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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.

Ken Lucci 0:30

So on this episode James and Ken are going to talk about it takes to go from your first trip to you as the owner getting out of the driver's seat. So we're gonna it's gonna be more of a dialogue. Um, because it's a critical time. Let's let's just back up with some statistics. 80 percent of small businesses fail within five years, and that's just universal. In our industry, 80 percent of businesses cannot scale past one or two vehicles if the owner stays in the vehicle, stays in the car, primarily driving. Not the best use of his time. and it's not revenue generation activity. No, we're not saying he can't, he or she can't get in the vehicle on occasion when the company gets bigger. But if you are in the vehicle 12 hours a day, you're working in the business, not on the business. And I lead literally in the business. So James, let's start with from trip number one. What are the attributes have to be for the service experience? And then how does the owner transfer that knowledge to the first person he decides to hire as a driver,

James Blain 1:47

one of the beautiful things about our industry is unless we're talking larger vehicles, trip one, a lot of times is not hard to get to. Um, you know, you might have, you know, if you're in Chicago, maybe you have to have a hard card or if you're, you know, in a market where you've got to do special registration or register with your airport, right? There's things you might have to do, but typically, you know, there's not a lot that's going to keep you from being able to go out there and do it. The kind of secret that I would say at TripOne is that when you're doing TripOne, a lot of times the focus is on just doing it. getting it done, getting it over with. That's not typically when you're going to have your aha moment, right? Trip one, tip two, trip three, you're getting your bearings. But as we start to roll through, when we go through those trips, what you've got to be able to do is you've got to be able to be a trusted ally. To your passenger, right? If my first trip with you is going to the airport and you hit a spot time, right? You're there 15 minutes early. You're polite. You helped me get my luggage in the vehicle. You helped me to the airport. Guess what? I'm now looking at you as a trusted ally. If you're dealing with a wedding, if you're dealing with anything, if you knock it out of the park, right? And in most cases, That's fundamentals. Be on time. Communicate well. Do the little things. They're going to be calling you. And in the vast majority of cases we see, that's the birth of a company, right? The birth of that company is you start becoming a trusted ally, and people start calling you and finding out that they can tell others they can trust and call you. And that's what

Ken Lucci 3:23

making, making quality impressions. Now,

James Blain 3:28

Now,

Ken Lucci 3:28

let me just clarify, though, this is a little tongue in cheek. If I drive you to the airport and I sit behind the wheel and say, Hey, thanks. Is that making a good impression?

James Blain 3:37

no, no. And here's the thing, right? Your first Handfuls of trips are going to be more important, believe it or not, than trips further down the line, because if you've already got a trip, let's say you've got your trips for the day. You've got a whole day's worth of trips to do. It's not as important. Important at that point that you are really worried about whether or not I'm going to get it there at that point. Your concern is how do I keep knocking it out of the park? And as Ken already mentioned, how am I going to get out from behind the wheel? But when you're first starting out, when you don't have that full trip board, you can't afford to not have the repeat business. You can't afford to lose anyone because in a lot of cases you don't have anybody to lose. So it is extremely important from day one from trip one that you understand, Hey, at the end of that trip, I'm going to get out. I'm going to help you. I'm going to thank you for your business. I'm going to let you know, Hey, I'd love to serve you again. And it doesn't matter what kind of vehicle it is. It doesn't matter what kind of company you are. It doesn't matter what you're doing when you're starting out in this business, when you're new to this business. That's what makes the difference because guess what? I don't care if you came from Uber. I don't care if what, where you started, that's my expectation of Uber is I'm never going to see that driver ever again.

Ken Lucci 4:57

Yep.

James Blain 4:58

Doesn't matter how great doesn't matter how awful I'm never going to see that driver again. What are the chances, unless I'm in the world's smallest town, that I'm going to get the same driver and over and over and people love consistency. We want someone we can trust. We don't necessarily want to roll the dice every time

Ken Lucci 5:15

No, no. And so, so making a good impression is, is the greeting using the person's name. It's in my mind, it's, it's, it's not a handshake after COVID, but it's, it's a warm greeting.

James Blain 5:29

and you should be ready if they want it right. You should, they should be in control of that interaction.

Ken Lucci 5:34

And absolutely carrying the luggage, insisting on carrying the luggage. It's all of the fine points that you teach in PACS. So assuming that I'm a driver and assuming I'm an owner, I can only drive so many hours a day. How do I force multiply? How do I force multiply at the inception?

James Blain 5:58

So I think this is where you and I kind of really have our parts and our roles to play. What, what we did very early on at PAX is we recognized that one of the hardest things to do is to kind of instill the core of What's the business, what should you expect? What do I train him on? What do I teach him? Because, you know, a lot of the greats out there, what they do, you don't stop and think about how, why you're great at it or how to teach it. You're solely focused on how to do it. And so it really comes down to having the right tools in place to be able to impart that knowledge. But then I think that's also where kind of, Ken, you're going to be more qualified to talk than I am of understanding. How to make sure you're at a price point that you can afford to do it. And then how do you financially make that work? And that's where I'll kind of turn it over to you.

