August 20, 2025 • 47 mins
Do you find yourself working *in* the business, and not *on* the business?
Ever feel like you're wearing too many hats?
You may be suffering from DIY addiction...
On this episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast, Ken and James discuss the hidden costs of micro-managing a business, and why systems, process, and training are so critical for the operation of transportation businesses.
Learn how to find the strength to take back your time, and get back to building your business. Discover why training, outsourcing, and process documentation can accelerate your company's growth. Go from DIY entrepreneur to a thriving business leader. Listen today.
00:00 Welcome
01:42 We'll Do That Ourselves
03:11 The Peter Principle
06:10 Spend Time Now to Save Time Later
08:58 Ken Riding the Rails
10:41 Don't Mow Your Own Grass
13:00 Ken Story
14:03 Tommy Mazi's Famous Line
20:01 Limiting Beliefs
27:14 Shoestringers
28:14 Bookkeeping Services
30:00 Your Business Plan Should be a Two-Sided Coin
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/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ken Lucci (00:24):
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to
another exciting episode of theGround Transportation Podcast.
I am joined by my Esteemedco-host James Blaine from PAX
Training, a self-describedtechno nerd.
It seems like we were just hereminutes ago, James.
James Blain (00:43):
I know.
I know Groundhog Day.
Ken Lucci (00:45):
so thank you very much everybody for joining us,
and today we're going to discusssomething that's near and dear
to both James and I and what wedo, which it, really is a
subject that I think is.
Too many entrepreneurs don'thave a plan to deal with, and
that is the cost of doingeverything yourself.
James Blain (01:07):
A hundred
Ken Lucci (01:07):
ultimate cost of being a DIY business owner,
doing it all yourself.
So James, why don't you lead,off as far as how you see this
affecting operators and what thedownsides are.
James Blain (01:20):
So I think the biggest thing that I've seen,
and I was guilty of it on myfirst business, is especially
operators that are costconscious or shoestring or,
trying to kind of, Hey, I, Idon't wanna spend, instead of
going out and finding a vendoror a ready-made solution or
something to exist, all, I'll doit myself.
(01:42):
We'll put that togetherourselves.
Oh, we'll do this.
I see it with training.
Oh, we're gonna, we, we, we'regonna make our own training
program.
We're gonna do all this.
I've talked to operators beforethat are.
well, you know, I, I had thisissue and, you know, instead of,
when we were growing, instead ofgoing and getting a software
platform, we just used Excel andI made the world's most
complicated Excel spreadsheet.
(02:03):
And we've been using that to,and.
You start seeing these types ofareas, right?
You know, oh, well, instead ofa, instead of having a good
maintenance partner, we got, youknow, one guy and he services
everything and he's our in-housemechanic and he's doing all of
it.
Okay.
There's a time and a place whereit makes sense to in-house,
having your own mechanic, havingyour own staff.
(02:25):
There's a time and a place whereit makes sense to say, Hey.
You know, I, I have thistraining.
I've got one car, I'm gonnateach'em what I do.
There's a time and a place whereit makes sense to do these kinds
of things on a shoestring or onyour own.
But what we see happen time andtime again in the industry is
you have larger companies thatare trying to save money and
ultimately cost themselves moremoney, or keep themselves from
(02:47):
growing and doing that, youknow, it becomes one of those
things where you find yourself.
Reinventing the wheel when youcould have gone to a shelf, got
a part off the shelf, put it inplace in your business, and
moved on to the next problem,and you're almost punishing
yourself as a result.
Ken Lucci (03:03):
Well, there's two things that come to mind.
One is the phrase chief cook andbottle washer, right?
And the other, the other to meis, is the Peter principle.
The Peter principle is whereyou've reached your own level of
incompetence.
Where, and I don't mean to usethe term incompetence, but
you've reached your own level,your, uh, a level where you're
(03:25):
unable to break through to thenext step.
You're unable to scale, you'reunable to buy the next vehicle.
You're, I talked to an operatorthe other day.
Uh, first thing in the morning.
I spoke to him and I said, how'sit going?
And he said, you know, it'sbusiness is good, but I'm just
burning out.
And I Well, tell me what youmean by that.
(03:45):
Well, I'm just doing everything.
I just, I'm a perfectionist andthis is his, his exact words,
I'm a perfectionist You know,I'm doing everything.
I'm doing the reservations, I'mclosing the jobs, I'm doing the
finance.
They said, okay, back up.
I thought when we last talked,you had so and so and she was
helping you.
Yes, but she left and I, okay,well wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
So let's talk about that acouple of, and I do believe
(04:08):
this, the biggest issue that Isee in this industry with
operators that are under 5million.
know, the smaller, the worse itis is the working in the
business and not on thebusiness.
James Blain (04:21):
percent.
110%.
Ken Lucci (04:23):
So, my comment to him was step back, write down
everything that she did, anddesign a job description and
daily activities of the nextperson you're gonna put in her
place.
Then I think you should writedown everything that you do,
every process.
Oh, Ken, it's so much.
(04:43):
Great.
James Blain (04:44):
It doesn't matter.
Ken Lucci (04:45):
Take a yellow pad or a computer screen.
Open up five computer screensand create an Excel sheet for
reservations, one for dispatch,one for billing and accounting.
And literally write down on agranular level, step by step
what it means to do thatprocess.
scaling any business is allabout people.
(05:07):
Processes, procedures andprofit.
James Blain (05:11):
Yep.
Have to have a system.
Ken Lucci (05:12):
right?
You have to have a system and,the excuse of that, I don't have
the money to do that.
Well, that usually means to me,okay?
