Maximizing Digital Advertising Success in the RTO Industry w/ Ryan Krass of Wowbrands

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Are you ready to transform your marketing strategy and dominate the rent-to-own market? Join us for a deep dive into the innovative world of Wowbrands with CEO and CTO, Ryan Krass. From pioneering mobile websites to developing state-of-the-art CRM software, Ryan offers an inside look at how his team is reshaping lead generation, mobile compatibility, and customer communication to capture the attention of younger consumers. Learn how seamless integration with existing RTO systems like Versirent and High Touch ensures a user-friendly and effective experience for clients.

Discover the seismic shifts in consumer behavior brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and what it means for your RTO business. We'll discuss the newfound importance of rapid response times to online inquiries and how younger generations are now purchasing big-ticket items online. Retraining salesforces and integrating technologies like VoIP systems can streamline customer engagement and boost efficiency. Ryan shares real-world examples and data that underscore the need to adapt quickly to these evolving trends in order to stay competitive.

Finally, get the inside scoop on how to make your digital advertising dollars work harder for you. Ryan discusses the critical role of mastering paid ads on Google, as the platform's ad space continues to expand. Learn about the varying effectiveness of different marketing channels, such as TV, radio, and social media, and why being present where consumers are most active is crucial. We'll wrap up the episode with actionable strategies for managing leads through advanced CRM systems, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks. This episode is packed with invaluable insights to help you stay ahead in the ever-changing RTO market.

Sponsored by APRO, Vox-pop-uli, and Jeraud Norman Marketing

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the RTO Show.
I'm your host, pete Schaub, andtoday we're talking with Ryan
from Wow Brands.
He has two roles over there andI'm going to let him explain
more about that.
But, guys, the reason that WowBrands is on and you guys know I
talk everything rent-to-ownit's because these guys know
what's going on, especially Ryan.
They are deep into the rent toown space and if you want to
talk marketing, these are theguys you want to talk to.

(00:30):
Now.
The reason I say that now youguys know we're sponsored by
Gerard Norman Marketing.
They actually introduced me.
Gerard actually sat down withRyan, had a little conversation
with us.
That's going to be coming outsoon, but you really want to
hear what he has to say becausethere's so much going on between
the ecosystems and what theycan do.
Ryan, how are you doing today?
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hey, dude, nice to see you again.
Ryan from Wow Brands, I am theCEO, slash CTO and I would say
we've been doing RTO marketingfor about 10 years now Across
the board.
We started roughly 8, 10 yearsago in the very beginnings of
mobile websites is where westarted.
We had customers come to usneeding mobile websites and

(01:10):
we've taken it from there tobuilding CRM software and
building lead management andvendor management and everything
in the RTO sector.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
So, just so you guys are aware, I am talking to Ryan
a little bit later in the dayand he's still at work and he's
dedicated to what he's doing.
And the reason I say that isbecause rent-to-own is not a
nine to five right.
We do this all the time and sowe like to know that the people
that we're dealing with are justas dedicated as we are in
getting things done.
And I want to say, Ryan is that?

(01:45):
So we met at RTO World 2024,where Gerard kind of introduced
us.
And I've heard the name WildBrands before.
It's not like you haven't heardof in the rent-to-own space,
but you actually have quite afew people that work with Wild
Brands right now.
So I was already looking and Isaw you even have rent-to-own on
there as part of people thatyou use.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah.
So I mean that's where wereally started was 10 years ago.
Mike came into the office andhe's always been at the
forefront of marketing andtechnology and all the digital
things.
And he came in originally waslike I've got a website, it
doesn't work on mobile devices.
And he was a forerunner reallyin understanding that consumers
are moving to mobile.
And I mean I just tell youright now, I think we're some of

(02:21):
the websites we manage are 85percent mobile.
I mean.
So that he was a forerunner inthat.
And that's where we really gotour start is.
We were working withCountryside or R2O, and we
started with it needed a mobilewebsite and its website wasn't
generating a lot of leads.
So that's really where we gotour start and we went from there
.
And then, I think about sixmonths later, a year later,

(02:42):
showplace came in and from therewe started to realize the
opportunity.
We've always done retailtechnology, retail, software,
retail, anything in the retailsector, but it really we started
to understand the niche and westarted to get, I would say,
really good results with thesites that we were managing and

(03:04):
from there it's just been a wordof mouth thing.
We've never done any marketingfor, for anything like or
anything like that.
It's just been word of mouthand it's friends of friends and
as you know, you've been to theAPRO shows and the trip shows
and the nationwide shows.
It's just everybody knowseverybody and when you provide,
you know, you hopefully providea good result, which I would say
, and hopefully we have thatword of mouth and that referral
gets around and they tell theirfriends and they tell their

(03:25):
friends and they tell theirfriends.
And I think right now werepresent roughly 300
storefronts that are allindependent owner operators.
And we started out doingcomprehensive marketing.
That means how do I get my siteranked?
How do I pull in traffic?
How do I make sure I'm numberone in Google and any of the

(03:46):
search engines?
And we've we've taken it fromthere and we really focused for
the first part of our part ofour business on how to generate
leads and get the leads in thedoor.
So then we spent a lot of timeon that and then, once we say
once we were successful ingenerating leads, we realized
the next opportunity is what theheck do I do with these leads?
How do I make sure they'remanaged?
How do I make sure thatsomebody calls them?
How do I make sure that youtext them?

(04:06):
And to be fair, I mean, theyounger generation wants text,
the older generation doesn't,but the younger generation wants
text.
You have to have these types ofthings.
You've got to be able tocommunicate with your customers
in a way they want.
So we've not transitioned, butwe've added to our product

(04:28):
offering over the last couple ofyears and specifically focused
on all right now we've got leadsand we've figured out the
algorithm, figured out the modelto generate leads in the RTO
space.
How do we start to manage thoseleads?
So that's really where we spentthe last couple of years is
trying to build software thatallows for leads management and
integrates with things that youalready use, such as VersaMeter,
high Touch or RTO Pro.
I mean you need that type ofinformation at your fingertips,
in my opinion, to be successfultrying to close these leads.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
So when I'm looking at the website right, if I'm
somebody who's interested inWild Brands and then I go onto
the website and I see theecosystem name, what does that
mean?
Like in the sense of, usuallywhen we're talking about Apple,
that means you know, you comehome and you sit down at your
computer and it's integratedwith your phone and it's
integrated with your tablet.
How does the ecosystem workwith Wildbrands and how does

(05:08):
that affect the rent-to-own leadspace and how it gets things
done?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, so our primary integration, our primary
ecosystem.
It starts with marketing.
It starts with generatingmarketing leads, and what that
means is does my website work?
Is it good?
Am I pulling in traffic?
And when consumers comespecifically on a mobile device,
is it easy for them to convert?
Is it easy for them to give usthe information and find what
they're looking for?
So that's part one.
Part two is how do I make surethat when someone is looking for

(05:33):
rent to own that, I'm numberone?
Because there's only one spotin Google for number one and our
objective is to try to makesure that every store that we
represent is in that number oneposition.
So the next part of that ismaking sure you're ranked on
Google.
The next one, after that, iswhat does my ads look like?
Am I pulling in ads traffic?
Because that's the reality ofthe world we're in today, which

