October 21, 2024 • 28 mins
Kristina Bouweiri is a seasoned entrepreneur and serves as president, CEO and sole owner of Reston Limousine and Travel Service Inc. (aka Reston Limousine). Kristina has built a globally recognized transportation business with a combination of innovative spirit, shrewd adaptation and a tireless dedication to diversity and international understanding.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M and T Bank prison CEOs you should know. Powered
by iHeartMedia, Let's meet Christina Pueri. She is the president
and CEO for rest In Limousine, a local company in
northern Virginia that, as you'll find out, has grown exponentially
over the last few decades to be one of the
premier services when it comes to transportation that they offer
all of their clientele. Before we talk more about Christina's
(00:23):
incredible company, I first asked her to talk a little
bit about herself, where she's from and her origin story.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm very very blessed. My parents are from Seattle, Washington.
They joined the Foreign Service, and I was born in Japan.
I lived in Japan for a couple of years, then
we moved to Brazil. We lived in three different cities
in Brazil, Rio, San Paolo and Bolain Dupada, and then
we moved to Portugal, and then I lived in Africa
ten years and so very very blessed. Had an amazing childhood.
(00:51):
Did not live in this country until I went to college,
and that's when I went to George Washington University.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So you and I have something in common. I lived
in the Seattle and I'm a long suffering Seattle sports fan.
I don't know if you're well, yeah, the same as me.
But I've had my trials and tribulations over the years
with Seattle sports.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, my father was a huge Seattle sports fan. I
never really bonded with the Seattle teams. I'm really more
of a Washington, d C. Sports fan anything in Washington,
d C. But I have very fond memories of Seattle.
We went there every two years for home leave, and
all my relatives were from there, and unfortunately most of
them have passed.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So I want to talk to you about a couple things,
and before we get into everything that is resting limousine
and your story about starting a company and all the
tremendous success that is behind it now and moving forward.
I'm always interested to talk to people. Two types of
people that have their own companies, people that have been
in the same place their entire lives, and people like
you that are very worldly that have lived everywhere in
(01:52):
every kind of culture and had a lot of changes
in their life. So with your experiences, which have been
mine too, because I've moved around everywhere. Change and adap
dictation or just a part of my life, and I
imagine as a leader of a company and the kind
of life that you lived. Can you tell me about
those experiences and then running a company and how they've
been advantageous towards you.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I feel that being adaptable is one of my biggest strengths,
and it's why I can handle the highs and lows
of running a company. And I learned how to be
adaptable because as a child, we moved every two to
three years, and I might have had to learn a
new language, but I definitely had to go to a
new school and make new friends, and at the time
(02:35):
didn't love it. But now as an adult, I look
back and I feel just so grateful for that experience,
and so I remember also my parents picked hardship posts
where you know, there was no TV or any entertainment
at all, so you kind of had to entertain yourself.
And living all over the world speaking multiple languages has
(02:56):
really helped me in my business. Being in Washington, you
can imagine I have many many international clients. I have
the IMF, the World Bank, many many embassies, and I
get them.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I live that life for so many years.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I know what it's like to be the child of
a diplomat and to move and diplomatic protocols.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I'm familiar with all of that.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then if you want to talk about my employees,
my employees are so diverse.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
They're from all over the world, and I love that.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So even though I didn't join the Foreign Service, which
is what I wanted to do, I'm in Washington, d C.
And my job is just so international. We drive foreign dignitaries.
Most of my employees are very international, and I feel
like I'm really still living in that world of being
stimulated by anything international and you know, living the dream
(03:49):
really well.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It's wonderful. Well, listen, we're obviously here to talk about
wrestling limousine, but before we do that, I always like
to talk about leaders and entrepreneurs and people to start companies,
about what they want to do coming out of school.
When you were coming out of school, I know you
kind of hedged on a little bit about what do
you want to do with foreign service? But coming out,
what are the kind of things that turned you on
and that you did want to do and what did
you do?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So I got that degree in international affairs, and my
senior year at George Washington University, I was offered an
internship at a nonprofit that did work all over the
world to uplift the status of women. It's called the
Overseas Education Fund, and they offered me a job. So
instead of joining the Foreign Service, I went the nonprofit route,
went back to Africa, and I worked in Somalia for
(04:31):
two years, and that experience was very difficult. It was
It's probably one of the hardest places to live as
an American, and that's where I was.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And after two years.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's a long story, but after two years decided I
didn't want to do that for a living, so I
came back to the States. Only job I could find
was one hundred percent sales commission advertising job. Took that job,
and I was cold calling out of the Yellow Pages
and I got an appointment with William Buwerry, who owned
rest in limousine. I sold him an ad and he
asked me out to dinner. So that is how I
(05:05):
got in the limousine business. I found my husband in
the Yellow Pages, so I quit my job, went to
work for him, and within a year we're married and
I basically took over sales, marketing and operations, and he
ran accounting, fleet management, and hr and together we ran
that company for ten years, had five kids, and after
(05:27):
those ten years were up, we were about a five
million dollar company.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
He said he wanted to take a year off, and.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I said that's fine, And a couple months in, I said,
you don't have to come back. I think it's running
better with just one one owner, one boss, And besides,
I was happy our five kids could have a stay
home parent. So ten years go by and I had
built it to a seventeen million dollar company.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
We had grown apart. I asked for a.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Divorce and I bought him out, and in the last
decade grew it to a thirty three million dollar company.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So it's kind of a girl power story.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, it sure is, and it's an extraordinary story. So
I want to do this because we always like to
hear I asked you about your personal origin story as
we talk about rest and limousine. There's so much to
dive into about how you've grown this business. It's woman
owned and it's local, but it's so diverse, and it's
national and international and the things that you do with it.