'cause it's where I gravitate.
You are not pricing yourservices properly because if you
don't have the money.
To evolve the business into thenext level, you're doing
something wrong.
(05:33):
you are the proverbial squirrelon a wheel.
Listen, and there's nothingwrong with that, but don't
delude yourself into thinkingthat you have anything more than
a, you've created a job foryourself that will suffer and
die when you suffer and die.
If you wanna create a businessand you want to employ even the
(05:53):
first person.
Frankly, you owe it to thatperson to have systematized your
business.
I, you know, it's curious to methat people with a service like
Pax, that anybody would say toyou, now I'm just gonna write
down my own training.
Oh, we are different.
James Blain (06:10):
Well, so here's the thing, and you, you've hit on
something really important.
So one of my personal mentors isAthena from BAC up in Alaska,
and we were chatting the othernight.
Ken Lucci (06:20):
way, a state that does not have Uber or Lyft.
James Blain (06:24):
Yeah.
or a ton of, ev, right.
Ken Lucci (06:26):
Lots of moose up there.
Is it moose or me?
But I digest.
James Blain (06:29):
mees.
The mooses, I, don't think theygive rides to the airport either
way.
Um, no, so, so Athena and I weretalking the other night, and I
think one of the things thatcomes up that is massive here
is.
It's limiting beliefs andthere's a lot of people that
have, and you've already hit onthis, which is why I wanted to
bring it up.
A lot of people have theselimiting beliefs of, well, I
(06:50):
can't train someone to do it'cause I'm the only one who can
do it.
Right.
Ken Lucci (06:53):
Oh, I can't find anybody to do
James Blain (06:55):
Well, another good friend of mine, Becky in Boston,
big shout out, Becky, because Iremember sitting down at a show
talking to Becky aboutfrustration with, I was having
man frustration with employeesdo that.
She said, look, it doesn'tmatter how hard it is.
You might have to have someonecome in and do that.
thing.
5, 10, 20 times and you're feellike you're just Groundhogs Day
(07:15):
doing it over and over.
But if you don't invest the timeto develop and teach them and
get where they need to go andhave that process and expand,
you are never going to be ableto hand that process off and be
able to develop processes andsystems.
Right.
So you've got two reallyincredible women in the
industry.
That know about growing andscaling businesses in our
(07:37):
powerhouses, our own right, thatkind of give that same type of
advice of you've got to knowwhen you can expand out by
getting rid of the limitingbeliefs that are telling you,
I'm the only one that can do it.
Right?
Or, you know, I'm the only onethat can do this, or This isn't
something that can be handedoff, or this is something
exclusively for that.
Look If you find ways to go outand again, take advantage of
(08:01):
what's in the industry.
Look, every business might bedifferent, but every business
owner faces similar challenges.
Ken Lucci (08:09):
and every business has the same processes.
I don't give a what industryyou're in.
you have.
the marketing processes, thesales processes, the operations
process, the administrativeprocesses, the finance and
accounting piece, okay.
E every single business does,and, and let's face it, people
get into the limousine space inmany cases because either they
(08:30):
were a driver and listen, someof the biggest Dawson rudder,
right?
I mean, Robert Alexander, someof the biggest players in the
industry got in as drivers andhave grown to be global
companies.
James Blain (08:43):
I mean, look, my business partner got in the same
way, right?
a I mean, literally a borrowedcar and a cell phone,
Ken Lucci (08:48):
so at the end of the day, I get it.
but they have to evolve theircompany, and they have to evolve
their business beyondthemselves.
my dad taught me in many things,and one of the things he taught
me, he was, owns a supersupermarket, and we used to go,
I think I've just told thisstory before.
We used to go on a Sunday.
(09:09):
Back then you'd, you used tobreak down the side of a cow,
right?
They would come in on rails andI, I used to jump on top of the
cow and ride the rail
James Blain (09:20):
I, I can just see you with a butcher's knife
riding a, a cow on a rail,
Ken Lucci (09:23):
no, no.
The the rail, would go from theback loading dock in the ceiling
into, the meat walk-in, and Iwould ride the rail whether
there was a cow on it or not.
There was the big hooks, and Iwould, alright, so on Sunday, I
would say to him, dad.
You know, why are we at thestore and you, you know, you're,
you're cutting meat.
He said, you see this cow?
(09:44):
And I said, yep.
He said, I know how to break itdown and if I break it down on a
Sunday, I don't have to paysomebody$27 an hour.
I mean, this was back in theday.
And, meat cutter was makingserious money.
James Blain (09:58):
Right.
Ken Lucci (09:59):
And his whole point to me was, you need to learn and
you need to know the best way todo everything in your store.
In your business to train peoplehow you want to do it.
But if you get stuck doing ityourself, your business won't
grow.
He used to do that.
He used to cut down the cowbecause he wanted to show the
meat cutter that he was notnecessarily holding him captive,
(10:24):
so to speak.
I know Athena.
I know Athena has a process foreverything.
I mean, there's no question sheis the most organized person in
the world, but what do you doand what do you say to somebody
who's not organized, who justcan't get outta their own way?
James Blain (10:41):
So I tell'em I don't mow grass, right?
what I mean by that is I used toalways mow my own grass, but I
have allergies and it's kind ofmiserable and I hate it.
One day I was at work at one ofmy early jobs and I was still in
corporate life in, in my earlytwenties, and I was talking to a
boss of mine and I said, man, Igotta go home and cut the grass.
He goes, I don't cut grass.
(11:02):
Said, what are you talkingabout?
He goes, well, I sat down oneday and I looked at how much
money I make every hour and whatmy rate is.
