Verify First, Chase Less: How DataTrue Helps RTO Dealers Make Smarter Deals with Dan Jobrack

One wrong address. One recycled phone number. One “upgrade” that turns into a first-payment disappearance. Those small details can snowball into charge-offs, truck rolls, and weeks of wasted collections effort. I sit down with Dan Jobrak from Data True to get practical about how rent-to-own operators can protect the business without slowing down the counter or treating every customer like a suspect.

Dan walks us through what Data True actually does, why it was built as live data verification instead of a “garbage in, garbage out” database, and how front-end verification helps clean up information while the customer is still in the store. We talk about the loss patterns RTO teams see most often, including first-transaction defaults, reactivations after 60+ days, and those risky upgrade deals where the payment history looks good until it suddenly doesn’t.

Then we shift to the back end: skip tracing tools like Pursue, newer options like SkipFind Plus for tracking old charge-off files, and Alert One as an early warning system that flags repeat shoppers moving across locations or even across cooperating companies. We also get into the shed rent-to-own market, why higher ticket sizes raise the stakes, and how instant criminal background checks can speed up hiring so you don’t lose great candidates to slower screening.

Subscribe for more RTO operations and collections strategy, share this with another dealer, and leave a review if it helps. What’s the biggest risk point in your process right now?

Transcript

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Welcome And Why This Matters

Pete Shau 0:08

Hello and welcome to the RTO show. I'm your host, Pete Shao. I have a very important guest today. But first, what I always want you to do, make sure you go to the website, make sure you go to the RTO ShowPodcast.com, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss podcasts like this one, the one you're definitely wanting to see. Because my guest, Dan Jobrak from Data True, is here to lay some information on us. To be honest with you, with everything going on in the world right now, I think we need as much information as we can get. So make sure that you subscribe to the newsletter. Don't be afraid to be a sponsor on there. We need you, just like you want to get the information. We need you to sponsor us because you know what? We do this just for you, for the RTO community. Dan, how are you doing today? All the way from you, well, a little bit off mic. Dan's been everywhere. He's been a little traveling at least last couple days, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Oh, yeah.

unknown 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Done some done some vacations, some traveling out here in beautiful Montana.

Pete Shau 1:01

Now, when I first saw that you were from Montana, I'm like, there's there's five other people in Montana, right? There's like, it's got it doesn't have much of a population. What it does has absolutely stunning. It's beautiful. The only thing I can tell you is the winners are probably ridiculously harsh out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Well, that depends on your perspective. We uh I my my philosophy is it's never cold. It's uh people that are not dressed warmly enough.

Pete Shau 1:24

I am straight Floridian. That is a cold, cold statement right there. But Dan, listen, I've known you for years and years and years, and we're talking about way back. You've done data true for a long time, since the early 2000s. Is that right? Yeah, this is our 19th year. Yeah. So going all the way back, we're talking about a time when data true was. I remember as we did things, and you you could correct me if I'm wrong, when somebody came into the stores, probably part of our verification process was dialing a phone number and putting in some of their information, and we got back something, right? We would either trigger something or we would say, hey, it's okay, no worries. Part of the things that we're talking about today, guys, is there's a lot going out there in the world. You want to be safe with the information that you have and you want to be safe with your products that you put out there. Dan has not only a way to kind of look up front and say, this is probably a good transaction, but as things happen, you might want to be able to reach out and go and get what you need from somebody who maybe is having a hard time, they've moved, they're not in touch with you like they should. Maybe they're embarrassed to call you. But you still need that information, you need to reach out, you need to touch them. This is one of the tools that make it happen. And this is not just somebody who started it. Dan's been doing this for a long, long time. There's a lot of renditions of rent to own that Dan has seen. And not only that, Dan, take me back a little bit. You didn't start out in rent to own, you actually started out in some in a completely different area. And as you started going through, it just seemed like when you made data true, it it kind of went into that along with the other things that you do.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of this conceptually started back in my Navy days back in the 70s and the 80s. I was I was in Crypto Intel and we dealt with puzzles and figuring things out. I spent uh 10 years uh in payday loan. And that was kind of the genesis of this mentality. What

Dan’s Background And Data True Origin

SPEAKER_00 3:20

you were referring to earlier is a system that used to be called Teletrack. And people would type in a social security number and they'd come back and they'd tell you they're on the system, they're not on the system, etc. You know, and Teletrack at that time, uh they'd all they had all kinds of ideas of what they wanted to do. That never happened. They ended up building just a database before they ended up going bye-bye. And they made their bones in the payday loan industry. When they lost that opportunity, then they shifted into RTO, so you guys got that experience. This was back in the 90s. So it was. When I left Payday Loan after 10 years, I went to work for uh for for Fidelity National Credit as a national director of business development, and we were dealing with some with some major accounts and dealing with collections and and and whatnot. Uh and when I say major accounts, I mean Chevron, AT ⁇ T. They were big accounts. And there was always something missing in the uh in my opinion, in the tools that we had available to us. So I worked on a program and and presented it, and uh it never took off with them. So I left the company and went out on my own. And uh I had a partner who's still with me. We've been together since 1999, uh even before the genesis of Data True, and uh I we created Data True. Uh the idea was to offer what Teletrack was promising that never delivered. Instead of a database, just some type of live data accessibility for a customer to come in that would verify all their information. It didn't even, and that was all it was originally. There wasn't even a skip trace product at that time. It was to verify the data that somebody would come in to know whether they were telling you the truth or they were just trying to put one over on you, take your money and run. Some of my clients that I I was dealing with back then when I was uh uh with business development, with national business development, yeah, I pitched it to them. I said, if there was something like this out there, what would you think? Oh, are you kidding? That's uh that would be a uh that would be from heaven. And they had paid a loan stores, but they also had rent-to-own stores and uh out of out of Kansas. And uh so when I left, I reached out to them. They got on board immediately. Uh, we got a an invitation initially, and this is 19 years ago, uh, and hooked up with James McAlpine and when he was over at Rent Direct Nationwide, went to a couple shows over there, and uh, then we went to the next show we went to simultaneously was with Tribb, Meeting of the Minds, uh back in 08, 09, something like that. And it was amazing. I mean, we were the hottest thing in the room. The live, the the crowds would gather around the booth, 1520 people. We were doing live demos on verification. And uh, out of nowhere, 60, 70 companies came on board within two shows, and we were on our way. And uh then suggestions, questions, recommendations from our clients. Hey, could you guys do this? Hey, how hard would it be to find this out? Literally, we started with eight or nine products, and we've got over 40 today, almost all of which came from the rent-to-own industry's suggestions, recommendations, or uh, or ideas.

Pete Shau 6:25

Well, I mean, that's great. Well, considering that the demographics of customers are pretty much exactly the same that would be where you were to where you are now. Coming into this, like, how was it to create? I mean, you basically created this program from scratch. You guys wrote the programming on this? Yes. So what so what makes now that you've been in for 19 years this idea? Because you because you said there there's this timeline, right? As you go on, you you started somewhere and it's grown and it's grown and it's grown. Where does this all where does all the data come from? Right? Because I remember in the Teletrack days, you would put somebody into the system and then they would sit there, right? And if something happened, I would report it. And if nothing happened, it would come back that nothing has happened.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Right.

