Ken Lucci 0:27

good afternoon and welcome to another exciting episode of The Ground Transportation Podcast. I'm a little sad today because my co-host James Blaine, is not with me today. So unfortunately, this is gonna be a solo episode. I'll try to carry the day on my own. I'm I deeply saddened and upset. He's busy out there training no doubt, a group of chauffeurs or a group of coach pilots to deliver fantastic service, which is what he does. James Blain from PAX Training. Godspeed, my friend, wherever you are, and I'll try to pick up the mantle of command here at the Ground Transportation Podcast. So today I wanted to talk about, some trends in airline passenger, and I wanted dispel a myth. We constantly fight on the chauffeur transportation industry. In the chauffeur transportation space, we are fighting with the most disruption to what we do primarily in air airline or airport trips to and from airports. And the sad part is historically, 70% of the reason why corporations use our services. Our to and from the airports. So my first message for the, for the listeners today and the viewers today is if in fact we lose the corporate traveler and the airline passenger to the disruptors. We have a serious issue as an industry. That's number one. Number two, I do not believe it's a foregone conclusion. I believe we deliver a better service experience. I believe we are the better value and the better choice to specific airline passengers. But let's get into the trends of passengers. As of 2024, by the way, we fully recovered to above pre pandemic levels for air travelers. So if you are not busy, it's not because the airline passengers are not traveling. Now statistically, we looked at a report by the Airport Council International about the global airline passenger trends, all the way up until 2052. And the re, and here's the data points. Each year, 5% more airline passengers are traveling internationally. So that means the international passenger growth is 5% compounded annually. And that is scheduled all the way up to 2052. It's like a hockey stick. The growth domestic passenger growth is increasing at about 3.8% compounded annual growth rate. So again hockey stick, little bit less of a, uh, pitch there, but it's still growing at 3.8%, compounded annual growth rate, all the way through 2052. Internationally, the growth is mostly in passengers, in the Middle East and Asia Pacific. that's where most of the growth is, but we're gonna get into some other destinations a little bit. And the growth, domestically is in the southeast and southern states, Texas, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina. So my question for the audience is, what happens to your business? If you can improve the efficiency, what happens to your business if you can increase airport transfers by 10% daily? Okay? What happens to the efficiency and profitability when you get maybe one more trip or maybe on a weekly basis, three more trips. what happens to the efficiency and profitability of your business and how do you get there? And I have some thoughts on that. But before we get into that, I want to dispel a myth. The myth is that airline passenger growth and airline passenger trends, the vast majority are business travelers. No, they're not. According to the a four a air travel survey conducted by Ipsos, one of the biggest in the industry, and Gallup, Gallup polls, right? Three out of four airline trips are taken for personal reasons. Corporate travelers make up 16% of all passengers, small business people, small business professionals make up 8%, and then personal is 76%. That's not my data. That's the data from two of the most esteemed polling. Organizations in the country and it was done for the airline industry. So the personal trips are about 76% of all airline passengers, and it's for things like leisure, recreation, schedule, vacations to and from college, to and from family events, job interviews, funerals, et cetera, et cetera. But overall, the current chauffeur industry, if you will. The vast majority of people who use SFR services are from corporate America. We're all fighting for the slice of the same pie. And we're not going after 76% of the possible pie. Okay? Now, before you and there's many people out there driving in their car saying, huh, those are all Uber passengers. No, they are not. Uber is trusted in the urban areas to go to urban airports, so urban to airports, airports to urban city centers. When you get 45 minutes to an hour outside the city or even more away from the airport, statistically. TNCs. Uber is not trusted for early morning trips. That is their Achilles heel. They have fought and they tried to get that business, but they can't guarantee the capacity. They can't guarantee the cars are gonna be in the road and the driver's gonna be available. We can, that's our domain. So let's specifically talk about The affluent passenger that first of all, this industry, we do a terrible job promoting in general. Every single operator out there is just trying to get more network business and market transportation company to transportation company. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you ever want to go to sell your business, that business is. Pretty worthless because it's not your client. It's a wholesale type of business that's good to keep your wheels moving, but it's not that profitable. It's good while you are building your own company to do that kind of work, but if you have built a company and all you do is affiliate work. I have to break your heart right now. It's not a sellable company. You may find another affiliate only company to buy it, but there's not a lot of value there, and that's just not me saying it. That's, every buyer in the industry will tell you that. Okay. So let's get back to the affluent consumer, which is the perfect market for chauffeur services. So let's talk about the consumer traveler, the consumer. Airline passenger, domestic leisure travelers spend about $718 billion a year. Now here's the thing. If you look at what is considered an affluent household, and the general is about 27% of households are above 150 but let's focus on over two 50. That's 10.1% of all households. So the good news is. The most affluent travelers spend one out of four hospitality and travel dollars. We'll get into that. So in your market, the first thing I want you to do, if you want to attract affluent travelers, whether they are a corporate executive taking a 10 day vacation, and we'll get into more of those statistics, is I want you to figure out what zip codes they live in. Okay, we just did this exercise for a client in New Jersey and 17% of all Jersey households, by the way, fit the over 250 category. You can. You can figure out where they all live. All the zip codes, it's a piece of cake. Every single state's the same way. So when we talk about the affluent consumer, we're talking about what I call the jet setters, the top 1% wealthy, certainly over two 50. The experienced explorers, those are the wealthy retirees that have saved up and they really are into the experiences because they've retired. And then you have your first class travelers. Those are the working. Working wealthy families, The good news is the market is out there for what we do. These same people, okay, sure. They use Uber in and around the city. by the way, all Uber trips, 85% are less than 20 minutes and 25 bucks. Okay. So at the end of the day, most of the wealthy live in zip codes that are way out into the suburbs. That's our market. So let's break down the affluent consumer household, over 250,000. Okay. They represent between 10 and 13% of the population, depending upon your city, but they do 25% of the global travel spend. 25% affluent consumers spend twice the national average on restaurants and hotels. 56% of affluent consumers plan to to take a cruise or a multi-city vacation abroad within the next 12 months. Now, I don't know why everybody, all operators are not doing crew going after the luxury cruise market because door to door services, you know, on somebody who's spending 25 grand on a, on a, on a, uh, and by the way, I'm not talking about carnival cruises with the kids, but the top shelf cruises, you're spending 20, $25,000 to stay on a cruise for a while. Of course, you're gonna do door to door service. And last time I checked the airport to cruise terminal. Um, not many variables there. You can get an affiliate to give you prices on that. So 56% of the affluent consumers plan to take a cruise or multi-city vacation abroad. That means internationally over the next year for about two thirds of them, hotel and airline loyalty programs dictate their preference for flights and accommodations. So what does that mean? Wealthy people like loyalty programs, wealthy people like to get a good deal, and they like to feel like a VIP. Now we just read a a the 2025 Luxury travel report that was published by Preferred Hotels and Resorts. By the way, they hired Harris, which is one of the biggest polling companies in the world, Harris, to do this 2025 Luxury travel report. And again, it's by the preferred hotels and resort. Their data states that the most affluent travelers have an average of eight leisure trips planned over the next year with two to three of those being international. Okay? So the most affluent among us, the top 10% in every one of your markets, their travelers, man, they like it now in the same report, they had a, a phrase that really, hit me personalization is now the baseline. Okay. They want personal service. They want bespoke itineraries. They want exclusive access, exclusive treatment, VIP treatment is expected by this group. They do not wanna wait in queue. They don't want to be treated like your normal client. They want you to cater to them and they'll pay for it. So 250,000. household income, it's anywhere from 10 to 13% of the total population. Total assets are above 1 million, and statistically they spend over 10,000 