Podcast Interview – “Pawn Star to Million-Dollar Coach” with Daniel Tolson & Ant Rice-Adams

Ant Rice-Adams (00:00):

You’re listening to Ants Talk! My next guest worked in the pawn industry for 17 years. His family were the local pawn stars or pawnbrokers. He has some very interesting stories to tell us. Welcome to the show, Daniel. How are you?

Daniel Tolson (0:14):

I’m, I’m bloody good. Thank you. It’s good to be here and I look forward to talking about pawn.

Ant Rice-Adams (0:20):

I know, I’m fascinated. I can’t wait to hear the stories. So Daniel, how did your family get into the industry?

Daniel Tolson (0:28):

My parents, when they got married in the 70s were farmers and they walked off their farm in Singleton in they started their new lives and my mom ended up in haberdashery in selling wool in crush free items. And she had a couple of stores in the Western suburbs in my father ended up as a concreter. So in the 90s, they were looking for something new to do and they got out of the careers and their businesses and they started a pawn shop.

Daniel Tolson (00:57):

And the reason why we ended up with the pawnshop was that my uncle, he was an ex-police officer and he’d started a pawn shop in Bathurst. And it was called the Bathist curiosity shop and basically he said it was a license to print money. You could buy something, resell it and make a profit. You could lend on items of value in, I get 20% on your money. So it was a very good business model, but we went into it blindly. I think the most experience we had was from my grandfather borrowing money in Merrickville when he was a young man and he’d take his broken watch and you’d shake it so they, it’d start to tick, he’d knock it even though it was broken. So he had a little experience. They really have been quite an institution in Australia. I mean I remember when I was young and broke that I went and got a few loans myself from the old pawn shops back in the day. [inaudible]

Daniel Tolson (01:50):

Part of our culture. And we get to a stage where, you know, sometimes we just need a bit of cash and we would work with high profile executives who have very small burn rate and basically they live paycheck to paycheck and they would run out of petrol and I would have to hook their watch their Rolex to put gas in the car and that would just get them through the day. So they’ve got the paycheck and then they’d go on to making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It was just got them out of a spot of bother. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s done that for a lot of people alone in history. So tell us how to Joe. I’m so way with the store’s actually based. We had our store at two 78 George street, Windsor. So to our left hand side on George street, Windsor, we had the railway station and that was really good because a lot of our clients use the railway that would then walk down past the pub play the pokies, have a beer, I’d collect the settling payment. And by the time I got to Ash up that spent the money and then they could go up to the bank and pay for their credit cards. There was a brothel up the street. There was some more pubs. Whatever they used to do with their money after that was not my, so is this Windsor Queensland winds in new South Wales right there on the Hawkesbury river? Ah, yes. Yeah.

Ant Rice-Adams (03:07):

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. That’s hilarious. What do you, what do you think the one thing that people wouldn’t know about the [inaudible]

Daniel Tolson (03:15):

District? I think people think it’s a dirty industry. The first thing that he pawnshop second hand. Good. I’d never borrow money, but they forget that people borrow money from the banks all the time. And before they all banks, there were pawnbrokers and they would try it as a, I think there’s a big misconception in Australia that stolen goods go through pawn shops, but they are so regulated. If somebody wants to borrow money, you’ve got to provide a hundred points of ID. You’ve got to show the serial numbers on the items of goods that you’re borrowing, and then it’s putting into a register and that register is connected to national fists register. So, if something’s stolen, it will be identified in moments. [inaudible] In the perpetrator will be caught, no doubt about it. That’s the first part. The second part is that a pawnbroker has license a license, and if you buy stolen secondhand goods and you know it, you can lose your license and your livelihood.

