Intro 0:06

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 welcome back to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. I am not with my, my partner in crime, James Blaine from PAX, is off doing other things, doing shovel training for a large company. So I'm, I'm flying on my own and I'm happy to introduce someone who's near and dear to me. She she was the president of the NLA when I was an operator. extraordinarily approachable and probably one of the top 10 most professional people I've ever met. Not only in this space, but elsewhere. So I'm happy to introduce Diane Forgey. She is the president of Wheatland Enterprises, and she also is a client of mine. We helped her sell her business, Overland Transportation in Kansas City. And Diane, thanks for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it.

Diane Forgy 1:25

Yeah, thank you for having me. Look forward to this. Be

Ken Lucci 1:29

So, yeah, and, and, you know, we'll tell the story. I mean, the reason why I wanted you on this podcast is you and I spoke at the Chicago or the Illinois Limousine and Bus Association over the summertime, and you talked about exiting. And I just found it even, you know, having worked with you on the exit process, I still found it. incredibly insightful, and I thought every operator should hear your story. So, why don't you talk about literally how you got into the limousine business, and then we'll go through your best times at Oberlin, and then I'll answer you, I'll ask you some questions.

Diane Forgy 2:03

Sure. I actually gave my parents the idea to buy a limousine and start a limousine service when I was in, in high school, junior high. And I, from an I was reading entrepreneur magazine at the time and there was actually a little article about the limousine business and I was just fascinated by it

Ken Lucci 2:22

Diane, do you want to talk about the fact that you were reading Entrepreneur Magazine in junior high and high

Diane Forgy 2:26

well, yeah, I, I mean, that may be another podcast, Ken, but I mean, I, I got an interest in my, my parents were, were Doing some real estate investing on the side. My, my father was in, in sales with a big company in construction equipment sales, but anyway, they just got kind of a little entrepreneurial spirit and I, I kind of latched onto that. They had their ups and downs and, and definitely in the limousine business. But anyway, I put that idea in their head. I actually found a limousine locally for sale. And again, this is so many little details, but they got in it. I had no intention of, and they started it on the side while they were doing their other things. My father drove and just did the traditional thing way back, you know, and so This before software before anything, right? Fast forward. I mean, I, I had no intention of being involved. I was excited and I was watching, but I went off to college, you know, I got out of high school. You know, I did well in high school. I played tennis as I'm, you know, varsity tennis team. And I was, but I was ready to get out of Kansas city, get out of Dodge, as they say. And I ended up going to Southern Methodist university in Dallas, SMU. Great school, smaller private school in the heart of Dallas. I wanted to be in a big city. And and I wanted to, you know, venture out. So, I took to that, like just, you know, putting, I just I love the environment, you know, cause even though, I mean, I was confident in myself in a lot of ways, I was still kind of an introvert and that really pushed me out there in a lot of ways. Like I was I, I took a heavy class load too. So, but I mean, I graduated with two degrees.

Ken Lucci 4:03

Which were?

Diane Forgy 4:05

I got a BA in economics. I loved economics.

Ken Lucci 4:09

Phenomenal.

Diane Forgy 4:09

and I, and I got a BBA with dual majors in finance and accounting. I, so what I wanted to do, I wanted to do something in the financial, you know, sector. I envisioned going to New York and being on Wall Street. Actually I didn't know, you know, what my path would be to get there, not not to immediately move. But anyway, so I loaded up on classes to get that done in 4 years. I, I placed out of some credits and I could have graduated early. But then my, thank goodness, my council, I, you know, I thought about it, but then my council said you could, you could get two degrees if you wanted to. And and so I stuck to that, took some, a heavy load. And again, I enjoyed the, the, the college environment. I was in a sorority was very social. Dallas is very social. SMU was very social. So. I think that helped me a lot with my confidence and all that. Out of college, I went to work for a commercial real estate company. I was actually interviewing with banks and I was going to start in the finance world by, you know, interviewing with some of the big banks. And then a friend of mine just encouraged me where he was going to go work at a very big Dallas space, but Texas, one of the largest Commercial real estate agencies and development companies in the state. And as soon as I walked in that office, there was this extra energy that was very different than the, than the, the banks, all the buttoned up bank environments, and I don't know, it was just very exciting and the people were very dynamic. And it was, it was a tough, it was there was two positions for kind of interns out of college and they interviewed, I was told like 300 people or so, and I was one of I take that back there cause there was, I started with two other guys, so they hired three of us out of 300 or whatever, you know, and, and I just dug into, I actually. Worked in the development department first on some projects with them, which was fascinating But then they pushed me out, you know, I mean it went well Learned a lot there. I think what helped me there. Sales for sure cutthroat environments surviving

Ken Lucci 6:20

Sure.

