Ken Lucci: 0:00

We're gonna be at the CHA for Driven show next week. We purposely are putting this out right before, I'm probably dealing with one of the more difficult topics that I'm gonna have to tap dance around, As much of an issue of AVS are, I believe this is a bigger existential threat to our industry this tells us we're making no headway. Where's no value differentiator it's literally like claiming to be a five star steakhouse and you get 3.8 reviews.

James Blain: 0:53

Hello everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Jazz Station podcast. This is for me my favorite day of the week. One of my favorite things to do and the only thing that makes it better is my co-host, my financial genius, my buddy, my partner in crime. I can't say enough. Ken, I love doing this with you, buddy. I'm excited to have you on, man.

Ken Lucci: 1:12

Back at you, James from PAC Training. You are one of the best.

James Blain: 1:16

So I gotta say before we start, we did a listener survey and I gotta do a shout out to Nathan. Thank for throwing out survey. We're gonna do a shout out to people that fill that out. tell us what you want us to cover. But speaking of reaching out, Ken, you sent me an email recently and this is what we're gonna talk about today. You sent me an email and I wanna say it was from BTN, right? And in that email, they basically had gone in and they'd surveyed and they'd looked at chauffeur services versus Rideshare. you sending me that for me. I opened it and had this just blank stare moment of not being able to believe it. not to dance around it, but how did you find that? What do you think? It says what it, it was really concerning to me when I read it.

Ken Lucci: 2:01

So periodically I go on to the G-B-T-A-B-T-N and five or six other sites, hotel sites, et cetera, et cetera. And I go to BTN and I look at what reports and what surveys they've done and what data sets are new. So I was searching for their latest, one of their latest reports, and this article is based on that report and the article we're talking about on business travel news.com is titled Chauffeur Comma Ride. Hail Services Slip in Ratings. the average person does not read into more than one, one or two paragraphs, but they always look at the graphics

James Blain: 2:44

Picture book.

Ken Lucci: 2:45

Right. Exactly. And what was concerning to me was, first and foremost that the 2025 travel buyers ratings of chauffeur providers, and these are companies with corporate travel management programs and corporate travel programs. So these are buyers, these are travel buyers as well as passengers. They gave a ranking from one of poor to five of excellence, to the chauffeur industry alone, the chauffeur alone of 3.8. So that was extremely disturbing to me on its face.

James Blain: 3:21

we got no fives.

Ken Lucci: 3:23

we got no fives. And so this to me is. more of an existential threat to the industry than autonomous vehicles. Okay. on its face, we are a five star steakhouse, and the TNCs are, barely a drive through to me, right? They're, basic protein, but what this basically says, and we're gonna get to what their rating was as well, we never got even close to a five. there was nothing above a 4.2. So when I look at the stats, when I look at Google reviews, and I hear the stat that, prospective customers favor companies with 4.5 or greater. They try not to look at anything below a 4.5. what really disturbed me about this was the basics. Clean, well serviced. New modeled cars. Wait a minute, what do you think we got there? For those of you out there who don't see this on the screen, you are all probably saying, we got a 4.7, 4.8 4.9. How's the 4.19? We can't even get the clean, well serviced new model cars,

James Blain: 4:36

which is like table, stakes.

Ken Lucci: 4:38

table, stakes, it's like making sure that the tablecloth is clean on the table when you go to the restaurant and has salt and pepper

James Blain: 4:45

Yeah,

Ken Lucci: 4:46

duty of care. Which, frankly, I have heard this industry hammer for years. 4.14.

James Blain: 4:53

and, here's what's scary about duty of care for me, right? I, as I've mentioned on this podcast tons of times before, I'm in like my 11th year, I'm 10 years. in whatever. we are seeing a 4.1 there, so we do better, right? Just barely better, but we do just barely better at new cars, new models, and duty of care, which when Uber was there, I remember when NLA did ride responsibly and they had Pamela Lee Anderson, and they did all of these other things and all these other campaigns, right? Tons of money, right? One of the big things Scott Sino back when he was in charge, like all of these things was always duty of care. Duty of care. Duty of care, 4.14. like really?

Ken Lucci: 5:35

4.14, it, it doesn't get better. Driver slash company employees. Four 4.01. 4.01 drivers, independent contractors, 3.86. Fundamentally, the shift in this industry after the pandemic where we're seeing. 37,795 operators, 27,000 roughly, or excuse me, 24,000 or one or two car operators, the shift away from the regionals that were doing one to 5 million down to utilizing and all of the 1, 2, 2 car operators that are doing a lot of the affiliate work. Now, to me that is fundamentally where one of the issues are, is the lack of control, and the lack of really inspecting what you expect. 3.86. So if you combine those drivers, company drivers got a 4.01.

James Blain: 6:38

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 6:39

Independent drivers go a 3.86.

James Blain: 6:41

Yep.

Ken Lucci: 6:42

I don't even need Cole to be here to do that math for me, but that's two 10th not, that's not even two tenths of a point difference. let's just go down the list, then we're

James Blain: 6:51

Well, but, but, but here's, here's one thing that I wanna point out though. We're gonna jump ahead because in my mind, the drivers and independent contractors is a different category. But then you have service consistency across affiliates. this literally is like a slide down because you get to service consistency across affiliates. Now you're at 3.54. And I think back to when I had Wyon on and he talked about the links, and I remember people telling me after that, oh, I can't believe the links he goes to, to vet affiliates and he's gonna find out this and he's got that. There's a reason that that 3.86 and then that 3.54 on service consistency across affiliates, there's a reason that those two are connected. We'll, we'll go through the rest of these, but being able to see this and make those connections for me was kind of scary.

Ken Lucci: 7:42

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I agree. negotiating prices and amenities. 3.4. Really? 3.4. Okay. Now, if that was asked a different way, do you think that chafer cars are overpriced? I would be able to give you more data, but negotiating prices and amenities are the 3.4. Price transparency. 3.5. Are you kidding me? And when you're talking about the average Uber trip that you take today, okay. If you took, wait a minute, if you took it 10 times, you'd have nine different prices.

James Blain: 8:16

If not 10.

