Ken Lucci 0:24

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. I am joined by my Esteemed co-host James Blaine from PAX Training, a self-described techno nerd. It seems like we were just here minutes ago, James.

James Blain 0:43

I know. I know Groundhog Day.

Ken Lucci 0:45

so thank you very much everybody for joining us, and today we're going to discuss something that's near and dear to both James and I and what we do, which it, really is a subject that I think is. Too many entrepreneurs don't have a plan to deal with, and that is the cost of doing everything yourself.

James Blain 1:07

A hundred

Ken Lucci 1:07

ultimate cost of being a DIY business owner, doing it all yourself. So James, why don't you lead, off as far as how you see this affecting operators and what the downsides are.

James Blain 1:20

So I think the biggest thing that I've seen, and I was guilty of it on my first business, is especially operators that are cost conscious or shoestring or, trying to kind of, Hey, I, I don't wanna spend, instead of going out and finding a vendor or a ready-made solution or something to exist, all, I'll do it myself. We'll put that together ourselves. Oh, we'll do this. I see it with training. Oh, we're gonna, we, we, we're gonna make our own training program. We're gonna do all this. I've talked to operators before that are. well, you know, I, I had this issue and, you know, instead of, when we were growing, instead of going and getting a software platform, we just used Excel and I made the world's most complicated Excel spreadsheet. And we've been using that to, and. You start seeing these types of areas, right? You know, oh, well, instead of a, instead of having a good maintenance partner, we got, you know, one guy and he services everything and he's our in-house mechanic and he's doing all of it. Okay. There's a time and a place where it makes sense to in-house, having your own mechanic, having your own staff. There's a time and a place where it makes sense to say, Hey. You know, I, I have this training. I've got one car, I'm gonna teach 'em what I do. There's a time and a place where it makes sense to do these kinds of things on a shoestring or on your own. But what we see happen time and time again in the industry is you have larger companies that are trying to save money and ultimately cost themselves more money, or keep themselves from growing and doing that, you know, it becomes one of those things where you find yourself. Reinventing the wheel when you could have gone to a shelf, got a part off the shelf, put it in place in your business, and moved on to the next problem, and you're almost punishing yourself as a result.

Ken Lucci 3:03

Well, there's two things that come to mind. One is the phrase chief cook and bottle washer, right? And the other, the other to me is, is the Peter principle. The Peter principle is where you've reached your own level of incompetence. Where, and I don't mean to use the term incompetence, but you've reached your own level, your, uh, a level where you're unable to break through to the next step. You're unable to scale, you're unable to buy the next vehicle. You're, I talked to an operator the other day. Uh, first thing in the morning. I spoke to him and I said, how's it going? And he said, you know, it's business is good, but I'm just burning out. And I Well, tell me what you mean by that. Well, I'm just doing everything. I just, I'm a perfectionist and this is his, his exact words, I'm a perfectionist You know, I'm doing everything. I'm doing the reservations, I'm closing the jobs, I'm doing the finance. They said, okay, back up. I thought when we last talked, you had so and so and she was helping you. Yes, but she left and I, okay, well wait a minute. Wait a minute. So let's talk about that a couple of, and I do believe this, the biggest issue that I see in this industry with operators that are under 5 million. know, the smaller, the worse it is is the working in the business and not on the business.

James Blain 4:21

percent. 110%.

Ken Lucci 4:23

So, my comment to him was step back, write down everything that she did, and design a job description and daily activities of the next person you're gonna put in her place. Then I think you should write down everything that you do, every process. Oh, Ken, it's so much. Great.

James Blain 4:44

It doesn't matter.

Ken Lucci 4:45

Take a yellow pad or a computer screen. Open up five computer screens and create an Excel sheet for reservations, one for dispatch, one for billing and accounting. And literally write down on a granular level, step by step what it means to do that process. scaling any business is all about people. Processes, procedures and profit.

James Blain 5:11

Yep. Have to have a system.

Ken Lucci 5:12

right? You have to have a system and, the excuse of that, I don't have the money to do that. Well, that usually means to me, okay? 'cause it's where I gravitate. You are not pricing your services properly because if you don't have the money. To evolve the business into the next level, you're doing something wrong. you are the proverbial squirrel on a wheel. Listen, and there's nothing wrong with that, but don't delude yourself into thinking that you have anything more than a, you've created a job for yourself that will suffer and die when you suffer and die. If you wanna create a business and you want to employ even the first person. Frankly, you owe it to that person to have systematized your business. I, you know, it's curious to me that people with a service like Pax, that anybody would say to you, now I'm just gonna write down my own training. Oh, we are different.