Diane Forgy 6:21

one of very few females, you know, in, in, in in the commercial real estate world in Dallas, talk about, I was, you know, I was okay with it, but it, you know, talk about chauvinistic environment and a little edge and, and little, little sexual harassment here and there I had. I had the secretaries coming to me complaining about who was hitting on them. There were the bosses and, and, you know, like I sat down with one of them cause I was friends with all of them. And I just said, Hey, can you, can you kind of lay off her? She's not very comfortable. And, and he just said, sure, Forgy, what about you? And I said, don't even go there, dude. You know? So, I mean, I, I played along with it. I, I, I learned how to. Not get flustered and deal with, you know, whatever. And then, you know, when I needed to became kind of one of the, one of the boys, one of the guys, you know, I can hang with them. And, but anyway, I definitely learned sales because, you know, you were pushed to number, well, produce for sure. But it was all cold calls. It was not just, you cannot sit back and put, put a sign up on a building and expect to get calls. And that's your business. You know, that's your, that's the way you're going to make money. And, and we got pushed hard for that and how many deals you had to spin, you have to have spinning, how many plates you had to be spinning in order to get closed deals. Cause real estate was hard, especially commercial real estate. It, you know, it could take months, even years to, to get a sale anyway. So I learned a lot of things. I learned how to read contracts. Because, you know, we had 25, 30 page, you know, contracts we had to, you know, lease contracts, sell contracts. I learned a lot of little pieces about real estate, and I was really passionate about real estate too, but it taught me other things. Negotiating, just, you know, sales you know, I, I was a hundred percent commissioned once I was out there. So I had to learn a little bit about me budgeting and making money from scratch. So, after five years or so in that business and I, I had hit some high points, some things did kind of change. The company got bought out by a big company. Some of the people I, you know, was working with went on to other things or other companies or moved out of the state. And I. I thought about going back to Kansas city, at least for a while, you know, kind of get closer to my family. Yeah, I spent a lot of time away and I thought I could continue in real estate there. And my, my parents had actually helped me get a rental house there and, you know, we're, we're managing it. So I had a little bit of interest in continuing to investing and, you know, connecting with a commercial real estate company here, but anyway, so I came home and, Took it kind of slow in the beginning. I, I was really just helping my parents in the background a little bit. I mean, I was looking for where I wanted to land, got my real estate license there, started to do a few little things. And then I just, they were doing everything by paper, because again, that was mainly what everybody did. And it was, it was a struggle. They had done some, some interesting things on a small scale, but I, I was like, man, this is, this is a tough road. So a couple of years later, just again, kind of passively being around it. Unfortunately, my, my father got lung cancer and it accelerated very quickly. And, you know, after the first few months of trying to do treat treatment that, you know, wasn't necessarily going to do a much, there wasn't going to be a cure necessarily. He, he passed away eventually. And but it was, you know, after about a six to eight month, You know, period of time. The last month was just came on really hard and I had to jump in and help my mother. She was in her sixties, you know, my father was in his, was 68. I mean, they're in their mid to late sixties. So they were not spring chickens. They'd been at the business for about 11, 12 years. And I was just like, okay, this is all she has, which isn't much. I got to help her.

Ken Lucci 10:13

Were they doing it full time at that point, pretty much?

Diane Forgy 10:16

me, not, not really, but I would say I, I had slowly gotten into maybe about, I don't know, more than 50%, but, but less than, Yeah, 50 to 75 percent because I was doing a little bit of brokering. And then I just had to switch and I was about to take a job. Actually, I was even thinking of come back to Dallas, but somebody had offered me a job in commercial real estate locally and I had to pass. I just couldn't do it. So, What I thought was maybe just going to be a short term period of stabilizing and see what, what she could do with the business, what we could do with it ended up being the beginning of my career in limited business 30 years later, you know,

Ken Lucci 10:56

Wow.

Diane Forgy 10:57

it was the early nineties.

Ken Lucci 10:58

How big were they at that point? How many cars, if you remember? How many?

Diane Forgy 11:02

at that, at that point they had actually gone down because at their height, they were maybe they'd gone up to 10 vehicles, but like a lot of little companies, what I learned, they had too many vehicles.

Ken Lucci 11:13

Yep.

Diane Forgy 11:14

They had bought some well, they had bought out a small competitor and they paid too much and took on too much debt to do it. That was another learning curve. I will tell you, I've learned as much. Seeing adversity and failure or or struggles and I have, you know, just getting the win.

Ken Lucci 11:31

Absolutely. That's the, that's, that's the hidden thing about business experience. You actually learn more from failure than you do from success. Success is fleeting.