Pete Shau 7:11

Is that kind of the way data true started, where it was like, hey, there's this, there's this piece here. I'm gonna input somebody, and you know what? Miss Jones doesn't have anything going on. I'm gonna report back that there's nothing going on. Now, if she does, I'm gonna report that there is, and then later on, if another store decides to report it and go, oh, wait a minute, I'm putting this information, I'm getting pinged on Miss Jones, whether it was down the street or in another state. Is that how original data true started collecting their information, or was there something else that added to that to say, hey, this might be a good, or you might want to pause on this rental?

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yeah, that's a great question, Pete. And I get asked, I get I get asked that question a lot because people are curious, uh, because there's so many things out there. There's the, there's uh, there's bureaus, you know, TransUnion, Experian, uh, Equifax, there's a TLO, there's uh there's there's all these different information databases out there. When this first launched, one of the things that always didn't one of the things that didn't sit well with me in the beginning was a database is is garbage in, garbage out. It's only as good as what people have input and what they've built, which was the flaw with with Teletrack. You know, they on the system, off the system. They came back and they started reporting all these different hits on a person, and they weren't bad hits, they were just where that person had done business or is currently doing business. And that that was always an area, uh a bone of contention for me. So when we built data true, my idea was that we didn't want to have a database. We wanted to access live data out there. Now, not all live data is created equal. The majority of live data that most people access when it comes to the high-risk industry are credit headers from the bureaus. And those can be expensive, but in this particular high-risk industry, whether it's uh or environment, whether it's payday loan, signature title loan, uh, whether it's uh rent to own, lease to own, buy here, sell here, these are all cash and carry type businesses for the most part

Live Data Versus Old Databases

SPEAKER_00 9:10

that do not deal with credit reports. And they actually advertise often, no credit necessary. You know, so you're in the high-risk industry, you know you're taking the risk. Taking a high risk to me does not mean we'll take any risk. It does not mean we'll give away the farm just to generate a sale. You still want to make a good decision. We wanted a program that verified data, but did not turn somebody away. We never wanted to be the one to say you shouldn't serve that customer. You know what the risks are. What we wanted to do was we wanted to create a system that gave you as much information on that person as we can ascertain from what they're giving you on in their agreement, in their application, whatever process is used, so that you can make a better decision at that counter. Nothing's gonna beat the eyeball to eyebell contact. You can't replace that ever, that gut feeling. But there are people that are pretty good. The person standing in front of you, one wearing a wife beater and the other wearing Armani. Which one's the dis which one's the dishonest person? We take all that away and we just analyze the data, which comes from public sources. To your question earlier, where it comes from, it's not a database. We access live sources and some databases, but we don't maintain the database. So we started, as I said, with just a few products. We tap into over, we got over 40 products now, and we tap into over 40 different information providers that all like a funnel parse into our system and produce instantly on the screen a result which red flags information that is either accurate and true, or less than accurate or less than true. I've never been one to say somebody's lying to you. That's that that's that's the that that's your place. For me, you know, we we just want to say, you know, that's not where they live. Maybe they forgot their address. I don't know. But you want to have those kinds of information available to you before you make a decision to sign on the dotted line. And that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to better prepare our clientele to make smarter decisions. That was the general.

Pete Shau 11:21

So as you're going into it, right, you have this, and which is I I love the idea, and I love the way you're stating it because it's true. A lot of people think that this conversation will be about you shouldn't, or maybe this is a bad idea. The conversation really is let me give you a gamut of information that you can make the decision that you're gonna make on. Not I'm gonna tell you to do it. You decide off of what we're talking about, and you say you can discern this is a good situation for me, or I'm willing to take that rest because this is a risk business. Uh, rent-owned is a risk business, plain and simple. And a lot of the reasons that they're coming to us is because they've had situations in other places, whether they couldn't return it, whether they did move, whether they were put in a bad situation, and now they have to come in and they still have those needs. And it's up to the rent-owned industry to decide good, bad, or indifferent. Now, as you're talking about 40 different places and 40 different lines of things that you do, let's start a little bit in the beginning, because that's a lot to chew on. What were some of the core products that you started coming out with in the beginning that allowed the rent-owned dealers to make better decisions on the rentals that they were making?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Okay, so the the the the first product we rolled out was information verification on front-end transactions. Uh, there was a large amount, and and still is to this day, a large amount of uh first transaction defaults, especially in payday loan. We know, my coming from that industry, a first transaction default is premeditated. Uh, it's it's not something that says, oh, I went and got a transaction and now I can't pay for it. They knew that two weeks ago when they came and picked it up. Some of the other transactions we were dealing with were longtime customers where you've long made your profit margin and you'd like to maintain a relationship, but if you can't, you can't. No harm, no foul. They'll be back when they need you. They knew who you are. But those first those first-time transactions, that was a problem. We found uh through through study and now empirical data that these premeditated transactions come in and give you enough information to get a transaction from you, to get that dining room set, uh, to get that payday loan, to get that computer. But they also give you just an information to

Front End Verification Red Flags

SPEAKER_00 13:30

cut and run when they don't want to pay you. They won't be able to find you won't be able to find them. We wanted to eliminate that. So when the system was created, what it did was it would parse through our information providers. And there was a time years ago that I would say when somebody says, Well, where do you get your information? I says, Would you like a list? A list of what? A list of who we get it from. Why would you do that? Well, you can build your own system. It's gonna take you a little bit of money and some expertise. Or for less than a dollar, you can run one through me. And obviously, that's that's the way it ended up. They they they opted for less than a dollar. So what what what the transaction would do, Pete, is they'd walk in, they'd fill out their application. This is from a 30,000-foot view, uh, whether it was by paper or typed into the system, and then parsed through data true. Originally it was right through our server. Now we have all kinds of uh uh of API setups, yeah, RTO Pro, VersaRent, et cetera, et cetera. But uh originally they would type in the information, very, very little information actually. You're collecting all the same information anyway, but you'd it take you about I I used to tell people it'll take you about three minutes to enter the information into our server if you have a two-minute smoke break in the middle of your three minutes, because it's really, really fast. So then what you would do is you'd send it to us instantly, right on the computer, and it would immediately on the screen, with three to five seconds, give you the report. What we say at Data True is red is wrong. So when a report comes back, some of it's in black and blue, and some of it's in red. If it's red, it means the information that you provided was less than accurate. You got the customer standing there, clean it up before you sign on the dotted line. Oh, I forgot I moved. I have a different phone number. I jokingly tell customers all the time when it comes to the phone number, and this is true by the way, I have seven children, and at any given time I don't like two or three of them. So if I if if I change my phone number, maybe they're not gonna get it. Uh and I say that tongue in cheek. The reality is we don't remember everybody we've told there have been changes. Case in point. Customer goes into a store, they've been your customer for the last year and a half, you haven't seen them in 60 days. They lost their cell phone or they changed their cell phone number, they walk in to do a transaction, and what does the employee say? All your information the same, Mr. Smith? Yeah, nothing's changed. Enter, enter, enter. But something has changed. They don't remember whether they told that outlet that there was a change. So we wanted to create something that took all of those human elements off the table and made it black and white, that you can look at and see what was true, what was not true. That was the beginning. And it cleaned up data. And in fact, it built, it started building empirical information and data that we were able to analyze that when data true was properly run, and this is essential, on the front end in three different categories: new clients, clients that have been inactive for 60 days or longer, or the worst ones of all, the upgrade. That's the guy who wanted the 55-inch out of the box, brand new, and decided uh the the vendor decided, the client decided, I'm just not feeling it. Try this smaller one first, prove yourself a good payer, and then we'll upgrade. And as soon as they get that upgrade, they're gone. They're out of dodge on that first payment. So in those three situations, we've learned, and we've learned this from the RTO industry, that these were the factors. When data true is run on the front end, that very first product of ours, that front-end verification, if it's run in those three situations, on average, one out of three skips is completely avoided. Because the information that you'll see, you'll see you've got somebody who's giving you information. Oh, I don't live there anymore. I forgot, I forgot my address. Nobody forgets their address. You know, you run the social through the system, if you take social security numbers, that goes in the system, it comes back that you're dead. I forgot I died. You know, these these types of situations you want to know in advance. And that's what that front-end system does. That's what we started with.

