Virginia son Jerry Marshall has worked hard to come from proverbial rags to relative riches – & his rent-to-own success story is still far from over
Spend some time with Jerry Marshall, and you’ll likely come away wondering, When does this guy SLEEP?
It’s not that Marshall is a whirling dervish of a dude, the kind of person who wears you out just by being in your proximity. To the contrary, his particular brand of energy seems to rub off on people around him more often than not, lifting folks up closer to his fairly consistent level of high-spiritedness, positivity, and engagement. Marshall emanates élan, a blend of style and energy – but he might not like the use of such a fancy French term to describe such a salt-of-the-earth, straight-arrow son of Rustburg, Virginia.
Truth be told, Jerry Marshall has never moved farther than about 20 miles from his birthplace, a tiny town in the center of the state, just outside of Lynchburg. Despite working for a half-dozen different companies – five of them in the rent-to-own industry – Marshall has somehow managed to stay in and around Lynchburg. And that is where he plans to stay.
“It’s home,” Marshall states plainly. “I feel like God put me in a great place, gave me great opportunities, and His plan for me here has just turned my whole life around – financially, professionally, you name it. I just love this community.”
And his community loves Marshall back: Today, the President of KAPPA Investments LLC dba Buddy’s Home Furnishings owns eight locations – seven in Virginia, one in North Carolina – as well as a Richmond-based Amazon delivery service with about 40 vans and 90 or so drivers, and a collection of rental properties he owns and manages.
Add in one lovely wife who’s way into travel; four beloved kids ages nine to 26 – one of whom will be newly wed and another who will be a high-school graduate by the time this article is published; an infant grandson; some aging parents; and a couple of weekly full-court pick-up basketball games with players who are easily two decades his junior, and you begin to circle around to the starting sentiment of this story, which is When does this guy SLEEP?
Jerry Marshall grew up in a poor, rural family with three older siblings, two industrious parents, and lots of love and Jesus. Marshall’s mother did factory work until breast cancer kept her homebound for a handful of years; his father worked days as a jack-of-all-trades for a bus distributor, or sometimes digging and servicing water wells, then spent many evenings picking up various tasks around town, working as a mechanic, handyman, or contractor.
Jerry’s grandparents also lived closeby on neighboring farms. His maternal grandparents especially served as attentive and encouraging role models for young Jerry; his grandfather commuted to a full-time job 1.5 hours away in addition to managing his farms, while Jerry’s grandmother showed him hard work and love like no other.
“We spent a lot of time with them, working that farm,” remembers Marshall. “We helped take care of their cows, pigs, geese, chickens, and a pretty good-sized garden. I got my first paying job at age 12, working on another farm for a local staple farmer during the summers, moving hay around and feeding cows.”
Not super-studious (he now suspects undiagnosed ADHD), Marshall gravitated early on toward sports, playing basketball and football all the way through high school. He graduated from Rustburg High School (the fighting Red Devils – file that away for future reference) in 1992, and went to Central Virginia Community College, then Liberty University – a private Baptist college co-founded by legendary televangelist Jerry Falwell, Sr. Despite working part-time on local farms and through temp services in addition to his studies, within a couple of years, Marshall simply couldn’t afford his higher education anymore, and decided to enter the workforce full-time.
“Through the temp agency, I did some factory work, then some work for a life-insurance company,” Marshall recalls. “I loved that job, because they wrote a lot of life-insurance policies for athletes, so I could indulge my inner sports-guy by being nosy about all that. My first real full-time job was with Ericsson telecommunications; they had a large plant here in Lynchburg, and I worked in their internal communications department for a few years.”
When his position got contracted out and he was offered a reduced salary, Marshall opted to take a severance package and go … into business for himself, as a painter. Around the same time, Marshall married his high-school sweetheart, Tracey Falwell (her grandfather was a first cousin of the aforementioned famous Falwell; see why the Red Devils is funny?). Jerry and Tracey met his senior (her junior) year, through a football teammate of Jerry’s whom Tracey was dating. When that couple broke up, Jerry and Tracey began spending more and more time together, and the rest – as they say – is 27 years of wedded history.
For the almost two years Marshall was running a painting business, his résumé remained online, and one day, a company named Rentway came calling (literally). Rentway offered a manager- in-training position, Marshall interviewed, – and was impressed with the company’s long-term vision and growth potential, as well as the consistent income offered.
“The opportunity to improve my life – and my family’s life – was the bottom line for me,” Marshall says. “I just wanted to provide a better life financially for my kids than I had had. I bought in on the dream of an opportunity to grow and develop, so I wrapped up my final paint projects and took the job.”
Jerry Marshall and rent-to-own just clicked. Within about six months of joining Rentway, Marshall was promoted to store manager of an understaffed, underperforming store.