Diane Forgy 11:41

exactly. And you can, you can get to dig and go to your head to if you until you have adversity. So I saw adversity almost at the beginning before I saw success. And that probably helped me along the way too. But so they had, at their peak, they had about maybe 10 vehicles. It was too much. They slowly had to get rid of some. But, you know, when I was, after I, you know, kind of took things over after he passed away, I think there was five or six vehicles and they didn't even need that many. It was really, unfortunately, pretty darn small. So the first year was a struggle. I mean, it wasn't a struggle. Actually, the business started to turn around. That was, that was Re almost recession time. And it had, there had been recession time in the late eighties, early nineties. But it was recovering and I just caught it, you know, on the, on the little bit on the up and turned it into something. I just started, you know, it was 24 7 though, you know, there was no. There was no other, you know, people helping, you know, internally, other than the chauffeurs

Ken Lucci 12:43

How did you do it?

Diane Forgy 12:46

7 phone and paper.

Ken Lucci 12:50

And, and, but you, but you grew the business by obviously creating a sales presence. I mean, yourself.

Diane Forgy 12:59

Well, in the beginning, yes, I was, I was doing everything. So, after a year of doing everything and not having time to really think about, anything other than I'm, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to melt if I don't do something different. At the time I reached out to the only other person like you in the industry, and that was Charles Tooney.

Ken Lucci 13:18

Oh, absolutely. Yep.

Diane Forgy 13:19

and I got over, he helped me get over the hump with some, some things like, you know, buying a software program, which there really weren't that many great options, but I did pick. The right option at the time, getting everything in a, in a software, getting a little phone system. And he said, you've got to hire somebody to help you like take reservations at least, or do a few things that you're never going to grow this company. I said, I believe, I believe that. So I couldn't imagine, I mean, I had never hired anybody, never had an employee. So I just, I had to learn that. I mean, luckily I I got along with people. So I knew I could, you know, I picked a good person for us at the time.

Ken Lucci 13:54

hmm.

Diane Forgy 13:55

they, and she, she just helped in the office. I got a little relief, was able to start, you know, kind of clearing my head out. And that was the beginning of letting go and just getting smart enough and willing to take the risk and take the time to train and, and delegate. That was the beginning of you know, the start, you know, just one new, you know, one employee at a time, I hired somebody else within another couple of years that who had really good dispatching skills. And that opened up my time tremendously as far as, you know, again, we had stabilized the company. I started putting money in the bank, not overspending, not paying myself much of anything. So again, that was just part of the deal at the time. And You know, we started to grow exponentially. I mean, we went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year when I first took it over to a million plus by, you know, like six, you know, seven years later or so, I mean, again, and that was after the first few years being a, you know, just a struggle and stabilizing, but it just started to get easier and grow exponentially. That, that person who I hired dispatch was also kind of my operations manager. I paid him more than I was. Making myself, you know, I, I've had to, and learned a lot from him in, in terms of how to, you know, just take the work and, and, you know, and get the logistics part down.

Ken Lucci 15:27

So what did you do when he was doing dispatch and you had a reservations person out there? You know, first of all, would you say the first million was the toughest?

Diane Forgy 16:42

Oh, I think it definitely, especially at that time yeah. It, it's hard to, to, to get, yeah. To get to

Ken Lucci 16:48

So how did you, what did you do once you put these people in place? What was your day to day job?

Diane Forgy 16:54

Well, I still had to help. I mean, the phones and everything were busy. I still had to have a suit ready to go, 'cause I'd still have to jump into a car but I could just, I spent a little more time learning the, the, my, what my software could do and reporting and, and just analyzing the business. I got a CPA. I got, you know, I really started to think more strategically about the numbers and the expenses. And, you know, again, I was still trying to remember. I was still working with Charles. I mean, we worked with him for a few years. So. I wanted to get the business into an office and, and, you know, we just got, I got better a lot of things. I spent more time with my clients on mostly on the phone. It was, I did go out and meet more of them face to face. And that was a big move too. I elevated a chauffeur who was helping us in the office help. He was helping us You know, with phone calls and all that. And then one of the things when the eye opening things, when I was, you know, got a handle on reporting and we had a couple of years under our belt, I saw a particular company who was a limousine you know, like a network, you know, that was farming work to us. That was a huge part of our business revenue. And as you know, when you see it in black and white, it was like, we have to diversify our client base. I cannot have a single client. Be that much of our you know data our life.

Ken Lucci 18:22

So let's talk about that. I mean, first of all, you, you hired a consultant and, you know, you and I have that in common. I mean, I hired Tommy Mazza when I first started. So you hired a consultant and Charles Tinney, you know, he was, I would say he was very good at finance, very good at operations, very good at, at, at, at revenue growth. But how important was it for you? to network in your local community and I'm going to get back to the revenue concentration in a second. How important was it for you to build your network locally?

Diane Forgy 18:58

Well, it was vital I mean Community in Kansas City is as a very big part, especially in the Midwest. And, you know, that's the kind of way that I think that our, our you know, our community is here. I mean, they people want to know you trust you like you and that's probably anywhere. Really? I'm not saying that, but certainly the, you know, Kansas City was, was a Was it was kind of easy to tackle that because there was really nobody doing that. I remember when we started to reach out to clients, you know, potential clients, you know, make sales calls and all that. And they'd say, well, oh my gosh, I've only used this company for years and years and they're not that great, but I didn't even know anybody else was out there.

