James Blain: 0:25

Hello everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. Uh, I am James Bla, one of the hosts from PAX Training. Unfortunately today I'm not joined by my co-host Ken Lucci. He is no doubt making a amazing deal happen within the industry somewhere. I believe he's actually in the air on the way there right now, so I'm sure we'll hear about that later on. Super excited about my guest today. We've got Phelp hopes from IMG, uh, Phelps. I'm super excited to have you on. Super excited to talk about IMG. Uh, I know when I got into the industry, IMG was, was kind of this, this group I thought it maybe as an association. I think there's a lot of people that kind of hear IMG thrown around and think it's like A-B-A-U-M-A and, and they don't quite understand the difference. But I'm most excited to talk about your background. Because I think the perspective that you're bringing to the industry, kind of your background and how you got to actually be the president of IMG is gonna be one of the most exciting things we talk about today. So welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you.

Phelps Hope: 1:27

Terrific. James, thanks so much, mate. I appreciate it. Uh, I'm very thrilled to be here and while I'm still getting my feet, uh, under me in this position with IMGI, uh, I certainly can talk about background easy enough.

James Blain: 1:40

Well, I, I think anybody listening from just that introduction clearly knows it's gonna be exciting because that Australian accent comes through. You've got the beautiful beaches in the background. So I think before we start talking about IMG, tell us how, one, how do you end up here? How do you end up in this space and what's kind of your personal background? How do you get to where you're at?

Phelps Hope: 2:00

That sounds great. Well, you know, how much time do we have, because I've got all kinds of background stories, so seriously. Yeah, you're right. I'm Australian and uh, I've been living in the US for many years now, but, uh, growing up my, uh, my dad was a civil engineer and so as a family we would travel around Australia. We move, uh, every year and a half to three years as he moved from one civil project to another, and then he got into mining and, uh, looking after mine towns and so on. So we lived all through the outback in all the major cities in Australia. And then at one point in, uh, kind of my preteen years, we lived in Papua New Guinea. Uh, we lived on an island called Boganville. Which is actually part of the Solomon Island group, uh, surrounded by the Coral Sea. And, uh, he was the mining engineer, uh, in charge of the mine. It was an open cut copper mine. In fact, it was the third largest open cut copper mine in the world at the time. And, uh, it was really exciting as a young fell growing up in Papua New Guinea and living in the tropics and all that that brings to it. But it was also third world. I mean, there was no radio television. We'd have a ship come in once a month and uh, we'd get the supplies off the ship and it would go into the PX and we'd live off that. And for four years I never drank fresh milk. All the milk was out of a can. And to this day, I can't even smell tongal milk or carnation milk without.

James Blain: 3:22

How old are you at this point? Right? I mean this, this clearly you How old are

Phelps Hope: 3:25

is the, the pre-teen years, so, you know, 12 through 15 kind of that, that, that range. And, which was very exciting because Boganville was, uh, there was a lot of activity in the Solomon Islands during World War ii and for those who know their World War II history a little bit, Guadal Canal is two islands down in the Solomon Islands, where there was a lot of, uh, battles there with the Japanese, uh, the American Marines and the Australian armed forces were, uh, holding the, the Solomon Islands. They tried to stem the tide of the Japanese advance to come take over Australia. So if it wasn't for the American Naval and, and marine forces, uh, being able to have the big battle, uh, naval battle in the Coral Sea, which is just off the Great Barrier Reef in Northern Australian waters, uh, we'd probably be speaking Japanese in Australia today. So thank you very much to all my yank friends. Uh, we appreciate that. Uh, I'm terrible with languages, so I wouldn't have done any good learning Japanese. Anyway, so growing up in that, that environment was a lot of fun and exciting. And you know, through my growing up years, I watched what my dad did and as a civil engineer working with all these really big trucks, these 105 ton trucks and the big drag line cranes that and Oh yeah. You know, guy stuff. I loved it. So I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna be a civil engineer too. You bet. I'm, I'm good. So fast forward and I go to the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and I'm halfway through my first semester of civil engineering and I'm sitting there in a, uh, in a midterm exam. There's about 150 kids. We're in an auditorium and at the front of the auditorium is this big block of pre-stressed concrete with rebar metal sticking out of it, kinda like a Star Wars looking thing. And we had two hours to write a paper about this block of concrete. Now I'll admit, I think I was hung over at the time, but

James Blain: 5:17

like all good college kids,

Phelps Hope: 5:18

there you go. That's it. I mean, it's just way of life. I'm like, nah, I've got, I, I do not care about this block of concrete. I don't think I could ever care about this block of concrete. So, tore it up paper and I walked out.

James Blain: 5:31

How, how long did you stare at this blocking? I and, and I, I'm sure it probably felt like forever. How long did you sit there staring at that before you just decided? No, I'm done.

Phelps Hope: 5:39

uh, you know, it, it was probably just a few minutes, James, but it felt like hours and, and I'm staring down at this blank sheet of paper and I've got nothing. Just nothing. And I'm like, yeah. So I, I march outta class and I called a, a mate of mine, uh, and this was before cell phones. And I said, you know, I've gotta go home. I tell the parents that I've, I've quit college here, and he said, well, I'm working as a bellman over at, at the local hotel and we've got an opening. You wanna come here unless you can go home and say, how I found a job. Yeah, no worries. That sounds great. So I get over there and yep, they hire me on the spot and when do you want me to start? They had a shift that afternoon, so I'm like, okay, great. I'll go home, get changed, and I'll come in and I'll start work right away. So I go home and get changed and kind of out the door. I'm, uh, oh mom, dad, by the way, I, I dropped outta university and I've got a job as a bellman, so all's good and off I go and I'm sure I, I still have that picture of my parents' faces. They're just there. I. That slack jaw, gobsmack look, you know, the, the jaws on the ground, like what, what, what, without even a conversation off I go. And, uh, so I'm halfway through my first shift and I'm like, oh my God, this is, this is amazing. You get paid to do this. This is great. It's like playing house. So that sparked me to say, you know what? I wanna have a hotel career. So, uh, I'd been working there for many months when I finally decided that. And I look around Australia and at the time there really wasn't any business schools that talked about hotel management. It was all just culinary schools. And I, I didn't wanna learn how to cook and I could really care less. So I looked around the world and where do you go for business? Who's got the best business in the world? America. So who we got in America, university of Denver, Colorado had a, has a very good hotel, restaurant management program. And at the time, I think it was number three in the country, I do not know where it ranks today, but they had a very progressive, uh, international student recruitment program. To get people to come into their hotel management courses. So, uh, I apply, I get accepted, and I come over to America. I go to university there and I need to work, gotta pay the rent. And so I, uh, I started working with Marriott Hotels at the time as a bellman, and I stayed with Marriott for about eight years and I ended up having a hotel career that was almost 15 years long. And today I live in, in Atlanta and I got transferred down to Atlanta. I took a job in Atlanta.

