49: Extreme Income takes Extreme Behavior with Steve Krupnik

October 17, 2018

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Yigal Adato: 00:00 Hey Pawn family, it’s Yigal and welcome back to another episode of the Pawn Leaders Podcast. If you haven’t already, go over to Facebook and join us in the Pawn Leaders Podcast Community where we talk about pawnbroking, leadership, marketing and strategy. It’s a great conversation. Go over and join us. On this episode I have Steve Krupnik on and it was incredible. He dropped so many value bombs, so much incredible information that I had to move them up in the queue and releases episode as soon as possible. And if you don’t know who Steve Krupnik is, Steve Krupnik enjoyed 30 years in the pawnbroking industry and he transformed his pawnshops who were located in this small Midwestern towns to some of the busiest and most profitable pawnshops in the state of Indiana. He was the founder and past president of the Indiana pawnbrokers association. He was a director of the national pawnbrokers association and in 1999, he was awarded the national pawnbroker of the year. He’s represented our industry on radio, on television, in print media. He wrote a book called Pawnenomics, it was a bestseller and he created products for the pawnbroking industry. He’s a great speaker and an amazing entrepreneur. And the value he gives in this podcast is ridiculous. Don’t just listen to it once, listen to it twice. I’ve listened to it over and over and over again. I gave it to the guys in my mastermind two weeks early because it has so much value. I hope you enjoy the show. Ladies and gentleman, my interview with Steve Krupnik.

 

Yigal Adato: 01:36 Hey everyone, my name is Yigal Adato and this is the Pawn Leaders Podcast, a podcast that help you make more money, stress less, and live an epic life all while working at the pawnshop. Steve Krupnik, welcome to the Pawn Leaders Podcast.

 

Steve Krupnik: 01:59 Yigal thanks for having me on and I’m excited to be here today.

 

Yigal Adato: 02:04 Awesome. You know, I always ask, I have a Facebook community and I ask everybody, who do you want to come on the show? Who Do you think would be a great guest? And your name kept on coming up. And I was reaching out and I’m like, how do I find this guy? And I finally reached out to you via LinkedIn. You answered me quickly. You said yes. I’m honored to have you here, so I’m excited for it.

 

Steve Krupnik: 02:25 I’m really excited and I hope we can get them some information today on this podcast where they’re actually glad they asked for me.

 

Yigal Adato: 02:34 Nice. Nice. Great. So, obviously many people in the pawn world that know who you are, know what you did. You’ve been around the block in the pawn arena. But for those of the listeners who don’t know you, how long ago did you start in the pawn industry?

 

Steve Krupnik: 02:52 I started in the pawnbroking industry in 1977. The price of gold was at $167 an ounce. I started writing loans at 3% per month plus 25 cents a month storage. And I was too damn dumb to know I couldn’t make money at that. So you know what? I made money and I was in the pawn business full time as a pawnbroker with multiple locations for 30 years.

 

Yigal Adato: 03:30 Wow, on what state?

 

Steve Krupnik: 03:31 Indiana.

 

Yigal Adato: 03:32 Indiana. All right, very cool. And so you did pawnbroking for 30 years and then while I was a young pawnbroker, I stumbled on a lot of your videos. You wrote a book Pawnenomics, you had different websites, pawn coach and how to open up a pawnshop. And I remember my brother and I, even though we were third generation pawnbrokers, we watched some of the videos and ask who’s this guy? So, how did you transition? You had a pawn shop, you had some stores and then you became a pawn coach, which I consider myself the same today. So, I’d like to hear from the Godfather of pawn coaching, how you became a pawn coach and what you did for other people.

