James Blain: 0:26

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. I am James Blain in PS training. I'm joined as always by my wonderful co-host, Ken Luchi, driving transactions

Ken Lucci: 0:37

I thought, wait a minute, but what, what about wonderful and talented?

James Blain: 0:40

well, wonderful,

Ken Lucci: 0:41

that's right. Wait a minute. Talented is my business partner, Cole Weber, who by the way, is off. He's off today, so he's off today. I think he's playing tennis today,

James Blain: 0:50

There it is. All right. Well, so today we're gonna do an episode on something that we are seeing over and over in my world. Ken's seeing it over and over in his world, and it's something that. You know, when you look at it on the surface to a lot of operators, it seems like the magical answer. It seems like, Hey, if I do this, this is gonna solve all my problems. And ironically enough, it typically does the opposite. It typically ends up tanking the business in tons of different ways. And what we're talking about here is volume. Volume,

Ken Lucci: 1:20

volume. Every,

James Blain: 1:21

volume.

Ken Lucci: 1:22

my, my trips are up. I'm doing so many trips. So many trips. Do you have any money left over at the end of the month?

James Blain: 1:28

Yep. Yep.

Ken Lucci: 1:29

to, are you able to pay all your bills at the end of the month and creating a business savings account? No. So guess what? That's proof positive. That chasing volume doesn't work.

James Blain: 1:38

Oh, and it's worse than that, right? Because do you have a brand? Are you so obsessed with chasing volume that instead of providing an experience to each and every passenger that has them craving you wanting to only use you as their provider, you are chasing the TNC model and now you're commoditizing yourself. And ladies and gentlemen, I have bad news. You can't compete with A TNC. Just can't.

Ken Lucci: 2:00

price. Low price is 100% a race to the bottom. I had an

James Blain: 2:04

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 2:05

contact me the other day who said, you know what I do every year? I make, uh, I make mystery calls to all my competitors and I undercut people by 10%. and And outta the same breath. This is, this is a guy who's telling me that he can't pay A-Z-I-D-L loan.

James Blain: 2:21

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 2:22

Okay? Right. So, I mean, how do you deal with that kind of a thought process? That's literally like you're a five star restaurant, white tablecloth restaurant, and, and your solution is to go get the shittiest cut of beef. And put it on sale. What do you think that does when they're cutting through shoe leather and they're like, I'm not coming back here.

James Blain: 2:43

No.

Ken Lucci: 2:43

So there's a direct correlation between, to me, low price and seeming like, and no customer loyalty.

James Blain: 2:51

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 2:52

one. and the other thing is from you are in the market and you are on the bottom half, let's just say the bottom third of the market price wise. Your, your business doesn't have any value. I'm talking about our industry. I'm not talking about low price car washes. I'm not, I'm just talking about our industry because, why do I say that? Because the margins are so thin to begin with. You need to be priced at the, I think the top third of the market. Right? And

James Blain: 3:20

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 3:21

you need to, if, if you have to sell on low price, you're in front of the wrong customers, period.

James Blain: 3:28

Well, and let, let's take that to a, a, a little cross industry for a moment, right? I obviously, we, we work across tons of different industries. We saw this initially when you started seeing guys that were used to the black car limousine side of the business, and they started moving towards the motor coach space. They started moving towards the large group moves, right? Instead of trying to win a cost war. They were going out and they were buying leather interior vehicles. They were buying high-end vehicles. They were putting a chauffeur behind the wheel. They were taking and elevating that service. And the mindset in that industry for a long time had always been you buy the cheapest vehicle you can. You run it for as long as you can. You try to control all your cost. What.

Ken Lucci: 4:08

you close at five o'clock at night,

James Blain: 4:09

you close at five o'clock at night. Yeah. So now you've got

Ken Lucci: 4:12

with that,

James Blain: 4:13

and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's, it's that difference of now we're taking, we're gonna put someone high end, we're gonna have a higher end vehicle, and they're demanding higher cost. And I think the shock there was people were willing to pay more for the customer service, for the nicer vehicles, for more of a luxury feel, even in the larger vehicles. And what.

Ken Lucci: 4:33

it min, to your point, there's always been mini bus, uh, mini buses with cloth seats and

James Blain: 4:39

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 4:40

Look at the GRE's, right? With the leather interior and the wood. They, they command more. more, more money per hour. They make more profit. They last longer.

James Blain: 4:49

Well, and I think that's key to understanding this game, right? If your goal is to try and be the lowest cost operator to do as many trips as humanly possible to try and get it done, to try and get it ran out, it's not gonna work. You know, we talked, one of our very first episodes I mentioned why I. One used to be one of my favorite restaurants here in Kansas City, blew it for me because during restaurant week, they threw all the presentation out the window. They threw everything out the window, and they were just trying to get plates on tables as fast as possible instead of actually focusing on what they do. So I think your brand suffers, and as a result of making your brand suffer, your passengers ultimately aren't gonna see the value. And you start losing out. So what does that look like financially though, Ken? What I mean?'cause that, that starts showing up there too, because you start getting slimmer margins. Right.

Ken Lucci: 5:39

Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a little bit of cheat sheets on a little bit inside baseball when we do a financial review. The only reason at this point in 2025 that we go back and we look at 20 nineteens revenue KPIs,

James Blain: 5:55

Okay.

Ken Lucci: 5:56

per trip, revenue per trip is, I wanna see whether that owner okay. Has increased his pricing. After the pandemic, operators that we see that are in the worst financial condition. Or maybe 5% of where they used to be in 2019. So I'm looking at, uh, sedans that are a hundred. They were$129 in 2019, and they're 134 or 139 today. Right. That's crazy talk.

James Blain: 6:28

Oh,

Ken Lucci: 6:28

that's number one. That's number one. I look at the pricing. And I don't see that they've incrementally gone up. So when we do the revenue KPIs, we pull everything from, um, Santa

James Blain: 6:38

oh.