Pete Shau 17:31

So you mentioned that, you know, as as you went into these events. There were guys lined up around a corner. There were a lot of things that they saw in Data True and said, you know what, this is something that I want to be a part of. Give me, give me some names. Who were who were some of the first people to line up and say, Data True is going to be where I need to be? What do you remember back then who it was that first came aboard and kind of decided this was a great idea?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Uh the very first ones that came on board were Willie and Jim Cole. They were the very first RTO customers that were signed up back in seven, I believe, out of Wichita, Kansas. It wasn't long after that that Terry Bevel over at Buddies came on board. That was uh I think you were around back in those days too. I was, I remember Bevel, yeah. Yep. Terry, uh Terry came on board. And as a matter of fact, Terry uh later in this in this podcast, we'll talk about one of the newer products, the Alert One, which was originally a brainstorm of Terry's back in 1985. You know, and everybody would, I mean, my Mike Tissett over at Countryside, Keith Ferriman. I I I mean, I can go on and on. There's uh there's people that are no longer in the industry

Early RTO Adoption And Product Growth

SPEAKER_00 18:40

that either retired or are no longer with us that over over the years have come on board. I've had people walk by, um, trying to remember, I don't remember who it was, but somebody walked by. They had a half a dozen stores, and they were asking me about it, and they asked me that same question. Well, who in this room is on data true? And I and I look up and I go, him, and I point over, and Mike Tissett just happened to walk by. And and Mike blessed his heart, uh, amazing customer, wonderful relationship. We love going to his show out in Ohio every year. He turns and goes, Mike. Mike turns around like that and says, You use these guys? He says, Absolutely, wouldn't use anywhere else, anyone else, and kept on walking without missing a beat. So I said to this particular uh gentleman, I said, So what else can I tell you? He says, You don't need to tell me anything else. He wouldn't use it if it wasn't a value. He wouldn't. And that was it. You know, selling data true to a potential customer in the R2 industry is a fun job. And the reason it's a fun job is because it's enjoyable like what we're doing right now. There's no work involved for me. I tell you what we do. You know what your needs are, you know whether you're having charge-off problems, skip tricks problems, decision-making problems on risk values, et cetera. Nobody knows that better than the person I'm speaking to at a show or on the phone. Nobody knows it better. I tell you what we do. In 90, I'd say at least 95% of the cases or more, every deal gets closed because there's a need. And it's extremely affordable.

Pete Shau 20:11

So let's let's go. We're not going back as far. You've started this, you get a partner, you guys develop it. We're at the shows, you've got some pretty heavy hitters that are coming on board and they're saying, Listen, I know what's going on. You know, especially Terry, uh, got to arrest him. But I mean, he was he was probably one of the pioneers going far back as I can remember. So they see the benefit of this. They start going, and then the ideas start rolling in. Then I think this is a great idea. Then I think that's a great idea. Maybe let's add some of this and tweak that and something. So as it starts rolling up, you're you're you're on your way to 40 plus products, but you don't know it yet. What starts rolling out that, you know, at that point in time as we're going from 2010 to 2015 and a little bit further, like what's on the horizon? What are people looking for that now is like, you know what, we need to expand into this? Because, you know, at at a later time, I want to cover a lot of the things that I think and a lot of things I see, but I want to make sure that everybody understands where did it come from? This isn't a fly by night. This is something that developed literally through the RTO industry for people who thought this is a great idea, but let me add this, let me add that. Where can this really help me more here or there? And so in that time frame, what did you add to it?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Well, once we got past the information side, the next logical lowest hanging fruit, if you will, was I said earlier, this was designed to verify information, and one out of three skips gets detected. And you either get cleaner information or you don't do the transaction. But what about the other two that do get by? Maybe they started out as good customers. Maybe they were longtime customers, maybe things happened, maybe they were dishonest, maybe they were completely honest, and life happened. Uh somebody died, somebody lost a job, uh, somebody got Divorced. They want to be good customers. You want them to be good customers. You don't want to lose them if they're a secure source of clientele. But life deals cards to people all the time that are not welcomed. And you and you have to deal with that. So the next logical thing, and part of it came from guys like Terry, uh, when we developed the API side of it, we'll talk about it later. Uh Larry Carico's company over at SKC. Uh it just all kinds of, I mean, best way. All these folks that we dealt with, they offered us different tweaks. And the logical trend, the logical process for us was to go from verifying.

Pete Shau 22:35

Let me ask you something. Are you getting everything out of your rent-to-owned business? If you're not an Apro member, then the answer is probably no. Look, advocacy is APRO's bread and butter. This is why they were created and what they do best. But here's the thing April membership is about way more than advocacy. April connects you to the movers and the shakers of the industry, people who've been there, done that, and they can help you do it even better. April's monthly webinars give you expert insights and actionable takeaways. Got questions about complex regulations or sticky situations? No problem. April's legal hotline gives you direct access to experts who have got the answers. That's a peace of mind that you can't put a price on. And let's not forget the resources, news, updates, and tools that keep you ahead of the curve. Scholarships for your team? Check. Disaster relief when you need it most? Double check. APRO is your ultimate support system in the rent-to-own world. Head over to rtohq.org and join the APRO family today. Because in this business, more isn't just better. It's essential.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

See you at the top with APRO. To finding those people that don't want to be found, that are those two out of the three. So we started the developing, we started the development of the skip trace tools. And