a year. On their scheduled leisure, travel. Perfect client. Where do they go? They're exploring the world. The top countries, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Spain, uk, Thailand, and Australia. In that order, so let's break it down. 77% of the affluent travel Europe. So, oh, you know, I, I can already hear it now. Operators saying, well, you know, that means I have to set up affiliates all over the world in 600 cities. I didn't say that 77% of the affluent travelers travel to Europe. Uh, no offense there. We have the list of the international airports where they're gonna land. So by process of elimination, you probably have 20 decent cities. And probably 10 cruise ports, maybe a little bit more on the cruise ports. Not a lot of work to try to attract these clients. And instead of taking one trip from their house to the airport, your job is to book the round trip. And to book the transfers when they get to their final destination. And the value proposition is that very simple. You won't wait in line, you won't do surge pricing. You're gonna know what the trips are gonna cost. You're gonna have one secured transaction with a trusted provider in one city. I'm gonna track your trips all over the world to make sure they're on time and your driver's there. I'm gonna send you the driver information so that you're not getting into an unsafe person's car around the globe. And by the way, you're not sharing your credit card information across the world, either. It's an easy sell. You just have to sell value. Okay, so what do these people do for a living? All right, well, the wealthiest professionals in your area. Our cardiologists, anesthesiologists, oral, and, macro facial surgeon. physicians. by the way, John's gonna flash the list of the wealthy occupations. Your job in your market is to figure out where do they go, what do they do? Where do they meet? Where do they eat and what do their spouses do? I left something out about, uh, affluent travelers, over 80% of the travel, uh, itineraries and plans. They're done by the lady of the house. So they, it, they control the travel dollars and they're planning the vacations for potentially the husband who's still working in these, in these, uh, high wealthy, uh, professions. So it's not too difficult. So how are you targeting the highest paying professionals in your area? And if we sold them air airport service, what else would they buy? Okay, so, the key again is the wealthy people, uh, listen, other than the Upper East Side or the Upper West side in, in Manhattan or the Back Bay in Boston, or, uh, I don't know where the affluent places are in Philadelphia. Alexandria in dc. Most of the affluent live 45 minutes outside the urban areas, even more. 45 minutes to an hour outside, draw a circle. Okay? They live 45 minutes to an hour uh, away from the airport. That those zip codes are your primary for airports and airlines. No one statistically no one is gonna trust Uber. At four o'clock in the morning or five o'clock in the morning to come get them. Okay? Because Uber can't guarantee the rides. You can. Yes, we are higher priced, but we guarantee our service. We have the safest, uh, chauffeur who are gonna be at your location 15 minutes prior. It's called a value proposition. Okay? So where do affluent people go and what do they do? All right. primarily, you are not gonna reach affluent people unless your brand is seen where they go. what they do in the local market. So let me give you some examples. Private clubs, whether it's a country club, a tennis club, a bridge club, private clubs, you can most likely, you know, find the address and go meet the manager. That's the stakeholder at the private club. Meet the country club manager. I'm not saying that you have to advertise at every country club. But, they're always looking for member benefits. So if you can figure out where they all live, and most of the time, if it's a private club. Most people in private clubs live within five to seven to 10 miles from that club. But you can do special round trips, give them a round trip package or a special travel around the globe. We just put together a program for an operator and did the, um. Profitability on the trips outside their region, by the way typically, you're making 30% on national and global work. So your affiliate gives you a price, you negotiate a good rate with someone who appreciates your business and will pay you partners, right? And then you do a markup. And the markup typically results in you getting a gross profit margin somewhere between 25 and 30%. You create relationships on the private club level, the stakeholders or the managers, the stakeholders, also member services. Who's in charge at that club of getting more members and are they looking for maybe incentives? What, when you join the club, you get $50 off a round trip, you get $50 off your first four trips, whatever you want to do, and you're saying, oh my God, Ken, you're asking me to discount, you