James Blain 6:10

Well, so here's the thing, and you, you've hit on something really important. So one of my personal mentors is Athena from BAC up in Alaska, and we were chatting the other night.

Ken Lucci 6:20

way, a state that does not have Uber or Lyft.

James Blain 6:24

Yeah. or a ton of, ev, right.

Ken Lucci 6:26

Lots of moose up there. Is it moose or me? But I digest.

James Blain 6:29

mees. The mooses, I, don't think they give rides to the airport either way. Um, no, so, so Athena and I were talking the other night, and I think one of the things that comes up that is massive here is. It's limiting beliefs and there's a lot of people that have, and you've already hit on this, which is why I wanted to bring it up. A lot of people have these limiting beliefs of, well, I can't train someone to do it 'cause I'm the only one who can do it. Right.

Ken Lucci 6:53

Oh, I can't find anybody to do

James Blain 6:55

Well, another good friend of mine, Becky in Boston, big shout out, Becky, because I remember sitting down at a show talking to Becky about frustration with, I was having man frustration with employees do that. She said, look, it doesn't matter how hard it is. You might have to have someone come in and do that. thing. 5, 10, 20 times and you're feel like you're just Groundhogs Day doing it over and over. But if you don't invest the time to develop and teach them and get where they need to go and have that process and expand, you are never going to be able to hand that process off and be able to develop processes and systems. Right. So you've got two really incredible women in the industry. That know about growing and scaling businesses in our powerhouses, our own right, that kind of give that same type of advice of you've got to know when you can expand out by getting rid of the limiting beliefs that are telling you, I'm the only one that can do it. Right? Or, you know, I'm the only one that can do this, or This isn't something that can be handed off, or this is something exclusively for that. Look If you find ways to go out and again, take advantage of what's in the industry. Look, every business might be different, but every business owner faces similar challenges.

Ken Lucci 8:09

and every business has the same processes. I don't give a what industry you're in. you have. the marketing processes, the sales processes, the operations process, the administrative processes, the finance and accounting piece, okay. E every single business does, and, and let's face it, people get into the limousine space in many cases because either they were a driver and listen, some of the biggest Dawson rudder, right? I mean, Robert Alexander, some of the biggest players in the industry got in as drivers and have grown to be global companies.

James Blain 8:43

I mean, look, my business partner got in the same way, right? a I mean, literally a borrowed car and a cell phone,

Ken Lucci 8:48

so at the end of the day, I get it. but they have to evolve their company, and they have to evolve their business beyond themselves. my dad taught me in many things, and one of the things he taught me, he was, owns a super supermarket, and we used to go, I think I've just told this story before. We used to go on a Sunday. Back then you'd, you used to break down the side of a cow, right? They would come in on rails and I, I used to jump on top of the cow and ride the rail

James Blain 9:20

I, I can just see you with a butcher's knife riding a, a cow on a rail,

Ken Lucci 9:23

no, no. The the rail, would go from the back loading dock in the ceiling into, the meat walk-in, and I would ride the rail whether there was a cow on it or not. There was the big hooks, and I would, alright, so on Sunday, I would say to him, dad. You know, why are we at the store and you, you know, you're, you're cutting meat. He said, you see this cow? And I said, yep. He said, I know how to break it down and if I break it down on a Sunday, I don't have to pay somebody $27 an hour. I mean, this was back in the day. And, meat cutter was making serious money.

James Blain 9:58

Right.

Ken Lucci 9:59

And his whole point to me was, you need to learn and you need to know the best way to do everything in your store. In your business to train people how you want to do it. But if you get stuck doing it yourself, your business won't grow. He used to do that. He used to cut down the cow because he wanted to show the meat cutter that he was not necessarily holding him captive, so to speak. I know Athena. I know Athena has a process for everything. I mean, there's no question she is the most organized person in the world, but what do you do and what do you say to somebody who's not organized, who just can't get outta their own way?

