Daniel Singh is a smiley guy. Even over the phone, you can hear him grinning throughout the conversation, chatting and laughing in his easygoing, jocular way. It’s extremely engaging – heck, it’s downright delightful. So much so that you might never guess there’s a flipside to Dan’s natural ebullience.
The CEO of Dial Rent-to-Own oversees a company that spans 10,000 oceanic miles, while still managing to make it feel like family.
Daniel Singh is a smiley guy. Even over the phone, you can hear him grinning throughout the conversation, chatting and laughing in his easygoing, jocular way. It’s extremely engaging – heck, it’s downright delightful. So much so that you might never guess there’s a flipside to Dan’s natural ebullience.
The CEO of Dial Rent-to-Own oversees a company that spans 10,000 oceanic miles, while still managing to make it feel like family.
“I’m either hot or cold, either all go or all stop,” Singh confesses. “I almost always have a smile on my face – and when all is well, I’m happy to step back and let everyone enjoy it. But I can also be kind of a pitbull – when I latch onto something and dig in, I’m not letting go until I get what I want. When I see a problem, I step up and I stay on top of it until it’s solved.”
“I like to be the best I can possibly be,” he continues. “My dad, an extremely hard-working man, always said, ‘Put your name on everything you do.’ That’s what drives me, wanting to do my best at whatever it is I happen to be doing. And I want – I expect – the same from the folks around me. I feel like it’s my God-given responsibility to make sure you’re the best you can be, too, and I’m going to do whatever’s necessary to help you get there.”
As CEO and co-owner of Puerto Rico-based Dial Rent-to-Own, Singh’s sunny disposition jibes perfectly with the “island-style” service the company claims. But the subtler, more driven side of his personality is equally as – if not more – responsible for Singh’s super-successful 30+-year career, renting in paradise.
Dan Singh was born and grew up in the Coachella [yes, that Coachella] Valley of southern California, with four sisters – two older, two younger – two hardworking parents, plenty of extended family, and not much extra money.
“At a very young age, I learned to work,” Singh remembers. “Not having a lot of money to buy everything we wanted, we learned to work for what we had. I’ve got recorded income from 13 years old until now, at 56, which I’m pretty proud of. We were rich in good values – love, discipline, work ethic – and I feel privileged to have that.”
Singh is a second-generation American from a Filipino and Mexican family of field laborers, led by his maternal grandfather, who immigrated by boat from the Philippines to the United States and began picking grapes in far southern California. Over many years of hard labor, Singh’s Grandpa Ross became a labor contractor, running his own labor camp where migrant workers could come, stay, and pick fruit – mostly grapes – through the season each year.
“My grandpa was the first person to hire me,” recalls Singh. “I began by weighing boxes of grapes in the vineyards, to make sure they were consistent going into the packing sheds. And eventually, I made it up to being a picker – pickers earned commissions – but I was awful at it. It turns out I’m color-blind, which we didn’t know at the time, and you pick fruit based on its color. So all my boxes got stopped at quality control. I didn’t last long as a picker.”
Through high school, Singh joined his dad for janitorial work each morning before school and returned to work every evening after school, washing dishes at the mall food court or working at McDonald’s. He was a straight-arrow kind of a kid – of course, he didn’t have much free time to find trouble, a fact which still holds true today.
“Some people say I’m hyperactive, but it’s really the way I was raised,” Singh explains. “I never sit and watch TV, for example; I just don’t have time for it. There are things to do – there are always things to do.”
I never sit and watch TV, for example; I just don’t have time for it. There are things to do – there are always things to do.
While Singh was a good student and loved to learn, college wasn’t financially feasible. He moved into management at McDonald’s, tried working as a teller at a savings and loan, but ultimately, decided his calling was to be a professional surfer. In 1985, Singh joined one of his sisters living in Oahu, Hawaii, and began surfing the huge waves of the North Shore of the island daily.
“Just one thing stood between a professional surfing career and me,” quips Singh. “I just wasn’t that good. I tried my very best, surfed every day for years while working a day job. But after a few injuries, knee surgery, and a bad back, I decided hanging ten maybe wasn’t my life’s purpose after all.”
Singh’s fiancée’s boss was being pursued by a Honolulu business called Dial Rent-to-Own; they wanted to hire her, but she was happy at her current telephone-company job. So she referred them to Singh, who began at the company in 1989 as a route manager. The next year, Dial sold its Hawaii locations to Rent-A-Center, and opened up its fourth store in the Northern Mariana Islands. Dial owner Bob O’Connor tapped Singh to manage this Saipan location; then a couple of years later, O’Connor added the Guam store to Singh’s territory.
“In the early 2000s, we began opening up Caribbean locations,” Singh notes. “Bob opened up stores in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in Aruba, and wanted me to take over operations of everything. He also offered me the opportunity to buy into the company, which I did around 2009. So I began as a route manager, and now I’m the CEO and partner in Dial Rent-to-Own.”
When we were having trouble with Guam’s attorney general, APRO gave us counsel on how to best deal with it.