(05:56):
is that Google is adding moreand more.
I mean I was just looking upthe numbers before the call.
In the last year, Google'sincreased their ad revenue by
15%.
It's not like there are newpeople that are searching, they
just keep adding more ad spots.
They keep adding more ad spots.
And if you're not ranking andif you're not, sorry if you're
not running ads.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Somebody else is and somebody else is going to steal
that 15% just real quick,because that number actually
means a lot to me.
When we're talking about 15% ofGoogle ad space, how much money
does that equate to?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Because you know Google probably does a few
billion a year on ad space.
Oh it's, 10% is a lot.
Ad space is 48 billion.
Somewhere in that ballpark Ithink 2023 was like 42 billion
in 2024.
The last 12 months we're goingfrom Q2 over Q2, was 42 billion
last year and 48 billion thisyear.
Q2 over Q2 was $42 billion lastyear and $48 billion this year,
and you know what it's not like.
They added new things.
I mean, the only way theyincreased that revenue was to

(06:51):
add more ads.
So if you go to Google rightnow and search for anything it
doesn't matter rent to own orwhatever you're now going to get
sometimes four ads that show upfor an organic result yes, and
50, 60% of the people don't makeit past the ads.
So if you're not running ads,you were kind of out of luck.
Somebody else is stealing thattraffic from you, even on your

(07:12):
own brand name.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
So how?
Because Wow Brands doesn't justdo rent to own, and I think
that's really important forpeople to understand is that Wow
Brands actually representsquite a bit more than the rent
toto-own sector, but they have awhole.
Is it a division or an areawhere you have just honed in on
rent-to-own, where you're ableto take it on, just like you do
the big box retailers.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, so we do a lot of, let's say, in-store retail
technology.
So that's like in-store displaystuff.
It's in-store.
It has a lot to relate to kiosk.
It has a lot to relate toin-store displays.
It has a lot to do with what isthe conversion optimization for
this stuff?
There's point there IOT systemshow much, how much water has my

(07:54):
device dispensed in the lastday or last week, or stuff like
that.
We have grown.
What has happened is we startedout really playing in the
retail sector and then, over thelast, I would say, three or
four years, rent to own is nowsomething like 80 to 90% of our
business.
We are primarily doing rent toown just because we understand
the opportunity there and themajority of the customers that

(08:17):
we work with are seeing atangible result and they're the
ones that are referring us.
So our opportunity as we kindof go into the future is really
going to be around.
What is the technologysolutions we can build?
How do we continue to expand onmarketing?
How do we give the consumerswhat they want as really
consumer behavior changes?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
So, when you talk about integration, because you
mentioned three primary users ofhow we do our operating
software, so you mentionedVersaRent, you mentioned High
Touch and you mentioned is itProRent?

Speaker 2 (08:46):
RTO Pro.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
RTO Pro, right?
So those three I know arelargely in the top five,
probably in the top three, right?
Yeah, so in that situation,that integration, if I was to
have one of those three andyou're covering 85% to 90% of
rent to own, if not even morethan that, how?
85 to 90% of rent to own, ifnot even more than that how is
the integration with thosesystems?

(09:07):
I mean, can I expect wildbrands to like, let's say, we
give you a call, ryan, thingsare going well.
You probably were not going totalk exactly to Ryan, but
they're going to call somebody,right, and they're going to get
somebody on it Right, and sothey come in.
How good is the integration?
Is there steps that they needto follow?
Is it already done in thesystem where you can say we've
already tried and true this,this is really, really good to
go and it's only up to the tierthat you want to do?
How does that work?

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah.
So we we try to focus on umagain.
It's for us, it's about leadgeneration.
So I've got a lead, I got alead in front of me.
How do I provide you the toolsto best convert that lead?
That's really what we're tryingto get at.
So when we're integrating withsomebody like it doesn't matter
VersaRunner, high Touch or anyof them when a customer comes in
, you're going to want to know acouple of things.
Number one are they active?

(09:51):
Do we have active agreementswith them?
Are they past?
Do we have past agreements withthem?
Has anybody ever talked to thiscustomer in the last couple of
years?
As long as you're using a CRMsoftware eight years, seven
years at this point so you canlook and see what's the note,
who's the last person to talk tothem, what did they say?
What was the sales process looklike?
If you have a VoIP system, we'lldo things like VoIP integration

(10:13):
so we can see did somebodyactually call this customer?
How many times have I calledthis customer over the last
couple of years?
How many times has the customercalled us?
How much time have we spenttalking with the customer?
We also have things liketexting built into the system,
so you can also see.
Any text conversation you'veever had with this customer is
just in a like an iMessage typeof history that you can see.
That in that's deep.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
I mean, you're really going deep into it.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, I mean we try to give you what you need.
Number one is are mysalespeople?
Are they making the calls?
Are they texting?
Are they texting?
Are they reaching out toconsumers?
Because we started out in thebeginning of we're getting a lot
of leads but I was told they'rejunk leads.
Can you get into the data oflooking at the junk leads?
You didn't text them, youdidn't call them, you didn't
email them.
What'd you do?
Maybe a junk lead, but youdidn't reach out.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
So we can't technically justify a junk lead,
yet until we know that it'sdead, right.
And I think the only lead weknow of now is either an active
lead or a dead one.
Because you can't, we have towork it until we know that it's
not good, right?
I mean, that's kind of like RTOsales 101.
You work a lead until they saydon't, don't call me anymore.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Until they opt out or tell you to stop calling me,
you keep working it.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
You're now on that list where you should not call
me ever.
And then you go okay, I got it,Hands down, I get it.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
And you're good to go .
But it's all about, and I wouldsay, really in the last, covid
facilitated this COVID pulledforward.
I mean, there was a technology,everyone was headed to a
digital space.
Covid just forced 10 years ofchange into one month.
So it became an.

(11:47):
The sales, let's say the salescycle, has changed over the last
three to four years and really,since COVID, you have to reach
out to the consumer.
They're not walking into yourdoor at the same capacity that
they were before, and I thinkyou can, you can back that up
with all kinds of data sourcesas well.
As you know, you live there,you live this world.
So I'm telling you, you, yes,the foot traffic is not there,
um, and what has happened is itreally has facilitated, like a

(12:09):
behavior, a change in consumerbehavior, um, and the biggest
opportunity and challenge is theretreating of the rto sales
force to be able to accommodatethat and to work and understand
that world is much differentthan it was 20 years ago.
It's much different than thanit was 10 years ago, and you
have to, especially in theyounger generation.
They don't, they're not walkinginto your store.

(12:29):
That's not how it works anymore.
Anyone under the age of 35 istypically not going to do that.
They're going to shop onlineand especially when we're
talking about big ticket itemsfurniture, appliances those are
big ticket I didn't electronicsomewhat, but those are big
ticket items that sometimesyou're going to look at 10
different websites before youmake a purchase.
Yes, simple as that.

