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The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Ever wondered how a $8.5 billion industry keeps millions of Americans lounging in style? Step into "The RTO Show Podcast" – where the mysterious world of Rent to Own furniture finally spills its secrets! Your host Pete Shau isn't just any industry veteran – he's spent 20 years in the trenches, collecting the kind of stories that'll make you laugh, gasp, and maybe even rethink everything you knew about that couch you're sitting on.
From wild customer tales to industry shake-ups that'll knock your rented socks off, Pete brings the seemingly mundane world of furniture financing to vibrant life. Warning: This isn't your typical business podcast – expect real talk, unexpected laughs, and "aha!" moments that'll have you looking at every lease agreement in a whole new light.
Whether you're an RTO pro who knows your depreciation schedules by heart, or you're just curious about how that fancy sectional ended up in your living room, Pete's got the inside scoop you never knew you needed. Tune in and discover why the furniture business is anything but boring!
The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
What if your POS system actually made your business better?
What happens when a data analytics expert decides the rent-to-own industry deserves better software? You get Revo POS—a ground-breaking point-of-sale system that's completely reimagining how RTO businesses operate.
From the moment you experience Revo's interface, you know it's different. While traditional RTO software cobbles together multiple disconnected systems, Revo seamlessly integrates everything: inventory management, customer data, quoting, digital agreements, even your phone system. The result? A streamlined operation where your team never needs calculators, paper forms disappear, and pre-leased inventory turns 30% faster.
Enos Barger, Revo partner and 30-year RTO veteran, takes us behind the curtain to reveal how this software emerged from R&R Tire Express's needs but was designed with flexibility for the entire industry. "We're not writing software for one way of operating," Barger explains. "For every pricing model, there are a hundred variants. We had to customize for that reality."
The system's innovations are striking: completely paperless transactions with digital signatures, a VoIP integration that identifies customers when they call, mobile capability for field operations, and an intelligent quoting system that prioritizes inventory you already own. Perhaps most impressive is how the system handles RTO's complexity while remaining intuitive for store staff.
Built on modern technology (SQL backend hosted in Azure), Revo's approach represents a fundamental shift in industry thinking. Rather than building everything in-house, they focus exclusively on exceptional RTO functionality while integrating with best-in-class partners for complementary services like texting and review management.
Ready to see what next-generation RTO technology looks like? Visit RevoPOS.com or contact Enos directly at enosbarger@revopos.com to learn how this software could transform your operation.
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hello everyone, welcome to the rto show. I'm your host, p chow, and today we have something we haven't done in a long time. We haven't really talked about the specifics, especially a pos system with somebody as great and as grand as somebody that I have on today. I saw this at the last rto world convention, the trade show, and I'm going down the aisle and I'm telling you it stuck out like a sore thumb. These guys are really pushing what looks to be not only beautiful but very functional software, new POS system, a POS system called Revo POS, and I'm here with the owner owner CEO, I would imagine or something thereof.
Speaker 2:A COO? Yeah, I'm a partner. Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1:All right. So, enos Barger, I'm so glad that you're here today. Tell me, where did Revo POS come from?
Speaker 2:Well, actually it was born from a need that was seen, actually ironically, by someone that came from outside the industry. So the founder of the company, nick Dozier, who's my partner in the business. He actually owns several different you know. He's partners in several different types of businesses. One of those is a chain of game buy-sell-trade game stores called Game Exchange that has, you know, 150 locations nationwide. He's ownership partners in a big chunk of those. Those partners have been successful in a lot of different things that they've done, and one of the things that they decided to do was they were turned on by the notion of the R&R Tire Express business model. So they researched it, decided to go in and become franchisees, and it was really in the lead up to the opening of their first store.
Speaker 2:Nick wasn't involved deeply in the store operation, setup type of stuff, but with his background in technology he started reviewing the software options that were out there and very quickly figured out that this, that what was available just wasn't, wasn't going to cut it long term. For, at least for the way he wants to operate and that his team wants to operate, he had already written the point of sale system for the game exchange company, you know a decade or so ago and then. But his, his main background is really in big data analytics. So all the vendors we're in walmart country, in Bentonville Rogers, arkansas area, so there's a ton of business that flows through this area. All the vendors have to have a presence to be in the Walmart Sam's Club ecosystem, and one of the things that these companies that are selling millions of SKUs to Walmart Sam's Target Kroger, you name it, they need data SKUs to Walmart Sam's Target Kroger, you know, you name it, they need data. So years back he spun up a data analytics firm, was very successful in that business, ended up selling it During his non-compete was when this project kind of flowered out and so he took the first few years of development under his wing and then, of course, we've subsequently hired other developers and he's less involved in the day-to-day code as he used to be.
Speaker 2:But he's in the middle of spinning up another data analytics company that basically because the other one he sold, they ended up kind of faltering a bit, and so I think he has most of his old clients back and some new ones, and so that's where Revo came from. It was born from a need and the vision that Nick has, and he's a guy that I've really enjoyed getting to work alongside for almost three years now. Because, man, you talk about a high sense of urgency, like if he says, hey, we should do this, like he means today we're going to start doing this thing.
Speaker 1:Let's figure this out, let's figure this out. Let's figure this out. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And one of the most brilliant guys I've ever had the privilege of working with. He has a great vision, and so I actually didn't join his operation until he was already in midstream. And it was just one of those situations where I was having lunch with someone that I used to work for for about a decade he's an R&R franchisee as well and he said listen, I really want you to have a conversation with this guy. I think he's right in your backyard, I think he's somebody you'd be interested in talking to. And I went and talked with him and two weeks later joined the team. Like it was a no-brainer to me.
Speaker 2:I could see the potential for what was in front and the way that they had gone about the build of the product. At that point. The one tough thing is rent-to-own is a very complex business to write software for. Even if you're just writing it for one way of operating, it's complex, but when you're talking about a product that's going to serve a wide variety of dealers, it's got to be so flexible. I don't think he knew what he was getting into at first with the level of granularity and complexity.
Speaker 2:so the first couple of years were spent, like you know, going through and looking at the features, how they were written. They were written, you know, to the way that they respect to him. But because he hadn't, you know, he's never operated in a rent-owned company, he didn't know that for every pricing model you have out there, there's going to be a hundred variants of that same pricing model. And then you have, you know, the same as cash versus not same as cash in terms, and you know all the different things that are out there. So the first couple of years I was here, we really we really re rewrote much of the program because it was written to do it the way he was. He had been told that it, that it was going to operate. But very quickly, as soon as we started talking to franchisees, it was evident like this one way is not going to fit.
Speaker 1:So we have to customize this, a way of throwing ideas and things in, especially because a lot of our franchisees are direct owner operators. They don't always just kind of have somebody else doing it. So he comes into this and he says, okay, they're open to franchise. They look at it. The model isn't exactly what he's used to. He's used to pinpoint data. He's used to pinpoint data. He's used to kind of understanding everything that's going on. This is all crazy. Now, what's your background into all this and how did you play a role in helping create this? Because I think that if only made you helpful in the development of it, but the site of where you're going with it as well.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah and Pete, sometimes in the middle of your path, your career path, you kind of wonder where's this all going to end up? And in rent to, and I grew up in rent to own. So I started for all intents and purposes. I did about a year in the telephony industry, you know, like an eight from 18 to 19, 19 and a half, so like the bigger PBXs that run like hospitals and things like that. So I had a little bit of a technical background from that side of things.
