Ken Lucci: 0:25

Good afternoon and welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. Um, we, James and I, are just really crispy road warriors. We've been on the road for, uh, when did you leave your house to go to the UMA?

James Blain: 0:43

I left on a Friday. I got back on a Wednesday and two weeks before that I was in Philly and I was there for I think seven or eight days. It's it's been a track.

Ken Lucci: 0:52

So I left, uh, I left for the Chauffeur Driven NLA show last Thursday. Uh, met Last Thursday, I met with my first prospective seller Thursday night. Uh, and then I met with three local, uh, companies, uh, on Friday, uh, that were actually two were local one was in early that were potential sellers. And so today is Friday and I, I'll, I guess I'll sleep in my. My own bed tonight. Um, so before we get to the chauffeur driven NLA show, you went to the UMA United Motor Coach Association conference, which was in Oklahoma. Okay.

James Blain: 1:41

City this

Ken Lucci: 1:41

Listen, give us, give us your sentiments. Give us a read on that conference, some of the highlights, the sentiments from bus operators from 24 and how they feel about 25.

James Blain: 1:55

So, so I'm going to pull it back a little bit further because a couple weeks before that I was at the American Bus Association and International Motor Coach

Ken Lucci: 2:03

That was Philly.

James Blain: 2:04

And that was Philly. Yeah. So that was eight days in Philly. Then we, uh, being a Kansas city native, we, uh, we had to kind of give Philly the, uh, respect on, uh, absolutely trouncing the chiefs and then, uh, turn around and go right back out. Yeah. What a game, what a game. It

Ken Lucci: 2:20

So that was kind of like, uh, that was kind of like a sentence for you. Eight days in Philadelphia, that was kind of a sentence. It wasn't really a trip. It was a sentence.

James Blain: 2:28

and for those of us, you know, for those of us that do a lot of shows, for those of us that work in both sides, the motor coach and the limo, we just kind of get it. Um, there's a lot of people coming over now, but for those that haven't been to either or show, um, it's really kind of for us an interesting set of shows this time of year because ABA. is really designed to take tour destinations and connect them with tour operators. So you have Broadway's got a booth. Um, Branson's got a booth, New Jersey, you've got States, you've got cities, you've got all these different places that are trying to entice the operator to send a tour bus

Ken Lucci: 3:08

To set up tours, to curate, to curate bespoke tours. So, you know, Pennsylvania Amish country might've had a booth and this is why you need to visit with us. Really? That's interesting. So it's actually a marketplace.

James Blain: 3:23

It is. And ironically enough, you've nailed it. It's actually called ABA marketplace. But the other thing that's unique is ABA has the bus industry safety council. I'm lucky enough to call a lot of the board members friends and to sit on their executive board myself. So what we do with the bus industry. Industry Safety Council is while they're doing education set sessions, you've got a couple of different tracks and there it's really focused on safety. It's focused on driver qualification files. It's focused on working with FMCSA. It's working, you know, all of the things that are purely safety. So even though you're connecting. Tour destinations with tour operators, you've also got this pure safety track running. And then as if we haven't had enough going on, you have Trailways and IMG, which are large networks, and they switch back and forth. So they switch between UMA Expo and they switch between ABA's marketplace. So this year, IMG was at Philly. So we have this kind of show within a show that is the exclusive group of IMG and those operators who are really kind of the top of that industry. Those are the operators that are going above and beyond.

Ken Lucci: 4:35

That's interma, IMG international.

James Blain: 4:38

Motor coach group.

Ken Lucci: 4:39

And this private group, it's a private group of operators. I think the best and the brightest of the motor coach industry. Okay.

James Blain: 4:48

Yeah. And we're so we're, we're lucky enough to have worked with one of the larger companies in there. So we were invited in recently. Um, we've been absolutely blessed to get to see what that group's doing and help do it. And for us, it's perfect because that group's whole goal. is to be the best of the best. And when you're a company like us, that all we focus on is safety and customer service and driving those up to the top level, it really kind of lines up perfectly with our core values. So to kind of bring it around, you've got that show, you've got ABA marketplace, you know, we've got IMG going on. We come back, we get a little reprieve, we turn around, we go back, right. You know, UMA expo. So we're going down, obviously. That's not too bad for us. It's only a four hour drive from Kansas City down to Oklahoma City. But there's a couple of recurring themes that have kind of come up there. The first, I don't care what side of the industry you're on. I don't care what kind of pastor transportation you do. You're absolutely going to relate. And that's insurance

Ken Lucci: 5:45

Mm hmm. Oh, God. It's a common thread, right?

James Blain: 5:48

It's dominating the landscape. It's dominating the conversation and it is the number one issue. And one of the interesting things is I was in a session at UMA. And one of the things they talked about is that you can actually get a 15 percent increase in your rate before they have to actually basically send you a cancellation type notice and say, Hey, we're doing more than 15%. And in that room, what I was hearing is 8%, 10%, right? Just under that is what people were saying their increase was. And one of the biggest issues, and someone brought it up in the room, is that it doesn't matter who's at fault. We had an operator in the room, raised his hand, had a question. Hey, I had a bus. Someone came out of nowhere. They basically cut the bus completely off. There was no way it could possibly stop. We ended up hitting that vehicle. All the lawsuits inside of that bus.

Ken Lucci: 6:43

Oh, Jesus.

James Blain: 6:44

They're against him, right? All of, all of the repercussions of that are against him. And I can tell you right now, don't get me wrong. I am all about making sure you've got your bubble, making sure you're keeping your safe space. But one of the things that that brought up is we are starting to get to a point because of the aggressive nature of the insurance landscape, where we're hearing more and more about fraud scams, and it's very tough to guard against someone who's willing to cut three lanes of traffic to essentially crash into the front of

Ken Lucci: 7:17

But stop, stop there for a second. So what, so every one of us has seen on YouTube the, the consumer vehicle or the SUV, and then a small vehicle gets in front of them and slams on their brakes. And there's just that, that person who's driving. the car that gets hit is lucky enough to have a dash cam. You know, at the end of the day, it's a suicide mission to me. If you are in the livery space or the motor coach space, if you don't have the maximum tele telematics available, Outside cameras in the front, outside cameras in the back, cameras on the side, cameras inside. I mean, I'm sorry. It is legitimately, there's no way to do business without it. If you, if you can't afford it, it means your prices are too low because to me, that's an extra level of, of insurance, right? And that's evidence that works for you or against you. Um, as Matt Dawes likes to say, if you don't have telematics, the plaintiff's lawyer is going to ask you why. And if you do, and if you do have it and you've not changed behavior and you've not, God forbid, if the driver was at fault, if you're not using it to manage your business, you're in deep trouble.

James Blain: 8:34

Absolutely. And it's interesting because that kind of dovetails me into to bring us a little bit to chauffeur driven because one of the things that we did see on the motor coach side is there was a little bit more focus on training, a little bit more focus on proactive. One of the things I talk about all the time is you've got your proactive realm. And you've got your reactive row. Now I've got to be protected in an accident and I have to have camera footage. I have to have telematics. I have to have everything there. That's my react. That's the footage of the accident taking place. But the other side of that, and this is something that the bus industry safety council did a mock trial on and what's something they actually focused on in there. Is if you don't have the proactive, the problem becomes that plaintiff's attorney. If you don't have training, if you're not actively training your team, how to avoid the accident, two things, one, you're going to have more accidents than you should. You're going to have a higher loss rate than you should because they are going to play like they train. You practice like you play. If you don't have that proactive training in place to teach them what to look for to take evasive action to build that safe space around the vehicle, you're at higher risk. The other side of that, though, is even if you have the telematics and you have the whole accident covered, you have the footage, you have the video. As soon as you get to court. The plaintiff's attorney is going to go, well, great. What did you do to prevent this accident? What were you doing to make sure our passengers were safe?

Ken Lucci: 10:01

this. It's a double edged sword, right? That's that telematics can cut for you or against you. Okay. So in this, it kind of, it kind of bothers me that there are operators, not necessarily the bus guys. I see the bus guys light years ahead on safety. I mean, do you agree?