So that said, why don't we just start from the
(06:19):
very beginning about mission statement? What is that When it
comes to Resting Limousine.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Our mission statement is as follows. As an organization, our
passion is to provide a variety of transportation solutions for
individuals and groups that exceed clients expectations at home and
around the world through our commitment to safety, excellent service,
and lasting relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
One of the things you also do, Christina on your
web pages that you put your core values on and
not every company does that. I was appreciative as I
was researching you the company and everything that you decided
to put that up there. It meant a lot to
me that you're going a little bit extra to say
this is the stuff we believe in and this is
where we're going to give to you. Is a customer
that we kind of live every day. Can you tell
(07:02):
me what the core values are and also why you
put them up there?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I mean, honestly, I feel like any company that is
being well run has to have core values. I mean
it's really setting a direction for the employees and hiring
people that share those values. To me, I mean, it
really means everything. And our values are that we have
a culture of caring, we have teamwork, we're committed to
our customers. We honor continuous innovation and agility. And then
(07:33):
of course safety. Safety is huge in our industry because
of what we do. We're driving precious cargo every day.
And you know, I remember back in the day, I
would be awake at night thinking about what would happen
if I had an accident and someone got killed. You know,
those are the types of things I dream about at
night or have nightmares about. And so safety, as long
(07:54):
as you follow really strong safety protocols, you can mitigate
your insurance costs and I can.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Sleep at night.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And so that's really why that's there, because it really
has to be woven into everything that we do.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So I know what's in the title of your company,
but if you were just to give a thirty thousand
foot view and in a short sound by tell people
about what you do, what would you tell them?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So we're a transportation company. We have sedans, vans, limousines,
and buses. We are in thirteen market segments. We drive anybody.
Just think about anybody out there who might need either
individual or group transportation, and we provide that service, whether
it is a I mean ninety percent of what we
do is buswork, shuttle, buses for universities, government, non government, corporate, personal,
(08:42):
and then we have the sedans and the subs and
the vans will do weddings, wine tours, site steeing.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I mean, you name it, and we do it.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So transportation is sort of we've woven into everyone's lives
in some way. A lot of what we do are
commuter shuttles and picking up people at the metro and
taking them either to where they live or where they work,
and so that is what we do.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So at the beginning of our conversation, you talked about
growing this company, and there really isn't any business growing
and exponential like you have with you and your team
is really impressive. We don't have to get into the
weeds on this, but as you thought about growing the
company and all the different ways that you can shuttle
people around, whether it's privately, as groups buses, big buses,
how did you decide that you were going to do
(09:28):
this and expand and how did you get the success
of growing this company like you have.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, I like to say it's better to be lucky
than smart, and I feel like we were at the
right place at the right time. We were in rest
in Virginia in the nineties and business was booming. We
had all the dot COM's using US America Online. We
drove ted leons's to work every day for four years.
We had all that work coming in. We had a
(09:54):
contract with the High rest In and we fell into
government contracts. So one day just knocked on my door
and said, do you want to bid on a government contract?
And I said what is that? I had no idea.
And his wife worked across the street for US Geological
Survey and Resting and he said, my wife works over there.
They have a two bus shuttle going into DC every day,
(10:14):
and if you win, I want to be a driver.
I said sure, and so I won my first government contract.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And so then I thought, well.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
There have to be more of these, and I started
researching government contracts and for the next ten years until
I lost my small business status, I won every government
contract that I been on.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
So you know, again, we were at the right place
at the right time.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
We had an office in rest In and a guy
just knocked on our door and opened up my world
to government contracting. And as we lost our small business status,
it was now time to diversify out of the government
and that's when we went after university's hospitals, anybody that.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Needed a shuttle.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
But I'll tell you that the way to grow a
business is to do a good job. You know, if
you do a good job, you will those contracts get renewed.
If you do a good job, you become a referral
source for your clients. And that's really why we grew
was because we did a good job and we've got
referred to other people.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
All right, well, let's talk a little bit about doing
a good job, Ben right now, how many markets are you.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
In so locally everywhere from Baltimore to sort of Stafford
and then out to West Virginia. We have our fleet
doing contracts and non contract work throughout the whole metro area.
But through an affiliate network, we can provide a car anywhere.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
In the world. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
We do a lot of the international relocation work for Intel,
and most of that work is in Oregon, Arizona, or
New Mexico. So we do about thirty trips a day
in those markets. And then we have a lot of
embassy clients that use us when they go out of town,
so they typically go to Chicago, La, New York and Boston.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
So we have clients.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
We offer one stop shopping through rest in limousine. You
can get a car anywhere in the world to take
care of you.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Ah, it's pretty extraordinary. How many staff do you have today?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
We have about three hundred and fifty employees.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Okay, So all those questions lead to this as the
way you want to run a company and your culture.
And you're obviously in a people person business, very personable,
and there's a lot of people that are coming through
that are wanting to get a great experience, either for
themselves or a small group or a large group. How
do you pass down your core value that you talked
(12:26):
about in your culture to everybody that drives all your
vehicles and works for you to make sure that they
keep the standards that you want to Since you have
such a large company and so many staff, that's a
great question.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, a lot of it has to be with choosing
the right people upfront that you're going to hire, and
then of course training, and then of course we do
ongoing training. And then we have a lot of incentive
programs for our employees. We have employee a month we
have they get a bonus if a customer sends in
a letter saying that they did a great job.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
We have a lot of incentives for our employees. We
do annual events.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
We have a company picnic for them and their families,
and then we do a great Christmas party, and we
also do fireside chats. Once a month, we'll do a
fireside chat. Any employee can log in and ask me
anything they want, and we tend to focus on positive
stories so that each employee can hear about the great
(13:23):
things that are happening at rest of the magazine and
how happy we're making our customers.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I imagine you've gotten some pretty incredible feedback that everybody
has access to you at least once a month. I
think that sounds like that's important to you that anybody
in this company can talk to me. They have a question,
they have concern, you have access to me. It sounds
like that was important to you.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Absolutely. They know they have access to me. They have
my cell phone number, they have my email address. You know,
we also have quarterly safety meetings.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
I'm there. Of course, they have access to me and
they know that.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And we have so we have obviously drivers and then
we have supervisors that are out on the road monitoring
our performance, and we have operations managers out on the road,
So we have all these layers of management, and you know,
I've gotten a lot of compliments for that that we
actually have boots on the ground, people out there checking
on things and making sure everyone's doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Christina, I don't want to assume that this is a
competitive category, but I'm just going to say it probably
is what you do out there. And if that's the case,
when it comes to whether it's competition, people do things
like you do. How do you differentiate your business from
there to say we're the best of what we do.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
So we differentiate differentiate ourselves with as I said, great
safety program. We have a technology called Samsara, which is
a little camera in the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
That camera is actually.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Watching the driver and we use artificial intelligence to monitor
our drivers when they are driving. So if the driver
becomes distracted, or he picks up his phone, or he
rolls through a stop sign, my safety manager gets an alert,
and then the cameras are also facing forward in case
there's an accident, everything gets recorded and gets saved on
(15:14):
a hard drive. So our safety program is using the
latest technology and it's why we have low claims and
low insurance premiums, and you know, this is something that
makes our customers so comfortable. We drive a lot of kids,
young kids, older kids, we drive a lot of seniors.