APRO Message And Industry Support

SPEAKER_00 23:49

originally we went, because we had a lot of the information that was that was that was necessary, if we can just find the right information providers, parse, pull out pieces of what was needed and kind of put them together. Whether it's a utility company network, whether it's the uh the Reebok system uh through the old uh the the phone system, whether it is uh credit headers, it doesn't really matter. Some of it's proprietary, some of it's not. We can pull it all together, pull these pieces together, and we working with our IT director, we could put together a program that would help find process of elimination, if you will, find where these people that don't want to be bothered or don't want to be found, where they are, enabling a client of ours to either get back their product or get back some of the money that's owed to them, or just offer a way to help out for somebody who was, as you mentioned earlier, they're ashamed, they're embarrassed, they don't, they don't want to call in. They've never been in that situation before. And it and it's not that they're bad people, they're not. And then there are those that are

Building Skip Trace Tools That Work

SPEAKER_00 24:52

bad vivo, you know, which is what that that's that one-third you're catching up front. How do we find these ones on the back? So initially it was an idea that came from Terry. And he says, I came up with this brainstorm Dan back in 1985 of a national skip stolen database where we can put information in and anybody that subscribes to it can pull those charge offs up, see that person's history before it happened. So we built it. And it was called uh uh skip, I think it was alert. It was actually the original skip find plus that act then came became became Alert One. Now we still have Skip Vine Plus today, we still have Alert One today, we'll talk about those in a while. They have nothing to do with that original product, but we repurposed the name because it does it fit. But in the original process, the idea would be a national skip stolen database. Uh we rolled it out. As a matter of fact, my partner went to an FRDA meeting, I want to say, back in 2011, 2012, right in there, and that's where it was rolled out to FRDA. We got a lot of folks on board in the beginning, but it seemed that as a national skip stolen database, it really didn't apply to somebody like Chad out in out in out out in Nebraska. Nebraska. Because the people that are in Nebraska really aren't the same people that are in Florida. And there was such a huge concentrate in the southeast corner of the country of RTO clientele compared to the rest of the country. So it didn't really get the traction and take off to be a national, it ended up just being regional. So we shut it down, didn't give it another thought. Then we started thinking about how we can use the shell of what it was in our system, uh, because this would be therefore become database crossed over to our live data to continue to work and develop other products. And then we started advancing the skip products. Uh we came out with People Find. This was a very narrow base search. Uh uh it went through four different categories Social Security search, uh reverse address, reverse phone system, which covered all three phones, uh VOIP, cell phone, and landline, uh, and an email system. Well, as things continue to progress, we sidelined the email because it ended up being used more, and it should be, by the way, for uh marketing, where you can send out emails. And and a lot of our clients do that. The reason we sidelined it is because the other three skip products, we had that we offered them in a no-record return, no charge environment. We either gave you what you're looking for or we didn't charge you uh for the submission. So then that we started saying, well, we need something bigger, we need something more robust. Uh and then Pursue was born. And Pursue is by far our hottest product. Uh it actually, and when working hand in hand with the front end as a skip trace product, nothing compares to it. Most of our clients, if not all of our clients, will swear by it that there is nothing else out there like Pursue. You almost think you're looking at a credit report. I mean, it can be a huge report with tons of data points, and uh it's designed to help you find people that are trying not to be found. So you can re-engage and e and re-establish the relationship or get your product back or get what's owed to you, whether it's money, product, or both. In the shed industry, we found out that we can find other properties that people are connected to. So we added that to the system. They got the shed, they took it apart, they took it next door to their neighbor's house or their other or their father's house. They're also connected to that property and they put it over there, and now you can't find your shed. You know, so our system and you know, we've expanded and expanded, expanded uh into all different avenues where we can find that person who doesn't want to be found. And in this industry, that's those two out of three. In most cases, these people don't want to be found. They think they have one over on you. I got a television, I got a dining room set, I got a shed, what I got a car, and now nobody's looking for me. And eventually you'll forget about it. Well, let's say it's a TV, let's say it's a 55-inch big screen. Chances are by the time you catch up to them five years from now without without data true, they're playing tic-tac-toe using a quarter on the screen. You don't want the screen back. You know, but maybe they owe you $2,200. It'd be nice to have some of that back. So it was the natural progression of verifying data and then finding the people who got under the wire on you. Maybe they used a fault a fake social and when they started with you, you didn't have the information to ver verify that's that kind of stuff. Enter data true. All that stuff is now.

Pete Shau 29:19

How many of your customers take that information, right? So you have some customers that uh, and we're talking about RTO entities, whether they're the shed side, which we'll talk about that, because I'm glad you mentioned that, or the traditional side or the tire and wheel side, or whatever side it is, right? And they go, all right, we're gonna start using your services, we're gonna check them on the front end, and maybe if they make some bad decisions, we'll check them on the back end. But there's also like these lists that maybe have been untouched for a little while, you know, and it's like, you know what, for these for this amount of time, we weren't using data true to see if maybe we can do some type of recovery, whether it's making payment plans with people who we we finally get a hold of or you know, having a return product, or just having conversations, period. Did was that always that a chunk of it as you started going into this? Did you get like these big file cabinets of guys just walking up and going, hey, I have all this issue here. What can I do to find A, B, and C? Because to me, that seems like a big dump of information. How do you get all the information from point A, a dealer, to point B where your information source starts doing all this information? Like, are they is it a data file dump? Is it, I mean, are they just typing away from the files? Like, how would they get it over if that was a case? At least back then, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

I mean, now almost everything's digital, but well, yeah, back then there wasn't a way to do all that without entering MM onesie twosie type of a thing. And that's a great segue into one of our three new products in the last uh 18 months uh or 15 months, actually. We rolled out a product called SkipFind Plus. I told you we repurposed a couple names because it meant because it made sense. So SkipFind Plus SFP is it addressed exactly that. What do you do with uh with with these files? Uh what I what I refer to it as jokingly, I refer to it the the Chinese filing cabinet. Okay, now the Chinese filing cabinet, I coined this years and years ago because every business has what is a Chinese filing cabinet? It's a four-drawer standard filing cabinet, and the bottom drawer, there's no bottom on it. You just put stuff in there that you never want to see again because you've exhausted all your efforts, and it goes all the way to China. So what do you do with these files? Well, SkipFind Plus was born. We found a way to maintain an alert system. Okay, and this is a subscription process uh product. We don't have we I think we only have two subscription products. Everything else is pay as you go, uh either in a one uh in an a la carte environment or an unlimited access environment for a flat fee. So Skipfind Plus is one of our newer products that is a subscription. Uh I rolled it out meeting of the minds last year. We rolled out Skip Find Plus. It retails for $25 because of our relationships with the R2 industry. That's $25

