Legend: Wayland Russell of Eagle Rental Purchase

A small team launched six stores in a month, refused bargain-bin products, and built a public company that outperformed the category—by betting everything on culture, quality, and customer dignity. Pete sits down with industry legend Wayland Russell to unpack how Rainbow Rentals rewired supply chains, pioneered bundled PCs with Dell, and turned account management into a customer success engine long before that term existed.

We get into the hard decisions behind “more, better, different”: walking High Point for years until a manufacturer agreed to weekly, multi-location delivery; insisting on midline-and-up TVs and appliances; and designing software that enabled seamless vendor ordering and just-in-time fulfillment. Wayland explains why computers—dismissed by competitors as “doorstops”—became a double-digit revenue stream, and how intuitive, icon-based bundles helped families cross the digital divide. His philosophy is clear: be the advantage to the disadvantaged, and let operational excellence make premium accessible.

There’s grit here too: brutal early financing, loans called twice, and the courage to walk away from payday lending margins that clashed with core values. We explore APRO’s pivotal advocacy, the ethics of pricing versus credit-card debt, and the decision to sell while rewarding associates and investing in the community. Along the way, Wayland shares candid leadership lessons—hire for passion, make everyone a partner, celebrate managers on the front line, and act like the conductor who helps others shine.

If you care about building durable culture, rethinking logistics, and serving customers with respect, this story will stay with you. Listen, share with a colleague, and leave a review telling us the boldest idea you’re taking into your business.

APRO
Association of Progressive Rental Organizations

Chapters

• 3:13 Origins And Partners Of Rainbow Rentals
• 6:01 Going Public And Outperforming Rivals
• 9:08 Culture Over Company: People And Values
• 17:22 Redefining Furniture Supply And Logistics
• 24:18 Premium Electronics And Collection Philosophy
• 29:49 Inventing Bundled PCs With Dell
• 37:01 Ethics, Profit, And The Decision To Sell
• 43:37 Advocacy, APRO, And Industry Defense
• 49:25 Pricing, Credit Cards, And Customer Value
• 54:22 Leadership Lessons And Final Reflections

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 2:11

Hey everybody, welcome to the RTO show. I'm your host, Pete Chao, and today, special guest legend, we have Wayland Russell who has been we're gonna have a story for you. It's gonna it's gonna manifest from little starts to a really big ending. And as you know, April is right now we're working with April to get this legend series in here so that we can get the information to you so that you understand exactly what's going on and exactly how we can start this experience um from the beginning. And Wayland, you have a story to tell, an excellent story to tell. Right now, as of right now, though, you are a co-owner of Eagle Reynolds. That's correct. So I see Joe all the time. Yeah. Uh but a guy, he's a big guy. He's a big guy.

SPEAKER_00: 2:57

You know, uh I started out five foot six, but uh, I was in martial arts. I had to have two vertebrates removed from my neck. Last year I had three uh uh vertebrates fused in my back, so I'm down to five, went the wrong direction. I started short, now I'm five four. My partners are Randy Lewis, 6'4, Joe Fisher, 6'3, and Richard Morrow, who's 6'2, and I'm five foot four inches. Well, we we look really ridiculous together.

SPEAKER_01: 3:23

I tell you what, what my wife's always told me and trying to make me feel better, big things come in little packages, right? I think that uh God has always blessed me to be a man of stature, regardless of how tall I am.

SPEAKER_00: 3:34

Exactly right.

SPEAKER_01: 3:35

And we look for it.

SPEAKER_00: 3:36

God don't make no junk. That's it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:38

That's it. So you were a co-founder of Rainbow Reynolds. Now, Rainbow Reynolds, in case anybody doesn't know, ended up with 100 plus stores that ended up uh changing names and in some different acquisitions. But I mean, Rainbow Reynolds in in what it was in the mid to late 90s was the place to go.

SPEAKER_00: 3:59

When we went public in June of '98, uh Renaissance average store was bringing in six hundred thousand dollars per year. Aaron's was bringing in six hundred and sixty thousand per year, and Rainbow Reynolds was doing 1.3 million per year.

unknown: 4:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 4:18

I mean, we're talking double numbers.

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 4:20

Wow. Okay. So in Rainbow Reynolds' existence, there was 124 stores actually.