Ken Lucci: 6:39

Warrior fast Track, and we look at revenue per trip. And I look at the, the, the, the healthy companies are between 25 and 30% higher than, than pre pandemic. And the most healthy. ratcheted up their pricing every year a little bit since, right? They went way up after the pandemic to get people to come back to work, but then they adjust their pricing'cause they know their cost structure. So when I see people that are, that are 50, 60, 70% airport. And their gross margins should be 35%. So after you turn the key and do all the work, you should have 35 bucks out of every a hundred left over to pay overhead, pay yourself, and show a profit. When I see those companies that have 28% gross profit, I say to them, you, you, you, there's, there's no doubt in my mind that your pricing is way, way too low. You don't have enough money left over. Okay?'cause I want you to think about, it's very simple. yourself the question as an operator, number one. Do you have to juggle paying your bills at the end of the month? Do you have to say, well, I'm gonna pay this one late, right? I'm gonna pay this one late. I'm gonna carry a credit card balance. Okay? That's the number one problem. That's the number, that's the number one thing that tells me that your prices are too low. Number two. Are, are you literally not paying yourself a decent wage? I saw a company this morning that's for sale, million dollar company for sale, know, been in business for a long time. A, the, the, a potential buyer sent it to me and I said, Jesus, the guy has literally taken$25,000 out in W2 income average over the last three years. He, he does not have enough money left over to pay himself. Right? The, the next thing is ask yourself a question. At the end of every month, are you taking money off the table and creating a savings account, or are you living on lines of credit and you literally, at the end of the month, you're lucky if you have a thousand dollars left. That's not a business that's literally just churning money. Right. And it's, and, and it's, you have one problem and you're out of business. You have one thing that happens. So I, I, I, I can't convince people sometimes that. If you are competing on low price and, and that's your answer to everything. You are shortlived. Your business is Shortlived. True story, very true story. I had a client call me up. He's a retained client. We do his financial reviews every single month and every month we talk to him about how he was last year verse at this time and the next 90 days. We do a sales plan with him. Comes to me and he says the corporation called him and he's got a, a shuttle five days a week that he can bid on that takes him from a train station to their office building, right? So it's like maybe six in the morning till 10 in the morning and then he comes back. So we did a complete pricing pro forma with him and he says, geez, Ken, you know. They're paying$88,$88 a segment, and we're priced at 130. He said, I'm not gonna get the business. I said, wait a minute, you just told me that the guy that's doing their work has got a DOT flag. You told me that his DOT file is, is, it's either suspended or he has a flag on his DOT. You, you, are you telling me that? Do you want to cut your cost to the point where you know

James Blain: 9:59

Okay.

Ken Lucci: 9:59

be in that condition? Sell the value of what you got, the best piece of equipment that you can, leather interior, the best chauffeur, redundant equipment in case it something breaks down, and at the end of the day, the chips fall where they may. The guy follows my advice. He's got a two year contract with them now.

James Blain: 10:19

Well,

Ken Lucci: 10:20

The guy, he, he, he didn't, did not compromise, but

James Blain: 10:24

right.

Ken Lucci: 10:26

to the corporation, look, the longer we do this, and the more business you give me, I can give you. best possible pricing in all areas, but this is why I need to be at this price because you're asking me for, for$5 million worth of insurance. You're asking me to see the criminal background checks on my chauffeur because you're a defense

James Blain: 10:49

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 10:50

and you're telling me that the guy that did it for low price doesn't have any of these things. So chasing volume is not the answer, and just because you buy things in your life on low price. Doesn't mean that your proper client targets do, right? If, if you literally are doing PPC ads and all you're doing is getting calls from people that are gonna use airport service because they're in town. Once this year, you, your marketing and advertising in the wrong place.

James Blain: 11:21

But let's, let's tie some stuff back for a minute, because I think the overarching thing that's gonna come up over and over and over is twofold. The first is like any other part of your business, and this is where I live. This is my world systems and processes. If you don't have systems and processes, if you don't have a plan, you're gonna suffer. The other thing is something that came up when we had Bruce on and what we talked about is you can have it done right. You can have it done fast or you can have it done cheap. And guess what? Anytime I move one of those sliders, the other is gonna adjust. I can't give you all three of those. I. So what we see over and over and over and what I try to help operators when they're putting together their training programs or developmental programs is you've got to be able to take what you are doing and show that same value. It goes back again, ironically to Bruce when he would talk about, when I pick up the phone, when I'm talking to someone and they ask me for price. I'm not just giving them a number. Same thing that you just mentioned with that defense contract. If they want all of these things and you are trying to throw in a low bid, you are not only doing a disservice to yourself, you're doing a disservice to everybody around you. Because guess what? If you have the systems, you've gotta be able to pay for the training. You've gotta be able to pay for the maintenance, you've gotta be able to have newer vehicle. Exactly. And if that's not reflected in the presentation that you give and the price. Guess what you're gonna lose. And the other side of that is, and this is the, in my personal experience, owning and running businesses, right? I, I've been doing it now, God, 15 plus years. What I figured out on my first business, that was one of the hardest lessons, is that you can't. Get every contract. You can't get every bid, you can't get every quote. And if you want every single one, you don't get it. And I, my father's favorite thing he says to me all the time, he goes, the most expensive education you ever got was the first business. And I think I've shared this before. My first business was a disaster. I had no clue what I was doing. I lost money. I walked away. Thank God I didn't have any debt.'cause I, I've managed to break even, which I can tell you, I know a lot of guys that don't on their first business. But the education I got there was the most crucial thing and there was two huge takeaways. The first was just'cause I put in a quote just'cause I go in and do a proposal, doesn't want it. I learned later on, there's been times that I've pitched a client or I've pitched a job or I've pitched a quote or I've done an RFP and I get deep into it and I go, nah, I don't want it. And ironically enough, sometimes when you do that, the client comes back and goes. The hell do you mean you don't want it? Well, I can't.

Ken Lucci: 14:11

listen. That's a golden nugget right there. Not, not every client is. Just because the phone rings and you get the sales lead,

James Blain: 14:21

It's not. Might not be your guy.

Ken Lucci: 14:23

it doesn't fit your definition of good business.

James Blain: 14:25

Yep. And ironically,

Ken Lucci: 14:27

revenue is.

James Blain: 14:29

right, and the funny thing is there's been plenty of times that it's happened again and again throughout my career. I. When someone comes up and they wanna bid and they want this, and I say, Hey, I'm not even gonna bid you. Well, why not? Because you are asking me to give you something that can't be done at the price you want. If you can find, you're setting me up for failure, you're setting you up for failure, no one's gonna win in this situation and I'm not going to compromise what I'm doing and try to kill myself to make it happen. And you know what's funny? I'd say probably about half the time they go, okay, well. Explain that to me. What, what would it cost to actually do it? What, what would it take to actually get it done? Now, I'd love to tell you every single one of those comes through, but you know, in sales, if you're getting 30%, you're doing well. And what I found is that's about it, right? About half of that half, right? So now you're down to about 25%. Half of that half comes back and says, all right, put the plan together. Let's do that. Because this is what I want. This is what I need, but I didn't know, or I didn't understand what it was gonna take to get that.