James Blain: 10:21

It's I think, and I've had this conversation. It came up at chauffeur driven. It's it's because of where you start. And I'm sure you see the same thing in the financials in our world. If I want to start a black car company, I can go out, I can go buy an SUV from GM. And I can do some licensing and I'm in business. If I want to start James's bus company, I've got to drop 650, 000. I've got to get audited.

Ken Lucci: 10:47

Yeah, total, yeah, total barrier to entry.

James Blain: 10:50

yeah. So, so you're starting from a point of heavy regulation, heavy safety, higher stakes versus a point of lower regulation, lower stakes, and it kind of molds those operators, but we're seeing a lot of crossover. We had a lot of customers on the black car side. That we saw at UMA. We have a lot of people that we saw at UMA that are purely motor coach operators that came to see the NLA for the first time, that line is starting to blur a little bit, and you're starting to see that age of the mixed fleet.

Ken Lucci: 11:20

Yeah, and I, I would argue that you're starting to see a coalescence between the two industries for a variety of reasons. One, I believe that the traditional bus guys are retiring out. There's a lot of very successful bus guys that I know that they're, that are above the age of retirement. And they've done well, they've bought their fleet, they've run their fleet, and they own their fleet, and they own the property that they're in, and they've decided, I'm going to either sell or I'm going to wind down. So there's a coalescence happening between the two industries. The second thing that I see that the chauffeur industry has done is the chauffeur industry has raised the bar on service. Okay. Well, let's face it just by being open 24 hours and seven days a week, because we don't know any better on the chauffeur side. That's what we do, right? Now we're offering where bus companies typically, you know, have a record. Some of them have a recorder on it after five o'clock in the afternoon. Um, now, now we're providing 24 hour service, both, uh, reservations and logistics backup. So talk to me about, talk to me about the sentiment of, The show, the UMA show, how do people, you know, we, when was the last time you, I mean, you saw some of them at the ABA, but when was the last time you saw a lot of these guys and how did they say they finished up in 24? And how, what was the mood of the show? If you could take a mood,

James Blain: 12:50

The mood was pretty good. So we were in, uh, we were in Raleigh. For the last show. And I think we are still in a period of upward trajectory. A lot of these guys are buying vehicles. We're seeing a lot of growth. We're seeing a lot of great things happening. I think the interesting thing that we're seeing, and this ties directly into us talking about the two is that they are becoming more receptive to figuring out what we're doing. And I think that. You know, and I say we're doing, I happen to live on both sides of the fence. So it's interesting. I switched sides, but the black car side of the industry wants to come to UMA to understand the logistical, the management and the safety side of how they're managing that many buses, how they're running their fleet, how they're operating. The motor coach people that I see that are coming to our industry are trying to understand a couple of things. Um, they're on the black car side. They're trying to understand the opportunity for sprinters. They're trying to understand the opportunity for controlling the entire transportation experience with that company.

Ken Lucci: 13:50

wait a minute, back up, back up, back up. Are you saying the motor coach companies are coming to show for driven to dip down and now buy fleets, buy vehicles that are smaller.

James Blain: 14:01

we are, I have seen, so. In this show, you know, we've seen motor coach companies come to the CDNLA show, but at this show, I had a customer that was there looking for the smaller vehicles because they are now in that space. Um, I had someone else that I've known for basically as long as I've been on the motor coach side that was there looking to understand and learn more. About how things are working in the black car space and the opportunity and what they're doing in service levels. But one of the things that is really becoming key is controlling the entire passenger experience for a large client because what we've and it came up, you know, we had Maurice on a Maurice talked about. You know, I had my apple contract. I had little vehicles, a little vehicles turned into large vehicles because they knew they could trust me. They knew they had a relationship. We're seeing the same thing happen now in reverse.

Ken Lucci: 14:58

But I'm surprised at that because I'm very, I, I'm, I see the same thing. I don't go over to the, I'm not on the motor coach side as much as you are. I mean, we've got some huge valuations coming up, but we've not, we're members where we haven't gone to the UMA. And I, but I noticed two or three companies that we facilitated or assisted with the sale on, they were motor coach companies. And. But they also went down to minis and vans. I've not seen any yet that have gone dip down to providing chauffeured car. Um, I know there was one in Richmond that sold right. That was motor coach all the way down, uh, into chauffeured, but that's rare. Do you think you're going to see more motor coach operators trying to do the diversified fleet role, including chauffeured

James Blain: 15:46

I think it's going to be more, it's not going to be chauffeured the way we think about it. So for example, um, I've got a customer that They stepped into that world because of insurance limits and being able to have the insurance carry that the customers there wanted and what they're doing. But I also see, you know, Maurice talked about stepping from employee shut up Murray from eggs. Absolutely. Maurice from Mosaic, which by the way, um, big shout out and congratulations to Marisa Wanda. Um, they actually won an award at UMA. For what they're doing with being forward thinking on, uh, essentially the way they're taking care of the environment. And like he talked about, he saw where Apple was going. He went there, he actually won an award that makes a lot of sense off the, off the back of that

Ken Lucci: 16:34

Love to hear that.

James Blain: 16:36

the big thing that we're seeing is I see it more taking place. With larger corporate clients, I see it more taking place where maybe I'm sending a motor coach out for an employee shuttle and they need something smaller and I don't have something smaller in my fleet. So I go and I grab that and I start doing it because what we're finding is. There is that want and need to handle all of the pasture ground transportation in one company.

Ken Lucci: 17:02

It's smart.

James Blain: 17:03

It, it, it makes everyone's life easier. And it's been for a very long time. It's been the entry point for the black car guy, because I go get the contract for Apple, right? And we'll walk through Maurice Brewster story, right? I go get the contract for Apple for the smaller vehicles. I take great care of them there. I get slightly larger vehicles. I get slightly larger vehicles. You reach a point where they say, Hey, we have this partner. We know, like, and trust. And those are the keys. Know, like, and trust. And they're providing a level of service that's higher than everybody else. Why wouldn't I want them to just take the whole thing and take care of it

Ken Lucci: 17:38

No, and you listen, you're speaking about something that is critical. Um, is diverse, diversified fleets, diversified clients, but more importantly, uh, we talked about this on the side. My, my biggest fear for the chauffeured industry and our role of providing corporate, uh, ground transportation for the corporate space. is some operators have taken a step back on from SUVs and sedans. They have basically said, Oh, there's too much competition there. I'm going to focus solely on large vehicles to your point. Number one, you have motor coach companies that are doing the opposite. Now they're, they're coming down into the space. Whereas we, the chauffeured space started going up into motor coaches pre pandemic. I will tell you to a company out of the 270 companies that we have reviewed. Anytime we see a company that relegates the sedan and SUV to someone else in, but they want to only pick and choose what they do in the corporate space. Their revenue goes down. They lose the corporate market for the reasons you're talking about. He who controls the relationship controls the revenue.

James Blain: 19:05

100%.

Ken Lucci: 19:06

So if, if like Maurice, I mean, look, there were so many things about that podcast that were fantastic, by the way, guys, go, go and look up the, uh, it already dropped, right? The mosaic. Yeah. The mosaic dropped. So go.

James Blain: 19:21

a blueprint, right? I mean, Maurice lays out a blueprint.

Ken Lucci: 19:24

lays out a blueprint. You're talking about a guy that started in Rolls Royces and talk about a niche. And now he's one of the biggest, I would say boutique global networks in the country. Right. And it's because, because when he captured the customer and they wanted him to provide bigger and bigger vehicles, he literally, he just acquiesced and went all the way up to motor coach. Um, no question about it. All right. So give me the overall sentiment of the U. M. A. As far as how do people feel about how do they feel about ending in 24? How do they do? And then how do they feel about 25?

