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You're listening to the ground transportation podcast with Ken Lucci of driving transactions and James Blaine of PAX training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Ken and James.

James Blain: 0:26

All right. So, uh, we thought it'd be great to start off by talking about why we're doing this kind of what you guys can expect, what we're looking for. I'm James Blaine of PAX training and I'm joined by

Ken Lucci: 0:37

Ken Lucci from driving transactions.

James Blain: 0:40

So we're super excited to put this together for you guys and to kind of talk a little bit about what we're going to do. Like I said, we thought that kind of for the first episode, For our first time out, it made a lot of sense to talk about why we thought this was important and timely and why something like this needed to exist. So I think at this point, I'll kind of turn it over to you, Ken, and you can kind of start by kind of going over what you thought made sense and how we kind of got here.

Ken Lucci: 1:05

Sure. So, you know, my company is a financial analysis and M and a firm. We do valuations and we look at the financial health of businesses. We've looked at everything, uh, 250 companies plus. everything from under a million to a million to 150 million. And we see the same patterns and problems with all these businesses and it's getting to be very difficult to make a profit. Um, you know, when you're in a business that only drops 10 percent of every dollar to the bottom line to the net profit, you've got to manage all the dollars, nickels and quarters. And we're finding that from a holistic perspective, we're seeing all problems that are existing in the industry. And we're kind of both of us are in a unique position. We visit with operators all the time. We talk to operators every day. Our, our echo chamber is the entire industry. Our echo chamber is not just one business speaking to perhaps the employees or maybe in a 20 group. Our echo chamber is the entire industry and other industries. And, and you and I are sitting in the same place, right? We're, we're not above it. We're, we're next to it. We're a little bit over saying, Hmm. This guy's telling me about this problem. Funny. I'm seeing this problem in 20 other places. So we wanted to do this podcast because, you know, first of all, it's all going to come back to finance, profitability, customer experience, customer service. Because again, the patient is holistic. The problems may all be the same, right? But you have to take a holistic view of the business to determine. You know, where are we missing things? And, and we both see the same problems. And when you and I was speaking the other day and you said the service failures are on the fundamentals and we look at it and say, you know, this is why which profits are shrinking because what we're delivering is not necessarily across the board, the best product or the best service we could be. And think about it. The industry is facing a variety of competitors from a variety of different places, like never before. And, but on top of that, the margins are shrinking. The costs are getting crazy, right? Fleet insurance is through the roof, labor's through the roof. So the margin for error is not there. So when you look at failure, you know, failure is very rarely one problem. Failure is a compilation of all of these things. And it dovetails with what you and I do every day. right? If the meal that's being put on the table supposed to be a five star experience, it's not. It's borderlining on two or three. Profitability is going to suffer. So I want to point out this was your idea, and we're happy to. I'm happy to help execute it. And, um, you know, we've, we've worked together to hire a really good guy, uh, to help us with this and hopefully the operators will find value. They'll participate. They'll tell us what they want to talk about.

James Blain: 4:11

I couldn't agree more, you know, and if you're someone that's listening to this right now, you know, if you, if you don't know us, you know, we've, we're two people that have been in the industry. I'm going on my eighth year and I was really lucky that, you know, eight years in. I get to stand with the giants of the industry. I was really lucky in that my business partner, Bruce Heinrich has been doing this, you know, 30 plus years. He started his business with a borrowed car and a cell phone. He's worked in Los Angeles. He's got a successful company here in Kansas city. And so when I came to the industry, I was really lucky in that. I had a lot of people take me under their wing, but one of the things that really jumped out to me about why I thought this podcast was important and why having an outlet and a channel to be able to talk about these things is important. Is that things have changed just so much in those eight years, right? You know, when you're younger, you think, Oh God, eight years is forever. But really, you know, in a business, eight years is kind of a drop in the bucket, especially if you look at it at the level of an industry, right? This is an industry that's been around. It's going to be around, but the changes have been incredible. And what we're seeing exactly like you were talking about, Ken is a lot of these things are fundamentals. So in our world. Our world is that of training. That's what I do day in day out from our online platforms to going in personal working people. And you're absolutely right in that what we are seeing is not the complicated, right? It's not people getting things wrong because you know, the super complicated piece of API didn't talk to that API. It's no, the chauffeur didn't get in the backseat and he didn't clean out the backseat. It's, you know, it's not. We had an issue and somebody didn't realize that this person was running behind and now the whole board needs to be reshuffled. But the trip board doesn't get reshuffled, right? It's fundamental failures. It's the block and