James Blain: 8:01

Still with Marriott

Phelps Hope: 8:02

No,

James Blain: 8:02

this

Phelps Hope: 8:03

this point I'd moved on. Yeah, I'd moved on for Marriott and uh, I had got recruited away. Uh, I got a great training program and so other hotel companies love to poach Marriott trained personnel. So I, I got swept up in all of that and I actually, uh, came to Atlanta in a, uh, career progression to, to be a part of the worldwide sales effort for a hotel brand and ended up at the corporate office for what is now in the continental hotels. I got into that wonderful job climbing that ladder, and I get into the corporate office and there's no ballrooms anymore and there's no guests anymore. It's all R EITs and hotel portfolios, and it's like, nah, this is boring. So once

James Blain: 8:46

lost the people.

Phelps Hope: 8:47

no drop out. There's no, there's no events, there's no people, there's no excitement. There's no connectivity. And uh, and they do a great job. Don't get me wrong, it just wasn't for me. So I drop out and I'm in Atlanta going, okay, what do I do now? And, uh, I start up my own event planning company

James Blain: 9:03

So what year is this? When you start your,

Phelps Hope: 9:05

Uh, this was in the early nineties, so all through the nineties I started two companies. One was a, uh, a corporate event production company, and that was working with corporations and other entities about their business messaging and designing events and, uh, to towards known outcomes to really have better impact, uh, make them more efficient and have them more experiential for their guests. And this is now for primarily clients or employees of the corporations. Well, I found out there's a lot of convention work in Atlanta. So I also started up a DMC, a destination management company working with inbound conventions to the city of Atlanta to design what they needed, be the local resource. Need a DJ florist. You need a shuttle system for your, your, you know, motor coach shuttle system for your attendees, for a multi-property convention, uh, offsite events, whatever it might be. I designed it, managed it, and so forth. So. Again, fast forward, both those companies are doing very well all through the nineties. And then we ran into nine 11 and the landscape, as it did for a lot of people changed and the convention business in Atlanta changed. And, uh, it, it only took a couple of years post nine 11 that we just could not sustain our business. And so I closed the doors, but that business is, it started with me and a phone and a phone book. And I used the convention planner before it went online and it'd give you the contact for all the conventions, you know, they're coming into town, who was the person to call and so on. And that's just dialing for dollars saying, Hey, what do you need? Need a dj? Great, I'll book it for you. Managed it, made a few dollars on the side, starting out with that, that mode, if you will, uh, grew the company to 35 employees and we were about$10 million in, uh, in fees, revenues, uh, at our peak in the late, at the end of the nineties. the.com bubble kind of burst a few things and then it ran into nine 11. So there was kind of a slide there for the way business was being handled. It pushed everything online and so Google stepped in where personal service, uh, and interrupted the personal service providers because the corporations post nine 11 froze everything. And they were like, well, we still gotta have our meetings. We still gotta do what we're doing. Well, how do we do that? Well, the young guns at the time said, we've got this lovely thing called the internet. Let's use Google search. And you need a motor coach, you need a dj. You don't have to call someone like Phelps. Just go in Google search and it'll tell you who's out there.

James Blain: 11:36

Was that a slow progression? Was that something where, you know, you started seeing a changing tide and you had

Phelps Hope: 11:41

We did. Yeah. It, it, it was slow and it just, it, it, it bent more to rather than the personal relationship and being their go-to P person, the Google search environment, because the internet was really getting, really starting to flourish at that point. And remember, these are the MySpace time period when you'd had MySpace pages and people were emerging from that into having a website, which looked like a, basically a digital PDF version of what their print website, you know,

James Blain: 12:09

People were making their websites on Microsoft Word at that

Phelps Hope: 12:11

That's right. That's exactly

James Blain: 12:13

I remember. I remember making a couple of those God awful

Phelps Hope: 12:15

that there, there was no click-throughs, there was none of this. So this was in that early days, well, nine 11 really, and the.com bubble bursting. That was the stimulus of the use of, of, of the, the websites and so on. Well, that continued. We ran into other things and we finally had to close the doors. We did a soft landing. It just didn't work for what we were, uh, which is okay.

James Blain: 12:37

So, so tell us a bit, right, that's, that's a term that I don't think we've ever used on a show. Tell us what a soft landing is. What does it mean when you exit a business soft landing?

Phelps Hope: 13:25

Well, that's where basically you chain the doors and you say, Hey, we're not in business anymore. And you turn around and you pay off your creditors. Uh, sometimes, and in my case it was, you know, cents on the dollar. We think we paid 30 cents on the dollar to the few people that we owed money to. Uh, we sold the building that I owned at the time and got out from under that. And, uh, we still had open contracts with clients. So what I did was take, uh, employees and put them together in little, basically, uh, project management groups, introduce them directly to the client, let the client know that the company was going out of business, but that this group of professionals who were already servicing their, their project would then finish out the contract and you pay them the balance and they'll work for whatever the remaining balance was. With the goal to maintain that client for themselves and that this was, help them have a progression to continue their profession. Well, out of the 35 employees, got 17 of them today, own their own businesses from that point. So it, it worked out well for many of them that, that got their kickstart. They got trained in the company that we had and, uh, that they maintained the client. And, uh, it's a lot easier to grow a business when you've got clients rather than just setting it up and then go look for clients. So that was a good kickstart and it was the way to do it this way. I knew that I wanted to continue working in the industry, so I didn't want to just go bankrupt and, you know, run away. Uh, you know, I had the, the ability to pay things off and, uh, keep my head high in the industry and talk about a learning, uh, learning curve was incredible. Uh, it really bruises the ego, though, I gotta tell you. You really have to suck it up and, uh, take it on the chin. Uh, some people are not happy, but most everybody understood and, uh, then and stay active in the industry that I really love. So it worked out really well.