know what? I'll bring on a new client if it's only gonna cost me a flat 50 bucks. Because I'm smart enough to not only just sell them that one round trip, but I'm gonna send them marketing and on everything I do in all of my vehicles. So private clubs is, is extremely important and it's not just go in and expect that they're gonna give you the business. Average person, average stakeholder, average client or influencer needs to see your brand and me exposed to you six times. Before they'll recommend you. And that's the same by the way, with customers. Usually they need to see your brand up to six times before they'll buy from you. So strategy is to visit the clubs, get to know the stakeholders, maybe check 'em out on LinkedIn, start sending emails out, start going on their Facebook groups. Critically important that, you know, and I don't care if it's a hunting club. we have a great operator up in Montana, a great kid. I'm really impressed with him, and he goes to every high-end hunting lodge. That's what one of the things we've talked to him about, because, Montana doesn't have international airports, in every, uh, Hamlet. So he, he can give pricing to all of these clubs and they can wrap it into what they're doing. And also by the way, private clubs are fantastic. They always put together group not always, but they put together group travel. So at the end of the day you need to know who's in groups and associations in your area. The second. Place Where do affluent people go and what do they do? Fine dining. So yesterday I visited with a, one of my favorite operators. He's a retained client of mine in Philadelphia. And I give him a hard time all the time because the first time that I went to see him many years ago, he bought me a steak dinner. So every time I say to him, listen, if you want me to come up there to see you, see you, you gotta buy me a steak dinner. And he took me to the Capitol Grill yesterday. And he shared with me that the capital grill he took me to was the highest grossing capital grill in the Mid-Atlantic. So I walk into the Capitol Grill and the first thing I see is all of these lockers with wine bottles. And with names. So could you just picture, you know, can Lucci or, the Lucci group, right? And inside it was like 10 bottles or so. So I said to the young lady, how much would it cost me to get one of those? She says it's $500 a year and you have to buy 12 bottles and you can drink the 12 bottles all year long. And you know, they, you get a good price on the 12 bottles. Why? They want you coming back to buy the meals. I mean, I think we had I know we had lunch and, and of course, my client was nice enough to buy for me. I think it was like a $115 lunch. Anyway, every. Fine dining restaurant in your market. You need to know the manager. You need to know the maitre d. First of all, you should know every single five star restaurant and a business luncheon restaurant that has a private room. You need to know who's responsible for booking that private room. And you need to let the managers know that, listen, if they have somebody or they want to do a package with you, you're willing to do a package together. And we used to do a tremendous amount of trade with restaurants. Eddie V's. Down in Tampa was a great restaurant. And the manager, uh, Steve still remember him. And he would say to me, Ken, you know, we've got couples coming in and we want to do a. Transfers for them to bring them over and bring them back. What can you do to for me? And we gave him a price and he said, can I pay part of that in gift certificates? I said, Steve, you can pay all of it in gift certificates because we'll do birthday packages with it. We'll tell our customers, listen, this is what you get. You get a hundred dollars gift gift certificate to Eddie v's. You know, you get a reserve table, et cetera, et cetera. You need to know the managers. I'm not saying that you have to barter. It's, it is up to you. I mean, we had a Rolls-Royce Phantom that my goal was to have that phantom parked out in front of the top 10 restaurants in Tampa Bay every Friday and Saturday night. And you, you know, back in the day, you could see. One of my SUVs or the Rolls Royce Phantom was parked out in front of many restaurants in Tampa Bay. But you need to know who the fine dining establishments are who owns them. Okay. Which is pretty straightforward. and become members of the Chamber of Commerce in your area and most of the re restaurateurs are there. And I remember down in Tampa there was, one guy, Frank Shivas owned about five restaurants that we were very friendly with and we always did work together. The next would be day spas. The best day spas in the area. You need to know who owns them, and it's a great opportunity for you to create packages, to put together packages, to deliver people to and from the day spa and market to their clients, et cetera. That's the other thing with the restaurant. It's absolutely appropriate for you to do joint marketing