Ken Lucci: 5:58

tackle. It's not special teams. It's absolutely

James Blain: 6:01

it's block and tackle. And it's it's wild because I've had the advantage of coming from outside the industry and having a small business family right where I've got a father in law is his own business. I came for a family that had their own business. Right. We'd love to think that we have these like super unique problems. Like nobody understands my problems. A lot of this becomes fundamental business problem, right? You know, I talk a lot about driving safety. It's the most invisible part of what we do. If you're in this business and you're getting people from point A to point B, you're not actually in chauffeured services, right? You're not providing a luxury transportation experience. But I talked to operators every single day that a lot of their most crucial failures are stuff like, Hey, our accident rates are through the roof or Hey, you know, we've, we're having all these incidents, we're having all this, you can't get to actually providing a luxury experience. If you can't nail that fundamental part of it, and that goes all throughout the business, if you don't have the fundamentals of your financials in place, like what you do, Ken, you can't nail and grow there. If you don't have everything in place. You can't kind of escalate to another level. And so what I really want people to understand is that's what we're trying to tackle here is what does it take to get that done and how do you do that? And I think one of the big questions that I always get asked from people is, you know, how do I, how do I get to that next level? How do I go to that next level? And I think just like any pro sports team, a lot of what we're going to be talking about is nailing the fundamentals, because like you just mentioned, Ken, we can't go to special teams. Until you're absolutely killing it on the fundamentals. And so that's our goal. That's what we hope to give you guys. That's kind of what we hope to do, but I think we also would be remiss. We didn't talk about some of those major changes, you know, in my world, I think one of the biggest changes I've seen is that we figured out that we can't set up a revolving door, right? There's not that revolving door anymore. You've got to bring people in. You've got to make sure you keep them. You've got to do retention. You know, Ken, is there something that stands out to you that is, you know, You know, hey, this is the one big thing I've seen or something that's shifted that's kind of jumped out at you that we're dealing with.

Ken Lucci: 8:05

Yeah, you know, um, the cost of hiring and recruiting, retaining, training, et cetera. It can't be a revolving door. You know, for the fundamentals of this business, the financial metrics have changed since before the pandemic. Now, the beautiful part of it is 2019 was a watershed year of revenue, but it was not a watershed year for profitability. And I could talk about all the reasons why. But emerging from the pandemic, 80 percent of the companies we've reviewed have had better financial performance after the pandemic, especially when they implement the programs we've been talking to them about. But what we've seen is while, you know, the revenue metrics have gotten better, People have increased their prices. The cost structure is going higher and it is managing everything. You just, what you just talked about, you know, we are in an industry where the direct labor to provide the services, somebody where somewhere from 25 to 31 percent of total income, the company takes in. Above and beyond that, your G and a supervision, your management, and your founder compensation, and all of your total labor could be over 50, 55%. So when you talk about that, managing that and reducing turnover, improving performance and improving all of those metrics and efficiencies is what's going to make you more profitable. So. You know, it's what I do is what I do is boring compared to you because, because you're training people on the service delivery and they absolutely, they should see it. They should get it. What I'm doing is I'm putting their nose and things that they may not be comfortable with, but they have to. but what, what I've seen the changes on is a constant increase in cost drivers, the direct cost drivers, that's number one. I don't know about you, but the labor aspect of things and attracting good people and keeping them and really getting them to do, you know, the fundamentals and then the little things has become very, very challenging. So I'm seeing the sugar high of high revenue and optimum, you know, Increase better profits in 2022. I'm seeing that trend down. I'm seeing revenue challenges are back. Pricing challenges are back and profitability challenges are back. And as we discussed, I, I can, I can point to two, two things that we're missing as an industry that is, is contributing to the loss in market share. And that is, is we've taken our eye off the providing the luxury service experience. And we are not extending that luxury service experience or quality service experience to every touch point in, in the, in our companies. That's really what I'm, I've seen, we've taken our eye off that ball.