James Blain: 15:17

I, I think a couple things stand out to me there. First I can tell you your experience with your first business. I, I, I envy a little bit.'cause my first business that I started, we did a soft landing at the end, but we never reached that scale. Right? We never got to the point where we had all the employees and 10 million fees and those, you know, ours was more kind of bootstrapped trying to figure it out. And for us, I did the same thing when I exited my first business. I, I happen to be very relationship driven. Anybody that's worked with me at Pax, any, my existing customers know I'm the guy that if you call me at 3:00 AM I'm gonna answer even if you're drunk. Right? Don't call me drunk at 3:00 AM but I'm the guy that I'll answer. Um, so my big thing is when we exited our first business that I had with my dad. We were kind in the same boat as you. We wanted to leave with our dignity intact. We wanted to make sure that our clients ended up where we needed to be. But we had figured out in our case, you know, we had seen a similar erosion, we had seen a lot of regulation changes, we'd seen a lot of things that made that business not viable. So I've got a ton of respect for you in doing that. Now, let me ask you, so you, you make the soft landing, you, you get out, it sounds like completely unscathed. It sounds like a win, right? You've, you've gotten out, you've taken care of your people in terms of your internal clients, which are your customers, you're taking care of your external clients. You've really kind of set everything up to make a soft transition out. How does that then change to you moving to IMG? What, what does that next chapter

Phelps Hope: 16:44

we've got a big step before that, so I must tell you, you know, it was the right thing to do. It was the hardest thing I had to do because basically I had to euthanize the company and I'd grown the company with my sweat equity every single moment That, for those those dozen years.

James Blain: 17:01

And you're 10 years in, right?

Phelps Hope: 17:03

Oh, we're more than 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. We're, uh, we, uh, we're almost 12 years at this point. And, uh, it was like having a child die, I'll be honest. It was quite emotional and I couldn't even look at, uh, photographs of, uh, events or with the company or reflect any for a couple of years after that. I mean, I literally was mourning the death of that company'cause I had put so much into it. But, you know, God had something else in mind for me. I wasn't, didn't know it at the time, but, uh, I knew that, okay, if that wasn't meant to be. Uh, unfortunately it did result in a, in a divorce. Uh, the marriage broke up, uh, still got the three kids from the marriage. Uh, they're all grown now. They have three boys that they're off doing their own careers, which is wonderful. Um, so it was a big reset. So it's like, okay, what do I do now? So I

James Blain: 17:50

is, so now it's like a whole life reset,

Phelps Hope: 17:52

It is a life reset. And it's like, where do we go from this point? I knew that I enjoyed, I still enjoyed the travel and event business, whatever that was going to be. And uh, there was an opportunity, uh, one of my, excuse me. I went out there as a consultant, used my experience, see what I can do to help others. I found out the consultancy is almost like, like having a doctor friend. You know, I don't have time to come to your office and I can't afford your fees, but you know, I've got this pain. What do you think the pain might be? You know, I've got this event I'm trying to do. I'm, I've got this challenge with my company. So everybody loves free advice and and frankly that's how the travel industry is anyway, because we all call each other to support each other. You know, we, we all network because. Frankly, none of us know what we're doing when it comes to a brand new project, except we've got a process that we've had experience with that has worked in the past, but we always run into something we didn't, we've never dealt with before, or we've got a challenge that we just can't seem to figure overcome. Who do we reach out to? We don't phone consultants because frankly, we are the consultants in the travel industry. We call each other. That's what we do. We call our friends or the people we do business with, or if we're in a, an association of some kind, we call other members of the association. I. This whole business is behind the scenes, and that's what we do. We figure it out using each other, whether it's our vendors or even our clients sometimes to sort out how we get things done. So I went out as a consultant. That didn't last very long, but one of the consultant clients that I had needed someone in-house. They wanted to take their meetings department and turn it into a profit center. How do we take it, an internal meetings management department and put it on the street to work for other clients and open up revenue stream to our company?

James Blain: 19:42

almost spinning a business out of their

Phelps Hope: 19:44

That's right. You know,'cause they've done it with their, their marketing communications. They would do it for other, now this was an association management company. For those who don't know, it's basically a corporation who's in business to manage trade associations and professional societies. So what would happen is they'd contract with the volunteer board that will take all your admin function and we'll take over your marketing meetings, management, your books, and all of these things. We put together an employee group and they become the staff, quote unquote, of your association. So this association management company, uh, it was the largest in the world at the time. We had seven offices around the world headquartered in Atlanta. So it was down the street from me, uh, New

James Blain: 20:26

travel associations or is

Phelps Hope: 20:27

No, this was an association management company that was in all industries. And yes, they were in travel. They were mar managing the, uh, an airline passenger Experience association. This was basically an airline association. Uh, they were in manufacturing, they had trade groups, they had professional societies like medical insurance, financial, all types of industries. Because it's an 80 20 rule, 80% of the functions for any association is exactly the same. The 20% is the flavor of that particular association, which is dictated not just by the member group, but also the industry that they're in. Obviously, insurance agents look a lot different than the Plumber Trade Association,

James Blain: 21:07

Well, we, we talk about this a lot in our industry, right? And, and being in training, being someone that helps develop operations. I get calls all the time. You're not gonna understand our company is totally and completely different. Okay? So are we dealing with vehicles that have wheels on them? Yes. Are we dealing with drivers that drive these vehicles? Yes. Are they doing what you want them to do? No. Okay. So we've, we've established the 80, that's gonna be the same. Let's now talk about your 20. So it makes total sense

Phelps Hope: 21:33

So that's it. That's it. So at the peak we had 188 associations that we managed, and I headed up the convention meetings and membership department anyway. So as a consultant, I'd shown them, well, this is what you're gonna do to make this thing profitable. And the, and I said, well, your biggest problem is your meetings department is full of meetings people, these are logistics management people. Nobody there is in sales. Nobody there is in marketing. Nobody there is forward thinking. You've got no strategy. Well, can you develop a roadmap? That's right. Here's the roadmap that you are, you paid me to do. Here you go. And the chairman at the time said, this is great. Can you do this? And I said, well, certainly can, but not as an outside consultant, I've got no authority. So great. What if we create the position and you come in and you run the division? Okay. I did that and, uh, that led to an almost 20 year career with this company, uh, overseeing global offices in China and Brussels, uh, Bahrain, Singapore, all across America

James Blain: 22:30

are you boots on the ground at every

Phelps Hope: 22:32

very much. No, not at all of'em. We had with 188 associations,

James Blain: 22:36

I was about to say.