where you do a package. They send it out to their email or they'll put it on their social media, and you do the same. Everything I'm talking about amounts to regional networking and building your brand. If you are afraid to do that, then. I hate to say it, you shouldn't be in the hospitality transportation industry. That's what we're in. Okay. Because it does it, it requires you knowing the movers and the shakers and the affluent zip codes, and who are the most successful lawyers and the successful doctors, who in the most successful occupations. Who are those people in your area and then obviously the five star hotels in your area. You should know who the managers are. You should know who the concierge are, if they have them or people at the front apron and let them know that if they have any affluent guests and you create relationships with them, we can help you out with that. We work with a client that had to put a house car. At a hotel, and if I'm not mistaken, she gave them a Nautilus. So we had to plan with her in order to do a house car. And they paid to insure it. All she did was provide the house car. How much did she have to get in business to, to either offset that or what could she bill them for that car? And how much revenue was she going to get from that hotel? So any five star hotel. better know who you are. obviously New York City, of course, there's tons of five star hotels. And I'm talking more about, the top 20 to top 50 metropolitan statistics statistical areas in the country. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about, The statistic, about 8% of all airline travelers are in the small business category. 16% of all travelers are in the corporate space, and the remainder are people on personal. that small business category, those are literally the professionals in your area. Those are. The top five to 10 lawyers, the most successful realtors, the most successful in the medical profession, including dentists, including plastic surgeons. that's a no brainer. And you know, the, the beautiful thing there is usually they have to advertise and their names are in the healthcare directory of your typical hospital. Okay. But again, who are the most successful people in the most, the wealthiest professions? Every bank president in your area? Every high-end attorney. Okay. There are probably some that make their living on personal injury. Great. They have money. Take their money. They love being treated, special. So doctors, lawyers, bank presidents, financial planners. People who serve the wealthy and all of the medical practitioners, the most successful entrepreneurs, you need to know who these people are. Now, none of what I'm telling you sadly can be done through putting Google Ads up. Some of it can be done through social media and through LinkedIn by researching who these people are. But at the end of the day, what I'm talking to you about is building your brand because I will share with you, affluent people have certain things in common with every one of 'em. Number one, they want to feel special and important to you. They want to feel special. You need to make them feel special with every interaction. If you have not trained your staff on how to speak to a VIP client, I even recommend a VIP 800 number or a VIP special email address. Back in the day. I made the mistake of giving everybody my cell phone and for years, I, I mean, the cell phone probably had 5,000 contacts in it. Every professional athlete in Tampa, every high-end realtor, every high-end lawyer they had my cell phone. I don't recommend that. I recommend that you, you create a special program special specifically for frequent travelers and. Specifically, look at that wealthiest zip codes in your market that fit 45 minutes away to an hour away. From the airport and create a list. Get in the Facebook groups, get into the country clubs, make a list. How many country clubs can there be in the top 10 wealthiest zip codes in your area? How many top end restaurants are there and how many managers do you need to get to know? It's called networking people. Okay. And it's kind of like what I see everybody do in Las Vegas when they're going to affiliate Central, trying to solicit to get business from other transportation companies. How about instead of doing that, or perhaps in addition to doing that you go out and you create a personal sales agenda. This is a key, a personal sales agenda every week of where you're going to network. Okay, so next thing I'm gonna hear is, well, I can't get into the buildings. The buildings are all secured really? I haven't, I haven't seen that. Maybe in Manhattan Sure. But in the suburban medical office parks. Well, I'm afraid of going in and cold calling. Let me tell you what works with cold calling. You call my friend Arthur Messina and Drew Messina from Creator Card and you say to them, give me the Ken Lucci special. And what they will come back with is probably three or four options for paper cubes. Three