 

Steve Krupnik: 04:20 Well, before I became the pawn coach, I became something much more important. For the first time in my life I became a husband. And along with this package and this love of my life came an adorable stepdaughter and just starting to get into the teen years and I said, man, I’ve been doing pawnbroking for 30 years. I don’t want to miss this opportunity. Which is the reason, that’s the sole reason I sold my pawn business. I thought, okay, I know how to make money. What do I do next? Well, let me see, i’ve been on the National Pawnbrokers Association board for so many years. I founded the Indiana Pawnbroker’s Association. People have been asking me advice about this industry for many decades. Maybe I can sell the advice. That’d be fun. So, I sold my stores and I transitioned into the coaching industry and it was so much fun. I really had a ball and unfortunately I was a little too successful. What do I mean by that? I ended up with thousands of clients in 16 different countries and they all wanted more of me and they wanted the things they should have wanted. They wanted one on one consulting. They wanted on-site consulting, they wanted monthly continuity newsletters, they wanted mastermind groups, they wanted the things that I could further help them with. And those were things I was not willing to do because it would have put me in the same position of being away from my new wife and my new daughter. So, I slowly transitioned out of that, even though it was just a rip roaring blast. But Yigal, I guess you put me back into it today. So, let’s rock.

 

Yigal Adato: 06:30 Nice. So, let’s talk about your time in, you know, in the consulting coaching world. I saw a video of you today from 2009 when you were wearing this awesome Japanese or Chinese outfit. And you were talking about how your time at the NPA and as a consultant, you’d walk into hundreds of pawn,shops. So for those people who are listening, I want you to let them know, what did you see in the pawnshops that were successful and what did you see in the pawn shops that weren’t successful and what differentiated the two?

 

Steve Krupnik: 07:08 A number of things really, but some real basics. When I was doing all the pawn shops and stop and every time I got a chance, I mean, I was looking for ideas, come on, I’m doing it this way, show me a better way to do it. And I learned so much of what not to do and a little bit of what I could be doing. So, it was very useful along. But the thing that really opened my eyes was I had to change the six inches of real estate between my ears because I thought I knew what the pawn industry was and there were a few places that had my eyes wide open and I went, oh my God. And this is probably possible in my market too. And I tried things and they were, but there’s a lot of things that I learned to do, especially marketing higher end pawn loans. I mean, it doesn’t take any longer to write a $5,000 pawn loan than it does to write a $50 pawn loan.

 

Yigal Adato: 08:26 True.

 

Steve Krupnik: 08:27 All you’ve got to do is sell them and sell them effectively and know how to take care of that customer that may need that larger sum in a short term loan. And don’t kid yourself, I don’t care what market you’re in, I don’t care if you’re in Chicago or if you’re in Keokuk Iowa, they’re there. Look for any business person who has a roller coaster type of cashflow and that could be a customer of yours. That’s one of the biggest things I learned.

 

Yigal Adato: 09:06 And I think what you just said there is one of the fastest ways to grow a loan balance, instead of doing a $150 loans, you do one $5,000 loan and your loan balance has gone up and now you’ve become part of a network of business owners who will refer each other to you to write these large loans.

 

Steve Krupnik: 09:30 Oh, that is just a snowball effect. But there’s another reason that you may choose to go after these larger loans and that is because your competitors won’t, they won’t do it. Either they don’t know that they even exist or they’re not willing to scale their finance charge to accommodate these larger loans. If you’re located in a 20% stake, good for you, but there isn’t an idiot on the planet that’s going to pay 20% a month and borrowed $10,000 from you. They’re not gonna do it. Okay? You’ve got to make it fair for them and fair for yourself, but it’s a great way to grow your loan balance and no, you’re not giving away money. You’re selling it for a lot more than the bank does.

 

Yigal Adato: 10:27 Now, with the hundreds of thousands of clients that you had while doing the coaching, what was the common denominator within the biggest mistakes that they were making?