Ken Lucci 19:39

There you go.

Diane Forgy 19:39

You know, and so out outreach is very important, but I got involved in you know, the, the chamber. You know, you gotta work it a certain way. You know, there's, there are, I, I, you know, I learned, you know, we, we eventually hired our first salesperson, you know, at, at some point early on the late nineties. And, she was part of some other groups like MPI and all that. And so I learned about that and got involved. Getting involved in your local community is very important. You know, going getting FaceTime with your clients as, as you're able to very important partnering with. Organizations, it's a stepping stone, you know, that's important to, I mean, we eventually got to a point. We were probably 1 of the 1st who we branded our logos very subtly, not obnoxiously on our fleet. We had our show 1st, where name tags with our logo on them, you know, very uniform appearance. We had a very uniform fleet. So, you know, that was all part of building our brand. And so when people saw us. At the airport or a hotel or an event, whatever. It was like, okay, that's an Oberlin car. And I don't know how many times, you know, we, we had that you know, that that's how we got a lot of business, you know,

Ken Lucci 20:55

Well, think about it. Think about it. A lot of companies don't do that, right? So you're in traffic and all you have, you have a nice little logo on the back trunk. And people see the name Overland and, and the impressions that you make in traffic are incredible. Now tell me something. When, what kind of, what was your decision and how much revenue did you have when you made the decision to hire a salesperson?

Diane Forgy 21:21

Around that million dollar mark.

Ken Lucci 21:24

That was aggressive.

Diane Forgy 21:25

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 21:26

That was aggressive. And she, you said she, right? So, and just generally, what would you say to a million to 2 million operator that was going to hire a salesperson? What was the most important thing looking back at that when you hired the person, what were their best attributes and you know, what did they do to help your business grow?

Diane Forgy 21:48

Well, luckily they had worked for another company, a bigger, a much bigger company than us. And she was looking for another opportunity. What we had done in the industry, there weren't that many other companies, but other chauffeurs, other people, owners, whatever saw us moving along and being very high quality. We weren't, you know, We weren't unethical in any way. We'd never go after anybody's people. But what happened is if they weren't happy, they came to us. But this particular person besides, I mean, she had been in the hotel world prior to that hotel sales.

Ken Lucci 22:26

Critically important. She's been in hospitality before.

Diane Forgy 22:29

exactly. So, you know, she, she was already pretty dialed in to the community, you know, and it, that we weren't a hundred percent in I mean, we had our, our corporate accounts and, you know, we, we advertised quite a bit at the time was mainly yellow pages, but,

Ken Lucci 22:46

Oh, sure, sure.

Diane Forgy 22:48

and and so she's just kind of, oh, she, she was just an insider that allowed us into some places we had never been.

Ken Lucci 22:55

So, let's talk about this. Let's fast forward a little bit. I mean, Overland, at Overland at the height, you were how big? How many, how many, how much in annual revenue?

Diane Forgy 23:06

About six before

Ken Lucci 23:07

About 6 million. Yeah, now think about, think about that. That's in the, that is literally in the top 5 percent of the industry. 5 to 7 percent of the industry, okay? So, You, you woke up one day and you said, wait a minute, I'm doing a ton, I'm doing too much work for one client. And what did you do there and why was that concerning to you?

Diane Forgy 23:31

the rates weren't so good, the pay terms weren't so great. That didn't help.

Ken Lucci 23:35

Yep.

Diane Forgy 23:36

And I mean, it gets very comfortable. I do see this in the I see it in small business period. But I definitely see it in our industry. You you get a comfort level, especially with with a small business. If your business is mainly taking farm in work, you know, fulfilling work for other companies that's great. And I have the best friends in the world because of it. You know, I, I was, I was a good partner. I, and we were in a position to, to, to take the business. We were definitely the, the go to company in Kansas City for, for years. So it's nothing against that. It's just that. You can't live and die, especially when it went down, like during the financial crisis and, and a few other times, you know, when Uber started take hold, I definitely saw dips in our affiliate work, you know, it, because they, they depend on the same kind of work that we do. Right. So I don't know what the magic number is, but I will tell you that the, the, the cumulative total of the affiliate work that we did in Kansas city was. About 25 or so percent of our total revenue, you know, and and that's with some pretty major players, you know, that we did a lot of business with.

Ken Lucci 24:46

But this is a valuable lesson for every company. Okay, is diversification is critical and it's diversification not only in the type of the corporate clients, but the type of clients you have and also the type of service you provide. I mean, you and I, you and I both know people in the industry that poo poo doing weddings, they poo poo doing private work. But the secret to your success was you, you diversified your business.