James Blain 10:41

So I tell 'em I don't mow grass, right? what I mean by that is I used to always mow my own grass, but I have allergies and it's kind of miserable and I hate it. One day I was at work at one of my early jobs and I was still in corporate life in, in my early twenties, and I was talking to a boss of mine and I said, man, I gotta go home and cut the grass. He goes, I don't cut grass. Said, what are you talking about? He goes, well, I sat down one day and I looked at how much money I make every hour and what my rate is. And then I realized I could have my grass cut for $20. And I said, you know, I make 60 bucks an hour. Why in the hell am I working down at 20 bucks an hour? And not only that, the time with my kids and family Is way more valuable. So why am I going to go and spend that time that investment on doing it? Can I mow the grass? Sure. Do I know what it needs to look like? Sure. if the guy can't do it that week, can I do it so that it, gets done? Sure. Why would I take my valuable time and do that? And I tell owners this all time, you know, I get people like, oh, we're, you know, we we're, we've built our own training program. We have our own training program. Great. So you're putting time in to keeping it up to date. You've laid out all your processes, you're keeping up with things we'll, we'll know. Okay? So what, what you're telling me is we put a lot of money into something a long time ago and we don't wanna put money into it now, but then we still want to have the highest levels of service and no accidents and kind of get it. And I go, okay, well great. So if you spend a ton of money and you buy the best grass you possibly can and you mow it, but you never water it, you never put any seed and feed, you never do anything to it. Are you gonna be pissed when it's dead and brown? I give that analogy only 'cause we're talking about the mowing grass one, but that's what I see people do in business and I see it, happen time and time again.

Ken Lucci 12:29

I think it also is someone taught me once that this was primarily in sales, but number one, know your worth. Okay. And number two, is that the best use of your time? Which, what you just said answers that question. The answer is no. A better use of my time is relaxing with my family. Or a better use of my time instead of writing a training manual is working on my business instead of in it. True story. I, a client of mine a while ago. Came to us and thought he wanted to sell his business. So we put a value on it and we had a tough time getting the financials out of him. And I said to him, you know, what's the story? Well, Ken, I just don't have the time. Excuse me. Wait a minute. Back up a step. You are three and a half million dollar company. Who does your books? Well, I do. What? Yeah. I spent, you know, three quarters of a day to a day, you know, and that's why, I'm sorry, you're losing patience with me. And I said to them, listen. I'm not losing patience with you, but you are telling me, I'm looking at your business and your business is flat as a pancake. Oh, it's consistent. Yeah. It's consistently

James Blain 13:41

Consistently not growing Yeah. Consistently flat.

Ken Lucci 13:44

right? So your revenue is flat, but your costs are going up and your spending your prime time selling time, which by the way is like from 10 to three every day. you're stuck in your office doing administrative work. The first thing that I recommend to you and do it. If don't do it, I get paid either way. right. That's the famous line that Tommy Mazi used to say to me. God love him. God rest his soul.

James Blain 14:08

Oh, I am disappointed that, that we had lost him by the time I got into the industry because there's so many gems of wisdom there.

Ken Lucci 14:14

Tommy was, was fa Tommy was the first guy that I hired as a consultant, Arthur Messina from Create A Card. Recommended that I hire Tommy because I was so green. And Tommy, I flew Tommy from, from, uh, Philadelphia, down to Tampa once a month and put him up in a hotel. Had a cha for come and pick him up. And I used to have these wacky ideas and Tommy would say, you know, Ken, you can either listen to me or not listen to me. You're still paying me 1500 a day. And, and we used to have a rule. I mean, he used to let me do something twice and then the third time he would say, I told you Right. But my getting back to my client, I said, you are doing something that is so. Beneath your time as the president of this company and you are telling me you don't have time to network in a pretty damn good region.

James Blain 15:04

The stuff that's gonna make you money,

Ken Lucci 15:06

you know, no one presents your business the way you do. Okay? And I've had, uh, recently we helped somebody do a sales compensation plan. And this is a great operator. I love this kid. And, I love all my clients, the ones that we keep anyway. And I said, listen, you are so, you're doing so great. You know, you're up over 10 million. It is time you need an outside salesperson. So we helped them design. the comp plan. You know, if he was a $3 million operator, I would say to him, whatcha talking about you're hiring an outside salesperson? The best person to represent your business is you. there is a time when you will outgrow even that function. Okay? when you have to start worrying about banking, relationships, finance, relationships. Your advisors, et cetera. So I think the message is, if you are a DIY guy or gal, you are never gonna get to the point if you do not shave off some of these responsibilities and memorialize them in written process and procedures and checklists

James Blain 16:13

and figure out how to offload 'em.

Ken Lucci 16:15

and the secret is to write them in sixth grade or or third grade levels so that anybody could do them. you are gonna hit a ceiling. And I mean, I have people that hit a ceiling. That are a million dollars and they can't crack it. They can't get above that, right? They're always knocking on the million. They're doing a million, but their business isn't growing. And then I have other people that are at 5 million, and as soon as their largest clients stops traveling, they start, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I'm like, because you are not out there, pres presenting and telling your story five times a day to new people. you're being reactive. Well, I have to close the jobs and I have to do the, you like doing it, but no offense. At 5 million. You should be checking on it.