SkipFind Plus And Watchlist Alerts

SPEAKER_00 32:01

per month per location. The RTO industry relationship that we have, we reduced it down to $20 per month per store. And when I rolled it out, we rolled it out at $15. It was $10 off. I mean, that's almost half off. And anytime I talk about it in a podcast like this, or if I go to a show, I always grandfather in that $15 fee. Which if if you've got uh I mean, I I think Larry has over 70 or 80 stores, uh, you know, uh that that adds up. It adds up per year. So the idea behind Skip Find Plus was it's it was I call it the gift that keeps on giving. You can enter them in one at a time, or you can we can provide you a spreadsheet that we have that you can it's an Excel and you can upload the entire spreadsheet. So you say to an employee, here, this is from the Chinese filing cabinet. Here's 25. Enter these in this month, and next month I'll give you 25 more. And you just keep on entering them and entering them. And then you put them back in the cabinet. You don't worry about them again. I refer to it as the gift that keeps on giving because there's a button on there when you enter it. Last name, first name, social, that's all you need. More is always better. If you want to put in a phone number, if you want to put an address, even though you know both of those are dead ends, they're never really dead ends in the information world. Okay. And then there's a button on there that you click that says a little box that says, I'm watching. That's it. And you save it and you walk away. This person now shows up. Uh let's say you're in uh in Tampa, and this person uh absconded with your stuff, and now they're in San Diego. So I'll grab one of my San Diego customers, public storage. There's a public storage in San Diego, okay, or uh San Antonio, uh one of the police departments there uh in in Texas. Uh they go in and they run a data true on the front end. The customer comes in, they're just verifying that triggers an immediate email to the customer that entered the skip, telling you, oh, here's Pete Shao, and here's his current address and phone number. It's not gonna there's no proprietary violation because it's not telling you who ran it. It's just telling you another Data True customer ran this on, in this example, Pete, and here's Pete's new contact information. You pick up the phone, you call Pete, and say, Hey Pete, it's Dan over at Dan's Rental Owner. Remember me? How'd you find me? I don't know. I know a guy who knows a guy, you know, you know, and and then you then you re-engage to try to get it. Yeah, yeah. So uh that's the gift that keeps on giving. And that's Skip Find Plus. And this is all part of ideas that came from clients that would that we toyed with and said, well, how can we develop this to be a productive product? And that was one of the two of the three recent ones that we wrote out.

Pete Shau 34:40

So how do we get into the to the shed business? You mentioned that, and I wanted to talk about that because a lot of our guests are finally starting to see the show now from another side of the coin. And when I say that, you know, it's the tire and wheel side, the shed side, you know, we didn't talk about it that much, but they're there and they're huge. When when did you make that shift over to the RTO shed side and start servicing that industry as well?

SPEAKER_00 35:04

We you know, we've been servicing sheds for at least 16 years. Not the we don't have the same presence that we have in in the rent to own or the payday loan industries, but we but in the shed industry, we had a dozen or so clients all over the country. I went to uh a trade show, I want to say back in nine. And while I was there, I drove down to one of our clients who was a buy here, pay here, uh, cash and carry car dealership. And I want to say it was in like a chicken shaw, if I remember correctly. So, and and I think it was Kansas. But while I was there, there was somebody who had reached out to me who was in Texas who owned a shed business. So I went to that business. I have to get his permission to say his name, so I won't, but let's just say I went down there because we're we're in the fraud protection business, so I'm certainly not gonna give up

Why Sheds Became A Big Focus

SPEAKER_00 35:55

I'm not gonna cross that line. So I go down there to Texas and I drive out there and I get a tour of their place, and just amazing what they were doing with sheds. Sheds that look like houses. It was amazing. And they built them there and everything. And I spoke to the owner, he came on board right away. And this was like I said, back in 09. And other ones trickled in from that. I mean, it's the same way in our private investigations and police divisions. You know, we picked up a couple and then word of mouth starts to go out there, and suddenly we have a PI division. So we didn't really create a shed division because we only had about a dozen different clients spread around the country. Uh but the shed division is big business. Forty percent of all sheds are rent-to-owned. I got five of them here in Montana uh within within 10 minutes of my house. Of course, in Montana, we all have sheds. So um, but but they're everywhere. And so to your to your question, when did we jump in there? And uh, we actually brought on board in November an executive sales director for the shed division, Ryan Farnsworth. I'll I brought him to a couple shows. Ryan will be at a couple of the upcoming shows, and then we'll be at Shed Week as well. And that's Ryan's baby. So at RTO World last year, a gentleman came up to me prior to the show opening up. Uh they were having the April meetings, and he's connected to the April sign of it as a rent-to-owned shed guy. And he came up to the booth and he wasn't wearing any credentials because he wasn't there to attend that show. He was there before the doors opened. So he came in, he walked up and says, I'm curious what you do. He walked around the room. I told him, he said, Oh my goodness, man, do we need you? So we got to talking. Next thing you know, he's telling me, here's the contact information. You need to be at Shed Week next month in Knoxville, Tennessee. And he was on the board at the time. I actually I believe he had just left the year before, but he had all the contacts. And I said, Well, what do you do now that you're not doing that? He said, Oh, no, I'm in the industry. I work for so-and-so. And he gave me the name and I said and and he told me where they were from. And I says, You know something? I've been to your town. He says, Oh, come on. I said, No, I have. Back in 09, I was there. I went and saw so-and-so. He says, That's our company. I says, You're a client. He said, Well, we didn't need I didn't know. So that all got taken care of. Now they're rolling it, they're rolling fine with it. But then we went to Shed Week that that next month. We couldn't get there in time to get a booth. So we just kind of walked around and got the lay of the land. We'll be there this year. And that's how we entered uh this the shed industry. And now we've added a whole handful of shed companies just since Ryan came on board. That that will be a shed week as well. And of course, that is the next, I expect that to be the next explosive division at Danditru, of which we have several. Uh, Rent2Own and Shed is just two of the several divisions that we serve.

Pete Shau 38:42

Hey everyone, it's Pete Chao here from the RTO Show Podcast, and I want to tell you about a company that's making a real difference in the rent-to-owned space. WoW Brands. I've seen firsthand of the approach marketing. Let me tell you, it's not just about ads. WoW Brands build complete digital ecosystems designed specifically for the rent-owned industry. They're e-commerce and lead generation strategies. I mentioned the activity working with the rent-owned industry. Listen, these folks are passionate about these. They don't just slap something together. They design, build, and scale the kind of digital retail tool your business needs that your customers actually want. So if you're serious about growing, reach out to Wild Brands at WoWBrands.com. I trust them, and I think you will too. Yeah, I want to say right now that I didn't know how big the shit industry was until recently. And

WoW Brands Sponsor Message

Pete Shau 39:36

just because I've been part of the traditional side and you know, we service the traditional side, and I actually didn't even know how big the tire wheel was until I came over to this side. So as I've been, you know, expanding my horizon, so to speak, and I'm being able to see this, I definitely want to bring that part on the show because I want people to understand like there is so much of this out there. This industry is a lot bigger. When we say rent to own and we were on the furniture side, we kind of just thought it's the furniture side. No, it is huge. The shed side, and you got to think, you know, when we're talking about what is a what is a common ticket look like in the RTO world as far as traditional. Well, that really depends because I have things as small as lamps or as big as an entire living room set or a bedroom set or a package that encompasses both, right? So if you go in between, it could be a $29.99 item, it could be a $34.99 item with some inflation, maybe $39.99 item, right? A week. When you're talking about a shed, though, you know, and you're talking about, hey, I've got this living room set, maybe it's $14.99 cash price or $2,000 cash price or whatever. Sheds aren't starting at $2,000. If you get a brand new shed, you're talking about four, five, six thousand dollars for a small, you know, whatever. Now you start getting a 10 by 16 with two barn doors and a little, you know, window up top, you're talking about $16,000 shed, right? And so now the the the item ticket is completely different. So even though my customer count might be a little different, the in other words, the units, let me phrase that. The unit count is different. The unit count