And then I realized I could havemy grass cut for$20.
And I said, you know, I make 60bucks an hour.
Why in the hell am I workingdown at 20 bucks an hour?
And not only that, the time withmy kids and family Is way more
(11:24):
valuable.
So why am I going to go andspend that time that investment
on doing it?
Can I mow the grass?
Sure.
Do I know what it needs to looklike?
Sure.
if the guy can't do it thatweek, can I do it so that it,
gets done?
Sure.
Why would I take my valuabletime and do that?
And I tell owners this all time,you know, I get people like, oh,
we're, you know, we we're, we'vebuilt our own training program.
(11:47):
We have our own trainingprogram.
Great.
So you're putting time in tokeeping it up to date.
You've laid out all yourprocesses, you're keeping up
with things we'll, we'll know.
Okay?
So what, what you're telling meis we put a lot of money into
something a long time ago and wedon't wanna put money into it
now, but then we still want tohave the highest levels of
service and no accidents andkind of get it.
And I go, okay, well great.
(12:07):
So if you spend a ton of moneyand you buy the best grass you
possibly can and you mow it, butyou never water it, you never
put any seed and feed, you neverdo anything to it.
Are you gonna be pissed whenit's dead and brown?
I give that analogy only'causewe're talking about the mowing
grass one, but that's what I seepeople do in business and I see
(12:27):
it, happen time and time again.
Ken Lucci (12:29):
I think it also is someone taught me once that this
was primarily in sales, butnumber one, know your worth.
Okay.
And number two, is that the bestuse of your time?
Which, what you just saidanswers that question.
The answer is no.
A better use of my time isrelaxing with my family.
(12:52):
Or a better use of my timeinstead of writing a training
manual is working on my businessinstead of in it.
True story.
I, a client of mine a while ago.
Came to us and thought he wantedto sell his business.
So we put a value on it and wehad a tough time getting the
financials out of him.
And I said to him, you know,what's the story?
(13:14):
Well, Ken, I just don't have thetime.
Excuse me.
Wait a minute.
Back up a step.
You are three and a half milliondollar company.
Who does your books?
Well, I do.
What?
Yeah.
I spent, you know, threequarters of a day to a day, you
know, and that's why, I'm sorry,you're losing patience with me.
And I said to them, listen.
I'm not losing patience withyou, but you are telling me, I'm
(13:34):
looking at your business andyour business is flat as a
pancake.
Oh, it's consistent.
Yeah.
It's consistently
James Blain (13:41):
Consistently not growing Yeah.
Consistently flat.
Ken Lucci (13:44):
right?
So your revenue is flat, butyour costs are going up and your
spending your prime time sellingtime, which by the way is like
from 10 to three every day.
you're stuck in your officedoing administrative work.
The first thing that I recommendto you and do it.
If don't do it, I get paideither way.
right.
That's the famous line thatTommy Mazi used to say to me.
(14:06):
God love him.
God rest his soul.
James Blain (14:08):
Oh, I am disappointed that, that we had
lost him by the time I got intothe industry because there's so
many gems of wisdom there.
Ken Lucci (14:14):
Tommy was, was fa Tommy was the first guy that I
hired as a consultant, ArthurMessina from Create A Card.
Recommended that I hire Tommybecause I was so green.
And Tommy, I flew Tommy from,from, uh, Philadelphia, down to
Tampa once a month and put himup in a hotel.
Had a cha for come and pick himup.
And I used to have these wackyideas and Tommy would say, you
(14:36):
know, Ken, you can either listento me or not listen to me.
You're still paying me 1500 aday.
And, and we used to have a rule.
I mean, he used to let me dosomething twice and then the
third time he would say, I toldyou Right.
But my getting back to myclient, I said, you are doing
something that is so.
Beneath your time as thepresident of this company and
(14:58):
you are telling me you don'thave time to network in a pretty
damn good region.
James Blain (15:04):
The stuff that's gonna make you money,
Ken Lucci (15:06):
you know, no one presents your business the way
you do.
Okay?
And I've had, uh, recently wehelped somebody do a sales
compensation plan.
And this is a great operator.
I love this kid.
And, I love all my clients, theones that we keep anyway.
And I said, listen, you are so,you're doing so great.
You know, you're up over 10million.
(15:27):
It is time you need an outsidesalesperson.
So we helped them design.
the comp plan.
You know, if he was a$3 millionoperator, I would say to him,
whatcha talking about you'rehiring an outside salesperson?
The best person to representyour business is you.
there is a time when you willoutgrow even that function.
Okay?
when you have to start worryingabout banking, relationships,
(15:50):
finance, relationships.
Your advisors, et cetera.
So I think the message is, ifyou are a DIY guy or gal, you
are never gonna get to the pointif you do not shave off some of
these responsibilities andmemorialize them in written
process and procedures andchecklists
James Blain (16:13):
and figure out how to offload'em.
Ken Lucci (16:15):
and the secret is to write them in sixth grade or or
third grade levels so thatanybody could do them.
you are gonna hit a ceiling.
And I mean, I have people thathit a ceiling.
That are a million dollars andthey can't crack it.
They can't get above that,right?
They're always knocking on themillion.
They're doing a million, buttheir business isn't growing.
(16:37):
And then I have other peoplethat are at 5 million, and as
soon as their largest clientsstops traveling, they start, the
sky is falling, the sky isfalling.
I'm like, because you are notout there, pres presenting and
telling your story five times aday to new people.
you're being reactive.
Well, I have to close the jobsand I have to do the, you like
(16:59):
doing it, but no offense.
At 5 million.
You should be checking on it.