(12:52):
You're going to price check,you're going to compare and if
there's a direct correlationwith close rates and time to
respond, if you don't respond ina fast fashion and sometimes
that's under a couple hoursyou're not going to close that.
That that lead it's just notgoing to happen.
They've already moved on.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
I got a question for you because a lot of people ask
me this and I actually don'thave the answer to this.
So when we're talking aboutbecause we do know that they go
out there, they're shopping withtheir fingers right, normally
on the phone.
Like you said, 85%, most ofthem are on their phone and the
only so they're jumping throughright and they're starting to

(13:24):
see, you know, hey, I like thisor I like that.
How important is pricing versusgetting to that lead as soon as
possible?

Speaker 2 (13:33):
What do you mean by how important?
What do you mean by that solike?

Speaker 1 (13:36):
so like, let's say, somebody has a sofa, brand a
sofa, okay, brand a sofa is 1999.
They go somewhere else and it'scalled brand B sofa, but it's
really brand A.
It's both, you know, both fromAshley and Progressive or
wherever, and so they're sayingit's $18.99.
How important is thatdifference in price versus me
getting to that lead as soon aspossible?

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Well, if you've called them before they made it
to the other site, it doesn'treally matter.
That's what I would say.
Right, I mean the average.
The metric I've got is, onaverage, on a big ticket, high
appliance or high dollarappliance value purchase, it's
10 and a half websites is howmany times a consumer they go to
10 different websites, or 10.4websites technically to try to
evaluate.
So price does matter but if youcan get a hold of that customer

(14:18):
quickly before they are makingit to the next batch of sites,
you're going to have a.
You know, you're going to havea much higher conversion rate
and we've got the kind of.
let me pull up this data here,some of our larger metrics if
you connect with them in lessthan an hour is a 52% close rate
.
In two hours it's 46.
Eight hours, 42.
And it goes down and down, anddown and down from that.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
So what I mean?
You've seen Rentone, I've seenRentone.
What is Rentone telling you?
What is an average time in thespan of all the stores of
Rentone that you have that weactually get back to that lead
quick enough?

Speaker 2 (14:50):
I mean I could show you the dashboards.
Every company is different andyou can kind of look at that.
But I will tell you the guysthat are the most aggressive,
that are part of what we do tryto have a sub two hour contact
time and, whatever the roleeither sales director or CRM
director, whatever you want tocall that person is very
militant about that and makingsure that people are following
up in a reasonable time fashion.

(15:11):
But I mean just in your ownlife.
If you put in a lead, ifsomebody contacts you a day and
a half later about it, you'vealready moved on, I'm not
talking to him.
I'm going to tell you right now,if you call me a day and a half
later.
I'm not talking to you Exactlyso, but five years ago that
wouldn't have been the case,right?
So that is now a.
The world has just changed, andconsumer behavior has changed

(15:31):
in such a way that there's anexpectation of a very fast
response.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Well, it's the instant gratification, right?
No-transcript?
Okay, I'll pay five extradollars to make sure that it's

(16:02):
here in front of my door whenI'm not even going to have it
right then all the time.
So you have this ecosystem thatkind of works with generally
almost all the OS systems thatwe have out there, and we know
how fast that we need to get tothem.
What are some of the tricks ofthe trade?
And I don't mean to get like toointegrated because I don't want
to know everything, but likewhat is something that you would
say this is an offering that ifyou came to Wow Brands, this is

(16:25):
probably the most basic packagethat we have.
Something like maybe it's awebsite integration, because
when you're talking about phones, that's a deep integration.
When you're saying I can tellon a VoIP system or a voice over
IP system that hey, you've madethis call here and you made
that call there, I'm going toimagine that's somebody who's
dedicated to making sure thattheir online is 100% secure.

(16:45):
But not everybody can do thatright, because we have some
single store operators or somethree store operators who would
love to have that, but it's alittle bit out of their zone as
far as making sure that it'sright, so like what's something
that basic that they can walkinto to say this covers a lot of
area and maybe most bang foryour buck.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
So a couple of years ago we got, uh, we started to
design a product for the, thesmall stores, the one or two
store retailers that that,because they're the one I mean
they need the boost, they're theones that really need the
online presence, and, um, we'vekind of designed a solution that
works for.
Our uh solution that's like Ibelieve it.
It's sub four stores, soanybody sub four stores.

(17:22):
We have a technology solution.
It's effectively, we can getyou a site up running really
quickly.
What you care about, and Ithink our pricing is even on the
website it's $800 a month perstore.
I mean, that's our pricing andas you get to a larger number of
stores we tier those pricesdown.
But our prices are right thereand our CRM prices are static as
well.
All of that stuff kind of comesas part of the package, meaning

(17:47):
we'll handle the marketing, theseo, the, the crm is included
as long as you're in one of the.
You got to be on one of thosethree platforms, obviously, for
it to be meaningful and then ifyou have a voip system, we don't
charge, we'll just integrate itfor you for free.
There's no cost of doing thosetypes like voice.
Oh wow, so we integrate with.
I can tell you off the top ofmy head we have spectrum, we
Nextiva, we're working onGranite and I just talked to
somebody yesterday.
I mean we'll do the VoIP.

(18:07):
As long as you've got a VoIPsystem, as long as you can get
me call logs in some capacity,we'll do that integration for
free.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
That's actually amazing.
That's actually really good tohear for people who might not
have all the ability to invest.
And you have those small storepackages.
I actually know a few peoplewho definitely might be
interested in that.
So you've got big packages,you've got small packages that
actually sound amazing and, tobe honest with you, I think
that's the way to go for a lotof people that I know.
So when you're, you hadmentioned something, because

(18:36):
there was a lot of passion inthe last time we talked, it was
like I want to get these guyssales.
That's what we do.
So how does how does the CEOand the CTO right, it's the
chief technical officer.
How did they get together inRyan and become Wild Brands?
Like, how did that happen?

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Because they're usually separated.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
You know what I mean.
They're usually like not thesame role.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, it happened somewhat organically.
I've always been the technologyguy.
I've always been the nerd Builtall the software to start out
with, and as time has progressedit's gotten bigger than me.
So we've, we've, slowly, slowlywe're up to 35 ish people at
this point across all thedifferent channels of marketing
that we do.
At the core of it, I'm a nerd.
I understand, I understand theanalytics, I understand the

(19:20):
marketing, I understand thetechnology and I I try to
approach everything from areturn on investment.
If you're not getting a returnon investment, you shouldn't be
using us, just to be very blunt,and you really shouldn't be
using anybody If you can'tmeasure it and you can't map it
and you can't prove that.
Hey, before I came to you, Ihad 100 leads and after I came
to you, I'm at 300 leads orwhatever those numbers may be.
You're getting ripped off.

(19:42):
We're taking your money and youshouldn't be.
We're very much about trying toprovide a return on investment
for all of our customers andthat's, I would argue, that's
probably the reason we've beensuccessful in the industry is
the end of the day, if you'regoing to spend your marketing
dollars, you need to know thatit's effective and you need to
be able to generate sales.
If you can't generate sales,you're wasting your time and

(20:05):
we've tried lots of differentways.
We've wasted a lot of money andwe've spent a lot of money, I
should say, on differentmethodologies of how to convert
leads and how to get stuff andhow to get consumer data, and
doing a full application versusa small application, doing a
payment versus a non-payment,and we've kind of tested all
those things.
And the benefit of where we'reat now is we represent so many

(20:27):
different stores.
We can test things out on onecompany and if it works great,
we can roll it out to the entiregroup.
So we kind of have that benefitof if we know what works.
I mean, one of the stats I'veshown before is getting a $1
down payment is better than anentire application by a hundred
percent.
Like you'll get a 30% closerate on an entire big

(20:49):
application with everything youever need.
But if you also just get $2, $1down, those people are hounding
you for the sale.
They're coming to you.
I gave you money.
Where's my product?
That's a much differentmethodology or mentality.
So we really try to focus onlead generation.
We try to focus on leadgeneration through all different
sources paid organic, just yourwebsite.

