Mike Strong · Founder and Owner, Mike’s Rent-To-Own · U.S. Army · 1967–1969
Mike Strong entered the Army in January 1967 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, a post he and his fellow recruits knew as Fort Lost in the Woods. After basic training, he went to Fort Sam Houston in Texas, the home of Army medical training, for his advanced individual training, and then to Fort Lewis, Washington, for combat medical training.
In December 1967, he was assigned to Tripler Hospital, the Army’s hospital on the hill above Honolulu near Pearl Harbor, and he served there until his time in the Army was finished.
Serving as an Army Medic During the Vietnam War
He tells that part of his life in a few plain sentences, and the plainness is characteristic. During the Vietnam years, Tripler became one of the busiest military hospitals in the Pacific, receiving many of the wounded who needed more care than the field hospitals in Vietnam could give.
A medic in that setting learns things that are hard to put into words and easy to recognize in the way a person works afterward. Care is practical, and it happens one person at a time. The person in front of you comes first, and the job is not finished until that person has what they need.
Building Mike’s Rent-To-Own in Kansas
After the Army, Mike returned to Missouri State University and finished his degree in 1972. He went into management with the Chrysler Corporation in St. Louis and, while working there, earned a master’s degree in business at Webster College.
It was a good career with a good paycheck, and in 1981 he walked away from it. He wanted a better life for his family and something of his own to build, so he moved them to Hutchinson, Kansas, and in May of that year opened a Curtis Mathes rent-to-own franchise.
He started, as APRO has told the story, with little more than a pickup truck, good credit, and a willingness to outwork whatever came at him.
Plenty did. The franchise ended unexpectedly, and a man with a young business and a family that had followed him to a new state had to decide what to do next. Mike rebranded, reopened, and kept going as Mike’s Rent-To-Own.
Asked what advice he would give future business owners, he offered three rules: “Never give up, do your best every day, and treat your customers like royalty.” A soldier would recognize the first two, and the third is the medic’s rule carried onto a showroom floor.
The company grew gradually, which is how Mike says it grew, from one store in Hutchinson to fourteen locations across Kansas, including the addition of A Full House and Basham’s Home Store in 2021. It grew with family.
His son, Michael Strong, and his daughter, Angela Strong-McCool, now help lead the business with him, and Mike, still at the office every day, has made a point of letting them learn to lead.
Angela has described a father who often stays quiet while she and her brother work out a solution, willing to let them try new ideas and sometimes fail. Mike, for his part, puts a premium on listening to others and on being willing to admit when he is wrong, which are not the qualities people expect from a founder but are often the ones that let a founder’s business outlast him.
Giving Back to Veterans and the Community
The care extends past the store. Mike’s Rent-To-Own has filled its delivery trucks with food for local food banks and supports schools, youth organizations, scholarship programs, and homeless and women’s shelters. It also supports Honor Flights, which carry veterans to Washington to see the memorials built in their honor.
In July 2026, the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce named the company its Small Business of the Month, an honor nominated by fellow local businesses. Nearly sixty years after a young medic reported to Tripler, Mike Strong is still doing the same work in a different setting, looking after the people in front of him, and making sure the veterans in his community are among them.
About Mike’s Rent-To-Own
Mike Strong Inc. dba Mike’s Rent-To-Own is a Kansas-based rent-to-own dealer with 14 locations across the state. The family-owned company offers furniture, appliances, electronics, televisions, tires, and other household products through flexible rental-purchase options. Mike’s Rent-To-Own has been an APRO member since 1993.