 

Steve Krupnik: 10:39 For the newer pawnbrokers the biggest mistake barn on just shines right through is they were doing a horrible job of qualifying their customers at the counter, especially in new customers. Their redemption rates on pawn loans were horrible. Why? Because they did not qualify the customer for the loan. They’re effective yield on their loan base was tanked. Why? Because they didn’t explain all the terms properly, they didn’t do a lot of things that should be done initially and then re generated to more steady customers many, many times. In all the new pawnbroker as a customer walk in the door when a widget under his arm and he says, hi, what can I help you with? And the guy says, yeah, I got this, puts it on the counter. And what did they say? You want to pawn this? That customer may not even know what a pawn loan is. Oh yeah, I’ll pawn on it. What are you giving me for it? Are they going to pick it up? Hell No. You never qualified, I mean laying the terms to them. Well, while we’re on the loan counter here, the pawnbrokers that were clients of mine that knew how to qualify a customer, how to get them to come back, how do make them grateful and provide them value for what they’re paying for that loan. A lot of them didn’t know one thing that I taught them, as a matter of fact, I had a pawn broker in the Philippines with many, many locations and after I taught him this one, he tried it out for six months and a couple of his stores implemented in all of his stores throughout his chain and he wrote me that he owes me a yacht. I don’t really have a place to keep a yacht here, but I appreciate the offer. Okay, to the more seasoned pawnbrokers that are listening, you sell things every day. Pawn loans, that’s selling money. Wholesale, retail, scrap gold, you sell all kinds of things in your business, yet it’s very rare to find a pawn broker that is aggressively selling one of the most profitable items in the entire store. You’ll never find it. So, what’s so valuable that you’re not even selling and you don’t even have to replace after you sell it? Pawn loan renewals, extensions, rollovers, whatever you call them in your area. If you learn and teach all of your frontline people to sell them aggressively, you will be amazed. You can sell them on the front end of the loan. Okay, Mrs. Smith. Now you see this date here? It’s the due date. That’s not really the date that you have to pick up your pawn loan. Here’s what you can do. You can sell them during the duration of the loan. You see a customer walk in the door, you recognize, your on over the computer, you bring up their name. You walk over and say, Hey George, how’s it going? What are you on your lunch hour? He says, yeah, just thought I’d come kick around a little bit. You know George, you got two pawn loans that are due for renewal here within a week or two. If you’d like I can take care of those for you right now while you’re here so you don’t have to bother coming back. I do. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s extend those cause I’m ready to pick them up yet. You can sell renewals on the back end of the loan. Hi, I’d like to pick my pawn loan up, Steve. Oh sure. No problem. Now do you know that if you need this money for a little longer, you don’t really have to pick it up today. All you need to do is just pay the service charge, then you don’t have to worry about it. The customer will tell you, they’ll say, oh really? You know, I could use that money for a little longer. Let’s just do what you said. Or the customer will say, are you kidding me? If I don’t come home with that, my wife is going to scalp me. Doesn’t matter. You’re selling renewal, rollovers, extensions, whatever you call them, and that costs you nothing and it increases your cash flow in many, many ways.

 

Yigal Adato: 15:52 I couldn’t agree with you more. I think one of the mistakes that the pawn shop owner makes is not explaining that to the employee. The importance of the rollover, the importance of the interest paid or whatever you call it, as you said, and how that keeps the business going, how that pays the bills. And if you were to give that clarity to the team and they were to know that importance and you were to train them on it, just like you said, Steve, I believe that people would be making more money, default or redemption rates would go down and business would pick up for a lot of people listening today.

 

Steve Krupnik: 16:32 Yeah, they absolutely do. There’s so many, so many things you can do. I mean, oh my God. Back when I first started pawnbroking in Indiana, it was a tough state to do business in and you had to mail out notices before you could sell a pawn item that wouldn’t redeemed and all sorts of other things. And eventually they changed where you didn’t have to mail out the notices. However, because I already had customers that relied on the notices, I gave them an option. Now if you get delinquent on this and it gets to the point where I could sell it, would you like me to mail you a notice? And of course now it’s drastically different. Would you like me to mail you a notice? Would you like me to email you a notice? Would you like me to text you and notice how about some smoke signals? Anything really? So, I still offered the option to send these notices out because a lot of longtime customers relied on them. Okay, I get it. You pay your bills, you wait until the shut off notice and then you pay the minimum I understand, that’s how you operate. But in providing these customers an option to get a notice, I also had the option of sending them a marketing and direct mail piece or a coupon or a reason or an offer or I’ve been studying marketing my entire adult life. It has made me a bunch of money and still does every day and I love to do it. So, I turned it into a marketing thing. There is no reason, any pawnbroker listening to this can not do the exact same thing. Just simple as can be.