Daniel Tolson (04:11):

So if you were to run a shonky deal, you’d be caught pretty quickly. Yeah. I think the third thing that people forget is that eBay, Amazon garage sales, Gumtree, this was where the stolen goods move through because people don’t have to prove where they got the item from and it’s all traded in cash. So, I believe it’s probably one of the safest places in our pawn shop coming. I’d say about June, July, August, September, every year we’d get fishing rods would get whipper snippers, chainsaws, lawnmowers, and people would come in and borrow 50 bucks on it. And this was like the busiest time in our business. And there’d be just stuff everywhere. And eventually, I asked my brother, I said, why do you think we get all this stuff at this time of year? And he said, Oh, it’s probably because the lawns don’t grow and people can’t go fishing. I said, it’s gotta be something else. So, we started to survey our customers and we said, why do you come and hock at the same stuff at the same time every year? And they laughed. They said, this is the cheapest place to store your goods in the whole of the town. And it’s the safest. You’re protected by the police people. And this was fascinating. People would borrow money on their goods and go overseas because we were the safest place. We were like Fort Knox. Yeah, yeah. And that’s how they used us as a storage facility as well.

Ant Rice-Adams (05:32):

And it’s funny because you actually just mentioned about eBay, et cetera. It really is like the old time eBay because it’s stuff that people want to sell. It’s a great place to the gum put it, they’re getting a lot of eyes on the product and then they’re making money from it. And hopefully a safe way. Ebay is not that safe, but the pawn shops always have been, and I remember many, many years ago, so many people that were surrounding in my life always use pawn shops to either get rid of their old engagement rings from the marriage that broke up to men wanting to sell different parts of cards that they had sitting around the house or you know, being forced to clean out the garage and other people that would go and take this stuff in. That was a bad birthday present or Christmas.

Daniel Tolson (06:16):

Right. I’m sure you get a lot of those posters, toasters, kettles, electric blankets, and it was actually, it’s actually a very good way for people that don’t have a lot of money

Ant Rice-Adams (06:27):

To actually just get a bit of a loan. It re it really, I mean, it’s still ease. It’s, it’s a great way for people that aren’t making a ton of money to actually get just a little bit of pocket money to make the week a little bit easier.

Daniel Tolson (06:40):

Mm Hmm. We, we would see people coming in to pay their employees wages. I’m going to have credibles that we, we had a gentleman, you’d come in and pull in his BMW so he could pay the wages of these people and he didn’t have to pay them. He did not have to pay them. He could have said, well, stuff you, but he said, no, I’ll pawn my car. That’s incorrect. I’ll get the money and I’ll make sure everybody got their wages. We would say tradies on a Friday they wanted to pay their men at 4:00 PM. So the brick layers would come in and hock their brick laying equipment, all their scaffolding so they could pay their men and they’ll do that because they hadn’t received their checks. And I would go and collect the debt on the weekend and they’ll be back then 9:00 AM Monday morning retrieving their goods. So if any of those chefs out there are listening, there’s a team to how to pay your staff. We, we have seen collections of knives, you know, the most exquisite knives in their role shifts would come in and borrow them because that’s a tool of trade and they’re worth a fortune. They are professional Schiff spends thousands on their knobs and we used to borrow and lend on them all the time. Some of those gems

Ant Rice-Adams (07:50):

Have so just ridiculously priced because they’re, it’s, it’s almost like an art and how they prepare and make them. So have you actually seen that pawn show that’s on TV?

Daniel Tolson (08:00):

I even have been to their store in Vegas. Is that sort of, how real does that ring true look in? In my opinion, it’s not true. Yeah, it’s very staged. What you could imagine Al pawn shop to be like, it was more like a Jerry Springer show that that was the reality. People would come to our shop for entertainment and I would watch the people. So I would say pawn stars is great because it, it’s the epitome of how old pawnbrokers would want to feel that they’re this place where everything’s shiny and worth a ton of money and their customers are clean and self made millionaires. But the reality it’s not, the pawnbroking shop is like a episode of Jerry Springer. There are punch ups at the front. The, the list of stories that I could, hopefully we get some time to talk with you. Joel is going to drop, your eyes are going to open and it happens like Jerry Springer.

