I first started in the pawn business as a college freshman. A friend of mine’s father was in the business and I needed a part time job. I was apprehensive at first having never had any personal interaction with a pawn shop and having some admittedly preconceived, and what turned out to be dead wrong, ideas about what a pawn shop is. I had only seen the Hollywood created dirty and seedy version of a pawn shop in TV and movies. My first day on the job was a real eye opener. What I thought would be a business model aimed at separating customers from their possessions and valuables for as little money as possible and turning around to sell those same items for maximum profit turned out to be the inverse of that. The store was clean. The staff was sharply dressed and very friendly. The merchandise was well presented and very fairly priced. And the customers that came in were treated with courtesy and a smile. And there was certainly no effort to pay customers as little as possible in order to get and sell their items. In fact, it was explained to me almost immediately that objectively, the business did NOT want to take ownership of the customer’s property unless that was the desire of the customer. The way the business worked best, I was told, was when the customer was able to borrow what they need on whatever it is they brought in, and then come and pay back the loan and retrieve their item or items. That when customers knew they were treated fairly and given fair value, they nearly always came back, and we had a tremendous reputation and a lot of repeat business and referrals. I’ve been in this business 26 years since then and operated more than 50 stores in 5 different states. I’ve carried the lessons of that first day and the days that followed with me and it still brings me a lot of joy to help people with their short term loan needs and to do it in a way that is friendly and fair and keeps them coming back.