How does TRIB really work and why you need it

Pete sits down with Mike Tissott — president of Countryside Rent-to-Own (40 stores across Ohio and Kentucky) and newly elected president of the Trib Group — for a wide-ranging conversation on family business, buying groups, and where the industry is headed.

Mike's origin story is straightforward: his dad started the business in 1985, built it to 10 stores, and eventually gave Mike an ultimatum over dinner in Charleston — come back or I'm selling. Mike came back in 1997 and has been running it ever since. The first person he met at his first rent-to-own convention was Chris Kale Sr., just as Kale was leaving Buddy's to start Rent King.

On Trib, Mike is clear about what makes it different from other buying groups: it's laser-focused on independent rent-to-own dealers, not retail broadly. When Trib was previously aligned with Brand Source, members were being sent to retail showrooms where vendors didn't want to sell to rent-to-own operators. Breaking from that allowed Trib to serve its actual constituency — small and mid-size independent dealers — without being a retail afterthought. Over 50% of Trib's membership is one-to-four-store operators.

The product conversation centers on the challenge of replacing the PS5 revenue cycle now that pricing and rates have softened. Mike frames it through the Moneyball lens: you can't replace one big product with one other product, you replace it with three. His answer right now is mattresses, bedroom furniture, and high-end gaming laptops and desktops. More broadly, he says the opportunity in the industry isn't necessarily finding the next hot item — it's doing existing categories better and slowing the churn. Every store open more than a couple years has served a thousand customers, just not all at the same time. Getting paid-out or lapsed customers back is where growth actually happens.

On marketing, Mike credits Facebook Live as one of their most powerful tools, citing a store manager in London, Ohio with 4,000 followers who can go live and sell product like an infomercial. He traces the marketing evolution from TV commercials to flyers to direct mail to social, and says the next step is getting better at all three simultaneously — social, direct mail, and old-school guerrilla marketing like visiting lost customers in the field.

On leadership, Mike's mentors are his parents and Gary Fairman of Showplace. His operating philosophy is simple: make Countryside a great place to work and a great place to shop. He runs new employee orientations every six weeks and has for 25 years, always telling new hires that if they don't come to genuinely believe they're doing something amazing for customers, they should go do something else.

The episode wraps with the credit-or-sales question — Mike goes sales, without hesitation, noting that the best medicine in rent-to-own is more rentals, and that everything in collections depends on a sale happening first. His parting thought: the stores that really thrive are the ones where sales and collections work together with no walls between them.

Transcript

Pete Shau 0:07

Welcome to the RTO show podcast where we talk rent-to-own. I'm your host, Pete Chao, and I'm on the phone with Mike Tissot doing an interview on what's going on in the RTO rent-to-own land in Ohio and Kentucky, 40 stores. Not only that, what's going on in Trib this year and going forward? Mike, I see 40 stores. You guys are like knocking on the neighborhood of Pennsylvania. How far is it going to go?

Mike Tissot 0:31

Well, we're not going to Pennsylvania. You know, we are we are bound by our friends. So if you were to lay our stores on a map, you would see my good friend Gary Fairman kind of right in the middle of all of our stores. We're not going to go there. And you know, we're bumping up against West Virginia and Indiana and Pennsylvania. And you know, West Virginia's always been an interesting state because not there's not many dealers there, and that might be a possibility at some point. But uh we we like Ohio and Kentucky quite well. So we've gone grown organically with our folks from kind of the hub and the spokes of the wheel where distribution and and all of our home office functions are. We've done that for 35 years. So um just one at a time is the way we've done it. But no no interest in no interest in Pennsylvania because I hate the Steelers, really. That's really the answer.

Pete Shau 1:25

I thought you were gonna say the legal the legality of rent to own over there might be different than Ohio and Kentucky.

Mike Tissot 1:31

It's everyone's every state's a little different, absolutely. Um, and so there's obviously gonna be you know issues inside of that to figure it out. I mean, it's all figure outable. That's probably my favorite quote. I tell my daughter, it's all figure outable, but uh, you know, I don't I don't it's not necessary for us to do that to continue our steady growth at this point.

Pete Shau 1:51

So, what I wanted to get into is why are we having an interview with Mike, right? So, Mike is the president of Rent to Own over 40 locations, the actual current sitting president of the Trib Group. Uh, congratulations on that. I meant to say that again, but congratulations on the nomination and the capture of that. So, how do you manage that? How do you be a president of and now the the rent to own brand and this company is a family situation, right? I mean, that was that passed down. How did that happen?

Mike Tissot 2:20

Our business, my dad started our business in 1985. Um, it's funny how so many of these rental businesses started back in that same time frame 83, 84, 85, 86. It's crazy. But um obviously that was the ripe time in the economic environment. The rent-owned stores made a lot of sense. So my dad started it in '85 and worked to grow it over those over that time. And I came back to work for him in '97. And man, that's a long time ago now. So that's how it happened. And he and I worked together only for a couple years. Uh, he was very interested. He was a builder. My dad built houses before he was in the rent-owned business. And not unlike that, he built the business um up to 10 stores and doing very well. And um, he built our culture and he built the connectivity we had in the rent-owned community. My dad was the president of Trib, my dad was the president of April, and but he didn't want to do it anymore. He didn't really want to run it. Uh so at one point he convinced me to come back and work with him, and and that was, you know, nearly 30 years ago now. So time flies when you're having rent-owned fun, right?

Pete Shau 3:29

Right. It is a quick stroll down memory lane when you turn around and see how many years have gone by. So 96 comes up. Did you think that sometime you would be taking over the family business, or was this like something that you I wouldn't say worked into, but you know, you thought, okay, I'll be here for a while, maybe it'll work. Or was this, I'm gonna do this. This is what I'm gonna do. I'm coming back. This is a family business, I'm gonna make this mine.