Ken Lucci: 8:17

Correct. so. Pricing transparency, 3.5, availability and the ease of booking are four. Frankly, I think that's being generous. Quality data and reporting 3.3. 3.3.

James Blain: 8:31

That's our lowest score. That is the bottom of the bottom.

Ken Lucci: 8:36

Service consistency across affiliates, 3.5, complaint resolution, 3.8, complaint resolution, complaint and problem resolution 3.8. Now, you know, maybe I'm being difficult and I'm not an operator and all this, but I will tell you one thing. We are blessed to work with some of the most profitable operators in the industry, getting them there and keeping them there. And there is a direct correlation, a big, big line, solid line, super highway of align between most profitable companies that we deal with, and the level of quality, the level of service that they deliver. The most profitable companies in the business that we work with are, number one, they're always probably in the, third highest in their market. They have the best vehicles because they can afford them, but they are obsessed with service, and I believe that's it's a, it's a total correlation. By the way. They're also the ones that are growing at 10, 15, 20% a year in all categories. So when you look at the 3.8 here, if this was your individual client, what advice do you have for them? And are you taking this as badly as I am?

James Blain: 11:12

so for me, it's funny because when you sent me that email, the attachment you had was document eight, right? And so now if you work at Pax, like you're hearing me like, man, document eight. Document eight. I'm so upset about document eight, right? That's kind of been like the internal code name for this. What scares the hell outta me, okay? What scares the hell outta me is what we're about to talk about. And that's the ride share scores. Because here's the thing, if you got a 3.8 out of five, look, I was just in New Jersey, I was out with Mike Rose, I was out with Jay Gel. I, I literally, we spent two days meeting in the morning, meeting in the afternoon. Every single chafer, right? Every single motor coach driver, every single shuttle driver, their entire staff. And that whole talk was about, hey, service is in the gutter right now in the States, right? At least here in the United States, service is down in every single industry. And think about It like you're not gonna have a Honda Civic pull up to pick someone up from a private jet because a chauffeur, the chauffeur is. the top. You expect to have a good, sharp looking, sharp breast chauffeur. But when I saw this, I had this moment of like, oh God. Maybe we are gonna get to that point, or maybe instead of a chauffeur, it's just a ride share driver in a Suburban, because what we see when we start looking about it, and we'll talk about this here in a second, when we start looking at the ratings for ride share, the gap is minuscule.

Ken Lucci: 12:46

It is. Yep.

James Blain: 12:47

if there's no difference and the differentiator is convenience, you're done, you like, you can't win that fight. It's more convenient, it's easier. It's we, we feel the same way about both, but one is cheaper and one is more convenient. You are screwed. And so I think my fear, and this is a genuine fear, is that the differentiators, the value that's provided by the industry. If that's not there, it, it's gonna go away. And this, I mean the talk I'm about to give right next week in Vegas, actually on Sunday, that that whole talk is gonna center around this. Because if you are not providing value, if you are not meeting that higher expectation, you're done. I've said it for the past 10 years, if you're competing directly with Rideshare, your Rideshare, and if you wanna run a rideshare company and compete head to head, you better hire some engineers. You better get some software, you better get some on demand. And frankly, I think you're gonna lose, that. What you should be doing is running a limo company. If you're a limo company, if you're a motor coach company, you should be running the Top Motor Coach company. Like that's what scares me is when the generic brand is at the same level.

Ken Lucci: 14:01

So let's talk this through. Duty of care on the chauffeur side was a 4.14 duty. Do wait a minute. Duty of care with ride share. Where the biggest news stories about Uber are sexual assaults. The duty of care with rideshare was 3.66. Our duty of care was 4.1. Okay. I'm as equally enraged about both sides because the duty of care of the TNCs is effing non-existent. It's been proven okay that it's been proven. They have issues with one person signing on the app and they have five different drivers in the car that are not the same people.

James Blain: 14:46

wrong vehicle showing up. You

Ken Lucci: 14:48

wrong vehicles showing up the sexual assault and the suppression of that data. You are being telling me that they got a 3.6 now, as much as we should have gotten a five, they should have gotten a two and a half.

James Blain: 15:02

but here's what's scary. we didn't. even get a four and a half, right? If you start thinking about how reviews work, right? If you look at our, I of Care, it's 4.14, they're at 3.66. That's not a big gap,

Ken Lucci: 15:18

you know, listen, you can, the pricing, uh, you can't touch. Okay. But they're still talking about pricing and amenities. And I know a lot of the 3.5 that the TNCs get is because of the surge pricing, along with pricing, transparency

James Blain: 15:31

the pricing transparency is where we lose, right? Because here's the thing, most companies are not out there surge pricing. Most companies are not out there having to charge, you know, all kinds of weird things. Hell, you call rideshare. by the time it gets there, sometimes I wonder if the price will change, but their pricing transparency is a 3.4. Ours is a 3.58. So basically negligible difference.

Ken Lucci: 15:54

Correct. and I hope to have the people that did the survey, at some point on a future podcast. but at the end of the day, if you are talking about TNCs at, just think of it this way. The same black suburban pulls up And theirs gets a 3.61. We get a 3.8, we're doing something wrong. Okay. I hear people talk about, well, we're the JW Marriott and the Ritz Carlton,

James Blain: 16:23

not according to this. We're not,

Ken Lucci: 16:25

not according to this. We're gonna be at the CHA for Driven show next week. We purposely are putting this out right before, I'm probably dealing with one of the more difficult topics that I'm gonna have to tap dance around, in discussing avs. do I think there are a threat to the industry? Yeah, I think we're gonna have a problem, but I think it's a skimming problem, As much of an issue of AVS are, I believe this is a bigger existential threat to our industry because you, this tells us we're making no headway. Where's no value differentiator And it's literally like claiming to be a five star steakhouse and you get 3.8 reviews. It's just absolutely. The outta your cells when you see

James Blain: 17:11

but you haven't dropped the final nail in the coffin here, right? So at this point, if we continue going through their scoring, if we continue looking at it? right, let's, cut to the brass tacks here. We as Rafford services industry got a 3.8. They as rideshare got a 3.61. That is a negligible difference, negligible. And my fear here is that that gap is too tight. Now to the point you just made about AVS one, if you're going to the CD NLA, show one, you better be in my session two. You better be in Ken's. But here's the, interesting correlation there. If right now with ride share drivers that are just shorts t-shirts, show up, get in the car, drive you there, drop you off. It's a What's gonna happen when we go to Rideshare? If everything stays the same, I would tell you that rideshare on self-driving is going to be about the same, if not better. If we don't get from a 3.8 up higher in terms of their expectation, the value we provide, everything else. If the suburban drives itself and shows up and the door opens And they hop in, it's going to be roughly the same experience for that business traveler. And at that point, we're done. The only differentiator we have is the a hundred percent.