Instant Criminal Background Checks For Hiring

Pete Shau 41:05

cost infinitely more. So even though I'm selling I've got one agreement to that person, I've got one agreement to that person, well, that agreement starts at $16,000, where this agreement might start at $1,000. And so you really don't know how much it's it is. But I can tell you right now, every time I'm driving down the street, there are lit, and you say five, I have to agree with you. There's probably like five or six around my house within if I was to go even 20, 20 miles, I'd probably say maybe more, maybe double that. They're everywhere around here. And I don't live that far outside of Tampa, okay? I live in Landlex. I am literally one stop on 275 or 75 right outside of Tampa. This is not any rural country, and they are everywhere. I mean, everywhere. You start hitting out to the outskirts like Dead City, Sever Hills, Spring Hill. I mean, there are sheds everywhere. So this is really good to know for everybody who's who's thinking, well, this is a one-trick pony. This is only for one. No, this encompasses all of the rent-to-owned industry, and very well I might. I don't want to go too far into the all the other uh businesses that you cover. I mean, you said PI. I didn't even know you guys had a PI division. Oh, that's a big division for us.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Uh private investigators, landlords, people fill out applications to rent apartments. Uh, you know, so we have those human resources departments for verifying information on employees, which goes hand in hand with our latest product, which is the new criminal background check, which I rolled out to you guys, to your industry. I rolled it out for less than 12 bucks, and there's no waiting period. It's instant right on your screen, goes right to the NCIC, and it's an instant criminal background check. You know what these different things are.

Pete Shau 42:39

I was gonna wait a little bit, but let's talk about that because that that adds a bit. I I remember we were talking about FRDA, which was was not that long ago. You kind of blew my socks off. I really, when you said some of those things and how instantaneous it was, I was doing stuff with, and I know I won't mention the company, but you know, we were trying to bring people on, and it took sometimes three to six days to get something back. Now, in the environment that we're in, if I'm trying to get somebody aboard and they have to wait an additional three to six days after the interview process, and I've said they're okay, well, I can't, I obviously can't bring them on until I know that they're okay, right? Because if I bring them on, I've already brought them on, they're on the system and they're on the books, and I realize, hey, this probably wasn't the right person to get. But who can wait another week to get another paycheck, right? I mean, that this is a go time. People are in need of the jobs that they have, the income that they're the revenues that they need to pay the bills, feed the family. So I would lose some really good talent to other locations that were able to do it faster. So you're saying that some of the information, not just to be able to find some skit trace people, but you have stuff that can bring back, what is it, DMV information and some background information extremely quickly for HR services to bring people aboard?

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah. Our criminal background check is an instant report. I rolled it out for $11.99. Um, we pretty we we don't give it to the stores. I mean, you usually that stays in the hands of a decision maker. Or an HR department, etc. Don't want people checking on their exes or their clients or anything like that. But yeah, the idea was that uh and and and you were right, it's not just waiting six days. That that wasn't the issue for me. When I came up with this idea to do this, uh and and my partner and I discussed the the pros and cons of what it would take to roll this out. The idea was that when you get a good candidate, good candidates don't wait around for you to call. They're looking for jobs. And when somebody offers them a job, they're taking that job, they're looking for a job. And while you're waiting three, four, five days, in some cases longer, for a report to come back, if it's a clean report, you call them up, hey, I got news, I got great news for you. A week ago, Monday, you came in for an interview, we're gonna offer you a job. I mean, I'm working. You know, so those are the first ones that go. So you don't want to wait on those. So, yeah, you can put some very, very limited information in the system, and it literally goes through the national system and comes back to the NCIC and comes back and tells you if they got a criminal background, if they've been convicted, if there's uh some some some uh vehicle stuff going on in there, especially since you deal with drivers. You know, all that stuff's in there. Anytime that the court enters something on that person, you might have seven different subjects on one person, all dealing with the same transaction, but they went back to court three or four times, they pled guilty, it's all in there. Now it's not guaranteed. There is no guaranteed system. If there was, I'd have sold the company and I'd retire very, very wealthy. But it's it's a solid system. When I say not guaranteed, not every agency in this country reports. Some of the rural areas they don't report. Uh felonies, felonies are always gonna get reported. I mean, a felony has to be reported. If I'm living in Kentucky and I move to Montana and I walk into Bass Pro Shop and I'm on a handgun, I can't buy that if I have a felony. So felonies are always gonna hit. When it comes to drivers, what our clients are doing is they're saying, look, I'm gonna extend you a job, Pete. But we have to wait for our insurance company for five days or six days on the driving record. So we're gonna hire you, we're gonna start training you, and if that comes back dirty, uh, we'll hire, we're gonna have to let you go. Is there anything you want to tell me before I run that? You'd be surprised people say, you know, or they don't show up, which gives you your answer, you know. So that is the newest product that you and I spoke about at uh FRDA when we also spoke about one uh and what we should do with that. And that one, that one's a dizzy as well. We should probably touch on that if you want.

Pete Shau 46:25

Well, let's do that now. I mean, we we're we're there. We're talking about some ways, not only that you but that I helped to skip trace, not only are we able to really kind of start digging into how you got here, what you're able to do, now we're expanding to some of the front end versus the just the back end, especially with the hiring, because that's super important. What is the alert one? And and I know that's probably like the the one shining star that I've been really wanting to talk about and kind of dig into. Talk to me about that and how that works.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Alert one, originally from Terry's brainstorm of a national skip stolen database, which was on the back end, we moved it to the front end and repurposed the the programming and kept the name because it made sense. Alert one. Alert is something that happens up front, not on the back. You want to be alerted to something. So, what could we do with this? So, what we did was we took the alert one system and we made it an early warning system. So let's say you have 10 locations, and if somebody goes into store number 101 and a week later they go into store 105, store 105 needs to know that they were in store 101. It doesn't matter whether a transaction transaction was secured in the first store or not. The first thing that's going to happen when they run them to Data True, across the screen in bright red and white letters, it's going to say alert, alert, alert. A transaction was run at a different location and it'll give you the phone number of that location on this person on such and such a date. Now, nothing proprietary is but exchange. But in your industry, I have learned from your industry,