James Blain 17:05

You've brought us to something that's Really, crucial. So I was, I was, you know, thumbing through Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, I've, I've been trying to reprogram my social media to gimme what I wanna see and I swipe up and I get this video and it's Kevin O'Leary, for those of you that don't know Mr. Wonderful. From Shark Tank. And he is talking about when he was working with Steve Jobs and he had, his learning company is working with Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is being an asshole. And he was just ripping. Oh yeah, yeah. surprise. So Steve Jobs is being an asshole. He's, he's telling him, oh, well this is what it's gonna be. This is what you're gonna do. I'm in power, blah, blah, blah. And he said, as much as I hated Steve for the way he was, and as much as I hated him for being an ass, Steve's signal to noise ratio. Was one of the highest I've ever seen. Steve's ability to get the noise out and focus on what's important and not get caught up on the dumb stuff and hand the things off that weren't important. Almost everything that he focused on. Was where he needed to be focusing on, and he was able to either hand off or filter out or find ways to not let the things steal his time. And that's what we're talking about here. Is

Ken Lucci 18:17

by the way, you don't have to be an, you don't have to be an asshole, okay?

James Blain 18:22

Well, but, well, but, but In case you go watch this interview, Kevin O'Leary did say that the only person with a better signal ratio than Steve Jobs was Elon Musk, who he thought was an even bigger asshole than Steve Jobs,

Ken Lucci 18:36

that.

James Blain 18:36

But

Ken Lucci 18:37

Leadership and culture will be another article for another, for, for another episode, rather. It'll be another subject. But I firmly believe your message there is focus on what's important. During prime time, and, and I remember, I like this guy. He's not a client anymore. You know, we, we said, you know, here's your value. This is the best we can do for you. Because he was doing it for 30 years and his business, has been plateaued for the past 10 years. And there are other people in the same market that are just hitting it outta the park. And how do you say to someone, no offense. That's the stupidest thing in the world. You should be hiring and training a bookkeeping service. you have our program, you have our Cost of goods financial program. You've invested in it. I will even help you hire a bookkeeping service. And now I want you to inspect what you expect from your financials, and I want you to do the same thing from a dispatch. and, and

James Blain 19:36

From every standpoint.

Ken Lucci 19:37

it's no secret. People who can't let go and who cannot articulate in writing and cannot create processes and procedures. Okay. And I understand you created the company. I understand that you started from scratch, at some point DIY The people who are stuck in DIY to me are the people who are stuck and have control issues.

James Blain 20:01

Well, so a couple things. One that goes back to limiting belief. One of the things that Athena and I talked about a lot, I mentioned that conversation we had recently, we're both in lockstep on that if you can't grow as a leader, if you're not growing personally, if you don't overcome your own limiting beliefs. They limit the things around you, right? They limit what you can achieve in your personal life. They limit where your company can go. And I wanna be really clear, my, I'm not, coming this from the standpoint of, oh, you should just hand training off to pacs and we'll do everything. No, what you should do is you should be smart about it. So in our world, when we work with a customer, it's, Hey, we have all The fundamentals. We have the defensive driving, we have The customer service, we have all that. We now wanna focus your time on making sure that what you are imparting, what you are working with them on is what makes your company unique. What is your secret herbs and spices? What is your culture. What are you doing? How do you do it? What are your client procedures? Right? Because look, I, I gave this example, you know, before. You have to be able to invest the time in the signal. And I can tell you right now, trying to get someone to understand, Hey, you're a motor coach driver. Let me show you all the features of a motor coach. Lemme show you all the features of this Escalade. That's not what your passengers and your customers want from you. So you wanna be able to take the fundamentals and deliver it in a way that makes sense. And then do it. To your point, and Ken, you tell me if I'm wrong here, right? and this is what I do at my company. I'm not dealing with the books day-to-day, but you better believe that once a month I'm doing a review of my balance sheet of my p and l, of what our numbers look like, of what's going on, and I sit down with my bookkeeper and we go through every single number and make sure it's right. But I'm not the one wasting my time putting every receipt, every transaction in. I'm just inspecting what I inspect. 'cause I've created a process and handed it off.

