's other car that it didn't work in the first place. We have a methodology of getting that product to them in an easy way. And now they can be on a safe set of tyres. We are serving that customer in doing that but it's got to go beyond that because you got to treat them even better than this getting them tyres you got to you got to get them things that other people don't give them. For instance, when somebody does business with us, we have a, what we call a customer care package. And all of these things that they have to buy from someone else is included in our programme. And a perfect example is, we have a lifetime alignment programme, which means as long as the tyres are on their car, we're going to align them every six months or 6000 miles at no charge, we're going to fix their flats for free we're going to, I could go on, but it would turn into a commercial, but we package everything up to match the words we're talking about. When we say serve, don't take that lightly. It's not just a noun and a pronoun. It is this is the way we're going to live, this is the way we're going to do. And to your point, getting them involved in serve days, teaches them the value of serving. That makes sense.

Andy Follows: 1:15:58

Yeah, absolutely makes sense. It's just a Yeah, a very good example of where there's a very solid connection between what they're doing out in the community and what they're doing in the office, right like or back at the shop. Sometimes that can be hard to do, depending on the business that you're in. Because if you,

Larry Sutton: 1:16:17

if you stop talking about it, it'll go away. We never stop talking about all of my all of my folks know, we never stop talking about it, we now we bring on new franchisees that were convinced believe in what we're doing. If we're

Andy Follows: 1:16:30

Now it sounds like you have managed to having gone convinced they don't believe in what we're doing, they don't get a franchise. Yet we first started, everybody wants one gets one. Well, we made a lot of mistakes, we let people in, we shouldn't let in, they took us a while to get all of that fixed and get it right. But pretty much if they don't believe the same way we do it, they're not enthralled with the idea of serve be the purpose, there's a lot of conversations, you can have that reveal that if we and then we have, we'll have the five of us and we'll have we'll have them and we'll spend a couple of days with them. And then we'll all come in and talk about it. And everybody will vote whether we let them in or not. That's not the way we used to do it. But it's the way we do it. Now, if we like them, and we feel like they're going to do adapt to that belief. Now we're not going to tell them where the pencils go on your desk or, or where you do this, we're going to help them in every way we can. But we're also open to ideas, had I not been open to ideas we might not have ever figured it out. I mean that just being honest, had I not be willing to listen to one of my franchisees RNR Tyre Express might not have matured to where it is today. So back to that listening thing. You know, you give us that early lesson of Listen, take it in and then see what see what happens.

Larry Sutton: 1:18:02

You hit the nail on the head. There's non from I don't want to be a franchisor, I don't want to tell entrepreneurs what to do. You found a way to say, Okay, this stuff you absolutely I'm going to tell I'm not going to tell you what to do. But if you don't believe this, you're not coming in, this bit is in absolutely cast iron, this is this is happening. This bit, I don't mind how you do that bit, you do that best for your market for your team. But you're gonna you're gonna keep these bits. These are non negotiable. This is negotiable. And as you say, you wouldn't have necessarily turned it around with the tyres in the front and the wheels in the back. If you hadn't listened to negotiables. And then there's recommendations, there's a big difference.

Andy Follows: 1:18:49

So what are the non negotiables? Serve is clearly one of them.

Larry Sutton: 1:18:53

Clearly, some of the non negotiables are dress code, we make non negotiable because if you don't, it gets bad quickly. They'll still show, if it's negotiable, you don't look like the guy you're supposed to look like or the woman you're supposed to look like, it can get crazy.

Andy Follows: 1:19:13

That happens in corporate offices.

Larry Sutton: 1:19:18

Absolutely. You know, that's one, we just actually funny you when you said non negotiables we just had a regional managers meeting. I mean, last week, and it was all about what you just said, what are non negotiables? And what are our recommendation? What is our recommendations? We have to get clarity on what our non negotiables are. And so I have my five top leaders in there discussing is that a non negotiable? And if it is why? I'll give you an example and non negotiable when you instal a set of tyres is after the tyres are done, someone from management needs to taut check the lead nuts. Non negotiable. Because what happens if one of them comes loose, and the tyre comes off the car, you're putting customers lives at risk. So that's a non negotiable from the shop. So we have shop non negotiables we have, there's a certain way you do certain things, those, those have everybody has to comply with those because they're smart to do it that way. But there's other things about your store layout, we got recommendations, this is how we recommend it. There's a pretty big book of, of recommendations, we try to keep the non negotiables as they're just absolutely must. We try to keep those less, but there are quite a few because of the nature of the business.