Alert One Early Warning Across Stores

SPEAKER_00 48:01

the RTO industry, that, uh, and it was similar to payday loan. You know, if I'm if I've got an RTO store in my town and I got three competitors, I know who they are. They know who I am. It's friendly competition. And we share knowledge of people that are bad players. Because bad players aren't just bad for me, they're bad for everybody. Bad players for you are bad players for me, and nobody wants those people in the system. So not only can we connect those 10 stores within a company, I can connect companies, I can connect regions, states, etc. As long as everybody agrees, yeah, I want to be connected to uh a buddies or uh or a best way. I want to be connected, again, no propriety information. Proprietary information is being exchanged. We had a situation. I'm going to leave off the names of the companies, if you may. Uh we'll call him, we'll call them uh company Curly, Larry, and Mo. Okay. A husband and wife separately would end to see Curly. Curly's owner calls me up and he says, Hey, Dan, one's not working. I says, What do you mean, Curly's owner? And he says, I ran this person in. The husband and wife, they hit me in three of my stores. This was in Florida, by the way. So he said, I said, give me the information that was entered in. Let me investigate for you. So I did. Well, they entered the wrong socials. I can't fix that. So he said to me, That's on me. But then we entered the correct social and all the bells and whistles went off for alert one. They hit three of his stores separately, that's six transactions. They hit a store from your background, we'll leave it at that, a company from your background, which is very, very prominent, which is in his town. They hit that, they hit one of those. Then they crossed the border into Tennessee. Oh, wow. And they hit a store there. So they ended up with five different locations, five transactions each. Now, do you remember earlier in the beginning of the podcast, I mentioned front end gives you a heads-up warning on the history to verify information? If they were looking at their front end report, they would have seen that every other six months, Mr. and Mrs. Dishonest customer were in Puerto Rico. So I called back, I called back uh Curly and I said, Well, Curly, first of all, if you want your product back, I'm willing to bet it's at a flea market in Puerto Rico. However, Curly, Larry, and Mo all got hit for over $20,000 combined. Now, could that have been saved? Yes. Alert one at $15,000, and all you have to do is get one per year, and you pay for the whole year plus sum. Because the average charge off uh for a book charge off at rent to own, as I understand it, runs between $400 and $700. So if that's still accurate, I believe it is, and you're only paying $15 a month for alert one, how many months can you go on $700 before you get a lot of different things? Yeah, so you catch one and you will catch several, absolutely. So you can connect companies, you can connect comp stores within companies, it gives you the alert. You call over and say, Hey Pete, you had John Smith at your store uh last Thursday. What what happened with that? Uh I just wasn't feeling it. Oh, I rented a TV to him. Yeah, guess what he's looking for today? A TV. And guess what he's about to go south on in two stores? Two TVs. Is it designed to turn them down? No. But if somebody was across the street at your competitor and they got a dining room set last week, and they're looking at a dining room set in your store this week, what are the odds that somebody needs two dining room sets simultaneously? I'm going to go ahead and two different companies. Yeah. So that's alert one. Uh, you know, and and the beauty of it is we can connect companies, which is something that we haven't done a lot of. There's people that are worried about, you know, if they come into my store and they call over and they say, well, that company over there said this, that, and the other. That's a training issue. That's a simple training issue to let people know we just can't serve you today. That's all you gotta say. You don't have to give them a reason. It's your business. So that there's your there's your three big, there's the three big new ones: your alert one, your criminal background checks for your new hires, and your skip find plus. And you mentioned earlier what do you do? Because we never circled back to it, with the customer that does not collect all of the information by social security numbers. We have a way to do that as well. We can actually produce a pursuit report for you with no social security number. If you only collect the last four digits, we set it up where you only process the last four digits.

Pete Shau 52:39

All these things have to drive. When you say that, if you if you don't have a social security number, because going into the end, I mean you're you're literally giving me some good stuff here. But if you if you don't have a social or you have at least the last four, how accurate are those compared to a full social?

SPEAKER_00 52:55

Okay, so let's say you come into my rent-to-own store and uh I don't collect socials. And we have some big ones out there that don't. Rent a center doesn't collect socials, Aaron's doesn't collect socials. There's a lot that don't collect. Some collect the last four, some don't collect any. So what do we do with those? Everybody, Social Security or not otherwise, has one of these little suckers right here. And with that comes a number.

Pete Shau 53:20

Cell phones are, I mean, they're just everywhere now.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

They are huge. And whether it's a cell phone or a landline or a VOIP, as I mentioned at the very beginning of today's uh show, uh, any one of these is connected to that person at some time. Now, phone numbers are regurgitated, they're they're reprocessed. You get yours disconnected, six months later, it belongs to somebody else. How often do you get a phone call? Hey, is Pete Show there? I don't know who that is. I've had this phone for a year. That's who owned it before. So when you run a pursuit going through our phone verification system, it'll come back. Let's say I'm running it on you, and I get back 10 Pete Shows. Or I get back, not even that, not even that. I get back 10 people connected to that phone number. I scroll through, and you're only running one transaction. You're not getting charged for 10, you're just getting charged for the one. You scroll through Jane Smith, John Doe, Billy Bob, Mary Larry, and then suddenly Pete Shao goes, Oh, there's my guy. And there's your pursuit report. Okay. And now you can take that apart and find out where's Pete hiding? Is he staying with his son? Is he staying with his parents? Is he staying with his siblings? Gee, I got Pete Shao's uh ex here. And uh my experience is when you get somebody's ex and you're trying to fight them, they'll tell you everything.

Pete Shau 54:35

A little tip from Dan. So, Dan, before I go to, because I like to do some lightning quick questions at the end, but just real quick, we talked about there was subscription-based and then there's action-based. Basically, a transaction happens and then you get charged. What differences or what products have the differences? What products have a subscription base versus the transaction-based?

SPEAKER_00 54:55

Okay, so our only two products that we have that would be used by this audience uh that are subscription-based is the Skip Find Plus and the uh Alert One. Okay, because we have to maintain those systems and whatnot. So those are subscription-based with a monthly fee per location per store. Everything else falls in two categories: either an a la carte purchase or an unlimited access. So let me break it down for you. Our skip products, pursue and people find, are always a la carte. We couldn't do those in an all-packaged uh flat rate flat rate service. But we what we did do is we offered them a la carte with no record return, no charge. So we either give

Pricing Models Subscription Versus Usage

SPEAKER_00 55:40

you back a report or you don't pay for it. You don't pay for the submission. Okay? Then on the front end, we also have a la carte for all the different elements of a verification. Address, social security number, verify that the landlord's legit, verify that their employer exists. If you take checks or you want to make sure they're not using stolen or lost debit cards, you can ping their financial institution. We actually ping the financial institution directly and come back with the report on their relationship with their bank. Personal references, up to six. All these things are in that verification on the front end. Now you can run those all a cart, but here's the fun part about rent to own. If you are running more, if it hits on all of those factors, okay, everything you put in comes back with a verification. Um, and they do. I mean it's it's amazing how much how much information pings through. I'd say at least 95% or better accuracy on coming across. 95% is a good number. That's a great number. I mean, if if 95% of your patients as a brain surgeon survive, you are a very, very rich brain surgeon. So yeah, no doubt about it. So we came up with a way some years ago, and we still maintain it, uh, where you can get an uh a uh unlimited access. Now, I say unlimited access with air quotes. What we did was we took the national average at the time of how many transactions the average rent to own processed in a month. And that's those three that I talked about earlier: new upgrade or reactivation. The average rent to own nationwide at that time was 125 per month. We didn't want to tap it there, so we added another 50 and we called it 175. So we have a flat fee of $85 a month in the rent-to-own industry, um, is where it started. Okay. Then we we tweaked it, and now now it depends on the industry. But it's a flat fee. Once you have run 16 a la carte transactions in a month in a store, you've exceeded the unlimited access rate. 16. And if you're only running 16, you're not in business very long.