Ken Lucci 6:47

You know, you, you, you, you've hit the nail on the head with one car operators or what I'll say under five car operators. Where? they'll any ride is good business to them. And unfortunately, it's setting a bad, a bad tone. And it's it's the time where you should be building your business solid brick by solid brick. So I remember starting ambassadors a long time ago, and I remember being in the front seat of the car through probably the first 1, 000, 000, right? And I was more times than not, um, you know, when we were scaling our first year, we hit a million bucks. I made sure that I had everything I needed to do the job. My SUV had a small laptop, right? I started by replacing myself. If you will, I cloned myself. I wrote down all of the things that I thought were my touch points, and I trained my first part time chauffeur. In addition to that, I found one or two smaller, very small operators that I could, I felt I could trust. I, I, I made a friend who owned an, uh, I had an SUV, you know, we, we started rapidly, but the, in the beginning I had an SUV, so he had a Lincoln sedan. And we felt we could trust each other. We had a handshake. We're not going to steal people. We're not going to steal customers. So I instantly, I instantly force multiplied myself when I hired my first part timer who could work opposite hours than me. And I trained him in my way. And then I found a trusted partner. Right. So now take a look at that. If, if my SUV was probably back at that time, you could do between 120 and 150, 000 a year at an SUV. I mean, today that's a little bit light, but,

James Blain 8:41

That is.

Ken Lucci 8:42

but when I, when I, now I found that, that partner, right, I could probably do another 30, with him, right. And he was also going to use my SUV. So that's what I mean by force multiplying. The toughest thing for me as, as a, as a chauffeur, I loved taking care of customers. I loved it. You know, with the whole Ritz Carlton thing, I just loved it, right? I love looking the part, black suit, gold tie, et cetera. The toughest thing for me was not duplicating myself in the chauffeur seat. The toughest thing for me was to realize that I had much more important job. Outside that, outside that front seat and the reality that that was the easiest place for me to duplicate myself. So, you brought up in the beginning of this that, that, that revenue production is 1, 000 percent the job of the owner. You can't, in the beginning of the job, you can't hire a salesperson to do it. You have to do it. Somebody said to me yesterday, well, Ken, that's because you're got a great personnel. And I know I don't, I mean, no, I don't. I actually, I actually think, and his point was, you know, there were a lot of people that one car operators are minority operators, that English is their second language. Mike, my, my comment to him was a lot of people love to help hardworking people who came to this country. So all you need is a rock card. All you need is a business card and a smile, right? So if I'm driving and I have three trips today, my question is, what are you doing in between those trips? It's a perfect time to make. It's all about prospecting. It's all about the business cards you can create. It's all about the network you can create from the ground up.

James Blain 10:38

And I think you hit on something really, really important, right? And I can't overemphasize this enough. You know, people think that build it and they will come right. That's not how business works. We all love to think that we can go quit, you know, a nine to five and we can go start a business that'll be successful overnight. Okay. As we already started with most businesses are going to fail. And here's the thing. If your passion is, I was born to be a chauffeur, right? That's what I was born to do. That's my absolute passion. If you start a company and that company is successful, you will not be a chauffeur anymore. Because once you start to grow that business, you're the owner of the company. You're, you know, the manager of the employees. You might go drive every now and then, but if you really want to be behind that wheel every day driving, and that's your goal, it's totally different. Yeah, you're capped. It's not going to happen. Because once you become a successful business owner, you are not Your end product, you are the owner of that business. And so I see a lot of people that get into the industry and all, man, I absolutely love, you know, I love driving. I love interacting with my pastors. I love doing those things. That's going to change as you grow. And a lot of times in business, one of the best things I've ever been told, it's the things that we don't want to do, or

Ken Lucci 12:02

yeah, we don't like doing,

James Blain 12:04

We don't like do it. That's typically what you need to do most and so

Ken Lucci 12:09

you need to master it. You need to master it. You know, there's one sentence that I will tell every business owner, every small business owner, medium size. I don't care. Is this a good use of my time?

James Blain 12:21

a hundred percent. Absolutely.

Ken Lucci 12:23

Okay. So. Understand, I firmly believe this. No one is going to build the business but you. You can hire the best PPC person in the world, but you have to build the company from the ground up, just like that, you know, that flower coming up through the sidewalk. It's gotta grow to a, it's gotta grow over time. So, you're your best networker. And also, You're in a beautiful piece of metal as long as it's clean, right? It's great to show off. So you need a, you need a rack card, you need a daily prospecting agenda and, and an agenda for yourself to, to what's your plan of action to grow revenue. First thing we got to do, first thing is find that trusted partner, that trusted ally. If you don't want to trust somebody with their car, then you better find that part timer. right? That you can train to take on jobs because, you know, I found that I knew I had to get out of the front seat when I had to juggle a trip versus a networking event, a trip versus going to meet with a prospective client. I knew that was the time for me to get out of the front seat. So I do. I do think you have to have a goal and objective of where do you want this business to be in a couple of years. And what's the best way for me to build the foundation? It is what I do. So I would tell you, number one thing you got to do besides master the experience, which is all you is you need to know your cost structure and you need to know what you need to charge for gross margin. Um, funny on Facebook yesterday, I put out a calculator and it was a picture of, uh, 118, 000 Cadillac Escalade and with a little bubble on the top that says, you know, how many rides do I need to do to pay for this thing? What's my what? You know, what am I making per trip? And I had five people asked me for that calculator and it but it can be as simple as a piece of paper. What are your hard costs? Insurance, vehicle payment, repair and maintenance, etc. Then what are your soft costs? The other thing is I don't know if you see this. I see dry. I see one or two car operators that don't pay themselves and they're

James Blain 14:46

see it all time.

Ken Lucci 14:47

right and they just throwing the money back into the business. And they, by the way, they're also not including themselves as a cost when they're charging. So if you, if you want to get out of that vehicle, you've got to replace yourself with somebody that you're going to pay that, you know, you clone yourself or maybe you have a kid, right, that you don't pay. So I always tell people from day one, pay yourself the wages that A, you're worth is if you are out to try to get another job, you know, what, what am I worth? And then secondly, always have an eye to pay yourself based on replacement costs. I'm going to write, if I'm going to leave the car. And I'm going to do reservations. The same thing applies. I need to eventually get higher reservations. So it's a progression. The sad part is I think this is where the biggest failure is, is the failure from the getting going from 1 to 5 and then from 5 to 10. There are steps in there. There's no organizational development.