Ken Lucci 23:01

Yeah, I mean we dealt with an operator today that's a million dollar operator, and every single day he's the one that's putting in all of the receipts. He's closing out the jobs

James Blain 23:12

a million dollars

Ken Lucci 23:13

Yeah. and I said the same thing to him. know, is that the best use of your time during the day? and he, he hired us because he is having profitability problems. And when we looked at the business, you know, he's doing a million dollars, he has 16 pieces of equipment, you know, that production should be at almost $3 million. Right? So. the DIY is self-limiting. Okay. It's almost like a self perpetuating problem. I don't have the money to hire someone else, et cetera, and so therefore I need to do it myself. You know, it's, it's let, let's just break it down. To me, it's focusing on what are the most important priorities and when. When, I mean, I have a client that probably gets up at five o'clock every single morning and the first thing he does is close out the jobs from the night before until 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock because the phone rings and so and so didn't show up. and I've said to him, I'm not gonna tell you that you doing something wrong 'cause that's what you want to do, but you're about a $5 million business. I don't think that's the good use of the owner's time every single day. So it's focus, on what will move the business forward.

James Blain 24:31

Yep.

Ken Lucci 24:32

You closing the reservations and billing the jobs and hitting the credit cards. Maybe something you enjoy, but that's not gonna move the business forward. Now you checking to make sure that somebody has done it, 100% will. But it's, 10 minutes of your day instead of three hours from your day. So what's the most important thing that you deal with? Because you know, you, you, you are kinda like a one man army. You do have your buddy there who's in sales, and I know that you meet with Bruce because you guys are partners and you oversee the business. But what do you focus on during prime time? What's the most important

James Blain 25:12

so look, I mean, I'll be blunt, you know, and most people, you know, they see the faces of the company, right? You know, they see me, they see Aaron, you know Bruce, I run pacs day to day. And I will tell you that my big thing is that we are not in the same boat as most companies when it comes to having a bunch of employees that are drivers. But you know the people that you're never gonna get to see. Look, I love development. I came from tech from that background. At a point I figured out, hey, I'm not the right guy to be doing the development. So what do I do? I come in, I lay down what I wanna see, I lay down what we're working on, and then I hand it off to the people that manage that. I work on, in my world, as we've talked about, I really try to keep my focus on, project managing and I'm our number one salesperson, right? I'm going out to shows, I'm going out, I'm trying to be the face, I'm going,

Ken Lucci 26:05

yeah. It's business. development, constant business development, and it is customer relations, project management.

James Blain 26:13

Yep. And now, does that mean that, you know, if there's a sale, I'm not gonna hand it off and say, Hey, you know, you're gonna work with Casey or you're gonna work with Aaron and they're No, I mean, at a certain point when, when the time is right, I try to get in that habit of handing things off. And I will tell you something I heard in my first business from my father, and I found it to be very true. This is one of my favorite quotes of my dad. And that's, it's usually the things that you don't wanna do or that you're dread doing, that you need to do most in the business. Because a lot of times you get in that comfort level of, well, I'm doing the stuff I wanna do and I'm doing these things, and you're not doing the things that you don't wanna do, or that you dread doing, or that you don't like doing. And those often give you the most needle movement.

Ken Lucci 26:56

Well, and to your point, I mean our entire existence. Is dealing with owners who don't want to deal with their finances and you know, the hubris line I hear is, ha ha, ha ha, I have an accountant who does that. Good for you. You talk to the son of a bitch once a year and the thing he tells you is how much you owe in taxes. You have no clue of how much you make on every job, how much you've made every day, what you have for free cash flow, how much. Business you're doing this month versus same month last year, et cetera. And you're, you're, to say it nicely, you're financially agnostic. Meaning, you have no idea about your profitability. You know, once a week. Cole and I go through the financial condition of the business and I spend most of my time. Identifying and working with him on the priorities of the week. Handling customer, existing customer calls, and then business development. and he calls it making it rain. that's what I spend most of my time on. Okay. and. On Saturdays and Sundays when it's not prime time, I'm usually writing something. I'm usually working on a program. I'm working on a course. not in the summertime, by the way, but to, to your point. So the smaller operator that you and I come across, the one that has perpetually been five to 10 cars or that.

James Blain 28:20

They're usually shoestring guys. They, they started it on a shoestring and they're, they're squeezing the budget just as hard now as they did when they start. Yeah.

Ken Lucci 28:27

And it stays there.

James Blain 28:29

And, and look, I've been guilty of that before myself, right? There's been times where I've had, you know, and, and I try to, I heard this great quote once that anything that you have to do more than two or three times, if it can be automated and you don't, you're dumb. Um, I think it's brutal, right? It's, It's, a very blunt quote, but I look at it in that same way. If I do something three times. I don't create a process for it and I don't see if I can automate it and I don't see if I can hand it off to someone. I tell myself, I say, Hey, It's a dumb use of my time. You could be better using your time and look. sometimes you might not be at a point where you can hire a bookkeeper, but you might look at, Hey, you know what, what can we do in terms of, you know, getting a bookkeeper that's shared and then reviewing it less often, or,