Mike Tissot 3:50

I can tell you, I probably at age 18 and 19 had zero idea that I would ever do it. Left high school, went to college, played baseball in college, D3, so but we still played baseball, and then took a uh took a job in Chicago, worked at a marketing company, and had no designs of ever coming back to Ohio or Hillsborough, small town Ohio, or working for my dad. And then over time working at the marketing company, it it wasn't like meat and potatoes enough for me. It was it was fun. I worked with a lot of cool people and some people that are my friends today, and love living in Chicago for a number of years, but it just there wasn't enough meat to it in terms of driving a business or making an impact. It was just making pretty ads, and it just wasn't something that got me excited to get up and go to work every day. I might have taken a couple of Ferris Bueller days off when I was there, who knows? Um, but uh, but my dad in '97 was at the point where he just didn't really want to run the company anymore. And um then honestly, at that time, folks that are listening to this have been in the business for a while. The multiples were as high as probably they've ever been. And he was being offered some prices to sell his company, where he was like, This is something I probably should consider. And my father and I used to take golf trips every year, um, three or four-day golf trips, and we were on a golf trip in Charleston, South Carolina. We sitting at a restaurant called Slightly North Abroad, and a table adjacent to us was Roy Williams. So um, we'll never forget the scene. And I was there with one of my best buddies from college and my dad, and and my dad looked me in the eye and said, if you don't come back and work for me now, I'm gonna sell the company, so we'll be there. Your choice. And uh so I said, Yeah, and that was it. So in September of 97, I came to my first uh rent-to-owned convention in Bally's. I came by myself. You'll appreciate this, Pete. I sat down at a bar thinking, oh my gosh, what the heck did I get into? This guy came down and sat next to me and I said, Hey, what's your name? He said, Chris Kale. I said, I'm Mike Tissett, nice to meet you. First guy I ever met at a rent-town convention was Chris Cale Sr. Just leaving buddies getting ready to start Rent King with the two partners.

Pete Shau 6:03

When I first came on to Rent King, he was probably the first one I connected with as well. And uh sharp guy. He's got a lot of good ideas and a lot of foresight for the business, definitely looking down the road and what's coming up. And I haven't met anybody who did it better at the time when I first came into business than he did. Very, very understanding of the business and and where it's going and wanted to be invested in all aspects of it. And I really respected that. It's crazy that it happens. You know, Danny and I always had a saying, you know, going back just a little bit, and at one point in time last year, we decided, you know, hey, we're doing this, let's have this show. Which I don't know was maybe that was the beginning of the end for him. I don't know, because it's it's really hard to have it. But so we started the show and we sat down, and one question that kept popping up is what the heck are we doing? Like, I mean, we're doing talks and we're talking to people and we're having the podcast and we're we're showing up and we're trying to do our videos, and it just seemed like this whirlwind of of rent-to-one that I never had expected, and it really took a lot of uh finagling, but it opened my eyes to a whole different rent-to-own ball game. Actually, on that August is when we got to see you, and and what people might not know is you actually helped me get over the idea that speaking was like this monster. I remember talking to you in the hallway. Yes. Yeah, because I was asking, I was like, man, what you know what I how do you do it? Because you seem to do it so well. And the pointer is I still take with me, you know, know it very well. You know, make sure that you call on the audience when the time gets tough, call on your friends, make sure that you believe in what you're saying and and study it graciously. And I, you know, Danny and I were doing that that talk, I was like, holy cow, I I didn't think it would ever get this far, you know. But I you know what I noticed, Mike, the last few years, maybe I'm not looking at it from maybe your point of view. I I feel like with all the conventions and all the talks and everything that's going on, I feel like it's going from a lot of companies in rent to own to like almost like this family environment where everybody's realizing we're all going through the same problems in the same mud, you know, we're trying to get to the promised land with the customers and what's the sweet spot of having this merchandise and how to rent to own it. But then I always wondered getting there from the 80s to now, let's say 2015, 2016, does that take away the competition between companies that, you know, when you kind of unveil and you kind of give away the little secrets, do you feel like that sometimes, or is it the opposite where we've taken it down and now we can kind of cohesively share?

Mike Tissot 8:31

I think that I believe that a rising tide rises all boats, and I think that there's a lot of people in this industry that have known each other for a long time. We don't compete in the same markets. I mean, I compete in the same markets with a few people that I'm really very close friends with, so I don't have a problem, and I know you guys in Tampa obviously do that, but I we know we're kind of in this fight together. You know, we've been in this fight together in DC over the years. We've been in this fight together to get through COVID where we all kind of banded together. Oh my God, what are you doing? Who'd you get called with? What's your rules in your state? And I think that caused some connectivity. But this business is a lot the same as it was 25 years ago, but it continues to evolve. And having a network of friends and mentors in this business helps, I think, us all get through it. So I think there's there's always been a high level of camaraderie in the business because the rent-owned business is really made up of a bunch of independent operators, a bunch of entrepreneurs, whether they're rent-to-owned or rent king or or franchisees of Premier, franchisees of errands, or franchisees of Renaissance. I mean, some of my best friend, you know, a guy I talked to on the phone an hour yesterday as a franchisee of Renaissance. I mean, so it's not, and we're sharing everything about everything. So I I think it might be better than it's ever been because we've gone through some stuff in the last couple of years. I mean, think about I mean, I was an econ major in college, and think about the economic things that we have faced in the last 24 months from inventory shortages to mass inflation to you know wage inflation to lack of staff. I mean, it's been crazy the stuff we've had to deal with. So I think that those things probably cause us to come together more. But you mentioned the Trib thing. I mean, the Trib, the Trib Group has it's a buying group, and the goal of the buying group is to help the members get the best deals and the best service and the best support from the vendors and make our vendors want to want to sell our dealers. It's a it's there's two constituencies in the trib group, but it's also been a group of networking. You know, we had we've had a meeting for 20 plus years called the meeting of the minds, and maybe we're giving ourselves too much credit calling it the meeting of the minds, but it's it was always been about sharing ideas. That's just it. Like come here and tell people what you're doing and what's working. And I've always been open and willing to do that. I mean, I've I've beat my chest about renting renting to own tires for the last four years, and that business continues, it's hard. And I've seen a lot of people get into it and get out of it because it just didn't go, it just didn't gain traction. There's the first tire joke. Um, but once you get it rolling and customers understand what you're doing and how you do it, it's a fantastic business. And um I I think Ruthone in general has always been a sharing community, but I think the last few years it has nudged it even further that way.

Pete Shau 11:18

Now, when we talk about TRIP, the rental industry buying group, I'm you know, I've been doing some homework and looking it over, and I see on the upcoming events the Full of Pep summer meeting. What what exactly is that?

Mike Tissot 11:32

Well, all I have is heard tale of it and seen some some photographs, but uh David David, our good friend David David, um uh he uh has company meeting, his company meeting in southern Indiana where he brings all of his employees there and they have hot air balloon rides and race cars, and it's a summer picnic for his family. He he, like many others in this industry, has a very thick, amazing culture um for his company that I think spans you know four or five or six states now, and uh there's vendors come to that show and kind of hang out, but it's uh it's a really a place that he goes every year to celebrate his employees. That's what that is.