Speaker 2:But you know I was, I was coaching youth league baseball with a guy who happened to be a regional manager for a company called Fastway and for about six months he was in my ear like hey, listen, I really want you to come to work for me. I think you could do well. So finally, I was just like I had a young family starting and I wanted the ability to further my career quicker than I felt like I could in that industry that I was currently in. And so I took a leap of faith and took all the leadership tests that they gave me and everything, and I guess I scored well enough to they made me an MIT. Six months later I was running my own store before I was even legal to walk next door and buy a beer, and this was in North Little Rock. So I've done everything, from the old route manager where the policy was one man, one van and if it got delivered, collected on, serviced, returned, it was you and you had a territory, and that was just the way the business worked.
Speaker 2:And so I was knocking on doors and doing the things that needed to be done and then pretty quickly moved up into a regional manager position and then, later on, an assistant DVP. There was a bunch of mergers and acquisitions between Fastway to All, rent Co to Home Choice and then finally, I think, home Choice went to Rentway and I'd kind of been through the gauntlet with the mergers and acquisitions and so I was considering taking a break from the industry at that point because I really didn't know where I was going to go to work and stay local to Little Rock area. But all of a sudden, which the guy that had originally hired me had ended up leaving during the home choice time. He said hey, the guy that sold Fastway, his non-compete ran out and he wants to open up another set of stores.
Speaker 1:And so that's how it goes. That's how it goes, sign me up.
Speaker 2:So for four months we worked out of a pickup truck and we opened seven stores in 18 months Wow.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a rampant pace, but at that point I was hooked. I was hooked on small to medium-sized rent to own. You don't have to wait for 17 meetings to make a change. You're nimble, you feel like you're a lot more in control of your destiny. You're a lot more in control of the culture that you create with the people that that are around you, that are, that are working hard. So but then then that come then out of nowhere, like out of the blue, the owner calls and says we're, we're selling to these guys out of Jonesboro that have five stores. And I was just crushed, you know.
Speaker 2:And at that point I I was, I was ready to write it off and uh, but it was garen. There's a guy named garen vale and fred pearson who had, uh, had you know, something called pay less, and I think they were. They were playing around at that point with a name change. So I agreed to consult for about three months and help with the transition, with no intention of moving to jonesborough. But, um, after three, garen sat down and said hey, listen, I know you don't want to move, but there's a future here. I actually grew up about an hour and a half northwest of Jonesboro and I had a family member that I found out had a health concern, and so it got me in closer proximity. I talked with my wife, we ended up moving up to Jonesboro and then I worked with Garen for about 10 years until he franchised with Aaron's and during that time I was oh, I don't know 25 probably.
Speaker 2:At the time I got to tell you I wouldn't be sitting here today if it wasn't for the 10 years that I spent with Garen and Fred. There was a lot of changes. We grew that company to around 19 or 20 locations. I told Garen. I said I know someday you're going to want to step back and I want to work a plan today so that when you're ready to step back, I want to be the guy that you lean on to run this thing. And he said, ennis, that's fine Operationally, I've got no concerns. But you have to understand some other components of the business. He said you're going to have to step out of the COO role and you're going to have to do a year as my controller and you're going to have to do a year as a CFO. And I didn't take accounting classes in high school, I didn't go to college, so I didn't know anything about that.
Speaker 1:But what I did know was, given time, I could figure it out, and so, and of course, patience. So that's the lovely thing about life nowadays, you know, I think a lot of people get hung up on the thought that if I don't have a degree, I don't have the ability to make it, I don't have what it takes because I don't have this knowledge. And the truth is I would take experience over knowledge almost every day. You know, I know how to balance a book, I know how to do this, and that's always the truth. You always need that. But the essence of the experience is not only do you know what you need because of what's going on, but you've also failed. You've been able to say you know what, this is not the route. I've really got to be careful because this is not the way I want to go and I really like that. So all this rent-to-own background how in God's name did you end up working for a software?
Speaker 2:company. So that's kind of the latter part of the journey. So I really cut my teeth in cash flow management, accounting. I got deeply understanding between book depreciation and tax depreciation and tax strategies and I'm telling you it was a couple of years of intense discomfort because it's like learning how to swim all over again. But I made know, we made it, I made it through that and we were able to work through.
Speaker 2:He ended up acquiring his partner's interest. We worked out the lending and so I dealt with banks, so all of that stuff. You know I wondered when, when it came time, when he decided to franchise with Aaron's which I completely understood why from an ownership standpoint, the kind of the defined exit strategy and all that stuff, pre-calculated valuation of your company, you always knew where you stood, so all those things. But I took a look at that Aaron's Pathway book and I thought we don't need a six-inch deep manual to know how to run this business Like. This just is not my thing. And nothing against Aaron's at all, like I never operated in their system, but at that point in time it just didn't appeal to me. So I took a period of time where I did consulting in rent to own, helping smaller companies. One of those things that I helped them with was converting software. I bring I brought a number of different companies off of older software systems to at that point was what was the most current system in the marketplace, which was VersaRent.
Speaker 2:And during that time I went to users' conferences and I was flying down to their offices to help, you know, go through the meeting, the setup, the decision-making, all the things, the conveyance, developed a relationship there and then, you know, maybe four or five months later I get a phone call from the owner and said hey, what would you think about coming in and running the software side of things here? I've got a guy exiting, and so we ended up talking over a little bit of time. I went down there and interviewed and so I took that job and I ran that company for five years. So once again, not a software background. Now, every time I was in the business I'm a data, I'm a guy, and so I always became the subject matter expert in the company on whatever point of sale that we were on, and then all the things you have to bolt around it just to like be able to function and make good decisions. So it was kind of hand in glove. But I didn't have a software background from that perspective, never worked in the software industry.
Speaker 1:But you knew. You knew what you were looking for because you've been in the business on both sides of it the operations and the upper management to say I know what the software needs to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and it was a great. So I walked in and thought, like we all tend to, I've got Rentown, I've got rent to own, figured out my way of doing rent to own, and the first six months I got informed very clearly from my clients that that way isn't the way to do it. This is the way, the way it works. And you know, and honestly, I had to take a step back and gain a little humility because even with 25, you know, 20, 24 years in the industry, at that point I didn't know everything about rent to own. I knew what I had been exposed to, I knew how I had ran rent to own and I really got my eyes opened about just the really innovative ways that dealers run their businesses. That it's foreign, it was foreign to me. And then, you know, I would get a feature request, and this is the thing that probably primed the pump the best. I would get a feature request from this customer that says, hey, I would like this feature, will pay for its development. So I would scope out that feature and then I would hand it to developers, developers would go out and code it and we'd release it and then within two weeks I would get, you know, six phone calls from different operators going. That would work great, if only it did this, because this is the way we do business.
Speaker 2:And so what I found for that first year was you cannot write a piece of code to do it one way, because there's going to be 10 different ways it's going to be utilized. So what I had to start doing was backing up and going okay, where can we make this customizable at kind of every layer of the process, so that if Joe Blow wants to do this and Susie wants to do this, then we can accommodate that and we don't have to go back in and touch the code again. Rewrite it right, yeah, yeah, because the worst time you spend is rewriting code and developers hate rewriting code. They like to write new code, but they don't want to go back and touch it 15 times. So if you want to demoralize your development team, you don't get the design right on the front end to the best of your ability. There's always going to be a little thing here or there that you're going to need to tweak.