 

Yigal Adato: 18:38 I urge. So, we have a mastermind called the Pawn Leaders Mastermind and we have members in it where I urged him all the time to ask for email addresses and do text to phone conversations so that at some point they can not market to their customer, although it is marketing, but connect to the customer and you hit on a point that’s so right. We have the opportunity today more than ever. I can’t imagine how business was, you know, 40 years ago or 1977 before I was even born, that we can capture so much information from the client and use it with marketing to be able to bring them into the store for a sale, bring them into the store to buy some more stuff. So, I think today more than ever, if a pawnbroker who’s listening to this isn’t using your text message blast, isn’t using email marketing in some way, shape or form, they’re leaving tons of money on the table.

 

Steve Krupnik: 19:39 Tons of money on the table. I mean, come on, you’ve already got everything about them. You got their name, their address, their kids names, their date of birth. You’ve got everything you need to effectively market to a customer. I never sent out Christmas cards or stuff like that to my good customers, my steady customers, why? Because I’d have to cut through the clutter of all the other crap they get that time of the year. Did I send them a birthday card? No. I sent them a half birthday card. In other words, it was exactly six months after their birthday. Well, I just turned 60. No, you just turned 60 and a half and it was literally a birthday card cut in half and the envelope was triangular. And I’d send these to my better customers, happy half birthday. They would show them to everybody and tell them where they got from. Can you believe this guy? He’s crazy. Oh my God. And of course they’d always get a half birthday offer for something special and give them a reason to come in and you touched on a real good point here Yigal because this is something that most pawnbrokers do not realize. If you got good customers in your database, which all of you do and you can tell that they are good customers. Why don’t you reach out and touch them every so often?

 

Yigal Adato: 21:23 Yes.

 

Steve Krupnik: 21:24 I had so many clients where I said, okay, I’m coming in and I’m selling you some scrap gold. What happens? Well first this and then that and then that and then we make a deal and I print out the bill sale and did you sign it and get your money and walk away with a smile? I said, that’s not what I want to know. I want to know what happens next. What do you mean? What happens after you make the deal with these people? Okay, [Incomprehensible] you and they’re bubbly and they’re happening. You treated some of them so well and you paid them so fair. What’s next? Anything. Well, what could that possibly be? How about a thank you card? How about a thank you card with a business card in it? How about wording it that says we sure hope that you were very satisfied with your transaction, if for any reason you weren’t here’s the manager’s cell phone number. If you are very happy with the transaction you made, we’d also like to know that the biggest compliment you can pay us is to refer your friends and family to us. What’s that cost you a dollar? Come on. What’s the return on investment? Astounding.

 

Yigal Adato: 22:51 And when I think about this, if you’re in a street and a lot of people are on the street where there is four or five competitors in the market, if you are thinking the way Steve just mentioned, which is what happens after, because in the state of California, Steve, which is where I am, my pawn shops. A loan was for four months plus a 30 day grace period.

 

Steve Krupnik: 23:13 Okay.

 

Yigal Adato: 23:13 So you don’t see a client sometimes for five months. Right? So-

 

Steve Krupnik: 23:18 Right.

 

Yigal Adato: 23:18 -we had to reach out and touch them and send them a card or send them an email, send them a text blast because I want them to walk in, you know, two more times, three more times as opposed to just coming in once every five months or once every four months to pick up their merchandise or pay the interest. And so those of you listening again, you’ve got the database, use it and be different than your competitor. Connect with the client as Steve says, and I also agree that will help your business, for sure.

 

Steve Krupnik: 23:51 Oh, Yigal we need to get together, we would talk all night or get drunk before that I don’t know.