Ken Lucci: 16:15

Well, and, and part of, part of the, the not chasing the volume play is again, it's where are you advertising?

James Blain: 16:25

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 16:26

I had someone the other day that told me they're spending 4% of their total income. We've, we discovered this when we're doing the review. 4% of their total income on digital. Advertising and SEO,

James Blain: 16:40

How much do they have as their total marketing budget? Do you know?

Ken Lucci: 16:43

well, it's a million, it's a million dollar company,

James Blain: 16:46

Okay. Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 16:47

Okay.

James Blain: 16:48

that's a huge chunk.

Ken Lucci: 16:49

4% of that,

James Blain: 16:51

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 16:51

like 40, 40,$50,000.

James Blain: 16:54

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 16:54

So I'm like, okay, so let me understand something. I can't find you on page one when I plug in your city.

James Blain: 17:06

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 17:06

And I, I plug in limousine service, airport service, this, that, and the other thing. I can't find you organically on page one, your Google My Business not even your correct address. exactly are you spending that money to me? You know, understanding that not all revenue is good revenue, understanding that growth needs to be strategic.

James Blain: 17:33

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 17:33

to be profitable. It needs to be among clients that help you build your brand and enterprise value. I mean, those easy tests are simple. I mean, I don't even have to do a review with a customer. I will ask the question. Do you have savings? No. Well, no, we don't have a savings account. We just keep everything in a checking account and you know, I have less than$10,000. Okay. Do you have a, do you have a line of credit? Yes, I do. Is it maxed out? Yes, it is. Okay. Are you able to pay your bills every month? No, I'm not. Well, obviously something is wrong.

James Blain: 18:08

Yeah, you're one bad month away from the end of that business.

Ken Lucci: 18:11

right. You know, and, and the other piece of this puzzle on volume is especially post pandemic, there's so. So there's so much less even now,

James Blain: 18:22

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 18:22

quality vehicles out there and less quality operators. The concept of opportunity cost, okay, now this is, this happens with us constantly, okay? I've got at least five people chasing me to do valuations,

James Blain: 18:38

Oh.

Ken Lucci: 18:38

and I already know from talking to them that the metrics of their business are not such, and they want to get out this year. It's either that. I, I, I can chase those valuations or I can work with one guy who wants to exit in two or

James Blain: 18:54

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 18:54

and he's got all of the fundamentals. He just needs my help. He's already a b and he needs my, he my help to get him to an a plus. So, not a, not all clients are, are, are really meant to be. Right? There is a

James Blain: 19:08

Huh,

Ken Lucci: 19:09

of good business that you have to develop on your own, right? Like with you. know, you are an investment in training. To

James Blain: 19:17

absolutely.

Ken Lucci: 19:19

you're not an expense. But if someone comes to you and says, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna do, I don't want to add another recurring bill, guess what? They don't

James Blain: 19:26

They don't get it.

Ken Lucci: 19:27

don't, they don't get it. If they're not measuring quality assurance and, and I had a guy the other day or while back to me, say, I don't care if I have bad reviews. I just am interested in making a profit and I want to build value in my company. I'm like, you, you don't get

James Blain: 19:42

Then you miss the boat.

Ken Lucci: 19:43

You completely missed the boat. So this is a guy that chases tons of low price weddings. If I told you the name, you'd know exactly who he

James Blain: 19:51

I think I already know who it is.

Ken Lucci: 19:53

Right. He's like 1.9 reviews, like the most horrible reviews. But, but my point on the opportunity cost, let me get back to that. You know, if, if, if you. Are if you only have three limo buses or you only have two stretches, or you only have three GREs, right, and you've, and, and you wanna do weddings or you wanna do group and meeting, if you sell to the lowest price early in the season, you've missed the opportunity to do business with larger group and meeting or. The, the, the, the, the higher price bride who's working with a wedding

James Blain: 20:29

Right.

Ken Lucci: 20:29

and she's at the, at the top shelf venue. So, so your$300,000 Grech. He is parked in the wrong end of town, right? So you don't want

James Blain: 20:40

Huh.

Ken Lucci: 20:40

to see the brand and it's not in front of the best wedding ven venues. I mean, at the end of the day, measuring opportunity cost. The same thing if you don't wanna farm out your best clients, but you are playing a low price game and your best clients call you and you don't have in-house equipment available and you've gotta use the, you know, an IO from Facebook, you have a problem. So the. Not all good. Revenue is good revenue. Understand. You decide what your definition of good business is. I have to tell you, I don't wanna deal with people who question our retainer because we give a money back guarantee on what we do. We're the best at what we do and I know it, and I basically say, look. I've never had somebody say to me that my retainer didn't pay for itself times three x because of the, of the data that, and the profit improvement we've been able to make and the, and and the, the ability to sell a company when others couldn't. So opportunity cost is key. Knowing who your ideal client is, right? So this is gonna bring us up to what in your mind is the most competitive, is the where we have to be the most competitively priced? What is it?

James Blain: 21:55

Well, so I think, I think before we go there, I think the, the part we have to hit that you've kind of alluded to is the slippery slope that you're talking about, right? Because I think beyond where you have to be most competitive. What we've talked about so far lines up this slope. If you are at a point where you are trying to be low price. You are going to force yourself into volume. You're not gonna have a choice. I'm the lowest price guy. The only way I can make more money is to do more trips. What happens if I do more trips and I don't, I don't care what kinda operator you're, I don't even care what industry you're in. This is everybody that literally is out there running vehicles. So I now have to do more trips, which means I have to try and squeeze more out of each one, which means if I hit a slow month, I don't have the volume. To your point. I don't have the time, I don't have the money to be able to invest in training. I don't have the time, I don't have the money to invest in anything other than trying to plow into those trips. So,

Ken Lucci: 22:55

keep the, and keeping the lights

James Blain: 22:57

and keeping the lights on.

Ken Lucci: 22:58

it it's like being a squirrel in a cage.