James Blain: 11:07

a hundred percent think that that game has changed. So one of the things that I look at, and I'm one of those people, I love Learning from the greats, right? I'm the kind of guy that, you know, my, my thought of fun is sitting at my grandma's house and listening to the stories of how things work, because I'm huge on understanding that the more we know about where we came from, the more that's going to shape where we're going. And understanding that there are people that will point out the potholes. So you don't have to drive through them. Right. It's huge. And I think one of the things that comes up there and you're already alluding to is we've talked a little bit about how this industry has changed. I give talks all the time, and one of the things that I bring up is I show a black SUV. I say, this is a black SUV. It used to be really easy. If you had a black SUV, black sprinter, black stretch, you know, black, Lincoln, whatever you might be getting picked up and well, that's a limo. Well, if I said now, is that an uber or is that a chauffeur? Guess what? You don't know that distinction is gone. The delivery

Ken Lucci: 12:07

vessel is now across the board.

James Blain: 12:10

It's across the board. So if your distinction is, I have black cars, you're gonna lose, right? If that's your only distinction, you don't have a national level app that I can go into. You can't provide me the convenience level that they can, right? You can't compete in that way. So what we work a lot on when I talk with people a lot is, you know, what you can do though, is I can provide that concierge experience, right? If you send someone in that vehicle and it's the same vehicle, now it's the person in there that's making all the difference. And one of the things that we've seen time and time again, and I'm sure you see it with financials is you can't say, Hey, the playbook that worked 20, 30 years ago is the same playbook I'm going to play out of. Everybody's had that book. Everybody's used it. Everybody's read it. So if you want to be able to actively build and grow your business, you really have to be able to go in there and say, Hey, we're going to separate and we're going to basically set ourselves apart by understanding that we have to focus on those people. And that game in itself has changed because Coming into this year, you are now in a very competitive market. These people have lots of options on where they're going to go. Um, you know, obviously coming out of COVID, a lot of those guys that were older, a lot of those gals that were older, that were driving those vehicles. They didn't come back. Right. And that made up a big portion of the workforce. And so now you've got to bring people in and get them up to speed. And you're fighting yourself a little bit and that and can, as you mentioned, right? Your financials are king. If I can't get him in the vehicle, get him doing trips and generating revenue, I can't have them on the books. But by the same token, you've got to be able to balance finding the right people, getting them trained fast enough, getting them out there, keeping the service levels up and figuring out how to do that in a way that's sustainable and it's going to build and grow your business.

Ken Lucci: 14:01

you know, at some point there will be a postmortem on how the pandemic has changed, uh, human behavior, consumer behavior, corporate behavior, and then businesses. So when, when, when we look at our industry and we look at post Uber, which is all I care about because the rest is totally ancient history, you know, um, talking about this industry. post before Uber is like talking about this industry when Cadillac built the series 75. You're too young to know that. Or when Lincoln, you know, in the sixties, took that slab and created the first stretch. It's all total ancient history. So what Uber did to this industry is a few things that were scary. You know, first of all, it made everybody a chauffeur. Second of all, it, no question, no one can question that it is created a much more convenient ordering and logistics tracking process, ordering process, payment process, tracking the trip, detailing satisfaction, providing feedback totally. So where are we left? Well, here's the gap. Here's the app, total convenience. And then here's the chauffeured experience. What we're left with is first of all, every customer touch point. If they have the app, they have total convenience. Well, what we have is actual human customer touch points that we need to take advantage of. Brand person, persona in the market. You know, if the, if your website looks like a black car service, That's what people are going to see if it hasn't been updated. The initial inquiry has to be with a friendly person. The booking and reservation has to be flawlessly followed up on. Obviously, the logistics and service delivery have to be perfect. And that's where you get into the chauffeur aspect of what you do. What, what bothers me that I see more than anything, is if you accept the fact that the delivery mechanism, meaning the conveyance mechanism, Is now virtually identical to our biggest disruptor. Now forget about cleanliness for one second. It's the same black, black SUV. And I'm not talking about Uber X. I'm talking about, Uber, black, right? By the way, there's 110, 000 of those guys out there. So to your point, if what's pulling up is the same as the biggest disruptor who plays with their pricing, et cetera, we have to control the luxury experience. Through personalization, attention to detail, making that person feel special. You know, you and I have, we've talked about this a lot, you know, the experience is about emotion. The point, the point a to point, how do