Pete Shau 12:12

That sounds totally amazing. Actually, Ranking is doing a summer picnic, so to speak, in August for all the employees and their families and stuff. So that I love it when we can get together and kind of put our hats down and say, you know, we are doing the same thing, but for today, we're just we're just us. I'm me, you're you. Let's enjoy it, right? So being a part of Trip, right, and having this group would mean that when it comes to product, you guys probably see the influxes probably a little bit sooner than some of the stores. Have we been doing a good job of changing uh what we're getting? Are we been doing a good job of changing the product that we're getting to meet the needs of this so-called newer generation? I don't want to say so-called newer generation, but I I think they approach things differently. And have we been doing a good job of getting, you know, you tell me, I are do we have new things on the way?

Mike Tissot 13:00

That's a difficult question, Pete. I think that we are lucky that we sell a variety of goods. Because as as one product line might be waxing, the other one is waning, and and over the course of again, the last few years, you know, since the COVID started, probably in in 2020, um, things have kind of changed super fast. So I I believe there's a you know the biggest opportunity rent to own, the biggest change and the biggest challenge in rent to own is us solving what I call sales 2.0. You mentioned Chris Gale Jr., he and I talk about a lot. Like how do we sell to our customers? They're not walking in our store every day, and how do we sell via you know, text and phone and visit? And it's just very different how we're gonna sell into the future. But from a product standpoint, we got propped up with PS5s, with the game systems. With that business was robust for about 18 months, and it made everything feel pretty good. But you know, it's gonna it's gonna ebb and flow like everything else. And then anybody in the business today, in June of 2023, knows that that business is is not what it was. And we knew that was gonna head that direction. The pricing isn't what it was, the rates aren't gonna garner, it's not gonna garner the rates it did. So the cool thing we have to do is is make up for it in other categories. I look at my business like there's there's these core categories. There's TVs, there's there's laptops, there's upholstery, there's mattresses, there's bedrooms, there's and and those things are gonna, and laundry obviously, which is the staple of this business that grew so much during COVID. And so what happens is as one starts to fall off, which the game systems are starting to, and the TVs have been, and the laptops did, you have to pick it up somewhere else. So we've done in our company, we've done a lot of promotion of mattresses over the last couple of years and done really well with it. We're really pushing bedroom furniture now. We've this is going way down the wrong way, way down a path, Pete. But um have you ever seen the movie Moneyball? I have. Okay, one of my favorite movies of all time. So Moneyball, there's a scene where Brad Pitt's sitting at his table with his scouts and they have to replace Jason Jombi. They want, you know, the Jason Jombi had like 37 home runs and 108, 140 RBIs, and like we got to replace Jason Jombi. And Brad Pitt's like, you can't replace Jason Jombi. You gotta replace Jason Jombi with these three people. And you know, they try to find guys based on the metrics that can get on base. And so my point of this is, you know, sometimes you have big products like the PS5s. We can't replace it, but we have to replace it with three products. We're gonna have to rent more tires, we're gonna have to rent more mattresses, we're gonna have to rent more bedroom furniture. So, you know, back to your question, it's it's a puzzle. And all these core products that we rent, you know, you did your walkthrough of your store down there, and you've got a lot of bedroom suits, you've got a little living room suits, but you got to make up for it with a little better youth bedroom business and a little better mattress business and a little bit better gaming laptop business and gaming desktop business, which is kind of new and and high-end. So that's the answer. The answer is for every dealer, identify maybe it's different store-to-store. What are the products in the entire lineup that you can augment to make up for the ones that are waning at different times? And we go through these seasons. You may we may find you know, six months from now, the laptop isn't as strong again because there's new technology that makes people want to have this OLED screen or something like that. And we've been lucky that we've been able to sell you know new technologies like that over the years. You just you don't really know what what's coming down the line, but I would say in the next six months, it's reinventing core categories is the path towards excellence.

Pete Shau 16:40

I you know, it's funny you say that. I was talking to somebody. What's the next upcoming thing? And I said, I I'm gonna be honest with you, I think the next upcoming thing is the thing that we've always had. I think the core of what we've had in rent to own is really gonna start coming back considering where the possibility of the economy is going right now and how people are holding on to their dollars and what's coming up.

Mike Tissot 16:57

And I think the necessities typically we have products that customers need, you know. And if you look at your lineup, I mean a lot of stores have always tried to do good, better, best. And I mean, that's traditional retail. Our customers are typically either give me the cheapest or give me the best. The the the better doesn't sell as well in rent-to-own. You know, customers come in wanting, give me your cheapest laundry set, give me cheap, you know, or they come in treating themselves because you know, Johnny is a truck driver that makes great money, and Bethany is a home health aide that makes good money, and together their income is strong and they want the nicest washer and dryer you have because it's the you know, that's that's their thing. And so those products will continue to move, but the starter laundry will move every day in this business.

Pete Shau 17:44

I completely agree. Now, here's a question that I have the trip group is a buying group, correct? So does it have a set amount of members that it has to maintain? Can that waver? Does it go up and down depending on the years and and the amount of people that join or leave? I mean, how does that affect how the trip works?

Mike Tissot 18:03

Well, you know, the the more members the trib group has, the more buying power potentially it has. So the membership has been pretty steady over the few years. There's there's additions, and then you know, the nature of this business, companies get bought. And so when that happens, that they're not members anymore. They get rolled into another company's membership. We look at our membership mainly by number of companies, not necessarily number of stores. You know, over 50% of the membership is one to four store operators, and that's the core of rent to own. And so we want to make sure we do everything in the Trib Group to make sure we're filling the needs of those pe of those constituents the best we can. But in terms of the flux, it's it's not much. I mean, it's it's been, you know, we we will have 96, 90 to 100 companies come to the next meeting of the minds. We'll have you know 80 to 90 companies come to RTO World, like, and it's been that way for years. So it's been very really been very steady. Maybe not always the same, the usual suspects, um, but the numbers have been about the same.

Pete Shau 19:07

So then here's the biggest question. Uh not the biggest question, but here's a question. Do you know we always say that, right? We're gonna we got dun dun dun. Here's the biggest question. My question is You need a t-shirt that says this is the biggest question. The big question is to the to the next bigger question is Trib is something that I've kind of grown up with in the rent-owned industry, right? So I've when I came in in early 2000s, because I took a hiatus, I was like, oh my goodness, I need to take a break. But I came in early 2000s, and as I was going through I always heard a trib. But it's not the only name in the outfit, right? I mean, there's actually a different buying group, and and what is the what is the difference or what is the why does Trib work well and why would it be the place to go to versus another buying group?