James Blain: 23:01

Well, yeah, you, you have this self-fulfilling prophecy where you have to become more volume. And then the most interesting thing I've seen happen, and this blows my mind, is people, instead of going in and hitting the brakes, they literally, right, you're in a nose dive and they start throttling up towards the ground going, Hey, let's just reduce the prices so we can get more volume. Now you are literally doing the exact opposite of what you could. So I think, I think before we talk about where you have to be most competitively priced, I think the, the one thing I wanna hit on right now is if you are listening to us and you think you might be in that nose dive, I think the first thing you've gotta do is understand you're there and start figuring out how to start increasing prices to pull back on volume.

Ken Lucci: 24:59

Right, because doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the different results is the definition. It's, it's insanity. And to your point, I mean, I, I had a guy call me about three weeks ago and says, look, you know, I've got, I don't know my pricing. I. I'm, I'm trying to do a ton of affiliate

James Blain: 25:17

Yeah. Okay.

Ken Lucci: 25:17

just don't know my pricing. I'm like, okay. Uh, okay, so, um, you're keeping your financials and QuickBooks. What? Well, well, if, first of all, if you don't have your financials and QuickBooks and you don't have your financial statements, it's literally, you know, you're losing money, but you don't know where,

James Blain: 25:35

All right.

Ken Lucci: 25:35

So

James Blain: 25:36

The boat's sinking, and I'm not gonna go find the hole.

Ken Lucci: 25:40

Just crazy. And, and another true story, I I, I had a customer that was referred to me by a really good guy. I mean, he is an insurance cust insurance agent, and he literally begged me to take this client, okay? And I called the guy and I could instantly tell was not a kind of operator I want to deal with.

James Blain: 25:59

Okay.

Ken Lucci: 26:00

Um, obsessed with low price. Telling me how great his business is. But his business is no, absolutely no revenue growth. His equipment is all old. He cannot afford to buy new equipment, but yet he's telling me how good he is. we did the valuation. He wasn't satisfied with the value. And I said, you're, you're telling me you, you have, you're, you're 60. You can't, you can't pay the bills at the house.

James Blain: 26:32

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 26:34

You had to sell your house because you cannot afford to pay your mortgage, but you're not listening and you are telling me you, you don't want to change how you do business. I'm, I'm sorry, we're not gonna be able to help you. Fast forward a week ago, I see that he's got his business up for sale with another broker. With a broker, by the way, with a bus. Just a general business broker, and. Somebody called me, he said, I thought you did that valuation. I said, I did. But he didn't wanna listen to change. He did not wanna listen to the fact that this is what his business is worth. He didn't want to accept that.

James Blain: 27:08

Right.

Ken Lucci: 27:09

it was, everything about him was low price. You read the reviews, they're talking about vehicles breaking down. I'm sorry I didn't have an extra, an alternator. I mean, just my, my question for operators like that is, don't you have pride in yourself? Don't you deserve. To make a profit, I don't understand. Well, I have to be low priced. You don't understand my market. Well, you know, it's funny. We've, we valued about five companies in the general area, and four out of the five, you being the fifth are, are making good money is the problem. You, is the problem the market, the customers or your mindset.

James Blain: 27:48

Well, I think one of the things that's worth mentioning, and I saw this in my first business, I've seen this in almost every business dealing I've ever had. I think there is a general fear, especially among small business owners, that if I raise my prices, my clients are gonna revolt, they're gonna leave me. Now, there's a couple things that are, are really true that you have to think about. One, if you are raising prices, you better be delivering value on what you're doing.

Ken Lucci: 28:17

Oh, chop

James Blain: 28:18

But

Ken Lucci: 28:18

hundred percent.

James Blain: 28:19

the most important lesson that I ever learned was from when I worked with my father-in-law. And he, his, his thing was you go in and you raise prices. If nobody complains, you wait a little bit, you raise'em again. If nobody comes in, you raise'em again. If they start complaining, right, if they start being upset, you do one more, and this is counterintuitive, but you raise it one more time, right? Because that first set of people complaining were probably your cheaper customers you wanted to get rid of anyway.

Ken Lucci: 28:51

No loyalty to begin with.

James Blain: 28:52

Right? The the point where you now are at once you've raised those prices. Now does that mean we're gonna go in and we're gonna double price overnight? God, no. But you now get to the point where, guess what, in raising your prices, if you've done this right, the ones that fell off. Those are the ones that, hey, they weren't the right fit. They weren't the right ones. Look, I, I'll tell you, we are a company at PAX that, you know, we operate a little differently than most companies'cause we're a membership based organization. You know, when Covid hit, I took a personal financial hit. Bruce took a personal financial hit and we, we literally did our own type of package to help. But I can tell you when we had to raise prices. It hurt. And one of the things that I learned after that is the guys that were complaining the most about the prices raising this and that were the guys that weren't using it, were the guys that didn't have people in there. They weren't using it. They weren't getting the value. They weren't translating apps to their passengers. They weren't able to raise their own prices and compensate and pass through. And those are the ones that we lost. And to your point, earlier. There's this fear of you don't understand my business, you don't get my business

Ken Lucci: 30:04

uh.

James Blain: 30:05

Small business is small business. We all have our unique things, but at the end of the day, none of what we do is, you know, the secret thing that only we know, that only we do. You have that thing that makes your business unique, but everybody owning a business is dealing with similar and related problems. And when you refuse to see it, you start holding yourself and your business back now.

Ken Lucci: 30:30

Well, if you also have no relationship with your clients, no ongoing relationships with your clients

James Blain: 30:37

stickiness

Ken Lucci: 30:38

and there's no stickiness there, right? So I re I remember being, I. Uh, when I was doing a lot more on site, I remember being in an operator, and this is a big company,

James Blain: 30:50

now.

Ken Lucci: 30:51

the reservations phones were ringing and the owner himself took the reservation call, right? Excuse me, Ken, I'm gonna take this. Absolutely. That's the priority. literally said he, he looked up, he looked them up on his reservation. Oh, Mrs. Smith, you traveled with us in October. Welcome back. Thank you so much. Um, a, a week. Uh. going to the airport. Tell me the flight. Oh, terrific. How long are you gonna be gone for? Listen, let's book the round trip because we typically get busy on Fridays. Let's book the round trip. So my, my whole point is he had the relationship with them. He and I said, did you know who they were? He says, yeah, vaguely. I just looked it

James Blain: 31:28

Oh,

Ken Lucci: 31:28

on the, but, but his whole persona was, he knew who they were. them for calling and created that relationship. He's constantly building the value of his business.