James Blain: 16:58

they feel?

Ken Lucci: 16:59

How do they feel? Right.

James Blain: 17:00

How do you make them feel

Ken Lucci: 17:01

high quality? You make them feel special. You deliver the high quality. How do you, how do you exemplify exceptional service? Um, how do you make it unique that they're going to talk about you in a positive way? What scares me and you know, you more than me when you, cause we both travel to the same places when we're picked up in a black car and they don't know who we are and they don't know what part of the industry is kind of shocking that it would be tough in some cases to say, wait a minute, are we in an Uber black or we in a show by reservation? So chauffeured service. So I think that's,

James Blain: 17:38

I

Ken Lucci: 17:38

think that's where the key is. Um, and. Again, you point back to, well, Ken, you're a finance guy. What does it matter to you? Well, when I look at customer companies that are not profitable, I can tell you their service experience, their repeat clients, their customer trends, people who use them three years ago and not using them anymore. By the way, we track all that and it's, we bring it up to owners. They're shocked. Well, what, what, what, what do you mean company a, What do you mean they're down 30%? Somebody's going to call them. Okay. Well, you know, that's also part of your problem.

James Blain: 18:14

But if you don't call them, if you don't notice, if you don't, right. They're not, I think all of these owners love to have this thought, right. And it, and it can be tough because as a business owner, right. As someone who sits in that role, you know, for my company, we've got a lot on our plate, right. And sometimes, you know, you come in during the day. And transportation more than anything. It's what is most on fire right now? Oh, we are,

Ken Lucci: 18:37

we are firefighters,

James Blain: 18:38

firefighters.

Ken Lucci: 18:38

We are firefighters as an operator. I could, I would be lying to you. If I said I spent every day scrutinizing my financial metrics in my KPIs, my T I didn't have time, but I did, I'll tell you, I might, I, at some point, we'll discuss this. I was a master at making myself the least important person in the company. Um, not because I was lazy. It was because I wanted to focus on working. On the business rather than in the business. And if there's one thing we nailed, it was one thing we nailed was the service experience. And that really does come from the top. If you've got an owner who's not vested in striving for perfection, I mean, they have to understand you're not going to get perfection with everything, but striving for it is extremely important. But if your owner is, has a mentality of point A point B logistics, right? And he's missing the point. That now

James Blain: 19:33

absolutely

Ken Lucci: 19:34

the conveyance is the same. I see the existential threat to this industry as the degradation in the luxury service experience

James Blain: 19:45

100%. And it's it's interesting because that's something that we've we've already said we're going to tackle in the future. So if you're really about the luxury experience, we want you to tune in for that one with us. But I think it also leads us into something that I have learned. And that I wouldn't say it's exclusive to me. Right. But it's something that I had never heard anyone say until it clicked for me one day. And that was it. We are lending status to our clients, right? If I'm getting off a plane, if there's a hundred people walking and they're going to baggage claim. And there's a sharply dressed chauffeur, right? Nice. Not on the tie, right? Nice jacket, looking sharp sign, held up. Every other passenger is going to look and think, well, holy cow, he's got someone. They're carrying the luggage. They're doing everything. There's so much that guy must be important because there's somebody there waiting for him, looking good, ready to take care of it. They are getting that status lent to them.

Ken Lucci: 20:38

Why am I, why am I not doing that? Well, and here's what's

James Blain: 20:42

interesting.

Ken Lucci: 20:43

Yeah.