 

Yigal Adato: 23:59 Well, it’s very frustrating to me to see a pawnbroker at a NPA show year after year and asked him, what are you doing that’s new, right? And there’s nothing that’s new. No, I’m selling my gold to this person instead or Oh, I switch softwares or I did this. I said, no, you have to be, I say this all the time on the show leadership, marketing and strategy. Steve, you said you were a student of marketing for so many years. If you’re listening to this, you need to be a student of leadership. You have to be a marketing guru and you have to have strategy down path to beat your competitor.

 

Steve Krupnik: 24:42 Absolutely. Ygial when they first came out with a halfway decent software for a pawnshops. I was absolutely elated. Yeah, back when I started my pawnshops there was no computers for pawn shops, but once they started it, I had a database that I could work with easily, kind of a built in CRM system. And one of the things that I launched that I was absolutely shocked and how successful it was, was a lost pawn loan customer reactivation campaign. My computer would let me know if I hadn’t seen this pawn loan customer in six months and I’d send them on a card. We miss you. You haven’t been around in a long time. I hope you’re doing well enough where you don’t need us. But if you do need us, stop in and see us. Here’s a special, you can come in and have. Yeah but six months, hit him at nine months. I sent you a card that we missed you three months ago. Now we’re starting to get a little concerned. We hope you’re okay. Just pick up the phone and call us if you get a chance, just let us know that you’re okay. And then I hit him with a third one at a year and of course it was even more humorous than this tension getting, and it was amazing how many people came in and said, you know, you hit me at six months than I thought. Yeah, okay. He wants me back. You hit me in nine months. And I thought, man, they really do miss me and they know I’m gone. None of the other places I don’t go to anymore know that I’m gone. And sure enough, they ended up coming in and then say you’re right, I haven’t been here in x amount of time. Here’s why. Could have been a real bad customer handling in a situation, could have been any number of things. Could have been, I got a raise, I got a job. Well, that’s great. I’m glad to hear that. Why don’t you just shop with us? I always give my pawn loan customers or former pawn loan customers the best deal I possibly can. You get special pricing. You’re a current customer, so why don’t you turn in to a current customer again?

 

Yigal Adato: 27:23 Steve, before this, before I hit record on this podcast, you said that we might upset some people and I think I’m going to do that right about now.

 

Steve Krupnik: 27:31 Good.

 

Yigal Adato: 27:32 I guarantee you that you know more than 90% of the people listening at this moment are too lazy. And haven’t thought about implementing something like that because they’ve said, oh, that’s a lot of work, I have to send the cards. It cost too much and what am I going to do? And like that golden nugget you just dropped right there. I can imagine. I mean, we bring customers back in 5%, 10% even if you have a 10% ROI on that campaign, that’s huge.

 

Steve Krupnik: 28:08 Sure it is. Sure it is. But there’s no way that anyone listening can expect an extreme income without exhibiting extreme behavior. That’s what it takes.

 

Yigal Adato: 28:22 Say that again, please.

 

Steve Krupnik: 28:25 You cannot, you cannot ever expect an extreme income without exhibiting extreme behavior. The two go hand in hand and if you’re making excuses why you can’t do this right now, extreme income and excuses are very incompatible. It doesn’t work.

 

Yigal Adato: 28:51 Let’s take a mic drop right there. That what you just said is a mindset shifter and about, you know, seven minutes ago in this interview you talked about the six inches between your ears and I’m guessing that when you worked as pawn brokers, that was one of the biggest battles, is changing that mindset [Incomprehensible].

 

Steve Krupnik: 29:14 It was a battle on the seasoned pros. It was relatively simple on the newbies.

 

Yigal Adato: 29:21 Got It.