James Blain 15:54

No,

Ken Lucci 15:55

And they charge what they charge, what their competitors charge, or they charge what a network tells them to charge. Um, but, but I, so which is more important from day one in your eyes? If you're in the car, is it the service experience or is it marketing and selling? I

James Blain 16:16

you're, you're reading,

Ken Lucci 16:18

is.

James Blain 16:18

you're reading my mind because you, you know me and that's why we, we do this together for, for me, there's a couple of things. There's a lot of pressure in our industry to look the part, to be the part, to write. If you're, if you're starting out and you go buy a fleet of five brand new escalades, you. Better have the margin and you better have the business to pay for those five escalates because guess what? You know, unless you have very specific clientele, I don't care if it's a suburban that

Ken Lucci 16:52

there you go.

James Blain 16:53

nice suburban that has the leather interior that fits the part versus the brand new escalator, right? You have to understand your market. You have to understand what you're doing. And there's a lot of businesses that I see you. That are absolutely plowing money into things like that.

Ken Lucci 17:09

Oh, we call, we,

James Blain 17:10

to do that, but it has to pay you back.

Ken Lucci 17:13

call those all flash. No cash.

James Blain 17:15

All flash, no cash. And here's the thing, right? You know, I can't tell you how many times I have been in an Escalade, right? Or I've been in a Mercedes, or I've been in a high end vehicle, and my heart is breaking because that chauffeur, that driver, because I got stuck with a driver, not a chauffeur, Is not understanding that they are. They have to live up to that vehicle. I have to feel that not only am I in the lap of luxury, I'm being treated and I'm being served like luxury. And here's the thing I will tell you in today's market, in today's world, in today's economy, someone that shows up in a suburban that is going to understand customer service. That is going to take care of all the touchpoint. It's gonna give that level of service. That person is going to get more repeat business than a driver in an Escalade every single day because

Ken Lucci 18:10

Absolutely.

James Blain 18:11

when you get outta an Escalade, you don't feel anything. I don't feel special 'cause I got outta the Escalade, the way that person driving the Escalade made me feel matters. But I will take someone in a suburban 10 times outta a week now. If you've got the market to where you can put a true chauffeur in an escalade and your market will give you the margin to make that work more power to you, but don't try to do that just because you feel you've got to live up to an image

Ken Lucci 18:41

I

James Blain 18:42

of businesses fail because of that.

Ken Lucci 18:43

I agree. And I'm going to give you an example. And I'm glad you said that because, you know, my answer is People are going to rave about the experience of a restaurant by the food is served, the presentation, how they were treated by the staff, etc. Versus the flashy advertisement or even the fact that it's in a five star hotel. How many restaurants have you been in five star hotels that are shit? They're terrible,

James Blain 19:13

I ran out of fingers.

Ken Lucci 19:15

Right. So my answer to someone starting out is if It's not a choice, okay? You don't have to choose A or B. The choice, the first thing you need to do is perfect the experience and perfect making such an impression that A, the person will call you back and B, they will recommend you to other people. At the same time, make sure you know your cost structure and what to charge. It breaks my heart. When I see on Facebook, an uber black driver will post, Oh, I made 375 today and I worked 14 hours and I did nine trips or whatever it was. And I'm like, no, you didn't make 375 because your vehicle cost 2 and 11 cents a mile to run. Right. And, and, and by the way, you ended your day 70 miles away from your base and you're driving back empty. So the right. So if I was starting over again, and by the way, the funnest time I had in my life was the first year at Ambassador Limousine getting to a million million dollars. Tommy Mazza was my consultant. And, and one day when I literally, he came down for the day to, to, to, to consult for me and to put together a training program on, on, I think it was doing reservations at the time. I'm like, I got to go do a trip. He said, Ken, now you need to make the choice. Do you want to grow this business and work on it or do you want to work in it? And you will know. And, and out every chauffeur that's listening to this, by the way, at some point, we really have to. Broadcast went, we have to do a better job at letting these guys know they can listen to this, but you will know the day when you have a to make a choice between seeing a new client and doing a trip. It's time to get out of the car or what's more likely to happen. You're going to go balls to the wall 2 3 days in a row and then you're not going to have anything. So the only way for you to smooth out that consistency is for you to make time to work on your business. Somebody said to me yesterday, Yeah, you know, I'm up to five cars. How do I get it to 10? You know, PPC is that this? I said, let me ask you a question. Write down your top 20 customers, your top 15 customers and they and tell me what they do. and I don't do strategic consulting, but they bought the finance course, right? And he's like, Well, this guy's a doctor. This guy's of this. This guy's and I said, Hmm, do you think he's the only cardiologist in town? Dig where the gold is. Pick up. If you pick up your first five clients or your first three clients in a given well, it was zip code market in that zip code. Facebook groups for that for that area. Find the country club. That's the, the, the, the key is you're going to be a hamster on a wheel if you can't find the time to get out of that car.

James Blain 23:16

Look, it, I, I want to. Talk a little bit about, you know, kind of the hiring and getting people in there. But one of the things that stuck with me at a very young age is I had a guy that I worked for And we were talking one day and you know something about mowing grass comes up because yeah I can't afford to mow my own grass I said the hell are you talking about you can't afford to mow your own grass. He goes think about it How much is my time worth? If, if my time is worth 200 an hour and I spend an hour mowing the grass, I'm an idiot. I'm the dumbest person in the world. Cause I can get a guy to mow the grass for 30 bucks. I can keep making 200 bucks an hour, right? And guess what? Now, the grass got mowed. It's probably gonna look better cause that's what he does for a living. And I'm working in my strength, making the 200 an hour. I think you got to put yourself into that same thought with your business. If you're going to become an expert at running your business, you need to say, Hey, I might actually be able to go out there and do it better than that chauffeur. But at the end of the day, what is the cost of that trip going to be? And am I going to lose money on that trip as a result?