James Blain: 20:44

More importantly, right. What can be given can be taken away. Imagine being the person that, you know, is supposed to be getting status lent to them, and you've got that chauffeur that's leaning up against the pole, right, that looks like a haggard reporter, right, that has, you know, the flimsy, folded up paper sign with all the creases on it that you can barely read. Now, the, Perception goes from, wow, that guy must be important to thank

Ken Lucci: 21:10

God. I'm not that guy.

James Blain: 21:11

Right.

Ken Lucci: 21:12

There's no perception difference because now that person who's thinking that is heading up to the Uber lot, right?

James Blain: 21:18

Absolutely.

Ken Lucci: 21:19

So it cuts both ways. you know, 80 percent of consumers will pay for a better luxury service experience, a better appreciable demonstrated, better service experience, that's 80%. And corporations, you know, think about why a corporation hires us. They hire us, the person who's making the, who's coordinating. It's not the person who's taking the service there. They're either in procurement, they're an EA, but what, do they want? They want their boss not to complain to them. They want their mind, right? They want their boss to feel special. So, you know, the, the creation of an experience is all about the feeling and the emotion. And unfortunately, listen, it's true, right? That the most important thing is you've got to get the car there on time. But for a variety of reasons, operators are solely fixated on that. They are solely fixated on that. So it's like the, it's like the restaurateur who is so hepped up on getting the meal out of the kitchen fast and fast and furiously. That the presentation on the meal is terrible. Do you ever go to a diner and you see the heaped on food, right? And you're like, what the hell is under that sauce? Versus you go to a What is that sauce? You go to a white tablecloth and it's all about the presentation. Mr. Lucci, you know, this is your, this is your Butterfly, medium, well, filet mignon. Don't give me a hard time. I like it butter, medium well. And, and, and this is what you have. And think about how they present the dessert. the dessert tray or the, and they're, they're going through all the ingredients. This is all about the experience, you know, and we, we all, we're like, well, I can't relate to that. I don't buy on value or I don't buy luxury. Every one of us buys on value. And every one of us has something in our lives that we buy on luxury.

James Blain: 23:17

One of the things that gets taken for granted is if I have an account, right? Especially, you know, if you're doing retail work, right? They're only gonna get married so many times, we know that. But there's a couple things that happen, right? If you're on the retail side and you botch the wedding, they hate you. They, they abs, they're, they hate you. They will go out of their way to make sure anybody with a pulse knows you botched it, knows you're the worst, right? And you're stuck trying to find someone new. But that can go the other way. They can say, Hey, these guys knocked it out of the park. These guys killed it. The same thing you see on the exact side, right? If you've got an account, if you've got a company that you're doing work for and you're not knocking it out of the park, you're just kind of meh. And one time that person takes an Uber and he gets back and he tells his assistant. Hey man, I can't tell the difference. It might as well be Uber. I'm just going to Uber from now on. Well now, you didn't live up to the expectation. They'll just leave. I think, I

Ken Lucci: 24:09

think, I think mediocre service is more insulting than bad service.

James Blain: 24:15

And, and I agree. I think that, at least in my mind, I think the thing that people don't realize is that you are in more danger with mediocre service than you are with bad service. Because when you have really bad service, you start to typically see the hemorrhaging. You start to see the result. You start to see that you know that you start to see the signs. If you've got mediocre service, right? Yeah, you're just gonna kind of chug along and there's not going to be

Ken Lucci: 24:44

any trouble. Wait a minute. Until the better solution comes. Yes! Yes! I always tell this story. I gotta tell this story. So, I'm in, I'm in the business. No, I left the business, but I, I was still using showbiz service. And

James Blain: 24:56

for perspective, Ken, tell us, you know, your background as an operator, right? For anybody that doesn't know you. Kind of give him some background there because I mean, obviously I know, but for the, for our listeners, they might not know that you actually started in that world. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Ken Lucci: 25:09