Diane Forgy 25:15

well, we never put the retail work either. Again, we're not a big market and I would have, I mean, until we started to get into the motor coach world, I didn't see a path easy path to getting to 8 to 10Million, but that was my plan. And and then And of course that was right before COVID, so it was

Ken Lucci 25:32

Right.

Diane Forgy 25:33

but you know, with the path that we were on in the first two months of 2020, I, we were, we were already 20 percent at what we were in 2019. And we had so much on the books in groups and events. So, but going back to diversification, no, we never poo pooed retail. We, I, I, I was, I'm, I'm a huge believer in diversification and, and we also had a Oh, a tremendous number of local individual travelers. But we, we had the big accounts you know, with the big companies in town and a lot of inbound business. We worked with, you know, some of the FBOs, you know, we worked with, we had inter the entertainment business, we had the majority of that with the big tours that would come in. I had two direct, you know, with tour managers as well as people in the industry that ended up with contracts for tours. So we had entertainment. We had. We had retail, we had corporate, we had affiliate. And, and then when we started getting more into the, to the mini coach and motor coach side, then we ended up more institutionally, you know, schools, churches, government big groups and events, you know, big, big groups and events, of course, you know, doing out of town work, you know, you know, doing the worldwide, we got into that.

Ken Lucci 27:54

okay. So, if you had to break down, because there are many companies that never get to the five million mark. I mean, listen, I deal with operators all day that have been a million and a half dollars for the past ten years. What do you think your top two or three secrets are to the fact that you got it over five million?

Diane Forgy 28:13

well, I mean, obviously you cannot do it alone or, and you cannot be a control freak, even though by, by nature, I really am a control freak. You have to, you, you have to build a team. I mean, you, you have, you have to be a good person. I mean, you have, like you said, I'm approachable. I am very approachable. I can take a lot. You know, I, I won't let people, you know, rattle me, you know, whether it's an employee, whether it's a vendor, whether it's a client, you know, I, I, you know, I I've been good at that. I've had training in that, you know, early on, I, you know, I had Dale Carnegie training back in high school, actually, you know, I mean, I just, I learned a lot, you know, it was part of what I learned in the real estate in my real estate career, but.

Ken Lucci 28:56

That's critical. You look, I mean, Dale Carnegie, Dale Carnegie Communications is, is critical. It's not just for sales. It's not just for sales. So, you know, you're also, you're being modest because you were one of the best brand, branded companies I ever represented. You know, you spent, you spent some time and effort. Not only designing your brand, but living your brand. And you know, your, your website was Casey limo. com. Right. And, and the Oberlin brand is, is to me, you know, you had brand standards. You just didn't, you know, create all kinds of different logos. And you, you created a very well known brand in your market. I, I, you tell me if I'm wrong, but you, I think you were the number one or number two. Every year, right?

Diane Forgy 29:49

What in in my market? Yeah,

Ken Lucci 29:53

Yep. Yep. And I mean, no question about it. So, one of the things that intrigued me about your discussion in Chicago, when we really put you on the spot to talk about exit, is, you know, you had said something very intriguing, which is, you thought about your exit plan when? When did you start considering what that might even look like?

Diane Forgy 30:17

I after the Financial crisis in late oh eight early, you know, oh nine. I think that was a wake up call That was different than like 9 11, which I'd gone through. And that was a kind of a short term blip. That was a, that was a real hit in the gut. And I just realized how fast, you know, things could change. I mean, it, it just, you know, I think again having my, Economics background and all that just the economic cycle started. I started going through that and I said, you know, this industry is very, very vulnerable to any

Ken Lucci 30:56

Economic downturn, especially if you're, if you're not, you're not diversified because I can imagine the fact that you did a lot of different services and you were diversified cushioned the blow a little bit. But I agree with you that financial crisis was a shock to this industry.

Diane Forgy 31:13

it was

Ken Lucci 31:15

did, when did you buy your building? Yes.

Diane Forgy 31:19

and that was a necessity. We, we had been 1 of the, the, the milestones and at the time in the late 90s, we We had a small office at that point, but we we won the contract, a hotel contract with, with at the time, the Ritz Carlton, and one of the requirements was being on site, so we had moved to the Ritz Carlton, it changed hands. It was the Fairmont for a couple of years. And then the intercontinental, which is still is. And we stayed there, but we, we grew out of the space. We couldn't, when we started getting more, you know, larger vehicles, we couldn't park them on site. We had to find a place to park off site. It became a real burden to try to service the vehicles and, and and just the logistics of it. So I started to look, I didn't know if I was going to buy or, or, or lease, but an opportunity, which was only about a mile from my house ended up happening, you know, coming, coming available. And I jumped on it and that was a, that was a. Big game changer. And, you know, I didn't even know. I had never gone through buying a building, you know, buying that much of something in one hit. And but I had early had met somebody again at a networking event, a banker. And I just said, I'm thinking about this. This was. Months before I, I found the building and I started building a relationship, just getting to know, you know, what the bank would need. And, and, you know, my, my, my, my books were were in good order. And, but I, he, you know, kind of walked me through the process. And, and, and when I saw it on paper, what they, what the terms could be. I was like, this is absolutely a no brainer. that opened up an equipment line of credit that opened up. You know, again, interest rates were so good at that point too. So that was, that was the best traditional financing versus third party financing is. So much better. And, and once, you know, once you can start getting financing, I mean, I, and they were one, I ended up with about three or four local banks I could get financing from. And that, but that was all that it all started. I had done some other local financing with some banks, but I just hated to see the interest rates, you know, that some of the third party lenders had and