Ken Lucci 24:29

Am I, is what I'm doing now adding the most value to my business? Okay.

James Blain 24:35

not, what could you be doing?

Ken Lucci 24:36

Alright, and, and this brings me to something else. Okay. Even before you decide to get 100 percent out of the car. You know, at some point, burning candles on both ends, when you start to become very successful, your phone's gonna ring at all hours of the night, and that's the fastest way to burn out of the business. Okay? And the other piece of the puzzle is, You know, would you rather have your customer hear you waking up and groggy, or would you like to use a call center to do that? As long as you properly scripted them, right? You don't hand them the number and forward the phones without giving them explicit instructions. But, you know, the impression we talked about this on another episode is the luxury experience starts with the first customer contact, right? So let's discuss this before I'm even out of the car. Assuming that I've perfected a nice service experience and I'm getting some momentum with more customers. And by the way, I'm in a nice way asking or letting people know that we do work by referral. And it would be great if you could tell your friends if you love what we do. Best time to do that is when you get a compliment. Okay? So, If it were me, I would invest in a nice looking website. I would not embellish. I would not try to look like I'm Delta Airlines or, you know, a net, a global network. But I would build a nice website. I would try to get all of the attributes I can to get its search engine optimization. I would also, if I had one vehicle, I would make sure that vehicle had photos in the backdrop of was every landmark in the city that I was right. So out in front of Fenway Park in Boston would be one down in Clearwater Beach in Tampa, where we were right and etcetera. So I would start doing social media post. Oh, by the way, let's let's talk about this right now. The elephant in the room. Do not take pictures with celebrities and do not tell people. Didn't we just see that last week?

James Blain 26:39

I,

Ken Lucci 26:40

Didn't we just see that on Facebook? Didn't we see that on Facebook?

James Blain 26:42

all the,

Ken Lucci 26:43

It was a

James Blain 26:43

and I'm just like, uh,

Ken Lucci 26:46

that was a pretty large company that I saw it. I mean, it was the owner himself. And and so so no selfies with customers. But you know, is it okay to have your SUV in front of a private plane if it's a real one? Sure it is. Have a picture of your vehicle in front of an FBO.

James Blain 27:01

I want to touch on that for a second because there's a big difference between, you know, if you have like, you know, let's say you have a local celebrity and you drive for them a lot and they say, Hey, I'd love to help your business. And you say, Hey, You know, if you'd be willing to endorse me or if you want to do, I'd love to do that. That is completely different than when that is complete, right? So I don't want anybody to think, well, wow, he's saying I can't use anybody to Marcus. No, right. It is completely different to have someone that's endorsing you, supporting you. You know, You know, we use

Ken Lucci 27:31

take.

James Blain 27:31

then snapping a selfie when they're getting out, right? You know, Hey, can I get a selfie with you real quick? You know, they, they deal with that so much in their daily lives that that's not what they're not looking for you to fan guy, fangirl groupie out on them. You are providing a service.

Ken Lucci 27:48

take it to the next step. I mean, one of the things we did first on when, during the first year at Ambassador is, we started sponsoring, uh, the New York, uh, the New York Yankees at Steinbrenner Field. We started sponsoring Mahaffey Theater, for example. I mean, I'm not sometimes and we, we very rarely paid cash for it. Sometimes you can do sponsorships on radio and sponsorships on theater at theaters for a

James Blain 28:16

we can trade for it.

Ken Lucci 28:17

and we can trade for it, which we should spend an episode on inexpensive ways to market. But if I was trying to get out of the front seat, I would put some priority on a good website. I would really be my social man, uh, social media. marketeer to start with. I would do postings and content. Um, kind of a word of advice. You are your brand at that stage. No politics, no religion. No, no, no, no. If you're a Red Sox fan, fuck the Yankees. You don't say go ahead and bleep that out. Don't say that on social media. But you know what? But there's so many ways for you as a chauffeur during the day to turn your downtime into prospecting. I used to go to restaurant row. And when I owned ambassador, there was a lot of high end restaurant building going on. And I made it a habit to get to know the managers. And I still know a lot of those guys. So I would take a picture during the day when the restaurant wasn't open in front of the sign or in front of the entrance. Hey, check out Flemings. Hey, check out uh, Eddie v's. Ask for Steve Hickey the manager. Tell him I sent you right. And, and if you really good, you get pictures with them. And they'll put it on their website or their social, their social saying, Hey, Ambassador Limousine stopped by. Thanks for coming by. So, you know, it's a misnomer. Oh, I got to go buy, I got to go buy a minibus because, you know, I've got, no, you can, you can build your brand and build your company. little by little incrementally without getting so much in depth. You know, your five escalate example, your five escalate example. You can, if you really know your market, you can find the person that has an escalate and say, if I get a high end client, can we have a partnership on that? Or you certainly can find other chauffeurs that are, uh, independent operators to force multiply. But the, the key is, you know, I think you have to have a plan and, and I, I, I, if I had to prioritize on this during the same period, I would calculate my cost and make sure I had pricing for airport service from every wealthy zip code, right? Draw a circle around your region, however you want to do it. I would price charters from the wealthiest zip codes to downtown, wealthiest zip codes to sporting events, and I would make sure that my gross margins were there from day one. You know the funny thing is? You can never It's a lot easier to adjust your prices down for a volume client than it is to start too low and then try to go up. Um, And foundationally, if you don't have your prices right from day one, we just talked about it on the last episode, you're kind of building on quicksand.