“I wasn’t ready for it, but I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity – and I believe in myself,” Marshall affirms. “I was learning on the job, so it took me about a year to get it organized and get it together. I was working so hard and such long hours, I thought my wife was going to toss me out. But by year three, our store finished in the top 10% of the whole company, which was 1,200 stores; the following year, we finished in the top 1% – we ranked #2 companywide.”
Marshall was promoted to regional manager, overseeing seven stores throughout central and northern Virginia. Again, the first year was a challenge, the second year a success, and by year three, Marshall’s region ranked #1 among the company’s 114 regions.
I feel like God put me in a great place, gave me great opportunities, and His plan for me here has just turned my whole life around – financially, professionally, you name it.
Jerry Marshall
Then Rentway sold to Rent-A-Center, which proved to be not a fit for Marshall. But a former fellow Rentway colleague, Michael Bennett – who knew Marshall and his hardworking, super-successful ways – came calling (again, literally), offering Marshall a regional management position with the Aaron’s Sales & Lease Ownership franchise where Bennett was now working. Marshall joined Aaron’s, and for the next two years, oversaw up to eight stores, including the three biggest and most profitable Aaron’s stores statewide.
Then the franchise sold to Aaron’s corporate … which, after three months, sold it to another franchisee … and Marshall was done.
“I worked for three companies within three-and-a-half months,” he explains. “I’ll be honest, I kind of lost a little of my love for the industry. I had a bad case of professional whiplash. So I left, having no clue what I was going to do.”
Tracey supported the family for the next six months while Jerry grew bored and antsy.
“I was still talking to a lot of my friends and former coworkers in the industry,” Marshall recalls, “and I’m a sports guy, so it was sort of like locker- room chitchat every day about the business. And the more I talked to them, the more I missed RTO. Then I saw the Easyhome ad.”
Canada-based Easyhome was searching for “the best of the best” rent-to-own operators, offering the top three a fully funded Easyhome franchise of their own. Marshall initially brushed off the contest as a longshot, but it kept coming up in different ways; Marshall finally took its persistent presence as a sign, and applied.
“Following two rounds of applications and interviews, Easyhome flew me to Toronto for a face-to-face panel interview,” remembers Marshall. “Even though I was really nervous, when I walked into the room, God just blessed me with a world of confidence. I felt like I wowed them with my business plans, how I believed in myself and what I wanted to do. I knew I had killed it.”
Sure enough, Marshall was selected, spent a summer flying all over Canada for training, and with Easyhome’s $750,000, opened up his first store in Lynchburg in late 2010.
“We grew that store beyond our wildest imagination,” Marshall attests. “We had Easyhome’s largest grand opening ever; we signed 127 customers the very first day. We were the fastest store in company history to reach a million dollars in revenue, which we did in our first ten months. We paid our loan off in two years, and Easyhome funded a second store up in Roanoke, Virginia, in 2013.”
And then it happened again: Easyhome sold their U.S. franchises to another franchisee, and things began to change – not for the better. But again, a former colleague came calling (yes, literally); Brian Kahn, the Aaron’s franchisee Marshall had worked for with Michael Bennett, offered a plan to get Marshall out of his Easyhome contract and join Buddy’s Home Furnishings, where Bennett and Kahn were now thriving.
“Brian was an extremely successful gentleman who thought that much of me, that he wanted me to join his organization and become part of it, while offering me an opportunity to grow,” says Marshall. “So I said, ‘Sign me up!’”
Extricating Marshall’s stores from the Easyhome franchise system was an arduous, expensive, and time-consuming process. But in late 2016, Marshall officially joined Buddy’s, merging his two existing stores with Buddy’s locations and taking on two more Buddy’s locations – doubling his number of stores overnight. Marshall paid off his debt for the four, then last year, acquired a couple of stores from local independent Hometown Rentals, and opened his first from-the-ground-up Buddy’s store in Roxboro, North Carolina. Just recently, he opened his eighth location in Collinsville, Virginia.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter what the name is on the outside of the building; I care about what we do on the inside, because that’s what makes the difference between us and our competition,” Jerry Marshall affirms. “I’m a genuinely caring person. I take care of my associates, and that rolls over to how they take care of our customers.
“My philosophy is, whenever we lose a customer due to a return or a move to the competition, we have done everything we could to keep them,” he continues. “We’re never going to lose a customer because we screwed up and didn’t do our very best to make it right. We always treat each other and our customers at the highest level and with the utmost respect.”
Marshall says he and the people he’s managed have never “chased the numbers,” i.e., goals or quotas set by higher-ups; they simply did things the proper way consistently, and always hit the numbers as a natural outcome.
I believe in treating people the right way and in doing things the right way – with honesty and integrity – and there’s just no substitution for hard work.