SPEAKER_00: 4:28

Right? We ended up with that. We had we had we were not an acquisition story, we were a grain field story, but we had several acquisitions. We bought Zoom, we bought Wayne Chambers uh stores down to own and and some others. So, but uh many of them were not the sizes of our stores, and they were very fragmented. So we would consolidate those. So by the time that uh we we sold to Rena Center in 04, we were 124 stores, right at a million dollars per store with that, because we had several new stores and stuff like that. So when when did Rainbow Reynolds get started? Well, what happened was um uh I was uh at that time I was with Crown Leasing uh for about three years. I started in the industry on February 1st, 19 uh uh 1977 with uh Chuck Sims and Remco. And and really before that, the rent-owned industry stores looked a lot like pawn shops. And Sims was trying to really bring that forward. And uh uh and I I caught that passion then. Uh and so um when my first child was going to be born, uh, we were from Canfield, Ohio. So we we wanted to move back to family when my first child was born. So uh Ralph Devlin, uh the brother of Tom Devlin and the owner of Rena Center at the time, offered me a position as vice president of operations for Renner Center in the state of Ohio. So I moved up there uh back home and uh worked with him for two years. And then I opened up Consumer Rentals in uh Cleveland, my first store that I own of my own. Very, very successful. Uh one of the gentlemen, well, several of the gentlemen that had worked with me at Rennes Center had left and went with Crown Leasing. So Jason Alford, who was a dear friend of mine, uh a fellow Christian and brother in the Lord, he came to me. He said, Let us buy consumer rentals, and we want you to come uh and be in charge of MA at uh Crown Leasing and so forth like that, and uh manpower. Uh, they made me an offer and I took the offer. Uh and that was with Bob White. Well, uh about three years later, him and Bob White fell out of relationship. And uh and because I was so closely uh tied to Jason, I got fired with him. Uh so uh so I told him I said, let's uh let's start this company. And I said, uh, or he said to me, I don't have any money. I said, I've got the money. We'll get started. So we brought in uh Jason, Larry Hendricks, Mike Viveras, uh, and uh we put in all the money, took all the risk, and I gave 57.5% of the clump company away the very first day we opened up to people that I knew that would take to get to where we needed to: men of integrity, men of passion, men with great experience, and strong, strong disciplines. That's important. And uh so so uh Jason agreed to that. And his father was the pastor of our church in Ohio. So we started for two weeks at 5 a.m. in the morning, we'd lay down on our faces before the Lord and say, we don't want this company, we want to work for you. We want this company to be your company. So in 1986, uh we we opened up the first store. We opened up six stores in the same month. That's how we opened up Rainbow Reynolds. Wow. Six stores in the same month. Wow. And uh the very first store we opened up was in Boardman, Ohio, and we had a young man by the name of Randy Lewis, which delivered the first of two million customers of Rainbow Reynolds history. Wow.

unknown: 8:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 8:35

He was on one end of the TV, and Dan Hess was on the other. So we started and we were founded on Judeo-Christian values. We didn't try to legislate morality, we loved everybody. Your personal uh life is none of our business. We're gonna love you, we're gonna treat you with respect and dignity, and we're going to reward your accomplishments. And that's what we did. So you started fast. You started really fast. Well, yeah, because you know, we'd have been in the industry for a while. And we we the from the very first day, we were going to be a publicly traded company. That was decided before we opened the first door. We would be a publicly traded company. Uh, because that was the only way that we would be able to share the company with our fellow associates that would build the company. Right. You know, right. Uh, and uh we were blessed with uh the best of the best. Our our turnover rate was like 11%, unheard of in the age.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

Wow. That yes of. Yes. As of right now, I mean, I think right now we're going through a lot of of a turnover rate in the last couple of years. It's just skyrocketed.

SPEAKER_00: 11:19

Well, you know, even our society, uh, you know, we're not we're not trained any longer that you start with a company and you die with that company. That's not the the mindset, right? Uh, but uh because everybody was so important at Raybo Reynolds, there was no king and queens. Uh, the reason that Raybo Reynolds became the great company that it was was not because of the short Lebanese Scotchman. It was because of 1,200 people that loved their company and loved their customers.

SPEAKER_01: 11:49

Culture is absolutely super important to keeping a great business great. You do not build a company, you build a culture. That's it. So you start you start there. You know that you want to create, you find some people to create with you, and you know that you're going to take it public. What were, you know, going to this part in your life, what were some of the mentors or some of the people that you knew that you were able to model or talk to or rely on to help you make these decisions and get to where you were?

SPEAKER_00: 12:21

Well, you know, first of all, I surrounded myself with people that I thought uh had the experience, the the uh the expertise, and the quality of character. So I surrounded myself with those people. And then the Lord brought us people. I like to tell you that I'm such a great interviewer that I can pick out the best. No, you know, it just the people that came to us were exceptional. And there was one thing I wanted to see in the people, particularly if I had to go outside and hire from out of the company. Show me your passion. Show me your passion. People have resumes and they have work history. Show me your passion. It's so important. Yeah. So we we were able to fill our company with passionate people and we treated them as partners. We never use the word employee. Not ever. You know, I I I don't if I'm if I'm gonna hire a shepherd, I I want someone that that that loves the flock, not somebody that's a hired hand. And as soon as the wolf comes, the trouble comes, they book. You know, I wanted people that had a dog in the fight. That's why I gave away 57.5% of all of uh that that I owned, really, to these people, because they needed to love this company with a passion. Uh, and that's what was required, and they did. And each person had their their skills as as we went in into the project.