(15:36):
We drive some very very important CEOs, and so having
that safety program, that camera watching the driver at all
times is really what sets us apart from our competition.
That and the fact that every single person at this
company really does care.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Again, we have that culture of caring.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Whether you call and talk to someone about making a
reservation over the phone, or whether you're being met by
a driver, they care about the customer.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It sounds like there's a lot of things going really
well right now. There's been growth, and you've got a
great team there and great staff members and a wonderful clientele.
With all that said, are there any challenges currently in
the industry that you're working on to make sure that
we can get better here? But they are presenting themselves
to you sure.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I mean every industry always has challenges, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
One of our challenges, well, insurance rates going up every
year has been a challenge for quite some time, and
I believe that the reason why that's happening is because
we're lumped into the same category as trucks, and there
have been a lot of accidents with trucks and the
settlements have been huge, which is affecting everyone, even limousine companies.
But traffic is a challenge, Insurance is a challenge, and
(16:47):
I would say that even though the pandemic has been
over four years or so, buying a bus is still
costing me double would it cost me before the pandemic.
I haven't seen pricing go down for what I'm I
need to buy, so rising costs are always a problem.
Labor is still higher than it was before, and I
don't expect that to go down. So there's a lot
(17:08):
of challenges, and I think those challenges are probably preventing
a lot of people from getting into this industry. It's
become very difficult to break into it, especially with insurance.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Rates where they are.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
You have to really be in business for three years
before your rates are reasonable. And so that's helping me
because there's less competition and that's actually a benefit right now.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So those are the challenges. And I know you probably
have hundreds of stories, but if you could for me,
because I know that when you run a company and
you are experiencing a great story with a client or
a family or a company. You say to yourself, this
is why we get up in the morning, because we
want to make our customers happy they've had a great
experience or something special happened. Is there anything you can
(17:53):
share with me over the last several years where you
had a great story of something that really meant, something
you per so that you helped out a client or
a business, or something happened that. He said, Wow, this
is why we get up every day. This is why
we're here helping our clients. Can you share one with us?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I think about a story that was shared during one
of my fireside chats and it was by this driver.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
His name is Ted.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
He's wonderful. Everyone loves Ted. So he picked up a
CEO from the airport who was distraught, and Ted said,
you know what's wrong? And he says, well, it's my
daughter's birthday and I have to go to a meeting
and I'm going to be late, and my flight was
late and my day is just awful. And Ted said, well,
I'll do everything in my power to turn your day around.
So he took the gentleman to a meeting and while
(18:38):
the gentleman was in the meeting, Ted went to a
florist and picked up a dozen roses and hit them
somewhere in the car so that when he took the
client to his daughter's house, he surprised him and pulled
out this dozen roses in of oz and said, sir,
I hope this makes your day a little better. Now
you have a dozen roses to give your daughter. And
the CEO was floored. That is just one little story
(19:02):
of some of the nice things we do for our customers.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I think it's also a testament to you once again
your culture about hiring the right kind of people, Christina
that would do cool extra things like that.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yes, yes, it's true.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That's wonderful. That's a nice story. Well, listen, I want
to put a pin in the business, and maybe it's
connected to the business, but I also like to talk
to entrepreneurs and founders and CEOs of companies about philanthropic
and charity work. And I imagine that you have very
little time to do that. But when you do have
time with your team or whether it's personally on the
side of Christina, what do you like to be a
part of.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
That is a great question.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
And it's a huge part of our company and it
all ties into the culture of caring.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
So remember when I talked about how I had five kids.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Well, I actually couldn't get pregnant for five of those
years and was finally blessed through in vitro to have
healthy boy girl twins. Before the twins were won, I
had another baby all by myself, and I had another
one two years later, and I had a stepdaughter. So
you know, I prayed to God for one healthy baby
and I got four in three years. So I just
(20:03):
felt so blessed, and I decided I was going to
always support children's charities, especially charities where there were sick
children involved. So it all started out with the Make
a Wish Foundation and then the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and
it kind of grew from there. And so our mission
is to support children's charities. But we also are a
(20:24):
seasonal company. We're super busy in the spring and the fall.
It's mostly weather related, and things slow down in the
winter in the summer, so when the things slow down,
we try and use our fleet to do good in
the world. And so it could be Wounded warriors or
pretty much any nonprofit that asks for something in the
winter and the summer, we often try and help them out,
(20:45):
and so it's turned into a substantial amount of giving.
We've given away over one point five million in transportation
and then through this monthly networking lunch that I founded,
we raised eight hundred thousand dollars for charities and so,
you know, we just we have done everything we could
to help our community and it's a big part of
(21:06):
what we do. We also my team will participate in
walks for raising money.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
And you know what I.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Love about our drivers is if we're if we're comping
something for a nonprofit, they usually tell me they don't
want to get paid. Now we pay them anyway. But
that just shows you how wonderful the people are that
work for us.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Goes back to culture though, doesn't it. Yeah, it does.