Ken Lucci 33:32

Well, let's, let's talk about that because a lot of people don't understand it. And when I was an operator, I didn't spend a lot of time on it, which I wish I did. You know, first of all, your, your background was such that, you know, your, your financials were always in order, right? Number, and you were a numbers person, but when you network with that banker, he said, look, this is what you're going to need if you want to buy your own piece of property. It, the, the, the operators that think. Okay, just because I can get a loan means I must be doing something right. That's a wrong mentality. There are traditional lenders that are your local banks where you're going to get the best deals. And then there are third party financial companies and they call me all the time, call us all the time. And those are the people that are commercial lenders and then they may resell the paper. Let's keep, let's keep names out of it. But basically they're a loan broker. So You know the delta there, I mean, what, what, what, what do you think the interest rate difference was when you opened up the relationship with the traditional bank had to be three or 4% savings,

Diane Forgy 34:40

Yeah, that's about, that's about right. I

Ken Lucci 34:42

which is incredible on a, on $150,000 piece of equipment or even a sedan. Saving three or 4% is, is fantastic, especially 'cause we're in a business that only spins off net percent te 10% net profit.

Diane Forgy 34:56

Oh, yeah. Well, and it's simple interest too. I mean, the, the, the, the early payoff was no big deal,

Ken Lucci 35:01

Right. You could pay it off at any time. So what would you say that buying the building was a game changer for you?

Diane Forgy 35:07

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. It was a, it was a huge game changer. You know, it was a perfect building and, and again, my real estate background, I had good. I knew the criteria I needed and I, I knew, you know, what I was looking for and what would benefit, you know, from a

Ken Lucci 35:22

you, so you, so you kept it in another corporation. You didn't

Diane Forgy 35:25

Oh yeah. An LLC. Yeah, I've definitely put an LLC, paid myself rent. I mean, again, that was part of my. You know in my mind my exit strategy, this is how you build wealth You know, you've got to own things you got to own assets and you got to you know that bring in income And

Ken Lucci 35:40

you paid yourself a decent W2 income at that

Diane Forgy 35:42

oh, yeah, I I'd done that, you know, I mean I built it up. But yeah, I Paid myself a a w 2 salary for for forever really

Ken Lucci 35:53

Yep.

Diane Forgy 35:54

Start a 401k Plan so I could start putting money away and and and let you know, give the employees an option to put money away How did you have to take care of your employees? And that's a huge thing as best you can especially this is you know This industry it's not an attractive industry. It's not easy to find good people that will You know, work in this industry. So that's definitely part of it too. But you know, the building side is, was, was important. And I mean, obviously the market has changed now. You know, the buildings cost more interest rates are higher, but still versus lending and kind of controlling your desk destiny.

Ken Lucci 36:31

I just had 100%. I just had an operator in San Francisco call me and he said, I'm sick of paying rent, but I can't afford a building like well, then you find yourself some two or three people that you you want to go into a partnership with or real estate partnership with. And he ended up finding an office, excuse me, an industrial condo. And it's it's looking like it's going to work out for him. But you know, to your point, right. And this is really what, you know, one of the things that when you talked in Chicago, you said, you started thinking about exiting almost 15 years before you did.

Diane Forgy 37:10

Yeah, well, and I didn't have any intention of selling at that point, but I, you know, over the years I've had people approach me and, you know, if I want to see if I wanted to sell and, Actually, in most cases, it was a client,

Ken Lucci 37:26

yep,

Diane Forgy 37:27

that wanted to be like a silent partner or, you know, an investor, you know, just, and they liked us. They knew they knew me. And and you know, I had a broker approach me one time asking if I wanted to sell. So, you know, I always listened, but I, I, I wasn't necessarily ready, but I wanted my business to always be ready. And again, going through that downturn. I, it also just said, I need to start taking some money out of this company. I mean, I, and, and, you know, get it number one, get it out of the company, you know, from a liability standpoint, you know,

Ken Lucci 37:59

talk to me about, and this is getting geeky, but talk to me about liquidity. I mean, how much liquid capital, cash, did you, do you do, did you do credit lines with the local bank and just in case and such?