James Blain: 20:00

I, I think the sentiment there was really great. Um, I think one of the, a little bit of a, uh, a killjoy, but I think you've really kind of identified a couple of their pain points at the moment. Um, we've had an abnormal amount of natural disasters. And so there was a lot of impact there. That was one of the sessions that IMG did a couple weeks prior was talking about operators that have been hit by natural disasters from shops getting flooded out and barely being able to afford the water and save your buses all the way to tornadoes. I mean, you name it. They kind of covered that. And we saw that as kind of an impact. However, there's evacuation work for that. There's things that happen there as well. And I think the overall sentiment Is that the industry is really growing. The industry is doing great. Everyone's kind of still on that high and we expect that to continue through in the coming years. And I think the big thing right now, if you are one of the companies that is poised for growth. It's really locking that in because regardless of the industry, what we're seeing is the larger companies are expanding what they have. They're expanding the work they're doing and they're growing, but the little tiny companies that were relying on that work to come from someone else are now getting squeezed because of the fact that if I'm that larger company, I like being able to farm to you. But if I can grow my fleet, if I can grow my driver pool, I can then. Take that in house

Ken Lucci: 21:31

You know that really what you're saying? Uh, absolutely. Uh, dovetails or parallels directly with what we saw on the financial state of the industry report that we finished 2024. The smaller companies are the 1 on the chauffeur side. Other ones that suffered a little bit. Those are the ones that maybe were 10 percent or more back the medium to larger companies that were taking advantage of both vertical growth and You know, expanding new clients, but horizontal growth by offering existing clients, more services, the medium to large have the ability to do that more than the small. Okay. So let's shift some gears. It sounds like the bus and I agree the motor coach side of the business is doing well. Um, you know, there's a lot of market share available, both new growth. I mean, they grow at about three, 3 percent compounded annual growth rate a year, which isn't great, but. Touring is back, sightseeing touring is back, charters, line runs, that's all back. And the other piece of the puzzle is market share is going to become available on the code space because a lot of bus companies are either retiring and closing or they're selling. So that's a good, you know, that's, that's, that's market share churn, if you will. So now you race into Las Vegas and, um,

James Blain: 22:56

literally, quite literally.

Ken Lucci: 22:58

and, um, how, how, what was your sentiments? What was your takeaway from the chauffeured driven national limousine association show?

James Blain: 23:07

So, so for us, I kind of, I have my blinders on for the first day. You know, we close down the show floor at UMA at noon. We're off to the airport flying through Austin. I get there at six 30 in the evening. I set that booth back up and that same booth, all of us, we do two shows a one day. Um, so I, I didn't get as many of the Sunday sessions I would have liked, but I think a lot of the things have carried through. Um, Tim Delaney, Matt Doss, um, they, they took up a lot of that insurance presentation. They had their own slides. They had their own deck. Um, you know, research underwriters had their COO there, uh, but by the time they got to him, he didn't really have a huge chance to go in. So Matt and Tim were able to kind of take the front of that. And I think one of the things that I've seen is in our industry, speaking to the black car guys, right? It is a reactive industry and that doesn't appear to have changed. Most of the conversation here was about telematics. It was about cameras. It was

Ken Lucci: 24:07

So, so back, back up a step and set the stage. Tim Delaney is the president of the largest Lancer insurance, one of the largest carriers in the industry. Um, if not the largest, um, Andrew Dawn is the, is the COO of research underwriters. Uh, one of the largest agents in the space and, and our friend Matt Dawes, who we did a podcast with him, guys go back and look at that podcast. It was, it was great. And we were going to have Matt on again, but Matt Dawes is the preeminent legal mind and the largest transportation practice. In the country. So the session at chauffeur driven was about insurance.

James Blain: 24:54

It was, and really it was talking about what that landscape looks like, what some of the key root causes are. And, and look at you, you can take this from different angles. So depending on who you talk to in our industry, you're going to get a different story. Um, you know, I've heard, I've heard everything. I'm lucky enough that PAX Training and Lancer are official partners. We work together. Um, I'm very lucky in that I've got to spend personal time with Tim getting to understand what they're seeing and dealing with. We talk to their safety department on a regular basis. And really there's, there's some key things and Tim did a good job of pointing those out. The first is, guys, there's not a lot of people in this space. It doesn't matter if you're on the motor coach side, the black car side, any empty passenger ground transportation. We just don't have a lot of carriers.

Ken Lucci: 25:46

because it let's face it from a, from a financial perspective last year for every dollar that they took in for policies, they, they spent a dollar 18, right? So, so stop saying that the, the insurance companies are getting rich off this industry. They're not. That's why people are leaving it. That's why people are leaving the states that have no tort laws, right, like New York, like New York, uh, like Michigan, you know, the, they go in a certain political direction, and the lawyers are, they have these nuclear verdicts. So, his point is There's only a few carriers in the space to begin with. What else did they go? What else did you get out of that session?

James Blain: 26:30

So I think for me, a lot of that was really, really revealing of what I've already mentioned before. We're a reactive industry. We're not a proactive industry. I've built my entire 10 years in this industry, helping make companies proactive, helping, trying to get them trained to get drivers to be ahead of the curve, to try and get to the point where we're preventing accidents. It's accident never happened. And it really was telling because a lot of that session was spent talking. About telematics, about safety program, about safety culture. Now, I, I'm in the training space. If it was up to me, the very next session would've been training and that, that for me was a little heartbreaking. This I want to give a lot of credit where credit is due. Um, Lacey, who came from EOS, uh, Mike Sapone, who is a, a longtime customer of pacs and, and an absolute incredible business mind. Uh. I think for me personally, the most value for me outside of spending time with my customers, working with them, but just me taking things back actually came from the EOS session that they did. Anybody that did not attend the EOS session really missed

Ken Lucci: 27:41

So that was Wednesday's only workshop. That was Wednesday's only workshop. Um, and it was, uh, just give us a finish up with the insurance piece

James Blain: 27:52

Yeah. So, so we'll, we'll come back to that one. So, so on the insurance side, Really, the, the big key takeaways right now tie back to what I was saying with the bus industry, and that's that any claim whatsoever, regardless of how small, regardless of what it is, has the essential ability to mushroom cloud. And so the problem right now, and you already touched on it is tort reform is there in some states, but it's not in most, we don't expect it to come quickly and you have to be proactive. The other big thing, and this isn't something that, that Tim touched on for more than a month, but the other big thing that everybody has to realize is what Mike Marcoli brought up in his episode as a broker, him talking about the space and talking about things. You, you can't take the mindset that the insurance company is my enemy. You can't take the mindset that they're just trying to make a profit off me. If you want to have that in the back of your mind, that's fine. But you have to actively be working with them because they know where the claims are going to happen. They know what's going to go wrong. That's why we try to work as closely as we can with them. Because if we know the top five things that are causing accidents, the goal here is to play chess, not checkers. You need to be actively doing everything you can to hedge against those, not just have video of it. Once it happens.

Ken Lucci: 29:18

What are those five?

James Blain: 29:20

Oh boy, put me on the spot. So it really is going to depend on market. It's going to depend on vehicle type. It's going to depend on what you have. Um, this isn't something that was covered in the session, so don't feel like you're missing anything, but the most common ones that we hear following too closely,

Ken Lucci: 29:38

Yeah, I had that. Yes.

James Blain: 29:40

time, big time, following too closely is a big one. Failure to leave space around the vehicle or be aware around the vehicle.

Ken Lucci: 29:48

All sides, all sides. You're 12, you're 3, you're 6, and you're 9. Yep.

James Blain: 29:54

We call that 360 driving in our world. You've got a 360 degrees around the vehicle. Absolutely everything. Um, I would say that one of the bigger things that I'm seeing and again, Lancer, someone like that, that's got the data is going to be able to give you a much more better ordered list. But one of the other big ones that we're seeing is the scams are making their way up the ranks. Um, Well, especially if you're, if you're dealing with vehicles or you're dealing with areas where they can easily identify and spot an opportunity, man, I've heard stories. And I might've already told this one in the podcast where someone runs up, they basically throw themselves on the hood of the car. They say, yeah, hit me. Well, now you're in a situation where they've got an opportunity. They're going to try and drill it through. They're going to move it from attorney to attorney.