That's nice. Thanks for sharing all that. I really appreciate it. Well,
I'd like to ask you about the state of the
industry you talked about. You know, it's kind of hard
to start a business today about what you and your
team do now, and I certainly get that, especially in
the kind of world we live in. But what that said,
as far as not specifically rest in limousine but as
(21:45):
you see the whole genre of what you do, what's
the future look like?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Well, the future involves a lot of change. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Electric vehicles will be the next big change for us,
and they're actually pretty difficult to manage because most of
our vehicles run from six o'clock in the morning until
midnight and it's really not practical to fuel up, so
especially the buses. Electric vehicles are smaller than regular buses.
(22:16):
So if you have and I know all this because
my customers are already asking me for pricing. So when
we do a shuttle bus contract price, we have to
provide pricing on diesel, electric, CNNG and pro PAIN and
I currently have buses that run on propane and CNG,
So if customers are asking for, you know, a greener alternative,
(22:38):
we can do it. It is more expensive and most
customers don't want to pay extra, so we have a
few that will the whole The electric cost is about
four times what the cost of diesel would be if
you want to run a bus from six in the
morning until midnight, and so that has become prohibitive for clients.
But I believe the government will subsidize that at some
(23:00):
point and we will have to make that change. And
then the next stage after that. I don't know if
it will happen in my lifetime, but it would be
autonomous vehicles. And so there's a lot of change coming
to our industry, and you know, we've seen a lot
of change in the past, and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Sounds a little daunting, but ay, you excited about it
as well.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I'm excited, you know because if you think about artificial
intelligence and what that has done for our industry. I mean,
I remember back in the day, you'd go to the
airport to pick up a client and you'd never find them.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
You know, no one had a cell phone, no one
had a pager.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And these days, not only can you find your customers,
but you can through GPS, you can figure out how
to get where they're going. You don't need to read
maps anymore. There have been so many positive changes. I'm
always an optimist and I believe that we'll figure it
out and it's always going to get better.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, always get a big laugh. My daughter's twenty two
now that lives in New York, and she said, Dad,
what'd you do before GPS? I said, we winged it
or we had a map. That's what you had to do.
You just had to forge forward. Well, listen, I love
this conversation. I want to get some final thoughts from you,
and really is an extraordinary story about what you've done
with this company and the growth of the culture of
(24:13):
the people, your core values, and it's I think a
testament to you, Christina about why this company is doing
so well is that you know you care about people
and you treat them very well. And I think you
and I could agree that a little bit more acts
of kindness go a long ways, especially when you're running
a business like you are, in a people oriented business.
With that said, can we get some final thoughts from you?
The floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, honestly, I can't think of anything else that I
should have been doing with my life. You know this,
this career has sort of made my life come full circle.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I love what I do. Every day is different, there's
always a challenge. I like to be challenged, and I
love people. And you put all that together and the
answer is run a limousine company.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I like that. I like that, and I if I
could indulge you just for a second and listen, I
have a wife and I have a daughter, and anytime
there are women athletes and celebrities or like you that
run a company, I see them as role models and
mentors and I'm happy about it. And there need to
be more of that. And while we have come a
long ways in the last twenty five years of women
(25:18):
owning businesses and being in government positions and prominent positions
being paid properly, I could go on and on and on,
we're still not there yet. With all that said, there's
a lot of young female entrepreneurs or want to be
founders and CEOs or just start their own company that
listen to this program. Can you just, maybe just for
a few minutes, give some advice to anybody that wants
(25:38):
to start any company about, you know, not specific to
maybe your experiences, but just in general terms, about a
woman out there who wants to find a company and
start coming up.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Well, my advice really would be to be a lifelong learner.
Always be trying to learn and improve yourself. I do
a lot of that, whether it was a business book
club or a CEO peer group or seminars. I've always
been a lifelong learner, and I really believe that's a
huge part of my success, and then another part of
(26:13):
it is networking.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I truly built this company.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
By getting out in the community, meeting people, joining organizations,
and networking with wonderful people. And I've learned so much
from the people that I've met out networking, and so
I have about nineteen thousand people on LinkedIn. I have
worked really hard for twenty years to network and get
(26:39):
involved in the community, and that's where I've met the
people that could turn me on to great opportunities, and
that's where I've done a lot of my learning. So
I guess networking and being a lifelong learner is very important.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Well, you and I are like minded, Christina, because I
talked to my daughter about this, who's an aspiring filmmaker
in New York now, and I've talked to her since
high school about networking, especially linked Even if they're strangers,
just go ahead and introduce yourself and get right in
there like a dirty shirt, and also get your experiences
out there and get as many things as you can
(27:11):
to get better every day. And if you make a mistake,
you know, figure out why you made a mistake and
try and respond to the mistake in a more positive way.
And do your point to get better. So I think
it's wonderful advice and I appreciate you sharing that with everybody.
Let's do this as we close up our conversation. Let's
give the website to everybody. There's a lot of information
down there. There's cool pictures and all the things you
do on there. And I imagine, Christina that you do
(27:33):
hire the best of the best, so if there's some
career opportunities, people could check that out too. So what's
that web address for everybody?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
It is www Restinlimo dot com. And we are always hiring.
We need good people, so please send them our way.
Whether you have a CDL or not, we are hiring.
And we're also looking for managers and probably dispatchers detailers
for the fleet you name it. Please go to our
(28:01):
website and see what positions we have open. I really
appreciate this opportunity.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Well, it's our pleasure, and thanks for making time because
we know how busy you are, Christina, but we really
appreciate you joining us in the empty banks. CEOs you
should know and have a good one.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Take care, Thank you so much, Dennis. Take care.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Our community partner M and T Bank supports CEOs you
should know as part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within them.