SPEAKER_01: 13:54

Is there any particular people that stood out to you that you can say in the beginning, these were really the guys that and it sounds like you had a lot of great people on that team.

SPEAKER_00: 14:04

Yeah, you know, I I knew everybody in the industry. I, you know, I knew Tom Devlin personally and what drove him. I knew Chuck Sims. Uh, you know, uh I knew uh Mr. Tally uh you know very, very well. And I I and I can't say that I bought into everybody's ideas, but I cherry-picked, and I was able to see where the quality was. And we saw our mission differently than many people that go into business. We saw our mission to be the advantage to the disadvantaged. That's why uh we when we started the industry, started in the in or rainbow rentals, all that was out there was Dixieland furniture. That's what, and and we were buying Mill Mean bedrooms, uh inexpensive Ashley bedrooms from uh uh from uh uh you know the uh uh the the stock people that would uh buy the stuff. We paid 30% more for them uh through these brokers, you know. Uh and so we decided our customers need to have the same kind of furniture we want in our home. So me, Larry Hendricks, who had a polio leg, and Mike Fivera started walking the High Point Furniture Show every April, every October, when nobody in the industry was there. And uh the only way you could buy furniture was you bought it at the High Point Show for six months. It was, and every month it was delivered to one location. I said, no, no, no, no. We have 60 locations. You have to deliver to every location every week. I need, I need a dozen living room sets in 60 different locations every week. And for two years, for every show, walking and walking, walking, we got no, no, no, no, no. Until we went to England Corsair. And Rod England says, we can do that. We changed the world.

SPEAKER_01: 16:16

How important was that meeting with Rod England that that you got this one yes now? How pivotal was that to creating a different gross set in what you did?

SPEAKER_00: 16:28

Well, just think of England Corsair. First of all, they they picked up 60 stores that that was, you know, uh buying a dozen sets of furniture every single week. Yeah. All right, so that was a big jump for them. But what do you think happened at Renaissance when they found out that we had the quality furniture we had in our stores? England Corsair got a call. So then, and next thing you know, Lazy Boy was buying England Corsair. Uh, and it launched them. From those ideas, from that that just in time delivery and so forth, Ashley adopted that model, and that's why they're the biggest furniture store by every metric today, because we changed the way furniture was was bought, marketed, and shipped.

SPEAKER_01: 17:16

So when you when you go into England, Corsair, and you say that you you want all these sets, and I mean, they're seeing the potential in this, they're seeing how we can really make a difference. How come is it that the other companies didn't see that value? Because if you're coming to me and I'm selling furniture and you're telling me you got 60 stores and you want a dozen sets shipped all the time, I'm gonna shake your hand and we're gonna do business. What prevented other people from doing that? And what do you think it was that England said, hey, I see the potential in this and I'm going with this versus others who at the time really didn't see that value?

SPEAKER_00: 17:51

Well, you know, working through distributors, again, there's a 30, 35% markup, and you can only get what they're gonna offer you. Correct. We wanted more better, different for our customers. We wanted more, better, different for our associates. We wanted more, better, different for our investors later on. And we worked hard to answer the question how can we be more better different? So the reason nobody else did it is that no one would do it. It took two years of just talking and preaching to these manufacturers that we want to deliver to our customers your products. We don't want Dixieland furniture, we want your products. I want a product that I would be proud to have in my home because that's what my customers deserve. So we fought for it and we fought for it, and we found one knucklehead that said I could do that. So Rod England and I, and uh and a guy by the name of Jim Carbot, who called every one of our stores every week to get the order and then turn it in into the company.

SPEAKER_01: 19:05

You know, it's funny you say that because we just talked about Ashley and how great they are. I have guys that I've known for years, and no matter where I've worked in this industry, they will call every single week. Hey Pete, how are you doing? What are you guys looking for? This is what I have going on, this is what I have coming up, this is what's coming out of the next quarter, this is what might be, you know, this is a drop in price. You guys want to jump on that? I mean, it's just amazing. When you have somebody who's willing to work with you and really willing to make a difference, those partnerships can make some amazing differences.

SPEAKER_00: 19:37

He knew every manager, loved them dearly. They loved him. He had to hire help, he had to get an office, hired help to be able to do that. We did millions of dollars with them. I mean, Rainbow Reynolds' average year, we bought$70 million worth of merchandise. Average year, average year. That is a good we we've been up to 94 million in one year of buying merchandise and just purchases. Just yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 20:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 20:05

Wholesale priced furniture.