James Blain (17:05):
You've brought us to something that's Really,
crucial.
So I was, I was, you know,thumbing through Instagram,
LinkedIn, Facebook, I've, I'vebeen trying to reprogram my
social media to gimme what Iwanna see and I swipe up and I
get this video and it's KevinO'Leary, for those of you that
don't know Mr.
Wonderful.
From Shark Tank.
And he is talking about when hewas working with Steve Jobs and
he had, his learning company isworking with Steve Jobs and
(17:28):
Steve Jobs is being an asshole.
And he was just ripping.
Oh yeah, yeah.
surprise.
So Steve Jobs is being anasshole.
He's, he's telling him, oh, wellthis is what it's gonna be.
This is what you're gonna do.
I'm in power, blah, blah, blah.
And he said, as much as I hatedSteve for the way he was, and as
much as I hated him for being anass, Steve's signal to noise
ratio.
(17:48):
Was one of the highest I've everseen.
Steve's ability to get the noiseout and focus on what's
important and not get caught upon the dumb stuff and hand the
things off that weren'timportant.
Almost everything that hefocused on.
Was where he needed to befocusing on, and he was able to
either hand off or filter out orfind ways to not let the things
(18:13):
steal his time.
And that's what we're talkingabout here.
Is
Ken Lucci (18:17):
by the way, you don't have to be an, you don't have to
be an asshole, okay?
James Blain (18:22):
Well, but, well, but, but In case you go watch
this interview, Kevin O'Learydid say that the only person
with a better signal ratio thanSteve Jobs was Elon Musk, who he
thought was an even biggerasshole than Steve Jobs,
Ken Lucci (18:36):
that.
James Blain (18:36):
But
Ken Lucci (18:37):
Leadership and culture will be another article
for another, for, for anotherepisode, rather.
It'll be another subject.
But I firmly believe yourmessage there is focus on what's
important.
During prime time, and, and Iremember, I like this guy.
He's not a client anymore.
You know, we, we said, you know,here's your value.
This is the best we can do foryou.
(18:58):
Because he was doing it for 30years and his business, has been
plateaued for the past 10 years.
And there are other people inthe same market that are just
hitting it outta the park.
And how do you say to someone,no offense.
That's the stupidest thing inthe world.
You should be hiring andtraining a bookkeeping service.
(19:18):
you have our program, you haveour Cost of goods financial
program.
You've invested in it.
I will even help you hire abookkeeping service.
And now I want you to inspectwhat you expect from your
financials, and I want you to dothe same thing from a dispatch.
and, and
James Blain (19:36):
From every standpoint.
Ken Lucci (19:37):
it's no secret.
People who can't let go and whocannot articulate in writing and
cannot create processes andprocedures.
Okay.
And I understand you created thecompany.
I understand that you startedfrom scratch, at some point DIY
The people who are stuck in DIYto me are the people who are
(19:59):
stuck and have control issues.
James Blain (20:01):
Well, so a couple things.
One that goes back to limitingbelief.
One of the things that Athenaand I talked about a lot, I
mentioned that conversation wehad recently, we're both in
lockstep on that if you can'tgrow as a leader, if you're not
growing personally, if you don'tovercome your own limiting
beliefs.
They limit the things aroundyou, right?
They limit what you can achievein your personal life.
(20:23):
They limit where your companycan go.
And I wanna be really clear, my,I'm not, coming this from the
standpoint of, oh, you shouldjust hand training off to pacs
and we'll do everything.
No, what you should do is youshould be smart about it.
So in our world, when we workwith a customer, it's, Hey, we
have all The fundamentals.
We have the defensive driving,we have The customer service, we
have all that.
We now wanna focus your time onmaking sure that what you are
(20:46):
imparting, what you are workingwith them on is what makes your
company unique.
What is your secret herbs andspices?
What is your culture.
What are you doing?
How do you do it?
What are your client procedures?
Right?
Because look, I, I gave thisexample, you know, before.
You have to be able to investthe time in the signal.
(21:09):
And I can tell you right now,trying to get someone to
understand, Hey, you're a motorcoach driver.
Let me show you all the featuresof a motor coach.
Lemme show you all the featuresof this Escalade.
That's not what your passengersand your customers want from
you.
So you wanna be able to take thefundamentals and deliver it in a
way that makes sense.
And then do it.
To your point, and Ken, you tellme if I'm wrong here, right?
(21:30):
and this is what I do at mycompany.
I'm not dealing with the booksday-to-day, but you better
believe that once a month I'mdoing a review of my balance
sheet of my p and l, of what ournumbers look like, of what's
going on, and I sit down with mybookkeeper and we go through
every single number and makesure it's right.
But I'm not the one wasting mytime putting every receipt,
(21:50):
every transaction in.
I'm just inspecting what Iinspect.
'cause I've created a processand handed it off.
Ken Lucci (21:56):
Yeah, I mean we dealt with an operator today that's a
million dollar operator, andevery single day he's the one
that's putting in all of thereceipts.
He's closing out the jobs
James Blain (22:06):
a million dollars
Ken Lucci (22:07):
Yeah.
and I said the same thing tohim.
know, is that the best use ofyour time during the day?
and he, he hired us because heis having profitability
problems.
And when we looked at thebusiness, you know, he's doing a
million dollars, he has 16pieces of equipment, you know,
that production should be atalmost$3 million.
Right?
(22:27):
So.
the DIY is self-limiting.
Okay.
It's almost like a selfperpetuating problem.
I don't have the money to hiresomeone else, et cetera, and so
therefore I need to do itmyself.
You know, it's, it's let, let'sjust break it down.