As a bank for communities, M and T believes in
dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses thrive
because when businesses succeed, our community succeed.
M and T Bank prison CEOs you should know. Powered
by iHeartMedia, Let's meet Christina Pueri. She is the president
and CEO for rest In Limousine, a local company in
northern Virginia that, as you'll find out, has grown exponentially
over the last few decades to be one of the
premier services when it comes to transportation that they offer
all of their clientele. Before we talk more about Christina's
(00:23):
incredible company, I first asked her to talk a little
bit about herself, where she's from and her origin story.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm very very blessed. My parents are from Seattle, Washington.
They joined the Foreign Service, and I was born in Japan.
I lived in Japan for a couple of years, then
we moved to Brazil. We lived in three different cities
in Brazil, Rio, San Paolo and Bolain Dupada, and then
we moved to Portugal, and then I lived in Africa
ten years and so very very blessed. Had an amazing childhood.
(00:51):
Did not live in this country until I went to college,
and that's when I went to George Washington University.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So you and I have something in common. I lived
in the Seattle and I'm a long suffering Seattle sports fan.
I don't know if you're well, yeah, the same as me.
But I've had my trials and tribulations over the years
with Seattle sports.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, my father was a huge Seattle sports fan. I
never really bonded with the Seattle teams. I'm really more
of a Washington, d C. Sports fan anything in Washington,
d C. But I have very fond memories of Seattle.
We went there every two years for home leave, and
all my relatives were from there, and unfortunately most of
them have passed.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So I want to talk to you about a couple things,
and before we get into everything that is resting limousine
and your story about starting a company and all the
tremendous success that is behind it now and moving forward.
I'm always interested to talk to people. Two types of
people that have their own companies, people that have been
in the same place their entire lives, and people like
you that are very worldly that have lived everywhere in
(01:52):
every kind of culture and had a lot of changes
in their life. So with your experiences, which have been
mine too, because I've moved around everywhere. Change and adap
dictation or just a part of my life, and I
imagine as a leader of a company and the kind
of life that you lived. Can you tell me about
those experiences and then running a company and how they've
been advantageous towards you.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I feel that being adaptable is one of my biggest strengths,
and it's why I can handle the highs and lows
of running a company. And I learned how to be
adaptable because as a child, we moved every two to
three years, and I might have had to learn a
new language, but I definitely had to go to a
new school and make new friends, and at the time
(02:35):
didn't love it. But now as an adult, I look
back and I feel just so grateful for that experience,
and so I remember also my parents picked hardship posts
where you know, there was no TV or any entertainment
at all, so you kind of had to entertain yourself.
And living all over the world speaking multiple languages has
(02:56):
really helped me in my business. Being in Washington, you
can imagine I have many many international clients. I have
the IMF, the World Bank, many many embassies, and I
get them.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I live that life for so many years.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I know what it's like to be the child of
a diplomat and to move and diplomatic protocols.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I'm familiar with all of that.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then if you want to talk about my employees,
my employees are so diverse.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
They're from all over the world, and I love that.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So even though I didn't join the Foreign Service, which
is what I wanted to do, I'm in Washington, d C.
And my job is just so international. We drive foreign dignitaries.
Most of my employees are very international, and I feel
like I'm really still living in that world of being
stimulated by anything international and you know, living the dream
(03:49):
really well.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It's wonderful. Well, listen, we're obviously here to talk about
wrestling limousine, but before we do that, I always like
to talk about leaders and entrepreneurs and people to start companies,
about what they want to do coming out of school.
When you were coming out of school, I know you
kind of hedged on a little bit about what do
you want to do with foreign service? But coming out,
what are the kind of things that turned you on
and that you did want to do and what did
you do?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So I got that degree in international affairs, and my
senior year at George Washington University, I was offered an
internship at a nonprofit that did work all over the
world to uplift the status of women. It's called the
Overseas Education Fund, and they offered me a job. So
instead of joining the Foreign Service, I went the nonprofit route,
went back to Africa, and I worked in Somalia for
(04:31):
two years, and that experience was very difficult. It was
It's probably one of the hardest places to live as
an American, and that's where I was.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And after two years.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's a long story, but after two years decided I
didn't want to do that for a living, so I
came back to the States. Only job I could find
was one hundred percent sales commission advertising job. Took that job,
and I was cold calling out of the Yellow Pages
and I got an appointment with William Buwerry, who owned
rest in limousine. I sold him an ad and he
asked me out to dinner. So that is how I
(05:05):
got in the limousine business. I found my husband in
the Yellow Pages, so I quit my job, went to
work for him, and within a year we're married and
I basically took over sales, marketing and operations, and he
ran accounting, fleet management, and hr and together we ran
that company for ten years, had five kids, and after
(05:27):
those ten years were up, we were about a five
million dollar company.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
He said he wanted to take a year off, and.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I said that's fine, And a couple months in, I said,
you don't have to come back. I think it's running
better with just one one owner, one boss, And besides,
I was happy our five kids could have a stay
home parent. So ten years go by and I had
built it to a seventeen million dollar company.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
We had grown apart. I asked for a.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Divorce and I bought him out, and in the last
decade grew it to a thirty three million dollar company.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So it's kind of a girl power story.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, it sure is, and it's an extraordinary story. So
I want to do this because we always like to
hear I asked you about your personal origin story as
we talk about rest and limousine. There's so much to
dive into about how you've grown this business. It's woman
owned and it's local, but it's so diverse, and it's
national and international and the things that you do with it.