Ken Lucci: 30:40

No question. You know, I, I, I think we should, we should, in the future, we should have Tim on directly. Um, and one of the safety guys, I mean, what you're telling me from a messaging perspective is these, even if they're one or two car operators, first of all, if you're a one car operator and you drive one way when your client is in the car, and then you drive another way when you're racing, this is, this happened to me last night and the vehicle, the guy was okay driving me. And then I watched him just bolt out of the parking lot, probably to his next, next ride. And, and he cut off somebody, he cut off somebody who is, he was leaving anyway. So proactivity versus reactivity to the message, you know, the message I think from, from the sessions, because it keeps coming up, they keep having insurance session is you need to build a that you are a lower safety risk because You have a defined safety program. You are a customer of PACS. You are examining your telematics and you're changing bad behavior. Yeah, we should have Tim on to, to go through it. So, so give me an idea of how you felt. What was the overall sentiment of the operators you talked to about 24? And what do you, what's the sentiment you thought about 25 and then we'll talk about vehicles?

James Blain: 32:10

So, so I think there's a little mixed bag and I'd love to get your opinion on the financial side. Um, a lot of people, the January, February beginning of year, slow down. One of two things I heard it either didn't slow down as much or we're coming out of it earlier. So I think the overall sentiment is the business is going up. Um, again, one of the big things, if you're a little tiny, smaller operator, you're not getting that work being sent to you like you were before.

Ken Lucci: 32:38

they're going to keep it in house.

James Blain: 32:39

they're going to keep it in house.

Ken Lucci: 32:40

You're the last one to, you're the last, you're actually, you're actually the first one to know, aren't you? Because they're keeping it in house rather than sending it. Yeah.

James Blain: 32:49

So, so we saw a lot of that coming through. I think the other thing is I think we're reaching a point where we've, we've kind of realized that insurance is going to continue to go up. I'm going to, I'm going to preface this with, There are no insurance discounts at this point. I'd love to tell you I have a magic wand that you're not going to get an

Ken Lucci: 33:07

None. It's a permanent hard market. It's a permanent, it's a permanent hard market and they won't say it as bluntly as that, but it is. It's a permanent hard market. You've got a budget for at least a 10 percent increase. And, and if you don't do your part literally by creating that safety culture, okay, you're going to get nailed. It's as simple as that. So let's talk about the sentiment of the show. Let's talk about. The people that you met on the floor, how was their attitude?

James Blain: 33:37

I think the attitude was great. You know, I, I can tell you big shout out to everyone that came to see us. Um, you know, I, I don't know that I've ever had that many people coming to see us. I think part of that is the podcast. I'm, I'm glad to say it sounds like everybody's enjoying it. I think the other side of that though is I think the show floor continues to grow year after year. I think the show continues to grow year after year. Um, I think the other thing and I'm gonna again, we're gonna take a little tangent. I had tons of people that actually took me up on my selfie challenge,

Ken Lucci: 34:11

Yeah. So did I, so did I.

James Blain: 34:13

but I will say, guys, you got to tag us. You know, you got the selfie. You've got it in your phone. You got to tag us. I would love to announce the winner today that we had, right? We were hoping to do that jointly. But we've, we've got all these selfies out in the wild that I don't know where they've ended up. Um, so post those,

Ken Lucci: 34:29

What is tagging the selfie? What is the process of tagging the selfie?

James Blain: 34:34

So there's a couple different ways that you can do it.

Ken Lucci: 34:37

Tell us technology

James Blain: 34:39

yes,

Ken Lucci: 34:40

Tell us Mr. Wizard.

James Blain: 34:41

the easiest way to do it is to make a post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, um, now X, whatever your favorite social media is, and then just put the symbol and put ground transportation podcast. That's it. And then you just post

Ken Lucci: 34:58

whoa, whoa, whoa. You're telling me, you're telling me this whole thing about tagging. This is a revelation to me because it's not, it's not on a P and L or a balance sheet. You're telling me that I can post a picture. And then I can say the at symbol ground transportation podcast.

James Blain: 35:16

And, and you can, you can tag individuals that way. So the at symbol, you can put James, you can put Ken, you can put whoever you want and tag it that simple. Um, and then from that point, it's really easy. You, you've done it. You've tagged it. Then you can even go into the individual photo and you can actually tag people within the photos. So if you click on the photo, there's a little, it looks like a price tag up in the corner. Right. You click that tag and then you can click on the photo and tag people within the photo. Um, almost every platform's about the same. They all support kind of the at symbol. We are really, really easy because we have at ground transportation podcast on basically every platform. So

Ken Lucci: 35:57

So, um, I was at the, I was invited to the NLA president's dinner

James Blain: 36:01

What a

Ken Lucci: 36:02

it was great. I have to tell you that Eddie, Eddie McCoy from fast track, the software company, um. His wife, Lisa, got tied up, which is code to say that she was with her friends and didn't want to go, so Eddie took me as his, as his date, so to speak. I was his plus one, and poor guy's right. And, and so, um, who shows up, but because it was the president's dinner, the NLA president's dinner, is anybody who's been on the board of directors at the National Limousine Association gets an invitation. Okay. So, uh, the current president, Brett Barinholtz, first of all, he did a great job at the whole show. It was great. Terrific. Uh, obviously he was a guest on the podcast guys. If go look at the, look at Brett Barinholtz from taxidermy. Great

James Blain: 36:55

What a great

Ken Lucci: 36:56

So he was on fire that night. He did a great job. And, but who shows up at the president's, uh, meet a dinner, but. Dawson Rutter and Tammy Rutter from Commonwealth

James Blain: 37:08

who were just recently guests.

Ken Lucci: 37:10

Dawson. They dropped two days before the episode that episode that Tammy and Dawson were on dropped two days before and Dawson comes in and he stops me and he said, You know, everybody's walking up to me saying great job on the podcast. And I'm like, I don't, and that was a good Dawson impression. But anyway, and, and, and Tammy, the same way. And, and, you know, I've been meaning to dissect that I've been meaning to dissect that episode because they dropped some unbelievable. there. Okay. About treat our customers that as if they're yours, we treat you like family. We, and it was great. But anyway, it was, it was terrific to see them, but I will tell you the same thing. I had a lot of people comment on the podcast, um, to the point between that and the fact that we have a lot of things going on. Um, I took my badge off when I was walking through the hallway. at the conference center because racing between meetings, we, I don't know about you, but I was getting stopped. Um, so, you know, I think we have to think about this. I think, I think next year, I think we have to set aside something where we do a meet and greet.

James Blain: 38:27

NLA board members. We're talking to you. We would love to have a grand transportation podcast. No, I think there, I would love to have an

Ken Lucci: 38:33

Why do I think my credit card is going to have to come out for that? But that's okay. I'm, I'm willing to do it.

James Blain: 38:38

we'll split the bill on that one for

Ken Lucci: 38:40

so a few, a few things happened to me at the show. Um, number one, um, people came up to us, uh, both of us obviously and said, Hey, congratulations on the podcast. I left, listen to it. Other people said, had suggestions about subject matter. Okay.

James Blain: 38:59

Oh, there was also a suggestion about my hair. My hairline appears to be receding.

Ken Lucci: 39:04

are we going to go into that? Is that what we're going to do on a Friday? You want to talk about receding hairlines and you

James Blain: 39:10

I couldn't help

Ken Lucci: 39:11

anyway. Um, you know, and especially and I forgot my special shampoo for 10 days. So, so I'm lucky. I have any hair left anyway. So I think that a couple of a couple of upcoming sessions. I want to tease. Is we're going to have a day in the life of week in the life of an affiliate manager And we're going to have an affiliate manager on from a couple of serious companies And and one of them is going to be paul from legends in new york paul from legends limousine He's the one who suggested it and and then i'm going to try to get a couple of others on there the second thing i'll tell you, um is that's coming up is we We are gonna have a podcast with the ROS ladies. Okay. Let me tell you, if you don't know who the ROS ladies are from the,

James Blain: 39:58

Set the stage for them.