Ant Rice-Adams (09:03):

That’s incredible. That really is. It’s hilarious. The funny thing is is that what I’ve noticed, I mean we’ve got one around the corner from us right here and I must say it’s one of the messiest shops I’ve ever walked into and it’s sort of like, well how are you going to sell anything when you can’t really see anything holding tangled in other crap basically. But most stores aren’t like that. I must say. They keep the shop pretty well kept. So we have some great headings that relate to some of the stories that you have about the people that were frequent. The stores. I’m so excited for this day and you’re going to tell us a little about each one. So number one is mr corral?

Daniel Tolson (09:41):

Well I think he must have been my he had a crush on my brother for sure. So my brother and I, we would run the pawn broking business. Mum and dad were away, semi retired. And this gentleman came in and I, I won’t mention his name, Betty. He had the first and the last name that were both first names. And he also had a split personality, bipolar. So one day he would come in as one personality and another day he’d come in as a second personality. In the second personality, he would speak about himself in the third person. And he’d referred himself as mr corrupt. And he would say to my brother, he’d say, mr corrupt, we’ll be coming to the pawn shop today. And so I would play along with it and would say, and what does mr corrupt want today? And he’d say, well, mr corrupt would like to borrow some money and would say, well, mr corrupt, what would you like to borrow and how much?

Daniel Tolson (10:35):

And he’d say, well, he doesn’t want to use a physical good. He’d like to make an alternative payment, if you know what I mean. And mr corrupt wanted to have six in return for some money. And he would ask questions. You’d be like, what’s behind the curtain? And we’d say, there’s nothing behind the curtain, mr crufty and sight is there a bed behind the curtain. So I missed a corral. He wanted to have sex with my brother and my brother was two years older than me. He was about 15 kilos lighter than me. And it was quite pretty mr corrupt that a crush on him. And Monday, mr corrupt wanting to come out the back of the store and we told him nothing, Goff.

Daniel Tolson (11:21):

And I then I grabbed the a what we’d called the dentist, which was a metal baseball bat, and I chased him down the street. So that was mr [inaudible]. My God, there’s some people out there, but you know, honestly it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a rarity because one of our competitors he was in a surrounding suburb. My mother went to his pawnbroking store one day just to talk to another pawnbroker, see what was happening in the industry. And he offered her some advice and she could make an alternative payment and he had a bed at the back of his own shop and tried to put it on my mom.

Ant Rice-Adams (12:01):

It’s incredible. I mean it’s, I definitely know it’s not rare. I’ve been propositioned myself and some of the weirdest situations, and it’s just like, are you serious? I want something a little bit more worth, a little bit more than what you’re offering. Just a little. So the next one is why get paid in a $50 bill when you can have ten five dollar bill?

Daniel Tolson (12:27):

It was one guy used to come in for years and he would borrow on a Nakia 55 10 [inaudible], and every week he borrowed $50 on it. And the interest was at 20% so it was $10 per month or part thereof. And you’d would come in and you’d borrow on it. And every single week he would show you his charger. He would show you that the fun worked. You’d leave the SIM card in there, you’d get the line, and then you’d get his $50 so it was just a pattern. He did the same thing every single week. And when he would ask for his money, he would ask for the $50 in $5 bills. And what do you do? Is when we’d give him the $50 in $5 bills, he’d sit there and count it one by one and it asked for his money in fobs cause it made him feel like he had more money and he had sat to wave it around and it was so important for him that he had recognition that he had money because a 50 in your wallet, the wallet’s thin, but if you’ve got 10 fives it’s thick.

Daniel Tolson (13:29):

And so it made him feel that he had more money and then he had it candidate. So we would take the notes yet and you count them, flick it light, then flick it and lied to any lie. Ollie’s tens across these volumes across the table and then take the cash. He actually didn’t need the money. It was just significance. Yeah, he just needed somebody to speak to. He needed somebody to talk to and he was buying himself some attention and then he had the eyes of the other people. So he lived in the local caravan park. He worked at the local chicken farm collecting eggs and he just wanted to also demonstrate to the people who were in the shop who also lived in the caravan pack that he had cash. Well that was just significant, lovely guy.