So that said, why don't we just start from the
(06:19):
very beginning about mission statement? What is that When it
comes to Resting Limousine.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Our mission statement is as follows. As an organization, our
passion is to provide a variety of transportation solutions for
individuals and groups that exceed clients expectations at home and
around the world through our commitment to safety, excellent service,
and lasting relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
One of the things you also do, Christina on your
web pages that you put your core values on and
not every company does that. I was appreciative as I
was researching you the company and everything that you decided
to put that up there. It meant a lot to
me that you're going a little bit extra to say
this is the stuff we believe in and this is
where we're going to give to you. Is a customer
that we kind of live every day. Can you tell
(07:02):
me what the core values are and also why you
put them up there?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I mean, honestly, I feel like any company that is
being well run has to have core values. I mean
it's really setting a direction for the employees and hiring
people that share those values. To me, I mean, it
really means everything. And our values are that we have
a culture of caring, we have teamwork, we're committed to
our customers. We honor continuous innovation and agility. And then
(07:33):
of course safety. Safety is huge in our industry because
of what we do. We're driving precious cargo every day.
And you know, I remember back in the day, I
would be awake at night thinking about what would happen
if I had an accident and someone got killed. You know,
those are the types of things I dream about at
night or have nightmares about. And so safety, as long
(07:54):
as you follow really strong safety protocols, you can mitigate
your insurance costs and I can.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Sleep at night.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And so that's really why that's there, because it really
has to be woven into everything that we do.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So I know what's in the title of your company,
but if you were just to give a thirty thousand
foot view and in a short sound by tell people
about what you do, what would you tell them?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So we're a transportation company. We have sedans, vans, limousines,
and buses. We are in thirteen market segments. We drive anybody.
Just think about anybody out there who might need either
individual or group transportation, and we provide that service, whether
it is a I mean ninety percent of what we
do is buswork, shuttle, buses for universities, government, non government, corporate, personal,
(08:42):
and then we have the sedans and the subs and
the vans will do weddings, wine tours, site steeing.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I mean, you name it, and we do it.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So transportation is sort of we've woven into everyone's lives
in some way. A lot of what we do are
commuter shuttles and picking up people at the metro and
taking them either to where they live or where they work,
and so that is what we do.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So at the beginning of our conversation, you talked about
growing this company, and there really isn't any business growing
and exponential like you have with you and your team
is really impressive. We don't have to get into the
weeds on this, but as you thought about growing the
company and all the different ways that you can shuttle
people around, whether it's privately, as groups buses, big buses,
how did you decide that you were going to do
(09:28):
this and expand and how did you get the success
of growing this company like you have.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, I like to say it's better to be lucky
than smart, and I feel like we were at the
right place at the right time. We were in rest
in Virginia in the nineties and business was booming. We
had all the dot COM's using US America Online. We
drove ted leons's to work every day for four years.
We had all that work coming in. We had a
(09:54):
contract with the High rest In and we fell into
government contracts. So one day just knocked on my door
and said, do you want to bid on a government contract?
And I said what is that? I had no idea.
And his wife worked across the street for US Geological
Survey and Resting and he said, my wife works over there.
They have a two bus shuttle going into DC every day,
(10:14):
and if you win, I want to be a driver.
I said sure, and so I won my first government contract.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And so then I thought, well.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
There have to be more of these, and I started
researching government contracts and for the next ten years until
I lost my small business status, I won every government
contract that I been on.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
So you know, again, we were at the right place
at the right time.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
We had an office in rest In and a guy
just knocked on our door and opened up my world
to government contracting. And as we lost our small business status,
it was now time to diversify out of the government
and that's when we went after university's hospitals, anybody that.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Needed a shuttle.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
But I'll tell you that the way to grow a
business is to do a good job. You know, if
you do a good job, you will those contracts get renewed.
If you do a good job, you become a referral
source for your clients. And that's really why we grew
was because we did a good job and we've got
referred to other people.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
All right, well, let's talk a little bit about doing
a good job, Ben right now, how many markets are you.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
In so locally everywhere from Baltimore to sort of Stafford
and then out to West Virginia. We have our fleet
doing contracts and non contract work throughout the whole metro area.
But through an affiliate network, we can provide a car anywhere.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
In the world. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
We do a lot of the international relocation work for Intel,
and most of that work is in Oregon, Arizona, or
New Mexico. So we do about thirty trips a day
in those markets. And then we have a lot of
embassy clients that use us when they go out of town,
so they typically go to Chicago, La, New York and Boston.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
So we have clients.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
We offer one stop shopping through rest in limousine. You
can get a car anywhere in the world to take
care of you.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Ah, it's pretty extraordinary. How many staff do you have today?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
We have about three hundred and fifty employees.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Okay, So all those questions lead to this as the
way you want to run a company and your culture.
And you're obviously in a people person business, very personable,
and there's a lot of people that are coming through
that are wanting to get a great experience, either for
themselves or a small group or a large group. How
do you pass down your core value that you talked
(12:26):
about in your culture to everybody that drives all your
vehicles and works for you to make sure that they
keep the standards that you want to Since you have
such a large company and so many staff, that's a
great question.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, a lot of it has to be with choosing
the right people upfront that you're going to hire, and
then of course training, and then of course we do
ongoing training. And then we have a lot of incentive
programs for our employees. We have employee a month we
have they get a bonus if a customer sends in
a letter saying that they did a great job.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
We have a lot of incentives for our employees. We
do annual events.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
We have a company picnic for them and their families,
and then we do a great Christmas party, and we
also do fireside chats. Once a month, we'll do a
fireside chat. Any employee can log in and ask me
anything they want, and we tend to focus on positive
stories so that each employee can hear about the great
(13:23):
things that are happening at rest of the magazine and
how happy we're making our customers.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I imagine you've gotten some pretty incredible feedback that everybody
has access to you at least once a month. I
think that sounds like that's important to you that anybody
in this company can talk to me. They have a question,
they have concern, you have access to me. It sounds
like that was important to you.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Absolutely. They know they have access to me. They have
my cell phone number, they have my email address. You know,
we also have quarterly safety meetings.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
I'm there. Of course, they have access to me and
they know that.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And we have so we have obviously drivers and then
we have supervisors that are out on the road monitoring
our performance, and we have operations managers out on the road,
So we have all these layers of management, and you know,
I've gotten a lot of compliments for that that we
actually have boots on the ground, people out there checking
on things and making sure everyone's doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Christina, I don't want to assume that this is a
competitive category, but I'm just going to say it probably
is what you do out there. And if that's the case,
when it comes to whether it's competition, people do things
like you do. How do you differentiate your business from
there to say we're the best of what we do.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
So we differentiate differentiate ourselves with as I said, great
safety program. We have a technology called Samsara, which is
a little camera in the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
That camera is actually.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Watching the driver and we use artificial intelligence to monitor
our drivers when they are driving. So if the driver
becomes distracted, or he picks up his phone, or he
rolls through a stop sign, my safety manager gets an alert,
and then the cameras are also facing forward in case
there's an accident, everything gets recorded and gets saved on
(15:14):
a hard drive. So our safety program is using the
latest technology and it's why we have low claims and
low insurance premiums, and you know, this is something that
makes our customers so comfortable. We drive a lot of kids,
young kids, older kids, we drive a lot of seniors.