(21:13):
You've got to generate leadsand then we try to provide you a
solution, or a technologysolution to be able to close
those leads in a more efficientmanner.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
So you're talking technical right.
You're getting down to thebrass tacks of it.
This is how we do it, this iswhat we're going to do and this
is how you can make it moreefficient.
So then did you create?
The is your creation?
Wow Brands.
That was your whole situation.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
I started.
We started Wow Brands in 2008.
So we've been at this for 16years now.
I started off with a partnerand we sold the company and then
about three years ago, I boughtit back.
So I bought it back and I got apartner in it, but we've we've
basically taken the company nowto and we've, as we purchased it
back, we really have turned itinto a I'm going to say, almost
exclusively in a rent to own.
We still do other retailtechnologies because we have a
lot of legacy clients as itrelates to to the retail world,

(21:59):
but we're primarily focusing allof our efforts on how do we
grow the rent to own space, howdo we provide better solutions,
how do we provide bettertechnologies?
And as long you know my opinionon, as long as we continue to
do good work and we providepeople a good return on their
investment, they're not going togo anywhere.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
So you're in a pro, you've got people coming by,
you're the, you're the guy right, you're the chief technical
officer, you're the CEO.
I mean, you can probably answerevery single question that
somebody has in in.
In those situations that arepeople coming by and saying, hey
, what's wild brands and what'sgoing on, how does that
transition happen?
Like, do you, do you pull themto the side and say this is

(22:33):
everything I got, or is it oneof those?
Let me give you a card and letme talk to you when we have a
chance.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's either, or I mean, typically the way people
find us is they they've beenreferred in some capacity.
So we don't get a ton ofwalk-ups of just people that
have never heard of us.
We get some of those, but themajority of the people have,
have already heard of us, orthey've seen me speak or they've
seen whatever we we're.
Our links are also at thebottom of almost all of our
customer websites.
So we typically are getting,let's say, leads from our, from

(23:03):
our website, or RTO dealers aregiving us a call in that
capacity.
We don't get a ton of likewalk-ups.
The shows for us are more aroundjust meeting our customers and
talking to them, but from acomprehensive.
You know, we'll explain tothese guys what we're doing, how
it works, what thefunctionality is.
Really, all we can do is pullup a couple of websites that we
work on and show this is how itworks, because every month we're
rolling out promotions.
We're trying to keep thewebsites fresh.
We're trying to things we'velearned in the sector.

(23:25):
Your consumers will continue tocome back to your site if you
give them a reason to, butyou've got to give them a reason
to.
If you don't give them a reasonthey're not coming back.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
They're only going to come back when they need
something.
When you do these monthlythings, is that something where
you sit down with the RTO?

Speaker 2 (23:46):
dealer and go okay, let's go over six.
We will plan out a couplemonths in advance.
We partner with Countryside ona lot of this, so we'll take a
lot of their promotions and someof their print work.
We have some people there thathelp us out a lot Jess and Kate
specifically and they will helpus with it.
They will tell us theirpromotions and for the rest of
the group we will often usesomething that resembles that.

(24:08):
We've got a promotion librarynow of about four years of
promotions.
So if it's something that youdon't want to go with, this
promotion that we've got in thenext month or next month is your
customer appreciation monthwe'll design or build out
something specifically for yourpromotion in the types of things
that you want to focus on.
We will often give you likewe've got the rest of the year

(24:28):
kind of planned out.
We know roughly what ishappening, what the promotions
are going to be on the store, onthe dealer side of it, their
responsibilities.
Do they want to go with it, yesor no?
Do they want to change?
Well, what products do theywant to feature?
What are the gift?
Do they want to do two weeksfree or four weeks free?
They want to do $20 down or $10down that type of stuff, but
really we're turning these sitesevery 30 days where the website

(24:48):
is fresh, there's a newpromotion, a new game, and I
know that sometimes they'recheesy but they work.
I can provide you the data.
I can show you how many leadsthey generate.
These things generate amonstrous number of leads.
They keep the site fresh andthe consumers that are often on
their browsing will come backevery month or two and they're
back on the site playing a game.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
They're on the website doing something that
generates a lead in somecapacity.
So then I got to know, becauseif you're doing rent to own and
you're kind of dialed in the wayyou are, you understand pretty
much everything.
Then here's a question right, Iknow that you got RTO or
countryside rentals, right, orrent to own.
You've got magic rentals onthere.
They're not close.
But what happens when you startgetting two companies that are
a little bit too dialed in?
Because here's the truth, whenyou see us at April, when you
see us at Trib, we're allfriendly, right, we're like yeah

(25:36):
, we're all good, and how areyou doing things and how am I
doing things?
But when we get back, I stillhave sales to make, right?
And then you've got somebodywho's knocking on their door and
they come up to Wild Brands andgo hey, this is what you're

(25:56):
doing for them.
You're doing a great job.
I'd like to be a part of thattoo.
How does that work.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Customers is one of the things.
That kind of are the I'm goingto say unique selling
propositions, because thereality is, for this to be
successful, I can only rank onesite number one.
I mean, it's one site numberone and I can't rank two sites.
Sorry, but one site number onethat's a little funny right
there.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
I don't know, the video is blurry, but you can
only rank one site, number one.
I can't make two sites numberone in the same city.
That's just not going to happen.
You can't.
There's only one spot.
So we won't take overlappingcustomers.
And if there are scenarios whereI'll use Arona as an example
They've got stores throughoutthe US.
They've got 50-some storesspread out through I think it's

(26:43):
10 different states.
For that to be effective, wewill go to the owners there and
ask them if we got a customerthat's in their area, are you
okay with us taking this or not?
And if they say no, we won'ttake the customer.
I mean because a lot of whatwe're doing is there's a value
in sharing data and in our CRMsoftware you can compare how

(27:05):
you're doing against all of yourpeers.
So we give you real timeinsight and you can see how is
this company doing, what istheir close percentage, and we
try to create a community insome capacity where they can
share information in an open way.
And there's not a good way tosolve that problem with
overlapping customers.
So we just don't do overlap.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, well, that's why I wanted to ask, because,
like you said, you want to be atthe top.
You want, when you're doing youin a search engine and whatever
you're putting, whether it'srent to own furniture, lease
agreements you want to be thatnumber one and if you can't be
that number one, at least closeto number two.
Right, you don't want.
You don't want to be way downthe list and if you have a
couple of different people, itwould imagine the 50 states

(27:47):
proper.
Do you cover anything outside?
Because I know that we havesome rent-to-owns in Guam, we
have them in Mexico, we have acouple of different iterations
of rent-to-own outside of the, Iwould say, four walls of the US
, but the borders of the US, howdoes that work and do you guys
do that?