James Blain: 31:38

yep.

Ken Lucci: 31:38

thing that I know that the same guy does is he sends out every three weeks or every month he sends a newsletter, electronic newsletter to to, to his client base. But on top of that, he also has people. His reservationists when they're not busy.'cause he got aggravated wa looking at watching them sit on Facebook.

James Blain: 32:00

Huh.

Ken Lucci: 32:01

He, he has them call people. Let's just say it's April. He has them call people that used them last May or last June and say. You know, this is so and so. This is Stacy from, so From such and such limousine. We know that you, uh, used this last year on spring break. Just double checking to see if you're gonna need us. Give us a call back and please ask for me. And I, I'm telling you, when you look at the, we do a, a review of. How many existing customers used him last year, the year before, the year before that? Each year they're growing,

James Blain: 32:37

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 32:38

this, it's not coincidental. The guys in the top third as far as his pricing is concerned. Okay? Now, the funniest thing in the world is when I met him in 17, 60% of his business was affiliate war. Now it's 30% of his business. 70% of his business is now, uh, is now his own corporate clients. So he's at the top third in his market. He's got. When we do a heat map, his cl existing client use is growing and growing

James Blain: 33:09

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 33:09

he's consistently telling them, Hey, you know what? Just wanted to let you know we have this brand new sprinter, uh, for executive nights out, or executive. If you've got any dinners out, let us know. We've got this brand new mini bus and this is how you use it. So he's constantly communicating with his client. So the other day I said to him, tell me something. What are you spending on PPC? Oh, he said, you know, practically nothing. I mean, we'll ramp up for weddings. We'll, but I know somebody in the same town that's spending three grand and, and they've got the secret sauce on PPC. Right. Which is like, it's crazy.

James Blain: 33:42

Well, but it's mindset. but, there's, there's something here that we have to point out because I see people screw it up time and time again. Okay. The PPC guy is going out and he's trying to find his end user. And he is trying to pull those in. I wanna reach these people that have these events that's doing a wedding, that's doing whatever. I'm gonna go reach them and I'm gonna go find them individually and I'm gonna make a stream in. One of the things I learned very early on is that you wanna try and find partners. You want to try and find alliances. If I know that I'm doing weddings. I might have some money in PPC, but guess who I'm taking care of? Guess who I'm, and you talked about this when it came to restaurants and others.

Ken Lucci: 34:25

Yep.

James Blain: 34:26

the wedding planners out to lunch.

Ken Lucci: 34:28

the best wedding photographers in town. The caterers a

James Blain: 34:32

together, right? Those are, those are my people that I'm working with and those are my people. Now, the other thing is everybody wants a guy. So not only that, you've gotta be able to then say, Hey, if I got this lead off of PPC, hey, no, we'd love to take you care of you. By the way, we have these incredible people that we work with. We know the best of the best in town for everything. Do you have your caterer? Do you have, you know this, do you have your dj? Do you, do you have all that planned out? Because we would love to help make that easier for you, and I can send you over a list to some of the top people in town that we work with that we know will take care of you. And now all of a sudden it's, well, hold on. I called this guy for a quote. He's making my life easier. He's providing value. I haven't even dropped a dime yet. And what does it cost you to keep that list? They're sending you referrals. You're sending them referrals. So I think a lot of people have lost that. And one of the things that I, your, your network is your net worth.

Ken Lucci: 35:29

mm-hmm. It's the give to get, it's the give to get.

James Blain: 35:32

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 35:33

val, it's the giving of value before you sell'em anything. Right. It's, there's no question about that. And, and look, I was just reading something today about lo the low price clients from a perspective of loyalty. They're not. the client

James Blain: 35:53

They're gonna go find the next cheap price. I.

Ken Lucci: 35:55

That's basically it, and it, my answer and, and I, you know, I, I, I'm lucky, we're blessed with a lot of business. I had an operator, been in business for a long, long time, say to me, well, you know, there just aren't that many corporate, uh, accounts anymore in this area. They've all moved away. Well. I mean, I literally have my researcher pull up the fact that there's nine Fortune 500 companies

James Blain: 36:18

In the area.

Ken Lucci: 36:19

Right. Well, I can't just walk in there and find them. Okay, great. I, I literally put a list together of all the business networking groups. You know, it, it is the mindset and my answer to people who say they can't go up on their prices'cause their customers won't pay it is you have the wrong customers then.

James Blain: 36:37

Well,

Ken Lucci: 36:38

I grew up in Massachusetts.

James Blain: 36:39

yeah.

Ken Lucci: 36:40

joke about the W towns, right? Wellesley, Weston Wayland. Right. And those W towns. Those W towns are where all the money

James Blain: 36:50

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 36:51

and at the end of the day, if you don't think those people who are sitting in a$3 million,$2 million price, the best zip codes in your area, do you think they want the Uber driver to know that they're going out of town for 10 days? The answer is no.

James Blain: 37:06

God no.

Ken Lucci: 37:07

getting, getting back to what people are obsessed with and is, you know, number one, I if in every category selling to corporate clients, the most important thing to the corporate client is you make'em look good.

James Blain: 37:22

Oh.

Ken Lucci: 37:22

travel manager, you create that relationship. I know, I know companies that have been doing business with the same. Corporations, the same corporate clients for 15 years because of the relationship and, and they have gone up on their prices. The secret to going up on your pricing is, is justifying it is, Hey, listen, these are the things that have gone up. Uh, this is why I have to go up on, in price on you this year. Right? But. general, if, if your strategy is to be the lowest price in the market, cannot, you, you just, you're not gonna survive. And just ask yourself those questions. I mean, are you paying yourself? Are you the last one to be paid? And you just get what's left over?

James Blain: 38:08

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 38:09

well, you're, if that's, if, if yes, then you're targeting the more the wrong customers. If you cannot make a living. Better than if you went out and you, put your services in the marketplace and got yourself an eight to five job. If you are not making at least a third more owning your business, in the wrong business because you certainly, your risk is much higher, right? When you just take an eight to five job, what's your risk getting hit by a car on your way to work? But as

James Blain: 38:40

Okay.