Pete Shau 57:42

Right, right. Yeah, you don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

So we came up with that unlimited access. You can run it now. If you've got 10 stores, the unlimited access is 775 per location. We add them together. Now you got 1,775. So if you got one store that ran 80 and one store that ran 200, there's no over there's no overcharges. It's your flat fee. So those are the a la carte and the flat fee up front, and then there's the a la carte for skip trace, and then there's the two products that are subscription based. Nice.

Pete Shau 58:11

Well, Dan, I want to ask some quick questions. Not that I'm trying to put you on the spot, but I'm trying to put you on the spot. If I'm a new, if I'm a new retailer, I'm a new guy, I've opened up my location, I'm new to this. I'm not sure what Data True does yet. If you were gonna say in a in a bite-sized chunk, what would you say to new RTO dealers right now is the most important thing that they can get out of Data True?

SPEAKER_00 58:46

I would say you want to be sure of your clientele, so verify their information when you begin a relationship and have a tool in your toolbox that helps you find people that take off with your stuff. And we provide both. Okay.

Pete Shau 59:00

If you were to give one bit of advice about Data True, and let's say I had to pick one. I'm an RTO dealer, I'm gonna pick one. In your opinion, what would you say? I've got all these. This is the one that I'm gonna recommend to you.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

You know, the core of Data True Pete is that front-end verification. You know, we think we know our clients, it's a small town. I see this client at the grocery store all the time. You know, it takes away that personal, I'm gonna make the decision and puts everybody on an even playing field. Verify the information to be true and clean from the beginning. You save a fortune. And it's not just a lost product. How much labor do you spend knocking on doors, having a vehicle, paying gas, making phone calls? You'll spend more money collecting than you make profit on the product. And that's a hidden cost that we don't even think about. So if you can avoid one out of three, you're not only saving the product, but you're saving everything that goes in. You guys are not in the collection business. That's what we do. You're in the sales business. You don't hire collectors. So, how expert collector are people in the retail industry? It's a value-added service that they have to provide as an employee because that's the nature of the beast. But if you have a tool that does that for you, verify, get the information on the front end, that is key, and have tools available to you when you need them for those that slip. And there will they. There are some that slip by. There is no perfect system. There are.

Pete Shau 1:00:32

So that's I'm here to tell you, it happens all the time. Last question on the lightning round. What do you see coming up for Data True and the RTO industry in the near future? Let's say in

Best Advice, What’s Next, How To Reach Dan

Pete Shau 1:00:45

the next five years, is there something coming down the pipe? Is there some direction that you see it taking?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

Is there something that you like, you know what, we're not there yet, but I can definitely see this being a part of the RTO industry and Data True at this point in time because well, in the RTO industry, I think verifying information and and the skip trace products with the expansion of collecting for uh front-end alerts, finding people ongoing, you know, I think, of course, barring the next great suggestion that comes from people in the RTO industry, if we have the ability to build build it, we will build it. Um, if you build it, they will come, right? Kevin Costner. So that's it. You know, and and I I think that is uh I think that is really where we are going with this. I think in the RTO industry, one of the things we're finding is there are a lot of lateral businesses that are owned also by RTO owners that don't even get a thought. For example, I have RTO owners that own apartment buildings, duplexes, things like that. What can we do for them? Do you take applications from tenants? Do you want to run a criminal background check to make sure if you own an apartment building that you're not introducing into a family environment, somebody who's a sex offender?

unknown 1:01:55

Great.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

There are lateral, lateral services that can serve the clientele that are currently being served. And they don't even think about saying, wait a second, I can use data true over here. I have I I have I have a pawn shop. I could use data true on the pawn side. I can use data true on the rental side. So I do see those layers that are on the out on the being carried on the back of the clientele in RTO that it can be expanded to to provide additional services.

Pete Shau 1:02:25

I love it. I love it. Well, Dan, it's uh it's been a pleasure having you on. I know we wanted to do this for a long time. You you you've been in the industry for forever, you've got a lot going on, and I love to hear all the new things that you have as far as services to the RTO industry, the expansion into the sheds, and and furthermore, anything that we can get going. If somebody wanted to reach out, now I I don't know anybody who might not know you, but just in case they don't, how would they reach out to Dan? How do they reach out to Data True and get your services?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Of course, the easiest way is to come see me in any of our shows coming up, whether it's a whether it's the Midwest Expo, whether it's World, RTO Trib, Shed Week, I'll be out at David David's place in Indiana. And the the so we go we go to a lot of the shows. But if you wanted to reach out to me either electronically, you can email me. Uh it real simple, djo brack at datatrue.net. So it's my first initial and my last name. Or you can email Ryan, uh Ryan Farnsworth. It's uh Ryan F at datatru.net, or you can email info at datatrue.net. Or you can call our office. Our corporate headquarters is in Pasadena, and you can push a button on there. I think it's button number two, and you'll get the sales and business development division. That's my division that reports to me directly, that uh is responsible for this uh for the RTO industry. That phone number is 626-396-8271, and then it's extension two, and then you'll get a list of who you can contact, me or Ryan, you can find us there. So either an email or a phone call is the easiest way to reach us at any time. And with uh with these today, you can't on if you don't want to take a phone call, fine, but you can't unrun the emails. If you didn't write down my email address or the phone number, just go to datatrue.net.

Pete Shau 1:04:13

You cannot run the emails, cannot run the cell phones. I think everybody has one. Guys, let me tell you, Dan, so glad that you were able to come on and talk about Data True a lot because it's one of the things that I wanted to get into. There are resources out there. Data True has a whole lot of them. If you guys want to know more, make sure you reach out to Dan. Make sure you find out what's going on at Data True. But if you want to know more about the podcast, hit me up, Pete at the RTO ShowPodcast.com. Make sure you go to the website, also at www.therto showpodcast.com. Literally go on there, look around, sign up for the newsletter, become a sponsor. You can buy some swag. You can look like me right here with this shirt or any other color that you like. You can also have the ability to go on there and kind of see the events and what's going on in the future. Dan mentioned that Data True is going to be in some of these events. Well, if you want to know what those events are or what's happening, you're welcome to go onto the website, check it out. You're going to see what's coming on in your area. Dan, again, I appreciate it. I love you being on the show. Thank you so much. And I'm going to tell you guys as always, get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.