Speaker 2 (28:04):
I mean, we talk to Dan right from Dial.
He's the Guam guy Right exactly, but he's in a unique situation
where he doesn't have anycompetition.
Oh well, that's great.
He doesn't need to spend themoney on us because he owns the
markets.
We do some in Puerto Rico, forexample, though I know Arona has
two or three stores there thatwe do, but that's a lot.
I mean we do.
I think the majority of ourdealers are in the Midwest.

(28:26):
I'll tell you that they're onthe East Coast, Midwest, some in
the Kansas Missouri area.
We don't have a ton out West,with the exception of in Idaho.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Well, we're going to Nebraska next year, 2024.
Apro is going to have in Omaha,nebraska.
They're going to do APRO'sversion of RTO World 2025.
It's going to get as close overthere as humanly possible.
I mean, the year before that wewere, we were in indiana, so I
guess that's a pretty decentside west.
But yeah here you're going to bein the middle of the united
states where we can kind of talkto everybody and see everybody,

(28:59):
because everybody's going tohave to fly in, because that is
the number one flyover state inamerica, because I can't I can't
tell you anybody who actuallylives there, except for Chad
Fosdick.
He does there and I know he'sgot some premier guys over there
and I don't know if he uses youor not, but that is definitely
a flyover state.
I've flown over that thing ahundred times, so one of those
things.
But as far as the WoW brands isconcerned, rent2own does a lot

(29:23):
of CRM and, in case anybody whodoesn't know what that is, it's
your customer relations manager.
And one of the problems thatrent-to-own had with customer
relations managers is that theywere always tailored to a sales
side, not necessarily therent-to-own side.
And so now you're saying thatyou have a CRM.
You guys have been doing thisfor quite a few years 10 years
or so and then now you're kindof more dialed in since you

(29:44):
bought the company back.
How different is your CRMversus some other CRMs that
aren't tailored to rent-to-own?

Speaker 2 (29:51):
I mean.
Well, it's completely built forrent-to-own, so there are
things like agreements are justnative and built into the system
.
So it's trying to pull inagreements.
It's trying to pull in customerdata.
We kind of divide our CRM intoreally three sections.
The first one is web leads,which are the leads that come
directly from the website.
Those are people that have cometo your website, engaged with

(30:11):
you in some capacity and givenus your information.
So first name, last name, email, phone, store number or store.
We forced that as kind of abasic requirement for everything
.
The second thing that we foundas we started doing the CRM is
there was not a lot of trackingthat was taking place for people
that walked into the store.
So whether you want to callthem a walk-in leader community,
whatever term you want to use,and every dealer uses a

(30:32):
different phrase, but there iswe built our system so that you
can number one, enter those andstart to track them.
And it'll also if somebodywalks in or you interact with
them or you meet them at a showor you've got, you know, you
have a tent cell or a fair orwhatever it is.
You're grabbing thatinformation, you're putting them
in the CRM and then you're ableto manage and work those leads
in the same way, because thoseare just as good or, frankly

(30:53):
better than somebody who justcame to your website.
But for the longest time thoseweren't being tracked.
So we've got that part in there.
And then the third part is, Ithink, probably the unique
selling proposition of whatwe're doing, which is how do I
reach out to the customers orthe historic customers that I've
had?
And I think every RTO dealerthat we've interacted with tends

(31:15):
to have something thatresembles a solicitation
schedule.
So on Mondays, I'm callingthese guys.
Tuesdays I'm calling these guys.
Wednesdays, I'm calling theseguys.
We try to put that right infront of you.
So when we set this up andcustomize it for you, you could
say on Mondays, I want to callall of my payouts from last
month and we'll organize it sothat when you come in you can
select my list.
For Monday, I select my payoutslist and it's going to provide

(31:37):
you here's all the payouts thatyou had last week or whatever
the time period you chose is.
We have a payout list, we havereturn list, we have 1AORs, we
have new rentals, we have sameas cash expirations, birthdays,
anniversaries, whatever thosetypes of lists are that you want
to do?
We, you know the partners.

(31:59):
We have Versa and High Touch.
We can go to those.
We're RTO pro.
We could go to those guys andsay I need a new report.
The customer's requestingsomething like this for a
specific data set and they willprovide it to us.
So that's kind of where we'vegotten with this and we'll build
those lists to match whateversolicitation schedule you
currently have, or we canrecommend one to you.
That is just kind of a copy offof somebody else.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
So then if I'm let's say I'm a new dealer right Cause
I'm, I've actually looked intoit several times myself and I
can't tell you that I'm nevergoing to do it, but I am looking
into it because we do rent toown right and so if I was to go
and have a new company, I don'thave anybody who's paid off
before, I don't have any returns, I don't have any of that base

(32:39):
information there.
Does Wow Brands have a way ofmaking it so that the new
dealers, somebody who's cominginto a fresh market, at least
for themselves, who doesn't haveall that ground information
already innately built into theVersaRent system or the high
touch system, where you haveyears of return this and pay off
that?
How does Wild Brands deal withthat as far as a new company is

(32:59):
concerned?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well, if you're a new company, your only option is to
focus on lead generation.
Your sales opportunity toexisting customers just doesn't
exist.
So we would put the majority ofthe emphasis and focus on lead
generation.
Specifically competitive, we'dgo after your competitors.
Who are your competitors in themarket?
How do we pull traffic fromthem?
How do we pull those leads?
Our primary goal in that typeof scenario is to make sure

(33:23):
you're ranking number one andyou're pulling in as much
traffic as you possibly can,because your only sales
opportunity is new sales.
You don't have anybody to goafter.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Well, you better be closing it within two hours.
What else are you doing, right?

Speaker 2 (33:33):
You better be closing sales.
And, to be fair, the guys thatare the smaller ones, they're
very militant about that.
I mean they're going to makesure when that lead comes in
they're calling them becausethat's their livelihood for
tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yes, well, I mean, you're talking about $800 a
month.
It might not mean a lot tosomebody who's got 20 stores.
It definitely means a lot tosomebody who's got two or three,
because that's a chunk of whatit is your revenues that you're
bringing in.
You got to show something forit, and I think a lot of these
guys definitely understand that.
It's just nice to know thatthere's a place to go to to get
all this.
Now, I've mentioned it before.
I've had several people mentionit to me and it's probably the
topic that I've talked aboutquite most.
Every time I talk to somebodyon a podcast and it's always

(34:12):
like hey, what do you think iscoming around the corner?
And nine out of ten times Ihear it's AI.
Is there an AI factor that'sbuilt into Wow Brands and what
you guys do, or is it all say?
It's all number driven?
I know exactly what it is andthis algorithm tells me exactly
what I need to do.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Oh, good question.
I would say that AI is going toplay an important part, but it
is.
I don't see a terribly good usecase in the next five years for
RTO.
What I can say that my opinionof where this goes in the next
five years is more and more paidads management, because that's
the Google is not stopping ontheir, their ads push.