 

Steve Krupnik: 29:23 I had a fairly new pawnbroker in a major market near me that was having a hard time getting pawn loans out. So Steve, I don’t know what to do. All they’re doing is bringing me junk. So I can’t take that stuff in and said, wait a minute. Between yourself and your employees, you need a little shift in your mindset. If somebody comes in with an anything, a rusty box of crappy tools on it, and they sincerely need to borrow some money. This is the first thing you think of. This is what you train yourself and your people to do. It’s your job to do everything you can to get the shop’s money in their pocket, find a way, and usually, almost always there’s a way, and even if that’s the only thing he’s got, he’s almost out of gas and well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll give a few dollars on it. You can go and get some gas and something like that, and if you’ve got to throw it in the dumpster later, who cares? It was just a few bucks, but I guarantee you when he reaches in his pocket for a gold chain or when he brings in his shotgun, he’s going to bring it to you. Why? Because you cared because you helped them. That is the key to really having a very robust pawn loan business.

 

Yigal Adato: 31:03 I just had this conversation with a member of the mastermind and he said, Yigal you guys convinced me to take in more stuff and now my default rates going up a little bit. And I said, and? He said, well, I’m just not used to that. And I said, okay. I said, how many more new customers did you get in? I got a bunch in. I said, listen, it’s all going to level off when you lend something, make sure obviously that, you know, you can either sell it or you can sell it at cost, but when they need money and they’ve got that rifle, that gold chain, you are the person they’re going to come to and you’re going to make the money and not the competitor. So, I love that you said that. I even love that you’ve said, you know, even if you have to throw in the dumpster, who cares? I think people are just afraid. Some [Crosstalk]

 

Steve Krupnik: 31:54 It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. That’s another thing about throwing it away, throwing it in the dumpster. I can’t sell this stuff. I gave him a chance. The other thing is what your showroom looks like. Do you age your inventory? Do you know what is selling and what isn’t selling and why? There’s gotta be a reason. I mean, don’t be a museum curator. Keep it fun, keep it interesting, keep it moving, and if you got to throw something out, throw it out.

 

Yigal Adato: 32:28 I think you just offended a bunch of people there. Cause pawnbrokers are hoarders, that’s what I say.

 

Steve Krupnik: 32:32 You don’t want to keep stale aged inventory in your store. Why? Number one reason, because whatever you’ve got in your showroom is what people are going to bring in to pawn. I guarantee it. I’ve proven it hundreds of times with all of my clients and they just shook their heads and said, I never knew. Let me give you an example. I was at a convention and a friend of mine, I said, hey man. I said, I’m going to go to a seminar here real quick on Rolex. I said, you want to come along? Sit with me. He says, Oh God, no, Steve. I’ll sit here and play the slot machine. As he said, I’d never get Rolex is in. So do you ever have any in the store ever? He said no. I worked out a deal with them and as soon as I got back to my shop, I’m memoed m a realize Jen stainless state, just nothing too fancy. You put it in his jewelry case, put a decent price on it before he sold the watch. He took one in pawn. I didn’t know you dealt in Rolex. When I expanded the store, Jerry in one of my shops where I could take motorcycles, I went down the street and bought a Harley wholesale and put it in the show room. Why? I wanted them to bring in Harleys. It really works that way. So that’s why you don’t want the age to crappy looking inventory hanging out in your showroom for six or nine months because it’s like a magnet. Crap attracts crap. If it’s crap, get it out of there.

 

Yigal Adato: 34:24 This episode is full of Golden Nuggets. It’s full of incredible information. I think that if you’re listening to this show finish listening to it. Then rewind and listen again and then maybe three or four times. Because just with these two things, I mean extreme income. If you want an extreme income, you have to show extreme behavior and crap attracts crap could be a game shifter for a lot of pawnbrokers.

 

Steve Krupnik: 34:51 It certainly could.

 

Yigal Adato: 34:52 I’ve got two more questions for you Steve because I know that we can probably go on for hours and I-

 

Steve Krupnik: 34:56 Yes, we could.

 

Yigal Adato: 34:57 -love to invite you into the mastermind to talk with the guys there. My first question is, if Steve Krupnik was to open a pawnshop today, what would it look like?