James Blain 31:25

And, and now we're kind of jumping, right, and talking a lot about this marketing stuff. A lot of this is applying as we're getting to five and ten cars. You know, if you know that there is restaurant week in your town, you should be going to the top ten restaurants and saying, Hey. We'd love to partner with you and do a combo deal. Say, you know, try the best restaurant with the best way to get there and enjoy a night out, you know, or, you know, we always say, don't talk about politics and religion. But, you know, if you're going to church every Sunday and you haven't made it a point to let everybody in your congregation know. I provide car service. I'd love to work with other like minded people. Guess what? You're missing out

Ken Lucci 32:03

Well, that's what the way they teach it.

James Blain 32:04

got to get the word

Ken Lucci 32:05

Right. That's the way you teach in your, in life insurance. They teach you the first people to sell life insurance or health insurance for are the people in your network. If, if you're proud of the fact that you're trying to build a transportation business, every single person who knows you. needs to know what you do because if they like you, the chances are they will tell at least three or four or five people, right? So it is an instantly a way to build your network.

James Blain 32:33

now to that point, I'm going to, I'm going to do a what not to do. Cause I feel like we haven't done those yet because

Ken Lucci 32:39

No, we've been overwhelmingly positive

James Blain 32:42

Right. So I'm going to take it. I'm going to be a little negative for a minute. So one of the things that I see all the time, it shows, and Ken, you'll see it as well, is I'll be sitting there talking to someone or I'll be standing there talking to someone and someone new with a smaller company is super excited and they'll come in and they'll interrupt my conversation, right? I'll be in the middle of the conversation. They'll interrupt my conversation and say, Hey. I'm new in the business. I want to give you my card. And unfortunately what they've done is they've guaranteed that neither I nor the other person are going to endorse or use them because they didn't have enough respect to wait to then introduce themselves. They didn't care enough to even ask who I was. They're just putting a card in my hand. And one of the cardinal sins of sales is to just assume that you can go up and just start pitching somebody. One of the things that you have to keep in mind as an owner is it's great to talk about what you do. It's great to do that, but you have to genuinely care enough to want to have a conversation with someone. Because if you go talk to someone and you're talking about, Oh, you know, we have this great luxury car service, you know, we do this, we do that, but you don't take the time to find out what they actually needed.

Ken Lucci 33:51

what they do,

James Blain 33:52

and what they do, you might've missed the whole pitch of being able to share with them how you could help them, or they might've missed the opportunity to share with you, figure out how it fits together and then say, Hey, You know, we, we don't need what you're talking about right now, but I might need help in this other area. Is that something you could do?

Ken Lucci 34:14

you know, there's, you're, you're, you're bringing up something that again came up yesterday. Someone said Well, you're just a natural salesperson. And like it, it didn't start that way. Best books you could ever read is the little black book of networking and then how to win friends and influence people. Okay. Those

James Blain 34:32

And that's a classic.

Ken Lucci 34:33

those are classic. And those are the communications that have not, those have not changed. And there's a bunch of others, but the little black book of networking, and then how to win friends and influence people. If you just take those tips, the other piece of the puzzle is. You should be able to, I'm a big believer in line cards, something to leave behind. I'm a big believer in, you know, a quality pen, a coffee mug. I don't know if I talked about this, but we used to do paper cubes. And we used to write on the top, when you run, and on the bottom, the bottom one, when you run out, call this number and we'll come back. So, I love leave behinds. But to your point, the networking piece. People, people love to talk about themselves. But the idea is, you know, James, you told me you're you, you own a training company. Can you tell me what's that like? What do you do? Right. Um, you know, this is what I do. She's, you know, if you ever have people that come, do you have people that come into town for training sessions? Yeah, we we host training sessions. Anytime you need me to pick up, I have access to vans. I have access. So, what did you just do there? You found out more about that person's life. Right? And now, you applied it to what you do, after you got the who, what, where, etc.

James Blain 35:58

And, and notice how that need is a great example of something that's different. It's not, Hey, if, if there's ever somewhere you need to go, it's, Oh, well, you know, if you're looking to take care of those clients, I have access to these vehicles, because as we talked about in the beginning, one of the beauties of this industry is. Is that if you have partners, you can trust and you can gain access to those vehicles, you know, they're going to take care of the client and you still have an opportunity there. And I think that really transition us is into something that we talk about a lot. And that's actually bringing people into the organization and it can be really tough, especially in today's market to try and find the right people. And one of the sayings it's always stuck with me is you want to hire slowly, you want to fire quickly. Right. And the idea there being you really want to take your time to try and figure out if they're a fit. Um, but as, as Gary Vanderchuck has said, you've got to check your ego at the door when you're hiring, right? You want to think that you can get to know someone, you can make this great hire. And, and I will tell you, I've hired a lot of people. I've had to let people go. One of my big things has always been nobody that I've ever had to let go has been surprised. Nobody has ever come to me and gone, Oh my God,

Ken Lucci 37:12

I'm

James Blain 37:12

so out of the blue, right? Because part of building your organization, part of, you know, especially if you're, if you're trying to get out of the driver's seat, that's going to be your most important hire you ever make. It's going to feel like you're giving this person your baby to hold and you're terrified they're going to drop them. But when you're at five and 10 and 15, you know, there's a great Steve jobs quote, and that's it. It only takes one idiot, right? Brutal quote, absolutely brutal quote. But if you happen to have one person that you hire that doesn't care, that doesn't get it,

Ken Lucci 37:45

get it.

James Blain 37:45

happens to be driving the CEO of your biggest

Ken Lucci 37:48

They're the weak link in your chain.