To me, it's focusing on what arethe most important priorities
(22:49):
and when.
When, I mean, I have a clientthat probably gets up at five
o'clock every single morning andthe first thing he does is close
out the jobs from the nightbefore until 10 o'clock or 11
o'clock because the phone ringsand so and so didn't show up.
and I've said to him, I'm notgonna tell you that you doing
(23:09):
something wrong'cause that'swhat you want to do, but you're
about a$5 million business.
I don't think that's the gooduse of the owner's time every
single day.
So it's focus, on what will movethe business forward.
James Blain (23:25):
Yep.
Ken Lucci (23:26):
You closing the reservations and billing the
jobs and hitting the creditcards.
Maybe something you enjoy, butthat's not gonna move the
business forward.
Now you checking to make surethat somebody has done it, 100%
will.
But it's, 10 minutes of your dayinstead of three hours from your
(23:47):
day.
So what's the most importantthing that you deal with?
Because you know, you, you, youare kinda like a one man army.
You do have your buddy therewho's in sales, and I know that
you meet with Bruce because youguys are partners and you
oversee the business.
But what do you focus on duringprime time?
What's the most important
James Blain (24:06):
so look, I mean, I'll be blunt, you know, and
most people, you know, they seethe faces of the company, right?
You know, they see me, they seeAaron, you know Bruce, I run
pacs day to day.
And I will tell you that my bigthing is that we are not in the
same boat as most companies whenit comes to having a bunch of
employees that are drivers.
(24:26):
But you know the people thatyou're never gonna get to see.
Look, I love development.
I came from tech from thatbackground.
At a point I figured out, hey,I'm not the right guy to be
doing the development.
So what do I do?
I come in, I lay down what Iwanna see, I lay down what we're
working on, and then I hand itoff to the people that manage
that.
(24:46):
I work on, in my world, as we'vetalked about, I really try to
keep my focus on, projectmanaging and I'm our number one
salesperson, right?
I'm going out to shows, I'mgoing out, I'm trying to be the
face, I'm going,
Ken Lucci (25:00):
yeah.
It's business.
development, constant businessdevelopment, and it is customer
relations, project management.
James Blain (25:07):
Yep.
And now, does that mean that,you know, if there's a sale, I'm
not gonna hand it off and say,Hey, you know, you're gonna work
with Casey or you're gonna workwith Aaron and they're No, I
mean, at a certain point when,when the time is right, I try to
get in that habit of handingthings off.
And I will tell you something Iheard in my first business from
my father, and I found it to bevery true.
This is one of my favoritequotes of my dad.
(25:29):
And that's, it's usually thethings that you don't wanna do
or that you're dread doing, thatyou need to do most in the
business.
Because a lot of times you getin that comfort level of, well,
I'm doing the stuff I wanna doand I'm doing these things, and
you're not doing the things thatyou don't wanna do, or that you
dread doing, or that you don'tlike doing.
And those often give you themost needle movement.
Ken Lucci (25:50):
Well, and to your point, I mean our entire
existence.
Is dealing with owners who don'twant to deal with their finances
and you know, the hubris line Ihear is, ha ha, ha ha, I have an
accountant who does that.
Good for you.
You talk to the son of a bitchonce a year and the thing he
tells you is how much you owe intaxes.
You have no clue of how much youmake on every job, how much
(26:12):
you've made every day, what youhave for free cash flow, how
much.
Business you're doing this monthversus same month last year, et
cetera.
And you're, you're, to say itnicely, you're financially
agnostic.
Meaning, you have no idea aboutyour profitability.
You know, once a week.
(26:33):
Cole and I go through thefinancial condition of the
business and I spend most of mytime.
Identifying and working with himon the priorities of the week.
Handling customer, existingcustomer calls, and then
business development.
and he calls it making it rain.
that's what I spend most of mytime on.
(26:54):
Okay.
and.
On Saturdays and Sundays whenit's not prime time, I'm usually
writing something.
I'm usually working on aprogram.
I'm working on a course.
not in the summertime, by theway, but to, to your point.
So the smaller operator that youand I come across, the one that
has perpetually been five to 10cars or that.
James Blain (27:14):
They're usually shoestring guys.
They, they started it on ashoestring and they're, they're
squeezing the budget just ashard now as they did when they
start.
Yeah.
Ken Lucci (27:22):
And it stays there.
James Blain (27:23):
And, and look, I've been guilty of that before
myself, right?
There's been times where I'vehad, you know, and, and I try
to, I heard this great quoteonce that anything that you have
to do more than two or threetimes, if it can be automated
and you don't, you're dumb.
Um, I think it's brutal, right?
It's, It's, a very blunt quote,but I look at it in that same
(27:43):
way.
If I do something three times.
I don't create a process for itand I don't see if I can
automate it and I don't see if Ican hand it off to someone.
I tell myself, I say, Hey, It'sa dumb use of my time.
You could be better using yourtime and look.
sometimes you might not be at apoint where you can hire a
(28:05):
bookkeeper, but you might lookat, Hey, you know what, what can
we do in terms of, you know,getting a bookkeeper that's
shared and then reviewing itless often, or,
Ken Lucci (28:14):
You do a bookkeeping service.
there's bookkeeping services onevery single street corner.
The key is, and we help people,interview them.
To me, they have to beQuickBooks certified or at least
five years of QuickBooks,experience and use.
So the bookkeeping service isthe easiest thing in the world,
(28:34):
the most difficult.
Is to teach a bookkeeper and toeven teach a CPA about our
industry.
That's where we come in whenpeople buy our program, our
driving financial success, itgives them the chart of accounts
that they should be setting uptheir QuickBooks in.