Ken Lucci: 18:39

and the people at the company, the customer service we deliver?

James Blain: 18:42

and I will tell you that to me is the other reason, like I get scared. I see complaint and problem resolution 3.82 versus 3.69. You gotta be kidding me. Like really?

Ken Lucci: 18:55

It is not a small issue. It's not a small problem. When your customer thinks that when an issue happens, you are gonna be a 3.8, 3.8 satisfaction rating. I'm solving the problem instead of five. Okay. I really question what I'd love to, to really deep dive with the methodology here, but it's sad to me that we didn't even approach a four and a half out of five. Nothing is gonna be perfect, but I will take, you know, 4.5 out of five is a 90. Right? It's a score, it's an A minus. If my math is right, I might need coal for that, but at the end of the day, I'll take a B plus or an A any day of the week. We're getting barely a c plus here. I'm not gonna give away the AVPs, but There are plenty of ways we're gonna be able to have opportunities and future proof our businesses. there's absolutely no way we're going to survive as an industry and grow market share if we cannot deliver a clean vehicle and we can't get four and a half out of five minimums on our chauffeurs. So I'm gonna just keep throwing it back to you. What do you say to your client when they come up with, if it was just one network instead of the, plethora of larger companies or companies, what do you say to them when they, if you saw something like this,

James Blain: 20:17

So first things first. All right.

Ken Lucci: 20:20

it?

James Blain: 20:21

I, I think before You. fix it, right? This is, this is kinda like when you gotta go to aa, you gotta admit you have a problem before you can fix the problem. I can tell you right. now, we have people listening that are like, ah, well, how many people took the survey? Well, what was in the survey? Well, me get this outta the way right now. I travel a lot. I am literally this month alone, in the month of February, before even getting to CD to present next week, I will have had four different trade shows. That's eight different rides with eight different sets of chauffeur. Minimum. All right, minimum.'cause I've got airport runs in there. Now, here's the thing. I can tell you right now the experience that I see here is consistent with what I'm seeing in real life. Because typically what I do when I go to these shows is I will book a car at the airport and I'll take the car service to the hotel. I'll take the car service back. That gives me a car service perspective. If I can do it with two different companies, I'll do it with two different companies, sometimes the same one, but then when I'm there, a lot of times what I'll do is if I'm going out to dinner or something, I will say, all right, let's figure out what Rideshares doing in this town, And I will purposely order their premium or black, or whatever. it's I cannot tell you how many times I can't tell the difference. I can tell the difference when I book it. but when the person shows up, other than the app experience. I can typically not tell the difference anymore. well, and the only giveaways at this point, I, hate to say it, are with the rideshare drivers. their big thing is they typically don't get outta the driver's seat. They typically don't have any kind of idea what appropriate or professional communication looks like in the vehicle. But I can tell you I've had some chauffeurs that have had the same problem. So I think one, you have to understand that this is an issue. Two, you have to gain visibility into what's happening in the backseat of your vehicles. That is probably, but that's probably the biggest issue that I see Right, now is

Ken Lucci: 22:23

Because they're gonna say, it's somebody else's problem. It's not mine.

James Blain: 22:27

Well, but not even that. A lot of times it's not inspecting what you expect, right? Because look, you've, gotta ghost ride. You've gotta make sure that you're doing surveys. You've gotta do everything you can to try and reach that passenger. Now the other thing that I'll put out here, and this is really important, is I think the biggest differentiator that I see is that it's not enough to train people. You have to empower people. You have to get them on board with your

Ken Lucci: 22:56

Well, look at the, look at the Ritz Carlton. You talk about ultimate empowerment. You have the ability to spend$2,000 to wow a client or solve a problem.

James Blain: 23:06

yeah.

Ken Lucci: 23:07

They laughed at Fritz when he did that back in the eighties, you know? But that was the biggest brand differentiator as far as brand satisfaction. When people look at the Ritz Carlton brand, They remember the wow experience. and I am absolutely tired of two things in this space. One is limo operators saying, well, somebody who uses Uber is not my client.

James Blain: 23:29

They might have been your client if they couldn't tell the difference.

Ken Lucci: 23:33

I got a sister who makes a million dollars a year selling real estate. She's got a son who is, is commercial real estate does the same thing, okay? You are telling me that somebody who doesn't earn a million dollars is not your client. The issue is we do a terrible job in many, in, in promoting ourselves. And yes, we have tech issues, but I gotta tell you, both of the people I just mentioned eat at five star restaurants when they go out to stay, they're not staying at Motel six. they're staying at JW I think she's Sapphire at the Ritz Carlton at Marriott. But, but my whole point is that number one is the huge misnomer. And the other thing I hear is, well, Ken, it's just a ride. It's not about the ride, it's about the experience that you provide, right? If that sentiment was correct, okay, we would all be staying in Motel six because it's a clean,

James Blain: 25:32

Well, and think about it, Ferrari, Bentley, Porsche. Pick your favorite brand. they would be outta business.'cause it's just a car, Right. No one, no one would have Gucci purchase.

Ken Lucci: 25:43

Rolex is just a watch.