 

Steve Krupnik: 35:11 It would look, unlike 99.9% of the shops in the country, it would be extremely niched. Just a very specialized area. Maybe we should have a part two sometime Yigal I made more riches in niches than I ever did off a wedding bands in my big brick and mortar stores. I looked for specialty areas to get into. I learned the things that none of my competitors knew. Yes, I knew exactly what a paddock, Felipe, triple moon phase pink, 18 karat pink gold was worth. And I could verify that it was real and I’m sure as hell wasn’t going to low ball anybody with something like that. But you learn those things and your competitors don’t know that. And then the competitors that you actually like, and there were a couple that I liked they didn’t care that much for me, but they loved to send me that merchandise and would you want to send this over state or go over to the South Bend store do this and that because they knew if I did business with the person, I’d give him a little kickback. I gave him a reason to send me customers. You can have referrals with your competition. You can have referrals with your customers. You can have multiple levels of referral systems with your customers. As I did very successfully. There’s just so much you can do. I had VIP cards for customers. Who the heck did I learned that from? The casinos. And it was great. The whole of them loved it. Oh my God. Oh, you can have a reciprocal referrals with different businesses you’re not competing with at funny, every time somebody carried out a pizza from Bruno’s pizza on my area and had my coupon on the box and every time somebody picked up a pawn loan they got a coupon for Bruno’s pizza. What did it cost us? Almost nothing. What did it get us? Lots of new customers.

 

Yigal Adato: 37:37 And I want to say Steve, that if anybody’s listening thinking that doesn’t work today, you are dead wrong, dead wrong. There is no better way to market than what Steve is talking about. Obviously with social media, you know, Facebook and Instagram and all these types of things, but if you don’t have the big funds to do these types of things, go to your local pizza shop and do cross promotion, go to [Crosstalk] the shop, the grocery store, Morris and I built our business into millions in pawn because our competitor had so much money to advertise on television. So we would go to the supermarkets and we would pay for people’s groceries and we give them a card, right? Because we didn’t have the thousands and thousands. We had a couple of hundred bucks. I’ll pay 50 bucks here, 20 bucks here, 30 bucks here. Or We’d go to the local Taco shop and we’d say, Hey, we’ll buy 500 tacos at a discounted price when somebody buys some rolled tacos today. Just give them our flyer.

 

Steve Krupnik: 38:46 Brilliant. Not a big investment, not a big part of your time, but it’s different than what everybody else is doing. And that’s huge. I mean, even if you do not do any marketing in your pawnshop, and I’m sure there’s people listening that do not, I can give you one tip on what not to do. Don’t do what everybody else is doing. Don’t do what your competitors are doing because they don’t know marketing. Seriously. Do something different. Differentiate yourself. So many ways to do it.

 

Yigal Adato: 39:19 [Crosstalk] be different, be Bold, be extreme like you say. And with that Steve, I put to the Pawn Leaders Podcast Community on Facebook and I said, hey, Steve Krupnik is coming on, what questions do you want to ask him? Now I haven’t talked to you about this before. They asked me to ask you about red’s hourglass.

 

Steve Krupnik: 39:42 What else be? They say you can’t buy the front page on the newspaper. I did. I had a business partner that I started out with in my first pawnshop, elderly fellow, real character. And he planned out when he passed away. I was going to take care of this and that for him and one of the things he wanted me to do was to take his cremains, his ashes and put them in a big hand blown hour glass. And he said, just put it over more people can see it in the store and anytime you want some work out of me, flip me over. So yeah, it’s still in my office as a matter of fact. But we had so much fun with that and the customers loved it and they’d come by and they’d still look up the hour glass that was sitting on the shelves. Hey Red, how are you doing? You flipped him over lately, is he working? Well, I did a press release on how much fun we had with this hour glass from my wacky business partner and put in some comments from some of the customers and that sort of thing. Local newspaper got right on to it. Front page story. Huge picture. I had radio stations coming in and interviewing me. I had a TV station coming in. They wanted to see the hourglass. Well, it’s still around, but we had so much fun with it. Would that have happened had I not just composed a nice little press release and got it out there? No, that never would’ve happened. It was just simple marketing and a lot of fun. And that’s one of the things that I just briefly want to mention to the people listening to this, if you’re not having fun in your pawnshop, you’re doing something real wrong, real wrong. You’ve got to have fun. You’ve got to enjoy yourself. You’ve got to relax. You’ve got to love what you do. But don’t take yourself or the business to [inaudible] it can really mess you up if you’re not having fun you need to change something.