Phelps Hope: 22:37

300 meetings, events, trade shows, and conventions every year. So again, I had about a 30 to 40 team staff scattered in these offices. And, uh, they're the ones who were boots on the ground. I definitely got involved with the ones that needed strategic assistance, like it was a struggling industry. We needed to reposition that meeting within the industry. So I get involved with it, or we've taken on an association to manage, and it's a, the convention or the annual meetings in deep stress, they're financially upside down, whatever it might be. I get involved with those things. Uh, if it's just functionally going through, great. One of the meetings, managers would take it and they make sure that the food and beverage is lined up, the ab and that the hotel they're booking is contracted correctly. Those types of things. So I did that for almost 20 years, James, and, uh, enjoyed the heck out of it.

James Blain: 23:24

How similar was that to your first company?'cause it sounds like there's a lot of alignment there. Did it kind of feel like a, like a second breath, uh, almost like a second wind to the first company or what, what did that feel like to you? Running that?

Phelps Hope: 23:37

Well, what it did for me, having my companies, which as an entrepreneur, as you are yourself, growing a company takes certain inversion layers of growth for yourself. So rather than just a sales guy or an operations guy, I had to evolve to be a director. I had to evolve to be a CEO,

James Blain: 23:54

to grow to be able to

Phelps Hope: 23:55

I had to grow? That's right. And so through that process, I understood more how to manage other people because I'd gone through those inversion layers myself. And so coming into ru into a larger corporation and running a division, I'd done all the jobs down at the menial task level, all the way up to the strategic level. So I better understood what they needed and how they, how to make them, how to help them grow in their position as professionals, but also be more effective for the client side. Loved it too. Absolutely loved it. But I gotta tell you, it was, uh, a lot of wear and tear traveling globally, uh, you know, two weeks a month, and being on your feet and running conventions in, not just throughout America, but around the world. I. Sometimes they're 18 hour days and there's a lot of physical wear and tear. And it was to reach, to finally reach the point it's like, you know what? I gotta find another way to do this because I'm gonna, I'm gonna run outta steam physically. Uh, I haven't, but, uh, I knew I would do, and it just timing, and again, this is, I say this is how God works, uh, works in amazing ways that you can't see. I got a tap on a shoulder at a trade show and a recruiter said, you know what? We got this position over at IMG. It really takes a unique person for this. The current person, which you all know as Bronwyn Wilson, who coincidentally is also from Australia, uh, she's from Melbourne, I'm from Brisbane, just. A little respect there. Um, anyway, so he said, you know, you need to apply for this job. We really need someone to your capability. And I said, oh, let me sit with it for a little while. And it took a few months to noodle it and, uh, said, sure, this sounds like what I'm excited to do is to be able to take all those many years of skillsets in those different environments and apply it now to an organization that needs my kind of skillset. Um, the, uh, what I walked into at IMG was amazing. I mean a, a, a very well run organization.

James Blain: 25:52

It is not like any other group I've ever been a

Phelps Hope: 25:55

not and it's, and it, exceptional is the word I would use, which is wonderful because I get to stand on that success and look to the future. Where do we go from here? We've got certain headwinds in the industry. We've got certain headwinds within membership groups. We've got things that we have to deal with, not just the short term, like changes of administration and regulatory type things, but longer term, what's happening on the client side? What's their world look like and how do we adapt for it? So there, there's a lot of that background which would, which which seemed to be very applicable for what I was doing.

James Blain: 26:26

So I

Phelps Hope: 26:27

So that leads us up to today.

James Blain: 26:28

Yeah, Yeah. And, and I was really lucky that, you know, we had, we had worked with an IMG partner outta California with TCS, with Kevin and Terry Fisher. We'd been working with them on their training. And so we got in, we got, you know, invited into IMG and it's, it's completely different than any other group. And I'll, I'll call it group'cause I want you to kind of explain the difference here in a second. But, you know, for IMG, one of the things that we saw is IMG really kind of represented the top of the motor coach industry and the goals and the way that IMG operates and everything there, you know, even, even becoming a part of IMG for us was an interview process. You know, are you a right fit to be a partner? Yes. You've been invited by, by someone that's working with you within the group, but you know, are you the right fit? Tell us about yourself. So, becoming a partner with IMG was a really big deal for us because of how you guys operate. So, I know when I first got in the motor coaching industry, I. It kind of felt like it was this group and they do meetings at, I am at a BA, they do meetings at UA. I didn't know if it was an association. It was, it was kind of this mythical group, right. Of these top tier operators. Can you help kind of pull that curtain back a bit and tell us, right. What is IMG? Some people think it's an association, right? Other peoples think it's some kind of club. You know, what if, if you had to go explain IMG to someone that was new to the industry that has no idea what we're talking about and they just think it's another acronym, how do you, how do you package that up in a way they can understand to really bring them up to speed on what IMG actually is?