It gives them sample monthlyfinancial reports, and then we
(28:55):
teach'em how to read theirfinancial metrics.
If you do that once.
I mean, I, and we have a sayinginternally, we love to work our
way out of a job.
We have, we have some, we havesome great retained clients,
some of the best and biggest inthe industry, but we love to
work our way out of the job.
Okay.
And by going to whoever'skeeping the books and saying,
(29:18):
listen, here is standardQuickBooks gap accounting.
This is the chart of accountsI'd like you to use, because it
puts all of the costs to turnthe key and do the work up here.
We want to break your revenuedown by silo, so I can train
anybody with QuickBooksexperience, but you know, who's
the toughest to train the owner?
(29:40):
The owner?
It's, it's, it's maddeningbecause first and foremost to
get you out of a DIY, beingA-D-D-I-Y guy or girl, write
down a business plan, and youknow what, it doesn't have to be
an.
Opus.
Okay.
I used to think Opus was like alittle penguin, but opus is
actually a long dissertation,right?
(30:00):
So it doesn't, you write abusiness plan.
Okay?
That answers two questions.
If you've been in the businesslonger than a year, your
business plan comes down to onecoin, two sides?
How can, and what if.
Okay, so the how can is all ofthe positive stuff that you want
to achieve over the next month,over the next quarter, over the
(30:22):
next year.
The what if is what if it's abad thing that happens?
Okay, so to my$5 millionoperator, and I've had this
discussion with him, a nauseum,okay.
How can you duplicate yourbiggest client?
Biggest client does a milliondollars with you.
How can you duplicate them?
Because that's the Achilles heelto your operation.
(30:44):
When they stop traveling, youstart freaking out like chicken
little.
So the how can is, what is myplan?
Two three to five x.
That client.
So he's not the only, let's justsay he's a lawyer.
He's not the only law firm,right?
So, and then the what if.
(31:05):
The what if is what if you getsick?
James Blain (31:09):
Well, what if some, what if you get hit by a bus
tomorrow?
Ken Lucci (31:12):
What if that big client leaves you?
Right?
So you have to have a plan.
So Guy says to me, this$5million operator.
I've had three or four peoplethat I've tried to hire that I
have hired that haven't workedout, and I said, okay, well
let's look at that.
is it the people?
And you look at their resumes,their resumes are great, or is
(31:34):
it you?
Okay.
And the reality is.
It's not him as an individual,it's him as a leader.
He's, he, tells them somethingas if they've done it wrong.
rather than saying, here is theoutline on how I want you to
handle this, right?
So you come up with yourbusiness plan, the how can is
(31:56):
the good stuff, what you wannaachieve, the what if is what
you're gonna plan against, andthen you create.
In bullet form, how you gonnaachieve these?
How cans and how you're gonnadeal with the what ifs.
The policies and procedures tome people get really talked up
about it, right?
There's software out there.
One of them is called tra ual,and by the way, the guy that
(32:21):
wrote this book is the pitchmanfor them, right?
Michael Gerber, if I can everget him on the podcast, if
anybody
James Blain (32:27):
Oh, yeah.
No.
Yeah.
We
Ken Lucci (32:28):
Emin.
Okay, so policies and proceduresstart with writing down when you
start like, what John, ourproducer does with us.
Every single podcast.
When he starts the podcast, inthe beginning, before it became
muscle memory, he had to give usan outline.
Step one, step two, step three.
Okay, so.
That is to me is the birth ofevery single procedure or policy
(32:53):
comes with the owner Who's doingit now, writing down the steps.
Well, it's just me.
Okay.
Do you have drivers?
Yes.
How about if you train one ofyour drivers to be able to give
you a morning off so that youcan go out and do business
development?
Right.
You now, you've just taken agiant step forward, but My$5
(33:15):
million operator fight with himconstantly.
Oh, you should see what thisdriver did.
You know, he had a low airpressure at the airport.
And, you know, he drove it allthe way home and, and wrecked
the rim because it was flat.
By the time he came back, Isaid, okay, teachable moment,
teachable moment.
Write down.
what should have happened.
(33:37):
Okay, so he has a reservationsdepartment that's on duty 24
hours a day, re reservations anddispatch.
What should they have told thechauffeur?
Assume the chauffeur maybedoesn't have the greatest common
sense or
James Blain (33:55):
Well, but, but where you're going with this,
right?
This is all about playing chessand not checkers, right?
Ken Lucci (34:01):
Absolutely
James Blain (34:02):
I do this with operators all the time, right?
If you're a PACS member, youdon't need this train, you don't
need all that jazz.
You just have to let us knowbecause what we, we have built
out.
We've got set up a, literally,we've got a list that is, here's
the five days of training.
Here's what you're doing whenyou're onboarding, here's what
you're doing when you bring themin.
Ken Lucci (34:22):
for every department.
James Blain (34:23):
Yeah.
And we, we help people do thisin every single department.
Right.
And one of the things I tellpeople all the time, if you go
look at my.
Dispatcher training, or you golook at my CSR training.
I'm not worried about trainingthem how to use your software.
If your main concern withtraining a dispatcher or a CSR
is, how do I train them to usewhatever software we use?
(34:44):
You blew it because.
That's one.
If you ever change software,you're screwed.
But two, that's not how you doit.
That's like if I said, Hey, I'msending you to a surgeon.
We didn't teach him how to thinkabout the surgery.
We taught him how to use theknife and the stitches to open
you up and cut you open.
And he knows how to use all thetools.
Well, great.