(15:36):
We drive some very very important CEOs, and so having
that safety program, that camera watching the driver at all
times is really what sets us apart from our competition.
That and the fact that every single person at this
company really does care.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Again, we have that culture of caring.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Whether you call and talk to someone about making a
reservation over the phone, or whether you're being met by
a driver, they care about the customer.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It sounds like there's a lot of things going really
well right now. There's been growth, and you've got a
great team there and great staff members and a wonderful clientele.
With all that said, are there any challenges currently in
the industry that you're working on to make sure that
we can get better here? But they are presenting themselves
to you sure.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I mean every industry always has challenges, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
One of our challenges, well, insurance rates going up every
year has been a challenge for quite some time, and
I believe that the reason why that's happening is because
we're lumped into the same category as trucks, and there
have been a lot of accidents with trucks and the
settlements have been huge, which is affecting everyone, even limousine companies.
But traffic is a challenge, Insurance is a challenge, and
(16:47):
I would say that even though the pandemic has been
over four years or so, buying a bus is still
costing me double would it cost me before the pandemic.
I haven't seen pricing go down for what I'm I
need to buy, so rising costs are always a problem.
Labor is still higher than it was before, and I
don't expect that to go down. So there's a lot
(17:08):
of challenges, and I think those challenges are probably preventing
a lot of people from getting into this industry. It's
become very difficult to break into it, especially with insurance.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Rates where they are.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
You have to really be in business for three years
before your rates are reasonable. And so that's helping me
because there's less competition and that's actually a benefit right now.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So those are the challenges. And I know you probably
have hundreds of stories, but if you could for me,
because I know that when you run a company and
you are experiencing a great story with a client or
a family or a company. You say to yourself, this
is why we get up in the morning, because we
want to make our customers happy they've had a great
experience or something special happened. Is there anything you can
(17:53):
share with me over the last several years where you
had a great story of something that really meant, something
you per so that you helped out a client or
a business, or something happened that. He said, Wow, this
is why we get up every day. This is why
we're here helping our clients. Can you share one with us?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I think about a story that was shared during one
of my fireside chats and it was by this driver.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
His name is Ted.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
He's wonderful. Everyone loves Ted. So he picked up a
CEO from the airport who was distraught, and Ted said,
you know what's wrong? And he says, well, it's my
daughter's birthday and I have to go to a meeting
and I'm going to be late, and my flight was
late and my day is just awful. And Ted said, well,
I'll do everything in my power to turn your day around.
So he took the gentleman to a meeting and while
(18:38):
the gentleman was in the meeting, Ted went to a
florist and picked up a dozen roses and hit them
somewhere in the car so that when he took the
client to his daughter's house, he surprised him and pulled
out this dozen roses in of oz and said, sir,
I hope this makes your day a little better. Now
you have a dozen roses to give your daughter. And
the CEO was floored. That is just one little story
(19:02):
of some of the nice things we do for our customers.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I think it's also a testament to you once again
your culture about hiring the right kind of people, Christina
that would do cool extra things like that.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yes, yes, it's true.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That's wonderful. That's a nice story. Well, listen, I want
to put a pin in the business, and maybe it's
connected to the business, but I also like to talk
to entrepreneurs and founders and CEOs of companies about philanthropic
and charity work. And I imagine that you have very
little time to do that. But when you do have
time with your team or whether it's personally on the
side of Christina, what do you like to be a
part of.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
That is a great question.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
And it's a huge part of our company and it
all ties into the culture of caring.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
So remember when I talked about how I had five kids.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Well, I actually couldn't get pregnant for five of those
years and was finally blessed through in vitro to have
healthy boy girl twins. Before the twins were won, I
had another baby all by myself, and I had another
one two years later, and I had a stepdaughter. So
you know, I prayed to God for one healthy baby
and I got four in three years. So I just
(20:03):
felt so blessed, and I decided I was going to
always support children's charities, especially charities where there were sick
children involved. So it all started out with the Make
a Wish Foundation and then the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and
it kind of grew from there. And so our mission
is to support children's charities. But we also are a
(20:24):
seasonal company. We're super busy in the spring and the fall.
It's mostly weather related, and things slow down in the
winter in the summer, so when the things slow down,
we try and use our fleet to do good in
the world. And so it could be Wounded warriors or
pretty much any nonprofit that asks for something in the
winter and the summer, we often try and help them out,
(20:45):
and so it's turned into a substantial amount of giving.
We've given away over one point five million in transportation
and then through this monthly networking lunch that I founded,
we raised eight hundred thousand dollars for charities and so,
you know, we just we have done everything we could
to help our community and it's a big part of
(21:06):
what we do. We also my team will participate in
walks for raising money.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
And you know what I.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Love about our drivers is if we're if we're comping
something for a nonprofit, they usually tell me they don't
want to get paid. Now we pay them anyway. But
that just shows you how wonderful the people are that
work for us.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Goes back to culture though, doesn't it. Yeah, it does.