Ken Lucci: 39:59

out, out in the podcast. Well, first and foremost, the ROS ladies. I met the ROS ladies because last year, uh. At last year's show, I, we were just coming off selling Leros, a company called Red Oak, very big operator. And that particular deal was difficult, but it, it, you know, the guys who Leros always beat the crap out of me, but, but they invited me to dinner and they show me some love by surrounding me with the bevy of women. That they called the Leros ladies. So the, I met the Leros ladies and really came to appreciate the fact that they're the frontline customer service people. So they're, they're affiliate people that recruit affiliates. They are customer service people that take care of existing customers, their reservationists and their global network reservationists, et cetera. So what they proposed, um, is that they're going to come on the podcast. We're going to make it fun. I'm not going to tell you what it's going to be like, but we're going to make it fun. Cheers. James, I want you to think about me as Hugh Hefner without the red pajamas. Wait a minute, and we're going to

James Blain: 41:04

And we were off track on hairlines. Oh, boy.

Ken Lucci: 41:06

and we're going to have to have, we're going to have to have many people on. You're going to see many faces. We'll make it fun, but I, I, I'm really enthused about it. Because we're going to ask them specific questions on how do they overcome price? How do they maintain large accounts, et cetera, et cetera. So, so look at that. So the show was great.

James Blain: 41:29

Oh, yeah.

Ken Lucci: 41:29

Um, I, I do feel like I have to hit a couple of things. Um, we were, I was asked to do a presentation for the second year in a row with one of the large affiliate networks, a company called Boston coach. And there were a couple hundred people there. And I did a session, I did a session on selling value instead of low price. Um, and by the way, anybody who wants to, can anybody that wants to email me at info at driving transactions. com info at driving transactions. com. And I will invite you to the webinar. Okay. So what we decided to do is we did the presentation and it really talked about. Tangible ways to sell value instead of low price. I'm not going to go into in great detail, but it was eyeopening. People loved it. And so what we're going to do is we're going to do a webinar. I offered to do a webinar because I don't want you. I couldn't go over the whole thing in 30 minutes, but. I want to provide an hour long with action items, with, um, worksheets so that you can implement all this stuff, just to give you an idea. I mean, selling value is not leading off with the price. First selling value is stepping back and establishing rapport relationship. You know, one key. Uh, excuse me. Could I have your first name? James? My name is. Can I call you James? My name is Ken. My name is Ken. I'm going to be assisting you today. So just by using your name repeatedly, you've increased the chance that that person is going to buy from you by about 30%. So, so that webinar, we're going to take them all the way through that. And then so, but during that session in the Q and a period, I had a lot of people ask me about the sentiment of the economy. So. I, I walked away with three potential gray clouds, not black clouds, but gray clouds.

James Blain: 43:30

Could they turn black or are we thinking they're going to stay gray?

Ken Lucci: 43:33

So here's the thing with a gray cloud, right? So a gray cloud could turn, turn black, or it could become a rainbow, right? It can, it can clear and

James Blain: 43:41

go either way.

Ken Lucci: 43:42

go either way. So one gray cloud that I think is going to persist and get darker is the fleet insurance issue.

James Blain: 43:50

I'd love to tell you that I thought that was going to be a rainbow, but guys, I think we're, I think

Ken Lucci: 43:55

Nope. And we're going to hammer that home. We're going to hammer that home to, to people. Get serious about becoming proactive, and they have to understand that it's a cultural thing, and we'll have to get Tim on to, to go into great detail with that. The second, the second gray cloud, um, is this connectivity issue that the thought process arose at the show that I think should concern everybody. And we're not, I'm not going to go into great detail because I have to study it, right? And I've, I only heard some chicken little kind of stuff, but I'm going to have to figure it out. And we're actually thinking about doing some sort of a position paper. But the idea is that. One software company, don't use any names, one software company that is, that is now part of three software companies. They were on their own and now they are, they're owned by one company and they're going to create what they call, they're going to create hyper connectivity. But so that all the data is flowing perfectly between those softwares. So the concern there is what I call connectivity island. Which is the connectivity of those software will be great. And then now what happens to connectivity outside the realm of that? And that's what we have to study, right? Because everything I've read about. literally talks about improving open connectivity and collaboration with other software providers and total collaboration and cooperation. Um, and the state of the industry report that we did talked about the fact that there are six countries that make up 70 percent of corporate travel. Okay. Um, and if you read the, uh, if you go see the webinar, you'll know what they are, but they are the United States, China, UK, Germany, France. And I know there's another one, but anyway,

James Blain: 46:06

so let me ask you, how much of this do you think comes from the fact That we didn't have a lot of options in our industry to begin with, right? There's never, you know, you go, you go to, you know, the, the sales space, Hey, I'm, I'm going to go find a CRM, a customer, you know, relations manager. There's a billion of them.

Ken Lucci: 46:24

yeah. Cause that's the, because that's their multi industry

James Blain: 46:27

How much of this do you think comes from the fact that as an industry, we're small. And I guess the other question I'd have for you is I think, what do you see happening with. Are you amazed with our motor with the other softwares there that haven't even come over to our world yet? Do you think there's any cross?

Ken Lucci: 46:44

Yes. So I, I will tell you, I, I left, I left The conference extremely concerned, um, very concerned. And I think to give that subject matter, you know, a full attention, it needs to be in writing and it needs to be researched. Um, but I will tell you that is a great connectivity is a great cloud. That's only, it only matters. If you want to take in work or farm it out. So you want, you want to farm in, right? You're going to receive information, data, electronically, automatically versus phone and email, or if you want to farm out. Um, so, and the, the last gray piece before I get to a real ray of sunshine, the last gray cloud that potentially people were concerned about. Was the economy.

James Blain: 47:43

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 47:44

So right after I did the talk with Boston coach, the Q and A opened up. I thought I was going to get Q and A about pricing. So I started getting Q and A instantly. And the first question was about the economy. So we, as you know, we did the, we're doing the financial state of the industry report. We have a summit coming up on April 30th in Washington, DC. Again, if you want information, it's info drivingrtransactions.Com And we did a huge deep dive. And every single morning I'm on the economist portal with 50 more IQ points than me. The bottom line is that coming after the election and coming after the first of the year, everybody was really enthused. But there, in the past week, I'm reviewing the Economist Portal and I'm seeing things about the chaos factor.

James Blain: 48:37

Is this different than what we've seen? Because, you know, coming out of COVID it was, well, it's a recession, but it's not a recession.

Ken Lucci: 48:44

Now, this is, this is,

James Blain: 48:46

How is this different?

Ken Lucci: 48:47

is this different? I'll tell you, the underpinnings of the economy are fantastic. The underpinnings of the economy since the election, the underpinnings are exceptional, okay? It's, number one, Inflation was trending down to 2%. That's what we have to see Number one is the inflation. Number two, the expectation that the, the tax cuts were going to be extended. Okay. Now, contrary to popular belief, they're not tax cuts for the ultra. Wealthy they're tax cuts for small business people and small business is the engine of the of the country Okay, it directly affects this industry but but everybody thinks that still thinks that the that they're going to come up and the third the third issue is to watch the fed because if number one happens the Inflation goes down. Number two happens. The tax cuts are, are, are, um, extended. Okay. The 2017 tax cuts are extended. The third thing will happen, which is the Fed will lower interest rates by, you know, at least twice.

James Blain: 49:48

the lever they have to pull.

Ken Lucci: 49:50

Every economist is practically creaming their jeans over this, right? Those, that trifecta, they're all waiting. Well, see, this is why I have no, you know, that's the way I

James Blain: 49:59

We're officially PG 13 now.

Ken Lucci: 50:01

Right. The, but the economists, they're waiting for, they're waiting for it. They're waiting for it. They're anticipating. Okay. Well, the last week on, you know, the data portals that I look at, they all started not backtracking, but I think it was almost like You could feel them come back and say, there's a little bit, there's,

James Blain: 50:23

Hesitation

Ken Lucci: 50:24

there's chaos going on in DC. So that was the

James Blain: 50:28

So is this doge? Is this, what's the trigger for

Ken Lucci: 50:32

it is.

James Blain: 50:32

what is it that has them leery? And is this something where it's trepidation on

Ken Lucci: 50:36

I'm going to tell you what it is. It's the unintended, unintended consequences. Of actions taken in D. C. that sound good, but they have unintended consequences. I'm going to do

James Blain: 50:50

Butterfly effect.