or four options for paper cubes or maybe even two or three other options for you where you walk in whenever you're cold calling, you're going to, you're going to deliver something of value. Oh, by the way, food works extremely well, by the way. I have never had anybody refuse food from me when I'm walking with a black. Black suit, gold tie, and an ID badge saying My name is Ken Lucci. I'm the owner of Ambassador Limousine. We provide airport service to, corporate executives, managers, et cetera. And we'd like you to open up an account with us and here's the benefits and why you should, I brought you a gift today. Here's my business card. Could I have the business card or the office manager? Okay, so what did I just do there? I gave them something of value. Okay. That probably cost me two or three, four bucks to make the impression a good impression. Maybe I stopped and got. Donuts. We used to have Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, and I told the story the other day, we used to have chocolate chip cookies and it worked so well. I had to lock up the machine at the office because a lot of people were eating them in the office. But the whole idea is you bring in something of value. If you walk in there and you're just cold calling, yeah, I hope they throw you out. If you give them something of value and you don't take up a lot of their time, all you wanna do is deliver a 32nd presentation. And walk out of there with the name of the office manager or their business card. Then you look 'em up on LinkedIn or you find them and you try to make an appointment. Okay? And we can go through building a value proposition as well. Why should they do business with you? Many medical practices open up accounts with my company. You give us the list or you provide the list of or load in who the doctors are, what addresses that they typically get picked up on or dropped off, and we'll give you customized pricing. We'll give you for top tier pricing best to your pricing. Just open up an account with us if you're interested in doing that. A lot of doctors and lawyers put the. Expense that through their business. absolutely. that's some of the value props and reasons why people do business with us. But this all comes back to something very, very simple. Very simple prospect. If you as a chauffeur, transportation owner or operator, or one car operator, as far as I'm concerned, if you wanna fight. For the pie, the corporate pie, which is only 16% of the airline travelers, God love you get into that fight like a dog fight. I mean it is a dog fight. Starving dogs going after a piece of chicken 'cause it's 16% of the travelers. How much you go after all of the professionals in your area? Well, can I live in a, you know, I live in a third tier market. I live in a small town. There's always doctors and lawyers there. And they all go out on travel. If they're making good money, I don't care if it's only 5% of the population in your area. Great, terrific. That's less people that have to know your brand. But I already proved to you that they are the travelers. The two over 250, over 200,000, over 250,000 crowds. Okay. Spend much more money on travel every single year and their planners. So instead of fighting for the 16% of the market, that's a corporate market only. How about you expanded to professional services, doctors, lawyers, practices, et cetera. Go down, right down the list. Even your best dentist. Jesus, I know what I just paid for having x-rays done. If you wanna stop there, that's great. You're just not the most inventive. What about the wealthy zip codes? Easy stuff. Every country club, every Facebook group, a mother's face group. How about the private schools? Where they all, send their kids. Okay. The affluent really do send their kids to private schools Montessori schools all the way up to private colleges. At the end of the day, if you are just gonna do what everybody else is doing, and you're gonna do the same thing that you've done for years and years, guess what? You're gonna get the same results. Nothing I can do. But if you wanna go after. The biggest, neglected piece of the traveling public. Okay. Or the of, and they are fit our demographic. It's simple. They're the top earners in the, in the country. The top earners in your market. And they live 45 minutes to 60 minutes away from the airport. Okay? Now to me. I would give them specials. I'd create round trip specials. If you go out of town five times a year, you can buy five round trips with me. Or if you worry that I'm gonna go out of business, just book the round trip now for your next trip. And I'm gonna give you, once you book a round trip, I'm gonna give you $25 off the next round trip. Okay. Oh, but Ken, you're discounting. Yeah. Well, I see so many operators spending thousands and thousands of dollars on pay per click ads. Just guess what I just did there. I saved you money by giving them a $25 discount on a round trip or even a $50 gift certificate on