James Blain: 25:45

I was, I was listening. I, I hate the sound of my own voice, so I listened to it on like two x so it doesn't sound like me anymore. But I went back through our podcast episodes the other day and I was listening to some of our earlier episodes and I came across the episode with Tom Hanick and I talking, and one of the things that Tom talks about is he's like, man, when I go out and drive, I get tipped every time. I get tipped really well. And all my drivers are all, all the chauffeur. What, how did you do it? What are you doing? What's your secret? What's this? What's that? And he's like. I provide a good experience. I take care of these guys. I make sure that I'm treating every single one of them great. He goes,'cause you can't look at someone and tell they're gonna tip, they're not gonna tip this. He goes, I just give everybody the same incredible service and I work on getting to know them. And I, I, I know exactly how to provide this exceptional service.

Ken Lucci: 26:31

No question. He's right. I did the same thing when I owned an ambassador. We were having problems getting people on Sunday mornings. Okay. I'm an early riser on the weekends, and I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning on Sunday, and I used to work till noon. I would be driving people from the sand pearl to the airport back and forth, back and forth, back forth. And one day I literally took all my tips. I remember it was 220 bucks and I fanned out that cash, on the copy machine. And I said, this is what you guys missed this morning. Okay. And they're like, well, you have a gregarious personality. I'm like, no. 80% of this job is showing up, looking good. Okay. Showing up, looking good, smelling good, okay. And having a servant's mentality. Okay. A servant's mentality in your mind. Of industry is in this country.

James Blain: 27:23

hot garbage.

Ken Lucci: 27:26

It's it's

James Blain: 27:31

I don't think that's the problem. I think you have a couple issues. One, I think that people are not understanding that It's not the complex problem of the game that causes the loss, it's the failure at the fundamental level. Right. you know, Ken, I, I didn't get to take you with me when I went to go talk to Mike Rose's team, but I brought your Derek Jeter story with me, right. I said, I, I got a partner does podcast with me, and he loves telling the story about Derek Jeter, right? This, this guy. Everybody thinks he doesn't need the practice because what did he do every time he took him there? Got there early and beat the hell out of it. Right. he just, he made it muscle memory.

Ken Lucci: 28:11

we was in the batting cage. He still had trainers that worked with him. He had coaches that worked with him. The guy would come in three hours before, spring training. Okay. And he was a machine to me, and he would meet his coach and he would, take some I mean, real critiques from this guy. but then he would be in the batting cage to the point where I'm like, you know, Mr. Jeter, I, I can't get over this. And he is like, Hey, it takes a lot to, to get here. And it takes a lot, it takes more to stay here.

James Blain: 28:40

and and he was considered one of the best batters, right?

Ken Lucci: 28:43

no, question. he took it extraordinarily serious, you know, and I think Reggie Jackson was the same way as, as different personalities. Right. Mr. Gida was very quiet, but I remember Reggie talking to Reggie about what you just said. When he would work with the, the younger players, he would say, you know, it's all about the fundamentals. You can't shortcut it. Okay. So getting back to our

James Blain: 29:08

So wait, so, so let me tie it back'cause I brought it up for a reason. All right, so the thing that I would tell you, and I see it every single operation I go to, do you know how many times I see people that have holes in a uniform torn coat,

Ken Lucci: 29:25

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

James Blain: 29:27

uniform Mismatch. right? The shoes are scuffed up. So let me ask you something. the easiest, thing that they can do to look the part is get up, shower, get dressed. Like you have to do that anyway, it's the most fundamental part. Again, back to that, it's not the super complex plays. What I think we're missing. Is the foundational fundamentals. I think as an industry, we are at a point where, like you said, it's not so much that they don't care, it's that we're not worried about is the uniform perfect. One of my favorite sayings, if you take care of the small things, the big things will work themselves out, right? It's not go take care and tackle the big things. It's if you take care of the little things, the big things will work themselves out. That's my concern for the industry. I feel like we might be trying to look at these bigger and more complex, Hey, this is this, this is that, but we've lost the foundational fundamental of step one. Look good, step two, cars ready, step three, everything's in the car, good to go. And then ultimately, right person, right place, right time, right vehicle. It, it's, it's that easy. But if you don't have that foundationally right, then the more complex stuff starts falling outta place starts becoming an issue. Because it's collapsing down onto a fundamental

Ken Lucci: 30:51

Now listen, and you know, one of the, one of, and I bring them up all the time, but Doug Schwartz did a, did a, uh, video about, you know, trying to keep the cars clean in the wintertime. And his emphasis was, look, guys, the outside's gonna be a little dirty because of all the snow, but I guarantee you the interior is gonna be absolutely perfectly clean. I mean, that's the differentiator. Uh, we're staying down the Renaissance Hotel down in Tampa, and I like it because it's near the mall and I can do some walking. And I remember right after the pandemic, I came in and I, no one even looked up. Okay? No one even looked up. And at that same stay, I had a problem, a big problem with the TV in, in my room. And I'm a, I'm, I'm watching CNBC and Bloomberg constantly. It's a part of my job. And I was, really pissed. they moved me to three different rooms. They have absolute. Terrible. televisions. They're absolutely terrible. The whole lg, the Marriott, the whole Marriott properties got'em. I'm a moron. I can't run the goddamn things. Anyway, and on the way down, the manager was at the front desk I said, you know, you're the manager. Could I have a minute? I said, you know, I said, I'm Ritz Carlton trained. He said, I took every course the Executive leadership center offered, and I stayed at the Ritz Carlton, the Pentagon City for 30 days, learning the back office. I gotta tell you, this is a terrible reflection on Marriott. People didn't look at me when I came in, didn't say anything. Okay? I could have been ordering a cheeseburger from a drive-through based on the enthusiasm I get from the staff. And then you gotta move me around three different rooms. I'll come back because it's convenient, but. It better be a market difference. Okay. And I did get a good email out of them, but then I, shook my head saying, where's the wow experience?

James Blain: 32:40

But, to hit on something and Ken, this is the scary part. I want you, I wanna go back to what you just said, kind of instant replay here. You said you were gonna go back anyway, think that's

Ken Lucci: 32:51

I went

James Blain: 32:51

but.

Ken Lucci: 32:52

to give him a try.