Ant Rice-Adams (14:11):

That’s incredible. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s heartwarming to hear that sort of stuff because I mean, you find that there’s been a lot of shows lately and there’s, one of them is actually that show ambulance that I watch where you’ve got sort of the medics that go out and rescue people’s lives, et cetera. And I’ve noticed you get a lot of people calling for that same reason, two ambulances. And it’s because they’re learning and they just want someone and some attention. Really. It’s really quite sad. The next one, cockroach infestations, almost envision this.

Daniel Tolson (14:44):

We come from a very clean family. We’ve had a Hass cleanup. My mother, if I didn’t clean my, she would take my clothes and throw them on the top of my car. And that’s just how Al Haswell is. If the, if the dirty Andy’s were left on the floor, they weren’t washed. If the dirty socks weren’t turned the right way and they left in inside, that’s how they were washed. So we learned to be really clean. So we got to the stage where we had this very low lying desk in the pawn shop and the people would bring in their goods and would bring them in and it might be a microwave. And I’d place the microwave down on the bench that was about waist level and as it would hit the table, all these small black things are just dropping out of the bottom of the microwave.

Daniel Tolson (15:31):

And so you try to figure it out the first couple of times, like what is that? And then we started to get these cockroach infestations in the pawn shops and the pawn shop and we’re constantly having it spread. We’re constantly having it bite it. And what was happening in sod, the microwaves in the TV is that in the Caribbean parks and in the the public housing that they’re living in, those infestations there. So the cockroaches were breeding inside their televisions that come into our shop. They’d put it down, the eggs would fall everywhere. And then would start to get infestations in the shop. And so it was disgusting. It was horrible. So we started to put these policies in place and I ended up with dermatitis because I was washing my hands, I swear like a hundred times a day. I had the sanitizer pumping it out all the time. We ended up creating a new desk and a cleaning station where they had to clean all of their goods before they got a loan on it. And I had never seen things so grimy and dirty in my life. And so I would just get these cockroaches and these eggs everywhere.

Ant Rice-Adams (16:35):

You don’t realize how hideous that actually is. I mean, I’ve lived through some of that myself. I actually was in, just before I left Sydney, I was living in this unit where right next door was this dear old, lovely lady, you know, quite elderly. Used to walk with a cane and sort of like a frame. And I started my unit next door, started getting infested with cockroaches. And I mean in festered I was, I literally bombed that place I think six times. And only then did I finally get some resolution. I then found out that cause I hadn’t seen it for a few weeks, I was asking some people to check on her. And nine I am actually, I ended up actually calling the place cause I just thought, well could have fallen down and no one knows her. And so they went to actually check on her.

Ant Rice-Adams (17:26):

And what had happened was she actually had gotten meals, she’d been put into hospital. And when the police came to me, they just literally had the look of horror on their faces. And they’re like, how well do you know her? And I’m like, Oh, not that. Well I sort of see her out there as we pass each other and I’ll ask her how her day is or I’ll help her with the bags, which were door. And they went, have you ever been inside? And I went, no. They went, do you mind if we look into your unit and just see the layout? And I went, okay. And they then told me that because she was so cripple, she actually couldn’t go upstairs to the, in the unit. Now upstairs in our units was our bathroom, so she couldn’t go to her own bathroom. So she was going to the bathroom in plastic bags, which were then spotted all around the unit. They said that as you went upstairs, it was literally like one big spiderweb. You had to walk through these webs to actually even go upstairs. And it was so bad. I couldn’t even get up upstairs. But thankfully, I mean, she was then taken out of that and put into housing that would suit her better, but I just couldn’t believe that she was left in that situation. It actually made me really sad, you know, I wasn’t so angry about the cockroaches. Then

Daniel Tolson (18:40):

We had a guy very similar to this coming into a shop and supposedly he had an incredible IQ. He was, he was supposed to be a genius, but he burned out in the local rumor was that he sucked these [inaudible] out with a vacuum cleaner. So he was, he was missing the eyeball and it was just a cavity. And so he would come in and this puss would just wipe out and he’s own, and this wasn’t an isolated event. This probably happened over 15 years. This past was just pouring out of his eyes. So the nickname we gave him was pissy. We’re like, okay, pass here. And in that day we’d had the Glen 20 in the, the smell from him was so putrid. Like if it, if he walked into the shop, the shop smelt for days and would have the Glen 20 at like and, and he lived in that same state. I remember the local rotary club went to clean his house out. Same thing, just absolutely putrid.