Ken Lucci: 50:51

it is the butterfly effect because, you know, the underpinnings are fantastic, but sentiment is extremely important, right? Perception becomes reality pretty damn fast. So it is specifically the Doge thing. And yesterday, uh, today's Friday, I will throw out the date. It's February 28th, yesterday, February 27th. Apparently the government froze all government travel and they basically essentially essentially cut everybody's credit cards.

James Blain: 51:22

And they had already been doing that to a certain extent because I know in, at ABA, guess what? You know, Cliff and Roger from FMCSA, two guys that are always there. Guys, we can't go. We got our spending cut. So, so they have now completely cut that back

Ken Lucci: 51:38

Yep. And you know, and it's the law of unintended consequences. I, I think my message to everybody is. Buy what you need. Do not buy based on a want. Okay? Use data to drive your asset purchases.

James Blain: 51:57

Well, it's the suburban versus the escalade that we always bring

Ken Lucci: 52:01

Oh, I mean, I'm telling you, I took a, I took an escalade back, uh, to the, to, to, uh, the airport with Brett Barron's holds. I, you know, I'm a carpetbagger, so I didn't pay any for any meals during the entire trip. I

James Blain: 52:12

I want to be like you when I grow up, Ken.

Ken Lucci: 52:14

I ate like a

James Blain: 52:15

I'm doing client

Ken Lucci: 52:16

I'm standing out there at five o'clock in the morning and Barron holds comes out. I'm like, Hey, can I grab a, can I grab a, of course. And the guy was impeccable. Right. And then I get picked and then I get picked up in Tampa. And the guy is in an Escalade wearing a pair of shorts. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Anyway, I don't want to get down that road, but buy what you need and keep cash liquid. Keep yourself liquid. Right? So that if in the middle of the year, things start going better. Fantastic. Maybe you can. You maybe you can make a purchase if it's a good deal, but buy what you need and be prudent, right? Don't get caught up in the hysteria of buying and overloading your balance sheet Um, the the one the one final I will tell you that is a is a is an absolute rainbow And a bright spot of the show for me. I'm walking out the door And everybody's breaking down booze and I'm walking out the door and I see the guys from Madge software. Have you seen Madge's by the way?

James Blain: 53:18

I haven't. No, we were talking about it earlier.

Ken Lucci: 53:20

So I see a guy named Leonardo Gianni and, and he gives me, and he, by the way, he autographed the book for me. Right. Okay. So to Ken, for my first mentor, uh, he's being very, Candid. Very nice. Uh, may this book spark innovation in the industry. So I looked at this and he handed it to me. I had finished the book. I was set to read. Uh, I finished it, the first book that I brought on the trip. So I'm into the first hundred pages of this book. This book is called mobility 3. 0 and it's how to win and thrive in the future passenger transportation, Leonardo G a N N I O mobility 3. 0. And I'm going

James Blain: 54:04

And it is on Amazon. I ordered myself a copy right before we jumped

Ken Lucci: 54:08

so, so it's, this book is high brow. This book is some of it makes me feel like when I sit with economists on the portal, I'm like, I'm only following every third word. But, but the reality is this book is points to what our industry needs to do. You have to distill it down, but. It's a fantastic book. Okay.

James Blain: 54:32

And I think we can drop a link to that in the show notes. And I know, like

Ken Lucci: 54:36

try to get him on. I actually texted him and because you know, it was, it was hectic and where everybody was leaving. I texted him when I landed and I said, look, I'm a hundred pages into the book. And I think number one, you need to come on the podcast and you need to distill it down. Right. Uh, it's, it's meant for the future of all ground transportation, mobility, all mobility, public transit, taxi, any empty everything. I said, distill it down for the livery space. So let's, we'll leave it at that. But, you know, overall, I think the show went extremely well. Um, I think that, you know, the revelation for me is I think you and I need to do some sort of a meet and greet of some kind.

James Blain: 55:17

love to do a fireside chat. I think that would be an absolute blast.

Ken Lucci: 55:21

Because a lot of people just had general questions that obviously because they listen to the podcast, you know, and maybe the other thing is we need to do more Q and A on the podcast. Maybe we need a Q and A session. Maybe we need the last 10 minutes to be question and answer. Maybe I, I don't know. We'll have to get with our, uh, producer, John and figure out what to do, but it. Seem to me that a lot of people that were stopping me, it was a either a, my, I want to talk to you about selling my business, which is great, terrific. Um, but not to be done on the show floor. Um, to listen, I love your podcast and I just have a question. So I think we need something next year and maybe it's, maybe it's what we need to do is we need to. Open up the podcast to I don't know if we can open it up to phone calls for emails beforehand I don't know how to do it. But I think the format is working You know, I always question because I don't know the I don't know the podcast business I always question whether we're being effective and based on the numbers John tells me we're going through the roof And based on the show, I got to tell you, I think, I think that it's, it's a format that's respected. I think it's a format that's needed. I'd like to see us find a way to address. those questions, right?

James Blain: 56:41

I agree. And I think one of the biggest things is I want everybody listening to us to know that we read every comment. If you guys sent us a comment, if you guys sent us an email, if you guys, you know, I can't promise we'll be quick. We have so many different platforms, but we take it very seriously and we really love the feedback. Um, and I think for us, this is something that, you know, at some point we may add sponsors, we may kind of try and bring it forward, but it's something that we genuinely see as a way. For us to help the industry and help growth and help the entrepreneurship and really kind of bring the stories of our industry to light.

Ken Lucci: 57:18

Every, if you listen, everyone, and I started listening, even though I hate the sound of my own

James Blain: 57:25

Oh God. Sad to your own voice is the worst. I can't,

Ken Lucci: 57:28

I can't say, you know, somebody at the show said to me that that's pretty common. Somebody that does videos and infomercials. I'm like, okay, right. And I said, do they, did they hate the look of their face too? I mean, I don't know what to tell

James Blain: 57:40

Okay. I, no, I will not really, if we're, if we're talking YouTube, I'm not watching our episodes on YouTube. I have my, I have my Apple. I listened to, I listened to myself in the car. Like I would anyone else.

Ken Lucci: 57:51

So I walked away thinking the industry's doing extremely well. I walked away from absolutely there's more providers this year than last year. Uh, you know, worried about those gray clouds, you know, one being the fleet. Insurance issue, which look guys, we have to manage it. Stop bitching about it. We have to manage it

James Blain: 58:13

You do. It's like any other problem you deal with.

Ken Lucci: 58:15

you know the second is you know, I think the chaos is going to calm down, right? I think at some point if they're you know, if something slides and the economy starts to slide I I think that the administration will go five yards forward to try to make sure that they, you know, that they reverse it quickly. I'd

James Blain: 58:36

Well, and, and having a financial expert, Ken, how much cash should they have on hand? Right? God forbid chicken. Little's right. The sky falls. Should they have three months of operating revenue? What, what should you have on hand?

Ken Lucci: 58:50

for three to four months of operating revenue, fixed expenses, right? So I hate to say it, but if the worst happens and this industry is known for that, right, we had nine 11 where things absolutely stopped. We had the financial crisis. Now we had the pandemic. Let's learn from the past people, right? You need to have three or four months of fish fixed expenses. Liquid hanging out. So,

James Blain: 59:13

Sitting in an account,

Ken Lucci: 59:14

sitting in account. Absolutely. And if you say to me, you don't have it If you don't have it, it's very simple.

James Blain: 59:20

Sell your boat.

Ken Lucci: 59:21

Now, it's it's literally like if you don't have money set aside They say you should have six months of your pay hanging up hanging around In savings in case the worst thing happens if you don't have three to four months of this Fixed expenses your rent your phone bill your software Your fleet expense payments, your insurance payments. If that's not hanging out, sitting there in a savings account, your prices are too low or you're overspending in other areas. It's as simple as that though. There's, there's no other third choice there. So yeah, I think you should, I think it's very prudent, um, because of the chaos factor. Um, while everything looks good, all, all of the underpinnings of the economy look fantastic, you know, but there is some unpredictable unpredictability. In Washington, DC. So I think it's prudent. That's a, I think it's a good thing. Good message to end on

James Blain: 1:00:16

And I want to zero in on something you said, because, you know, one of my favorite sayings is you always make a friend before you need one. You should always be ready for the worst before it happens. One of the key things I want to point out is you said you should have your three to four months in your business. And then you should have six months of your personal, right?