Speaker 2:But if you want to honor their time, then spend the time really thinking the process out, thinking the features out. How do they need to be customizable, and so, you know, I spent five years there, no-transcript. You can basically fall to the wayside, like other software platforms have, where you're basically painted into a corner by either the programming language or the database or the platform in which you're running on, and so I decided to exit. It was amicable. I still have great relationships with folks over there. I still have very, very close friends that I love, that I get to see and hug every time we're at a trade show together and I love the VersaRank guys.
Speaker 1:I go and say hi and they're, they're great people.
Speaker 2:And I, you know, and I helped recruit my replacement and train and train him. So you know it was, it was, it was nothing. You know, there's no ill will at all in that, in that exit it was just, that was the end of that season for me and I, uh, I entered into a ownership stake and operating position with a chain that was here local, but in that, you know, that was, that was something I'd always wanted to do. But but when this thing with Nick, this opportunity with Nick, came up, I just knew sometimes you're kind of sitting around waiting to know where you, where you belong, like really to exercise what your, your giftings are. This was just, this was the easiest decision I ever made.
Speaker 1:That was an easy call to make, yeah. So I want to get into this a little bit, because this is the story of how you guys not only got here, but the decision-making, the experience, the knowledge that you bring into Revo. But the truth is, revo is still something new. It's fairly new. Now you have cut your teeth in another part when you have R&R Express. You said that earlier. R&r Express is something that Revo uses. Tell me a little bit about that. And how did R&R become this outlet for Revo and not others? Yet Sure.
Speaker 2:So R&R had intended for some period of time prior to Nick's arrival as a franchisee they had for some period of time wanted to write a proprietary software for R&R. Rent-a-center went out on that path because they were using an industry software that I think had been. They'd been given a customized version that was unique to them. But because of the amount of money and the resources that they had, they decided to go out and write software. Well, and they're just writing it for one business model, just the way Rack does business. I think they have some franchising and that kind of thing, but basically it's simple in the fact that it's one way of doing business. I think, if I'm not mistaken, by the time that they got sued by their shareholders because the software had not been deployed yet, I think they had upwards of $120 million in that software.
Speaker 2:And then they ended up having to go back to the drawing board and make some changes before they were finally able to deploy and I don't know what that final ticket price ended up being Granted. There's going to be bloat and inefficiency. It's a bigger corporation, there's lots of layers. So you know, let's say you cut that in half. You know, if they were more efficient it would have maybe been $60 million. So the R you know, if they were more efficient it would have maybe been 60 million. So the r&r guys figured out pretty quickly when they went out and started talking to people about writing software it's a big ticket, it's a big ticket solution oh yeah, yeah, it's an investment.
Speaker 1:It's an investment that you, you really got to think about, because you know it's not two months and then it's done and you deploy it. I mean it's. It takes a lot of groundwork, trials, mistakes, retrials, uh, to get it right, because I mean, by the time you do deploy it, like you said you, it's got to be right. I mean it's got to be usable. Yeah, with all intents and purposes, and I know and we'll get into some of the features that that revo has, because I I seen a lot that's involved with this software.
Speaker 1:I've seen, because I've seen some of the older software, I've used some of the older software, sure, and it's like you have this particular item that you do and then this particular item that you do, but you do it through a different program. And this, you know this what you do is do a different program and okay, so now we could have up to five different programs, whether it be your phones, your CRM, your social media, your, your actually accounting software, and then your operation software, and now the accounting could be on the back end of the operations, but they never see each other, at least not at the store level. So there's these different aspects of it, but I was just kind of going over how integrated, how robust Revo really is. R&r decides to say, hey, we really want to get into this, we want to make something for ourselves. Was that the turning point? And going okay, we've got somewhere, let's make this happen.
Speaker 2:Or was there more to it, I think? When Nick saw what was available and was not happy with that, he called the guys and said, hey, there's got to be something else. And they were like, no, these are the options.
Speaker 2:And Nick said, well, we may have to open on other software, but I'm going to write something for myself. And I think their eyes lit up and were like because they knew his background, and they said, hey, let's talk about you know, let's use R&R as the first pilot, like if you can make this work for us, then you can use us as a testing ground. And I will say this they have been an absolute awesome partner to work with, you know, because it's not easy to rip the bandaid off. It takes a step of faith. There's going to be bumpy moments and especially, especially if you do anything innovative, what we, what we did not do. And I think one of the real benefits and I'll say this, I'll say this up front had Nick called me in, and if he had he known me and called me in from day one, more than likely the Revo product wouldn't look like it looks today, to its detriment. Because I think, at the end of the day, I would have brought my preconceived notion of the way rent-on-software is supposed to look and work and feel and it would have been a dressed-up version of what we've all seen all this time and the product would not be what it is today, had I been involved in that moment.
Speaker 2:So tip of the hat to him because he didn't have that to look at, like he didn't. He didn't go into the software that his stores were operating on and look at it and go, okay, well, we'll recreate this menu. We'll recreate this menu. He's like here's the business in general, it's really taking payment for time and it's inventory management, it's this and that, and he's like.
Speaker 2:But he's a data guy. So he's like why, why would we not incorporate data, like lots of data and the customization of data within, just within, the screens? And so you know, that's kind of how it all got born. So Nick had a vision for it and then they, you know, with R&R guys, we've kind of given him the framework of specs and how things were supposed to work here as he was starting to code each thing and, to their credit, they did a fantastic job of conveying the way that they are in our corporate did business at that moment. But they also didn't have necessarily that experience and that vision to know what kind of flexibility and where do you lay, where do you layer that flexibility?
Speaker 1:in. Well, I mean, when you're running a business, you seldom think about a different business, right? I mean you think, okay, if I have a car and it's got four tires, I'm not in the tire business, I don't know anything about it. But then somebody says they got a better tire. Now you're trying to make. I don't know anything about that, but I can tell you right now, larry Sutton, adam Sutton, they are forward thinking. Their entire staff is. The guys over there are just amazing.
Speaker 1:But I like the idea of not seeing almost like what the Mona Lisa look like, to paint a different version of it, because I've seen the POS system at Revo. I've seen it at the trade show, kind of on the screen. Obviously it's not somebody there taking payments and making phone calls, but it was a completely different overview of what I've normally seen. It looks completely different. So then I go to the website, I'm taking a look.
Speaker 1:Revo, you know R-E-V-O-P-O-Scom, and it's got features all built in. It's got a lot of different ways of doing what we do, kind of like on its ear, completely different setup. I really like it. As a matter of fact, I wanted to go over some of the things that I saw in there, because seeing the integration makes perfect sense. One of the things that I noticed is that you know you have the voice over IP call logging and phone integration possible with Revo, so you know I wanted to know how that works. Is that you know? Tally the outgoing phone calls, the incoming phone calls, the duration of time and who's making that call. Is that how it works?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, I guess there's a whole other piece of this. You know, our mission really at Revo is to take the technology burden off of the dealer, the owner.
Speaker 1:That's a real burden.