Ken Lucci 29:20

You do a bookkeeping service. there's bookkeeping services on every single street corner. The key is, and we help people, interview them. To me, they have to be QuickBooks certified or at least five years of QuickBooks, experience and use. So the bookkeeping service is the easiest thing in the world, the most difficult. Is to teach a bookkeeper and to even teach a CPA about our industry. That's where we come in when people buy our program, our driving financial success, it gives them the chart of accounts that they should be setting up their QuickBooks in. It gives them sample monthly financial reports, and then we teach 'em how to read their financial metrics. If you do that once. I mean, I, and we have a saying internally, we love to work our way out of a job. We have, we have some, we have some great retained clients, some of the best and biggest in the industry, but we love to work our way out of the job. Okay. And by going to whoever's keeping the books and saying, listen, here is standard QuickBooks gap accounting. This is the chart of accounts I'd like you to use, because it puts all of the costs to turn the key and do the work up here. We want to break your revenue down by silo, so I can train anybody with QuickBooks experience, but you know, who's the toughest to train the owner? The owner? It's, it's, it's maddening because first and foremost to get you out of a DIY, being A-D-D-I-Y guy or girl, write down a business plan, and you know what, it doesn't have to be an. Opus. Okay. I used to think Opus was like a little penguin, but opus is actually a long dissertation, right? So it doesn't, you write a business plan. Okay? That answers two questions. If you've been in the business longer than a year, your business plan comes down to one coin, two sides? How can, and what if. Okay, so the how can is all of the positive stuff that you want to achieve over the next month, over the next quarter, over the next year. The what if is what if it's a bad thing that happens? Okay, so to my $5 million operator, and I've had this discussion with him, a nauseum, okay. How can you duplicate your biggest client? Biggest client does a million dollars with you. How can you duplicate them? Because that's the Achilles heel to your operation. When they stop traveling, you start freaking out like chicken little. So the how can is, what is my plan? Two three to five x. That client. So he's not the only, let's just say he's a lawyer. He's not the only law firm, right? So, and then the what if. The what if is what if you get sick?

James Blain 32:15

Well, what if some, what if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?

Ken Lucci 32:18

What if that big client leaves you? Right? So you have to have a plan. So Guy says to me, this $5 million operator. I've had three or four people that I've tried to hire that I have hired that haven't worked out, and I said, okay, well let's look at that. is it the people? And you look at their resumes, their resumes are great, or is it you? Okay. And the reality is. It's not him as an individual, it's him as a leader. He's, he, tells them something as if they've done it wrong. rather than saying, here is the outline on how I want you to handle this, right? So you come up with your business plan, the how can is the good stuff, what you wanna achieve, the what if is what you're gonna plan against, and then you create. In bullet form, how you gonna achieve these? How cans and how you're gonna deal with the what ifs. The policies and procedures to me people get really talked up about it, right? There's software out there. One of them is called tra ual, and by the way, the guy that wrote this book is the pitchman for them, right? Michael Gerber, if I can ever get him on the podcast, if anybody

James Blain 33:32

Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. We

Ken Lucci 33:34

Emin. Okay, so policies and procedures start with writing down when you start like, what John, our producer does with us. Every single podcast. When he starts the podcast, in the beginning, before it became muscle memory, he had to give us an outline. Step one, step two, step three. Okay, so. That is to me is the birth of every single procedure or policy comes with the owner Who's doing it now, writing down the steps. Well, it's just me. Okay. Do you have drivers? Yes. How about if you train one of your drivers to be able to give you a morning off so that you can go out and do business development? Right. You now, you've just taken a giant step forward, but My $5 million operator fight with him constantly. Oh, you should see what this driver did. You know, he had a low air pressure at the airport. And, you know, he drove it all the way home and, and wrecked the rim because it was flat. By the time he came back, I said, okay, teachable moment, teachable moment. Write down. what should have happened. Okay, so he has a reservations department that's on duty 24 hours a day, re reservations and dispatch. What should they have told the chauffeur? Assume the chauffeur maybe doesn't have the greatest common sense or

James Blain 35:00

Well, but, but where you're going with this, right? This is all about playing chess and not checkers, right?

Ken Lucci 35:07

Absolutely

James Blain 35:07

I do this with operators all the time, right? If you're a PACS member, you don't need this train, you don't need all that jazz. You just have to let us know because what we, we have built out. We've got set up a, literally, we've got a list that is, here's the five days of training. Here's what you're doing when you're onboarding, here's what you're doing when you bring them in.

Ken Lucci 35:27

for every department.