SPEAKER_01: 20:07

So we're talking about furniture. So we're talking about the early days. You know what you wanted to do. Yes. You got with some of your partners, you knew you were going to be public. 57.5% out the gate. You get six stores in the first couple of months, and we talk to England, and and they say, This is this is the deal. This is what we're going to do. When did the trans, because that that is a huge deal at that point in time. Huge. When did Rainbow Reynolds start stepping into technology? The early TVs, the early washer and dryers, the early laptops.

SPEAKER_00: 20:39

Well, you know, uh, when we would go to uh, and I remember the first time, uh or maybe not the first time, but close to the first time I met uh Norm Smith from uh uh different TVs that he was was selling and so forth. And oh, you're rent-to-owned. So they would take me to the Milba Toast console TV or portable. And I said, Listen, if you want to do business with Rainbow, you take me to the middle of your line and go up from there. We don't want anything below middle. Our customers deserve the best. So we were we worked hard to give our customers the absolute best product, and we collected better than anyone else. Our average car close was less than 4%, our bad debt was less than 1.5%. Wow. Uh, and we collected better than anyone else because we did not have bill collectors. We had account managers that were supposed to get the account, work with the customer, and get them to win. Okay, so we were so efficient that we could offer the better products for less than Run a Center was selling the Milba Toast products. Wow, that's that's amazing. Yeah, all of those savings went back to the customers. Our job was to provide in the future our investors with a good return on their money. It wasn't to try to stack money up and see how much we can make. It was we we have a responsibility to make uh a living uh uh for all of our associates, and we have a responsibility to make a good return for our investors. So, which products came first? So you're talking about the did the television systems come first and then Well, yeah, we were the first to do rear projection TVs in in the world, the very first retone company to do that. We were paying$3,000 wholesale for a rear projection TV in those days. Yeah, yeah. And what we did is we marked it up two times, and we only initially rented it to existing customers as another unit. And then we just kept ratcheting the product up. Then I felt as though we needed to get our low to medium income customers into the computer age because I knew it was coming. So uh what I did is I went to Eugene Calabria, the CEO of um uh Global Business Systems. Most of the medical places you go to are running GBS software, global business systems software. And they were on the front page with Dell Computer. So I told Eugene, I need to find something. Because at that time, when you bought a computer, you got a blinking asterisk in the top left-hand corner. And you all you can do is play solitaire unless you typed in Cobalt language, or it wouldn't do anything. Correct. Well, then my customers, that wasn't gonna work. Right. And and and I was concerned my customers, more than anybody else, needed their children to stay on on par with anybody in the world so they can rise above where they're at, possibly, and have a better future. So I went to him and I says, We gotta, we gotta find a way to do that. He says, Well, let me make a phone call. He calls Dell Computer. So now on 224 in Canfield, Ohio, in my conference room, I got my IT guy, Matt Pecia, who was brilliant. Matter of fact, we wrote a software system that would trump any software system that's here today. I mean, I can tell you in an instant exactly how many orders was placed today, how much money, so forth. Uh, our our guys use icons to click on and order their merchandise. And and it was all EMI. That Whirlpool didn't even know the order came in. We didn't know the order went out. It just went, it showed up on the dock. They shipped the stuff when they accept it. If it matches, the computers paid each other, and that was it. Seamless transactions, okay, with it with that software. But now I'm now I'm in the conference room with Matt Peccia, the director of IT for GBS, and Dell Computer in just this little puny company on 224. So Dell Computer went to work and they created four Rainbow Rentals. And by the way, nobody had bundled software. When you bought the computer, you got a blinking asterisk. We set up uh strategic alliances with Net Zero, Quicken, all of that. We were the first company in the world. Well, I let me qualify that. Obviously, whatever Dell did for us, they proliferated to the whole world at that same moment.

SPEAKER_01: 25:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 25:27

But they did it for us, okay. So, like at the exact same moment that we were doing bundled software, all of a sudden it was being marketed to everybody, which is good. I mean, they did the work, they they deserved to do that. But we came up with this icon system for our customers to use. So now our customers were surfing the internet before mainstream America was.

unknown: 25:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 25:52

And and and at the at that time, a direct quote, uh uh Mark Speed of Render Center, I love the man, he's a good man. He was telling the people on the on the conference call and so forth that computers made good boat anchors. Bill Morgenstern from uh from Rentway said that computers in the rent-to-own industry were good doorstops. Imagine how embarrassed they were when we went public in June of 98 and we were doing a quarter of a million dollars per store in rental computers.

