Listen instead on your Monday Morning Drive:

A year ago, I walked onto a stage and put up a slide that said, “Rental Is Dead.”

For a room full of people from the rental industry (myself included, having spent decades in this business), it was a gut punch. But it needed to be said.

The industry I love no longer makes sense. The language we use, the way we price, the way we think about what we do… it’s all built on a foundation that crumbled years ago. We just haven’t noticed. We’re too comfortable with how we’ve always done it.

What most of you do isn’t rental, and it’s not even close.

Where We Came From

Before the 1970s, corporate events weren’t transactions. Theatrical and musical producers put them together. Without them, corporate events consisted of a microphone plugged into speakers and maybe a screen for a film.

If you want to understand our history, watch the documentary “Bathtubs Over Broadway” on Netflix. It traces the lineage of corporate meetings and industrial shows. Some of those big Ford shows from the 80s? I know people who worked on them.

Our industry grew out of renting film projectors to schools and military training facilities. During World War II, we helped train soldiers quickly: show films in the field, provide entertainment. That’s where audio visual came from.

Twenty years ago, you could still find film vaults in old AV companies: rental films, cartoons for parties, and the projectors and speakers to play them on.

As technology advanced, so did the work. Column speakers became arrays. Wireless mics appeared. Screens got bigger, projectors brighter. Audiences grew. Stage monitors were invented so performers could hear themselves. Slides gave way to video projection, then LED displays, then media servers.

Jobs got more sophisticated. But we kept the rental lexicon.

The Problem With “Rental”

Rental is a contractual relationship between a vendor and a user. Somebody rents an item to use. You rent a roto-tiller for your garden. You rent a shop vacuum. You rent a concrete mixer.

That relationship has no connection to helping a client get their show done.

Think about renting a car. Nobody asks, “Do you want tires on that? How many miles do you plan to put on them? Do you want the headlights to work?”

But that’s exactly how we “rent” shows. We itemize every component, option, and add-on. We turn a complex service into a transaction list of options you can and can’t choose.

Your customers never take possession of the equipment. They don’t pick it up and haul it somewhere else. They don’t take it home. They’re not responsible if it breaks. You are.

That equipment is your toolkit. When a plumber shows up to fix your pipes, they bring their tools. They don’t charge you rental on the wrench. You’re paying for the outcome — the pipes work.

When we do audio for people, we bring the tools. The customer doesn’t tell us which tools to bring. We’re the experts. We provide a service. The service is that everybody can hear.

When you use the word “rental,” you start thinking in terms of rental pricing: day rates, usage, discounts, and duration. None of those words belong in a conversation about getting a show done. None of them reflect the value of what you actually provide.

“Labor” Is Just as Bad

Labor is transactional. You’re paying for units of time rather than quality of service.

What we actually provide is a managed services agreement. We supply skilled professionals who bring knowledge and willingness to use it. If they can solve the problem in five minutes, it’s just as valuable as if it took five hours. The deliverable is what matters.

Call it “crew.” Call it “talent.” Call it your “team.” But “labor” belongs in the parking lot of a Home Depot, not in a conversation about professional services.

Stop Saying “Job Cost”

“Job cost” doesn’t apply to most of what you do. When we use it, we use it incorrectly. We’re comparing jobs that will never have the same circumstances.

It’s like a cashier at McDonald’s saying, “The customer who bought this Happy Meal took three minutes instead of two and a half, so our job cost was higher and we made less money on that transaction.”

McDonald’s doesn’t assess their business that way. They look at what it costs to service all customers.

All of your jobs together deliver gross profit over a period of time. Some deliver more than others through circumstances unrelated to the job itself. Some deliver more based on how you sold it.

The job doesn’t do anything. There are no costs “for” the job. There are choices we make that assign costs to areas of our business, and those choices change week to week depending on how busy we are.

Job cost, as a comparison tool, gives you no useful information.

“Operations” Isn’t What You Think

I talk about balanced businesses: selling, planning, administration, and execution. Those are the spheres.

You can still have an operations team. But understand where it fits. Operations is a subset of planning, not a replacement for planning.

Operations begins when equipment, personnel, or trucks need to be reserved in a system. Warehouse operations fall under this umbrella: labeling product and getting it ready to ship.

But there’s a huge piece of business between creating a sellable opportunity and executing it. That piece is planning. Project management, procurement, technical design, drawings, site surveys, managing contractors, booking travel, securing team… they’re all planning.

If you assign a project manager to do that work, they’re still doing planning. Their title just happens to be “project manager.”

Operations is one part of planning, not the entirety of it.

“Sales” Covers Too Much

Sales is not a person, and it’s not the whole process of growing your business.

If you were a pure rental company, you wouldn’t have a salesperson. You’d have an order taker, a customer service rep, or a rental desk manager. You manage transactions.

When we have sales, we have a selling process, and the people involved in that process are more than account executives: design, marketing, fabrication, and conceptual work.

But here’s the real problem: we use “sales” to describe a process that starts much later than the customer’s actual journey to your business.

Before a customer has a transaction to make, you do outreach, marketing, and business development. You host events and meet and greets. You build relationships with potential buyers.

As far as the customer is concerned, they’re already engaged with you. They just haven’t sent an RFP yet.

If we overuse the word “sales,” it’s probably to cover too broad a range of activities. The real focus should be developing ideal buyers who are ready to buy what you’re ready to sell.

You Don’t “Do Shows”

We do not do shows. Your customers do shows. That’s why they need you.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I do shows.”

No, you don’t. You get shows done for your customers.

You aren’t the producer. The show isn’t for your benefit. It’s their show and their benefit. You do it for them.

When you say “I do shows,” you position yourself as the star. When you say “I get shows done for my customers,” you position yourself as the expert supporting someone who needs help.

That second position is more valuable. It opens the door to advice, service, and partnership. It stops you from acting like you run everything and know everything.

You’re there to help. And helping them get their show done is the most valuable service you provide.

Choose Words That Add Value

No other industry I’ve seen self-destructs with language the way we do.

We use words that are outdated, inappropriate, transactional, and unconnected to service. Then we wonder why clients treat us like commodity vendors.

It comes from our rental history. I get it. But that history doesn’t serve us anymore.

Choose your words carefully, and watch how it improves your relationships with the most important people in your business: your buyers.