Proactive Operators Win: Safety, Business Development & Financial Planning

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In this episode, James and Ken break down one of the most critical—and most overlooked—skills in the ground transportation industry: proactivity. Drawing from real operator examples and industry data, they explore how being proactive transforms three essential areas of your business:

• Safety: Why consistency, telematics, training, and “the 72-hour rule” matter more than experience alone.

• Business Development: How to break out of reactive habits, increase your sales activity, and avoid the “it worked last year” mindset.

• Financial Planning: The fundamentals every operator must understand—cash position, liquidity, metrics, and preparing for financing or acquisition opportunities.

Ken and James explain why operators who are proactive—not reactive—are the ones thriving in 2025, and why consistency is the common thread running through every high-performing company in the space.

Whether you’re running a fleet of 5 vehicles or 150, this episode gives you the mindset and tools to stay ahead of risk, grow revenue intentionally, and strengthen your financial foundation.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome
01:36 Proactivity
04:59 No Accidents, No Problems
11:17 Few Accidents Are Freak Issues
16:05 All About The Reps
21:31 The Foundation
24:24 Business Development
41:25 Seasonality
43:42 Events Calendar
46:52 Finances

At Driving Transactions, Ken Lucci and his team offer financial analysis, KPI reviews,  for specific purposes like improving profitability, enhancing the value of the enterprise business planning and buying and selling companies. So if you have any of those needs, please give us a call or check us out at www.drivingtransactions.com.

Pax Training is your  all in one solution designed to elevate your team's skills, boost passenger satisfaction, and keep your business ahead of the curve. Learn more at www.paxtraining.com/gtp

Connect with Kenneth Lucci, Principle Analyst at Driving Transactions:
https://www.drivingtransactions.com/

Connect with James Blain, President at PAX Training:
https://paxtraining.com/

Episode Transcript

Ken Lucci (00:26):
Well, good afternoon audience, and welcome to another
exciting episode of the GroundTransportation Podcast.
My name is Ken Lucci fromDriving Transactions.
We're a financial analysis,business valuation and m and a
advisory firm, and I am joinedby my partner in crime, who I've
missed terribly.

(00:47):
Who is the road weary?
James Blaine

James Blain (00:51):
Road rear, road warrior.
Hello?

Ken Lucci (00:53):
From Pax Trading the best, the best driver training
program in the chauffeurindustry and the motor coach
industry.
Is there even another one thatcomes close?

James Blain (01:03):
Uh, no.
No, not that comes to mind.
No.
And, and we're, we're slowlyexpanding to all of passenger
transportation.
So if you drive passengers for aliving, we're gonna have
training for you.

Ken Lucci (01:13):
And they's the key.
It's the reason why he's roadweary.
He's on the road, hit on everysingle week.
We can't catch him here,unfortunately.
You, you know, the poor audienceis the one that has a problem.
'cause they have to listen to mynonsense constantly alone.
They tune in and they're like,wait a minute, we wanna see
James.
Why does this Anyway,

James Blain (01:33):
they'll have better financials for it, so pay
attention people.

Ken Lucci (01:36):
there you go.
So, uh, today we're hitting upona subject that is near and dear
to both of us.
And I think that the industryhas a well, small business in
general, but our industry has aserious issue with business
owners working in their businessand not quote on their business
and being overall reactive.

(01:58):
Um, and today we're gonna talkabout proactivity and we're
gonna, we're gonna nailproactivity.
With three on three subjectmatter.
three pieces of your businessthat are critical, safety,
business development, andfinancial planning.
So James, tell me in your mindwhen I say proactive safety,

(02:23):
what does it mean to you as faras what an operator should be
doing to be on safetyproactively?
What does it mean?

James Blain (02:33):
so look, the, the biggest thing that I see, and
it's gonna show up in all threeof these sections, is that we
tend to have this mentality thatnone of this is special.
This is stuff we've doneforever.
This is stuff we know how to do.
This is stuff we, you know, thepeople that we're hiring know
how to do this.
This isn't a big deal, right?
I see it all the time.

(02:54):
You know, Hey, this guy's beendriving, you know, 20 years or
30 years, or, Hey, I hire, Ionly hire experienced drivers,
right?
I don't have to worry abouttraining my drivers'cause I only
hire experienced drivers right

Ken Lucci (03:05):
Right, or this driver, this driver hasn't had
an accident in 10 years.
You know what that tells me?
He's due, he is overdue.

James Blain (03:13):
And, and here's, here's the funny part about
that, right?
It's kinda like saying, I'mgonna hire and, and you tell me
whether this makes sense, right?
I think of it as like, I'm notgonna go hire somebody to
manage, my finances, that's beendoing it forever and not knowing
anything about his background oranything else, just, oh, he's
just been doing it forever,right?

(03:34):
Because, and I say this all thetime, how many people you know,
have been doing their jobforever and still suck at it,
right?

Ken Lucci (03:41):
Right?
And, and sometimes, sometimesyou, you, you are correct
because I call it the, it's thesingle box mentality.
Every single day they open upthe same box and that is their
point of reference foreverything they do and, and
sometimes.
Muscle memory, especially in ourindustry.

(04:02):
habits are a bad thing when theworld around you is changing,
right?
and we can all agree, we can allagree that one of the top three
in issues in this industry isfleet insurance.
And

James Blain (04:17):
Yep.

Ken Lucci (04:18):
you cannot be treating your safety the same
way as you always have if youwant to stay in business.
Because the fleet insurancecompanies at this point are
taking no prisoners doing nofavors, and I don't blame them
and losing money.
So what is proactive?
safety plan mean to you?

James Blain (04:39):
Okay, so, so I'm gonna give a very unpopular
opinion, right?
Don't cancel me for

Ken Lucci (04:43):
By the way, you look like you, you do look like shit,
but keep

James Blain (04:46):
I could use, I could use a nap.
I saw that road

Ken Lucci (04:49):
You could, you could, but that'll be at the end of the
day today, so keep going.

James Blain (04:53):
it's all right.
It's all right.
I'll rest when I'm dead.
I'm too busy helping operatorsto sleep.

Ken Lucci (04:57):
Good idea.
Good sentiment.

James Blain (04:59):
opinion here.
Everybody says there's, youknow, there's an insurance
crisis, there's a crisis onthis, there's a crisis on that.
But I can tell you I've spentthe last 10 years of my career
preaching and telling anyonethat would listen, Hey, we've
gotta get in front of accidents.
We've gotta get in front ofincidents.
You've got to understand, right?

(05:21):
The number one thing I see incompanies is, well, we don't
have any accidents, we don'thave any problems.
We can scale back our trainingprogram.
Well, well, okay, so hold on.
So you're saying, because youare winning, right?
You've got a winning team.
My coach is going to have themdo less practice because we're
winning anyway.
Like it makes no sense

Ken Lucci (05:40):
It makes no sense.
It's like, it's like it, it is abad analogy maybe, but it's like
the Secret Service saying, youknow what?
We haven't had any attempts onthe president's life, so
therefore we're gonna stop the

James Blain (05:50):
We're gonna scale

Ken Lucci (05:51):
gonna stop, we're gonna stop the mandatory re
re-upping of, uh, firearmstraining.
Uh, close quarter firearmstraining.
We're gonna stop that because wehaven't had anybody that's
threatened the president thatway.
It's ridiculous.
Or, police department saying,you know, crime has really,
really, really been down.
Let's fire that crime preventionofficer and stop that entire

(06:12):
program.