Ken Lucci: 38:40

the business, you literally have risk, risk from employees, risk from customers, lawsuits, risk from accidents, risk from car accidents, risk from the vehicles going down. And to me, I don't understand why people think that if my, if, if business is slow. I'm gonna lower my prices. No. If business is slow, quadruple your marketing, quadruple your outreach. Reach out to your existing clients, create that sales machine. You know, there is a true state, a true story, true statement, that the only organism that grows for the sake of growth is the

James Blain: 39:20

The cancer cell.

Ken Lucci: 39:21

All growth in business needs to be strategic

James Blain: 39:26

Okay.

Ken Lucci: 39:26

is not adding profit. Adding value and building your brand. You're serving the wrong client. You're serving the wrong, totally serving the wrong client, and either you have the wrong vehicle mix or your, your marketing dollars are being spent in the wrong place. I mean, remember what we talked about as far as the opportunity cost. I mean, the worst thing you want is it, is you. You are selling low price airport transfers. One time customers

James Blain: 39:59

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 39:59

have, because you're constantly creating, you're spending money to create one customer.

James Blain: 40:05

But this doesn't have to be complicated either, right? I think a lot of people think, you know, oh man, you gotta have these super complicated systems. You have to do this, do that. So I remember, uh, a turning point for me as a business owner was when I read the book Profit First and the Turning Point for me of that book,

Ken Lucci: 40:23

should read that book, profit

James Blain: 40:24

we'll drop a link in the, in the description, right? Uh, but Profit First has a really simple concept, and that's that anytime revenue comes in, I'm gonna split it out. And what it's going to do, especially if you're an owner that's not getting paid. It forces you to get compensated. So it says you have this much money for operating expense. You as the owner are taking this much money, you're setting aside this much money for taxes, right? That's the simplified version of it. And guess what that means? And this, for as an owner, you tend to operate on this mindset of. I'm going to spend what I have, I'm gonna spend what I need. But if you have these accounts, if what you are getting paid and what you're paying for taxes is pulled out, and you only have so much left over to work with, there's this beautiful psychology of good entrepreneurs, then we'll figure it out, right? You're going to figure out how to make that new budget work. And so by having a system like that, that forces you to do it, it's going to put you in a place where, hey. I know what I'm getting. I know what I'm doing. Now, I would also argue, if you haven't heard the episode that Ken did on pricing, you need to immediately go back and listen to that because that's your system on pricing, right? Your system on pricing is, I know what my costs are, I know what I need to make, and by the way, what I haven't touched on yet in Profit First is you have a set profit. We're gonna run X amount of profit. We're not gonna guess. It's not what's left over. We're setting the society. We're running 10, 15, whatever that is. That's what we're gonna run. Well, now all of a sudden, you know, I have all of these things to cover. I know what my profit is. I know that's how you set your price. Well, guess what? Your training, your software, all of your different items have to be worked in there. And then like we've talked about, you have to make sure that when you are pitching, you are delivering that value. Uh, when I tell you that for me as there, there was two things that I learned financially that changed everything for me and my business, right? And Ken will help you take these to the next level. But these were where they started for me. They were getting a system like profit first in place to where I had fixed numbers. And then the other one that was magic for me in my business was. I have a monthly meeting with my bookkeeper. We sit down for an hour. We go over where all the money's going, we go over what our costs are, we go over what's different. And there's times where I go, well, hold on, hold on. Why? Why are we spending more in this category? What happened there? But thanks to those two simple things, I know how financially healthy I am at any one point in time, and I have that grasp on it. And I believe, and, and Ken, I'm gonna tee you up. Shameless plug for my cohost here. I wanna say your course is actually gonna cover a lot of that on how to read those reports, how to do those types of things, how to do those pricing. So, and, and obviously I don't wanna turn this into a sales pitch, but knowing that those are game changers, is there anything there that you see as kind of, other than buying profit first and taking your course, how does someone start getting on track with that? What's the, what's the step they're gonna take that's gonna lead'em down the road to fix it?

Ken Lucci: 43:42

Well, I, I think it's very straightforward as a business owner, if you are relying on your accountant to know your financial metrics,

James Blain: 43:51

Oh

Ken Lucci: 43:51

fail.

James Blain: 43:52

Toast.

Ken Lucci: 43:53

because you're toast. Because the they, their job make no mistake, is to calculate. Profit or loss and tell you what you know for taxes.

James Blain: 44:02

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 44:02

are making a profit, they can't tell you how to continue to double down and do more of what you're doing, right? If the, if you're, you've created a loss, they really can't tell you what's out of whack. So to me, it comes down to one, knowing your gross profit margin on every service you sell.

James Blain: 44:22

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 44:23

you are putting out a sprinter for five hours. You better know incrementally. How much does that sprinter cost you to put out? How much are you paying your driver? How much are you paying? All of your expenses, repair, maintenance, et cetera. And then what's your markup, right? And your markup goal. Should be somewhere north of 40% gross profit leftover. Okay, so first of all, my father used to t taught me this. You have to know the equation of what it costs you to turn the key in the morning. So how much does your overhead cost you to maintain? What is the overhead cost of your business? Right? How much it's like, you know, like tax free day. It's how many days of revenue do you have to have coming in before you break even and cover your nut? Okay. So to me that's, that's critically important. So I'd add up my fixed cost, I'd add up everything. It takes me right to maintain, keep the lights on, my employees, my inside employees, what I call my, my overhead, my people that are not generating revenue and know what my break even point is. But, you know, I, I've not, this is what we do is pretty complicated, but I can tell you the first number that I look at. I can tell you that depending upon the size of the company and the diversification of the fleet, I can tell you by looking at one number once the financials are in our cost of goods format, I can tell you if I'm looking at the gross profit margin, and it's not depending upon di, the diversification and size of the company either 30, 35, 40. Plus. Plus plus of 30, 35, 40. I can tell you those companies are not making any, any money I can if, if I walk in and I look at a black car company and their gross profit margin after everything is in our format, tailored the right way, and they're making less than 30%, I don't even have to look at their overhead. I know they don't have enough money unless they're operating seven days a week with no overhead, they're doing it all themselves. Right? I

James Blain: 46:30

Oh.