(34:50):
Five years ago it was one ortwo ads, two years ago it was
two or three ads and now you'reup to four or five ads.
If they own 95% of the mobilesearch market, which is the
majority of your the rent ownedcustomer, but then 95% of that
market, for you to be effectiveyou're going to have to be
better at paid ads.
That's a reality, Because ifyou don't, now you're scrolling

(35:15):
down on a mobile phone, you'rescrolling all the way down the
page before you get to the firstorganic result.
So if you had to say what inthe next five years is going to
be the most important factor, Iwould probably argue it's paid
ads management.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
So it's a little bit off topic here, but so Google's
doing all these ad revenues?
Of course, revenue is whatdrives everything right, but is
it basically because they'redriving ad revenue because they
need the revenue, or is itbecause there's so many more
companies out now that aretrying to advertise that we
don't have a choice but toincrease our ad revenue, because

(35:47):
everybody's fighting for thatsame space?

Speaker 2 (35:50):
I think that's part, I think it's both of those.
Number one it's not like theyneed the revenue, but that's
what they do.
That's how they print.
Money is ads and search, andthe majority of Google revenue
is coming from that and that iswhere they're seeing all their
not all their growth, but themajority of their growth is
coming from that specific area.
They're not going to stop onthat.

(36:11):
That's just the reality of it.
What is going to happen, andwhat's already happening, is the
search.
There's a pie, there's a totalnumber of people that are
searching and that pie is verymuch economic driven, meaning,
as inflation goes up or down,oil prices go up or down,
especially in the RTO sectorworld.
That is going to either makethat pie bigger or smaller and

(36:32):
it will become your job at thestore level to buy and acquire
as much of that pie as youpossibly can.
So Google is really and they'renot going to stop on this.
I keep hammering it and I tellthis to every customer and
they're tired of hearing me saythis.
I know that because they'rejust the cop out, almost a cop
out of.
It's going to just I hearing mesay this.

(36:53):
I know that because they'rejust the cop out, almost a cop
out of.
It's going to just, I need moreads money.
I need more ads money.
But that's the reality of theworld that we're in today and if
you're not in that spot, yourcompetitors are going to be.
Because I know cause I buy it.
I mean, I'm going to buyagainst my competitors?
Of course I am.
That's what we do.
Is you want to go after yourcompetitors?
You want to acquire thecustomers, you want to pull
every dang click from them youpossibly can.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
So in rent to own there's a lot of different ways
that can be marketed, but weeither do or we don't.
Somebody like John Cleek Jr ison TV, he's on the radio you
can't turn a dial without seeinghis face and he owns that part
of the area that he's in.
Okay, sounds good, but when Ilook at Tissot, he kind of does
it a little bit differently andhe's a lot more on social media.

(37:30):
They do the Facebook lives.
You can dial in on every givenweek and see him waiting for
three or four more people to geton because he's got stuff to
say.
What's more effective now inrent to own?
Is it the TV space?
Do I need to be more on YouTube?
Is it?
I should still stay with socialmedia because you know I maybe
get more bang for my buck, eventhough now it's a pay to play

(37:51):
system regardless.
Like where does RTO hit hardestthat you've seen?
Do we all, should we all bedoing radio?
Nobody needs to do else, needsto do podcasts, but does anyone?
we all need to do radio Likewhat's going on.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
I?
Here's what my focus right nownot right now, but in general is
you've got to be in front ofthe consumers that are looking
for your product or service.
So where do people look?
People don't go to Facebook torent a couch, they go to Google,
right.
So you've got to be where yourconsumers are at the other side
of marketing, and I and I thinkI would put that into the bucket

(38:23):
of that, I don't know what theterm for that is but those are
people that are actively lookingfor your product or service.
That's where you've got to bein front of and that's really at
the wow brands level.
That is what we focus on.
I typically don't touch theother things because in the
Google world, I can prove thatreturn on investment.
I can tangibly show you that ifyou give me X dollars, you're
going to get Y results.
I can hand you those reportsand all of our customers get

(38:43):
those reports.
We can kind of prove that whenyou start to get into the other
world, you are trying to acquiretraffic from people that may
not be looking for you.
So there's different parts ofthat.
One is they're not always look.
It doesn't mean you can't sellto them, but they are not on
Facebook looking for rentingaccounts.
That's not how it works.
They're not on LinkedIn, not onYouTube, necessarily looking

(39:06):
for those things.
Those things have a differentposition.
Those things have a differentnot position.
Those things have a differentapplication.
I guess, in the marketing world, facebook is about staying in
front of the customers thatalready know who you are.
That's what Facebook is allabout the guys that have already
followed me.
And, by the way, if you don'tput money behind your stuff on
Facebook, only 4% of it getsseen.

(39:27):
The other 96% doesn't get seenunless you put money behind it.
So, again, facebook is not acharity.
They're in the world ofmoney-making business and 100%
of their revenue comes from ads.
It's the same thing, and thereare guys like Gerard that excel
at this type of stuff.
This is what he does.
I tend not to touch that worldbecause I'm more interested and
focused specifically on how do Iget the people that are looking

(39:50):
for my product and services.
And there are other individualsand there are things at the
store level.
The reason Tiz excels so much onFacebook is his managers really
connect with their customers.
It's a personal thing.
His managers really connectwith their customers.
They've invested five, seven,ten years of time into building
their Facebook audience.
You've got to build thataudience before it's going to

(40:14):
have a meaningful impact onanything you're doing anyways.
So there's not a direct answer.
One is that you're trying tograb.
The Google and the in thewebsite world is much more about
grabbing consumers that arelooking for your product and
services, whereas the Facebooklevel or the radio or the OTT
and you know we partnered withEsquire and they do a lot of the
OTT type of advertising that'sa different type of demographic
that's trying to hit a set ofindividuals who are qualified to

(40:39):
buy from you the type ofdemographic that you would be
going after.
They're trying to reach out tothose consumers and actively
solicit in some way a response.
Whether that's a click, it's aphone call, it's a store visit,
they're trying to solicit that.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Our primary approach is how do I make sure that the
people that are looking for ourproducts and services can find
us.
That makes a lot of sense.
I love Atomball, I love Esquire.
They do a great job.
Because we always wonder right,there's somebody that's looking
, there's somebody that has aneed today.
They're looking today, but thenhow do you reach the guy for
tomorrow?
And I think the idea always is,if we stay in front of them in
some way, shape or form, whenthey have that need, we will be

(41:17):
when they come to.
And you're saying that's awhole different side.
That's more, gerard, than it is.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Ryan, right, that's 100%.
It's more, gerard, than it'sreally.
The hard part about it is it'sreally hard to pay somebody else
for that type of service.
Let's ignore ads management,the organic Facebook, the live,
the streaming.
You can't pay me to do thatLike I don't know.
The customers don't know me.
They don't walk in the storeand see me.
They walk in the store and seea store manager who knows them

(41:43):
by name or a sales associate.
It doesn't have to be a manager, anybody in that store.
But it's really hard to pay meor pay us at Wow Brands to do
those types of things becauseyour customers don't know who we
are.
Yes, we can take your assetsand build social profiles and
build ads or organic posts forme, but again, somebody's got

(42:03):
like they're there because theyknow who you are, they know your
store, they know yoursalespeople.
That's really hard to outsource.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, and it alwayscrossed my mind, because a lot
of people ask me about you knowthe marketing sense and because
you see my face and you hear myvoice, does it mean that I'm a
marketing guru?
It means that I know how totalk to people.
There is a difference, so andand.
So when they talk about youknow, hey, pete, what do you
think is the best?
The ad space on Google.