James Blain (06:14):
Well, and here's the other thing, right?
If, if you want to go down thatsame road, you know I mentioned
the people.
I only hire people withexperience.
Well, great.
What do you know about thetraining program of the company
they work for?
What do you know about theirday-to-day at the company?
They work

Ken Lucci (06:27):
Well, you are also hiring their bad habits.
Agreed.
Yep.

James Blain (06:30):
a hundred percent.
You're hiring their bad habits.
You're hiring everything thatcame with them.
One of the things that for me ishuge is if you are going to get
ahead of something.
The only way to get ahead ofsomething is to do it now before
it's a problem later.
So, you know, you think about itand one of my favorite examples

(06:51):
is it's exa and, and I hearpeople all the time with their
training programs, look, if youhad a heart attack, right?
You had a heart attack, you'relike, oh man, I had a heart
attack.
You go and they say, you got abad heart, and you say, no big
deal.
I bought a new Apple watch'causethe new Apple Watch will send
all of the data for my nextheart attack to the doctor.
Instead of

Ken Lucci (07:12):
changing your behavior.

James Blain (07:14):
your behavior, trying to get healthy, right?
No.

Ken Lucci (07:17):
Really good analogy by the

James Blain (07:19):
Well, but think about it.
We, we see it all the time.
You gotta treat it like yourhealth.
And what's really funny is wehave a lot of close calls,
especially in businesses whereit's a close call and I talk
about something called the 72hour rule.
And if you wanna learn aboutproductivity, human psychology,
and human nature, the 72 hourrule applies to practically.

(07:42):
Everything that you are gonnadeal with.
And it goes a little somethinglike this.
Hour zero is some kind of closecall near miss accident crisis,
something really bad.
That is kind of like a wake uptype moment happens.
At that point.
for the next 24 hours, you'retypically in like crisis mode.

(08:03):
I gotta handle that immediateproblem.
Now, what happens directlyaround that once we kind of pass
that 24 hours, okay, how do Ikeep it from happening again?
you know, whose fault was it?
How do I take care of it?
How do I get ahead of it?
That's typically when a companylike ours gets a phone call.
Hey, some, you know, we had aguy with an SUV at the airport

(08:26):
and the passenger swung the backdoor open and got ripped off
'cause the passenger or thechauffeur didn't put his hand on
the door and hold it closed.

Ken Lucci (08:33):
They, they did, they disembarked on the wrong

James Blain (08:35):
Right.
They got off on the wrong side.
Hey, I had a, you know, one ofthe guys was driving my band,
new motor coach.
He didn't get out and look andhe couldn't see it on the
camera, and he backed into acar, or he turned through a curb
and hit a Ballard.
Right?
It's, it's always the simplethings.
And then what happens once they,they hit that point, you have 72
hours to make one of two thingshappen.

(08:58):
Okay?
At the 72 hour point, it's gonnabe done.
If you haven't made thedecision, your decision becomes
indecision.
Now, your brain can't live withindecision, right.
No change, but, but your braincan't live with that.
Right.
we don't like the idea of, Ididn't do anything.
So we bs ourselves, we lie toourselves, we make, you know, we

(09:20):
were overdue.
You know, it wasn't that bad.
You know, that's the first timehe is ever had it, you know?
Right.
You, you lie yourself becauseit's easier than making a
change.

Ken Lucci (09:31):
you.
The word is rationalizing.

James Blain (09:33):
It's a hundred percent rationalizing, right?
So you are rationalizing thisproblem away.
Now here's what's funny andhere's why I bring it up.
In our world, we call that the72 hour rule.
If you look at an unpaid billfrom someone, right?
Let's say you have your a and r.
I'm sure you'll, you'llappreciate this.
Once your a and r gets to 30,right?

(09:54):
Once you get to 90, your chancesof getting paid drop.
Once you get to 120, they dropeven further.
And what the further out you go,it starts kind of hockey stick
in the wrong direction straightdown until your chances getting
paid are zero.

Ken Lucci (10:07):
So, so your point is when something happens, you have
the opport opportunity to turnit into a teachable moment and
change so that you can make surethat that behavior doesn't
happen again.
Okay.
Or you can do nothing.
And you've done really at, atsome point you probably, you

(10:31):
didn't do anything to make sureit doesn't happen again, and,
and I bet you it actuallyincreases your chances of a
repeat performance of the sameissue.

James Blain (10:40):
and what's, what's crazy about this, Ken, is it's
actually worse than that becausetypically what happens is we
don't get proactive.
We're not doing what we shouldbe doing to prevent an accident
or a service failure or any kindof other issue in the business.
Right?
And nine times outta 10, it's ahuman training error, right?

Ken Lucci (11:02):
Uh, absolutely.

James Blain (11:03):
look, e even if you, you know, you say, oh my
gosh, we had a freak accident.
The wheel fell off the vehicle.
Right?
The wheel just fell right offthe

Ken Lucci (11:11):
no, it, it's either process or human issue,

James Blain (11:14):
Right?
I

Ken Lucci (11:15):
process problem, human issue,

James Blain (11:17):
Yeah.
You go look at all of theaccidents that are, that very,
very few of them.
Are freak issues, right?
It's, well, we went back and welooked at the maintenance.
They weren't doing maintenance.
Well, you know, we had a servicefailure here.
Well, we went back and thisperson didn't know where they
were going, right?
They went to the wrong place.
They, you know, they weren'tpaying attention, they weren't
following.
So what happens is we have thesefailures to get ahead of things.

(11:39):
We have these wake up moments,these 72 hour rule moments, and
if you don't make an active,meaningful change and get back
on track, eventually whathappens is you start seeing
these cascading type issueswhere it gets bigger and bigger.
And a lot of times, especiallyin our world, it can go from

(12:01):
zero to a hundred real quick.
You might have a bunch of littleincidents because, you know,
I'll give you a great example.
You have someone that followstoo closely.
They, they, that's their thing.
They follow too closely and.
For a time, you know, they havea couple close calls, they get
lucky, and then they'refollowing too closely on a
tanker truck and a squirrel runsin the road and the guy slams on

(12:22):
the brakes and the luck runsout.
And

Ken Lucci (12:25):
those squirrels.

James Blain (12:26):
you know, it's always, they're

Ken Lucci (12:28):
but, but back up a step, back up a step because you
made a really good point therethat I, everybody in, in the
audience should, shouldunderstand that was not a
flippant analogy.

James Blain (12:40):
no, this is a real world.
I see it all the time.

Ken Lucci (12:42):
right, the Apple watch in relationship to
preventing the heart attack isthe same thing as the telematics
system.
As it is preventing an accident.
The Apple Watch does shit foryou if you don't change the

(13:02):
behavior that the Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch tells yousomething wrong and you don't
address it.
The same with telematics.
If, all you do is check off thebox, I have telematics,
therefore I'm safer, I have anApple watch, therefore I'm
healthier.
it's wrong thinking and I knowthat that's, operators are like,

(13:24):
I don't know what your problemis.
I have telematics.
Well, you're not looking at it,you're not doing anything.
Your analogy of the, the, of thefollowing to close.
Okay, that's behavior that wouldbe picked up by the telematics
system and, and you should beaddressing it before the
squirrel runs in front of thetanker and causes a pile up.