Ant Rice-Adams (19:41):

It’s really sad. I mean it sounds terrible, end up living like that and there isn’t some sort of service that are checking on these people that really, it’s quite disturbing that our elderly have to actually live like that. It really is. Going back to your funny stories. So the next one, condoms in your mom’s camera box. The sex tapes.

Daniel Tolson (20:04):

I know his family well, the Amos family. When we first opened up the pawn shop my mother is a good Catholic girl. She’s a, I only ever had truly one boyfriend, my father. And they would buy and lend on these VHS tapes and they HS, you know, we’re talking back in the eighties and nineties and somebody bought this big box of tapes in and my mum’s flicked through the mold are all current titles and they lent money on them. And my brother and I started to go through the box of tapes and my brother’s like, mom, this, this is not, what is this? And he pulls it out and it looks the Adams family, it’s a Pono and it’s called the guy and his family. And my mom could go, who goes to church, she almost died, but she had lent on a full box of pawnos.

Daniel Tolson (21:03):

But this became a huge lending item for our business because those pawn VHS videos, they would sell retail for between 50 and $70. Wow. In that way, huge trade in the 90s. So I remember, so my first pawno cupboard was the anus family. So, you know, these things started to come into your peripheral and then as digital cameras became popular, they were a good item to buy and sell and land on. And two good stories here are, I remember one guy came in with his girlfriend and they came up to the counter, me and my brother are serving and he said, you know, could I get a loan on this video camera? I said, sure, why not? Let’s have a look. How much do you want? You said a hundred bucks. So I picked it up. So like a JVC little flip viewer screen on the side.

Daniel Tolson (21:59):

And I started to watch the video and I’m testing it. I’m looking at him, dang, that’s him. I’m looking at her on the video. I’m like, Oh, that’s her. And they’ve got a homemade pawn on. They’ve left the tape and I’m testing it. And I said to my brother, I said, Hey, come and check it out and tell me if this is a good one. Should we lend on it? And my brother looks at it, he looks at me, guys just shakes his head. And he said, okay, give him a hundred bucks. So we gave him 100 bucks and I left the type in the night, didn’t take the type out. Then they went in about 15 minutes. They both came back in and though they read and they said we left out, type in the in the video camera. And my brother said, I think you did. And we’ve got that on sale for another 50.

Daniel Tolson (22:49):

Well you had that one. And then a woman came and she had a digital camera brand new in the box cannon, one of those zoom lenses on it. And she said, I’d like to get a $50 line on the camera. And I said, sure, why not? Let’s have a look. So I opened it up and it’s seen as packaging. I unraveled it and all of a sudden there’s a used condom in the box and I’ve just prayed on my head, there’s this discussing that day you do this or this, the worst thing you ever want to see in your life. And she said, what, what? And she flipped it around and there’s a used condom in there and she started to flip through the photos and her son had been doing home pawno photos with his girlfriend and leave the Loudon condom in.

Daniel Tolson (23:34):

The mom was devastated. He was gonna make on a, he was probably going to get rid of it and then forgot it. He’d say this out. I remember having a, this 17 inch Dell laptop that came in and it was, it was one of the lightest models and the people in borrowed on it and you know, we don’t go through the files because they’re going to borrow on it. They’re going to come back. Yeah. But sometimes they don’t come back for it. And so we went through and we should clear the hard drive. We turn it on password in and it’s like about 30 gigs just at home pawn and this young woman and a boyfriend, I want to be in people magazine. So they’ve done all their home photos. It got them on the hard drive. There’s toys and there’s letters topped up and drafted to people magazine and Playboy and homegirl and homeboy magazine.