Phelps Hope: 29:03

Oh, great question and very happy to, because I, frankly, I do this every day now. I find out there's always somebody who needs to better understand what IMG is. And having gone through that same question myself, what is this thing? Uh, I, I, I quickly understood it. So IMG is actually a corporation. It's not an association. It's an invitation only membership group of the high-end motor coach, charter service operators. We focus on the charter servicing regardless of what other aspects that the member might have, whether it's black car, school, bus transit, what have you. It's the charter service. That's what this organization is about. And IMG was formed for two distinct reasons. They, they formed it about 25 years ago. They, I think it's about 26 years now, because they think they, last year was their 25th anniversary, but it was formed for two distinct reasons. One is to create a distinction between. The vast landscape of everybody in the bus industry, whether motor coach or whatever it might be, is well, how do we create distinction with the charter service and the higher end charter service? Those that invest are able to invest more in their vehicles, that they're newer, they can invest a little bit more time and effort into their safety training, the driver training, the employer training. Those that are really focused on operational excellence, where it's not just a desire, but they actually actually do the work to put together repeatable training programs, which I know you're very familiar with. In fact, you are a great vendor for many of our IMG members, and we appreciate that. Thank you. very much, James. But, uh, it's a, and so that's the first reason. The second one was, you know, all of the motor coach operators are very regional. They might, some are bigger than others, obviously, but some are in their little valley, in their town. And this is the area that we've worked with, uh, for many, many years and so forth. And others have multi-locations and, and so on. Well, it was this way. We don't, the individual motor coach operator didn't have to invest in attracting the national business to their specific location. They, every, all the members would pull their, their resources and create this brand called IMG that's, that, that has, uh, marketing support behind it with branding recognition to create that. IMG is the higher end operators. These are the ones that invest a little bit more, have a little bit more on the insurance coverage, that and, and so forth. So when the client looks at it, no matter what the name on the door of the vehicle is, if they had the IMG membership logo, they know right away, oh, you're qualified to be at the higher level, so I know I can buy it. Listen, I came outta the hotel business. Libby, give you a little different parallel. Just like we all the motor coach operators are independently owned, hotels are often independently owned and a hotel sitting wherever. In some city, or whether it's, you know, in a resort or what have you. They need help in attracting more business into their hotels and they need to tap into a, a much bigger picture marketing exercise. That's why hotel owners will put a Marriott name or a Hilton name, or Wyndham, or in a Continental, whatever it might be. They pay money to have that franchise name put on the door. We're the Ritz Carlton. So in the hotel industry, if you see a Ritz Carlton or a Four Seasons, one of the higher brands, you know right away. Oh. This is a high-end operator, it's probably gonna cost me more money, but you're gonna get that white glove service, uh, versus your limited service properties or your general full service Marietta or, or Hilton property. It's the same thing with us. By putting the IMG brand on that motor coach operator, you know, this is the brand of excellence. This is the brand of high customer service. So that's, that's the whole vision with it. Um, and that's, and that's what has been known, uh, throughout the tour operator market and, uh, collegiate sports and student youth travel. And there's so many markets that recognize and understand the IMG brand. So in a nutshell, that's what that is. But because we're a corporation, we can set very stringent membership guidelines. In other words, you have to, there's quite a health healthy checklist of what you have to have in place to become a member. You have to be invited, you have to be invited by another member to come on in to the, uh, to the organization. And then we run you through, after you've applied, we run you through quite a, uh, a, a, uh, a very, very distinguished but very detailed, uh, process to make sure that you're the operator that, that, that you, that, that you put yourself out to be. And we understand because your other fellow operators, the ones that are assessing you. And, uh, it's not like we just have a membership person, so we're not an organization that would sell memberships like your typical association. You'd be join a member and then do what you wish. You have criteria also to be active and the member is the owner of the company. So the profile of our, our members is the family owned and operated motor coach operator. We do have a few exceptions. Some of those are grandfathered in and some of them, because of the ownership structure, as long as they're involved at the ownership level, uh, that's where the member comes in. So that was kind of 0.1. Why we do is to have the marketing brand and everything, but on the client side, sure, it's great to see the credibility and I can instantly recognize. The power of IMG is the network that we've created. So our members are strategically placed around, uh, USA and Canada so that no matter where the client enters the network, they're fully supported across the geographic landscape as their tours move across the country. So if they're got a tour starting in New York and it's on its way to LA for some reason, Peter Park or what it may be, and it runs into trouble, say, in Kansas, our Kansas member runs out right away, either replaces the bus so they, the clients can keep going or they fix it on the spot and keep them on the road. And it's that network of support that has become the real power, uh, of IMG. And that's, uh, the, the, the members have all, and my predecessor and her predecessor and those involved with IMG have spent a lot of time and a lot, a lot of sweat equity to get that brand built. And we work hard to maintain that brand. That, uh, it's, uh, it that, that this brand and the members of this brand live up to what the, the branding is, or the hype we live up to the hype.

James Blain: 35:27

Well, and there's some, there's some big things. There's a lot to unpack there'cause you've hit on a lot of things that make IMG completely different from any other group in the industry. You know, you think of a 20 group where operators are gonna get together, they're gonna discuss, they're gonna hold people accountable. They're gonna do that. That's a completely different concept, completely different idea. What makes so much sense with the way IMG is set up is that you have a like mindset and that I have, I, and all the time that we've been in IMG and I, I'm sure this will will go on in perpetuity. Almost every operator that I meet and talk to, even though they get together, they're talking about their issues, they're trying to figure things out. They are looking at it from the sense of. How do I stay ahead? How do I stay in the top 10%? How do I provide the highest level of service? Um, when I say they're my type of people, I mean that because in my world of training, we see a lot of cyclical problems. We see a lot of, Hey, you know, I had an issue. I need to revamp my training program. And then six months later it's, we need to do a budget cut. We need to pull back the training program, save money. And that kind of goes on and on. Whereas IMG operators, because of the way that they've brought these people together and they're all working towards the same goal, it's how do I get ahead of this? How do I stay ahead of this? How do we as a group figure out how to share that and stay ahead of it? And you've got this collaborative effort to where, like you said, one of the unique things with IMG operators is it doesn't matter where a tour starts. It doesn't matter where that trip starts. You know that if you are on a bus that has IMG on it, they have that network. It doesn't matter what happens where. Those members are gonna support each other. And then there's also a lot of education. There's also a lot of work there in terms of lifting things up. So I think, you know, it, I, I love kind of bringing this up because I really think it's unique in the space. I don't know of any other group across any level of pastor ground transportation that exists, that kind of has this same level of attention to detail and mindset. So I know, kinda like you said, this is a group that's been around for a while. This is something you've been working on. Let me ask you, coming from your background, you've got this beautiful perspective on people. One of the things that we've heard you bring up again and again is, you know, I, I, I find myself, I get to a role, you know, the block of concrete getting into the REITs and the management of the piece. You are a people person, right? That's, that's kind of your calling, is to connect and work with people. I, I don't know that there's a better role, but. How does it feel kind of being able to bring an outside perspective and what are the things that you kind of see as opportunities or ways that you see yourself as being able to con knowing that you're not gonna have those same kind of rose colored grasses that someone that grew up or was in the industry has?

Phelps Hope: 38:24

Right, right. Well, and let's not forget, we're all part of the travel industry. You know, I started out in the hotel side, DMCs, convention planning and so forth. Frankly, it's all part of the hospitality and travel industry. Every single one of us in the travel industry are in business to service other people who are traveling for some reason, whether it's a simple point A to point B, or if it's a wedding and a destination wedding or whatever it might be at some, in some discipline area, we are servicing others who are traveling, be it for business person, what have you, which means that we all enjoy servicing other people for what they need. We don't sell products, we service people, and there's a certain mindset that is throughout the travel industry. We're all entrepreneurial in our mindset because every single personal experience is a little bit different.'cause it's unique. The 80/20 rule, I don't really care why they're, they're, they're traveling, but 80% of it's gonna be the same to your point, round wheels and vehicles and so forth. But whether it's a plane or a chip or they're staying in a hotel or eating in a restaurant, or they're attending a concert or whatever it might be, there's a whole cadre of people behind the scenes working to service those people as they travel for their experience. So I am not unique by any means. The entire industry is built around this whole concept of traveling other people. Um, in fact, let me, let me give it a little bit of a story. So I, uh, you know, I, I, okay. International Motor Coach Group. Great. What, what are these people? Is it an association? So on, I got that all sorted out and I'm like, well, where did the word bus come from?