James Blain 35:29

Yeah. And we, we help people do this in every single department. Right. And one of the things I tell people all the time, if you go look at my. Dispatcher training, or you go look at my CSR training. I'm not worried about training them how to use your software. If your main concern with training a dispatcher or a CSR is, how do I train them to use whatever software we use? You blew it because. That's one. If you ever change software, you're screwed. But two, that's not how you do it. That's like if I said, Hey, I'm sending you to a surgeon. We didn't teach him how to think about the surgery. We taught him how to use the knife and the stitches to open you up and cut you open. And he knows how to use all the tools. Well, great. Does he know that if he nicks my heart, he is gonna kill me while he is in there? Well, no, we didn't think he needed to know that. Well, does he know that he needs to look around and see if there's anything else inside of the wrong with me? Well, no, no, no. He just knows how to go in and use the tools, Right. that's what happens in so many businesses. We get so caught up with how do we use the software? How do we use this? How do we use that? That we forget that you've gotta teach people how to think. So to the point where you just brought up about the teachable moment. In my world, if that happens, two things. One, you've gotta decide how you're going to work with and reeducate that individual person. But if that's truly a teachable moment, hey, we're gonna have our vehicle defect policy. If you get a flat tire, if you see a bus overheat, if you have any of these types of issues, This is what you do. And then if you're, again, if you're a Pax member, dude, I just made your life easy. Because you throw it in the platform, you click three buttons and everyone in the company has it. Now, back to managing time, you still gotta make sure they go in and they do. it, and you're inspecting and figuring out, well, okay, I've got these six people that never went in and did that. I need to grab them and talk to them. But you are switching it to a game of chess instead of checkers.

Ken Lucci 38:29

and this same individual comes to me and, laments. It's almost like what Tommy Ozzy used to do, which is a degree of psychological consulting. Right. Which we hate. We, that's why we just get back to the finance and profit piece. Every month it's complaints about so and so and such and such, and I go back and say, okay, what does the documentation say? What does the policy say? What does the outline say? I mean, my dad ran a business that was 8 million, which was a supermarket, and he passed it on to my brother. My brother was big on outlines and checklists. Okay. My brother could tell you. What the gross profit margin was of an Italian sub. Do you know how he did it? No. Do you know how he did it? He literally counted the slices, weighed it up, Okay. And figured it out. But I hear people say to me, well, they don't have any critical thinking ability. Uh, you are the one that's supposed to have that, and you are supposed to make it. idiot proof. So your policies and procedures have to be. To your weakest link, which is what I was trying to say. Don't leave it to your chauffeur. Well, you know, the chauffeur should have common sense. No, you should, you know when, when you really think about what we do, what we do as an industry is 85% rinse and.

James Blain 39:52

yes.

Ken Lucci 39:52

85% vanilla ice cream trips. Okay? And then the ones that are the most valuable are the ones that can do the high touch, the real tough stuff, right? But the most operators out there, if you just master a B plus, okay, or an A, you'll be better than most anybody in your marketplace. And to me, it comes down to. Starting from, if you are the DIY guy, I'm not saying for you the whole business, but if like, my client who spends two days doing his QuickBooks because he doesn't trust the ass that he sits on. Okay.

James Blain 40:30

a good use of your time.

Ken Lucci 40:31

It's not a good use of your time. And how do I know that? Because you're stuck at $3 million. That's why it's not a good use of your time. at the same time, he's complaining that he needs a chauffeur trainer, or he's claim, he says he needs a dispatch supervisor. You know, you would be free to solve those other problems. And, and I remember saying to him, you've been doing this for 30 years, are you gonna wait for a year 31 to solve that problem or what?