Daniel Tolson (24:25):

And we would just find this stuff all the time on the Bible. Didn’t try and bring in the toys and try to get a loan. Well I didn’t bring the toys, but they bought in the big glass bones. Remember when they had these [inaudible] he used to bring in their hydroponic kits and would lend on the heating lamps and all of that. That’s incredible. I bring all of it. It really is traced. It’s like a really that dumb, well the interesting thing was the police used to give us a hard time about lending on the hydroponics, but we said it’s an item of value. You can buy it and retail, there’s nothing illegal about it. We can lend on it. So it was an item of value and if that person was willing to take the risk then then they could, that’s it. I’m done in shops everywhere. So there is [inaudible] and then you know, home birth. You know in the 90s and two thousands that Homebrew equipment was worth thousands of dollars. Yeah. Dad had his whole cute, I don’t know, whatever happened to that that fed rent out very quickly. Once he drank the beer. It’s a lot of hard book. Oh it is. It’s ridiculous. The 70 stamps

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Training each week for Ann’s talk to learn about real life stories, celebrities and everything in between.

Daniel Tolson (25:47):

So the next one, how did you survive the wood at Royal commission? Well, the Rood Royal commission was pretty wild and they wanted to shut down pawnbrokers and whoever was in charge, they really had a targeting is pulling brokers and they wanted to make us all look like crux. So in, in each area of Sydney, they had these pawn broking units and they had an 85th squad and their job was to catch pawnbrokers buying stolen secondhand goods. Right. And what would happen would be we’d be running our business and all of a sudden you’d hear the sirens, you’d hear the handbrake pulled up and the car screeched to a stop and you’d get 12 to 14 police rushing into the shop. They’d have their hands on their gun that had Bulletproof vests on stab profession and they would just put the shop in lockdown and now doing an immediate, and they told us directly, we’re going to get you and we’re going to shut you down. And I’d sit us on the step, they said, sit there, don’t move. And they’d turn the shop upside down and I would do this month after month and it would freak you out. You know, you’re, you’re, you’re a teenager, you’re hot, you’re hot bleeding. The mum, they are having a panic attack because we’re running a legitimate business. And they would go through and they would find you for a spelling mistake. So I might write down Anthony, but instead of putting one Tay, I’d put two T’s and that’s $1,000 mistake and a point off your license.

Daniel Tolson (27:22):

And, and our customers that’d be in, they’re freaking out because they’re like, all of a sudden they just shut the shop. Yeah. And that’s it. And you can’t do anything. They could come to our property, you know, it has to, because it was a registered premises. They could come in 24 hours a day. If they said open up your shed at one o’clock in the morning, you’d have to open up the shed and this went on for months and years and we’d get fined and then you’d have to go to court and then the local judge would kick it out and it’s like, this is ridiculous. What a waste of time. Send them back to their business. It’s a spelling mistake. And they were really out to get us. And I think what I did through the rural commission, it filtered out the crooked cops and a lot of the crooked cops who were bullying us, they used to say to things like, to me, they’d say, ah, Daniel know that’s a, that’s a very nice set of golf clubs over there.

Daniel Tolson (28:10):

You know, could we organize something and I’d like to say these little things and you’re behind. Is this a setup [inaudible] or are you for real? And that that would for real. Now I remember walking out the back one day and I walked out and the cop was like, what are you doing? What are you looking at? I’m like, why are you where our money is? What are you doing near our money? And every time he come in, he was always near out until, see, we still had to man the shop and that’d be at the back. And he was always near the teal. I’m not saying that he stole, but what the hell was he doing next to the tool where all the casuals might talk in a float? You know, sometimes we’re holding 10, 15, 20 grand a cash Hetty enough. If they have some bucks going, that’s it.