Ken Lucci: 46:30

there's not enough money left over to pay all the overhead to associated with running a business. Pay themselves above, I mean, a living wage. I mean, uh, pay yourself very, very well. You are taking the risk as an owner and then have money left over to make a profit. I already know that the, that the business is in trouble.

James Blain: 46:52

Let me throw something at you though, Ken, though,'cause I can, I can already hear this from some of the listeners, but Ken, you don't understand and I get this at Pax, right? The reason I can't afford to do that, the reason I can't have newer vehicles. The reason I can't invest in training. The reason I can't do that, man. The margins on this business, man. These numbers you're talking about, you must be talking about huge. You know, crazy secular businesses. This is like a, a 5%, like 10% razor thin margin business. Ken, there's so little to be made, Ken, right? What, what do you say to that?

Ken Lucci: 47:22

I can show you in every size company in this industry, the million dollar companies, I can put$2 million companies side by side in the same market. And I can show you one where the guy is making serious six figures. He's bought a building, he and his wife take salary out of the business, right? And I can show you another million dollar business, same million dollars in revenue. guy cannot afford to pay himself. The guy's got the oldest fleet in the, in the area. The guy is in a rented building. He's approaching retirement age, and he's not paid himself W2 and

James Blain: 47:59

And this is the same revenue, right? Same revenue, million to million.

Ken Lucci: 48:03

revenue, million to million. You know the difference? a low price in the market and one knows his value.

James Blain: 48:10

Right,

Ken Lucci: 48:11

one has his, his airport transfers are literally 25% lower than the next guy. Okay? So if you don't want to get granular with your numbers, it's real simple. you would need to be in the top one third of anything that you do, right? And then you hope, then you hope that you're, you're gonna have enough money left over or. You do what's called zero based budgeting. It's simple. Add up all your expenses, add up all the variables, and you, you price based on knowing your cost and defining that profit. To me, the higher profit means I'm a higher value individual.

James Blain: 48:51

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 48:51

Now, don't get me wrong. When I started doing this job, I mean, I was taking on clients for probably a 10th of what we charge now, but then I decided. I would rather, I would rather deal with less people, spend as much time as I can with them than on, and, and yes, add more value to their business than is race back and forth. And, and to try to deal with people and, and just to do a volume play. Everybody has that choice and they don't think they do, but everybody has that choice. I'll go back to my original client. My original client that, that came to me with that shuttle contract. He was Heming and Han. He, he's in the top third of what he charges in the market. Top third, you go in any, if you price any of his services, he's a third hire. He's got his own building. He's got the best fleet in the marketplace. He's got the best chauffeurs, the best reviews. And he said to me, I don't think we're gonna get this, Ken. And I said, I don't wanna hear that. gonna first figure out. What, how we have to price

James Blain: 49:54

Right.

Ken Lucci: 49:55

we're gonna give you, we're gonna give you the elasticity. Let's add up all your costs. We're going to give you, here's what you could charge. If you wanna make 25% gross margin, I don't recommend it. Right? Here's what you can charge. If you wanna make 30%. Now, if you're gonna to do this, your strategy should be to capture. The executive travel for that company. So what does he do? He goes in at the highest price that we calculated together and he got himself a two year contract. This same guy comes to me and he says to me, um, I got another phone call from a group of private, private school, uh, uh, private school parents and three years ago they asked me for prices and they didn't go with me'cause they were too high priced. And, um, they just found out that the guy that they're using is running his equipment without insurance.

James Blain: 50:43

Oh geez.

Ken Lucci: 50:44

Okay, so, so, okay, let's forget about three years ago prices.'cause now your cost structure's different. We're gonna literally go, okay, here's from the office to, from your base to

James Blain: 50:58

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 50:58

house. This is your cost. From that house to the second. Picking up the second kid, the third kid, the fourth kid, and, and we literally, literally priced it by the mile. I said, here's your latitude. You can go A, you can go B, you can go C. But remember something people didn't value you back in the day, and they went with somebody. Remind them of that.

James Blain: 51:20

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 51:20

So what is he? He goes, he says, you know what, Ken, whether I get it or not, I told him, this is what I have to charge you because these, this is why best equipment, best chauffeur, criminal background checks, uh, drug testing best, best reviews, uh, best loss run and insurance. Right? I haven't spoken to him, but the whole point is the guy, he knows his worth.

James Blain: 51:44

Right.

Ken Lucci: 51:45

So I, while I feel bad for people when, when I'm dealing with the, the guy that does a million bucks who can't pay himself and is dealing with old equipment, but that's the person who says to me, but I can't be low price, but I mean, I can't go up in my price. But, but, but even when I say to him, there's a guy across town he's making, he and his wife are making six figures. They have a vacation home. They're doing the same million dollars. You are the only difference. their gross profit margin. They're managing their overhead and they're paid money. All it, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are the lowest price in your market, you're not gonna be able to pay your bills. You're not gonna be able to maintain your equipment, you're not gonna be able to pay yourself well. So this is the question I ask when I, when I say. When I, when I deal with an operator who calls me at 60 years old and says, I need to, I need to sell my company to, to pay my retirement, and the scenario is like the guy that's never paid himself. There's no value there. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make profit every year along the way, you are gonna have something to sell If you make and you pay yourself better. Then if you were out in the regular marketplace getting, you know, doing the Monday through Friday Jo nine to five thing, you are gonna have something to sell at the end of the day. But the other piece is you've made great profits along the way, you don't, you, you are creating wealth along the way. You, if, if you are taking lots of money off the table. You are gonna be less concerned about what you make when you sell your business. And I, I reject that. And you know what? I didn't have this perspective in 2018 when I started this because I, we, we've reviewed 270 companies. I can show you a$20 million company that's not worth a dime he's had to, his, his fleet is really old.

James Blain: 53:36

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 53:36

refinance his fleet. He's had, he has two or three, um, two or three lines of credit. Right Ken, I need to do another budget because I, I, I've gotta get another line of credit. I'm not doing it with you.

James Blain: 53:48

Well,

Ken Lucci: 53:49

you are

James Blain: 53:49

yeah.

Ken Lucci: 53:50

doing what? You're not doing the work. Right. So I can show you a$20 million company that's worth much less than a seven to$10 million company who is chosen to, to cooperate in the higher plane of his market.

James Blain: 54:07

Well, uh.