James Blain: 32:53

But remember what I said at the beginning, if you're fighting convenience and You're fighting price, it's really hard to compete. And you said it just, now, I'm gonna come back'cause it's convenient. So the problem that you have and the problem that I think we don't, I I, I can't get this into people's heads, right. we as the black car industry, are typically not the most convenient. We are typically not the easiest to deal with. We are not integrated. There is no black car experience app I can download on my phone and book any black car company wherever I go. But I can do that with Uber. I will tell you one of my big things, I know that if I travel and I've got luggage and I don't wanna deal with luggage, I'm gonna book a car. I'm gonna do greeted baggage claim, they're gonna help me in my luggage. I'm gonna get to the hotel. It's not gonna be an issue. I think what we're seeing across the board is that convenience is winning out in a lot of cases, and that's why this whole thing to me is so terrifying is we should be providing ultra high touch, ultra high convenience, ultra easy, right? But at the point where we can't do that. I think we're in trouble. and I, I'm gonna say this is something I've heard us fighting for as an industry and I think we need to fight harder. I think one of the problems that I'm seeing at more and more airports is the price of that convenience is starting to become a mile long walk in a lot of airports. Now we have relegated that guy doing an indoor greet. He's gotta go park in BFE. For those of you that don't know that military term, look it up, right? He's literally out in BFE, middle of nowhere and he's gotta walk with that passenger now two miles to the point where I've even had chauffeurs that have said, Hey, I'm gonna take your luggage I'll go walk out to the vehicle, I'll meet you at the door. And I'm sitting there waiting for like 10 minutes while they go drive around the planet to come back around. if we want to try and win that fight, that's where it is. And the irony of that: those passengers that are those first class passengers, there's higher level ones are doing that. You think of how we handle FBOs and a lot of FBOs, you're either getting escorted onto the field, right, or you're able to do a pickup straight off the jet. But I got the guy coming in first class who's the CEO of a company that isn't flying private and now all of a sudden, if I beat him a baggage claim, we gotta go walk a marathon to get to the car. I think a lot of this stuff we've got to unify as an industry in terms of what's the acceptable standard. I can tell you for me at PAX you know, beyond just training, that for me is part of my mission. I wanna standardize what the ultimate level of service is in every industry I work in from. The people doing chauffeur, whether it be Motor coach, heck, even school bus or an EMT, you name it. I want it to be that ultimate level. Because here's the thing, the way that these industries are getting disrupted is they're seeing in a lot of times complacency. I, I

Ken Lucci: 36:05

Complacency is a big piece of this. Yep.

James Blain: 36:07

well, but for me, and like I said, internally we call it document eight, right? I'm guessing it was the eighth article you read that day. I don't even know why it came in as document eight when you

Ken Lucci: 36:14

I don't know either, but you're right. Document eight, we'll call it that from for now on.

James Blain: 36:18

But document eight for me is like this wake up call. It's holy crap. we love to think, oh, you know, Uber's here, they're way low and we're up here, guys. it's not even a stare anymore. It's just a hump and that's gotta open back up or there's gonna be a hell of a coaling as a result. And then you better believe self-driving is gonna be as good, if not better in ratings than what Rideshares doing, which is

Ken Lucci: 36:45

well, and I think that the AV session, and I will share with you because this is, this podcast is gonna hit before Vegas. I've never been more apprehensive about a session than this one. and we're doing a deep dive report, and I'm calling it a Future Proof Your Business Report. And it is probably gonna go around 90 pages and we're gonna, I'm only gonna hit 5% of it at the session. But the whole thing is, again, I view AVS as a skim issue, where we're gonna lose a little off the top of a part of what we do, which is, you know, let's not get into it now. But the biggest issue I have is the problem I have that this survey said. To me is we like to think we deliver better service than the motor coach companies. Therefore, we can justify a higher price and we can have newer vehicles. We like to think we deliver better service than the tts even though they have a Suburban, we have a suburban, some of them have Escalades. What, whatever the case. But this is a level set for me. That's really disappointing. I don't think we're overreacting. Do you, this is the business travel news. This is a national magazine. I didn't look up the number of subscribers they have, but, I have to tell you, this to me is, it's a black eye.

James Blain: 38:08

This and, and again I know we're gonna have people like, eh, bt this lines up with what we're seeing in the real world. This, to me, lines up and I, and I hate to say this, but even at like a, a gut chat reaction, this lines up with my own experience traveling and using either or, and I've said this for a very, very long time. The difference is getting harder to tell. It's getting harder to tell em apart,

Ken Lucci: 38:39

so,

James Blain: 38:39

not good for us.

Ken Lucci: 38:41

look, we are blessed. We've, we've done about 300 reviews with this survey. It's brought us the survey partnership we have with chauffeur driven. It's brought us to a different level, but we get granular with our retained clients. We have some unbelievably profitable retained clients. We only have a few slots, like 12 total retained slots. Fundamentally, what they all have in common, number one, they granularly manage their financials. How many times have you heard me say that Every month we have a financial review, but more importantly, every single time I interact with them. I go to their locations. The locations are spotless. The service, when they pick me up at the airport is absolutely fantastic and I know, by the way, every one of them I know has pacs as far as I know. Okay. I, I mean, seriously, I mean, you mentioned a guy on, on the call is a, I mean, on the podcast's, a client of ours and he raves about it. My whole point is there is an absolute correlation between being able to charge what you want knowing your value to the attention to detail, and inspecting what you expect. The other day on Facebook, I get, I get so pissed off. When can you imagine, somebody posted,

James Blain: 40:03

passionate and upset. What?