Daniel Tolson (28:52):

And it’s going to turn around and get to be able to tell on him. Not well, someone, somebody who’s got the gun on the hip and they’re showing you when they walk in and they’re in the POM bragging squad and they’re there to find you and put you out of business. Very wild. Few years, very, very stressful for both of my parents. And you didn’t want to come to business. They made you feel bad. They made you feel that you’re doing something wrong. But we’re lucky that we run an honest show and we’re good people. And I don’t believe you can bully in on us person. No. And the judge knew it. Yeah. So scary was very dodgy back then. I remember I was younger, living in Queensland, I used to see, because I worked in nightclubs and I used to do a lot of artwork for night clubs for their flyer promotions and things like that.

Ant Rice-Adams (29:41):

And I’d be sitting there through the day time,

Ant Rice-Adams (29:45):

No one’s in, in the club, of course, it’s just me, the manager of all the owner of the club. Police would turn up, they’d come in, they’d laid with an envelope and you know, and I used to look at that when I was younger and I didn’t even blink an eye because I was just, didn’t really know what was going on. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve looked back and I thought, okay, now I know what was going on because it was the fortitude Valley was rife with corruption back in those days. Yup, absolutely rife. So the next one, the story behind the dentist and the attitude of justice.

Daniel Tolson (30:23):

Well, we needed protection. And it wasn’t against the condoms in the, in the, in the camera boxes. It was from some of the rough people that we used to get in and what, you would get a whole range of biker gangs and you’d have your common Geroge, you’d have your coffin. Shaders you’d have your hell’s angels your jelly jokers now that were pretty cool. Now, always really cool people to us. They never caused us problems. And we always said to them, look, if you want to come into the pawn shop, you’re allowed to come in, but you’re not allowed to wear your colors because you don’t, we don’t want the Bandidos thinking this is a common Cero shop. So you come in and you enjoy our services. Now colors, they were cool about that and now really nice. But you’d get some other people who were really walled.

Daniel Tolson (31:11):

And like I said before, it was like a Jerry Springer show. And I remember my brother getting attacked once by a person at the front and people were desperate at times. People were high on drugs and we had to protect us. So we had two baseball bats. One was a timber baseball bat and that was called the attitude adjuster. And when people started to threaten violence, we would just reach under the desk and would take the attitude adjuster and would sit it down on the table. And as soon as you sat down on the table by melted attitude, title change. So they went from a bully to amass and now like, Oh, okay, I’m really sorry about that. If that didn’t work and my brother was at that end, I’d pull out the dentist and the dentist was there, inter Ray range of teeth. And when I stood there with that in my hand facing upwards, I knew they’re in trouble. And there was a couple of times would chase people down the streets with the, with the dentist, including mr. Corrupt.

Ant Rice-Adams (32:09):

That’s hilarious. I love it. The dental,

Daniel Tolson (32:11):

It was, we had it written on there. My dad read it on these. He’s a real character, the attitude adjuster and the dentist.

Ant Rice-Adams (32:19):

So tell us what would be the most valuable item you’ve ever seen in store?

Daniel Tolson (32:26):

Talking about the the bikeys we saw some club rings in these club rings were quite interesting. So when you joined the club, you got a ring and that ring volunteer to the club for life and it should always be returned back to the club if you’re ever to leave. And it’s a, it’s a tough thing to leave one of those clubs. So I’m sending some some bikey rings there. I’ve also seen some two and three carat diamonds. I’ve seen golden rings worth, you know, 30 and $40,000. And I have seen bike is changed out. I swear there was one, it was what it was about half a kilos of gold. There was about that wide and about that thick and had a giant cross on it. And I think he must’ve learned about $5,000 at a time, but the gold was worth so much more.

Daniel Tolson (33:19):

Talking about Don rings and wedding bands. We used to have bags of wedding bands like shopping bags full. And we would sell bags of those to Chinese at a time and that melted down in the golden ingots and just melt it all down. I think the most expensive things is definitely the, the jewelry and the precious gems. And they were so precious that people used to break into the shop. You know, this a seven made a high ceiling that get up to the top and not abseiled Dan, not that Robert’s style back up and take off with the jewelry. So to be honest, that’s the one thing I used to love looking at in hoc shops is all the jewelry because you’d always see stuff that you hadn’t ever seen. It’s always very unique and period jewelry because you, you’d see stuff and old grandma that you never would’ve seen before.