That's nice. Thanks for sharing all that. I really appreciate it. Well,
I'd like to ask you about the state of the
industry you talked about. You know, it's kind of hard
to start a business today about what you and your
team do now, and I certainly get that, especially in
the kind of world we live in. But what that said,
as far as not specifically rest in limousine but as
(21:45):
you see the whole genre of what you do, what's
the future look like?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Well, the future involves a lot of change. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Electric vehicles will be the next big change for us,
and they're actually pretty difficult to manage because most of
our vehicles run from six o'clock in the morning until
midnight and it's really not practical to fuel up, so
especially the buses. Electric vehicles are smaller than regular buses.
(22:16):
So if you have and I know all this because
my customers are already asking me for pricing. So when
we do a shuttle bus contract price, we have to
provide pricing on diesel, electric, CNNG and pro PAIN and
I currently have buses that run on propane and CNG,
So if customers are asking for, you know, a greener alternative,
(22:38):
we can do it. It is more expensive and most
customers don't want to pay extra, so we have a
few that will the whole The electric cost is about
four times what the cost of diesel would be if
you want to run a bus from six in the
morning until midnight, and so that has become prohibitive for clients.
But I believe the government will subsidize that at some
(23:00):
point and we will have to make that change. And
then the next stage after that. I don't know if
it will happen in my lifetime, but it would be
autonomous vehicles. And so there's a lot of change coming
to our industry, and you know, we've seen a lot
of change in the past, and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Sounds a little daunting, but ay, you excited about it
as well.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
I'm excited, you know because if you think about artificial
intelligence and what that has done for our industry. I mean,
I remember back in the day, you'd go to the
airport to pick up a client and you'd never find them.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
You know, no one had a cell phone, no one
had a pager.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And these days, not only can you find your customers,
but you can through GPS, you can figure out how
to get where they're going. You don't need to read
maps anymore. There have been so many positive changes. I'm
always an optimist and I believe that we'll figure it
out and it's always going to get better.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, always get a big laugh. My daughter's twenty two
now that lives in New York, and she said, Dad,
what'd you do before GPS? I said, we winged it
or we had a map. That's what you had to do.
You just had to forge forward. Well, listen, I love
this conversation. I want to get some final thoughts from you,
and really is an extraordinary story about what you've done
with this company and the growth of the culture of
(24:13):
the people, your core values, and it's I think a
testament to you, Christina about why this company is doing
so well is that you know you care about people
and you treat them very well. And I think you
and I could agree that a little bit more acts
of kindness go a long ways, especially when you're running
a business like you are, in a people oriented business.
With that said, can we get some final thoughts from you?
The floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, honestly, I can't think of anything else that I
should have been doing with my life. You know this,
this career has sort of made my life come full circle.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I love what I do. Every day is different, there's
always a challenge. I like to be challenged, and I
love people. And you put all that together and the
answer is run a limousine company.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I like that. I like that, and I if I
could indulge you just for a second and listen, I
have a wife and I have a daughter, and anytime
there are women athletes and celebrities or like you that
run a company, I see them as role models and
mentors and I'm happy about it. And there need to
be more of that. And while we have come a
long ways in the last twenty five years of women
(25:18):
owning businesses and being in government positions and prominent positions
being paid properly, I could go on and on and on,
we're still not there yet. With all that said, there's
a lot of young female entrepreneurs or want to be
founders and CEOs or just start their own company that
listen to this program. Can you just, maybe just for
a few minutes, give some advice to anybody that wants
(25:38):
to start any company about, you know, not specific to
maybe your experiences, but just in general terms, about a
woman out there who wants to find a company and
start coming up.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Well, my advice really would be to be a lifelong learner.
Always be trying to learn and improve yourself. I do
a lot of that, whether it was a business book
club or a CEO peer group or seminars. I've always
been a lifelong learner, and I really believe that's a
huge part of my success, and then another part of
(26:13):
it is networking.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I truly built this company.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
By getting out in the community, meeting people, joining organizations,
and networking with wonderful people. And I've learned so much
from the people that I've met out networking, and so
I have about nineteen thousand people on LinkedIn. I have
worked really hard for twenty years to network and get
(26:39):
involved in the community, and that's where I've met the
people that could turn me on to great opportunities, and
that's where I've done a lot of my learning. So
I guess networking and being a lifelong learner is very important.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Well, you and I are like minded, Christina, because I
talked to my daughter about this, who's an aspiring filmmaker
in New York now, and I've talked to her since
high school about networking, especially linked Even if they're strangers,
just go ahead and introduce yourself and get right in
there like a dirty shirt, and also get your experiences
out there and get as many things as you can
(27:11):
to get better every day. And if you make a mistake,
you know, figure out why you made a mistake and
try and respond to the mistake in a more positive way.
And do your point to get better. So I think
it's wonderful advice and I appreciate you sharing that with everybody.
Let's do this as we close up our conversation. Let's
give the website to everybody. There's a lot of information
down there. There's cool pictures and all the things you
do on there. And I imagine, Christina that you do
(27:33):
hire the best of the best, so if there's some
career opportunities, people could check that out too. So what's
that web address for everybody?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
It is www Restinlimo dot com. And we are always hiring.
We need good people, so please send them our way.
Whether you have a CDL or not, we are hiring.
And we're also looking for managers and probably dispatchers detailers
for the fleet you name it. Please go to our
(28:01):
website and see what positions we have open. I really
appreciate this opportunity.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Well, it's our pleasure, and thanks for making time because
we know how busy you are, Christina, but we really
appreciate you joining us in the empty banks. CEOs you
should know and have a good one.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Take care, Thank you so much, Dennis. Take care.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Our community partner M and T Bank supports CEOs you
should know as part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within them.
As a bank for communities, M and T believes in
dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses thrive
because when businesses succeed, our community succeed.
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