James Blain: 40:08

Like the actual origin of the word

Phelps Hope: 40:11

Yeah, the word bus. how did we come up with that word? Was it something else? I don't know. So anyway, I did do a little bit of research when it before, right before I came on. So I, I mean, came into the position so I could better understand, well, what is our history?

James Blain: 40:25

You went all the way back.

Phelps Hope: 40:27

all the way back now, I imagine there was group transportation back in the Egyptian, the Roman days and so on. Just look at the ships. I mean, they threw groups of people on there to go fight other people. So I'm sure there was, you know, ground transportation of some sort, but in modern times. So to back it up just a little bit, so the word omnibus is where it really originated. And omnibus is a French wood, which means vehicle for all. And that's a derivative of Latin, which is O-O-M-N-E-S. So the Latin version is o was, you know, and it grew into omnibus and it means vehicle for all. And that was, I don't know where that came from, but anyway, so in 1823, there was a French corn mill owner. His name was, uh, Bry. It was like Stan Bry, Stan List, Bry, something like that. B-A-U-R-B-Y. Anyway, he, uh, he was, he lived outside the city of Nez and N-A-N-A-N-T-E-S, Nez France. Nez is on the, kind of the southwest coast of France, just south of the English Channel. It's a coastal town, but inland here, agriculture, you know, he, so he was a corn mill owner. Well, one of the byproducts of, of crushing corn, making corn meal. The corn mill is hot water. And so he decided to establish a spa business. So he's gonna have this hot water spa, but people living in the town, how do I get'em out here? So he, and to encourage them, he started this horse drawn transportation service from the city center of

James Blain: 41:58

A true entrepreneur, he is already spun off

Phelps Hope: 42:00

Right, right. And he's like, yeah, look. Lemme do a line run. He didn't really have that. But anyway, so he got that going. But on the way he would stop at the shop of a hater, and the hater's name was O-O-M-N-E with a little SO. And so he put up a sign there saying, you know, we do the Omnis omnibus. It was a play on words for him. It was all this kind of play on words. And so he started this run stop at the Hatters so people could experience buy a hat, I guess, and then continue on to the spa. So that's where it all came from, is from this fellow in 1823 in France. Well, unfortunately, the rest of that story is people really didn't care about the spa. They loved going to the Hatters, so it would just, he quit doing the runs to the spa and he just continued to go to other destinations that people could shop. So shopping was the derivative of the transportation industry, which is still what it is today. People fly to New York City to go shopping. I guess that's how it goes.

James Blain: 42:57

I, I, I gotta tell you, I mean, as far as businesses go, I mean, that I feel like a lot of people have been on that same business journey. I have an idea. I end up with two businesses. This one doesn't work out. I pivot, I partner with someone. I mean, that is, that is probably one of the best stories to line up our industry because, you know, part of what we do is every, as you mentioned with travel, you are always part in a chain. You know, if there's no destination, there's no point in having the bus, right? You know, you've got the hotel industry, you've got the bus industry, you've got all of these different industries, right? The airline industry, all of them that kind of chain and work together. And so I think it's interesting that in that one little story of the birth of the word bus, we, we have a lot of that dynamic going on, so it makes a lot of sense, right? A hundred years later. We're, well, what, a hundred? And then some we're still kind of seeing those same little micro stories play out.

Phelps Hope: 43:50

Well, that's it. So then I explored it further, say, okay, so that gives me the word bus, but it's used in kind of a transit mode. Getting him to kind of a point a point B on a scheduled run, if you will, is my interpretation. So then, you know of all that to school bus or evolve it to transit buses, but that's where bus is. Well, where did Motor Coach come from? Well, that was easier because it started with the stage coach, you know, and we would got a stage coach that's going to take you out the west, all right? You buy a ticket, you get on that, that stage coach, and you go out there with a group of people or whatever it might be. And of course then they added motives, so it turned into Motor coach, So that one was a little simpler to to understand. So understanding the roots of why people do things is, is a great way to learn how to take them to the next level. And, you know, many of our members are, are, are in their third, fourth, and we even have one that's in their fifth generation. I mean, they're very, the fifth generation's very young. But working in the business, uh, I think they're changing vending machines. I think they, they, they, they, they fill the, uh, the cans of coke in the vending machines, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, I did the same thing with my kids with

James Blain: 44:57

Gotta start somewhere.