Daniel Tolson (34:11):

Especially like rubies and emeralds and stuff like that. Compared to these days, we have almost everything has diamonds. That was always really, really interesting to look at. That sort of stuff. What I’m tell them, he says what you’re up to now these days, cause I know it’s a very different field. Well these days, I’m a specialist in emotional intelligence. So I’m working with companies privately owned, knowing dollar businesses or the app to privately own billion dollar businesses. And as a business coach, I help them win in sales now for their business, but also help them choose and bring together a world class team of people. So I’m working here in Taiwan, my company’s based in Sydney and I’m serving people in most States of Australia, the UK and America. And my job is to help these businesses run more effectively in create high profits. So it’s a very different game to the pawn broken that I’m just, it’s, it’s, it’s still like a game of chess.

Daniel Tolson (35:09):

You’re moving one pawn over here, putting the right people in the right places. And the beauty of it is you’ve dealt with most types of people so well, so many lessons that I share with my clients that I come from the pawn brokers and we talk about in my business today, customers for life. And it’s amazing our business. We closed that in about 2007 13 years later we can walk down the street and people will yell out across the street, Hey, Tulsan family. And my wife’s been walking down the street and she’s like, who’s that? And I said, Oh, that was one of the customers in the pawn shop at. People used to invite us to their weddings and the christening of their children. And I take these philosophies into businesses today and I say, you can never judge a book by its cover.

Daniel Tolson (35:55):

These people are the salt of the earth. They’re the kindness, they’re the sweetest people. And it doesn’t matter who you’re dealing with, you’ve got to treat them like a million dollar customer. And every person, you know, the gentleman who was counting Addys fobs on the table, we gave him his fives because we treated him like $1 million customer. The people who were coming in like mr corrupt, although I chased him down the street one day and I knew he was mr Krupnick that day when he came in and his personality changed, we still welcomed him to the shop and we made sure everybody was treated with dignity. And this is the philosophy we share with businesses today. You’ve got to build a business in with the intention of having customers for life. You want to see them down the street and you want them to say hello. You don’t want to have to carry the dentist. I want to get the knife in the back

Ant Rice-Adams (36:41):

Behind your hide. Ponder building because they’re walking past. I completely agree with that because I’ve worked for Chanel for around 10 years, back in 2000 or before 2008 and I’ve still got people that are now my really good close friends that were actually customers that I served at Chanel. And I mean, this is 15 something years later and we’re still friends. And it’s, it’s amazing that the rapport and the, the relationships you can build with people that you actually respect. Mm Hmm.

Daniel Tolson (37:16):

One. I ran a training in Sydney not long ago called eat that frog and it’s a time management seminar and one of the young men in them, he’s got a million dollar business and he used to be a customer in the pawn shop years ago. He would come in with his dad that would buy VHS, they’d buy DVA days. They’re always buying, they never borrowed. And you know, this relationship has gone on for more than 25 years. It’s incredible. Today he’s a customer and he sends me referrals all the time. He’s like, Hey, can you give him, I made a call, he needs some help in his business. And so we’ve been doing business for 25 years and I believe that’s how it should be. Like what you’re saying with Chanel [inaudible] microphone once. I never asked him. Well, we’ll find that out. So tell us, Daniel, where can people find more about you? Where can they find out about you? I’ve got two websites. Come and have a look at my personal website, which is Daniel tulsan.com and if you’re in business, you can visit my other business page, which is wind sales now.com and you can get a copy of my latest book called wind sales now.

Ant Rice-Adams (38:26):

Fantastic. And that’s Tulsan, T. O. L. S. O. N.

Daniel Tolson (38:29):

That’s it. Fantastic. Thanks so much for coming onto the show and having a chat. I really appreciate it. I love those pleasures really until the other X ride ones latter on Alrighty. We’ll speak saying thanks and thank you.