Speaker 2:And I mean I can tell you from my experience there are two components of rent to own that I feel like I feel that are the most intimidating to me as an operator. It's technology soup to nuts and then marketing, and both of those just so happen to be two areas where you can spend a tremendous amount of money and get very little value. Or you can spend a tremendous amount of money and get a lot of value, and so we, of course we'll talk about a little bit more as we go along, but we want to help that marketing side as much as we can. But our real mission is to other than your internet circuit. We can handle everything from that point in to the building, really. Yeah, so we not only provide software but we provide a full suite of managed technology services. So voice over IP, we're our own PBX, really.
Speaker 1:So we own that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we own the VoIP. That's why we can do all these integrations. We have full access to the APIs that we wrote Wow For that. So the reason that we have an integration into Revo with VoIP is that we own the PBX and we sell that service at a very reasonable rate to the rent-to-own. I mean, rent-to-own is our core industry. We're going to service some other small format retail from the managed technology, but rent-to-own is really the bread and butter. So our whole suite is designed to bring you the network appliance, all the wireless AP devices, your workstations, which are all the all-in-one PCs that the pack just slides in. They mount on a pole or are set on a very small footprint Printers, barcode scanners, anything else that's needed, plus all the phones. We can also do surveillance cameras and recordings of those. And we handle Microsoft 365 licensing and all of the security software antivirus and security software.
Speaker 2:We handle administration of all that so we handled all of that for many of the R&R franchisees in the R&R corporate and actually just signed on to be the provider for managed services for some other organizations that I'll be able to talk about at another time. So we're excited about that product, but it's really now one thing I want to do qualify. You don't have to use our managed technology to be on our software and you don't have to be on our software to use our managed technology. It's an offering to try to make people's lives better, but we don't hold a gun to your head. Like, if you want to use your IT guy that you've always used, then use them. If you want the integrated VoIP stuff with Revo, it has to be through our VoIP provider, but we make it. You know there's no contract. You own the hardware at cost and all you pay us is a very reasonable monthly fee, tax and everything included. And it includes all the features that are available.
Speaker 2:And even if you're not on Revo, we have a full call recording dashboard which you can access via web portal so you can review all your inbound and outbound calls along with metrics. So if you want to advertise like if you wanted to advertise one phone number on your trucks, one on your marquee, one on your website. We can give you analytics on where your call volumes are coming from. Roi on your advertising proposals. You mail a flyer and you want to. You want a phone number just for six months for that flyer. We can tell you how many phone calls you got off of that flyer to that number. And those were things that in my last company I had to pay separate groups for. I had phone service and I had something called CallRail and I had another thing for call recording and I only got I think I only got inbound calls recorded, not outbound calls. So since we own the VoIP and we control all those features, we integrated it directly into Revo. So right through the screen with the appropriate permissions.
Speaker 1:Like this is all permission driven, but someone I was going to ask you that next. Actually, how do you get permission to record those?
Speaker 2:Well, there's disclaimers that you in certain states there's a recording that has to play, yes, and they may have to opt in to yes, and so we follow all those rules but also permissions within the software, because you may maybe the manager in the store reviews calls, but you don't want other people being able to go in and listen to phone calls and that type of thing.
Speaker 2:Right right right, especially if people are calling in and like conveying a credit card for paying over the phone or something like that. So we want to protect all those. But you can actually listen to every inbound, every outbound call no-transcript, or if they have an account with you, if it's past due, if it's current, whatever.
Speaker 1:Does that work with references as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if that phone number's in there it'll tell you who we think that person is. So more than likely. And if you click on that screen, pop, it'll pull that, pull that record up. So as you're answering the phone it's already pulling the record up for you to know how to how to converse with that customer.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I'm going to, I'm going to have to go visit, visit some of the stores and play around a little bit. I like this, I love, I love the idea of it. Wow, I mean you kind of you got my mind reeling from an operations standpoint because I love the idea.
Speaker 2:You threw your wrinkle there, didn't I? No?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's so different? I mean besides this, because I mean that alone is huge. I mean, when I saw that, I knew it was important, but I didn't realize how integrated it was. So I know that we had talked before and there is a CRM that's involved in it. There is quoting that's involved in it. Now I'm finding out that there's a whole PBX behind it, but you know, so the phones are involved in it. What are all the major avenues that Revo has that you can say I'm not using this program? And I'm not using this program because I'm integrated into one operating software? Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean. So we do have what I would consider to be a light CRM. I mean, it's not a Salesforce which, by the way, I don't know if you've ever tried to use Salesforce, but it is. You know your eyes will glaze over, and I'm a guy that's not intimidated by technology. So most of the time when you go out and you get an off the shelf CRM and try to get it integrated, there's a tremendous learning curve and then there's a bunch of customization, that kind of happens, and you know, to me the best CRM is the one that people will use and not intimidated by.
Speaker 2:So we decided to put a light a CRM we call it our leads module and so we actually rolled this out in two different modules. There's one module that, like a lot of people who we haven't converted to our full point of sale in the R&R space yet, they're currently utilizing leads quoting and call recording Because, although those are things that they don't have in their existing POS system and then we can then convert them. And that really sets the stage because if we have quoting in place, we know their pricing structure inside and out and we customize everything to where the old days of a salesperson pulling a calculator out are over with. In Revo. They never have to pull a calculator out. If you know your cost of your product, which you do with us most of the time because we have vendor feeds integrated in from the tire and wheel vendor many of the tire and wheel vendors, and have a lot more onboarding soon we already know the cost of the item and what classification of product it is, and so all of our pricing is set up by if this is a performance tire, that's 16 inches and my cost of my product is 105 per unit, the margins the same as cash, the terms they're already pre-lined up and if you have any flexibility like, let's say, you want to float between maybe 15 or 18 month terms, if you're working with a customer, the only option that they have to pick in the quoting screen is they might drop it down, it might default quote at 15, and they may float it to 18 to try to get that customer. But outside of that all of the math is taken care of and they can either show the customer the quote or they can print the quote out to the customer.
Speaker 2:So prior to Revo coming on board, we had a leads program they were using, I think called Pipeline, so they were paying for Pipeline. Then if they wanted call recording they had to do like CallRail or something else, which is a fractional recording capacity. They were paying for that. If they wanted to do quoting, there were some options out there called QuotePro, which was very difficult to update, with kind of limited support, and then most people were literally running off of a super complex Excel spreadsheet that someone at the corporate office had to build and then every time they needed to change something they had to send out a new version.
Speaker 2:But then the problem with that is how do you know that the old version got deleted and they would go out and they would be auditing their stores and they'd figure out somebody's still quoting off of a quote sheet that's you know four revisions old Right, and so there wasn't any consistency there. Plus, it's still it's still dependent upon someone keying the right thing in to the variables in order for the pricing to get right. So there's a lot of exposure there. And then the biggest thing is the time waste and the risk of the fact that they would then have to turn around and take whatever was on that quote sheet and transpose all of that into their point of sale, and most of the time that meant they were calculating what the weekly rate was versus the semi-monthly rate.