I retired when I was 41 from the medical arm business. Um, somebody I really admire in my life said to me, you're wasting away to nothing. You better find a job and you better find a way to, you know, to hone your skills. So you talked me into getting a limousine business. I started organically from scratch. Okay. And I based my business on differentiation. We were the guys at the airport that had black suits and gold ties. And so I started Ambassador in seven. We did a million our first year. And it was based around perfect service delivery, differentiation. They had Lincolns, I had Cadillacs. They wore flowered shirts and had no signs or tablets. We had tablets. Black suit, gold tie, nameplate. Like military style nameplate. So. We grew from 1 million the first year. The second year, Tommy Mazza was my consultant. I had him on retainer for, I mean, I believed in consultants before I was one. And we bought a company called Julie's. Julie had passed away. She was the biggest in the market. She went, well, she was like three and a half, 4 million. When I bought her, she was 1. 8. This was during the financial crisis. We were growing so fast. We didn't know that we were in a financial crisis. And then I bought a company called all star, which, which again, was one of the biggest. But they had shrunken. So I'd combined these three companies, got them to five million in total sales. We did the presidential convention. It's in 12, 1. 4 million in 14 days. We serve both the Democrats and the Republicans. And I had reached, I reached my Peter principle. I saw that Uber was coming in. And I remember after doing the presidential conventions, I said, my counselor said, you know, you hit five million plus the conventions. What do you want to do? I think I'm going to sell it. You know, it was just not fun for me anymore. Um, that was the era of labor lawsuits and we were, we were all dealing with it. So I, somebody approached me and said, Hey, do you want to, you want to sell your company? And what happened was this guy handled the hard rock and he didn't have enough equipment. He said, can I borrow some of your equipment on the weekends? I said, I have a better idea. Why don't you buy the company? So we, the way it was very interesting structure to sell it. I stayed on as 51 percent owner. And he pledged all his assets to me until all the assets that he bought were paid for. And after the fact, everybody just asked me, Hey, can you help me strategic consulting? And I worked for one of the biggest guys in the industry, Bobby Bellagamba from Concord. Um, and then we honed the valuation skills and we get certified to do valuations. And you know, the rest is history. So, uh, I'm out of ambassador, but I'm still acutely aware of the operator. You know the fundamentals of operation and I'm flying home to Boston to see my mother I lived in Florida at the time and I land at Logan Airport and my car's not out front So you have to Logan you go to a special you go outside and then there's regular pickup people and then you know There's the lane for taxis and then then there's the lane for chauffeur So I'm going out to the chauffeured lane and I've got a you know, my carry on behind me and my car's not there There's nobody that says the sign of the window Lucci. There's nothing right? It's all outside You So I called the office and I'm like, this, the car's not here. And I'm not going to mention the network, the company that we used. But I see this shop dress guy in what I would call a black executive raincoat with a gold name tag. And he said to me, excuse me, are you looking for someone? I said, yeah, my name is Ken Lucci. I'm looking for my car. It's coming from such and such a company. And he said, no, I looked down the lane. He said, no, they're not here, but you know, sir, there is a rain, uh, you, but like a bus stop, you can wait in there. And I said, let me ask you something. Do you get paid to do this? He said, no, I'm just waiting for my client. And he didn't say who he was from. And I said, you know, what, what company you're from? And I said, well, he said, you know, I respect the company that's picking you up. They're a great company, but if you get in trouble, here's my business card. Well, I, I called the company and said, this guy's been trained well, he knew I wasn't his customer. Right. But he was extraordinarily personable. So, so I didn't have the greatest experience with the company that, that, that That was providing me with the service. But this guy made an incredible impression. So let me ask you a question. What did it cost him to do that? Nothing. Let me ask you a question. Do you think the chauffeur transportation market is expanding? Where more people, more, there are more users coming into the chauffeur transportation market? Or are we all just fighting, or are the operators all just fighting for the same market share that goes from one operator to another?

James Blain: 30:01

I don't know whether we're expanding or contracting right now, but I think we're definitely changing this inflection

Ken Lucci: 30:06

point. We're in an inflection point.