(42:34):
If you're going to make surethat you're capturing those
leads, you also got to make surethat you have somebody standing
there, like you said, ready togo, and they have to be able to
contact that lead and they haveto be able to have that
salesmanship on the other end ofthe phone and go hey, I have
this available for you.
This is what I want to do foryou.
What else can I get for you?
Do you have any referrals?
What time today you're going tobe home, you know, and launch
that, because if I put all mymoney into those ads and then

(42:56):
somebody starts calling in and Ihave nobody to take that call,
well then I'm wasting it.
But you know, maybe doing itthrough Gerard is the way to go.
Maybe doing it through WildBrands is the way to go.
Maybe the way to do it is tohybrid both and figure out how
to get everybody and anybody tocome to my store and buy
everything that I got and Godknows, that was right, right, so
to make it, to make a killingout of it.

(43:17):
So you always got to check andjust see for yourself what are
you ready to do, and I think,while brands has a really great
idea, I love the way that youtackle it and I love the way
that you look at it too, becauseit's very number and I want to
say just very technically driven.
This is what I can do for you,this is where it's going to go,
this is how far I can get, andthen the rest is, so to speak,
in your court.
Right?
This depends on how much youwant to put into.

(43:39):
This Depends also how muchyou're going to get out of it.
So if you have somebody therewho's willing to, you know, kind
of put that call down realquick so that they can grab that
online lead and say, hey, Iknow that you were looking
literally a couple of minutesago and I can handle that.
I have this.
I have a variation of that.
We have some lamps to match.
So you know, it's one of thosethings where you know you can
kill it and then you can see theverifiable information that,

(44:00):
hey, they are picking up thatphone within the first 30
minutes, within the first 45minutes.
We're stopping them mid swingor mid swipe, so to speak.
You know, I'm swiping right tothis RTO and I'm swiping left to
that RTO, and if we can get inthere and kind of just interrupt
that with a oh, you know what Iwas swiping, now I've got to
answer this call or earpiece, orwhatever you want to call it.
Listen, I'm a little old school.

(44:22):
I like the big mic and theearphones, because that's the
way I am.
Everybody's a little different,and so I think it's great that
Wild Brands can really kind ofdial in and tell you hey, this
is really what you're lookingfor, this is how you and this is
what we want to do.
A CRM to cover everything that'sactually specific to rent, to
own.
We don't have many of those outthere.
I know Gerard's working on one.
Gerard, I love you.

(44:45):
I'll tell you right now you gotsome competition out there.
But the CRM space is soimportant because it helps you
do some of that capturing rightwhen that funnel happens.
What is the latency on that?
I mean how, between the timethat somebody is really looking
and the time that it makes it tothe store, how much time is
there?

Speaker 2 (45:00):
From our side it's instant.
It's up to you whether or notyou see it instantly and we've
got a couple of different wayswe can do it.
One is you can get an email oryou do get an email.
I should say that thatsometimes has a latency of five
minutes.
Right, that's not on us, that'sjust on the email delivery
process.
If you're actively live in theCRM and you have it open on a
computer, we do have things likesound notification so it can
make a ding on a on a on acomputer in the store so that

(45:22):
whenever a lead comes in, youinstantly get a ding.
You can set up text messagingso that you get a text message
on your personal phone orwhatever, so that when a lead
comes in, you can instantly geta text message to know that
you've back to it's.
It really is that just consumerbehavior has changed in the
last three years since COVID.
It has facilitated a differentway in a different buying

(45:43):
experience and in part of thatprocess, I think part of the
challenge in the RTO sector isadapting to to just the way the
consumers buy now, because it isfundamentally different than it
was before.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, I mean I've, I've.
I can definitely tell you inthe last five years, uh, we went
from phone rings and doorswings to, uh, did you check the
online leads yet?
Have you checked that?
And, and you know what?
And I mean, you always want tomake sure your showroom is a
hundred percent.
You always want to make surethat you're rent ready.
You always want to make surethat the lights are on and the
door is open and and the.
You know everything works.
But the truth is, sittingbehind a desk and making sure

(46:15):
that you're quick and ready togo is almost always going to
beat it out.
I get just as many online leadsas I have walk-ins.
I usually rarely have morewalk-ins than I do online leads.
That's a rare situation.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Now, from your standpoint, which one do you
close better?

Speaker 1 (46:31):
You know what we need to do better, and I can tell
you that right now we need to dobetter.
Are we trying it?
Sure, and I talked to Gerardabout that, because there was
this thing that I'm a little bitmore old school.
If you put somebody in front ofme, they're walking out with
something.
I'm telling you that as 100%.
And am I better at it than Iused to be?
As far as a digital space, I'mhaving a little bit of trouble

(46:56):
with that.
Some of my guys are just likehey, do you want this or do you
not want it?
And there's like there's nosalesmanship into it, Right?
So they're just going straightinto a text message or an email
and they're kind of just goingstraight into it.
And even though it's, it's adigital conversation, there's
still some nuance there.
And so I was actually talkingto uh, you know, to Gerard about
that, about digitalconversations.

(47:17):
We actually did a podcast aboutthat because it was so
important to me to let everybodyknow.
Yeah, you can call them in acertain amount of time, but if
you sound like the CRM, they'reprobably not going to pay
attention to you.
Right, you got, was you got totext like you talk, not text
like you're.
You know you're writing aparagraph out to the president.
You want to make sure that allyour P's and Q's are 100%.

(47:40):
The idea is to be personableover this line of communication,
whatever media form that is,whether it be text, whether it
be email, whether it be a phonecall, whatever the case is,
reach out to the customer theway they reached out to you and
always remember, put a littlesmile on it when you type it
smile.
I don't know if that makes anysense.
When you're on the phone, yougot to smile.
Well, when you're texting, yougot to smile, because it really

(48:01):
does go through and the leadconversion does change and I
probably sound like a thirdgrade robot from back in the day
.
I was like a little Applesystem and I got to split my
disc in.
But I know people that areyounger than me that handle that
way better and so they'reactually better at texting.
And sometimes it's like, okay,you still got to answer the
telephone.
So we have that right now whereyou have some people that are

(48:24):
like I love it when they walk inthe door and I love it when
they call me, and you got someguys are like yeah, I like the
email and the text.
Getting those to merge has gotto be the hardest thing right
now, and I don't know why thatis.
It's like an oil and water kindof thing where I've noticed
coming out of COVID as well.
We have a more maturegeneration that is shake your
hand and still kind of be inyour face, and then we have

(48:44):
another one that's like thatcame out of COVID going.
I'm cool with the barriers, I'mcool with you being on the
other side of the glass andgetting those two to realize in
the same salesperson has beendifficult.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
The answer to that is it's almost an age thing, it is
right.
So if you look at the Gen Z,boomer generation.
Uh yeah, I'm looking at themetric in front of me.
There's about they want to doin-person sales.
Those are the people that arewalking in, the younger
generation, the Gen Z, themillennials.
They want text the majority ofthe time.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
You're talking about Gen X and boomers.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah, sorry, gen X, and.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Z.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Sorry, gen X is the.
I believe it's 1989 or older,right?
So those are the older people.
That's kind of my generation alittle bit.
The Gen Xers.
Those guys are stillcomfortable texting.
They're still comfortabletexting but they often,
especially on big ticket items,want the uh, the physically see
it, to physically touch it to.
But a gen z doesn't really carea lot of the time, right they