Phelps Hope: 44:58

That's right. So, you know, one of the headwinds we run in today is the succession planning. And it's not unique to the motor coach industry that's in many family owned businesses where, you know, there's many more choices today for the, for the emerging generation that they may not decide to work in great granddad's business. That granddad took over and my dad took over, and, uh, I'm not really not interested in making blue widgets. Thank you very much. So we do have that bit of a pressure because there's different types of jobs that existed back then. You know, look at all the technology related jobs. Look at the, you just name it, it's it, I mean, society progresses every generation. And with that. Some jobs fall off because they're just not needed anymore and they evolve to something else. And brand new jobs come in. One of my sons is a social media manager. I never even heard of that when I was in college. It wasn't even words you would, you know, you'd think that always that, like social studies, is that what that is? You know, type of a thing. So we're, we're always this new jobs in, so of course it's not automatic that the emerging generation is gonna take over the family business. So that's one of the challenges we have. Well, what do you do with your business at that point? So we're exploring that. Uh, there's always economic cycles that come in and unfortunately in the last 25 years, starting with nine 11 there, the, the, the traditional nine year economic downturn hasn't happened because it's been disrupted with a nine 11 and then a global financial crisis. Then COVID. These aren't just downturns. These are industry disruptors. I mean societal disruptors. So we've gotta look to the future. What's the next weird thing that we couldn't even see coming? Hands up? Anybody who saw that a pandemic would stop the world for as long as it did hands up. Anybody who thought that some underhanded financial sales in the mortgage world would crash the entire global financial structure. Who thought that somebody would wanna fly a 7 57 or whatever it was, into buildings to collapse them? I, these are just off the wall. Well, those are the times we're in, and it's unfortunate because there's some great things that happened at this time period. There's also some very disturbing and horrible things that happened. So we're in this, this, there's no rhythm anymore. There's no cycles anymore. It's just be ready for the next thing. And that's what we're all preparing for, that you can't count on what the last hundred years of growth looked like. Because the way things grow these days, they're much more accelerated. You're, every company is basically 90 days away from going out of business if you, especially small businesses, if you turn off the revenue stream, how many businesses go out of the business in, in 90 days? So you have to have that kind of a 90 day approach to it. What we gotta do in the short term, but as always, you've gotta have a long-term approach. Where's the horizon? We're, we're leaving LA today, and where are we going? Or, we're gonna go to Calgary, or we're going to New York. It's a direction that we're gonna go, and then we're gonna navigate the way that we get there. So your business talks about that? Well, this is a lot of what IMG brings because we have these incredibly successful, very knowledgeable, very dedicated owners and their senior executive staff. I. IMG and our meetings and our events that we do, and in fact our written communication and we have chat groups. We set up, we have all kinds of levels of communication, but not just at the owner to owner level, but also at the director, director, the safety to safety maintenance to maintenance operator in the discipline so that they're all switching ideas back and forth. It's almost like IMG is a franchise and these are the independent operator owners of'em, and we share information like you would there. Now I'll be clear, we don't get into the numbers. We don't, we're not like a spader group. We're opening our books and getting into the numbers, none of that. It's still a member group under the mar, under a marketing Monica. But we do generate revenue as a brand to our individual members, uh, because clients reach out to IMG as a one-stop shop, and that's where the, the, the power comes in for the client because, you know, they know with One Call they get today 53 high quality owner operators with multiple locations. And so, uh. Grand scale. We get a call from World Cup. World Cup sets up a meeting, all our members are on the call and we solve their problem right off the bat. So that, that's the power of what IMG is all about. And to answer your question, I'm so excited about because helping an organization that is rooted in the best qualities with the best intentions there, the without the infighting or the, the erosion of politics or personalities or these types of things that this organization, all, every single member, pulls in the same direction.

James Blain: 49:59

Right.

Phelps Hope: 49:59

So being able to help guide that and lay out where are we going for the next 10 years? What do we expect the world to look like in 10 years, we have those kind of conversations and walk it back into a roadmap. Well, the more we gonna do this year to best situate ourselves 10 years from now. It's so refreshing for the individual member to have a group of like-minded owners who, that they can openly share, ask questions, and as a collective, are way more powerful than any one individual would be. And so it's, it's, I mean, one day I can see I am GBA case study in, in marketing and, and management classes at universities. And, uh, there's just, it's such a powerful network. It's amazing.

James Blain: 50:44

I, I think for me, one of the big things that attracted me is, is the, like I said earlier, that mindset, because you've kind of alluded to it a little bit here, but you know, I remember when our most recent event that we had when we were in Philadelphia, um, and we were, so IMG was there, um, for anybody that that's listening that doesn't know, so typically IMG is going to co-locate with the a, BA and UMA events. And so, and, and this year we were co-located with a, b, a, and so we were in one of the sessions and it's very different to what you would expect. You know, people think, because it's an acronym, it acts like an association. One of the things that I've always found interesting is you will see at that event, you're gonna see the head of maintenance, you're gonna see people from the office, you're gonna see all these different parts of the business. And even though we're not opening books and talking numbers, I. All of that education, all those sessions are revolving around running as a top 10% company. Um, I know one of the sessions that was kind of burned into my mind because you talked about the different cycles and the things we've seen was the natural disasters educational session where the members were talking about. Right. We had everything from, um, I believe it was in Tennessee where there was a tornado and flooding. You had, um, I wanna say it was, um, I don't remember if it was Mike or who it was from Pollad, but they had someone there from Pollad talking about how they were part of the disaster relief with the fires and the issues in Hawaii. Um, you had, you know, Stephen O'Shea from Lancer Insurance talking about what happened when they had the hurricane and the flooding and getting ahead of it. Right. We're we're talking about here's what happened. Here's how we were able to address it. Here's how we do it differently. Here's, and, and as someone that's in the training education space, I sit in a session like that and I, I look like a five-year-old kid who's just been giving the world's biggest lollipop.'cause I'm smiling ear to ear. I'm going, we're playing chess not checkers, right? I tell my clients that. I say that on almost every episode. I can, it, it always comes up, right? We're playing chess, not checkers. We're so focused on being in the top 10%. We're so focused on being ahead that we're thinking about these types of things that could happen and being ready to respond and how we'd react and having a plan in place so that when it does happen, we're ready. And you see that come, I was lucky enough to be involved in the round tables when we were talking about maintenance. How do you find mechanics? How do you train those mechanics? How do you bring them up to speed? What's working? What's not working? How do we leverage all these different tools? And again, we know that we're going into a period where there be a mechanic shortage. How do we position ourselves as the most appealing? How do we get ahead of it before it, or that whole mentality really kind of embodies everything that I think IMG stands for and what it provides and how its members operate. So I think kind of as we come to a close here and we finish this out, what does the future hold? What's kind of the vision? Um, obviously as someone who's come in, you are able to bring this fresh perspective and you're building on this wonderful legacy that IMGs built. What do you see as the opportunities for growth and to build and to take things even further as IMG progresses and grows into the future?

Phelps Hope: 53:54

Great question, and one of the things I'm excited about, James, is the fact that I don't have to fix anything. IMG is an organization, you know, back in the association management days, we'd take on an association to manage. They always came to us broken.

James Blain: 54:08

In shambles, right?

Phelps Hope: 54:09

Ah, you know, whether it was a caustic culture, whether they're financially upside down or they're in a, a retreating industry. You know, we had one from retail, let me tell you, that was a headache anyway, um, so I don't have to fix anything. So we only, I only have to look to the future. But what the future holds is two main basics. I mean, there are gonna be natural disasters that happen. We'll all overcome it and they'll be global. Whatevers will happen, I'm sure it's gonna be aliens landing next. I think that's the next one. But they're gonna need motor coaches when they get here. So I wanna make sure I get their key

James Blain: 54:40

Someone's gotta move the military

Phelps Hope: 54:41

I gotta tell you what you got. You know, they're gonna get from the spaceship to wherever they're gonna go see the, the leader of the, the free world, whatever that is. Um, so the, you know, you had mentioned about the top 10%.