round trips under certain conditions. The other thing you do is don't charge 'em for early morning pickup. Say, you know what? I'm gonna waive that for you because we've got so many people in your zip code. I'm not gonna tell you his name, but he's one of the most respected operators in the industry, and I'm happy to call him my friend. I was talking to him last week. He and I lament the fact that he's worried about the airport services, for his business. He's worried about that declining, and I've said to him, listen, triple down on what you're doing, triple down on the less expensive ways to market. Did I say triple down on spending on PPC? No, I did not. Because you cannot have an ROI. If all of you're doing is trying to create new customers for airport service on pay per click, you have to have a variety of ways. Some of them very inexpensive, like networking at country clubs or associations or Facebook groups, et cetera. You have to have a mix. He just did a special, I'm not gonna give you the details, but he sent out an email to all his dormant clients. People that have used him. I, I forget the criteria, but used him years ago that he hasn't heard from, in one day. He booked 60 trips in one day. From that one email, he, he booked 60 trips. Now you can do the same thing by going out into your market if you're a new operator. Oh, Ken, I don't have a lot of dormant clients. Stop it. Go out in your market, get a list from your hospital of all of the doctors who are affiliated with that hospital or do the research, okay? Compile an email list and tell them you are a private transportation service and you, you specialize in taking families in these zip codes to and from the airports, and you have a lot of clients in the area and you'd like to make them a new client. Give them a bonus for signing up to become a new client. Pretty straightforward stuff. Okay, so what's my message? Let's go back. If your business is not growing, it's your mindset. It's not the market. Flat out, straight out. It's your mindset. It's not the market. Oh, how are you so sure? Because passenger transportation growth domestically is growing by about 4% a year, 3.8% international travel growing by fi 5% a year. That's the airline industry. Every single plane, 75% of the people are not traveling. Corporate travel corporate fortune 500 people. Okay? 8% are small business. 76% are personal trips, by the way, again. Wealthiest zip codes, 82% of private travel decision makers are women. The market for our services are the best demographic are the top 27% of the households. They actually make over 150,000 in your market the best. The absolute creme de creme. Are the 10% of households that make over 250,000. That's 13 million people around the country. By the way, again, like New Jersey, in this specific area, it was 17% right where this particular operator is. You need to know that stuff. Sure you can hire us and we'll do the research for you, but you need to know the wealthy zip codes in your marketplace. Alright, so in addition to that, again, the demographic of the affluent consumer, the over 250,000, why do I want them as my client? Because they spend 25% of the global travel, the households in this country, or 10% of the households spend 25% of the global travel. They spend twice the amount on restaurants and hotels. 56% of them, over half of them are already planning a cruise or multi-city vacation abroad over the next 12 months. And according to the 2025 Luxury Travel Report by the, the preferred hotel and restaurant group, which again, was not done by me, it was done by Harris. They probably spend millions on it. Affluent travelers have at least. Leisure trips planned next year, and two out of three, two or three of those are international. So how do you attract affluent clients from a service perspective? First of all, you've gotta be top shelf quality. As far as your vehicles and as far as the appearance of your chauffeurs, your chauffeurs have to be on queue providing VIP level service. In addition, everything you do in your company has to absolutely cater to VIP treatment. Now, do you think five star restaurants let their phones ring 15 or 18 times and then pick up saying kitchen? Think about what I just did there. This is what we do in the chauffeur industry, is let the phones ring and we pick up and say Dispatch VIP treatment, both online and in person. Once they set up an account with you, they should be treated differently than a typical day-to-day traveler. That's what they like. Again, where are they going? 