James Blain (13:44):
Well, and what's funny, right?
You know, I'd love to say, Hey,I'm in marketing.
I'm the fun sugary candy you getto eat.
You know my world where,

Ken Lucci (13:52):
by the way, I've never thought of you that way,

James Blain (13:54):
Yeah.
No, no, no.
That's not me.
But, but no, you think about it,the training really is, it's
kinda like the gym.
It's kinda like the working out.
You know, you should do it a lotof times, just like your New
Year's resolution, man, we'regonna fix our training, we're
gonna fix

Ken Lucci (14:07):
Okay.
That's another analogy.
That's another analogy.
You are the personal, wait aminute, PAX is the personal
trainer answer to gettinghealthy.
You know how many people jointhe gym and they never go.
They have every intention ofcreating a workout regimen.
Okay.
And they don't.
Right.
Personal trainer in, back in theday when I had really, really

(14:31):
solid pectorals, I had apersonal trainer way back when,
but I could not have achievedthe level that I had of, my
health without him.
And to me.
For every company out there thatsays, yeah, we have our own, has
in-house training.
You know what I say to that?
You know, again, you are basingyour training based solely on

(14:53):
what happens in your market, inthis box in your company.
Whereas somebody like a PAX istaking it all in from the entire
industry.
All right, so proactive safety.

James Blain (15:04):
Wait, we're we, we, we gotta, we gotta stay on this
for a second, right?
Because your, your analogy, man,there's so many facets to it
that, that we could bring inhere and I think it's probably
the easiest way to explain this,right?
Plus I wanna see pictures of, ofthe six pack abs in the pecs.
But, but, we'll, we'll

Ken Lucci (15:19):
pack, as I said, I said really nice packs.

James Blain (15:22):
Okay.
Well, I wanna see the reallynice pex

Ken Lucci (15:25):
When I had a six pack, it was'cause I was, I was
kayaking every day down inFlorida.
But I digress.
Go

James Blain (15:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so look, I brought that upfor two reasons, right?
The, the first is.
A lot of times what happens,right when you go through it to
force, you go through a breakup,you go through whatever, man, I
gotta get sexy again.
I'm gonna hit the gym.
And, and you crank on it, andthen what happens?
You kind of taper off, right?
We see the same thing in ourworld.

(15:51):
Well, we had an accident, we hadan incident.
We get real serious about it.
We, we, you know, we're getting,we're gonna get it all taken
care of.
We're gonna really focus on ourtraining program and then it
tapers off, right?
We gotta get someone on the roadfaster.

Ken Lucci (16:02):
but what you're saying is proactivity is all
about consistency

James Blain (16:05):
It is, it's a hundred percent about
consistency.
It's about the reps, it's aboutdoing it right.
And two, the point you madeabout a personal trainer, right?
There's, there's, and, and I becompletely transparent, other
than creating your own platformto do it, there's nothing about
what we're training or doingthat you can't go put together
yourself.

(16:26):
The difference, and you'vealready nailed it, is one, this
is what we do.
I live on the road.
I live with my customers.
I eat, sleep, breathe this, thisis my world.

Ken Lucci (16:37):
and the input data and.
The program is based on thetouch points that happen around
the country and the experiencesaround the country, not just
your specific company.
And it's, it's, tailored to, youknow, every facet of what could
go wrong in the space, not justin your market, not just your

(16:57):
specific vehicles.
I mean, you know, it, it's, it'sfunny, some people think of, of
Pax as chauffeur etiquettetraining.
I'm like, dude, you have no, I,it is so much, it's so much more
than that.
It's like when someone says,well, what you do is format a p
and l.
That is, look what we do is we

James Blain (17:17):
syn Excel spreadsheet.

Ken Lucci (17:18):
right.
We teach you how to format itand how to read it and what's
important about it and when,when you're not profitable,
what's wrong with it.
So the depth of safety training,let's just, the, the basic
elements you, you do, you thinkyou can't really have a decent
safety program.
Be proactive about it without amanaging a telematics system,

(17:40):
correct.

James Blain (17:41):
Well, I think what you are, talking about, let's
stick with that health analogy.
You know, if you are going tothe gym, right, you can go to
the gym, you can work out, youcan, you know, figure out
machines.
You can do it all on your own.
You can, I mean, that's whatthey used to do.
But I can tell you right now,there's not a pro athlete in his
right mind who isn't wearing anApple watch, a Fitbit.

(18:02):
All the tracking equipment has apersonal trainer is if you wanna
get the most, you, you have togo down those roads

Ken Lucci (18:08):
Oh, it was, it, it rang home to me to have, to have
somebody like a Pax to me isequivalent to when I, and to
have somebody like what we do isthe equivalent to when I used to
drive Derek Jeter to battingpractice in the morning and the
bat, the, the hitting coach usedto meet him there.

(18:29):
I'm like, KA, you need a, youneed a pitching coach.
He's like, Ken, I'm telling youright now, you cannot play this
game without continuouscoaching.
And you have to be able to becoachable.
There is not anybody in, andwhen I see players, new players,
or seasoned players, I say tothem, you need to play this game

(18:53):
and you need to hone your skillsevery day.
Like it was the last game of theWorld series along with the
first day, the first game youever played.
So, um, so proactivity isconsistency.
Proactivity to me is also, it'salso best practices.

James Blain (19:51):
Agreed.
And I, I think, I think thebiggest thing I, I'm gonna give
a a, I've probably given this onthe podcast before, but I'll
give this quote.
When I was a kid, my dad told methat you don't go to college to
learn what you're gonna do atyour job, right?
A doctor is not going to medicalschool to learn every scenario,
everything, right?

(20:12):
They're gonna get on the jobtraining, they're gonna see
cases on, they're going to learnthe mindset and the way that
doctors think.
An engineer is not going toengineering school to learn how
to engineer stuff.
They're learning how to thinkand apply and solve problems in
the same way as an engineer, Iwould tell you that when it
comes to being proactive, youhave to learn how to have a

(20:34):
proactive mindset.
You know, for me, my thing.
A proactive mindset is whereyou're trying to get ahead of
issues and solve problems beforethey happen.
Whether that be your financials,whether that's your marketing,
whether that's your safety, youknow, business development, it
doesn't matter, you know, as weprogress this conversation,

(20:56):
you're gonna see this bleed overinto all of it.
But most importantly, I thinkthe difference between being
proactive and trying to getahead, because I do think
they're different, right?
Being proactive and trying toget ahead are completely
different.
And that someone who isproactive is typically someone

(21:17):
who is being intentional.
I can try to work ahead, I cantry and get, you know, ahead of
myself.
That's not being proactive.
Proactive is, I'm intentionallysaying, Hey, I know that I have
to do this now to make thingseasier later.