James Blain 37:51

Yeah. And guess what? He's driving the CEO of your biggest customer. That's your biggest account. That right now, unfortunately, is what's letting you scale. And he just doesn't care. And the CEO says, you know, I'm not impressed. We're going to use someone else. You know, that's where those things matter. So being able to really invest in the time to do that and then equipping them for the role, making sure they know what's expected, making sure they know what they're doing and making sure, and we've talked about this before, that you have a mechanism in place to where you're not touching that employee. Just when they mess up, you're checking in with them, you're checking in with passengers. You've got to have a way to keep a finger on the pulse. Now what that looks like changes based on where you're at and the company you have, but if you don't have that, you don't know what's going on. And that's when you get into a scenario we've also talked about in other episodes, you can get into a scenario where you don't actually know what happens day to day on your trips and you think they're doing a great job. And come to find out they're not. So you've got to have a way to keep your finger on that

Ken Lucci 38:56

Well, and this is the other thing at inception, right? From trip one, you should have a review tool. You should be asking for reviews. You should be asking them to give you a five star on Google. You should be finding, asking for referrals. You should be working in, if you're picking somebody up on, uh, You know, Edgemont Street in the wealthiest area of town. Guess what? That's the best place for you to mine for more customers because you, your vehicle's been seen there. But to your point, you know, people wait to implement a review tool until they've got 10 or 15 cars. You know, let's talk about that solid foundation. An equalizer or force multiplier is when you have more, more, more, more, more Reviews, five star reviews, then a company five times your size, right? So now you're, you, you know, we all listen, I'm five, seven. I've been living with it my entire life. We all, we all have this insecurity about size, right? I don't have as many vehicles as so and so. Well, guess what? So and so is probably in Hawk up to his ass. That's not the measure of success. The measure of success is, do you have a plan to, to. force multiply yourself and get yourself out of that vehicle so that you could work on the business instead of in it. And how do you make sure every single day that you make every transaction count? You make every transaction count by making sure you're going to get that phone call from the person to come back to you. But then, you know, as the business grows, don't be afraid to perfect your 32nd commercial on who you are and what you do. Always find out what the other person does. Always collect business cards. And again, those two books are pretty, when I look back at that, when I look back at people's, oh, you're an ultimate salesman, I think that was the, what did it was, was I think it's Zig Ziglar's book. No, I forget, but it's might be Napoleon Hill, but anyway, it's how to win friends and influence people. Um, Dale Carnegie,

James Blain 41:01

Carnegie is

Ken Lucci 41:01

Dale Carnegie. I can't. statistically point to it, which bothers me because the National Restaurant Association has all of these statistics on failures. But most of these business, most businesses in most transportation companies, let me put you this way. They don't fail because they're too profitable from inception. They fail. They fail because they don't master the experience. Every, you notice what we talked, you notice what you'll never hear you and I talk about is The logistics of A to B because we're assuming it. We're assuming that you can get them from A to B. Okay, but that's, that's the expect. That's the minimum expectation. That's like saying he didn't get me in it. He didn't get it an accident on the way to the airport. What's going to get the client to come back is, is the creation of the luxury experience and mastering it.

James Blain 41:57

Here's what I'll tell you. There's, there's a couple of things that really stand out and I'm going to give you a lot kind of in one go here, but the first is somebody that is doing more than you. Is typically not going to be the one to talk bad or talk down about what you're doing. The haters are typically the people that are not where you are. They're not where you want to go. Very, very rarely in life is someone where you want to go right there. They're what you view is I'm trying to get here. Very rarely are those going to be the people that are saying, oh, you're dumb. You you're doing, right? It's typically, usually. The crab scenario, and a big shout out to a good friend of mine, Maurice, in the industry, who brought this up in a recent show, right? If you look at a barrel of crabs, what happens? That crab is trying to get out of the barrel. And when he gets to the rim of the barrel, and he's gonna get out, and he's gonna be free, and he's gonna make it Who pulls him down? Well, it's the other crabs. They reach up and they grab him and they try to climb on top of him So that's something really important to realize the other thing that i'm going to tell you that goes right backed up against that And this is something that for me showed up when I decided I wanted to try and get healthier And one of the things that they talked about a lot is a lot of diets a lot of health plans fail Because you're trying to starve yourself or you're doing this And you walk by a skinny person eating a beautiful giant cheeseburger dripping with cheese and juice and grease and you go, man, there's, you know, I There's got to be an easier way to do it. I'm not, you know, it's not the problem is you see that person You see what they've got you see where they're at and you say man I deserve to be there But what you don't see is you don't see their journey You

Ken Lucci 43:40

the work it took to get there.

James Blain 43:41

you don't see the work it took to get for all you know, this may be someone that Wakes up at 5 a. m. and works out, eats clean, eats healthy.

Ken Lucci 43:50

Just to have that one burger a week.