Does he know that if he nicks myheart, he is gonna kill me while
(35:05):
he is in there?
Well, no, we didn't think heneeded to know that.
Well, does he know that he needsto look around and see if
there's anything else inside ofthe wrong with me?
Well, no, no, no.
He just knows how to go in anduse the tools, Right.
that's what happens in so manybusinesses.
We get so caught up with how dowe use the software?
How do we use this?
How do we use that?
That we forget that you've gottateach people how to think.
(35:28):
So to the point where you justbrought up about the teachable
moment.
In my world, if that happens,two things.
One, you've gotta decide howyou're going to work with and
reeducate that individualperson.
But if that's truly a teachablemoment, hey, we're gonna have
our vehicle defect policy.
If you get a flat tire, if yousee a bus overheat, if you have
(35:49):
any of these types of issues,This is what you do.
And then if you're, again, ifyou're a Pax member, dude, I
just made your life easy.
Because you throw it in theplatform, you click three
buttons and everyone in thecompany has it.
Now, back to managing time, youstill gotta make sure they go in
and they do.
it, and you're inspecting andfiguring out, well, okay, I've
got these six people that neverwent in and did that.
(36:12):
I need to grab them and talk tothem.
But you are switching it to agame of chess instead of
checkers.
Ken Lucci (36:18):
and this same individual comes to me and,
laments.
It's almost like what Tommy Ozzyused to do, which is a degree of
psychological consulting.
Right.
Which we hate.
We, that's why we just get backto the finance and profit piece.
Every month it's complaintsabout so and so and such and
such, and I go back and say,okay, what does the
(36:41):
documentation say?
What does the policy say?
What does the outline say?
I mean, my dad ran a businessthat was 8 million, which was a
supermarket, and he passed it onto my brother.
My brother was big on outlinesand checklists.
Okay.
My brother could tell you.
What the gross profit margin wasof an Italian sub.
(37:02):
Do you know how he did it?
No.
Do you know how he did it?
He literally counted the slices,weighed it up, Okay.
And figured it out.
But I hear people say to me,well, they don't have any
critical thinking ability.
Uh, you are the one that'ssupposed to have that, and you
are supposed to make it.
idiot proof.
So your policies and procedureshave to be.
(37:22):
To your weakest link, which iswhat I was trying to say.
Don't leave it to yourchauffeur.
Well, you know, the chauffeurshould have common sense.
No, you should, you know when,when you really think about what
we do, what we do as an industryis 85% rinse and.
James Blain (37:41):
yes.
Ken Lucci (37:42):
85% vanilla ice cream trips.
Okay?
And then the ones that are themost valuable are the ones that
can do the high touch, the realtough stuff, right?
But the most operators outthere, if you just master a B
plus, okay, or an A, you'll bebetter than most anybody in your
(38:03):
marketplace.
And to me, it comes down to.
Starting from, if you are theDIY guy, I'm not saying for you
the whole business, but if like,my client who spends two days
doing his QuickBooks because hedoesn't trust the ass that he
sits on.
Okay.
James Blain (38:19):
a good use of your time.
Ken Lucci (38:20):
It's not a good use of your time.
And how do I know that?
Because you're stuck at$3million.
That's why it's not a good useof your time.
at the same time, he'scomplaining that he needs a
chauffeur trainer, or he'sclaim, he says he needs a
dispatch supervisor.
You know, you would be free tosolve those other problems.
(38:40):
And, and I remember saying tohim, you've been doing this for
30 years, are you gonna wait fora year 31 to solve that problem
or what?
James Blain (38:48):
so a lot of times when I talk to people, they
don't identify it as a problem.
And I think one of the bigthings, and this is something
that, you and I recently did anevent where we basically did an
all day, you did the morningand, and I did the afternoon.
and one of the things that Ispent a lot of time talking
about there with policies.
Is a lot of people go one of twoways with policies.
(39:10):
They copy and paste someoneelse's and they just drop'em in
and they have no idea what's in'em.
They think it's a legal stop gapto cover them in a lawsuit and
the other half try to putpolicies in place for
everything.
Look, I'm gonna tell, I'll saythis on the podcast, I say in
that course, every job I've everworked at handed me a manual
this thick, and then had me signand lie that I read the manual.
(39:33):
Nobody freaking reads it.
And the other thing is, and Itell people this all the time,
you want your policies to be ageneral guideline in most cases.
And then you want your policiesto then define, Hey, if you have
PTO, this is the rules for that.
If you have this, this is therules for that.
The training then becomes howyou bridge that gap.
(39:54):
So in training, I'm gonna take.
The key things in the policythat you need to know and apply,
and I'm gonna tell you about'em.
And speaking of common sense,right?
What's common sense to you?
Sitting in your office is notcommon sense to someone on the
road.
I could tell you right now,there was a situation where I
saw an owner, he was.
Pissed because he had a, he hada chauffeur that had a sprinter,
(40:18):
and the door wouldn't shut onthe sprinter, and he had to get
to his next trip, and he wasgonna be late, and he didn't
know what to do.
So he muscled the door, shut onthe sprinter, and just shut the
door and got in the car and ranand made the next trip.
And he came back all proud ofhimself saying, Hey, you know,
the, the door was messed up, butI was able to muscle it?
shut.
I wasn't late for any of mytrips.
He came back thinking he did theowner a favor, and the owner
(40:39):
went, what the f.
you know, there's a release onthe door for the latch.
All you had to do was hit therelease for,'cause the electric
door had messed up.
If you'd have hit the releaseand slid the door shut and
stopped and think for twoseconds, we'd have been fine.
And so there's this mismatch of,what's common sense to that
person in that moment.