Ken Lucci: 40:05

somebody posted, why are the majority of the limo companies not profitable? And there was some answers and it was, oh, competition, competition, competition and illegal operators. You know, something, that's not the case. Number one, they don't ma, most of them don't manage their financials properly. They set their pricing based on competition and it thought, it brought me back to document eight. Not one of them said, ab know your value, deliver the best quality service, et cetera. It was more, my response was more, they just don't manage their financials and they don't know their costs, but how much extra does it freaking cost to have a clean, new model vehicle and a chauffeur that's properly trained it, it's no more of a line item

James Blain: 40:57

But how much does it cost you not to have that? Right. So I'm gonna give a shout out to Alex from KLS and and la, right? So Alex acquires Bell Transportation in Vegas, and he reaches out to me very shortly after and says, Hey. I'm gonna buy these guys, each one of their chauffeurs, I'm purchasing a suit for them. I'm going to raise the service levels. We are going to be the highest service level, right? We're gonna have the best service. We're gonna grow, we're gonna make, but, and what I think is foundationally important to our industry that he did there is it's not hey, and, and, and I think of the opposite, right? Look at Southwest Airlines. I was complaining up a storm yesterday because I got on Southwest Airlines. I booked the flight and it was like, as soon as you get done booking the flight, add. Add, add, add, right? This new investment firm has purchased Southwest Airlines and they're strangling my favorite airline. Right? I used to ride with them'cause I love the culture, I love everything now. I can't even book a flight without getting beat in the face with ads. Alex did the opposite with Bell. You had this company that had been there since like the sixties, that was considered to be the biggest company there and he says, we're gonna get our cohort focus on, what does he start doing? We just did a huge project helping him, investing in that, investing in the training, investing in making sure that they know what to do, investing and bringing the service level up and he understood, Hey, I've got hundreds of people. We're gonna make this the biggest company and we're gonna make this the service level company. Right? Not because we can be the biggest, not because that, because we're gonna be the best. I think that type of focus, that type of investment, that type of laser precision of I get in there, I've gotta make it perfect. Now, he's really not trying to compete with everyone else. He's trying to make everyone else compete with him, and I think that's, the biggest thing.

Ken Lucci: 42:58

that's the best way to describe it. And back in the day when Tommy Maza was a consultant for me, Tommy would say, you are thinking small. If all you're trying to do is emulate the best company in your market, you're thinking small. If you're trying to emulate the best company in the industry, you should try to emulate the best service of the sales service organizations in any industry. And he's the one that pointing me to, you know, the Ritz-Carlton stories that we all tell, uh, the Nordstrom department store, burn Steakhouse. We used to eat at Burn Steakhouse, the two of us in Tampa all the time, and Burn Steakhouse, their waiters go through an eight week apprenticeship. On the floor. And then they have a program where the waiter and waitress has to work behind the scenes prior. Okay. And at the end of the day, burns is in the top, I think the top 20 or 50 in the, in the world. But my whole point was, his point to me was stop thinking from a service perspective. Stop thinking about that. You have to just one better your competition. Start thinking about how you build a world class service organization.

James Blain: 44:14

Right.

Ken Lucci: 44:15

know, the funny thing is I said to him, that doesn't cost any extra, it doesn't cost you any extra. Okay. I mean, yeah. Does it cost extra to train a waiter? A waiter waitress. But you know, so I'm gonna tell you something about Burn Steakhouse. You can't get a table there Friday, your Saturday night, ever. Okay. That's the one I, that's the place I bought the$15,000 worth of gift certificates. Anyway, that's, that's another, that's another story. That's another

James Blain: 44:39

I, I believe you've told that one. That is, if not, you've told it to me personally and I love that story.

Ken Lucci: 44:43

But look, you know, how do, how do we make a difference? And, and people are gonna look and say, who are these two idiots? They don't even run, uh, they're not even operators. Okay. I will tell you I did all this. Okay. My biggest problem I had was when we, we had some, uh, some of the highest touch customers in Tampa. And my biggest issue and is, I, I personally trained chauffeurs to take over my clients when the business got big where I wasn't running, what, why I wasn't doing the driving. And I found that the most important thing I could teach them is that, is if you don't have the servant's mentality, okay? And you know me, I'm the most arrogant prick we're gonna meet in your life. But I enjoy,

James Blain: 45:29

met. yeah,

Ken Lucci: 45:31

yeah, I enjoy. Taking care of people. I enjoy the, the thank you, the please, the formality. And it's, it's my pleasure. I, I enjoy that. And I, and I, and I do go back to, the story that Bruce tells and you tell it about the operator who comes to your booth, a PAX booth. and

James Blain: 45:53

Top down baby

Ken Lucci: 45:55

And what does he say about his chauffeur?

James Blain: 45:57

says, I got 70 idiots. Can you fix'em?

Ken Lucci: 46:02

The answer is no.

James Blain: 46:03

And,

Ken Lucci: 46:04

fix you.

James Blain: 46:05

and yeah, exactly. It was in that moment, Bruce and I became a team.'cause that's exactly, he looked at him, he said, look, it's top down. If you think they're idiots, they'll never be able to do anything with them. Right.

Ken Lucci: 46:13

Well, you know, it's like, yeah. It's like the general manager at the hotel, the general manager at that hotel. Okay. He sent me an email he didn't even offer to credit anything, and no offense moving my laptop and everything. Three different places. And the person behind the front desk is like, well, it's only a tv, so you don't understand what I do for a living. I, I, I'm looking at data constantly. Okay. And, and no offense, there's something going on that particular time, there was something going on that I was watching anyway, but that I, I felt like saying, I don't care what it is, I'm paying you 300 and something dollars for the room, or whatever it was, 3 85 and I couldn't get over that. It was, it was only a tv.

James Blain: 46:54

But that's our uniform, Ken. It's it's, look, I, I've, I've dealt with this time and time again. I've had, right, I've had times that we've gone in to shoot training videos or to work with people, and I get there and I say, Hey, what, what happened with your uniform? And I'm not gonna call anybody out, But I've seen every kind of from obvious to little things to you name it, right? And they'll go, oh yeah, it happened, blah, blah. Why didn't you get taken care of? Oh, I mean, it's fine, right? It's, it is the same mentality of it's just a tv

Ken Lucci: 47:24

yeah, it, it's, it's, but I wanna get back to this'cause I think we're gonna hit it. We're gonna hit something that's gonna upset some people. I have a real problem with the one or two car operators who think that the name of the game is, I have a 2025 Escalade and I'm gonna give you the lowest price. I think we need to get back to the fundamentals of this industry. I know. It's a problem to say mandatory training of iOS because there are iOS. Okay. Okay. You, you can't make anything mandatory, but you

James Blain: 47:53

Well, you can. Right? So let's get rid of that right now.'cause I've been playing with that for years. you can say you're required to have certifications. I require this of you. I require that of you. Right. Because otherwise they would say, well, I don't have to have insurance. you, can't require me to have insurance. So you, can't train them like employees. And I have lots of customers that require them to get PAC certified And show it to them and stay and maintain a PAC certification. Because even though they're not training them, that's, Hey, that's the level you have to be able to perform at. It's not, Hey, we're training you on A, B, or C. It's, you have to have insurance, you have to be PAC

Ken Lucci: 48:35

I'm with you. I'm with you.