Ken Lucci: 1:00:35

100%.

James Blain: 1:00:37

So that doesn't mean that I'm expecting to have it all there in the business. It's, I need to have an account somewhere for me personally, for my family, for everything I have that's separate. And I need to have what the business has. And one of the things, at least for me, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, Ken, because Being an MNA, this is huge. One of the things that came out at the EOS session was, if you're thinking of exiting the business in three to four years, that doesn't mean that you don't have a 10 year plan for your business. You still want a 10 year plan for the business. You still, can you talk about how that kind of thinking, and I only bring it up because I really want to it. Get that in before we close out. Can you talk about how people need to, now that we've come back from the show, we're in the get it done mode. How do they need to think about that? How do they need to go back and make sure they've got it? There

Ken Lucci: 1:01:30

Well, you know, number one, you have to number one, you have to have a 12 month budget, right? I just, it, it kind of is astounding to me if you, well, I never did that before. Okay, great. But you need to have a 12 month budget. And so you've got short term goals and then long term what do you want to do with the business when people Come to my booth. That's the first thing that I ask them. What do you want to do with this business long term? Okay. And if you never, ever, ever, ever intend to sell it, my answer is you should still be ready to exit in case somebody comes in and makes you the proverbial offer you can't refuse. But more importantly, in case something happens where you cannot. Run the business or don't want to run the business or you want to or have to exit. So the 12 month budget kind of leads to the 36 month strategic business plan Okay, you know what your cost structure is, you know what you have for fleet now The only thing you really don't know is what's going to come in for top line revenue, but past is usually prologue And you can usually project and forecast with some amount of certainty, what your revenue is going to look like. And you certainly in a 12 month budget, we do slight pivots up or down, but when we do a 36 month strategic plan, have an idea what you're going to focus on, have an idea, what's your major, how are you going to grow your major revenue streams, and as you grow them, have an idea of. What you're going to have to add for costs. I'm a little concerned that we are seeing more of a, we're seeing a little bit of a herd mentality, right? And I need to, I need to buy a motor coach. Well, why? Because I farmed out a hundred thousand dollars last year. That, no, that's not, You know, that that's the, a good example of a strategic plan, a strategic plan says when I farm out X, or when I have this mini coach paid off, I'm going to keep it for another 12 months, et cetera.

James Blain: 1:03:43

1. 5 times the work for the bus you're

Ken Lucci: 1:03:46

correct. So the,

James Blain: 1:03:47

that whole idea.

Ken Lucci: 1:03:48

Correct. The answer is in 25 to me, I, my goal would be if I was an operator, which I tell my operators all the time would be maximize your existing fleet as much as you possibly can try to add 10 percent to revenue, you know, like some of my customers that are a hundred million dollars, it's difficult to say I'm going to add 10, right? But in that case, I'd say, why don't you focus, focus on adding 5 percent and why don't we try to improve efficiencies? So I think the short term plan revolves around modest goals that you know you can hit, including keeping your profitability, improving your profitability from last year, because you know your cost structure, right? If you know your last 12 months and you've got your final P& L for the year, you can extrapolate it. 36 month plan. It really is. Hmm. What are the, what are, what are the next steps of the business? I mean, we went through this exercise with a client the other day. He brought in two motor coaches, brand spanking new, gorgeous motor coaches. Okay. Um, and I said to him, you know, obviously in 2025, we've got to get those, those. Those ladies out there making some serious money, right? So we set the goals for those motor coaches and then we said, okay, at the end of the day, you know, what do you think, what do you think you'd like to do next year or the year after? So that's where the strategic plans are. But you know, to me, it starts with. Revenue goals and then it's organizational goals, right? It's organizational goals. What, how do I want to move my business forward? So I thought the education, I know we're going long, but it

James Blain: 1:05:28

This is going to be a long episode guys.

Ken Lucci: 1:05:30

I thought the education was good. Um, I didn't go, I didn't go into each session, but I heard the education was good. Um, I wanted to stay for the EOS session, but, um, I didn't find out about it until I didn't realize it was going to, he was going to be doing the EOS session. Um, until, uh, it was, I already made my plan. So we are definitely from a teasing of future episode, besides the affiliate manager and what he looks for in his providers. Um, and we'll get you a couple of those affiliate managers and besides the Leros ladies, which is going to be my episode of the year, we are definitely 100 percent going to have Mike Zappone on about EOS. Now, one of the things I'll warn you about EOS is if you're not serious, if you are not dedicated to building a business that is, becomes a company, right? Cause remember the saying, you know, all companies. All companies are businesses, but not all businesses are companies. The EOS, EOS is a serious financial commitment, but it's also a serious commitment in time and learning, right? So for all my limo owner friends out there that say I've been doing it for 30 years, you know, I don't need to know anything more. Uh, right. It's, you know, as a side note, those are usually the worst businesses that we review is, you know, that kind of thinking EOS is extremely, I was glad it was there this year and I'm glad that Mike is doing it because Mike Zappone knows the industry and he showed me the EOS system. I knew about the US system. I read a couple of the books that that are, that are foundational around it, but I will tell operators it's, it's for the serious. It's for the serious entrepreneur that wants to turn his business into a company that exists beyond him. So that to me is, is, you know, I think that was the best session. That was the best edition that I could, that they did this year is adding in, you know, I have my own opinions about the third day. I think that the third day should absolutely 100 percent cause you're already there. 100%. It should be about intensive. Now you know how I feel about what the intensive should be. Uh, and what's lacking in the business, but I can't think of a better one than, than the EOS to get these guys thinking

James Blain: 1:08:07

I agree. And I think, I think you've, you've hit on so many great nuggets here that, you know, guys, I'm going to warn you right now. We're going to keep this one going just because I want to make sure we hit them. But a couple of big things that have jumped out to me about what you've said. The first is that you want to make when it's very hard. And I've seen this in weight loss, right? I've seen this in exercise. It's very hard to look at somebody that is further ahead in their journey and not want to feel like you should be there or you should fast forward. I'm lucky enough. We've had Athena Graham on the podcast. I'm lucky enough to call her a friend and a mentor, you know, and I, and I see a lot of things. I see where she's at. And Athena is very good about making sure that I understand. James, you're going to get there. James, you get it. You got to work on where you're at. You got to work on being your authentic self. You got to step into courage. And so what I see a lot of times happen, it shows is there's that pressure. It's the Cadillac and the SUV all over again. It's well, you know, I need to go buy a motor coach. All right, great. So you have 1. 5 times the work stuff. Well, no, everybody's got a motor coach. So I got to figure out how to buy a motor coach. Well, everybody's doing this. I got to figure out how to do this. I think one of the big things at the show that you have to keep in mind is you may meet someone that is at that hundred million dollar business and you might not even have made it to a million in revenue yet. And it can be very hard to say, Hey, I'm at this part of the journey, but when they're going to the dinner and they're doing this and they're doing all that and they're, you know, they've put a thousand dollars into that machine on the casino floor, like it's a dollar. There's a lot of pressure to try and keep up that impression. And one of the things that I think is huge at the shows is understanding that. You really have to be your authentic self. You really have to understand where you are in the journey and you really have to work on where you're at and work on getting there instead of trying to give the image that you're there at hyper extending yourself if you're not. I'd love to get your thoughts on that, Ken, because that for me has been a big thing that I've learned.

Ken Lucci: 1:10:18

so one of the things I came away with at this show was the fact that the show booth, as far as where we sit, the show booth, the show booth is a problem. Okay, because my existing customers come and they want to say hi, right? Because everything we do is on zoom, which is great. They find out that I'm a lot shorter than they think I am. Number two, and

James Blain: 1:10:38

Get your Tom Cruise shoes. We'll fix that.