Ken Lucci: 54:07

chosen to pay himself good money and yeah, he, you know, the secret with him. He justifies his prices. You know, he, he's dealing with the same airport transfers that you are, but he's marketing in wealthy areas. He is creating relationships with 10 clients in and that constantly use him rather than PPC trying to generate a hundred new leads a a, a month. So it, it really is how you wanna live, right? If you wanna, if you wanna, if you wanna turn your tables as a restaurant on a Saturday night, if you wanna turn your tables five times right, and just push people through the door with shitty food and do volume, that's great. I, I'd rather turn the table two or three times, making sure I've served those people incredibly well, making sure that they come back constantly. Constantly because of good word of mouth rather than continually constantly advertising for new clients because you're not creating any value.

James Blain: 55:09

There's a couple things though, because this all comes back down to having systems in place. Because to that point, if you are going to provide that higher level of service, you have to make sure, right? This is where I live. You have to make sure your staff is trained, both in the office and in the vehicle. To do that, to have the consistency, you have to have the systems in place to manage your financials. And the one thing that we talked about in a previous episode was you have to understand, right? There's this, I heard this adage when I first got into the industry. If you wanna know how well a company's doing, go in the garage and look at how many vehicles are out. I will tell you I've learned that that's not as true now as it used to be. Because if I've got my vehicles out running all night long and I've got'em running all day long and I have a contract that is my nights that I'm doing and I'm running it and I'm making no money on it, one accident, one instant, one issue is gonna wipe out every dime I made on it. I would be better off finding something different to do or, and in some cases, as crazy as this sounds, there are companies where you'd be better off letting the vehicle sit than accepting that. And so I think. Understanding that we are at a point where if you are looking to run a company, anybody can run a company. Anybody can try and stay afloat. You can be at the point where you don't make a dime on it. But if you are listening to this podcast, because you're one of those operators that is saying, I want my margins to be the ones that Ken's are talking about, I want to have that vacation home look, I will share. Right now, I have, I have friends in the industry. Then at one point we're looking at selling their business and then we went out to dinner at a recent show and they said, Hey, you know what? We were gonna sell the business, but we are getting enough money out of the business to sustain our lifestyle, to keep us happy. We've developed these great leaders, we have great leadership in place. We have great systems in place to where our involvement at this point. Is our how we want to be involved. We work when we want to work. We come in when we want to come in. We get to have that company almost as a luxury, almost as something great that we get to do. And we took out more money last year than we ever have before. You know, for us, it's sustaining our lifestyle. We get to almost have that as a hobby, and then when we do want to exit, guess what we know because of how it's running, because of all those systems, because of everything there. If we decide to exit, if we decide to do something like that, we're set up. And so I think this takeaway happens again and again and again, but there's these couple things, right? Find yourself a mentor. Put your systems in place, get things figured out, and then constantly develop the work on that. I think the only last thing I would say, and this was kind of my big takeaway that I got from that same operator, is try to overcome your limiting beliefs. If I raise my prices, they're all gonna leave me. I have to be the cheapest. Try to overcome these limiting beliefs you have, and from there, allow yourself to grow. So the business can grow. You know, I can't think of a better thought to really end this on other than if you were trapped in this volume rat race. It's a limiting belief. You don't have to be.

Ken Lucci: 58:22

it, it's, and I feel bad because they don't see their self worth, right.

James Blain: 58:25

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 58:26

for someone to call them on a Sunday to interrupt their family and. To say, listen, I, I, I need a ride to the airport at four, four o'clock in the morning tomorrow. Okay? At the end of the day, if that's what they, if that's gonna happen, you're gonna pay me, you're gonna pay me, or you're gonna pay whoever I have to pay. You're gonna have to pay us some pretty good money to guarantee at 3 45 tomorrow morning that vehicle's gonna know your worth,

James Blain: 58:52

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 58:53

I wouldn't be this adamant if I just didn't see the contrasting, the contrasting, companies. You know, the, I, I'm the famous, the tale of two companies,

James Blain: 59:03

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 59:03

and it's, if you, if you feel you have to be the lowest price in town, you're, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're always gonna suffer from cash flow problems. You're all, you're not gonna be able to fix your vehicles when,

James Blain: 59:15

It's everything. Accident, safety, money. It bleeds to all of it.

Ken Lucci: 59:21

A hundred percent you should strive to be in the top 10%.

James Blain: 59:25

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 59:25

and we've had a lot of those people on the, on the podcast and you can't say that we're not trying to provide value. That's for sure.

James Blain: 59:33

Well, and I think the other thing is, you know, I've, I've heard people's, well, if everybody was in the top 10%, who's gonna take the bottom? Rising tide lifts all boats, right? If every single person in transportation said, we're gonna step up the game, we're gonna step up what we're gonna offer, if everybody did that, guess what? The entire market's pricing is gonna rise up. It's not like one company out there was like, well, we're gonna charge more for eggs and we're gonna be, no. The whole industry had their costs go up, had everything go up, and now eggs are what eggs are, right? You see that in industries all the time.

Ken Lucci: 1:00:04

What's gonna happen is there's gonna be a lot of successful people laughing at the ones who've got the shitty reviews because their vehicles break down and they're arguing with customers and they get 1.9 reviews. And that's what you're gonna have. And it, I mean, it, it's, you know, Steinberg has said one thing that made a lot of sense. Winning is the number one thing to me after breathing, after breathing. And if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be in the top. If you're not in the top one, two, or three win place or show, it doesn't matter what, where you are.'cause the view's always the same.

James Blain: 1:00:38

Right. Why show up if you're not aiming for the podium?

Ken Lucci: 1:00:42

yeah, absolutely.

James Blain: 1:00:43

So,

Ken Lucci: 1:00:44

All right. Well this was another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. The place where you can go every single week for the best continuing continuing education in the industry. We don't charge you, we don't make you go get a hotel room. Great entertainment.

James Blain: 1:00:59

uh.

Ken Lucci: 1:00:59

entertainment. And um, we wanna leave you with a few things. If you've got any suggestions,

James Blain: 1:01:05

Absolutely

Ken Lucci: 1:01:06

Go to what's the website,

James Blain: 1:01:08

Ground transportation podcast.com or Facebook, Twitter, ground Transportation podcast. Yep.

Ken Lucci: 1:01:16

visit pack training. Or visit driving transactions. Give us your suggestions. Tell us what you like. Tell us what you don't like, and we're gonna keep doing what we're doing.

1:01:25

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.