James Blain: 48:36

are huge.

Ken Lucci: 48:38

Well, I, I said to, you know, an operator said to me, I don't want to get into trouble. I, I can't make it mandatory. and I said, you know something, let's figure out what it would cost you. Okay.

James Blain: 48:48

Yeah.

Ken Lucci: 48:49

run the classes, right? And say, look, come anytime you want, I'm gonna pay you the same rate I would pay you for an SUV trip. Okay? And, and I'm gonna feed you the goodwill that, that builds is incredible, because I think it's a problem. Okay. and I know I have'em call me all the time, you know, Ken, you know, everybody in the business. Can you help, help me get some work with Boston Coach, for example. I'm not gonna call Boston. I'm not gonna call Sharif and say, you know, so and so with a brand new Escalade drop the guy that you've been using for 15 years. And, and Right. And, you know, Boston coaches a fantastic example. Their quality control is incredible. Their quality and control. In fact, you know what I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call'em all out. I know for a fact the networks are really, really, I don't think the issue is, is the network house cars. I don't think the issue is the training that they offer their people. I just think the industry as a whole is lost control of the affiliate experience.

James Blain: 49:47

So we're gonna have to do another episode on that.'cause there's, two major things. So the first I want to give a shout out to, to Jorge over at Hermes's in Denver, because when I came out and did sessions for him and we did training sessions, he invited all of his iOS and he said, Hey, we're having a training session. Here's, we're doing a morning one, we're doing an afternoon one, we're doing a barbecue. And he incentivized them to want to come and to be better. And I can tell you I had the chance to reach a lot of guys say, yeah, I've done a lot of work for them. And not only that, we did it at his facility. So it's nice to come see the expectation, the standard. However, I think the, the thing that we're gonna have to do another episode on is something that I have seen a lot being on the board. So I'm on the board for a greater California luxury association. I'm on the board for, you know, CTA and Jay, which is over in New Jersey. So I've got both coast, I'm basically bouncing back and forth between California and New Jersey.

Ken Lucci: 50:41

asked me to sit on board. Isn't that something everybody ask you?

James Blain: 50:45

I stuck my face in it and, and

Ken Lucci: 50:47

Everybody. Everybody ask, everybody ask you to go places. I know. I thought it was the, I thought it was'cause the dog died. I think that's what it was. I used to get invited places. The,

James Blain: 50:56

You know, I, I, I gotta tell you, I'd love to be invited. I think I just kinda show up and they have to deal with it. But

Ken Lucci: 51:01

no, the only one that really goes outta his way to me. President Brett, I'll shout out. He invites me to the president's dinners and he, he,

James Blain: 51:12

see, see, we, we'll have to share invites.'cause Brett hadn't taken me out to dinner yet, so, all right. But, but back to the point. So you have two associations on different coasts, and I see this in all of the different associations. It's typically the board has got larger companies and they're trying to reach the smaller companies. What is important as a larger company, the way that they view the industry, what they're focusing on, where they're at, what matters to them in that moment is a much more pulled back, scaled out view. As that one car guy, as an IO or as a single car operator, it is a lot more important to that operator. It's just hamster wheel. I gotta get trips, I gotta get trips, I gotta get trips, I gotta keep the wheels turning. I gotta make money, I gotta bring it in. And we see it all the time.'cause we try to plan out these events and it happens in every association I work with. We're, Hey, we're gonna deliver value. We're gonna help'em do this and do that, and we're gonna teach'em this and we're gonna do that. And the times that they come are when they can translate it to instant gratification. Get jobs right now. And what, what I think happens there is what happens to all of us as entrepreneurs when you start the business, when you're at ground zero. The only way the thing moves forward is if you're running on the hamster wheel. The second you step off the wheel, it grinds to a halt. What that does is that means that you can only see what's directly around the vicinity of your hamster wheel. As you become more of an entrepreneur, you start building kind of an engine. You've got people to keep those wheels turning. You've got mobility. Now you can venture further away and increase your sphere to look around. What I think has happened in our industry is we have so many people that are focused on just running that wheel and doing it, and they're worried about the trips. They're worried about getting the work, and we haven't put in a system that basically says, Hey, that's great, but you have to do X, Y, and Z. A lot of that is I, I'm not gonna say what's causing it, but I think that's a lot of the reason we have. So many issues with illegal operators. We have so many issues with service levels. We have so many things there because if you're just worried about keeping the lights on, you're not gonna go find out the 40 things you have to do

Ken Lucci: 53:35

And keeping the right, and, and by the way, putting somebody in the seat or you, yourself being in the seat to get the trip done. Okay. At, at some point though, you know what I'm saying? And what we've been saying for the hour is it's a hell of a lot more important to do six trips or seven trips or eight trips, right. And make money than it is to try to do 10 or 12 trips and just barely get by. And I, and, and, and frankly, I think as an industry, we're barely getting by. And I, and I know for a fact, look, every one of our retained clients does extremely well. And, and I, I think they would tell you, uh, they would tell you that we're a big part of that from a financial perspective. And again, the direct line between making a profit and being able to have the best in class vehicles. Have the detailer in place that can keep them clean between trips, afford to go to the car, wash between trips, afford to pay your chauffeur well enough that they are dressed well and afford to continue to do the training. At the end of the day, every one of my retained clients say, you see it.'cause you go, you know, you've gone to some, we've talked about it. They have you back to do continuing education. And again, I I, I mean, driving the captain of the Yankees, that's one of my favorite stories of my life, is continually saying to him, Mr. Jeter, I mean, you, you're here 90 minutes, two hours early. And that's the mo best analogy I can give you. The man constantly trained, the man constantly improved. And I think that this study or this survey, you can just say, Hey, it's one article. I don't, I don't believe that. I think we've lost our fastball. I think the industry is maybe coming out of the pandemic and because of the changes that have gone on, but now it's time to get back to delivering five star service. I don't wanna see a survey that doesn't give us at least a 4.5. I mean, at the very, give you, you giving me a 3.8 because, uh, 3.8 for solving your problems. You gotta be kidding me. Reporting and record, keep record keeping and receipts. It's, it's that difficult. We can't solve the problems of the industry from a tech perspective here. And we do have issues with tech and convenience, but I'd like to think we can make a difference as far as the level of quality and in-car experience, because we do talk to a lot of operators that are smaller.