Ken Lucci: 1:10:40

Number two, a lot of people wait, right?

James Blain: 1:10:45

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 1:10:45

The first year, and maybe it's the podcast, the first year, this is the first year that I found that people want to come in and spend 20, 20 or 30 minutes, which I think we need. This is why I think you and I need to figure out some sort of a, an event, meet and greet, ask the questions, whatever it

James Blain: 1:11:02

Which by the way, comments, if you guys like that idea, if that's something you'd like to see, let us know because we need, we need to know your feedback.

Ken Lucci: 1:11:08

So, to your point though, you know, It's very easy in this industry because we're in the flash business. We're in the limousine. It's very easy to get caught up in it. Okay. Now you're talking to a guy who, if I needed it, if I had a bride say she wanted a Rolls Royce Phantom, I just went out and bought it. I mean that when I was an operator, it didn't make any, I mean, I did that on a bet and thankfully it worked out, but. You know, the idea is it's easier. It's easy to create that facade of success, right? The problem with the facade of success. Is you end up fooling yourself, and then all it takes is maybe 10 percent drop in business, maybe even less. And you're not just underwater, you're drowning, right? So, uh,

James Blain: 1:12:00

tied to your feet

Ken Lucci: 1:12:01

right, so, so, when you say to me, uh, uh, you know, when we walk around the show, there is an element of bravado that I think is unhealthy. And I think there's an element of bravado where people want to walk around and they want to tell you how wonderful they're doing. And, you know, I live in a, I live in a life of Chinese walls, right? Meaning that's, that's a term that's used on the M& A side that when you know something, you can't let someone else know that you know that information.

James Blain: 1:12:33

he's telling you, he's having the best year of his life, but you just went into the business and you know, that he is absolutely tanking, but you can't say that. Right. And we, we have the same thing in the safety world, right? I see companies all the time. We are the safest, we have the best culture and I'm going, but when we, when we talk to you, I know your program's

Ken Lucci: 1:12:52

Right. Well, I,

James Blain: 1:12:54

make a move to fix it,

Ken Lucci: 1:12:55

Right. You, you know

James Blain: 1:12:56

have that same concept.

Ken Lucci: 1:12:58

You know that they're one accident away from having a massive increase. It's going to close them. And I know that they're, that they have less liquidity. They have no liquidity. And if something happens, they can't make their next payroll. But I don't know what it is about human nature, you know, from an entrepreneurial perspective, I think we all want to be perceived as successful. Um, But I think, I think that that's kind of to me like an 80s or 90s limo mentality when the business really had some, it was high rolling, it agreed as good, and there were, there were definitely Cadillacs that were out there, um, stretch Cadillacs all over New York. I think that's a passé, I think that's a passé thought process. I don't know. I would just urge people to focus on the fundamentals. Um, to me, I, I go to the shows to, to gather information, to disperse information. Um, the conferences are less to me about. Is there less to me about you telling me all of the great things about how wonderful the business is. It's more about me asking the same pointed questions to people. How was your, how was your last quarter, 2024, you know, did corporate travel slow down for you because we're trying to measure sentiment in different ways, but, uh, you know, in general, I think we have to expect from the conference that there's going to be a certain amount of bravado. My biggest hope is that we see all those same people back the next year and They're truly prospering because, you know, there's much different. It's a different, it's different than post posting your Rolex on Facebook than it is being able to make your payroll and not worrying about, you know, or posting your toys or the rest of it. I know everybody wants to, to do very well and be perceived as doing well, but I think it's more important to, because you have employees that depend on you. It's more important to have. True financial stability. Um, so, you know, the last thing I'm gonna leave you with is what do you think would happen to that conference at the conference instead of being in Las Vegas? Was in San Diego or LA or Phoenix.

James Blain: 1:15:28

think the direct flights would be harder to get.

Ken Lucci: 1:15:31

I get,

James Blain: 1:15:32

I, I think, I think there's, so, so for those that haven't been in the industry long enough to know, you know, that is a show that has been in Vegas for a very long time. And that kind of comes from Bobbitt Media and LCT and, and, and all the way back. Um, you know, that was kind of, that was, you know, Sarah Eastwood Richardson, who we'll have on in a future date. Um, that was her big show. I mean, that was, that's when she was

Ken Lucci: 1:15:56

yeah, she was, she was at the show this

James Blain: 1:15:58

Yeah. She was at the show. I'd, um, shout out to Sarah. I didn't get to talk to her, but, um, uh, you know, it was, it was the big show of the year. It works, I think from purely, uh. Logistics standpoint, I think a lot of that works on the international side because internationally, it's very easy to get to Las Vegas. I think if we move to a San Diego, if we did something like that, I think the show could be just as successful, but I think part of the allure part of that is at least for those flying internationally coming in. It's very easy to get flights to Vegas. That's kind of a traditional location. Um, I don't, like I said, I don't see why it couldn't be just as successful somewhere else. I think we've reached a point where the East Coast Chauffeur Driven show is now starting to, it's not quite, at least in terms of my experience, it's not quite the same show. The international attendees don't seem to be as high, but that's a show that's moving around. I mean, at the end of this year, we're going to Dallas, Texas.

Ken Lucci: 1:17:00

And you know, I think that that one needs, I mean, I look forward to it because of the state of the industry sponsorship and, and that's the catalyst for us to do next year's report. It's usually the starting process of, of me, you know, and formulating the report. And I, um, I love that show because of it. I, I think it's a completely different vibe. You you're more apt to be able to get us, you know, alone at the, at that show. But I do think we need to be thinking about, um, you know, kind of a meet and greet session. Maybe we'll try it out in Texas. But if, again, if anybody's got some ideas that would be, that would be terrific. Um, so let's put this thing to a close. Let's, you know, we've got, um, we've got a few pretty decent. Uh, podcasts that are dropping. One is, uh, Tom Holden from Bus Advisors from Transportation Advisors. I interviewed him. He's going to be dropping, um, coming up. We will definitely have the affiliate manager for the smaller operators that are looking to attract affiliate work. I think that's going to be an absolute showstopper. And then, then me with the Leros ladies. I think they're going to give you a good idea. On how these people that frontline, they're fantastic. The first of all, it was a great company, but frontline, they deal with clients every single day. So in the meantime, knowing that that's coming up and their frontline reservations, people and customer service people, if the, anybody from the audience has questions, send them in. Uh, you know, if you feel you, you know, want to try to overcome objections on price, et cetera, or, you know, if you want to start doing affiliate work, I think that that would be something that we should talk about, um, but it's going to be fun. I'm going to leave some of the fun surprises and tell you that that that is definitely one that everybody's going to want to participate in. And, um, that's about it. It was great seeing you in Las Vegas. We didn't get a chance to spend. Anytime together, even though your booth was next to mine. Every time I looked over, you were busy with, we, you were absolutely, I saw Bruce you know, wants to say goodbye and that was about it. It was like drinking from a fire hose. No question about it.

James Blain: 1:19:22

yeah. I, uh, you know, being 50 50 partners with Bruce, it, um, you know, we, we maybe saw each other for a minute. This is one of those shows you and I saw each other for a minute. So, you know, it was one of those things, you know, you, you lucky enough to start something wonderful with someone, you build it up and then. You know, sometimes you get to the point where one of you is running one thing, one of you is running another, and that's just kind of how that plays out. I think we've spent more time you and I talking here than we did at the whole show,

Ken Lucci: 1:19:49

No. And, you know, I think we'll call this the double episode because we've pretty much gone to a hundred. 25 minutes, which is fine. We can eat and John can cut it up if he wants to. Um, but I think we covered quite a bit. Um, it's tough to compress a whole week's worth of work or, you know, the entire show down.

James Blain: 1:20:07

everybody, thank you for listening. We've got a ton coming. We've got some branding stuff coming. We've got, you know, hopefully we'll keep the insurance conversation going. We've got quite a bit coming down the pipe. So like we said, leave us a comment, subscribe, let us know how we're doing and we will see you on the next episode.

1:20:24

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.