Ken Lucci (21:33):
I agree.
I agree.
And when I think of proactivity,I think of planning.
Right.
But, but let's, let's just makeit simple for everybody out
there proactivity.
at its basis, if you accept thepremise that most business
people are reactive, they'rereacting to situations that are

(21:54):
occurring, I think the, the, thebasic starting point is don't
let the issue happen again.
Okay.
So,

James Blain (22:06):
the 72 hour rule, don't be the one that sweeps it
under the rug.

Ken Lucci (22:10):
so a couple things.
You have to put the foundationalelements of a safety program
together.
You have to have the safetymanual, the telematics, the
ongoing training.
and you have to manage the dataand manage, manage what you see.
Okay.
And constantly reinforce.
That's the consistency piece.
I have a client who I reallylike.

(22:33):
Uh, I mean, I, I like all myclients so they wouldn't be my
clients.

James Blain (22:36):
But this one more than the others,

Ken Lucci (22:38):
a couple people who are no longer my clients are no
longer my clients'cause I justdidn't like them.
Right.
But, but, and I, I don't losemany clients.
But, but when a client is notlistening, I, I, you can almost
tell it.
I stop talking and I really stopengaging with them proactively.

James Blain (22:56):
Oh,

Ken Lucci (22:57):
And this one particular client is stuck.
And he's stuck in, in many waysin his business.
And I say to him, you know,you've talked to me several
times about things that aregoing wrong out in the field,
uh, with the vehicles and.
my feeling with this is, is ifit happens once, it's your fault

(23:19):
that it happened a second time.

James Blain (23:21):
Yep.

Ken Lucci (23:22):
Okay.
So, so, okay.
So that's safety.
My other pet peeve aboutproactivity is this has been
2025 has been a different yearthan 22, 23 and 24, right?
22 coming out of the pandemic,everybody was on a sugar high
raising their rates.

(23:42):
Right?
I think 23 was a really, reallystrong year because people
raised their rates, raised theirrates in 22, and they had the
teams back together in 23 and,and get their stuff.
But, but I have to tell you, thesentiment in 25 is a little bit
different.

James Blain (23:57):
Oh, it's completely different.

Ken Lucci (23:59):
is completely different.
As I prepare for the state ofthe industry, we're pulling our
data and there's a lot ofcompanies out there that are
flat.
Okay.
When you look at the overalltravel feeders, the, the
airlines, the, uh, corporatetravel, the group and meeting
industry, the cruise industry,the private jet industry, all of

(24:22):
those industries are up nowwith, with a couple of caveats.
Summer's, tourist season wasdown okay.
Because of the tariffs and, youknow, whatever, geopolitical,
but overall corporate travel andairline travel is up.
So, you know how I am and I, Itroll Facebook and I, and I

(24:46):
shake my head.
When I listen, I see operators,is it, is business flat for
everybody, you know?
I've come up with a phrase thatit's not your market, it's your
mindset and proactivity.
We just touched upon it a littlebit with safety, but
proactivity, I wanna talk aboutbusiness development.
Okay.

(25:06):
Because, you know, it seems likeyou've been on the road nonstop.

James Blain (25:11):
I fair statement.

Ken Lucci (25:13):
doing business development.
Okay.
And in our own businesses, whenwe get into any kind of a lull,
which doesn't happen anymore,when we were getting into a
lull, it's because we didn'thave consistent business
development going on.
We would take on engagements, wewould be immersed in the

(25:34):
engagements, and we would stopour marketing.
This was before we had John.
So I wanna talk to the operatorsout there that say, you know,
this is an extremely tough year.
No, it's not.
Okay.
what I would challenge everyoperator is to answer the
question for themselves is, haveyou increased your proactivity

(25:57):
on both sales and marketing?
Oh, I've upped, I've upped my,uh, my Google, my Google Ads
budget.

James Blain (26:03):
Oh geez.
Here we go.

Ken Lucci (26:05):
no.
Don't get me on that soapbox.
Right?
Don't get me started on that.
So, when I think of businessdevelopment and proactivity, w
what does it mean to you?
Because, I mean, you've been outthere kicking ass at these
associations.
What does proactive sales andmarketing mean to you?

James Blain (26:21):
So I will tell you, for me, a lot of that came from
my time in a, they were actuallynow in a, a council in a, b, a.
But back then we were just agroup and it was called the
driving force.
And the whole idea was thedriving force was, this is kinda
circa 2020.
we're trying to help operatorswith recruiting, with hiring,

(26:42):
with that piece.
And we developed an entirefreaking manual.
It was, it, it literally was aguide.
That was all of the amazing waysthat you could hire and train
and get people up and get peoplegoing and get'em excited and
recruit'em in, you know, and,and it was, you wanna talk about
an all star team, right?

(27:03):
I had the least amount ofexperience at anyone on this
group.
We've got Brett Maitland, we'vegot, you know, Adam Hall, um,
Aaron was running it.
I've got Pam Ez from Daco, youknow, Mike McDonald.
We've got this All Star team,and

Ken Lucci (27:16):
So, but tee it up.
This is during the pandemic

James Blain (27:18):
This is, this is coming out of the pandemic,

Ken Lucci (27:22):
right.
You and, and you had to beproactive

James Blain (27:25):
you had to be proactive, you had to try new
things.
You had to go out on a limb.
You're trying to get your, youknow, your driver force back.
You're trying to get newdrivers.
And I gotta tell you.
The things that we would hear ishiring's, toughs, hiring's
tough.
You don't understand hiringstuff.
Do you know what percentage ofthe people that we would hear

(27:47):
that from actually used allthese resources?
Right.
We've got probably a couplehundred years of experience on
that group.

(29:02):
Literally a couple hundred yearsprobably of experience between
everyone on that committee.
And we've put together thisguide and people are doing the
same things over and over andover, and they're not trying new
things and, hold on.
But, but here's where I wannabring it back to something you
said earlier, they'rerationalizing it, they're doing

(29:23):
the same things as they werebefore.
They aren't working and they'rerationalizing it with, well, you
know, it's just a hard, and, andthis is what you're talking
about a second ago.
Well, it's just a hard market.
Well, the mindset is, I don'tneed the change.
It's not me, it's theenvironment.

Ken Lucci (29:41):
Well, and, and you know, I, I, I have, I have a
famous saying.
I, I used it at a 20 group withsome of the most profitable
companies in the industry.
I was invited, you know, one of'em is the head of a global
network and the, the others,every single one of'em is over
20 million, well, most of'emover 20 million.
And I said, you know, to someextent I like to talk to people
who are non profitable becausethey listen better.

(30:03):
And they say, what do you,that's kind of insulting, Ken.
I'm like, look, you're extremelysuccessful.
The problem with people who aresuccessful is omniscience
thinking where they thinkthey're the smartest person in
the room and they don't ask forhelp.
And second of all, they alsothink.
And some of them don't listen tothe advice when they get it.
you are so successful that youthink that tomorrow is gonna be

(30:24):
like today and yesterday.
And I think that that's the keyto proactivity in business
development is just'cause itworked last year.
Just'cause it worked last month.
Just'cause it worked for you foryour entire career.
It does not mean that it's gonnawork tomorrow.
You know, there was a time,there was a time where direct
mail was fantastic, then it wentout of favor because of email.