SPEAKER_01: 26:28

And and if I remember the article that I read, which actually came out in April, um very close to that year, was that I think it was 2005 or something. I can't remember the article time, but they were kind of going back over on how not only did you were a pioneer on that, but it didn't just take off. It was one of the higher selling uh items that you had, one of the lines that you had. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 26:52

It immediately became 10, 12, 15 percent of our income. Right. So, I mean, it was absolutely huge. Uh, and um it it it just leapfrogged again. The motivation for doing that was not to make a big pile of money. We hoped that it would, and we were gonna try to market it right and price it right, but we wanted to be the advantage to the disadvantaged. And as I say that, we looked on how we could make their lives more, better, different on a constant basis. So we saw the vacuum in furniture with the stuff that was there. We saw the vacuum in the low uh TV sets, the lowest refrigerator, the lowest washer dryer. We saw that vacuum and we wanted to fill that hole. And now the industry has to recognize that AI is going to create advantages for mainstream America that will leave the disadvantaged behind. This industry has the responsibility to make sure that we deliver those same advantages to our low to medium income customers that that are making our livings for us every day. They're our first concern. Now, as an owner, uh you know, for me, I wasn't the most impressive CEO you ever met. You know, I most people would say you can't even make the heights requirement. But but what what I saw for me is I was the band conductor. I I could not play the instruments anywhere near as well as every one of them could play their instruments, but I could help them make beautiful music together and they face the audience, they get the applause, not you. You're working for them, they're working for the audience, you're working for them. So the way that we had superior customer service is we made it a joy for every associate to come to work every day. They knew that they were loved, we expected the best out of them. When they didn't give us the best, with respect, we told them so. But always treating every associate as a partner with respect and dignity. And the reason Rainbow Reynolds was great was not its top-of-the-heap management, it was the the manager that greeted the customer with joy every time they came in the door and their fellow associates. And we we paid every single associate salaried. Really? Every associate of Rainbow Reynolds was on salary. Sick or not sick, you got paid the same. Always. A technicality that if you deliver furniture, interstate, you could be paid salary. Every secretary, we had 67 people in our home office, every one of them made one delivery every year. And we made them do it. It wasn't just, you know, uh saying it. No, they had to do it. And we got challenged with waging hours. And the lady that was coming after us said, we have never heard so many happy associates as when we we were asking them, you know, uh, don't you think you would make more in an hour with the hourly with overtime? And they said, Oh, don't you mess with this, you know? They they they loved their company. And the reason that we did that was not to save money. We did not want to buy our associates' loyalty one hour at a time. You understand? If you're an associate of Rainbow Reynolds, you are an intricate part of who we are. You are important as anyone else. So we're going to treat you with the same respect and dignity. We self-insured. The most you could pay for, if you got six kids, the most you could pay for for your health care is$3,000 a year maximum, including doctor visits, prescriptions, everything.

SPEAKER_01: 31:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 31:22

We hired an insurance company, I think was Aetna, the last one was Aetna, and we took picked a policy, but they weren't insuring it. We had catastrophic insurance. If you went over$50,000 as an individual in one year, then the insurance would kick in. But until an individual was greater than$50,000, we had no insurance. And next year it starts over again. So we were self-insured. We took every single associate, the manager, and their spouse, male and female, manager and the department heads on a cruise every year. About 300 people we took on a cruise every year, and that's where we remembered our culture, who we are, and why everybody's important, and what is our mission here? Okay. Uh it was the greatest experience of my lifetime.

SPEAKER_01: 32:21

I I it I love the sound of this. I love the sound of the culture. I love the sound of work. You can tell the passion when you're talking about. I can see it coming out of you. So going back to the beginning then, and starting over, because these are all these are all amazing high points. What were some of the hardest things that you came across during those times? Like when when you when you're when you're this is rocking and rolling, right? You've got England furniture coming out. You you're looking at the the TVs and telling them, listen, I need something quality. You're getting the larger TVs. There had to be some trials and tribulations along the way.