James Blain: 30:08

We are definitely in an inflection point. And one of the things that we were seeing and it was trending going into 2020, right? You know, obviously, March put a damper on it, but going into 2020, there was a lot of consolidation going on. There was a lot of, you know, different people that were amassing different size fleets and different companies. And we were heading in to a point of consolidation

Ken Lucci: 30:31

because 19 was a solid high year of high, high, high revenue.

James Blain: 30:34

Yep. Solid. And the first quarter

Ken Lucci: 30:37

of 2020 was without trajectory was continuing.

James Blain: 30:40

Yeah, no, I mean, we, we were not, you know, if, if we were on our way down and then COVID dragged us further, it'd be one thing, I think part of the reason that our industry was hit so hard. is, you know, we felt like we were on that elevator up and then the cable got cut in the elevator, dropped the bottom of the shaft. And unfortunately, some of us didn't make it back out. Yeah, but 40

Ken Lucci: 31:01

percent didn't make it through the pandemic because they didn't exactly. They didn't have the capital, the liquidity or the ability to pivot. In other words, they did

James Blain: 31:09

right.

Ken Lucci: 31:10

They didn't The heart attack killed him. The heart attack killed him.

James Blain: 31:15

Done. Yeah. And, and unfortunately, right, there's a smaller percentage that slowly just kind of petered out and didn't make it through. But what we've seen coming out of it is I think there's an explosion in smaller companies. Oh, tremendous. There's also explosion of people getting in. There's an explosion in people that are doing ride share that are on the lift that are on the uber that have figured it out. Yeah. Um, so I think sometimes we're also seeing those lines get blurrier, right? I talk to smaller companies all the time because, you know, we're training. We're development that are, hey, I have one car and I'm driving for uber black and I'm driving my own customers. Yeah. But when I'm driving my own customers, I want to learn how to step into luxury. I want to learn how to step above because I don't have a cool app, right? I don't, when they call me, they don't get to, you know, one of the things Uber innovated in, and I don't know if people know this, this is kind of something neat that I learned. They innovated the idea of watching the car come to you. So in the beginning it was, Hey, someone's going to come get you. Okay. Well, people were Are they coming? Are they doing right? Hopefully, I hope they're there. They might be there. They might not be there. And

Ken Lucci: 32:25

then you track the stats on the networks that actually stat that track the car, the calls coming back in the where are my car? Where's my car calls? That drives me out of my mind. Yeah. Even today, press three to find your car. It drives me out of my mind.

James Blain: 32:42

So what Uber figured out early on is if they want to put someone's mind at ease. Yep. All they have to do is say, Hey, not only is on his way, you can watch him. Yeah. Right. It is absolutely go to an airport and stand outside and look at how many people are mindlessly watching a little cartoon car driving. They could be doing anything else. But it puts their mind at ease. And that's something that we talk about and that I spend a lot of time really trying to get chauffeurs to understand, especially if you don't have automated text messaging, if you're just getting into the business, right? If you don't have tools, they're going to say, Hey, the chauffeur's on the way. All that. Guess what? There's nothing that is more like at ease for me than when I get into a new city. The wheels hit the ground on the runway. I turn off airplane mode and I see a text while we're taxing in. It says, you know, Mr. Blaine, I'm going to meet you down at baggage claim. You need to go to this store or whatever, whatever that might be. But I know I'm covered. I know he's there. We know he's waiting for me.