(30:47):
Well, now it's back.
Okay.
So, and Arthur Messina fromCreator Card talked about that
on the episode.
But as far as sales andmarketing bd, so you hit upon
something, you know, you, youdid it on the, the hiring
project that you have.
But as far as to me on proactivesales and marketing it's the
same thing with safety.

(31:08):
It's about consistency.
Okay.
It's about, in as far as I'mconcerned, in sales and
marketing, not only is itconsistency when you, when you
start something, see it through,it's about measurement of
everything that you do.
But more than anything,proactive, as far as sales and
marketing to me is not beingafraid to try new things and not

(31:31):
being afraid.
In my estimation, the biggestissue is it's, it's a much
tougher market in any businessto appear above the noise.
So I think the secret toproactive sales and marketing in
our space, as far as I'mconcerned, starts with two x or

(31:54):
three x the amount of marketingyou're doing.
And I do not mean triple yourGoogle Ads budget, I mean.
Try two or three different typesof different things.
Okay.
To go out there and reach yourtarget audiences.
Okay.
But do more, more than what you,traditionally been doing.

(32:15):
Well, what do I, what do I meanby that?
We've helped five of our retain.
Yeah.
Five of our retained clients,three of them have hired
salespeople and the other twoare just launching it outside
salespeople, but they'reactually hybrid.
They're inside and outside andwe've designed a program that
starts with their existingcustomer base and I've asked the

(32:38):
question, I said, okay, this ispro, this is gonna be proactive.
When was the last time youreached out to all of these
people?
Assured.
Assured that you have thecontact information of everybody
inside that company that couldpossibly by transportation.
So proactive.

(32:58):
Building out of the contacts,proactive contacts.
Okay.
Instead of just waiting for themto call you by reservation with
our program, one of the thingswe do is we look at same time
last year and the next threemonths, and we say, you know
something, last year inSeptember you did 75,000 with
them.
we didn't see that this year.

(33:19):
We're not seeing that.
Or, you know what they did?
They did 80,000 with you lastNovember.
You better reach out to them andsee if we're gonna get that
again.
proactivity to me is consistencyof your campaigns.
It's two or three xing.
The the strategies that you'reusing for, for both things,
sales and marketing specificallymarketing and promotion.

(33:42):
And then the other thing to meis, is reactivity.
Is it this industry is builtaround waiting for the
reservation to take place ratherthan.
Using the data from past yearsto project, predict and manage

(34:03):
the sales that can take place.
I mean, proactive top fivecustomers, one of'em is a law
firm.
Geez.
Do you think they're the onlylaw firm in Boston?
Do you think they're the onlylaw firm in la?
Chances are no.
How about we proactively createa list of the top 20?
Right.
So I, I mean, it is funny, theindustry to me is, it's

(34:24):
interesting.
It seems to me like it's in aperiod where it's its own worst
enemy at this point.

James Blain (34:29):
Yeah, but here's the, here's the thing, right?

Ken Lucci (34:32):
some companies.

James Blain (34:34):
Yeah.
But you know, if you, if youwant the easiest example of
being proactive.
Right.
the person that's, and, andwe're, we're in the driving
industry, so I'll make it realeasy.
The person that is driving,looking two to three car lengths
ahead is a reactive driver.
They're going to have to reactto what happens in the

(34:54):
environment when it happens in areal time.
'cause if they don't, theycrash.
The proactive driver is drivingthe horizon.
They know what's coming upahead.
They know what's further downthe road.
They know to get into a lane toposition.
Now how do you, They're managingit.
now,

Ken Lucci (35:13):
They're monitoring the horizon and they're managing
themselves.

James Blain (35:16):
They're exactly, but they're positioning
themselves before the situationhappens.
And by changing position beforethey reach the situation, A lot
of times they've already takenaction that prevents them from
ever having to take a reaction.
And I'll repeat

Ken Lucci (35:35):
Or Or guarantees the result, it guarantees the

James Blain (35:38):
will.
Not only does it guarantee theresult, it changes the situation
and the outcome because forexample, if you're driving two
to three cars ahead and someonecuts you off, you've now gotta
worry about, can I break intime?
If you are not even in that laneand it happens in a completely
different lane, you don'tnecessarily have to react to

(35:59):
that because you weren't cutoff, right?
The situation never occurredwarranting that.
Now, you talked about themarketing.
If you are looking at yourmarketing, I'll give you a great
example.
In my world, I know that aroundspring and fall.
There's a big uptick in shows,and so I know that for us, we

(36:19):
ramp up our marketing going intothat, and then coming out of
that, we know that we still keepmarketing up.
But guess what I'm reallyworried about coming out of that
now, I'm really worried aboutdelivering and trying to knock
it outta the park for all ofthose new clients so that I can
ride those cycles.
I can't tell you how many timesin business you see people that

(36:41):
are just basically reacting,Hey, we had this great uptick in
marketing.
We're gonna absolutely plow intoit, but never taking the step
back to look at it and say, Hey,you know, every single year for
the past four years, this hasbeen my best month.
Maybe I should look at how doesit taper off?
How does it build up?
How do I prep for it?
How do I possibly shift some ofthat over?

(37:04):
That's kind of what theproactiveness becomes in every
part of the business.

Ken Lucci (37:09):
Right.
And, and, and unfortunately,fortunately or unfortunately,
every operator that's reachedany level of success in the
business pretty much hasmastered getting a car from
point A to point B.
right.
hopefully.
But where I think there's adearth, there's where there is

(37:30):
definitely, um, there's alwaysseeking the easy answer is,
okay, who, who can I use forGoogle, for a Google paid ads or
who, who's out there for digitalmarketing instead of developing
a business development plan thatshould be implemented like a, an
eight cylinder engine.

(37:50):
Right.
Whereas, you know, maybe one ofthose cylinders is Google ads in
a certain, you know, certainspace, et cetera.
You know, it's funny, I remembersomebody saying to me last year,
oh my god, you know, they saidthis in like in January.
Oh my God.
New New Year's was terrible forus.
And the ho there were no holidayparties.

(38:10):
And I said, okay, so let's backup a step.
You know, first of all, you'rein a winter climate, so guess
what, if you had a shittyDecember and, and New Year's,
you're gonna have a tough timeJanuary, February.
But anyway, or what did you doto promote the holiday party
use?
Well, uh, really not anything.
We just didn't get a lot ofcalls.

(38:32):
Okay.
Well.
No offense.
Shame on you.
Okay.
If you, shame on you if, if youare not starting way before,
okay.
In anything.
we used to when I was anoperator, you know, a lot of
people who live in Florida gonorth for Thanksgiving.
Okay?
So we would start before, rightbefore Halloween saying if

(38:57):
you're planning yourThanksgiving flights book your
round trip now.
Okay?
The same thing with holidayparties.
We, we used to do, specificemail to all our corporate
clients, you know, and he, this,listen, Uber was still in
business.
I mean, they, they were, in thebeginning, people were enamored
with them.