77% of them. If they're traveling abroad, 77% are going in Europe. How about instead of social media posts on your latest shiny Escalade, you do posts that say, we provide travel to the uk, and you show a picture of Big Ben. That's the clock in, uh, London. He's not a tall person. Big Ben is a clock or you the Eiffel Tower in Paris. We are proud to provide service in Paris. And if you're really smart and you have a producer like my guy John, you could probably even put some French music behind it. So my whole point is instead of just saying I provide service to and from the airport, you're painting an an experiential picture. Focus on what the affluent people do for profession. Okay. most of it has to do with medical practices and professional practices, doctors and lawyers, financial planners, bank presidents. Okay. Dentists, but you know, the average cardiologist in this country makes $353,000 a year. The average anesthesiologist okay, makes $331,000 a year. Do you think they're taking Uber? If the ride to the airport is 45 minutes, you're wrong. Period. And I have the TNC data to prove it. Okay. They, the TNCs own the urban market. Don't try to market to affluent people. Going from Boston to Logan, it's a 20 minute ride. Or Manhattan to JFK? Well, you might at four o'clock in the morning. Okay? 'cause you don't want to be in a car with an Uber driver in New York at four o'clock in the morning. But anyway, target the wealthiest ZIP codes. Target the wealthiest professions master, where they go, master where they go, master what they do. Make sure that you know everybody where they go. And what they do in your marketplace. And I think you can be successful at it at the end of the day, if you're going to do the same thing that every other transportation novice does, which is go to the limo meetings and literally solicit each other for business. And hope that the network calls you because the provider that they, the globals call you because the provider they used in New York City fell on his ass on a trip. That's not a business plan. Hoping that someone fails or hoping that you're a lower price will attract another transportation company. You're better than that. So it's all about networking regionally, and I'm telling you to go after the professional. Professional occupations in your market and go after the affluent zip codes in the market. The other thing that wealthy people all have in common is they like to have a person to call blessed in a previous life to be pretty much at the service of the, probably one of the wealthiest families in the country. And all of their friends used to call me once they found out that I was, that I worked for this family. So at the end of the day, once you start catering to affluent people, they all use the same service providers, okay? It is the gift that keeps on giving. If you find one and you take care of them and you go to their neighborhoods, that's not a mansion surrounded by small. Cracker shacks, they typically live in the same areas. So network in your region, figure out who the most successful and affluent are. Gonna leave you with a couple of things. Charity events. Pick up the luxury magazine in your market. Or see if you can go online and figure out what the biggest charity events are in your area and network with those people. Donate a car, ride a round trip to and from the airport. Donate a night out in an SUV. Oh Ken, you're telling me to give away a discount if you've got two or 300 people sitting in a charity event your brand name is sitting up on the screen, it says, ah, you can have a night out in this sprinter for you and 10 of your friends. Okay. And you're in front of 300 people. If you can't turn that one ride into 10 paying rides, you got a problem. But that's just me. But again, it's up to you. You can just do gift certificates you want. You can just do advertising. You want, you can do trade. The bottom line is get in front of these people. There's no excuse. Okay? Yeah. Does it take a little bit more work than writing a check to your PPC guy? Of course it does. But it's also gonna give you long-term results and you're gonna build a brand name. So little tough love today. A little bit on Mike. Be considered a rant, John, I don't think I swore today and you know, it's all because I'm just pining for my, my partner in crime, James Blaine. Sometimes I think he doesn't like me anymore because he leaves me to do these things on his own, but. On my own. But anyway, James Blaine from PAX Training. I miss you man. I miss you. And this has been another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast my name is Ken Lucci from Driving transactions. I hope I added a little value today. I hope that you can absorb a couple of golden nuggets from this and at the end of the day. Don't fight for small piece of the pie. Go out there and build yourself a company and capture. The affluent clients and the corporate executives, and the wealthy lawyers and the wealthy doctors, and provide them with fantastic service. And then 10 or 15 years from now, if you, when you want to sell your company, I'll be here to help you, or at least my business partner will be 'cause I'll be retired by that. This is Ken Luci from Driving Transactions Signing Off. Thank you for your time and attention today, and have a great weekend and a great next week.

Speaker 3 46:39

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.