SPEAKER_00: 32:52

Oh, there absolutely were. From the very beginning, we wanted to borrow$1.5 million to get started. Before ever I had a loan agreement, I already had$30,000 for the payroll before I even had a loan agreement. So we go to Christ, the first corporate credit, and we want to borrow$1.5 million. Now, this is at the time, 1985. So this is the deal we got for our money. So they're going to charge me 18% interest rate on my money. I got to pay the attorney fees and so forth, which was$30,000. I got to give them$300,000 of my money to put in a CD. They're going to pay me 5% to loan it back to me at 18%. And I had to give 15% warrants. So now we had we had the Call at two years and the put at three years. I calculated beforehand that by the time we got to where the call was, that those warrants were going to be worth an additional quarter of a million dollars that they were going to make. I ended up calling calling it, or I'm sorry, the put was going to be uh 250,000. I called it after two years and paid them an additional$400,000 after two years. So calculate the interest rate on that. I was paying 18% on$1.5 million. They actually only loaned me$1.2, but I'm paying 18% on$1.5. I paid$30,000 for their attorney fees and so forth, and then gave them$400,000 more after two years. Calculate that interest rate. That is, you know what would have been more expensive money? No money at all. So the Lord blessed us, and we we could say, you know, let this is too crazy. No, we knew that we were supposed to do this, and that's what we did. Uh there we were, we had our loans called twice. We've never missed targets or anything for any bank or lending institution. Our last bank was Bank of America. Actually, uh we ended up the last one, was a consortium with uh uh uh Ohio Bank, Comera Bank, and uh National City Bank,$40 million facility that we we had with those three banks uh at at the time. Um so when they call these notes, it was because, well, uh one guy, I'm trying to remember his name, he was an accountant, he had 220 stores uh uh with uh Bank of America and uh another one of the financiers, and he he went bust. So the next thing you know, our banks are calling our note. That's normally the kiss of death of any corporation. They you don't have that kind of money just laying around. And uh and the second time it was called, I think it was when Henry B. Gonzalez decided to hold Senate hearing meetings about the legality of rent to own. So now the banks want it out. They said, we love you, you've always done what you're supposed to do, they want it went out. So we went out there trying to find everybody we could find, and we could not get the money. We weren't going to get the money. So we went to the bank with our tails tucked between our legs and told them, we'll shut down all growth, we'll give you all profits, and we'll have you paid back in one year. They agreed to that. As soon as they agreed to that, we have three banks call us back with incredible interest rates and so forth. And Bank of America uh took our took our loan for about 5% at that time. Now, the reason we couldn't find anything is God is a jealous God. He wanted to make sure we knew that we were blessed in that situation. The next the next situation I had, um my partner, who I dearly love to this day, like a brother, decided to uh leave the company after 11 11 years into the project. He was the bank guy. He was the guy that kept the I was the operations guy. I you know, products and people and all of that. Uh so he leaves the company and we have to buy him out, which was$11 million at the time. Oh okay, we gotta buy him out. We had we had about$12 million with Bank of America, and we probably were doing uh at the time maybe$70 million a year. So now I'm gonna have to borrow uh it would have been 12, uh about$23 million on$70 million of revenue,$60,$70 million of revenue. No bank would do that. So I flew to Chicago to meet with the the the, and they met me a couple of times, you know, but but really I had to reintroduce myself to them and say, okay, now Jason's gone, and now you got to loan me$24 million. Mike said, there there is no way in the world. They said, okay. Michael looked at me, I looked at him. Now, the reason they did that is I'm such an impressive guy and such a good speaker. No, you know what? We were a company founded on Judeo-Christian values. We treated everybody with respect and dignity and with good intent. And the Lord made that happen. One year later, we took the company public for the highest multiple uh rent a rent rent company ever had. We, and there's another story there. You're talking about trouble. We went out on the road show to take the company public. We had the three top underwriters on our book: Hunt Robinson Humphrey out of out of Atlanta, Dane Rosha Wessels, and Sun Trust Equitable out of Nashville. They were on our book. I presented 65 times in 12 days. One day I woke up in New York, I presented in Philadelphia, I presented in Salt Lake City, I presented in Seattle, and slept in San Diego. One day. One day. Wow. So it's the last day we're presenting to a portfolio manager in New York. And he says, by the way, uh Cooper Mills from Robinson Humphreys called a special conference call. We've reserved our boardroom upstairs for you. Uh, so right after your presentation, you can go up there. So I presented to him, went to the top floor, and now this guy from Youngstown, Ohio is looking at a table with 40 chairs around it. The whole floor is glass and a panoramic view of the entire New York. And here's this this little short guy from Cantville, Ohio, okay, with with Mike Peccia, uh, my chief financial officer and a representative uh from uh uh Robinson Humphrey. So he gets on the phone and he tells me, well, Whalen, this is June of '98. He said, uh, right now the dot-coms are all the rave. Nobody's investing in anything but dot-coms. There were 15 companies trying to get out public. Five have already delisted, five have downpriced. We're not sure that we can get you out in the price range of$10 to$12. And we're we're really doubtful that we're going to be able to get you out if you insist on telling our investors that you're going to give 10% of their earnings away to good works every year. I said, okay, okay. Well, first of all, let me make sure everybody's on the phone. Dane Rousher Wessels, who's on the phone? They told me who was on the phone. It was the principals who were on the phone. Sun Trust Equitable. I asked Larry Hendrickson, uh, my chief operating office, you on the phone? Yes, Will. I'm on the phone. Mike, my president, are you on the phone? Yeah. Okay. I want you all to understand this. The price is 10 to 12. If you can't get that, don't tell me. Just send me a letter. That'll be fine. Mike, how much do I have invested in taking the company public so far? Mike said, about$780,000. This isn't 98%. Okay. I said, right now, Rent A Center, average store is doing$60,000 per year. Aaron's is doing$660,000 per year. Rainbow Rentals store, our 63 stores are doing$1.3 million per year. And the reason they do that is because of our moral fiber. It is who we are. So if investors don't like that, we don't need their money. And this phone call is over, and I hung up on them. We came out with the highest participation of family and friends they'd ever seen. And we doubled shortly after we came out. We came out at$10 and we doubled. And then when we sold, we doubled again. Wow. And the reason that we sold in 2004 is I had a real conundrum. I'm a publicly traded company. Rent a Center is going to payday loan, which they had every right to do. Aaron's is going to payday loan. Rentway was going to payday loan. They were making 900% on their money. And we're saying we're a company founded on Judeo-Christian values. So I can't tell the investors anything that I have is going to make 900%. I don't have anything that's going to make 9%. We outprofited all of them store by store. But I don't have a product that makes 900%. I don't want a product that makes 900%. So I had no choice. It was time to sell. And when we sell, when we sold, every every associate, even part-timers, were rewarded handsomely, stock options, and so forth. And we built a new high school for Youngstown Christian School with the proceeds. Wow. Because we weren't there to become personally wealthy. We hoped that would happen, you know, because the much is given, much is required. And you know, we love being charitable and philanthropic and all of that. But it wasn't about let's see how much stuff we could acquire. We wanted to build something special. Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 43:39