(39:17):
And we would say, listen, youknow what?
if there's a a holiday party,we're gonna be, you know, we're
gonna give you a special rate onSUVs or a special rate on group
vehicles so that multiplecouples can go in the same
vehicle.
And the same thing we would dofor New Year's.
We would, we would advertise NewYear's is the amateur hour.
Leave your transportation to theprofessionals in addition to

(39:40):
that.
You know, the funny thing, andI'll tell you this is a really
good proactive story.
We noticed that around uh,Valentine's Day, we used to get
a lot of calls from ourprofessional, um, sports players
saying, Hey Ken, you know, I, Iwanna take my wife out for
Valentine's Day.
Can I have a car?
And I'm like, yeah, no problem.
And then they call back and she,I can't get any decent

(40:01):
restaurant reservations.
So we used to, this is a reallygood tip and probably
interesting, but we used to makereservations at the top 10 most
romantic restaurants.
Under the name AmbassadorLimousine, we would say,

James Blain (40:18):
So you had it ready to give out?

Ken Lucci (40:20):
we've got a VIP client.
He doesn't want to give hisname.
We wanna secure this.
Okay.
We, we want, is this a, are yougonna do this for us?
And that was like, I learnedthat the first or second year,
because we always had theYankees for an accountant.
And then we had the bucks for anaccount.
And then we had, the raise.
The guy that ran the clubhouseused to love us anyway, so when

(40:42):
we did it for the VIPs, then thenext year we sent it out to our
entire database saying We havesecured reservations at these
restaurants.
First come, first serve, don'tmiss out, but it's part of these
packages.
Okay.
And we would go from the PhantomRolls Royce down to a sedan,
Phantom Es, Cadillac, Escalade,Escalade executive and standard

(41:07):
Sedan.
And I'm telling you, theyabsolutely reservations are
already taken place.
And we have a, a seven.
A nine or an eight.
Right?
What do you want?
The Phantom.
The Phantom sold out to thepoint where I, I mean, I would
go to the Rolls dealership andsay you got anything, you know,
put a dealer plate on it andthey, you know, I think one year

(41:27):
we ended up doing it, but mywhole point was We would start
planning that in January.

James Blain (41:33):
But, but let's stop for a second, Canton.
'cause you're, you're nailingexactly what I talked about
earlier because if you were justtrying to get ahead and you're
like, yeah, I booked thesereservations, then I hoed them,
right?
You have something differenthere and that you are being
proactive because you're beingvery intentional about it.

(41:54):
You are building out a campaign,you're building out packages,
you're building out a plan.
It's not, yeah, we made a bunchof reservations so that we
could, you know,

Ken Lucci (42:02):
no.
And did the Rolls Royce package,the Rolls Royce package had.
The Rolls-Royce package had roroses in it and it had a bottle
of champagne in the back.
And that son of a bitch went for1995 that night.
And, and I was like, I don'tgive a shit if it doesn't sell.
It did it really?
Every, and we had to put, we putthe antique rolls on on as a

(42:23):
secondary package as well.
Right.
And it really, but you arecorrect.
And you know, once we had it thefirst year it was, we rolled
that out every year.
The same with holiday, the samewith holiday lights, the same
with board meetings.
Okay.
Every public company that hasboard meetings has of around the
same time every year.

(42:44):
Okay.
And we were smart enough to knowwhen we served serviced a board
meeting that they came to Tampato, to play golf.
We would make the phone call thenext year and say, are you
coming back?
No, we're not this year.
We're going down to Miami.
We can help you in Miami, but.
But we had to do that 90 to 120days before by looking at the

(43:08):
data that we already had.

James Blain (43:10):
But it's, it's interesting, right?
Because seasonality is such agreat example.
I can tell you one of the thingsand you're gonna laugh'cause
you're the financial guy.
One of the things that I screwedup my first probably five, 10
years having my own business wastaxes.
Right?
Speaking of something that'srecurring in practice,'cause I'd
wait till the end of the damnyear to figure out what I

(43:32):
personally owed in taxes.
The day I figured out how toactually actively start being
proactive about my finances,changed everything for me owning
a business, right?
Because it's so funny, we talkabout it that safety marketing,
finance, like this is somethingthat this mindset, even if it's

(43:52):
not a seasonal thing, any partof this, I mean, being proactive
applies in so many areas now.
I think one of the things for methat I struggled with initially
was identifying what areas Iwasn't being proactive in.
I found this rule that I reallyliked, right?

(44:13):
And that was that I had a threestrike rule.
Now, this three strike rule, ifit was something really bad,
would escalate.
But if I ever had something thatI reacted to three times and I
didn't automate it, plan for it,be ready and get ahead of it,
then I knew I was screwing up asa business owner.

(44:34):
Now, does that mean thatthere's, and the reason there's
that three strike rule issometimes you get weird crap
that you're just like, this isoff the wall, I'm probably never
gonna deal with again.
So you wanna have some kind offilter.
Right now in the safety world,it's kinda like, okay, if I get
the three little things I knowI've got ahead of it on the
financial side, you know, afterabout the second or third time

(44:55):
that I got a big unexpected taxbill at the end of the year, and
I just scramble to figure outhow to pay it even after, you
know, had a great year.
Spent too much of the money,don't have enough taxes, how
many times are you really gonnalet yourself do that?
But I think this really kind ofhighlights that in all of these
areas, you have to have triggersthat say, Hey, I need to either

(45:18):
automate plan or get ahead of,and be ahead of this and be
intentional to keep stuff frombecoming, Hey, I'm just a
firefighter in my business.

Ken Lucci (45:27):
And, and that's, you know, that's a, that's an
extremely good term because mostsmall business people are
firefighters.
Let, before we leave businessdevelopment, sales, and
marketing, I'm gonna tell youthe number one.
The number one tool you can usefor, for, for sales and business
development is an eventscalendar.
It's a, it's a calendar for theyear.

(45:50):
Okay.
It's a calendar for the year,and then it is to look at the
events that take place from acorporation perspective.
Most corporations do planningsessions.
Most corporations do employeeengagement outings, or they have
an employee annual event.
Most corporations, the largeones, they all have a board

(46:10):
meeting.
Okay?
even some of them.
We used to have advisorymeetings at Ambassador.
That it was show everybody inthe company was invited to them,
but we had a team.
Anyway, so a calendar of eventsto plan around your sales and
marketing.
And the other piece of, of salesand marketing that I think that
people get scared of is theythink that to be a great

(46:32):
salesperson, you have to be agreat communicator.
No, all you have to do is haveconsistency.
Okay?
You can go to Arthur Messina andDrew Messina and have them do an
electronic brochure andelectronic video that makes you
look like the biggest company inthe world.
But you don't have to have, youdon't have to be the guy
pitching it, right?
So it's all about consistency.

(46:54):
And to me, it's all about, ifproactivity to me is increasing
the amount of.
times the phone rings everysingle day.
It starts with what your basedata is.
You know, I was on with somebodyyesterday, great kid, uh, from
Montana, really like him, lovedthe market, and he's gone from
practically zero to$500,000, youknow, over overnight.

(47:15):
And, and, and we worked togetheron the financial foundation, and
we'll get to proactivity in aminute.
And I said, listen, the biggestproblem you have right now is
your chief cook and bottlewasher.
And you have to decide what isthe most important things for
you to focus on and then startat 500 KA year.
You need to start off loadingthose so that during the prime

(47:37):
sales times you can beproactive.
Well, what do you mean?
Well, you are in the land of thehigh-end phishing, uh, fishing
lodges.
I used to go to them, uh, mybuddy Wade Boggs, when he was a
client, Wade used to go outthere one day.
We, I was coming into HubbardLodge and Wade was leaving.
I'm.
Jesus.
I mean, what are the odds ofthis?
Anyway, you are also in the landof ski season.