Mike Tissot 19:49

Well, as the Trib president, I will give you the Trib commercial. Trib is a buying group built by members, ran for members, um, and is a has always been back to 30 years ago when I heard of it with my dad being on the board, and Dennis was on the board, Dennis Shields was on the board before he became the executive director, and he's been there for 20 years-ish now. But it is a group that is laser focused on helping independent rent-to-owned dealers, and it was connected with brand source for a number of years to help it get better buying power. Um, turns out that relationship, I think, hurt their ability to really serve the customers in a lot of ways. So that relationship was we broke off from them a few years ago. But nationwide has a buying group. Nationwide's a fantastic buying group. And uh they had an arm in their retail buying group for rent-to-own. And that's very different than having a rent-to-owned buying group. You know, those of us who've been a rent-to-wn for a long time realize that we have had to at many times try to make retail programs work for us. Well, we don't really do it for rent-to-home, but if you want to, like we have to try to make a retail CRM work for us. We have to try to make a retail sales program work for us. We have we're we're definitely a retail stepchild. And and I think what happens, what happened when we were as a trip group part of brand source, we started kind of going into that where some of our members could go to the brand source, and I just made air quotes you couldn't see. Um go into the brand source part of the showroom and see products that they really didn't want to sell to rent owned guys. And I remember meeting with Bose and they're like, eh, we don't really want to make this available. I remember meeting with um a mattress vendor, and they're like, Yeah, we really don't want to sell to rent own guys. And that just that gives rent owned guys a really bad taste in their mouth. You know, none of us want to hear that. Our money's good, you know. So uh I believe that trip. Has always been laser focused on rent-to-own, and we're not beholden to a retail company, and we don't have to worry about retail programs. And that's, I think, why it's always been able to better serve independent rent-to-own dealers than any other trade group that there's ever been. But I know that Brands Force has some amazing programs, and for a lot of folks, it's it's a great value. So there's your somewhat political answer.

Pete Shau 22:25

Yeah, that was a good that was a good answer. That was a good commercial. I like and I I'm gonna say the same thing. My money works just as well as anybody else's.

Mike Tissot 22:32

Yeah, I don't think there's things there's things that as a rent-to-owned dealer, we're never gonna get tired of. We're never gonna get tired of fighting the fight of people saying bad things about our customers, and we're never gonna get tired of fighting the fight of different types of business entities thinking we are unsavory in some manner because we know we have a just cause, you know, and that's what keeps the lifelong rent owners getting up every day, is that we our tagline mission statement at our company has been forever we get nice folks, nice stuff, and and we provide an amazing service to our customers to get and own great merchandise. And you know, that's that's one of the reasons I get up every day to do it.

Pete Shau 23:19

I love it. I'm gonna tell you right now, it's a difficult business to be in long term, but you you meet people, you meet really good people, especially the ones that you see year after year, and they've been around, and those are the people that you know they just do their best to make rent to own the absolute best that they can. So so here we are, right? 1996, North Carolina. Your marketing background. Did you ever think that social media but would be where it is right now?

Mike Tissot 23:41

Now that you I mean if you think about the fact that I came from like I worked at a company called Leo Burnett. Leo Burnett is in Chicago and they created Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man and Jolly Green Giant. And it's if you were to Google it, it's he's got a great speech called When to Take My Name Off the Door, too. If if you want to see one of the best business speeches of all time, but it was a great experience. And I spent my time there doing print ads for magazines and doing TV spots for uh I worked in the Maytag account for a while. Most of my time I spent working on the Philip Morris business on merit cigarettes. I don't even know whether they still exist or not. But we did um points programs and catalogs, we did a ton of billboards, we did a ton of direct mail, and um but obviously to think about back in you know the late 90s that this thing called the internet is how you would be reaching all your customers, is is absolutely crazy. But fast forward to what we do in our business is we have a fantastic marketing director and and Jessica, and uh she's led the marketing programs for us for a long time now, and a creative director in Kate that does just beautiful work, and she does a lot of work for some other uh rental dealers as well. But Facebook is the number one marketing thing we have. And I know a lot of other dealers, a lot of dealers are really working hard to get in it, but it like so many other things, it takes a ton of time to be really good at it. So I've got a 20-year store manager named Tamika Wall. She works on our London Ohio store, and I just talked to her on the phone yesterday, and they're having their tent sale. We do tent sales, thank you, the Fairman's for that idea. I don't know why we stopped doing them, but yesterday she told me I saw four, I saw four things on my live yesterday, Mike. And that's, I mean, literally, we have stores that have such a great Facebook following now, they can go live and sell products like it's an infomercial. That doesn't happen in all the stores because they don't all have 4,000 followers. But as you build that following and build those likes, it there's so much power in social media. We all know that. So it's exciting because it's cheap. And the fact that we can reach so many people so fast with a shotgun, you know, and I believe more so in a rifle approach to try to get customers to stay and get customers to come back. But, you know, that technology allowed has allowed us this pretty cheap shotgun. It's you know, the days of doing a commercial and listening to the phone ring, and that was kind of before my time, people were doing a lot of TV commercials, kind of merged into really mostly flyers and direct mail in the late 90s, early 2000s, and then it was mostly direct mail in 2000s, and then we moved into social. So if you look at kind of the evolution of marketing, you know, that's kind of what it was TV to flyers to direct mail to social. And some people are still dabbling in a little bit of everything, but there's no question that like going back to that kind of sales 2.0 that I was alluding to, I mean, social media is is a major component to being successful at that.

Pete Shau 26:53

It's coming out to be king.

Mike Tissot 26:55

Oh, yeah. Was that a rank king plug? It was a rank king plug. Okay.

Pete Shau 27:00

So I mean, I actually didn't know that you had a marketing background, so that would kind of make a lot of sense because uh the next thing I was gonna say is it seems like you usually have your finger on the heartbeat of what's coming up next or where things are going. You you seem to be on the front end and not usually the back end. I know that probably helps rent to your rent-to-owned brand a lot, especially now being on the front seat as the president of Trip, but social media has come. It's staying. We know that. Is there anything coming around the corner that Mike Tissett says, you know what, this is probably gonna be the next thing?