Diane Forgy 38:11

I really didn't have just operating lines. I didn't, I never needed it. You know, I mean, if I needed to buy a vehicle, I, you know, I, I, I got a loan. I never had to depend on a line of credit to make payroll or, or cover

Ken Lucci 38:26

scares the crap out of me. And people don't understand that when a line of credit is sitting on your balance sheet, it, it, to me in this industry, it means you either have a cashflow problem, you have a profitability

Diane Forgy 38:37

Right. I mean, that, that took years of just, you know, discipline. And focus on the financial side to slowly build up my capital. I, I did something too that I think that I can't remember, I can't pronounce the guy's name, but the, the profit first guy,

Ken Lucci 38:56

Absolutely. His book, Profit First. The book, Profit First, is a read for every business

Diane Forgy 39:02

yes.

Ken Lucci 39:03

Absolutely. No question.

Diane Forgy 39:05

I was doing that before I knew a profit first. Well, I mean, basically what I did, I, I set up about three or four different bank accounts, but one was for. My operating expense needs. One was, was I had in between all my money, all the, like, like the ACE, any ACHs or credit card processing went into one account. I, I either, I left some there, but I, that I transferred money into operations as I needed, but my real goal was to get as much into a money market account out of my, you know, I had to mentally say, this is, this is Warchest. This is, this is long term money. I, you know, to get that as big as possible.

Ken Lucci 39:48

It's financial management.

Diane Forgy 39:50

Yeah,

Ken Lucci 39:50

Now tell me, let's shift gears a little bit. 20, you're big in your 20 group. Your 20 group is one of the oldest 20 groups in the industry.

Diane Forgy 40:01

it's the oldest.

Ken Lucci 40:02

The oldest. How important is a peer group?

Diane Forgy 40:05

It's crucial. I, I don't think I would have done a lot of things without being in, in the 20 group. I, you know, it was the first 20 group. Actually Charles Tinney helped with their first facilitator and then Tom Mazza took it over. And then, you know, so we, we've, we, and then we had another company do our You know, moderating, facilitating for, for several years, but the people, the the ideas, the collaborating, you know, I always felt like I was several steps ahead because of the brain power and the trust and the just the, the savvy of the people I was surrounded by.

Ken Lucci 40:43

It's one of the best groups in the country. I mean, by the way, a lot of them are my clients, which is good.

Diane Forgy 40:49

And it still is, you know, it's a good group of very serious minded people. So I, I could go on again. I could go on

Ken Lucci 40:56

So, so let's recap. So, so, so you, when you, when you got into this business, it was a couple hundred thousand dollar business with your parents when you, you know, you got it in into it under, you know, some stressful circumstances. After you got a million, you invested in some decent people. You had a consultant work with you who advised you to bring in some more people because if you, if you You had to get, you had to get out and you had to build revenue, build growth. You brought on a salesperson. And the way I look at the success of your business having reviewed it, is you were diversified across the board in revenue and clients. You had a superior brand. I think before people really talked about branding. I mean, superior. I mean, and, and you, Kansas City. is a hell of a market. I mean, when I look at the GDP of Kansas City and the GDP, similar cities of that size, you brought in a decent team to help you, you, you paid them well, but the secret to you creating your own wealth, because you know, you obviously have done that, was you paid yourself a W 2 salary, you took money off the table in a 401k, you bought a building, And I, I'm, I'm not blowing smoke, but I'm telling you right now, what you've accomplished in your career is in the top 20 percent of, of what, of the people that I see in this industry. I've, I see people that unfortunately 30 years into the business are still paying rent. They're, they're, they're taking a modest, what I call, you know, Home Depot manager type, type, type pay. And they're the last ones to get paid. So if you had to give any advice, this is putting you on the spot a little bit. If you had to give any advice to, to, you know, the group that's coming up in the industry, I'm very excited for them. You know, the 30 ish 40 ish crowd. What would your advice be to them? What do you think is, what do you think is critical?

Diane Forgy 42:59

stay humble, number one, if you're not educated on your financials, you better be, you better get that way somehow. You better think about your, your, your, and Dan on paper and be very honest, your, your strengths and your weaknesses, SWOT analysis of sorts. I mean, the last couple of three years has been pretty incredible for, for rebounding and growing and getting rates up and all that. It's, it, but it's a little intoxicating probably, you know, in the whole cycle of, you know, the, the industry and the economy, this is, this, it doesn't just stay up, you know.

Ken Lucci 43:44

You're hitting, you're, you're hitting the nail on the head at the end. This is a phenomenal, because this is kind of like the crescendo, you and I have said the same things, you know, coming out of the pandemic, there were a lot of people on a sugar high. Okay. Now we're, we, we sit in a different space now because you know, you, you're not literally don't have to worry seven days a week about whether the vehicle is going to run. So we see different things. And We both commented on this. You know, people are getting back to bad behavior about loading up on debt. They are taking for granted that the rates are high, thinking the revenue will never fall. And you, you, you know, universally what you said in the, during this, is when you, when the industry hit a low point, you made a decision to prepare financially. You've always been financially astute. But you thought to yourself, wait a minute, number one, I've got too many eggs in this one basket. And number two, holy crap that, you know, we've got a financial crisis on our hands. So, you know, do you, why do you think people are so quick to, you know, get back into debt and, and forget the lessons, the shocking lessons of the pandemic?