(47:59):
You are also in the land of someof the most prestigious ranches
in the country.
You need to get out thereproactively because nobody sells
the business like you.
So to one of my favorite clientsin the world who confessed to me
the other day, probably wrongly,that he spends 15 hours a week
doing billing during the day.
I said, are you outta your mind?

(48:20):
I You, you are one of the biggercompanies in your market and you
the owner sitting doing billing,you know, first of all, he might
have a trust issue.
I said,

James Blain (48:28):
Little bit.
Little bit.

Ken Lucci (48:30):
right?
Why don't we start, by youtraining somebody to do the
vanilla ice cream billing andthen you can.
You can look over the globalstuff and the high touch stuff
'cause I get it.
So proactivity is also aboutdoing the right thing at the
right times.
Alright, so final thing aboutproactivity that we'll talk
about today is financial.

(48:53):
So for every one of our retainedclients, if you bought our
course, you know, one of thethings we do is we teach you how
to manage your primary metricson a monthly basis.
And then when if something goeswrong with them and the primary
metrics are not good, we teachyou the secondary numbers to
look at.
So if your gross profit marginsaren't that great.

(49:17):
We teach you, okay, let's lookat your fuel.
Let's look at your fleet.
Let's look at your driver.
Something is off here.
In addition to that, we teachyou from a liquidity perspective
what your, what your liquidityshould be for the size of
company you are.
You know, their lending ratios.
So to me, financial planning istremendously overlooked because
people, they say, well, I, Ihave an accountant.

(49:40):
Okay, great.
Do you look at the reports everysingle month?
Uh, no.
He just prepares my taxes.
Okay, that's not financialplanning.
That's retroactive.
This is what you owe.
Do you know that 30% of smallbusiness owners have to either
borrow a credit card, they haveto borrow, uh, I think it was
28% of of small business ownershave to borrow to pay their

(50:03):
taxes.
Did you know that they have toeither use their line or they
have to use credit card, etcetera, et cetera, because they
haven't set aside the capital.
Right?

James Blain (50:11):
I I've been in that boat, right?
I mean, that was, and, and it'sfunny because that my first
business, right?
My, my first business, you don'tthink about how it works.
You don't take the time to,again, you're not proactive.
You don't get the financialeducation.
You're trying to make the billswork.

Ken Lucci (50:27):
you are working in the business to try to generate
the revenue.
You're not keeping score.
So, you know, one of the thingsthat we teach people is, look,
if you are on our financialprogram and you've got the
monthly financial reporting andhopefully the, the KPI side, we
want you to do proactivefinancial planning with an

(50:48):
annual budget.
And it starts with what you didlast year.
Okay?
It starts with what were yourmetrics last year?
What were good, bad, what areyou gonna improve?
So budgeting is proactivity.
In addition, it's, it's, to me,it's proactivity is planning for
and calculating how muchliquidity you have.
Okay?
So for everybody out there, foreverybody out there, look at how

(51:11):
much cash that you have in thebank at the end of every month.
If it was not appreciably morethan when you started, you have
a profitability problem that canbe fixed, but why should I worry
about that?
Well, first of all, if you wannabuy any asset, the worst way to
buy it is zero down.
But you want to have enoughliquidity to plan for your next

(51:34):
vehicle.
So how do you do that?
You set aside capital plan foryour down payment plan for your
fleet insurance down payment.
This, for some reason, has beenthe year of people wanting to
sell because they can't.
Manage the new fleet, uh, theirfleet insurance price increase,
and they don't have the cash todo the down payment.

(51:56):
True story.
I, I had a, I had a guy, I don'tdo business with him, who called
me I think three years ago totry to sell his business.
And I said, look what?
We're not a good fit.
He called me again to try tosell his business and I said,
okay, Lou, what, what is yourreasoning?
He said, Ken, I, I, I gotta getout.
I don't have the money to, uh,to pay for my fleet insurance.
And I already have a secondmortgage on my house.

(52:18):
And I said to him, you know, notto rep salt in the wound, but
three years ago I said to you,you, you need to get your
financial house in order andwe're not a good fit because,
you know, we charge for that.
We, you either gotta buy ourcourse or you gotta pay us to do
it.
So the lack of proactivity onthe financial side of the world,

(52:39):
uh, financial things to me hasanother aspect to it.
Number one.
I don't think people like totalk about finances and they're
embarrassed about what theydon't know.
Number two, they think they canfarm it out or outsource it, let
it be someone else's problem.
And I just wanna dispel the,that myth number one.

(53:01):
Most, most of the CPAs that werun into, with the exception of
one out of 300 companies, theexception of one, this one woman
in California just happens to bein wine country.
This, this, this, fractional CPAtook it upon her herself to

(53:24):
learn the metrics the healthymetrics of the business by going
back and looking and saying,wait a minute, four years ago
our fuel was this, five yearsago our fleet insurance was
that.
And we had, okay, but, uh, butshe's the only CPA.
She has other clients, but thisis the only one she had in this
business.
And I always say to people, yourCPA's job is not to know the

(53:48):
financial metrics of thetransportation industry.
Okay?
Their job is to, is to tell youhow much tax you owe.
Okay?
If they're really good, theywill start telling you tax
planning.
So around, let to me, let megive you the financial planning
basics.
Number one is to know how muchcash you should have in the

(54:10):
bank.
Cash liquidity.
I'm gonna give you one number.
If you are a million dollaroperator, you should have no
more than$300,000 in long-termdebt on your fleet.
You should have no debt on amillion dollar business with the
exception of the fleet assets.
Second number, if you're amillion dollar company, you

(54:32):
should have the equivalent ofthree months of your base
expenses.
In liquid cash available.
Not a line of credit.
Liquid cash.
So what does that mean?
The g and a of a business, theoverhead of a million dollar
business is about$250,000 ayear.

(54:55):
Right.
Plus your fleet, all your fleetpayments.
So to keep the business open,you need to have three months of
your overhead.
Okay.
Because even if the drivers, youknow, are calling and saying
there's no work, you don't haveto pay them if, you know, if you
lay them off, you still have tokeep the business running.
So three months of basicexpenses, your

James Blain (55:17):
real quick before, before you go into what's
covered, right?
Because I know I can hear italready, right?
I, I get to hear the operatorsaying it.
Ken, you want me to put all thatmoney in there in cash, not
making me any money just sittingthere like, shouldn't I invest
it?
Shouldn't I have it somewhere Ican make money on that?
Money should I mean cash?

(55:37):
Are

Ken Lucci (55:37):
good.
Good question.
So, good question.
I'm gonna give you the opposite.
I mean, I'm dealing with anoperator the other day who has
several million dollars sittingin the bank and I'm like, dude,
can we please put this into someshort term investment?
Here's the key with cashliquidity.
Here's the key with theliquidity.
You gotta be able to get to itin a reasonable timeframe wi

(56:00):
within an emergency.
When you look back at thepandemic, the companies that
didn't make it through the first120 days and they had to
liquidate fleet, were cash poor.
Okay?