Mike Tissot 27:32

Wow, that is uh that's a tough one. I I I don't think I have a crystal ball, and and I'll go back to the product stuff. I think the next thing oftentimes is the thing you've been looking at, you just got to do it better. I think that's that's sometimes the next thing. I think we may abandon things too quick when it gets hard. I think we have a tendency to do that in our company. And so I I would say the next thing is doing social media better. The next thing is doing direct marketing better, and the next thing is doing hand-to-hand combat guerrilla marketing better. I mean, things like visiting customers, and and I'll give my good buddy Todd Homberger, who's not in the business right now, but the idea of visiting lost customers, and he said in one trip show, and this is the these are the meetings where you get the one or two great ideas, right? Going to a meeting of the mines or RTO World, which is coming up in San Antonio. If you haven't signed up, make sure you do so. But why aren't we visiting lost customers that have paid us multiple thousands of dollars like we visit 14 plus accounts? I mean, we put lost customers on our delivery books now in most stores. We should be doing it in all of them, but we're not 100% compliant. So those those are the lost arts that that we need to get back to doing because they're not walking in the store, and that's the evolution is customers are not walking in it. They don't have to. Over 50% of people are on auto pay. So why would they come in? And they can pay online and they can you know all the all the like, and they and they want to. So the next big thing is is getting better at social media, it's getting better at direct mail, and it's getting better, I think, at hand-to-hand combat, at really being great guerrilla marketers, is being able to reach people where they are, and that's the hard part.

Pete Shau 29:15

And now a word from our sponsor. We just want to let you know here at the RTO show, we use unlimited marketing solutions. They take care of us and all of our social media needs, and they can take care of you too. Right now, they're doing a great deal, 10% off if you mention the RTO show. That's RTO-s-h-o-w. Also, give them a call, 352-553-3245. They are amazing at what they do, and they can help you just like they help us. Give them a hit, Unlimited Marketing Solutions, or you can hit them up at Unlimited Marketing Solutions, LLC at gmail.com. Make it quick and easy for your social media needs. And now back to the podcast. I was spoken like a true rent-to-owned president. That was it. That was it right there. You know what's funny? I was talking to a good friend of mine, Leroy Steen in Texas, good friend of the RTO show, and he actually had a Todd Humburger story, which is nice. And and then you mentioned him. And I actually used to work with Todd in the same, I would say, same division. Oh God, 2000, 2003. Todd Hamburger is a top five rent-to-owned operator of all time. I'm putting on the list. Yeah, I mean, and you know, I did not know at the time that I guess I was with RTO royalty, but he was he was making it happen back then. He was in a very fast track of people that got moved up. That was something that I didn't see coming. Of course, I didn't know Todd like you guys know Todd. I I kind of knew of him, and we worked in the same around the same people in the same area at Rack, but I did not I can't, you know, I can say I shook his hand and say hot a few times, but that was about it. But it's just funny that you know Leroy said something, you're saying something, his name comes up quite a bit.

Mike Tissot 30:51

That it's just nice to know that sometimes we have those people to refer back to and and a couple of things Todd would say in some sales training, he kind of did the training circuit for a while and he talked about visiting lost customers and you know, really listen, uh Trent Trent Agin from Rent One, and I talk about this a lot. Every rent-a-home store that's been open for more than a couple years has a thousand customers. They just haven't had them at the same time. That's true. The issue in this business is people think the issue in this business is I gotta get new customers, I gotta get new customers, I gotta get new customers, and and we get new customers. I mean, most of my stores in the fourth quarter are getting, you know, 80 to 100 new customers every month. The trouble is we lose just about as many. I mean, the issue in this business, if you were to from a growth standpoint, is is the churn. It's how do you slow the churn? How do you we know customers that are at risk? We know the ones that are at risk. They are close to payout and they are past due. How do we how do we move the customers that are at risk back into good graces? We know customers that have just left. They left via payout, they left via pickup. How do we get them back? How do we keep them from leaving? How do we convert them that they have payout? Like that's where the magic happens from getting a store from 300 to 500 to 700 customers is the churn is is keeping the customers. And you know, I there's no there's no secret sauce to that, but there are a lot of great programs across the country with a lot of great independent rental dealers that they're really trying hard to do that. And that's never changed.

Pete Shau 32:24

I completely agree. I've said it before, not quite as eloquently, to some of my people. We have the backing to it. We just got to figure out how to get more of those same people at the same time. Completely agree. Now, here's a question, because I hear a lot of Mike, the president of RTO, coming out in the conversation. I do. I like it. That's where I'm at, right? I'm in the operations, I'm on the front side. But what does the trib president do? What do you do as trib president? How does that how do you fit that into the day? Because don't get me wrong, I'm not the most important guy in the world, but I'm pretty busy when it comes to running a division. So I can only imagine having 40 stores and then also being the president of Trip. It's got to be a feat. That's got to be a challenge. How do you do that? I mean, what do you do?

Mike Tissot 33:08

I mean, I I'm blessed, blessed beyond belief with 417 pretty darn committed folks that work at Countryside when I'm rent to own, and you know, the some VPs that are absolutely shoulder a ton of responsibility, some incredible managers, some of the best damn delivery guys in the world. And so, I mean, that makes my ability to focus on other things and things that help me build my business easier than than most. It really does. You know, from a trip group perspective, I'm excited to be the trib president. I've only been it for a few months, and and you know, one of the great parts about being a trib president followed in the footsteps of Chris Gale Jr., who's a fantastic, was a great president for us, and and Dan Fisher, who was a great president for us, two of my best friends in this industry. But, you know, the first part is making sure we're we're fulfilling the mission to our members, is trying to do our dead level best to provide the best buying programs we have, and then trying to find the best way to network with each other and share ideas. I mean, those are the things we try to do is is provide the connect our members with the best vendors, best pricing, and best program. And so there's some key big vendors in rent to own. Nashley's been probably the top vendor in rent to own for a long time, and and Michael Case and his team, you know, taking over for Gary do a fantastic job to help serve the rent-to-own industry. And so want to make sure that those relationships with those vendors are fostered. I think that's a big part of what I can do. I try to reach out to you know most of our vendors, a lot of our key vendors after the show. And, you know, how was it? What can we do better? How do we make this thing a better experience for you? So that's something I know I need to do. We're lucky to have an amazing Trib Office. Dennis Shields has been at the Trib Exec for a long time. Carl um is leaving us, and Carl is a fantastic resource. And Jennifer, we hired a few years ago, is amazing, tireless, and um has really helped uh move the Trib Office to a kind of a different level. So really helping remove any obstacles that those folks might have. And but probably the biggest job is connecting, Pete. I mean, it's just communication and connecting, working to connect all of our members. We have a Trib Communications Facebook page that we're trying to really get jump started. And you you played a part of that. And we've got probably 30 store tours on there from all across the country, and even one from Guam. And I know a lot of people have commented, they've got a lot of great ideas from that. So that's I think a great start of a way to use that tool to connect people even more. So connecting our members and fostering great relationship with great relationships with our vendors are probably the two most important things I can help with.

