Greg Skinner · President, Leopard Mobility · U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve · 1987–1997
Greg Skinner will tell you plainly that he needed the Army more than the Army needed him. He grew up in Dallas, Texas, the son of Baptist missionaries, and was an athlete good enough to earn a full baseball scholarship to Emporia State University in Kansas, where he also played football. Then his grades collapsed. He lost the scholarship; his father told him he was on his own, and in 1987 he enlisted. “The Army taught me discipline and structure, which I desperately needed,” he says.
Finding Discipline and Direction in the U.S. Army
He trained as a field artillery cannon crewman, Military Occupational Specialty 13B, completing basic training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, home of Army field artillery. He served as a gunner on a 155mm howitzer crew with the 1st Battalion, 33rd Field Artillery, known as the Big Red Machine.
He was also stationed at Fort Ord, California, and rotated to South Korea for Team Spirit, the large annual joint exercise between American and South Korean forces.
A howitzer crew teaches a particular kind of lesson. The gun fires only when every member has done his part, in sequence and under pressure, and no one’s job on the crew is beneath anyone else’s. Skinner learned that young, and it has organized the rest of his working life.
He left active duty in 1989 and used the Army College Fund to go back to school, finishing a degree in education at the University of North Texas. He kept serving, too. He spent eight more years in the Army Reserve and left in 1997 as a sergeant, E-5.
From Delivery Driver to Rent-to-Own Leadership
Rent-to-own found him while he was still a student. In 1992, he took a job as a delivery driver for Talley Leasing Company in Dallas, owned by Ernie Talley, an industry pioneer. When he graduated, a teaching and coaching job was waiting for him, but the Talleys made him a better offer, and he stayed.
The climb that followed looked a great deal like a military career compressed into a few years: delivery driver, account manager, assistant manager, and finally store manager of the first Talley Lease-to-Own location, which he helped open in Garland, Texas.
On the gun line, he had learned that you earn the next position by mastering the one you hold, and he applied that rule at every step.
Later, while working at Rent-Way, he took a store in Springfield, Illinois, and built it into the chain’s largest-volume location, earning Store Manager of the Year in 1995 and again in 1996. Rent-Way was then in one of the industry’s most aggressive growth periods, buying company after company.
Skinner rose with it through district, regional, and director-level roles and helped lead acquisitions along the way, including the Home Choice chain. By the time he left in 2000, Rent-Way operated more than 1,100 stores.
Acquisitions are their own test of the howitzer crew’s lesson, because hundreds of stores with different habits and cultures have to become one team, and that happens only when people trust the person beside them to do the job.
Building Leopard Mobility to Serve Rent-to-Own Dealers
He went on to open his own rent-to-own stores in Dallas, which he sold in 2008, and spent a few years as a franchise business consultant before returning to the industry as Director of Inventory Management at Flexi Compras. There he saw a problem that dealers everywhere shared. Customers wanted cell phones, but phones broke and turned over quickly, and few dealers could rent them profitably.
Leopard Mobility began as his answer. The company handles replacements so that dealers can concentrate on renting and collecting, and it is now in its twelfth year supplying the industry with cell phones and small consumer electronics, with computer gaming recently added. Skinner, who started in rent-to-own carrying appliances into customers’ homes, now leads the company as President.
Continuing a Commitment to Veterans and Teamwork
For Skinner, the connection between the Army and rent-to-own is practical rather than sentimental. “RTO is much like the military in that it takes teamwork and dependence on your co-workers to accomplish tasks and run a profitable business,” he says.
He has acted on that belief by hiring veterans at Leopard Mobility, and the company supports veteran programs through both charitable giving and volunteer work.
He has also given back to the industry, serving on APRO’s Vendor Advisory Committee, and he talks about rent-to-own the way many veterans talk about their units: a tight community, built on relationships, with camaraderie among dealers and vendors he has not found anywhere else.
The young man who lost a scholarship and needed someone to hand him structure has now spent more than thirty years building it for others.
About Leopard Mobility
Leopard Mobility Inc. is a Dallas-based wireless solutions provider specializing in mobile products and services for the rent-to-own industry. Founded in 2013, the company provides RTO dealers with a turnkey solution for smartphones, tablets, accessories, gaming computers, warranties, repairs, refurbishment, and related support services. Leopard Mobility Inc. has been an APRO member since 2015.