So when you're talking about, we're talking about Henry Gonzalez out of Texas. And if anybody doesn't know, that was a period of time where we were on the table and somebody wanted to eat our lunch or eat us for lunch.

SPEAKER_00: 43:54

Oh, no question.

SPEAKER_01: 43:55

Um, in that situation, were you a part of April? How did how did that come about?

SPEAKER_00: 43:59

Yeah, you know, uh April was originally founded by Chuck Sims and a few others. So I was the store manager. Every one of us, from so from the first day I entered this industry, I was a member of April. So I've been a member for 48 years. Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 44:15

So and back then, how important was it to be part of an advocacy group like APRO that can really take these challenges on head first and kind of help out with people such as yourself to stop and really educate uh the lawmakers on what we really do versus what they really think we do?

SPEAKER_00: 44:36

Well, you know, uh just getting in now, understand, let's see, I became plant manager of American Exochemical at the ripe old age of 23. So I was 26 when I entered the rent rent-to-owned industry. So we went to conventions and so forth uh with April back then, and we didn't really realize how important April would be. We just thought it was a trade associate, like all companies do.

SPEAKER_01: 45:01

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00: 45:02

You know, we didn't realize, you know, obviously I realized later on that if it wasn't for uh April and every human being with April, that we Ed Wynn saved this industry. Uh Wayne Chambers saved the industry. They were going to, the IRS was going to control us out of business with the way they expected us to uh depreciate our goods and so forth, we wouldn't have been able to make a dollar. They could have ruined us that way. The government had funded uh legal aid in every state to attack the rent-to-owned industry, to destroy us. And Henry B. Gonzalez was holding Senate hearings on the legality of our transaction. So we had a fight for our existence. If it were not for April and the the impassionate people there, there would be no rent to own industry today.

SPEAKER_01: 46:02

I agree with you 100%. And I'm glad that you're a part of that. So did you, aside Henry B. Gonzalez, were you ever part of the groups that advocated for either state regulation or federal regulation to benefit us and to educate the lawmakers themselves?

SPEAKER_00: 46:20

You know, we we we had people that went, but more than anything else, we felt a responsibility from our size to fund it. So uh you don't understand how many millions of dollars that went in to protecting our industry. Thank God Renaissance was what it was then. And Charlie Lautermilk at Aaron's was very, very generous. More generous than Rainbow Reynolds. We I think we carried our weight, but you know, at that moment in time we weren't as big as when we sold. Uh, but we we certainly had poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into legislation and so forth, while Renaissance and Aaron was pouring millions of dollars into it. Uh and this industry owes a debt of gratitude to specifically to Ed Wynn and specifically to Wayne Chambers at that at that time, and certainly so many others, but those two men uh ran point for us on some very dangerous soil.

SPEAKER_01: 47:24

So, how did how did Rainbow Reynolds and yourself get the narrative through who from people just like that? We're not just talking about the legal side, but there was always that that connotation that, you know, rent-to-owned, we're taking advantage of customers. How did you break through that in different situations to let people know that this is what our business, our industry, our people are really doing?