Ken Lucci: 33:42

you are correct that that's one thing that Uber did. The other thing that Uber did was, unfortunately, because of Uber Black. They, they have commoditized or moved into commoditizing executive level transportation because, because the asset is now the same. So, what's left for a chauffeured guy? You either need to hone, what are you going to do, go out and buy 120, 000 Escalades now instead of 65, 000, 70, 000 Expeditions or Suburbans? No, the answer is you need to hone your skill. You need to hone every single piece of that luxury service experience. And it, and it, and it intertwines with everything we've been talking about. Everything we've been talking about. So, well, listen, I mean, I'm glad we did this. I hope we, we get the chemistry of being able to add value. Um, it's not gonna happen without, without people watching this, emailing us, texting, etc. Saying, listen, will you, will you do an episode on this? You know me, I'm going to want to do a white paper article, you know, briefing document on every subject that we do. But you hit upon something that I really want to touch on before we leave. There's two things that bother me about, you know, I think it's myopic views. Well, the customer that uses Uber is not my customer. Really? Uber has a corporate, Uber has a corporate dashboard where everybody can track their trips. First of all, you have approved users for every corporation. You're tracking the trips, approving the travel expense, getting the receipt, right? And you see all the activity. That's a better corporate portal than any of the software in our industry. That's number one. Number two. I have siblings that, I have a sibling who is in the top 1 percent realtors in, in, in the country. Okay? She can pay for anything. And she uses Uber everywhere except the airport. Okay. Bye. And when she says I'm traveling here, who do you recommend? She does it because we still had the ability to own the airport because people don't trust the uber experience to and from the airport specifically to. Okay. But the other piece I wanted to touch upon with the people that use uber are not my customer. Uber Black provides the milk and bread, the entry level service that we used to all command. We, that was our domain, and it was the corporate executive or the corporate manager, the road warrior, like you and I are sometimes, traveling to and from the airport. That's the entry level. You, you and I follow a lot of these Uber, Uber Facebook groups. The ones that bother me the most are the drivers who say, you know what, I'm thinking about buying a Sprinter. So, I always say to operators, you know, it's all fun and games, it's all fun and games until their idiot uncle lends them money to buy a sprinter, and they hire their nephew to build a better, build a better website than yours, because that's the great equalizer, right? Yeah. The internet is the great equalizer of making you, like the one car operator, looking like the biggest chauffeured service in the region. That's what the operator doesn't understand. So when you look at this and you dismiss that customer that uses Uber, right? You're dismissing why they're using them. They're using them for the convenience of that app. And if they're buying Uber Black, they are a candidate for you. Okay? So, uh, listen, I hope this thing ends up adding value. It's the highlight of my, this is the highlight of my week because I'm tired of looking at financial statements, uh, and writing valuation reports. But, um, I, I, I will say I'm happy to do this with you. Um, And to me, that's like, if you've been Ritz Carlton trained to me, it's kind of like the guys to talk each other that Oh, well, I was in the military versus I was a marine. I was in hotel. No, no, I'm Ritz Carlton trained. That's another story. I have why I went to the Ritz Carlton Leadership Center and took all those courses and got certified because it wasn't my idea. My staff told me if I didn't take a vacation, I was they were gonna quit. But when I met Bruce and I saw what you guys were doing. And I saw what his pedigree was, it is very few operators that a granular level get, get what the job is. The job is not the point A to point B. The job is how you make them feel. And people will pay extra for that feeling. And that feeling is not by accident or anecdotal. That man has the muscle memory in his organization. So I'm glad you guys have been successful with the, with the training program.

James Blain: 38:31

Appreciate it. So I think on that bombshell, I think we're wrapping up kind of our first episode here. We want to thank everybody for joining us. I think one of the big things that we've already kind of dovetailed into, and I hope everybody will join us for is, I think one of the big things we really are going to be talking about is whether or not luxuries on life support, right? What does it take to stand out head and shoulders above. And be a luxury transportation provider so that when you are out there when you're running your business You are on that higher playing field. And so I I couldn't be more excited to be doing it with you can

Ken Lucci: 39:06

You know, let's get Bruce on the next time and let's let's dive into the service luxury service experience and give these guys some actionable items. You know, I don't know about you, but, you know, sometimes you can't help people that don't help themselves, right? They were their own worst enemies, and we're not looking to help the world. What we're looking to do is take the people that say, Yeah, I get it. You know, they could be hiring uber black. Or I used to do Uber black and I want to make more money. Well, this is the way you're going to attract them. And more importantly, if you, if you evolve the luxury service experience, the quality service experience, if you prefer to all of your customer touch points, you're going to attract people that are, that are going to be willing to pay more, and you're going to then be able to figure out how to get more of those people because they all talk, they travel in the same circle. So. It is the circle of life, Kimba. It is the circle of life. It's the service circle of life.

40:04

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.