Pete Shau 35:48

I think the Storetor Challenge was amazing. I actually did my last podcast on that just because I thought it was a great idea, just to lack of a better term, you know, pull back the veil on what's going on everywhere else, and everybody can see, like, yeah, I do that, but I didn't do that. Wow, that's a great idea. You know, I didn't put this there, or I didn't put curtains on the wall, or maybe I didn't have it as many.

Mike Tissot 36:08

Just a reminder from Donnie Palmer down in Alabama that more people have more bedrooms in their house than they do living rooms.

Pete Shau 36:14

Yes.

Mike Tissot 36:15

So that hit a stuck in cord with us.

Pete Shau 36:18

It did. So me and Larry were talking, and he was like, I just, you know, I've been at Rentz owned a long time. I don't know why I didn't see that. And I thought the same thing. You know, you kind of sit down and go, why didn't I think of that?

Mike Tissot 36:30

Fantastic. Yeah. I had no idea by make saying that line, he was gonna make his rent to own brethren hundreds of thousands of dollars just changing their focus. So I think we all owe him a steak dinner or a Budweiser when we see him in uh San Antonio.

Pete Shau 36:44

I think I'll definitely be a chip in for that one. So, Mike, you got the rent to own brand that you're running. You've got the trib situation that you got going on. You've done fairly well. I mean, second generation rent to own. I really think that you're doing an amazing job with everything and you kind of handle it very well. But going back a little bit, I mean it's like a duck though, man. I mean, under the water, there's a lot of kicking. A lot of kicking under the water. So talking about a statement that kind of affected almost I want to say the entire nation of Rent to Own, right? Who has affected you? Who has been a motivator in your life that has kind of helped you to get here, or maybe a mentor, or was it your dad, or was it somebody else that you still communicate with?

Mike Tissot 37:27

Well, I would say from a business perspective, it's definitely been it's definitely been three people. You know, it's been my dad, you know, he started the business and you know, he's my dad. So I can't because I have a hard time talking about my dad without getting emotional, but um, but yeah, he uh you know for those who knew him, he uh you know, he's the most humble and generous person you'll ever meet. And so, you know, to learn that value, not only the way he ran the business and the way he, but it really more the way my dad treated people and and uh without question he taught me that. And you know, my mother, who you know, started a business in 1972 called Tisset Home Center, which is a you know kind of a mom and pop version of Glows, and she still runs it today. At age 79, she runs that today, every day. She goes to work every day, and um, and she is definitely my hero as well. And just, you know, cheat I worked for her before I worked for my I couldn't work for her very long because I'm too much like her. And um but uh I laid carpet for her for a couple summers when I was in high school and and uh she is uh had taught me work ethic, and you know, the job's not done until the job's done. And you gotta if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, you're gonna think about it all the time and you're gonna you know never turn it off. And and she taught me how to be resilient. My mama always when things happen, she'd always say, Well, just punt. She's got one of my favorite sayings of all time, and she talks about big circle, little circle, and that you know, there's things in life we can control, and that's the little circle, and there's things in life we can't, and that's the big circle stuff. And so, you know, for my 52 years on this planet, you know, I've complained or whined to my mama about stuff, and she's just looked at me in the eye and said, That's big circle stuff. Don't worry about that stuff, you know, and so there's no question that I would definitely was in the blessed camp from the parent standpoint, but you know, I would add in addition to that, from a business perspective, there's there's been no greater mentor for me than than Gary Fairman um from Showplace up in Marion, Ohio. And you know, Gary and I got connected early because we're you know in Ohio and and he was friends of my dad. And and you know, whenever I have a business issue that's a little bit too difficult to handle and I need a sounding board, he is absolutely the person I call. And it wasn't, you know, not more than two or three months ago he helped solve one of a big issue I was dealing with. So I I've always called him my ethical sounding board, my business sounding board, and you know, I appreciate you know how he's played that role. And and I think that when you talk about the close knitness of this industry, and I have five or six or seven you know, really close rent-to-own operator friends that I could call and ask anything at any time. And I think that I'd highly re and I know I see the premier franchise guys and how close they are and how you know much they share things, and that's different in this industry than it is most. And so I would encourage anybody that's in this industry, you know, to have, you know, have a nice have a network, you know, build the network, use the shows to create the network, you know. You know, I know that there's uh Angie and Joe Fisher and some others are all like Chris Kale Jr. all around 13 stores, and they have like their you know, their biggest dozen group that they have like a call once a quarter on to talk about things they're they're facing. And so sometimes you have to push the envelope and create that. But I don't know where I'd be without my you know network of of rent-owned cohorts that I share ideas with, from Gary to Chris Boland to Glenn Leach to Trent to Chris Kale Jr. and senior, and um, all those folks have been mentors to me in some different ways.

Pete Shau 41:17

Just just so you I'm gonna say this out loud. I'm gonna say this out loud because Chris Kale is the one that came up with it. Chris Cale Jr., when I was talking to him on Monday, he mentioned, you know, because I was telling him the same thing. I mean, we you know, we come across some avenues that are just unbelievable. And he, you know, he was mentioning that you know that sometimes there's people that he has to talk to, and some people that we talk to are on on when I say on level, I mean they kind of do what we do, right? So you would talk to people who kind of run the shows that you do, and I would probably talk to more to divisional managers and GMs would probably talk to their GM cohorts. And you know, he mentioned a group that Trib should should make. And I was, you know, I'm I of course I'm eagerly listening. What is he talking about? And uh he called it the mom's group, the the multi-unit management group. And uh, you know, I I don't know how to name it better than the moms, you know, talk to the moms, you know, uh whatever the case is, but he mentioned that. And uh he's like, you know, and what we do sometimes as as owners or operators, whatever it is, we kind of we get together, and maybe in this situation, it would be like that mid-level group where we have multi-unit managers who kind of get together and kind of do their own thing as well. And when you're having that hard, difficult time of maybe getting the customers back or maybe you know bringing those non-renewals back in line, and how do you get through those hard times? And he said, you know, that group, and I was like, I gotta tell Mike that. There's no way that he couldn't bring it up and give him the credit for it because Lord knows I can't say that I said it out out loud myself.