Speaker 1:Well, human error, there's a lot of space for human error. So I got a question because now and I see why Tire and Wheel would be so into it Although I would love to say that the world begins and ends with tire and wheel there's a huge chunk of rent-to-own in the world that actually might do small amounts of tire and wheel. But you got furniture, and furniture is so different today it could be one price, tomorrow it could be another. You have 10 different vendors that sell you a couch that looks very similar. You have the Ashley version, you have the coaster version, you have the progressive version. Yeah, I mean, there's just so many different lines that are close. How is Revo going to interact with those amount of changes?
Speaker 2:Sure Well, so one of the things that we do is we put a stake in the ground and made the decision that there's not going to be any more model numbers that are in our system. They're going to be. We have an item which is kind of the equivalent of a model, but that item is the manufacturer SKU for that product. Because you have to have, I mean, for one thing you need consistency in your data Pete. How many times have you been through I know if you've been through mergers and acquisitions or conversions in the past in your existing software. When you let someone just indiscriminately build product records for everything that's in your catalog, how much of a wreck is that?
Speaker 1:right. Oh my God. Everybody has their own perspective of what this nightstand is, what the name of it is, what the color of it is. The model number is somehow you're taking the model number for one thing or you're leaving the number off, and that's probably on the better side. It gets much worse from there. So, yeah, I can definitely say I mean going through a few of them, especially when you're in, let's say, a different company. You have one company that has a purchasing department that enters in numbers versus a company that doesn't, where you can do it at a store level and getting those to match, even on some of the same products that you carry. You know, let's say it's Ashley and Ashley and it's the same model. You know B210 or whatever the case is, you can find 10 different variations of that because of is there an extra nightstand? Is there not? Did they get this product with this model, or that it is? It can be a nightmare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So and I will tell you, like when getting this product ready to port into the traditional RTO space, which, of course, is that's where all my background is. I mean, I was with Garin during the early rental concepts days, but I never, I never worked in their stores. I helped on the back end of things and I helped with auditing and that sort of thing, but as far as just the day-to-day the product flow and buying product in and that kind of stuff, I didn't deal with any of that. So the inventory is the biggest difference in the two business models, and so I'm working with partners.
Speaker 2:Currently, there's one particular web company that has so much of the e-commerce catalog already flushed out. That's one of the things, one of our philosophy statements, and I think I should probably this is probably a good time to just talk about that. You know, we made a decision to define our identity very early on, which is we are going to write rent-to-own software and that's what we're going to do. We're uniquely positioned to do that well, what we are not uniquely positioned to do is recreate the wheel when it comes to texting platforms or website building. I mean, we certainly have people in our building that have the skill sets to build websites, but there's a hundred other people out there that can build websites. There's not everybody else that can write rent-to-own software. So we're going to focus on what we do well. We're going to do it really well and then we're going to play nice with all these other companies out there that do what they do well.
Speaker 2:We're not planning right now on writing a texting platform. Our first integration is with Podium. Tons of people use Podium. Now we could write a transactional texting program that would send late notices and then accept a pay-by-text. But what we're not going to write, we're not going to write a marketing texting platform because it's a huge undertaking and it's very easy to do it poorly. It's very, very difficult to do it well. Podium seems to do that very well. We're not going to write a review management platform where you handle your Google and Facebook and all these different social media type reviews and the responses of those reviews and managing your star ratings and all that. We're not going to do that.
Speaker 2:So if people are already going to buy a product like Podium, why not just integrate our system to do the transactional messaging through Podium? We will still keep the log of everything that's inbound and outbound in those conversations, of everything that's inbound and outbound in those conversations. But why not just let you utilize the money you're already paying them instead of trying to charge you five cents a text to grab that? Just try to grab that kind of easy revenue off the top. At the end of the day, we don't need to be a texting company, we need to be a rental software platform. We're not going to try to write a data validation tool that says this person is who they are, this is their banking info and all that stuff. We're going to integrate with the best provider out there and let them handle that piece and we'll just play nice.
Speaker 2:Same thing with website integrations. If a website integrator already has a huge catalog, they've done all the work to build all those catalog items. Why would we recreate the wheel to try to cut them out to get the revenue to build our own websites? We'll just use their data and if they already have a CRM that people are already using, they don't have to use our CRM. If they're already using one that's already been written, we'll accept those records and we'll be the source of truth.
Speaker 2:To be one place to look to see have leads been worked. How many leads converted into quotes, how many quotes converted into rentals? Like, we'll play nice in that sphere but we don't need to have our hand in the middle of it. We just want to let people go, do their expertise and then interface with that and then allow people to bolt on what they need to bolt on to make their business work. There's a new trend in like AI communication with customers. We're currently talking R&Rs, interviewing all the different candidates out there. They'll pick their horse and we'll integrate with them and it just makes sense and we'll integrate our VoIP where we've already. One of the requirements we had was if the call leaves our VoIP ecosystem, we have to give them an identifier. They've committed they'll give us the identifier back, so we know the whole chain of custody of that call. No matter if it bounced around to six different people, we'll still be able to track that and put the recordings and the transcripts in our in our software.
Speaker 1:So that philosophy. I mean you're just. You guys are on a whole nother level with this. I really loved the thinking of this. I mean you guys have really kind of taken it and just really ran with it. How far ahead do you think Rivos is compared to the industry norm right now?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, in some areas we're heading shoulders above because because I mean, I mean we can just talk for a moment about quoting, for example, like how in the world we never had quoting in traditional rent to own. I, I, it's, it's, it's just, it's such a big mess and I and I didn't think about it until I got into the this R&R Revo ecosystem. But I mean, just think about this one scenario. Pete Lady comes in. She's looking for furniture and a couple of other things and obviously if you've got a salesperson, that's worth their salt. They're upselling and they're talking about these features and things. They're asking questions. They're like, oh, my dryer is kind of getting old, you know what I'm saying? Like that whole process, no-transcript. Go talk to my husband, let me make sure I see what my budget is and I'll come back in. Well, I'll be dadgum.
Speaker 2:They come back in and that salesperson's not there, that piece of paper is nowhere to be found and the notes in the CRM are so scarce because they're already trying to wait on the next person by the time they were trying to document it. Now you start the process over again, or the customer gets frustrated and leaves because they went through that same hour long process with you and hasn't have nothing to show for it, right? Or they tell you well, they told me they would rent me this, this, this, this and this and it's $25 a week and it's like that's $45 a week, right? That happens more often than not, so the quoting system allows you number one you don't have to get a calculator out If you walk around and you want a couple different options, you can either write down the SKU or you can pick up the price tags, bring them back to Revo or take the tablet out there and you can scan.
Speaker 1:I was just about to ask you that. So it does have mobile device integration, where you have a tablet in store or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a Windows Surface tablet and it will run the full instance of Revo and actually you can take it out in the field as well if you sell an Able or if you want to use a hotspot, yeah, you can actually transact Revo at the customer's house with a tablet if you want to take a payment.
Speaker 2:So there's no more field receipts, there's no more missing money, there's no more gap and there's no more. We got back here and somebody forgot to close the agreement out and it's set open for another week or something like that, so you can actually do business live. As long as you have an internet connection, you can do business live on Revote. Can you sign?
Speaker 1:agreements in the field.
Speaker 2:Yeah, On the tablet you can On the tablet?