James Blain 43:53

burger a week, right? You're seeing them on that date, but we see this in businesses. How many times do we covet someone else's business and go, man, they've got all those vehicles. They've got all that. I deserve to be there. I deserve to have that. without having any idea what they did to get there. And where I'm going with this is that you have to understand that as a business owner, you're on a journey and you can't judge based on other people's journey. And you can't let people define your journey. And one of the places this shows up really, really early on in your business Is where you decide to invest your money early on. If you're really about scale, if you're really about growth, right? We talked about logistics a second ago. If you don't have good dispatch software, if you don't have a good process to make sure, and you do something stupid, like you book two trips back to back when you can't possibly do it, or you expect that that passengers getting out of that car at that exact moment, and that's going to give you a couple minutes, right? Now I've got just a couple minutes. The ball's going to drop and the second you start doing those types of things and you fail to have those It's tough right because you're going to fail and here's the thing. I hear it all the time You know, I got to put so much money into dispatch software. I got to put so much money in the vehicle I got to put so much money into my website. I got to put so much money into training I get it they add up but you've got to you've got to make the time And you've got to set aside the money to be able to do that and to our point You You've got to be able to charge what you're worth to be able to do that. Because even at the five and hen car size. I see things all the time. So I, obviously, if you're listening, you won't be able to see what I'm holding up, but I'm, I'm holding up a perfectly wrapped pack of Wrigley's double mint gum. And the reason I'm holding that up is that I keep it on my desk. I got, it's probably years old. This would be rock hard if I opened it, but I keep it on my desk to remind me of a story. And that story is that Wrigley's gum, when there was a pack, Bad economic downturn actually increased marketing. What's one of the first things we were in a cup marketing. We're going to cut training. We're going to cut everything that it, but, but what they did, yes, the wrong thing to do, but the reason we do that, right. And Ken, you'll appreciate this. A lot of times we look at that balance sheet and we look at, you know, our profit at loss, and we're going through with the accountant and we're going through all the numbers and we're saying, Hey, Anywhere I what's the biggest number I can scratch out and I can keep more money, right? But the reason I keep this on my desk is the reason that Wrigley's is still around The reason that I can go to the store and buy it is when that downturn came they plowed and plowed and plowed Every penny, everything they could get into marketing because they knew that that's what was going to lead to purchases, that that was going to lead to profits, that that's what was going to get them through. And so they found every other place they could, that wasn't something that was actually going to bring in the revenue to cut. And that's what got them through. And it's so hard as an operator, as an owner, as someone starting a new business, as someone moving into the industry. To keep that in mind, but you've got to really find ways to balance that and you've got to remember You've got to keep your foot pinned on that pedal Because if you're not figuring out how to grow if you're not spending the majority of your time On things that are going to generate revenue for your business You're going to stunt your growth or worse yet, you're not going to ever get to the point where you hit the self sustaining part of the business and you can really focus on scaling and not how do I get to the next paycheck,

Ken Lucci 47:42

Well, and it comes down to it, it comes back to what we talked about, knowing your cost and knowing how to price. Right? Because, uh, the next, the next piece of that puzzle is how many trips can I do personally, and how many trips can that vehicle do when I'm off duty, et cetera. So it it, it begins with knowing the cost that you started with. What to price and how to make a profit and then what your production can be and how to Grow the business profitably that way meaning If my vehicle is not moving on Saturday, I guess I better figure out a way to make it happen if every Saturday night The vehicle is empty and when there are sports games going on in town or concerts going on and fine dining going on I guess I have I have to figure that out

James Blain 49:41

you know, and, and you've made a great point because it really sets us up for a transition to where I kind of want to move as we move towards the end of this episode, we've talked a lot about what I think of as the fundamentals, right? These are the fundamentals of your business. Um, These are the fountain. You, you can't get from 10 50 to 100 plus without these in place. If you haven't mastered this, if you don't have these in place, it's not going to happen. You know, obviously it's a little different at that point when you're doing that. So I guess I kind of want to, Ask you a question, Ken, and

Ken Lucci 50:14

Mm hmm.

James Blain 50:16

is, you know, in all of the companies that you've looked at, I know you have the advantage of looking at tons of different companies. What is the biggest thing that you see of companies that are able to go from 10 plus, you know, I'll take the easy answer here. And that I think for us, what we see is they have a plan. They have a system, right? They, as they've every time they figured something out, they've gone back and said, okay. Here's our process for that. It might change over time. It might warp over time, but you know, we've got how we train people. We've got how we onboard them. We've got how we bring them on. We've got how we do this, at least in kind of the training and operation side, that's the differentiator. We see is they've got a process and they've documented it.

Ken Lucci 50:59

you're onto something. My answer is, as you do, as the revenue is growing, the business is developing and the organization is developing, right? So as revenue is growing, where did the revenue come from? How do you duplicate that and then building the business systems behind it? Um, I did my first reservation form when I was the only one taking reservations. I did my first vehicle staging checklist when I was the first one doing it. Why? Because I knew that when I hired the second guy, he was going to, I was going to say, see this, this is how this vehicle goes out. So as you're growing revenue, as you're growing revenue, figuring out, first of all, it's got to be profitable from day one. You know, nothing solves problems at the end of the month when you like F leftover money, right? Nothing solves problems when you have, you know, your bank account and you price things right. And at the end of the month, you say, Hmm, look what I have left over. Wait a minute. I did 100 trips. Oh, wow. If I do 150, I should have this much left over. So as the revenue grows, the business develops, the organization has to develop and the processes and procedures developed. Sure, there'll be rudimentary to begin with, but invest in the right person to answer your phones. Making the right impression because the worst thing that can happen is you're in the car, you're taking care of somebody, you miss a call, or worse, you pick up the phone, right? When the customer is in the car. Cardinal, cardinal

James Blain 52:32

you give up the customer you're with for the customer you want

Ken Lucci 52:35

so start, start developing your business, start developing your processes from the inception. Uh, I, I have a really, from a guy I must have adopted. He bought the driving financial success course. He's a one car operator. The course was too big for him. So I, I gave him his money back. I said, look, I want you to keep the course, but here are some fundamentals that you need to start with. And that, believe it or not, he was the reason why we, we, we started building the business development course, because when you're doing four trips a day, they're not always back to back. You've got time in between is, is to make use of that time.

James Blain 53:16

well And I think you've hit on something really really important because one of the things that I see in companies is they don't have their Financials together. They don't have their business together. They don't have their plans. They don't have their structure They don't have their systems, but they're convinced that if they increase the revenue All of those problems will go away. And I have seen some amazingly large companies, right? That they kept scaling revenue, scaling revenue, scaling revenue, scaling revenue, but they never saw the fundamentals. And eventually the business imploded. And the reason it imploded is as we've talked about in another episode, when we talked about financials, you have to be in a place where You are working on having the best company you can at your size and then you have to be actually scaling if your answer to everything is, we'll just go get more revenue.