 

Yigal Adato: 42:07 Yeah. Steve, is there a book that you would recommend for somebody listening to read on marketing something that you highly recommend that you love, that it changed the way you do business?

 

Steve Krupnik: 42:22 Oh God, there’s so many of them and I’m not, seems like I’m always reading marketing. What I’d have to do is I’d have to go through my bookshelves and see which ones really jump out at me and say, ah, I remember that one. And like I say, if we have a part two to this, cause I could go on for about a week. I will list a couple of books on a-

 

Yigal Adato: 42:46 If you give me the names of the books, I can put it into the show notes. That way people, when they’re listening to the podcast, we have show notes below and I can just make the Amazon link clickable so they can go and purchase the book right away.

 

Steve Krupnik: 42:59 There’s one that comes to mind, I don’t remember the author or the actual name of the book, but if you go to the site like Amazon and type in grass roots marketing, you’ll probably find it. Because that’s the type of marketing that is personal. It’s very effective. It’s very, very cost effective. And it’s invisible. Your competitors have no idea what you’re doing.

 

Yigal Adato: 43:30 Is it the No BS Grass Roots marketing book?

 

Steve Krupnik: 43:35 You know, that might’ve been one of the candidates series. Yeah. That was, I think it was.

 

Yigal Adato: 43:43 Awesome.

 

Steve Krupnik: 43:44 You nailed it.

 

Yigal Adato: 43:45 Yeah. I just popped on Amazon. I put grassroots marketing. It’s the number one booked that popped up.

 

Steve Krupnik: 43:52 Those things work in a pawnshop, no matter what size you are, if you’re a little mom and pop to if you’ve got 40 locations, they work.

 

Yigal Adato: 44:06 Steve, I think we’re going to have to have a part two because this has been incredible. You sent me an email saying let’s have fun. Let’s give a ton of value and you have way exceeded my expectation as a host and I hope the expectation of listeners. I want to thank you for everything that you did for pawnbroking. As a young pawnbroker myself watching your videos, you made it pawnbroking cool before the TV shows were out and you gave content and you were helping people. So, I appreciate you for that.

 

Steve Krupnik: 44:41 Hey, we’re all doing what we can to make the industry as best as it can be and I really appreciate what you’re doing too and it’s been my absolute pleasure to be on today. I really enjoyed it.

 

Yigal Adato: 44:52 Thank you. For those of you who know that, I usually speak a lot more on these podcasts with a voice like Steve’s. I just wanted to hear him speak. Especially now that you doing voiceovers full time, right?

 

Steve Krupnik: 45:04 Yes. That’s my newest gig. I’m doing voiceovers full time. As a matter of fact, I’m talking to you from a recording studio. So that’s why, and I’ve enjoyed it. It’s a lot of fun, but still, I look back at my pawnbroking days and I just smile and shake my head. That [Incomprehensible] gig my God.

 

Yigal Adato: 45:25 Steve, Thank you so much for being on, pawn family thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Pawn Leaders Podcast. If you want to talk about this podcast, ask any questions, just have a conversation go to Facebook, join the group if you haven’t, joined it, it’s Pawn Leaders Podcast Community. And if you want to have a conversation with me, 30 minutes just to talk about your pawnshop with help you need, it’s free. Just go to pawnleaders.com fill out the form and let’s have a chat and see you guys on the next episode. Thank you so much, Steve.

 

Steve Krupnik: 45:58 Thank you very much and thank you for what you’re doing for the industry. I appreciate it, and I’m sure your listeners do too.

 

To continue the discussion join the Pawn Leaders Facebook community

 

For more information on working together go to www.pawnleaders.com.

 

Yigal Adato

Yigal is a 3rd generation pawn broker, and is now a mentor, coach and educator with the pawnbroking industry.


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