Speaker 1:you can, yeah. So what's the timetable for expanding this to other RTO vendors? I mean banning this to other RTO vendors, the other RTO locations. The industry, besides R&R Tires, is obviously a big one, but it's geared towards the tire and wheel kind of service. So R&R Tires and all that, obviously you can take advantage of it, but is there a timeline to bring this to other rent-to-own dealers that are in the industry, operators, excuse me, that are able to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is, and I'm fortunate enough that we were very, we were very fortunate to work with R&R in that, in that group, and it's not just, it's not just somebody who has 200 stores or or corporate specifically has 24 for us to kind of cut our, cut our teeth on, but it's really about the attitude, the aptitude, the approach that's so important because you can't, you know, you can't be, you can't be impatient with, with, with beta testing and helping people develop things. And so I'm fortunate to have great relationships in the industry from having 30 years here, and so I've got a couple of partners that that are going to begin beta testing our solution in the first quarter and I'm hoping to begin rolling out by April or May of next year into some select traditional rent-owned spaces. And we do have a commitment to R&R. We're deep in conversions now. We have one particular software product. That was our mandate first to get everybody off of that product because there were some concerns that it may not have longevity and no one wants to kind of get left holding the bag, and so we have probably 50 plus locations to convert between now and probably the end of January. Pretty big flow of those folks. But what we committed to R&R was that for everybody who's ready to move, we will have a catcher's mitt for them and anybody who strategically wants to wait.
Speaker 2:I mean, and there's a lot of things to take into consideration. I mean, I've been an owner, I've been an operator, and even when a software product is clearly better, the better move for my business, there is a disruption, the very best process. There's going to be pain, and what we have to do is we have to understand that if a business currently has momentum, even if it's a product that they're having to waste a lot of man hours to operate on, there's a fear because momentum is much harder to restart than it is to maintain Right. And so we understand, and there's nobody that's got a gun to their head that says, hey, you've got to be on this software product by this date. And honestly, we don't want that either.
Speaker 2:I don't want a hostage situation. I don't want people coming in and going. Well, I had to do this. That's not a good tone to start with. So we're completing out our commitment to R&R while developing the version that's going to feed traditional RTO. One thing I do want to clarify there, and it was something I didn't tell you in our introductory call. But in the tire and wheel space we are exclusive to R&R, so no other tire and wheel franchise companies or tire and wheel only operators will be able to be on Revo.
Speaker 1:Now, if traditional, Now that's in the future going forward as far as tire and wheel, it is R&R.
Speaker 2:It is R&R and R&R only Okay, and we committed to that because they're I mean, they're the leader. They're the leader in that marketplace and so we're comfortable with that. Now, what? That? There is an exception in the fact that if, if traditional dealers want to sell and rent tires out of their store, that this does not preclude us from from servicing that part of the business. But but actual businesses that are just in tire and wheel and in rent to own, they're off the table, oh man.
Speaker 1:We're in trouble. You know, I've seen a couple of numbers that I wanted to ask you about because I saw them, and I do know that this is a little bit more pertaining to the wheel and tire business. But you know, on the website it says that there's a 75% sales cycle efficiency. What exactly does that mean?
Speaker 2:Okay. So yeah, let me take you through the sales cycles. First of all, the part of that that's so hard to quantify is the person you know kind of picking the product that they want. Now, what I do know is even in that process we can get you pricing to that customer in a fraction of the time that it would normally take, because all your products are built into the system.
Speaker 2:If the customer says I want to know what you can do on this couch, this love seat, this table and this TV, you can build that quote out because you literally just start searching for those items in the quote itself.
Speaker 2:You don't have to go to an inventory screen and find them and then turn around and transpose them into the quoting system. You pull them into the quoting system and you have a price on the screen within seconds. And if there's methodologies for packaging for example, let's say that sofa on its own is going to rent for the rate that it's price tagged at. But if you pair it with the you know the love seat and also a coffee and end table set, we can preload into our algorithm that says okay, they're automatically going to, we're going to float the term out by you know three and we're going to take a blend of all these rates and all of a sudden, now you've got a rate and that's what you quote the customer. If your salesperson has the ability to give discounts, they can give that discount. If they need to float it some way within their whatever the ownership or leadership says, they're allowed to give.
Speaker 2:But you can get them a quote in just a matter of seconds and if they pull the trigger on that, then that customer can quickly fill out a digital order form and that could be on a laptop, that could be on a Raspberry Pi with a keyboard and a monitor, they could be on their phone. We just need them to get to a web form, put in that basic information from the rental order form. That gets sucked into the system and then, if you want to turn that into an agreement, you simply hit create agreement. That quote pulls a little window up and it says, okay, when are they going to be due again and how often are they going to pay you? You answer those two questions. You hit process, it goes out, it builds the agreement. It builds the initial invoice, which is like processing fee, delivery fee, like in the R&R space, you know, tire disposal, whatever's out there. It builds that one-time invoice and then it builds their first reoccurring invoice and automatically prorates it to their next due date and so you know exactly how much that customer needs to pay you today, and it's actually it'll show up on the quote form as well, if you want it to. And then if they're good with that.
Speaker 2:Then you open the agreement for digital closing. It renders this is the thing that takes the longest in the system. It takes about 25 seconds to render that whole agreement and then with a tablet or our credit card readers, you can write on our credit card readers so you can actually close the agreement on those. Or you can use a touchscreen monitor and a lot of times what they end up having is they have their monitor and then they have a touchscreen monitor facing the customer and they just pick up a stylus. You close the agreement and as you go down you're reading it through and they initial or they sign and you can even store that initial and signature and every time it comes to an initial spot or a signature spot, they just tap it and say apply and they can close not only the rental agreement but the arbitration agreement.
Speaker 2:Any club forms, any other disclaimers. If you have situational things like lawnmower riders, like you know, there's certain disclosures, there's anti-tip waivers for ranges, all of those pre-populate depending on the product that's on that agreement they can close that whole process. You hit save. It saves that document into an online cloud storage space that we host and back up and it makes that form available at any time. In that customer's record going forward, their order form's already in there, their order form, validation form is in there, so all of the records immediately become paperless.
Speaker 2:If the customer for some reason wants you to print a copy, you can print a copy. Otherwise, there's a link that's generated. You either text them or email that link that allows them to download that agreement packet at any time in the future. That the link never expires. And so you're really from soup to nuts. From the time the person says yes to executing, the thing that takes the longest is just them filling out the online order form, and if they've already done that prior to the process, then we can literally generate an agreement and digitally close it in less than five minutes.
Speaker 1:So I mean, you're, you're, you're killing me here. This is next level, and I'm glad I have you on the show, because this really is a completely different way to do things. A couple of quick things what do you do with the ID? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can do what you've always done you can take a copy of it. But instead of taking a copy of it, you scan it and it goes into the customer's document locker, where it's secured in that space up top. Or you can take an ID reader and, like you have the TSA or a lot of other places, you drop the ID in. It reads all the information off the ID, If you don't want to actually take a physical scan of the ID. Or you can have a specific ID scanner, those little bitty ones that you just run it through. It takes and puts the image on your desktop. You drag it and drop it into our document locker, delete it off your computer and you're done. All your PII and PCI compliance is. You're off the hook for it.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I was worried about, but I love that idea because I think it's something that we need to get better at as an industry. The other number that I wanted to talk to you about was 30% reduction in pre-leased inventory. Again, I know that we're on the R&R or we're in the tire and wheel space, but how does what we're doing, what you're doing now with the POS system and how you've integrated it so much so in the rental and industry as far as the wheel and tire, how do you reduce the pre-lease inventory by 30%?