Andy Follows: 1:20:47

Yeah, absolutely. And we're coming up to then 25 years almost aren't we of

Larry Sutton: 1:20:53

25 years next year. Yeah. And it's still fun. I mean, it we just had we have a we have a ball, we literally have a ball, I love to go out to the new franchisee, and meet the folks that are on the team and, and just kind of welcome them into the family and hang out with them that we will go out on on the grand opening we'll fly out on Friday, meet the team hang out with them go out to dinner that night with everybody and then work the grand opening the next day and and it's just fun, man, it just it is absolutely a blast.

Andy Follows: 1:21:27

I believe you. I believe you wholeheartedly, and you're not having to play golf every day.

Larry Sutton: 1:21:33

That's right. And now I'm enjoying that again.

Andy Follows: 1:21:41

Is there anything I haven't asked you, Larry, which means I've missed a lesson you've learned or a golden nugget from your career.

Larry Sutton: 1:21:48

I tell you, I don't think a day goes by where you don't learn something. You know, I could point to everything. But it's almost like every day something will come along. I actually got a words of wisdom from my real father when I met him later on in years. And one of those was he said, you know, he said, If I have a day where I don't learn anything, I just go next door, knock on my neighbor's door and say, Hey, teach me something. I didn't learn anything that day. That's brilliant. I love that. But yeah, I think that if you stop learning, you probably stop living learning is just a continuous, lifelong journey. Sometimes you're you're learning something again, because you do it. But you forgot.

Andy Follows: 1:22:34

Yeah, those are awkward. Yeah. It's like, Andy, you know better than Exactly.

Larry Sutton: 1:22:42

Exactly, exactly.

Andy Follows: 1:22:45

Well, it's been a real pleasure to meet you, Larry. Thank you very much.

Larry Sutton: 1:22:50

Likewise. You do this well, you're easy to talk to. Got a very pleasant demeanour and, and it's been fun. Some of them aren't, some of the people like, but you're fun. We can sit down, have a conversation. That'd be fun.

Andy Follows: 1:23:05

Well thank you very much.

Larry Sutton: 1:23:06

That's kind of what we're doing.

Andy Follows: 1:23:07

I'm glad. I'm glad you've enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed getting to know more about you and the business. You've done phenomenally well. It's very exciting. I look forward to now next time I see anything about your business I'll feel that much more connected to it. So we'll be following your your progress. And Excellent. Thanks very much.

Larry Sutton: 1:23:27

You bet. Have a great day.

Andy Follows: 1:23:33

You've been listening to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR with me, Andy Follows. Depending on your unique life experience, where you find yourself right now and your personal goals, you'll have your own takeaways from Larry's story. Some elements that stood out for me were that Larry moved around a lot as a child but found it easy to make friends. He liked his baseball and his music. He had the consistency of spending summers on his grandparents farm in Oklahoma. He didn't really have an appetite for school, but he had a work ethic and discovered that sales was a route to make money for a car and to help his mother. The fact that the first time he had his own business to run, he didn't have the business acumen to make it succeed. So he got a job in a bigger company, and learned how to help his dealers run their businesses. At this point, he was loving the learning because unlike at school, he could now see how it would help him to make more money. Then he gets another chance at ownership and this time he knows how to run a business. He and his partner build up a 30 store group. They grow cautiously, only adding a store when the previous one is profitable and avoiding debt. They eventually sell out to a larger group and Larry's contracted to stay on for three years and deal with the corporate life until he can finally get away. First he gets into Tropical smoothies which doesn't work out for him and then into tyres. I think it's helpful to notice that he wouldn't have heard about the tyre business if he hadn't been looking for some thing else. And when he came across it, he realised he'd be able to bring his knowledge of rent to own consumer appliances to the tyre and custom wheel business. And whilst he hadn't set out or even wanted to be a franchisor, because he didn't want to tell other entrepreneurs how to run their business, he's found a way to navigate this by separating the non negotiables from the recommended behaviours across their almost 200 stores. I'm delighted that one of the non negotiables is their emphasis on being a purpose driven organisation. And I like how they give team members opportunities to serve their community, and then point out how they can achieve that same feeling of serving others in the store when they fit a set of safe tyres to a customer's car. Finally, how serving employees first, and then customers is helping them as they head towards becoming a half a billion dollar turnover business. If you enjoy listening to my guest stories, please could you do me a favour and share an episode with someone you lead parent or mentor or perhaps a friend of yours who you think would also enjoy listening? Thank you to Larry for joining me for our conversation. Thank you to our sponsors for this episode, ASKE Consulting and Aquilae and thank you to the CAREER-VIEW MIRROR team without whom we wouldn't be able to share our guests' life and career stories. And above all, thank you to you for listening