James Blain: 56:07

So two things. One, if you are coming to C-D-N-L-A, right? this? is, this episode is is coming out right before, if you're not there Sunday, go change your flight, right? Because Ken's presenting on Sunday with Matt Doss, Esquire, I'm presenting on Sunday. The sessions are literally back to back. So you literally just have to go from one to the other. You need to be there for that. But two, I would say that if there's anything that we've touched on here that really stands out to me as we close this out is I think this is foundational, right? We are not seeing like super complex failures. We are not seeing craziness. It's the foundational stuff. It's like we've talked about this whole time. It's, it's the block and tackling. So I think if you are listening to this, what I would do is I would say, Hey, in my business, I'm gonna figure out How I'm gonna take the temperature of my customers and I'm gonna figure out what's happening in the backseat. I don't care if you have to have your neighbor go ghost ride, two or three rides. I don't care what you do. Right? Get yourself three or four different ways. If you're not doing surveys, start doing surveys. If you don't have people ghost riding, start ghost riding. If you're not reviewing your cameras and looking at the cameras and checking on the cameras, start looking at that. Whatever it takes, start getting different ways to take the temperature and put a score sheet together.

Ken Lucci: 57:32

I was just gonna say that put together a score sheet. How about having your reservation staff? Not that they sit on Facebook. God forbid. I would never say, never would I ever say that In between reservations, the reservation and dispatch staff sits on Facebook. I would never say

James Blain: 57:49

Who you been working with, man?

Ken Lucci: 57:51

Why? not have on downtime? Why not have some outreach By email or by phone. And I'll, I'll give you one further. How about the owner of the company? Calling the executive assistant or asking for permission to speak to the passenger and saying, how are we doing for you? How was that last trip? But I think the review tools, are there. And if you don't have one in your software system, then you have the wrong software system. while my customers don't want that bullshit, you can also set the software. You can set the software to not review, not send pings or reviews or text reviews to specific clients. one thing I'll leave you with is we developed an on time tool. we were asked by one of our big clients, you know, 15, 20 million to'cause the, the software doesn't do it well, Cole figured out how to dump the data from the software, and the guy's got a 96% on time rate. Now. Now look, you know, we had to get him there, right? But he said, geez, look at this affiliate out of town. 84%. 86%, 81%. I'm like, well, now this is something you can go back to, but how about, you focus on for 30 days? You let every affiliate know that you're gonna be making follow up calls to passengers, okay? And you can cite the BTN cite Business Travel news. Hey, listen, I'm not saying James, you didn't do a good job, but listen, we're making a concerted effort to make sure everybody gets five star across the board. So, do me a favor, talk to your people, okay? Whatever I can do to help you. I'm not saying anything was wrong, I'm just saying we're gonna be doing a lot more spot checking, okay? Because if we didn't have Uber, we blame ourselves. But at the end of the day, if we cannot beat. A company that's in the news for suppressing sexual assault statistics of their rides. And we can't beat that. Okay. And we can't beat what they've got going on. We have a serious issue. have a serious problem. As an industry.

James Blain: 59:58

I think that's the bombshell we close this out on is. As an industry, that should be a no-brainer. So I think, that's where we leave it. Like I said, if you are coming to Vegas, you've got Ken and Matt are gonna be doing an awesome session, autonomous. I'm gonna be doing a session essentially giving you every tool you'd need to build pastor, loyalty and growth, everything we've talked about, how to actually get it done, put it in, get it out there. So again, we have a listener survey. Please take our listener survey, let us know what you think. If you see us at the show, come talk to us. Come catch us

Ken Lucci: 1:00:32

and by the way, James? How long did it take you to put that session together?

James Blain: 1:00:36

the session four. Vegas.

Ken Lucci: 1:00:38

in Vegas? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

James Blain: 1:00:39

I don't even know. Weeks.

Ken Lucci: 1:00:41

yeah. I think I'm, I think I'm on the 60th hour and I've been driving Matt dos crazy. And, and, you know, let's just point out, number one, we don't get paid. Number two, we don't get a discount. Number three, we don't get free rooms. Number four, no one ever pays us, no one pays us a dime. We do this shit, okay? And this podcast costs us a lot of money. So if, if, if it gives us, if we've offended you, I apologize. If our goal is to get you to think, that's our goal.

James Blain: 1:01:09

percent.

Ken Lucci: 1:01:11

Thank you, my friend. Always great to spend time with you.

James Blain: 1:01:15

Couldn't have it any other way. Ken. oh. and don't forget, like, and subscribe everybody. We need to know that you guys actually Like it. Our subscriber count is how we judge whether or not you love us, hate us, or

Ken Lucci: 1:01:26

Like subscribers. It doesn't, at the moment, it doesn't cost you a dime to subscribe and anybody who subscribes now, you know, at some point we might have to draw the line and start charging, but it doesn't cost you anything. But we need you as subscribers. If you love us, we appreciate the emails and the comments that you like what we're doing, but we need you to subscribe because at some point, you know, somebody has gotta start paying for this besides me.

James Blain: 1:01:52

I, I agree. I agree. But, but until that time, don't worry, we're gonna keep, we're gonna have to keep cutting those checks. Thank y'all so much for listening, and we will see you all hopefully in Vegas.

1:02:03

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.