James Blain: 54:53

Yeah.

Phelps Hope: 54:54

Our companies, member companies, they're not in business to be the top 10%. That is a byproduct of what their vision and their own culture is because they're so customer centric, because they're so operationally excellence centric. The byproduct is the fact that they're the top 10% of the industry, and that's so looking to the future, two big areas. One is generational. Every generation adds to the current generation or to the current thing to help take us to the next generation. That curve has been getting steeper and steeper. It happens faster and faster, and the emerging generation brings more to the table than the preceding generations typically because of, and my point number two, technology. Where are we with technology today? What's technology look like in the future? How do we still maintain a business full of people who are customer service oriented and adopt technology to make us more efficient? Adopt technology to offer better services or more services, not to replace the people. Because we're in the travel industry, you cannot replace people servicing other people otherwise, it becomes a robot doing room service, and all it's doing is delivering a plate that somebody else put together for you. So sure we can have, uh, so part of the technology that, that we've already discussed and we're underway to adopt in certain areas is ai. Where, how do we get going with ai? How can we learn from experience rather than from consultants? And so we're underway right now to upgrade our website and it's all in the works. It's being done right now to incorporate AI in there to help us make more efficient and create more of a buyer experience, which is, you know, rather than trying to sell'em a bus, sell'em the experience, but let AI customize it for that particular buyer. And we have a plan for that. And it took a lot of serious minds to put this roadmap together. We're executing it. We also know, James, that we might fail. We might, we might invest in this. And, and we're, we're doing a proof of concept version and we'll invest in this. We're gonna give it a try, and we're gonna see what happens. We'll see, that's what IMG leaders do. We're not just the operational excellence leaders in the industry, but we're also the thought leaders in the industry because we're trying things to help better the industry and therefore better our, our companies individually, but collectively. So, giving AI a try and let's literally learn from it rather than just hear about it. And that's what we're gonna give it a try. Not being afraid to fail. Just do what Sony used to say. Fail fast. So that, you know, you can give it a shot, but don't make it a five year exercise that you're gonna live with it. Fail fast. Make it a 90 day exercise. Give it a try. Learn from it. Then pivot at that point. Do we progress on this road? Do we make a slight alteration or do we double down and say, you know what, that was great. Let's find the money and let's really go for it and blow it out so we're in that stage. So trying things is the best thing. We're in a, uh, the motor coach industry is a pretty, it's a, it's not an early adopter of technology, as you well know. They wanna, they wanna see other

James Blain: 58:03

in general, no,

Phelps Hope: 58:06

and frankly, just look at what's going on in the FAA. The airline industry is certainly not an early adopter of technology, since they're still using technology that has green screens and blinking little cute

James Blain: 58:16

I, I wouldn't even call them an adopter of technology. Right. They get, they get technology forced on them, and then hold onto it

Phelps Hope: 58:22

That's right. Now, we're not in the airline industry, so we really can't comment too much. We're not behind the scenes, but the transportation industry as a whole is not an early adopter of technology. So IMG has the ability and we also are in the unique position to be able to give things a try. So that's what we're gonna try. That's what the future holds. So let's not be afraid and have fear of what we don't know. Let's give it a try so we can stand on experience to make a decision, not live in fear of breaking a norm that we can't live without. And that's what we're giving a shot.

James Blain: 58:57

and I, I love the tieback to the story, right? You, you brought that story up about how we actually got the bus back in the 1830s and what, what happens there? Well, I have an idea. I implement the idea. Part of this doesn't work the way I want. I pivot here, I move there, I adjust. Look, one of the things that I learned very early on in business, and I was lucky enough to learn it, is that if you just find one thing that works and stick to it indefinitely, you're limiting your growth. Eventually, someone come in, someone will try something new. But what I've learned through my business career and owning businesses, and I'm sure you've seen this yourself, LPs, when you are constantly trying and innovating and working on things, even the ones that fail, provide opportunity. If you can't see the opportunity, if you can't see the education, if you can't see the growth in the failure. You are missing the point because I can't tell you how many times we've had a project or a thought or something, even when it just absolutely epically, implodes or fails or completely not how we want it. There's always some element of that, that we either learn something, gain something, and a lot of times you'll see pieces of that pop up somewhere else. So I think if you really wanna be an industry leader, you've gotta be willing to go out on those limbs. You've gotta try things. And I think that's part of what makes IMG such a great place for that, is you've got all of these people that are the leaders in the industry that are looking to push the envelope, that understand it's about the experience. So I I, I gotta tell you, I couldn't be more excited about having you all on and getting to talk about IMG. I know for us, it, I, I have to tell you out of all of the different groups that we work with, everyone we interact with, I think in terms of just getting to be there and see the way things go, and see the mindset, for me, it's probably one of my favorites. So I really appreciate you having them on.

Phelps Hope: 1:00:42

Well, thank you.

James Blain: 1:00:43

Do you have anything you wanna leave us with? Is there any gleaning little gem or, or anything on the horizon that you think we absolutely need to touch on before we leave?

Phelps Hope: 1:00:53

Well, you know not more about IMG, but I'll tell you what, for all the listeners, take a reflection yourself and look at how do you evolve where you're standing today. Because if we all adopt that mindset of growth and not to live in fear of breaking what we know now, but rather explore what we could learn later, it, it gives us a much better skillset and a much more mental framework to, to. Adapt to what does get pushed on us by this ever-changing society. So don't, uh, like you just said, don't sit, don't sit in your, your mode of, let's just do it the same way all the time. Don't be afraid to try certain things. Don't be afraid to fail because you just set the boundaries so you're not failing epically to use your point. But fail short and fail fast

James Blain: 1:01:43

Okay. And if you do fail epically, for God's sake, learn.

Phelps Hope: 1:01:46

and then share it. Let someone else know, let know what happened. And, uh, and don't, don't, don't be sad about it. Just understand that it does happen. But I do wish all your listeners all the very best.

James Blain: 1:01:56

Well, thank you again for coming on everyone. I appreciate you listening to the podcast. Hopefully you have some value. Hopefully you're able to set some light on who IMG is and what they do. As always, thanks again for listening.

Phelps Hope: 1:02:07

Thank you so much, James. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

1:02:12

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.