Today, Dial Rent-to-Own has more than 85 employees in ten stores situated within two regions located about 10,000 miles apart. In the Northern Mariana Islands, there are three Guam stores and a distribution center, as well as two Saipan locations; in the Caribbean, there are stores in St. Thomas, St. Croix, and Aruba, with the company’s headquarters in Humacao, Puerto Rico. By all accounts, Dial is an extremely successful and profitable business, yet Singh isn’t convinced more would necessarily be better.
“I mean, how much money is enough money?” questions Singh rhetorically. “Do you want to continue to go forth and conquer? Open more stores with more problems to solve, and less time and energy for your family and for enjoying the money you’ve got? And we’re located in such diverse and geographically separated areas, I’m just not sure we want to keep expanding.
“What I do want to continue to expand and grow is the level of service we provide to our existing customers,” he continues. “I want to continue to improve our focus on being a business based on relationships, based on people. I want to redirect our employees from bonuses as a result of achieving sales goals to bonuses as a result of exceptional customer care.”
To help level-up its customer service, Dial has used the pandemic as a chance to invest in its employees. Rather than furloughing folks because stores were closed or had very slow traffic, Dial has been taking this time to train them from their homes employing some swanky new technology. And, like the rest of the world, holding staff and management meetings via Zoom.
“We’re doing our level best to invest in our people so that they get paid,” asserts Singh. “It serves our long-range goals and serves them when they need it the most – which is right now. They still need homes, they still need to eat, and they’re still our family. And family is priority number one.”
But the coronavirus is just one among a laundry list of disasters Dial Rent-to-Own’s stores have continually experienced. Just within the past three years, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico were devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria [2017], Saipan was hit by Supertyphoon Yutu [2018], and, in January of this year, Puerto Rico had its worst earthquake in more than a century – a 6.4 magnitude quake with a 6.0 aftershock that shattered the island.
In other words, paradise has its price – which is one reason Singh says he’s so deeply appreciative of APRO and its membership. Whenever Dial is struggling, regardless of whether the trouble’s origins are natural or manmade, Singh depends upon APRO and his fellow rental dealers for guidance and help.
My grandfather kept our family together, and we’re still close. That’s the legacy he and my parents passed down – family is number one. It’s how we run our business, that we’re family, and it’s how we treat our customers, that we’re family.
“When we were having trouble with Guam’s attorney general, APRO gave us counsel on how to best deal with it; the same thing happened to us in the Virgin Islands, too,” Singh states. “When Hurricane Maria closed our stores for a while, APRO’s RTO [Relief to Our] Employees Disaster Relief Fund came to the rescue for many of our folks, helping them one-on-one to rebuild their lives.
“Additionally, I’ve met so many fantastic friends through APRO,” continues Singh. “When I took over all of Dial and I had no real idea of what I was doing, I called a friend. He said, ‘Come on down, spend some time with me, and I’m going to show you my stores and what you need to do.’ Same kind of thing with [Rent One’s] Larry Carrico, [Rent-2-Own’s] Mike Tissot, [UHR Rents’] Ernie Lewallen – there are too many to name. But whenever I have a question or need some help, I can basically call anybody anytime, and they’re incredibly giving. It’s an amazing experience for a businessperson.”
Spiritually speaking, it’s unsurprising that Daniel Singh is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, as it’s rather easy to imagine him knocking on folks’ doors to share his ‘good news’ with a smile that makes them smile, too. Singh also serves as the coordinator of his Kingdom Hall’s body of elders, which leads the congregation. Referencing recreation, Singh is a bigtime golf enthusiast, playing a couple of times a week.
But Singh spends the bulk of his Dial downtime with his family [again, unsurprising]. In early 2021, Singh and Suzie will celebrate not only 30 years of marriage, but also a brand-new extension of their family.
“The greatest achievements I have are our two children, who are really amazing people,” Singh effuses. “Our daughter, Danna, actually works here at Dial in marketing and advertising, and she also volunteers with our church. Our son, Taylor, lives in St. Augustine, Florida, and works for Ernst & Young as a senior consultant. He’s married to a sweetheart, and they’re about to add our first grandchild – a little girl – to the mix. I cannot wait.”
Singh had such a special relationship with his Grandpa Ross – “he was short in stature, but ten feet tall on the inside” – Singh is eager to create something similar with his own grandchildren.
“I had a wonderful grandpa, and I want to be that same sort of person,” Singh affirms. “My grandfather kept our family together, and we’re still close. That’s the legacy he and my parents passed down – family is number one. It’s how we run our business, that we’re family, and it’s how we treat our customers, that we’re family. I always said my first day as a grandpa is my last day of work, but as my sister reminded me, I can’t stop working because then I can’t spoil them the way I want to.
“I’m going to be the best grandpa and the worst grandpa at the same time,” laughs Singh, beaming. “I’m going to teach her to pull my finger and all those dumb jokes, and I’m going to spoil her to death with love. It’s going to be so awesome.”
Kristen Card has been a contributing writer for RTOHQ: The Magazine for more than 15 years.