Speaker 2:Well, it's simple. You make it easier to sell. And the way you make it easier to sell is in the quoting system. If someone's looking for a 225 55 R15 tire, like they are in our space in the quoting system, when you begin to type that in because you're going to be, you don't have, here's the other thing. You don't have to go to an inventory list, sort that inventory list and start writing down numbers on a piece of paper and then come back and start looking them up one by one to see what your cost of acquisition is, what are the rates on it, what's our RVV, what condition is it in? So in the quote system itself, you start typing that number in, it immediately starts pulling up the inventory that fits that and it's a Boolean style search. So as you're typing, it's refining the data it's populating search.
Speaker 2:So as you're typing, it's refining the data, it's populating, and so what we do is we set it up to where it prioritizes pre-release inventory. To flip to the top of that list first and it's going to tell you what is it, what brand is it, what are the attributions around it? That kind of thing Is it?
Speaker 2:a 60,000 mile warranty tire. Is it a 50,000 mile warranty tire? We can give you all those attribution things, but the other things that we give you is what condition is it rated in? So it's not just new or pre-leased, but we also have a conditional system. So you'll know if it's an A, b, c, d, whatever, and then you'll know what the rental rates are. And the rental rates are already pre-adjusted for the condition. So if you say my new one rents for this, but at condition A I want a 5% reduction in rate and a 10% reduction in term, we automatically kick that in so that when you're pulling it up to look at it, you automatically know. And to add it to the quote, you just simply select those four tires and hit add to quote and it moves it up there. And then the biggest thing at that point is to tell the customer hey, listen, normally these things would rent for this much and it would cost you this much same as cash Because I have it A-rated. It's right over there. You can hardly tell it's not new. I can do it for this and this. And then the customer goes that's a no-brainer. And you hit turn into rental agreement. So basically it's just giving people access to data at the moment that they need it.
Speaker 2:Because, the truth be known, if you've got 10 people in a store, people are going to take the path of least resistance. In the tire and wheel business, the path of least resistance is you already know that the guy that delivers tires to you every day has those in stock and you know how much they cost. So they would go to their quote form, they'd put that cost in and they'd quote the customer the amount. The customer says yes, they go order the product, while they've got eight of them in the back and they never had a chance to sell them because they're just trying to process sales faster. So if the quote system is where you look that up, you're going to see the new guy, the new guy's inventory too. But we're going to move the in-store inventory up to the top because you've already paid for that. Like, that's how you churn cash flow you sell what you've already paid for and you only order what you don't have.
Speaker 2:And so you know and I didn't even. You know, when we designed the system we didn't even think about that. I actually had a guy call me about I don't know 45 days after they converted. And he goes I think my pre-release inventory levels on the report are wrong. And I said well, what do you mean? He goes well, they're just lower than they've ever been. They're lower by like 30%. And I think that I think maybe there's a problem in the report.
Speaker 2:So I was like well, hold on a minute. So I queried the data and I compared the. I was like no dude, that's spot on. That's exactly how many sticks of inventory you have. I said have you done an inventory audit? And he goes yeah. And I said is everything accounted for? He said yeah. I said you just have less pre-released inventory. And so he started looking at other stores in the same company that had also converted and their pre-release levels are also down. And so it's just a symptom of the fact that we make it easier to sell the product you have and particularly we prioritize pre-release at the top. So it's the first thing you offer the customer.
Speaker 1:I love it Because you're. I want to say Revo has got so many new integrations and it's pretty cutting edge for what we're talking about. What could you possibly add in the future? We're talking about always being future-proof and I know that's a very difficult situation or term to say, but with all this integration and stuff, you never want to get left behind. Like you said, you don't want to be the guy who's I was great then. Right now I'm just a normal flavor of the week. What's coming down the pipe or something that you think might come down the pipe that maybe Revo will add or is looking to add, to say we're going to keep this step up so that you can always expect we would be on the cutting edge of what's going on in the world today.
Speaker 2:Sure, Well, the first mandate we have is to replace the functionality today that every other software does, right. So that's step one. Now the cool thing is and we have the benefit of being a new product, and so I will say, when you're already a mature product in the marketplace, the pain of changing dramatically is very large, especially if you are painted in the corner with your technology stack. So how do we future-proof ourself? Number one is we never allow ourselves to be so married to one code base, one methodology, one language, one tool that we can't adapt as newer, fresher technology comes out. Okay, so that's really the biggest way to future-proof. But the big thing is we are going to, we're going to do everything that all the other software already does, but we're just going to do it better because we're getting to reimagine it. We're getting to learn all the painful lessons that we've all dealt with over the years, either as operators or as software administrators, or even running a software company. But the big thing is to really harness the power of what fresh technology. So we're a full SQL backend hosted in Azure. So that's Microsoft's cloud data infrastructure. We're written in C, sharp, c Plus, with a Windows NET framework. So those are all cutting-edge tools. We'll continually upgrade those tools that we run with.
Speaker 2:But the thing is we have the opportunity to leverage. We can write an API. We can write to another company's API in just a matter of hours, whereas if you're in a legacy software code, writing an API can be very painful. You can be very painful, like you can be very limited and that's one of the big pain points we've had with other software platforms is they just can't talk well with other data. Well, the other thing is you structure your data so that you know that you're going to have to be very granular in it. Like, for example, how many times have you been on software where you were limited by the number of characters you could put in a serial number, or you had to build a model number that had that wasn't. You couldn't even use the manufacturer's key because the first five digits of that model number had to tell the system what. That thing is Correct.
Speaker 2:So our database is it's a deep database, meaning, like I've seen, sql tables and other software that is running on SQL. The problem is it's about two layers deep, which means that you've got a bunch of data crammed into one big table and that system might run on 15 real tables, like truly 15 tables that actually have most of the information. Ours is truly designed in a relational situation, so like, for example, you can have as many digits as you need in a serial number to accommodate what's out there. We have basic inventory categorization buckets but we also have just general attribution fields because we know that TV attribution is going to be different than furniture attribution, than appliance attribution, than mattress attribution, absolutely, and so we have like nine generic attribution fields that based on what product type it is. We know what each one of those fields is but we're not painting ourselves into a corner.
Speaker 2:So basically, it's foundationally building the data and on a technology platform so that, as we need to integrate and bring specificity and if we need to hold on to certain data from an outside, like we're going to do a shop software integration for art, a shop software integration for R&R, we will still be the source of truth. Because they still want to know, like, did this customer get you know a bump or a brake rotor repaired in the system? Well, we don't do brake rotor repairs. There's a shop software that kind of handles the automotive repair piece of it. But we still want to know in that customer record this was the date that they had that done. Here's how much they paid. Here are the pictures before the repair. Here are the pictures after the repair, in case there's ever a liability issue where they say, oh, you scratched my car, so you know, so that's, that's another way to kind of future proof. And the other thing is I mean we're going to stay hungry because ultimately we're all. We're all in business to make a living right and we're no different. We plan to be profitable and have a good business.