James Blain (56:11):
Yeah.

Ken Lucci (56:12):
And I can, I can call some people out, but I won't
'cause they're dead soldiers andthey're not in business anymore.
But if you look at the first 120days, there was a very prominent
operator in Connecticut thatwent outta business because he
owed another operator so muchmoney.
Okay.
He basically had to make a dealwith'em to take over the
business, which was dead.

(56:33):
I mean, the business, thebusiness didn't return.
I mean, uh, maybe a third of itreturned after the pandemic,
but, but that was catastrophic.
And, and the other thing I'mgonna hear is, well, that's
never gonna happen again.
Let me tell you something, andthis is gonna intersect with
your world, okay?
You have a catastrophicaccident.

(56:53):
I don't care.
I've never seen a business thatdidn't have a catastrophic
accident where the results wereconsuming of the business.
Business dipped.
After that, you had to put downmoney to pay, to rebuild the
vehicle.
You had to buy, in certaincases, you had to hire a lawyer.
In other cases, obviously youhad to, you had to replace the

(57:16):
vehicle.
Okay?
But it's something about whenthat ca catastrophic accident
happens, okay?
I mean.
It, it, in some cases, itliterally can be the death nail
of the business, but think ofcash liquidity as it, it, it is,
it is literally like Popeye'sspinach.

(57:36):
Okay?
If, if you are a weakling, youdon't have any cash, if any blip
in this, in blip comes up on theradar, you are not gonna be able
to survive it.
The fleet insurance is the onethat is interesting to me
because no offense if you own abusiness and you can't come up
with 50,000 in cash, okay,without a line of credit or

(57:57):
putting a second mortgage onyour house, what are you in
business for?
If, if, right?

James Blain (58:03):
there's more to it than that, right?
Because we, we spent half apodcast talking about proactive.
I am so tired, right?
This happens to me all the time.
Hey, I got my renewal coming up.
How fast can we train my entireteam on a year's worth of
training?
I haven't done.
Do you think the insurancecompany's stupid?
Right?
One, if You do it, they're gonnaknow And two, you should have

(58:26):
done that all year long.
And then when it's time to doyour renewal, you need to
present yourself, right?
You need to put your portfolioof, this is our safety
portfolio, here's our training,here's our telematics, here's
how we're spending time

Ken Lucci (58:40):
Here's our annual report.
Here's our annual safety report.
You know, we, we are ble, we'reblessed.
Coming up on another podcast,we're gonna have one of the, one
of the brightest guys, mostsuccessful guys in the insurance
industry.
Tim Delaney from Lancer and,okay.
And you know, Tim, one of thethings that gets me about Tim is
he's a gentleman.
Okay?
But I can tell you right now, ifhe was less of a gentleman, he

(59:04):
would say, flat out, we havebeen saying to you guys for
years, you need to do thisstuff.
Okay?
And now what's happened?
All of the insurance industryforces, uh, the, the cost of the
cost of reinsurance, the, thecommercial losses, the nuclear

(59:26):
verdicts, they've all come hometo roost.

James Blain (59:30):
It is a storm.
It's a storm of all of themtogether.

Ken Lucci (59:33):
correct, so if you listened to the proactivity that
they were preaching, you'd be ingood shape.
I know one large operator, it'sa$90 million operator who got an
insurance decrease.
Do you know why he blew away hisinsurance company with what you
just talked about?
His safety portfolio.

(59:54):
Okay.
He did a full on presentation ofhow safe his business were, was
coupled with the lo loss runs.
It, it, it ended well.
Okay.
Yeah.
Here are my loss runs, but letme show you my program.
So anyway, from a proactivityperspective on financials, you
should be prepared.
To show a, be a lender or toshow a potential buyer or a

(01:00:19):
seller that you are financiallyviable either to borrow, to buy
a piece of equipment or toborrow to buy a company, or
you've got your financial stuffin order to sell.
So another story, and I knowwe're running up on time.
Guy calls me, love this guy,guy's in, guy's in the Southern

(01:00:40):
city.
He calls me and I would take,take his phone call if I was on
Mars.
He's like, Ken, I got a companyI wanna buy.
I'm like, I am, I'm thrilled towork with you.
Okay.
He said, but I'm going on atrip.
I said, I got it.
Don't worry about it.
I'll talk, I'll, I'll handle it.
So he gives me the buyer'sinformation and I con, he

(01:01:02):
connects us by email.
He gives us the sellerinformation.
I connect by email and theseller says, listen, I've got a
business broker.
Okay.
That was four weeks ago.
We still have not gotten anydata.
I've called the business broker.
Okay?

James Blain (01:01:17):
Okay.

Ken Lucci (01:01:17):
This is a guy that, the, the seller is a guy that I
admire, and he's been inbusiness for 30 years and he's
decided to sell his business.
And he's using a guy that's apart-time business broker who
sells, also sells real estate.
And I said to the broker, Imean, didn't you prep this guy?
Did you do a valuation?

(01:01:37):
No.
And I, and I said to myself,Ken, you are working for the
buyer.
Just tell him what you need.
I gave him a list of what I needand he said, oh, this is very
helpful.
I, the broker said that to me.
So proactivity on the financeside is, is totally having your
house in order, having thecapital set aside.
Let's start with, did you endthe month with more money than

(01:02:04):
you began it after all yourbills are paid?
If the answer is no.
You need to come visit drivingtransactions.
If you don't have a proactivesafety program and you are
facing an insurance renewal, Idon't care if you're just
renewed and you're not happywith the increase, that should
tell you.

(01:02:25):
You need to talk to James sothat next year you're get
proactive now and be ready nextyear.
Oh, so listen, this is a, thisis an hour that's gone by.
real fast.
I love the fact that we took theproactivity and we weaved it
through those three things.
We could spend so much more timeon proactivity.

(01:02:45):
and I appreciate you being here.
I've really missed you.
You've been on the road.
I know I see you on Facebook atevery single association meeting
out there.
I wish I was as young as andaggressive as you.
God, God love you.

James Blain (01:02:57):
I, I, I wish, I wish I was younger.
I could be at more of'em, but,but at a certain point

Ken Lucci (01:03:02):
Listen, you, you're all over the country.
That's, I mean, you are, you areliterally like, there's two or
three of you.
So thank you very much foreverybody for tuning into
another exciting episode of theGround Transportation Podcast.
If you've got any questions,email us.
If you'd like any subjectdiscussed, shoot us an email.
And James, it's been a pleasure.

(01:03:23):
I love it when, uh, a plan comestogether and we can co-host

James Blain (01:03:27):
it is always a pleasure.
And if you guys haven't already,like, subscribe, comment, let us
know you're listening.
Let us know what do you want tohear us talk about?
Who do you wanna hear us talkto?
And thank you again forlistening to the Ground Train
Station podcast.
Ken, it's been a pleasure myfriend.

Ken Lucci (01:03:45):
my pleasure.
I.
Thank you for listening to theground 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 PAXtraining and to contact James,
go to PAX training.com.
And for more information aboutdriving transactions and to

(01:04:06):
contact Ken, Go to drivingtransactions.com.
We'll see you next time on theground transportation podcast.