Mike Tissot 42:39

No, it's fantastic. I mean, it is fantastic, and it's just he's you know, it just needs to get gain traction and get going. I mean, I you know, Ben Davis has been a uh regional manager for me, he's a divisional manager, him and Rachel Casey, and you know, I don't know how he's connected over the years with folks, and he spoke at the last meeting of the mine, and I think connected with even more folks, and he's been doing it for nearly 30 years, and he's as good as anybody in the world. And um, but I I've been called, Mark Mark Conley from Morona called me and said, Man, can I connect my you know this regional manager with one of your guys? And it's hard to be promoted from manager to regional, you know. That's a hard, that's a totally different skill set. And you're kind of on an island, and I mean, there's a fantastic book called Multi-unit Leadership by this guy, Jim Sullivan, that a guy from uh from Color Time recommended to me years ago that I give every guy that I promote. There's not many books about multi-unit leadership out there. That's one of them. But I I mean I think we're doing it, Pete. So one of us, me, you, or Chris Cale Jr. have to do it. So within the next week, there'll be some at least there'll be a mum Facebook group, I guess.

Pete Shau 43:43

There we go. We're gonna put the mums together. We should have put the mums together for Mummer's Day. We're gonna have it together for next year. But you've got the the ground floor set, right? You got mom, you've got the wisdom that you were able to pull from dad, you've got Gary. So then with all that, what Would you say is your personal style? What is Mike's personal style when it comes to rent to own and the whole the whole establishment, not just running it as president, not just being part of TRIB, but as a whole, what's your personal style you feel?

Mike Tissot 44:13

It's probably all those, it's probably my mom and dad rolled into one, but I'd say the best way to describe what we try to accomplish at countryside is making it a great place to work and making it a great place to shop. And it sounds just stupid simple, but like the most important thing that I can do with the help of everybody that works in my the 417 people that work in my company is make it a great place to work and try to find ways, everything we can do to make it a great place to work. It's a hard job. It's hard to deliver furniture, it's hard to do collections, it's hard to, you know, get people to buy stuff when you know we're going through whatever we're going through and they're not walking through the door. It's I can't make it. Well, I guess I can make it a little bit easier with some technology and some tools, and but we're gonna do everything we can to make this a great place to work. And so, I mean, I I I I read voraciously looking for ideas to make my place a great better place to work. I listen to things, I talk to people, I I observe. I mean, one of the, you know, I'm very aware of things we can do to make it a better place to work. And the same thing from a from a customer perspective. How do we make it a better place to shop? You know, what are the things we can learn from from retail? What are the things we can learn from Amazon? What are the things we can learn from this from Wayfair's website? What are the therm things I can learn from McDonald's, you know, to make it a better place for our customers to shop? And so I think that all that being said, it's you know, I'm driven by curiosity. You know, I'm I'm very I'm insatiable in trying to figure out how to make it better. And I'm driven by teaching and getting people kind of bought into what we do, getting folks. There's a commitment continuum we've we've taught and been part of our leadership training where folks may start as as resistant and reluctant to move up to compliance and hopefully move from to existent and then compliant and then hopefully be committed, and then in a magical world somewhere, they're compelled to do amazing work. But you know, we at countryside do everything we can to try to move people up on that on that continuum. And the more people we have we know that work here that are compelled and excited to come to work. I sound like Simon Sinek. I love Simon Sinek. I do like Simon Sinek. Make people excited to come to work, you know. But that's that's that's the most important thing I can do is make people excited to come to work. And if if we can do that and have you know some great tools and some great processes and procedures and give people the freedom to operate within them, we can do some pretty cool things in this industry.

Pete Shau 46:54

So it sounds like you grab innovation anywhere you can find it.

Mike Tissot 46:58

Isn't that basically what a company does is markets and innovates. I mean, that's if we're not innovating, we're gonna die. We have to innovate the sales process, we have to innovate the collection process. Um, it's it's every day we have to innovate, Pete.

Pete Shau 47:11

If you could look at yourself in the mirror 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever the case might be, and you can give if you could give some advice as who you are now to a younger version of yourself back then, knowing now what you've gone through and what you're capable of, but not knowing then what you're capable of, what advice would you give a younger Mike? Not just Mike, but maybe yourself or somebody who's going through the simulation situation. I'm young, I'm just not getting into rent to own. What's some advice that you would give to somebody earnest to figure this out?

Mike Tissot 47:43

You know, I would, you know, if you if you stance it as somebody getting into rent to own, you know, in the beginning, you know, I would which is different than maybe the advice I give myself. But I would say somebody getting into rent to own the beginning is understand and always know you're doing this for a just cause, which is helping great American blue-collar American heroes, as Lynn Leach would say, own nice stuff. Like our customers should love us, our customers should appreciate us, our customers should really care if we went out of business. And it's it's about that. If you don't believe what we're doing for customers is an amazing service, you should go do something else. Absolutely believe that. I tell people that in orientation, I tell every new person that I have new orientation every six weeks. I've done it for 25 years, and I tell people that if you may not believe this yet, but if you don't get to a point where you really believe we're doing something amazing for customers, go do something else. So you have to believe that. And then go back to the innovation part. It's all about curiosity, Pete. It's all about staying curious, it's all about looking for new ways and better ways to do things and and be willing to try. Like ideas are easy, execution is what's really freaking hard, you know. So staying curious, identifying something new, and then trying it, you know. I I have a habit of being a ready fire aim guy, which I'm okay with.

Pete Shau 49:13

Oh God, you know, so behind the scenes, Danny and I, you knew you can't imagine the amount of conversations that we've had because I I I just don't have uh the fallback that you do. I do have some people, but as a division manager, I can't talk to some of my guys the same way. But when we talked, that was Danny's tagline. That was that exact line. And uh he was always like, let's just do it. And I was always the opposite, you know.

Mike Tissot 49:37

Well, but there was, you know, it was in Jim, one of Jim Collins's books, he talked about fire bullets, then fire cannonballs. It's like ready, aim. I mean, so much time is wasted. Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim. Like, no, like ready, fire, maybe a small bullet, a warning shot, and then once you really hone in on it, then you fire a cannonball. Then you do it, man. So I think that I think that's a been an important part of you know, the group of people I get so lucky to work with every day have done. And we're we're trying stuff in places, man. I tried the craziest thing on a TV deal of just a month ago that and I've never done before, and we'll just keep trying stuff.