Jerry Marshall
“I believe in my team, and I believe in treating people the right way and in doing things the right way – with honesty and integrity – and there’s just no substitution for hard work,” asserts Marshall. “The upshot is, that’s become what I’m known for, which isn’t ideal – I don’t really want to be known as a workaholic, but it is what it is.”
Unsurprisingly, Marshall loves the mercurial nature and every-day variety of working in rent-to-own, but his favorite thing about RTO is the relationships.
“Again, I’m a sports guy, so my coworkers and colleagues are my teammates,” he declares. “I still have relationships with my former high-school football teammates, and rent-to-own has filled that gap for me as a professional. Now these folks are my teammates, and these relationships have kept me in the industry for almost 25 years.”
Marshall is also involved in APRO; he joined the association’s Board of Directors last year, and for years prior, APRO meetings and events were giving him the chance to not only make many more “teammate” relationships, but also gain information and inspiration to feed his passion for the business.
“APRO members are competing for the same customers and the same revenue, but at the end of the day, we’re also fighting for the same industry and the same jobs to keep all of our businesses alive and thriving,” states Marshall. “I love industry meetings and events, like the APRO Legislative Conference and RTO World; through them, I’ve developed key relationships all across the country and I’ve grown personally. I always return to work re-energized and more motivated; it can come from a conversation or a great speaker, but once I get even one nugget I can use to better my work or my life, that’s golden.
“I want to help lead my industry through APRO,” he concludes. “It provides rent-to-own with a central voice and keeps our business united, strong, and healthy.”
Bringing it back home, Jerry Marshall serves as a board member for the Boys & Girls Club of Lynchburg, which provides voluntary afterschool programs for local youth. Marshall sees a lot of kids passing through the club who are facing much of the same adversity he did as a child.
“I focus on the teens mostly,” notes Marshall. “I want to help them prepare to get through school, stay focused, stay out of trouble, and I want to present them with opportunities to find their own career passions and ultimately better their own lives.”
Marshall’s parents divorced when he was a teen, but he still has solid relationships with both of them, and shares his success to help better their lives, too.
“My dad has continued to struggle financially, but like me, he loves this community,” Marshall notes. “So I was recently able to bless him with a home, so he doesn’t need to worry about that. And my mom enjoys changing up her living room furniture, so I help her with that. And whenever something breaks, she’ll call me, like, ‘Hey, my fridge went out. How much is one of your refrigerators?’ She knows I’d never charge her, but she always asks.”
Jerry and Tracey’s family includes three daughters – Megan, 26, is in nursing and a new marriage; Mallory, 18, will be competitively cheering for Liberty University beginning this fall; and Maci, 9, who Jerry simply describes as “my heartbeat.” Their son, Morgan, is 24 and serves as his dad’s right-hand man, helping manage his various enterprises; he’s also father to the Marshalls’ first grandchild, Jaxon, who is 15 months old and infinitely loved.
Tracey works hard as a stay-at-home mom, and the pair have prioritized their children’s many extracurricular events over the years; Jerry has proudly coached them in football, basketball, baseball, softball, and soccer. Much of the family’s unstructured together time happens at Smith Mountain Lake, where they enjoy boating, swimming, and grilling with family and friends.
Tracey also works from home as a travel agent. She often accompanies Jerry to rent-to-own conferences and conventions, and the couple loves to get away, especially to the Caribbean. Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic was their fave vacay spot until a recent visit to Turks & Caicos; next stops on their travel wish list include Hawaii and Maldives (southeast Asia).
In addition to work, work, family, and work, Marshall’s pick-up basketball game is a twice-a-week mainstay, and he follows the University of Virginia Cavaliers, the Washington Commanders, and the New York Yankees with a nearly religious zeal. While he listens to mostly sports radio (the man likes sports), Marshall has also developed a fondness for country music by the likes of Kane Brown and Morgan Wallen, and he finds gospel music gives him just the inner lift he sometimes needs.
So that’s Jerry Marshall: Confident, competitive, caring. Hometown son. Hardworking man. Ambitious rental dealer. American Dream realizer. He’s got alllll the élan working, and an inspiring tale to tell.
“I love telling people my story,” effuses Marshall. “I’m not trying to boast, but I know what I came from, and I know what I’ve come through. I want people to know what’s possible. Tracey’s family did that for me; they were much more financially fortunate than I was, and they served as a kind of guiding light for me and a picture of what was possible.
“Doing what’s right all the time – whether others are watching or not – is key to building the life you want. Being honest in everything you do, having full-fledged integrity intact at all times, and just working hard.
“If you work hard enough, I believe it will happen,” he concludes. “It might not happen on your timeline or on the scale you want it to. But if you work hard with honesty, integrity, and respect, you’ll be better off tomorrow than you were today.”
And whenever you can squeeze in a snooze, you’ll no doubt sleep like a rock.
Kristen Card has been a contributing writer for RTOHQ: The Magazine for more than 15 years.