Ken Lucci 54:08

We're going to grow our way out of the problem. We're going to grow our way out of the problems. Guess what? They're going to follow you and they're going to get 2x, 1. 5x bigger, 2. 5x bigger, 3. 5x bigger because the fundamentals are wrong.

James Blain 54:22

and I want to say, and I want to make this clear, right? I don't care what scale you're at. I don't care what size you're at. I deal with companies all the time that don't deal with this on the financial side. It's the training program is stuck in the owner's head. They just They know what it is and they've kind of explained it to a trainer and there's no formal training program. And now they've scaled and they have a team of 50 plus or even more and they call and they want our help because, hey, we've got inconsistencies. Some guys are getting five star ratings. Some guys are getting one star ratings are. Turnovers nuts. And the reason for that becomes exactly what we've talked about. You didn't go in and take care of these problems when they were small and they've grown with the company. And so if you really want to be set up for scale, if you really want to be able to grow, I think the big takeaway that you've got to have, whether you're at one or whether you're at a thousand. is that you've got to make sure that you are working on optimizing your company, taking care of the problems you have at the current level, and you are focusing where you need to focus. There's going to be times in your business where you're going to have to stop. You're going to have to say, Hey, We're at a point where we need to solve what we have and take a break from growth and then focus on scaling. Because if we keep scaling, the problems are going to keep getting bigger until we can't solve them.

Ken Lucci 55:43

Again, the ideology. The only the only thing that grows for the sake of growth. It's the ideology of the cancer cell. It's just not a it's not a good business plan. You as you grow the business. You have to become a less important part of your business. I know that's difficult to say, but you do that by creating the processes. It starts with the checklist. It obviously. Tech. The tech piece is extremely important. As you grow, don't make everything manual. But in general, it cannot exist in here. That's when you're geared towards. You are the lifestyle business. You are not a company. And the last thing I'll say is again is is every company is a business, but not all businesses or companies. So if you want to grow something beyond yourself and you want to scale it, you have to have the right financial foundation and service foundation. And then you have to grow the processes as, as you grow the business.

James Blain 56:49

couldn't agree more. I think, you know, one of the things and you hear it on Shark Tank all the time is, is this a business or is this a hobby? And, you know, Back to the quote that I had, I think for me, at least in my career, it's been the single most important quote and it's worth repeating, right? Now I'll probably repeat it plenty more times, but it's always the things that we're putting off, the things that we don't want to do, the things that, you know, are, hey, I, I, I don't, I, I know I'll get to

Ken Lucci 57:17

I don't like doing that.

James Blain 57:18

those are typically the things that need the most attention.

Ken Lucci 57:21

Yeah. And before they become a crisis, because people come to us in one of two ways, they're either really, they've done well and they want to get out of the business. And those are the ones we love because You know, they built a good company and then the second is they come to us because they want to get out because they have not made any money and they've got a nightmare on their hands. Those are the toughest ones. Um, and I'm amazed at the number of people that ignore the financial fundamentals, but also they don't understand that anybody can get an escalator, a suburban or any vehicle to come and pick them up. It's all about the experience. It's the experience that makes the difference. The vessel to deliver the service is exactly the same as what Uber Black offers or Lyft Lux and there's a few others of them, etc. But mastering the service experience is really what's going to help you, help you scale in the chauffeured space.

James Blain 58:23

absolutely. And, and I think the key there is to keep in mind that there isn't a single person on this planet that's irreplaceable. There was people here before us. There'll be people here after us. We're not going to be here forever. Right? Uh, the thing to keep in mind is. The same is true. People got around before you started your business. People get around after your business. What your goal is, is to build relationships, to build trust, to where people wonder how they'd live without your business. And then the trick is to never let them have to go figure out what to do, right? Because you're taking care of them so well that they say to themselves, I have no idea what we did before we met him.

Ken Lucci 59:03

Yep. Exactly.

James Blain 59:04

can do that, if you can be that person, you're going to be successful and you get to be the one that calls and says, Hey, I'm exiting. Now, if you're at that point where, Hey, you need that help. Hey, I'm not where I need to be. The other thing that I tell you is you are not in an industry that's cutthroat. You're not in an industry where you can't go talk to other operators. There are plenty of people, right? Myself can included. That have watched companies scale or been the

Ken Lucci 59:29

Oh, we've, we've walked in your shoes. We've seen it. And yeah,

James Blain 59:34

and that's what day in day out So what I would tell anybody that's listening to this and saying, oh, man I I think I might be the guy that doesn't have the systems or oh, man I'm the guy that's stuck behind the wheel is you know find Those people to reach out to that have been over that or they're going to help you get over that or that are experts in the area you need to focus on and get the help now because if you don't do it now, you're going to deal with a bigger problem later. And I think that's a great place for us to leave it today.

Ken Lucci 1:00:02

Sounds good.

James Blain 1:00:04

All right. Thanks everybody for listening. We hope you guys tune in again. It has been an absolute pleasure. Uh, if you're not subscribed already, we are the ground transportation podcast. And so you can listen to us on Spotify, Apple, wherever you might be listening, uh, make sure to hit subscribe. And then we love feedback. So if there's a topic you want to hear more about, if there's a topic you want to hear less about, or if there's just something you feel like we missed reach out, we'd love to get in touch.

Ken Lucci 1:00:30

and if you know anybody that would like to, um, be interviewed or participate in this podcast, we would love to have them on if you think they'll add value.

James Blain 1:00:39

Absolutely.

1:00:41

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.