Pete Shau 50:20

So there's a question as we come to you know the end. Leeroy steam reminded me I forgot to ask him, and I felt terrible, but I'm gonna make sure that I mention his name every time that I asked this question. The RTO show believes that in this industry you've got two types of people. Now, everybody says there's two types of this, there's one type of the this is the question I want to know. From Mike's standpoint, are you a credit guy or are you a sales guy?

Mike Tissot 50:46

Oh wow. Interesting. I'm a sales guy. I mean, I want to sit here and say I'm both, but I'm I'm a marketer. And maybe that's because I, you know, started that way. I know I don't look the way other way in credit. I understand, and we don't call it credit, you know, we call it collections. Um, I never looked the other way. I watch it closely. I'm very in tune with how important it is to keep people from getting further and further past due. And if they don't pay on time, they can't keep their merchandise. And we have we innovate in collections as much as we innovate in sales, but it all starts with the sale. I also know that the best medicine in rent to own is a bunch more rentals.

Pete Shau 51:30

Absolutely.

Mike Tissot 51:31

That that same first rent-to-own convention I went to in 1997, the reverend of rent to own Larry Sutton was speaking when he was still in rent to own at that time and not in rent and roll. And his seminar, I don't know whether it was titled this, but it basically the message was this business is easy. All you have to do is rent more than you pick up and pay out. That's all you gotta do. If you do that every month and every year, you grow your business. And so we I know if we sell more, we do better. And if I'm not selling, then I got nothing to collect. So if you want to play the which came first, the chicken or the egg game with written or collecting, renting better come first. Because I've seen a lot of folks that were so collection focused that they were afraid to rent. So collection focused that you know we didn't give customers much stuff that our potential per customer is something crazy low. So I mean, I think sales has to come first in probably any company, but definitely in rent own.

Pete Shau 52:26

It's the yin and yang of everything that we do, right? Yeah. And uh I I remember when I first came into the business, I was credit centric. I was just like, that's it. You know, Rack kind of taught me that when I first came through. And that as I've evolved over the years through what I've done, I am definitely a sales guy.

Mike Tissot 52:43

The evolution, Pete, is you know, as auto pay has become more prevalent, and we don't have to spend if it's working and going through, which it's not automatic pay, it's it's set up to run. It doesn't always run, but it's taken time away from doing collections, which has given us a lot more time to do what I would call sales 2.0. So I think that sales will continue to evolve in how we have to try to attract customers and how we have to try to retain customers and convert customers. But as the technology evolves in collections and our retention rates have improved as we went through COVID, we're spending less time doing collections than we ever have, which is cool because that time can now be dedicated to sales, which is that sales needs that time because the way sales has evolved. So I'm just affirming that being leaning sales is the right decision. I'm just trying to pat myself on the back right there, Pete.

Pete Shau 53:40

Well, I tell you what, I call it the dance, the great big dance. You know, you got to find the right partner and you got to make it work, and you can't be afraid to go out there to talk to somebody that you don't know, grab their hand, take them to the floor, and have a good time. And I call that the dance. The sales part of it is something that I'm passionate about, something that I feel like, like you said, I if I was to pick two aspects and one of them had to be more important, I just have to say sales.

Mike Tissot 54:04

The other magic Pete is that you know, where stores do extremely well is where there's no walls between those departments. You've seen it, I've seen it. Anybody that's been in this business for a period of time has seen it where sales and collections bicker because of one reason or another. You shouldn't have rented to them. I can't believe we did this. You know, you and so when when we have sales and collections working in unison, when there's no walls that have been built brick by brick between those departments, that's a that store's magic. And I just finished this book called Unreasonable Hospitality by this guy Will Gudera's talking, he ran the number one restaurant in the world in New York City, and they had the same issues in restaurants between the kitchen and the servers, right? And so when they broke down the walls between the kitchen and the servers and they made hospitality as important as the food, it changed how the restaurant operated. So, you know, both those sides of the business has always been critical to a successor in its own store, but it's even better when they work together, and that doesn't happen every day.

Pete Shau 55:03

You know, I think we've always tried to get them to see each other and see each other for what they do and the importance that they bring to the table. And I can't say, but more than more than often, sometimes it's just like spend an hour calling credit, and you spend an hour trying to get that guy in the door, and you tell me that you don't appreciate what the other one does. Yeah. It's that safety net of it's having the seat belt on the fast car. Yes, one requires the other. You know, you're not going to garnish anybody coming through the front door if we're scaring them off, and at the same time, we can't pay any bills if we just don't get it right. It's that business, it's the yin and the yang. But I had a feeling that you would go that way. Uh I am that way. Um, it's it's one of those things that who we are in the rent home business, and as we've been coming up through the years, I always like to know who, you know, deep down inside, there's there's there's always one of us coming out. Is it the collections guy or is it the sales guy? You know, and as we run the markets and we run our divisions, I always want to know what kind of uh GM I have there and how do I approach that person.

Mike Tissot 56:03

They absolutely lean one way or the other.

Pete Shau 56:05

They do. But Mike, I really appreciate your time today. I I really appreciate you being able to be on the RTO show today and kind of telling us a lot about Trib and what really goes on behind the scenes and how they garnish what it is that happens between buying, selling, and just those relationships that come along with it. I will tell you that at some point in time we are gonna have to talk about this mom's thing. We're gonna have to figure this out, whether we come up with a great name or whether we keep uh Kale Jr.'s version of the mom's going on. I think it's gonna be a great thing. Also, just to let you know, because you have been on the show, you do get a free t-shirt. I just want you to know that. I like it. I like it. Thank you. I really appreciate you being on the show. I really appreciate you taking out your time. Everyone, the president of Rent Own, the president of Trib currently talking to us, Mike Tissett. We really appreciate your time. Thanks, Pete. What a great interview. Listen, if you guys want to talk to me, feel free to hit me up at Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. That's Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com. If you want any swag from the show, feel free to go on our website, www.therto showpodcast.com. Go on there, take a look, leave a message for us, or you can DM me on Facebook or Instagram, like us and share, subscribe, make sure that you get all the notifications for all the new things that we have going on. And as always, I'm your host, Pete, and this is the RTO show.