Diane Forgy 45:01

That's a really good question, Ken. I mean, because the mentality is always, I think that if I've got money in the bank, it's there to be spent and there's, this is a very interesting industry and it's, it's, it's a lot of what people do is it's very ego driven and it real, that really. One thing I noticed after the financial crisis started to turn the, the attendance at the, at the shows and the involvement to try to get a affiliate work, especially. I mean, went into hyper mode. I mean, it crazy. And I think it, it was overwhelming in some cases. It was great for the big, for the big networks because they had their pick of every, you know, everything, but and people wanted that business. But, and then social media took hold. And I think, especially during COVID when nobody had anything to do. All of a sudden they became, you know, kind of, you know, superstars in their own head with, you know, and, and, and I, there was a lot of ego. I mean, I, I never saw so much ego and I mean, there's good people and everybody, and listen, we're all human beings and, and everything, but as soon as people, you know, we're, we're getting out of it. That's when, you know, the, the Rolexes start flashing and, you know, the, the S class, this and the G wagon, that, I mean, That is so dangerous. And it's kind of like when you, when, when the financial advisors are big people in the finance world tell you when, when your taxi driver can gives you hot stock picks, you know, it's time to get out of the market.

Ken Lucci 46:35

no, it's true. But you know, you know, I think when I, when I think of you and, and when we, when we were given the talk in Chicago, I saw a different side of you because I helped you, I helped you prepare your, your, your slides and at the end of the day, your Midwestern values and your Midwestern work ethic and your, to me, attention to finance is the reason why you've succeeded. And, you know, because, you know, frankly, there are a lot of companies that are even bigger than yours that were never that as profitable as yours. And they never had the ability to buy their own buildings. So, I think you've done a lot of the right things. Now, I will make a pitch that I think you should have you definitely need a second act in this business. I see, I see what you do as, I would be tremendous management and operational consultant. If you want to be a financial consultant, we can help you there too. But, but, but so many of the operators need the mentor. They need, they need the mentorship. And you, it wasn't just fortune. I mean, fortune, fortune favors the quick and fortune favors to me, the people who make deliberate decisions. Your 20, your 20 group was critical. And that was a group. The beauty of that group.

Diane Forgy 47:57

Okay.

Ken Lucci 47:58

You want to talk about a room that it's tough to be the smartest person in that room. That's a, that's a big room.

Diane Forgy 48:03

Oh, yeah,

Ken Lucci 48:04

And it's, it's not a room where, you know, everybody's bloviating about the size of their fleet. They get down to business. So your 20 group was incredible. And I, I, I have to toot your horn as president of the NLA. I think that those were like very calm years. They were great years. Yeah.

Diane Forgy 48:23

thank you. That was fun. And that was a good experience to, you know, both with, you know, just figuring out how to get along with a, with, with a, with a group of people with different opinions and ideas and, and and dealing with adversity. We definitely still had our adversity, but I had good support, good friendships, good you know, just good vibes during that time. For sure.

Ken Lucci 48:45

And, and you know what? I think in you, you were successful in managing through calm and managing through crisis. And, and, and again, everybody and your tenure in that, in the NLA realized that they were all, we were all in the same boat as operators. Regardless of size, we're all in the same boat. So we've got to wrap it up, but I, I definitely, we need to have you back and Diane, I'm dying to see you in, in Las Vegas. If somebody wants to reach you, how do they get in touch with you?

Diane Forgy 49:20

My email is diane at wheatlandenterprises. com. Just the way it sounds, dianedia, a, n, e, at wheatlandenterprises. com. I believe. I can give out my cell phone. Is that what you want me to do?

Ken Lucci 49:33

No, just your email. I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to do that. Just your email is fine.

Diane Forgy 49:37

That's the best way. I mean, I'm friends with a lot of people on Facebook. They want to message me there or you know, I, I'd love to, you know, I had a lady from the Ilba show reach out to me a week or so ago cause she was dealing with something. She wanted my my help with, or my spin on. And so, you know, I, yeah. I'm always been that, that kind of person. If I can help or at least listen and, you know, give some direction, I will do it.

Ken Lucci 50:02

well, I'll tell you, you are, you're an icon in the industry and you are a, you are absolutely without question One of the most professional people I've met in business and especially in this industry. So I look forward to seeing you in Vegas and we'll, we'll leave it at that.

Diane Forgy 50:18

Thank you, Ken. I appreciate everything. Believe

Ken Lucci 50:20

All right, Diane. Thank you.

Diane Forgy 50:22

Take care.

Intro 50:23

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.