(49:47):
are.
They are so accustomed and theyoften came up during the covid
era when this was a.
Now this became a forcedbehavior.
This became a forced thing thathad to happen.
So they are just so accustomedto the texting world that there
really is.
The hard part is you don't knowwho you're talking to, right.
You don't know the age of theperson you're talking to, but it
tends to be an age thing morethan anything else you know, I

(50:18):
had somebody that I worked withvery closely and it was crazy
how different we approachedeverything.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
So he was like I'm texting and we'd be talking, I'm
calling my guys, and he'd belike dude, what are your fingers
doing?
And he's like I'm texting myguys and I'm like dude, just
call him.
He's like, no, not going tohappen.
So he said ding, ding, and he'sgoing over there and ding, and
I'm like dude, that's dry, likeI would go absolutely batty,
right.
But he's in the middle of threedifferent text messages and

(50:41):
he's going back and forth.
And that was his thing.
Okay, we're talking about amillennial here.
And so I'm like listen, I'mgoing to talk to you.
You're going to hear theinflection of my voice get it
done, or you did a great job.
You know what I'm saying and Ifeel like you can hear that
coming out of my voice.
Whatever he was doing, it musthave worked, because I mean, I
can't say it, didn't, you know?
So he's in the middle of threetext messages.
He's like well, I can havethree, you know three messages

(51:02):
going on at once.
You're talking to one personand I'm like, yeah, well, I bet
you that one person knowsexactly what the hell I gotta
say you know what I mean.
They know.
If you're in trouble, you'regonna know.
You're in trouble if you didjust like, yeah, I'm not doing
that.
But so then we talked aboutradio, and it was the same
things.
Like I don't listen to theradio.
Like what do you mean?
You don't listen to who doesn'tlisten to the radio?

(51:23):
I'm like bro, I'm in a car,like all day we go to stores,
right?
He's like, yeah, I listen to,like you know, pandora, or I
listen to spotify, or I listento something that gets very
dialed in.
I know what I want to listen toand so I listen to that.
And so I mean, yeah, I mightget a commercial, but it's not
the same commercials.
But you're right, you'reabsolutely right when I would
listen to it all day long andI'm listening to ads or all

(51:43):
kinds of different things thathave nothing to do with me.
Right?
He was different.
Okay, well, do you watch TV?
I watch TV.
What do you watch?
I watch none but Netflix,netflix and Hulu, and it's like,
how can we be so dang different?
But the truth of the matter isthat's the difference between
one generation and the next.
One's like very, very tech savvy, very, very on the phone I mean

(52:03):
at phone has almost turned intoan extension of who they are
versus, you know, I'm going tosay, some of the Gen Xers and
the boomers.
Like I can leave my phone onthe counter because I really
just it's a means to an end, butI really can live without it,
like I just don't need it.
So it's crazy.
My wife's that way too.
My wife's actually a millennialand man let me tell you like
sometimes I'm like put, please,put the phone down.

(52:24):
But that's how she does.
Every everything that we do,she's immediately on the phone.
She shops 100% on the phone.
If we talk about anything,she's immediately on the phone.
And it's crazy because, you'reright, if somebody's shopping,
they're on Google, that's thefirst thing that they do.
Where can I find it, what it is?
And it's not like you said, I'malmost not even price point,

(52:44):
it's just where is this sofa,where is this TV, where is this?
And then I can dial that ineven further.
Okay, well, it's in three miles.
Okay, what's in three miles?
All right, I've got these threestores.
Now I'm looking at these threestores.
It's so crazy how things havegotten lately, but in a sense, I
think Wild Brown's got it.
Wild Brown's really got itdialed in.
I mean, you guys have a reallygreat idea on how to turn those

(53:06):
leads in the sales, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
If we're on top of it , yeah, I mean this all boils
down.
I'm going to say it all boilsdown to age, for the way in
which the consumers are buying.
The older generation tends towant to be.
They're often desktop users.
They specifically are going tobe in person, they're going to
want to see it physically touchthe product in most scenarios
not always, but that youngergeneration I'm assuming that the
person you're talking about isprobably younger than you are
and they are very muchcomfortable and familiar with

(53:32):
interacting not over the phone,in fact, they prefer that they
don't want you to call them.
How many times Acting not overthe phone?
In fact, they prefer that theydon't want you to call them.
How many times?
I mean you're?

Speaker 1 (53:40):
just going to get hung up on.
They don't want to talk to you.
Oh my God, my wife, she willdie before she answers the phone
.
And I'm like, just call NopeHence, if we order something out
, if they don't have a menu islike it ain't happening.
I'm not talking to anybody.
She doesn't even talk to themabout walmart.
She's like I'll just searchonline and tell me what aisle

(54:01):
and, if not, guess what?
I will roam this sucker till Ifind it.
I'm like I won't just talk tothat guy, right?
He's like right there, she'slike not gonna happen.
And so it's just crazy howdifferent we are.
And I can see she is eightyears younger than I.
So, yes, it does represent thatmillennial kind of mindset and
Gen Z or Gen X mindset, but it'slike it's a real thing.
If I never saw it I wouldn'tbelieve it, and so saying that

(54:23):
it translates to our RTOcustomers and how they shop is
absolutely real and it's I mean,it's great to see that you guys
have been able to dial in sowell and get this done.
Listen, guys, if you guys haveany questions that you wanted to
ask, wild brands absolutely hitme up on the dms.
You know I'm on facebook.
You know I'm on instagram.
You know I'm on linkedin.
Hit me up there.
If not, you can email me atpete at the rto show podcastcom.

(54:44):
Feel free to hit me up.
I will definitely hit up ryanand go hey, what is going on
with this?
How do we get this done?
We have no idea what we'retalking about or what we're
doing and how would you solvethis problem.
If you guys want to have wildbrands a part of your brand,
please feel free to reach out tothem.
Ryan, how would they talk toyou?

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Uh, wow, brandscom, W O W B R a N D Scom, and give us
a call or send us an email.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
You guys make it easy .
It's so direct Go to wildbrandscom.
Listen, I just looked them upno-transcript.
Make it happen for you.
Thank you so much today forcoming on the show, ryan,

(55:28):
because, honestly, I think a lotof people need to understand
how integrated and how dialed inthat you guys can get, and Wild
Brands can actually do thatpretty much on the platforms
that you're using right now.
And if you're not going to makethose sales, listen, you might
want to check if your phone'sringing and they're swinging,
because he's going to give it toyou Plain and simple Numbers.
Don't lie, ryan, I reallyappreciate you being on the show

(55:49):
.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Is there anything that you want to help you rank
locally is reviews.
So don't stop.
You've got to focus on Googlereviews.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Man, you know what?
I'm glad you said that that'sthe freebie for the day.
If you're watching the show,rate the show as well.
Thank you so much, Ryan.
I appreciate you coming aboardand we'll talk to you later.
Thanks.