James Blain 40:59

so a lot of times when I talk to people, they don't identify it as a problem. And I think one of the big things, and this is something that, you and I recently did an event where we basically did an all day, you did the morning and, and I did the afternoon. and one of the things that I spent a lot of time talking about there with policies. Is a lot of people go one of two ways with policies. They copy and paste someone else's and they just drop 'em in and they have no idea what's in 'em. They think it's a legal stop gap to cover them in a lawsuit and the other half try to put policies in place for everything. Look, I'm gonna tell, I'll say this on the podcast, I say in that course, every job I've ever worked at handed me a manual this thick, and then had me sign and lie that I read the manual. Nobody freaking reads it. And the other thing is, and I tell people this all the time, you want your policies to be a general guideline in most cases. And then you want your policies to then define, Hey, if you have PTO, this is the rules for that. If you have this, this is the rules for that. The training then becomes how you bridge that gap. So in training, I'm gonna take. The key things in the policy that you need to know and apply, and I'm gonna tell you about 'em. And speaking of common sense, right? What's common sense to you? Sitting in your office is not common sense to someone on the road. I could tell you right now, there was a situation where I saw an owner, he was. Pissed because he had a, he had a chauffeur that had a sprinter, and the door wouldn't shut on the sprinter, and he had to get to his next trip, and he was gonna be late, and he didn't know what to do. So he muscled the door, shut on the sprinter, and just shut the door and got in the car and ran and made the next trip. And he came back all proud of himself saying, Hey, you know, the, the door was messed up, but I was able to muscle it? shut. I wasn't late for any of my trips. He came back thinking he did the owner a favor, and the owner went, what the f. you know, there's a release on the door for the latch. All you had to do was hit the release for, 'cause the electric door had messed up. If you'd have hit the release and slid the door shut and stopped and think for two seconds, we'd have been fine. And so there's this mismatch of, what's common sense to that person in that moment. And that owner, looking back now, was the chauffeur trying to break the vehicle and, and do damage? No, he was trying to get the job done. And keep the wheels rolling, But, in the owner's mind, well, this guy, you know, I, I got an idiot on my hands. He's, so, I think

Ken Lucci 43:28

but that's the teachable moment

James Blain 43:30

that's the teachable moment.

Ken Lucci 43:32

It's your job as the leader. If it happens once, if something wrong happens, once, your job is not to bitch the person out. It's to follow the rules of the five minute manager. Listen, you're a great guy, James. You're a great guy. That was you. Thank you for trying to solve the problem. I apologize. We should have shown you that, and now you make that part of your training program.

James Blain 43:56

Yes.

Ken Lucci 43:57

So it never happens again,

James Blain 43:58

That's your chestnut checkers moment, right. If, if it happens more than three times, it's you not that.

Ken Lucci 44:04

Correct.

James Blain 44:05

Because you didn't figure out it's the same thing with the automation. And I tell people this all the time. If you've got three problems that have third time, it happens, man, we just, I hear all time, I have this problem. It happens over and over. Well, what do you do? Well, every time they screw it up, I bring 'em in and I said, okay, great. So what does that do to keep the problem from happening, right? If the same person does it 10 times in a row. Clearly they're not gonna get it. Maybe it's just that person. But if every time you have to bring in someone different for a problem, you're not proactively getting ahead of it. So I, I think, I think this, you know, I'm sure you see this in finances, we see it in training, you know, as we kinda wrap this one up. Ken, I'm curious to know like you know, I've got, and I've shared a couple of my hard and fast rules, and you have too. Is there one rule or one thing that you think about when it comes to DIYing that you use as your temperature gauge to say, okay, this isn't an effective use of my time. I need to either outsource it, hire someone for it, or somehow get it off my plate and onto someone else's? How do you do that? I think that's a good place to leave it.

Ken Lucci 45:08

we have a a 12 month business plan and we have milestones, whether it's a milestone for the week or whatever it is, if I keep running into a roadblock that's keeping me from getting to the next step, I know it's not a good use of my time. I examine my time. you know, Cole will tell you that everything we do is billable. So. I would tell the average owner that if you are stuck at whether it's stuck at revenue, stuck at a number of trips, the vehicles are not moving. You are the only one that can unstick your business. And to me it starts with a very simple plan and starts with using your week and determining what is the best time of day or day of the week to do a specific function. And if that function is not worthy of the owner of the business, figure out. Someone else to do it, or at least cross train someone to do it because DIY can become, a rolling ball where you, you don't do it. You get behind, continuously behind, and you never out bury yourself. And that's the key with burnout. You're definitely gonna burn out. So if you don't figure out a way to schedule yourself and every hour of your day as to what's the best use of my time and offload the other things so that you can work on your business, not immersed in your business, you're never gonna, you're never gonna leave the DIY stage.

James Blain 46:41

No, I,

Ken Lucci 46:42

I think, a good place to end.

James Blain 46:44

yeah, I, I can't think of a better thing to hit. I mean, you. summed it up.

Ken Lucci 46:47

This book is the best investment any entrepreneur could make, could make, and I'm dying to see if anybody knows Michael Gerber. We'd love to have him on on the podcast. We would love to have him at the NLA Chauffer Driven show as a speaker, but this is one of the best books you can, the E-Myth. The E is for entrepreneur. The E-Myth, um, and why most small businesses don't work and what to do about 'em. So thanks James. It's been a great, podcast today and we'll catch you all next week.

James Blain 47:19

Thank you everybody for listening. Please leave us your comments, subscribe, let us know how you think we're doing, and we'll see you on the X Expo of the Ground Transportation Podcast.

47:28

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.