SPEAKER_00: 47:48

What I try to explain to them is that any bank that's going to loan you money is going to measure your beta or the risk involved, your ability to pay back. Okay. So in our industry, there is no debt, but we need to get our merchandise back. Okay. So when we send something to a customer, we price that at the very best price that we can. We service it, we stand behind it, and we will take it back when you've used half of it or most of it, or whatever the case may be. So there's inherent risks in renting the merchandise that we're taking, that when you buy a piece of merchandise, you're taking risk. So we charge extra for those services that we offer. But when you take into account what's in your wallet, if you make the minimum payment every single month, they're going to increase you to 32% interest and you will get nothing for that. So if you think we're expensive, look to American Express and Diners and MasterCard and Visa. And if you want to talk about usury, that's usury. That taking people that maybe had a problem. My own sister, her husband died in a tragic tractor accident. Sorry, and expenses were coming in, so she ran up her credit cards and made a payment every single month. She was making a minimum payment every single month and she was paying 32% every year on that debt. I said, give me those bills. Paid those off. She's never had a balance on a credit card since. And there's a lesson in that for us. There are 40 million people out there today with with greater than$7,000 on their credit cards right now. And they're getting nothing for their money. Those 40 million people should be our customers. We have to find a way to get to them and tell them it's acceptable and even wise to use the rent-to-owned transaction rather than put it on your credit card. Your best thing you could do is get a home mortgage. That's the smartest thing. Even better than that, pay cash. But if you're not in that position, don't put it on a credit card. Come to Eagle Runnel Purchase. There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_01: 50:37

What would you say is some advice with all the information, all the history that you have gathered? What is something that you would want to pass on to somebody in the future? Somebody that's coming through now, somebody that says, I want to open a store, I want to be in this industry. Um, what would be some of your advice to them?

SPEAKER_00: 50:55

You know, I don't know where I heard this, but it was from someone very wise said to me, You can get all you want in this life by just helping them enough of other people get what they want in the life. So treat everybody with respect and understand you can do more together than you will ever do by yourself. I'll give you this one last story. One time we had our the second time we had our loan call, I went on the bike trail as I normally do, and I ran eight miles before anybody was at work. And we we had called for an executive meeting for everybody to talk over what we would do, how we would go about it. So while I'm running this eight miles, I have an epiphany. I've got the answer. I can't wait to get to our meeting with the executive group. So I go in my conference room, I put on the chairman hat, and I started listening to the ideas to my left. By the time we got to the left corner of the table, I'm not sure I had the best idea. By the time we got to the right corner, I'm not going to tell anybody what my idea was. And and I will tell you, in all of the years, I don't remember ever picking my idea one time. Not once. I didn't have to. All my only job was to pick the best looking pig on the truck and go with it. But you know what? If it was your idea, we we applaud that, and it's no longer your idea. It's our idea, it's ours. And we would go from there. So surround yourself with the best and help them be great. Don't worry about your own greatness, help them be great. Words of wisdom.

SPEAKER_01: 52:43

So in the end, as we come to a close, not a selfish question, but I do want to know. How do you want to be remembered? If somebody says, you had a choice, and and usually we don't, usually it's the actions that have created, we've done throughout our entire lives, that have put us into where we are now. And then the people who look at us, that know us, that have been with us, our family, our friends, our loved ones, they get to say, This is how I remember you. But if you had the ability to look back at your life, which you do, and and and say, This is what I think I would remember, be remembered for, this is what I think I would like to know that people would probably say this about me, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00: 53:26

I think I'd like to be remembered as a less than bigger than life CEO that knew that his job was to make others great, not to be great. So if on my tombstone, if they put here lies a guy that made a lot of money, then I had wasted my life. You you have just indicted me on my own tombstone. Here's a simple man that trusted God and did his best to bless others. That's the way I'd like to be remembered. I think you will.

SPEAKER_01: 54:01

Well, everybody, we uh I I can't imagine somebody else who has gone through the things that you have gone and really able to accomplish things that you have uh in the way that you have. I mean, Rainbow Reynolds, I remember when I first came on, uh, I actually started at Renter's Choice under Ernie Talley. So if you say the name Ernie Talley, it takes me back to those days, the early, right at the early two. I actually started in January of 2000. Um, and it just it just brings back so many memories because that was a good company and it was some good leadership. And we're really glad you guys had time to sit in with us. Listen, if you want to connect, by all means, reach out to us, Pete at the rtoshowpodcast.com. Don't forget to the website is www.thertoshowpodcast.com. Go on there, see events, buy some swag, let us know that you're listening, and make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and now YouTube where you're gonna see this. And I will tell you guys as always, Wayland Russell, it has been amazing to have you on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 54:59

I'm I'm I'm honored to have been here. Uh, and uh I hope that some wisdom comes through with it.

SPEAKER_01: 55:05

Well, absolutely, absolutely, I guarantee it. We'll tell you guys as always get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.