Speaker 2:The mission behind what we're doing here is to not just get to okay, if we can get to this much recurring revenue, even par on a technological, even par with the retailers across the street. And I have fed my family for 30 years from this industry and I have gotten so many opportunities I may or likely would not have gotten had I gone down a different path and a different route to different industries. And I'm just so damn thankful that this industry has been so good to me Like I don't want to leave. I don't ever want to retire without having done everything that I could to pay this industry back for what it's meant to my family and it's provided a very good living and a wonderful group of friends and associates and colleagues just so much quality to our life. And so I think you know I'm in the unique position to be one of, I think, just a few handful of people that might be able to facilitate this kind of thing into the marketplace. And I know that not every rent-to-own may end up on Revo, and that's okay. At the very least we're going to be a disruptor.
Speaker 2:Where I asked, I asked a friend of mine one time, who's a, who's a minister? I said you know, tell me what your, tell me what your job is in a, in a sentence, and he thought about it for a second. He goes I'm here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And and I I think about that almost every day Like, how can I bring comfort or value or ease to this industry? And by doing that, then what's going to happen is we're going to afflict the comfortable, because if someone's going to hold on to their client in this, you know, as we roll this out, if someone's going to hold on to their client, they're going to have to raise their game and if they do that tip of the hat, fight as hard as you can to hold on to your clients. It's not personal. Like I said, it's not personal. I have I did business with, I've done business with every one of the of our competitors in the past.
Speaker 2:There's no ill will but, dadgummit, we're going to come hard to bring something that's going to give people a shot to finally get to express their creativity, their drive, their work ethic. Like I said in these education sessions, and I hear people go I would love to do this. If only I could. And what if we could do this? And like, oh, we can't do that because of this. And it's like, oh well, my website doesn't work because this doesn't work. And it's like, what in the world would I do if I didn't give it everything? I had to try to give them the yes to those answers, right, and we're never going to be everything to everybody, right.
Speaker 2:But if we can just do a very responsible job with the opportunity that we have, which is, you know, we get to come in here and write it in a fresh tech stack, we have experience, we have really good people I mean I don't want to go through this without talking about the awesome people on my team.
Speaker 2:I mean I am one part of a cog, but there is a culture in this building that they come in. They live it every day and I would invite you to call some of our franchisees and our clients and just talk to them about the relationship that they have, because I mean, when we go to trade show the R&R trade show like I'm not the guy that everybody wants to come talk to, it's Marcus and Doug and Will and the guys that are making this thing happen every day at the technological level and the guys that are training their staffs. They come up and give them a hug and they want a picture with them. That's how I know that we're getting it right.
Speaker 2:Like the technology is one piece of this, but you're not going to work in my organization without a servant's heart and you're not going to work in this organization without a passion to make people's lives better every day, and sometimes that means just knowing that their kid played baseball last night because you talked to him two days ago and ask him how that game went, on top of helping them with whatever problem they have. So you know, not knowing the future, how do we stay ahead of things? Not knowing the future, how do we stay ahead of things. We just don't allow ourselves to get comfortable and always be looking to what is the next thing we can do to put in these people's hands, to help them be successful.
Speaker 1:Well, anus, I'm going to tell you right now you sound like a driving force to get this where we need to go Now. I don't know where it's at right now, but you said Revo is going to be. There is an idea to try to have something ready by early to mid next year, something that can go into the rest of the RTO space and kind of start getting along with everybody else and showing them exactly why Revo has taken over R&R and why you guys are doing so well, all the things that I've seen. If you guys want to see it, I'll tell you right now. You need to see it because it's absolutely great. Why don't you tell them a little bit about how to find your company? What's the website? What's the website, what's a number they can call, how can they find out about your software and, more importantly, when it does come down that pipe?
Speaker 2:how do they reach out to you to see if that's the direction they want to go in? Sure, yeah. So right now the website is revoposcom. We'll be rolling out revonet Pretty soon. We were finally able to wrangle that URL. Listen, if you want to talk about Revo, my cell phone number is 479-236-7917. I don't need you to call a 1-800 number and leave a message. I'm the guy to talk to you. My email address is enosbarger E-N-O-S dot. B-a-r-g-e-r at revoposcom.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, because the experience is it's. You know, it's 70% what the software is and it's 30%. How do we prepare, how do we train? How do we ask the right questions? You know, like the fact-finding process during the discovery. I'm very thorough in that because that's the make it or break it. The devil's in the details. So we're going to responsibly roll out because what we can't do, like I told you earlier, it works.
Speaker 2:It's true, in the software industry, momentum is easier to maintain than it is to restart. What I've seen happen is people get hungry because there's new technology and everybody wants to convert it one time, and then the company says yes to everyone and then they do. You know, you end up doing a very mediocre job and then people get kind of tainted on it. You get a bad reputation and then you kind of try to kind of build yourself back out of that. We're not so hungry for revenue today that we're willing to overload our deployment capabilities just to try to say yes to everyone.
Speaker 2:It's going to be yes, but it may be yes in three months or yes in four months. That's not because we don't want your business. It's because we want your business the right way, and I've lived through the heartbreak of what that looks like, or cleaning up that mess on the tail end of what that looks like, and it's not a great situation. So we're going to be metered but we're going to be aggressive. So you know, it may not be that more than just a handful of people that we're already talking with that we get those deployed next year. I'm not 100% sure, because no one really likes to convert in the traditional space in October, november, december right.
Speaker 2:So you know, what I figure will happen is we will roll out, we'll test, we'll learn where we need to improve, we'll streamline things, we'll improve those processes, we'll add some integrations and then we'll be primed to roll We'll. You know, we'll do a certain number of stores next year in the traditional space and then we will probably really gear up for a pretty heavy deployment phase that following first, second, third quarter of 27.
Speaker 1:heavy deployment phase that following first, second, third quarter of 27. Well, I'm going to tell you what Enos you got me sold. I love the idea. At some point in time I want to sit down with you and kind of get more of a vantage point on this. I've seen kind of what it looked like at the trade show, what I'd like to see it as upfront and personal work. We'll work that out.
Speaker 1:Listen. Revoposcom you can't miss it. You've got the number, you've got the email. Hit them up, find out what's going on and if you have any questions, please reach out. If you want to reach out to the show, you can hit me up as well. It's Pete at TheRTOShowPodcastcom. Send me an email If I need to reach out, I will. You can also go to the website at TheRTOShowPodcastcom. Take a look around, listen to the episodes, buy some swag, because we always need it. We love our sponsors and that's how we get to do what we do. You can reach out on Facebook, instagram, linkedin and now YouTube, where you're going to see this Enos. I really appreciate you being on here. It's been a great pleasure to kind of talk about all the things that Revoke can really do. I'm excited to see it next year 100% out there in the world and doing what it does, cause I am a firm believer. So I'm going to tell you right now. I appreciate that We'll definitely hit this up again.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you being on the show. Yeah, listen, I appreciate you having me. It's an honor to get to be on. I love the show. I love what you're doing. It was a much, much needed addition to the industry. Obviously, you have found you know you have found your lane and are really doing well in it. So, so happy to be on and listen anytime you want to talk, even if it's about not about software. If you want to talk about something else, you know, call me up, I'm ready to roll.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, we're going to talk shop and more. Listen, guys. I appreciate you listening and I will tell you that, as always, get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one, bye.