(41:01):
And that owner, looking backnow, was the chauffeur trying to
break the vehicle and, and dodamage?
No, he was trying to get the jobdone.
And keep the wheels rolling,But, in the owner's mind, well,
this guy, you know, I, I got anidiot on my hands.
He's, so, I think
Ken Lucci (41:17):
but that's the teachable moment
James Blain (41:19):
that's the teachable moment.
Ken Lucci (41:21):
It's your job as the leader.
If it happens once, if somethingwrong happens, once, your job is
not to bitch the person out.
It's to follow the rules of thefive minute manager.
Listen, you're a great guy,James.
You're a great guy.
That was you.
Thank you for trying to solvethe problem.
I apologize.
We should have shown you that,and now you make that part of
(41:43):
your training program.
James Blain (41:45):
Yes.
Ken Lucci (41:46):
So it never happens again,
James Blain (41:48):
That's your chestnut checkers moment, right.
If, if it happens more thanthree times, it's you not that.
Ken Lucci (41:54):
Correct.
James Blain (41:54):
Because you didn't figure out it's the same thing
with the automation.
And I tell people this all thetime.
If you've got three problemsthat have third time, it
happens, man, we just, I hearall time, I have this problem.
It happens over and over.
Well, what do you do?
Well, every time they screw itup, I bring'em in and I said,
okay, great.
So what does that do to keep theproblem from happening, right?
If the same person does it 10times in a row.
(42:17):
Clearly they're not gonna getit.
Maybe it's just that person.
But if every time you have tobring in someone different for a
problem, you're not proactivelygetting ahead of it.
So I, I think, I think this, youknow, I'm sure you see this in
finances, we see it in training,you know, as we kinda wrap this
one up.
Ken, I'm curious to know likeyou know, I've got, and I've
shared a couple of my hard andfast rules, and you have too.
(42:38):
Is there one rule or one thingthat you think about when it
comes to DIYing that you use asyour temperature gauge to say,
okay, this isn't an effectiveuse of my time.
I need to either outsource it,hire someone for it, or somehow
get it off my plate and ontosomeone else's?
How do you do that?
I think that's a good place toleave it.
Ken Lucci (42:57):
we have a a 12 month business plan and we have
milestones, whether it's amilestone for the week or
whatever it is, if I keeprunning into a roadblock that's
keeping me from getting to thenext step, I know it's not a
good use of my time.
I examine my time.
you know, Cole will tell youthat everything we do is
billable.
So.
(43:17):
I would tell the average ownerthat if you are stuck at whether
it's stuck at revenue, stuck ata number of trips, the vehicles
are not moving.
You are the only one that canunstick your business.
And to me it starts with a verysimple plan and starts with
using your week and determiningwhat is the best time of day or
(43:38):
day of the week to do a specificfunction.
And if that function is notworthy of the owner of the
business, figure out.
Someone else to do it, or atleast cross train someone to do
it because DIY can become, arolling ball where you, you
(43:58):
don't do it.
You get behind, continuouslybehind, and you never out bury
yourself.
And that's the key with burnout.
You're definitely gonna burnout.
So if you don't figure out a wayto schedule yourself and every
hour of your day as to what'sthe best use of my time and
(44:19):
offload the other things so thatyou can work on your business,
not immersed in your business,you're never gonna, you're never
gonna leave the DIY stage.
James Blain (44:30):
No, I,
Ken Lucci (44:31):
I think, a good place to end.
James Blain (44:33):
yeah, I, I can't think of a better thing to hit.
I mean, you.
summed it up.
Ken Lucci (44:36):
This book is the best investment any entrepreneur
could make, could make, and I'mdying to see if anybody knows
Michael Gerber.
We'd love to have him on on thepodcast.
We would love to have him at theNLA Chauffer Driven show as a
speaker, but this is one of thebest books you can, the E-Myth.
The E is for entrepreneur.
(44:56):
The E-Myth, um, and why mostsmall businesses don't work and
what to do about'em.
So thanks James.
It's been a great, podcast todayand we'll catch you all next
week.
James Blain (45:08):
Thank you everybody for listening.
Please leave us your comments,subscribe, let us know how you
think we're doing, and we'll seeyou on the X Expo of the Ground
Transportation Podcast.
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.
(45:28):
For more information about PAXtraining and to contact James,
go to PAX training.com.
And for more information aboutdriving transactions and to
contact Ken, Go to drivingtransactions.com.
We'll see you next time on theground transportation podcast.
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to
another exciting episode of theGround Transportation Podcast.
I am joined by my Esteemedco-host James Blaine from PAX
Training, a self-describedtechno nerd.
It seems like we were just hereminutes ago, James.
James Blain (00:43):
I know.
I know Groundhog Day.
Ken Lucci (00:45):
so thank you very much everybody for joining us,
and today we're going to discusssomething that's near and dear
to both James and I and what wedo, which it, really is a
subject that I think is.
Too many entrepreneurs don'thave a plan to deal with, and
that is the cost of doingeverything yourself.
James Blain (01:07):
A hundred
Ken Lucci (01:07):
ultimate cost of being a DIY business owner,
doing it all yourself.
So James, why don't you lead,off as far as how you see this
affecting operators and what thedownsides are.
James Blain (01:20):
So I think the biggest thing that I've seen,
and I was guilty of it on myfirst business, is especially
operators that are costconscious or shoestring or,
trying to kind of, Hey, I, Idon't wanna spend, instead of
going out and finding a vendoror a ready-made solution or
something to exist, all, I'll doit myself.
(01:42):
We'll put that togetherourselves.
Oh, we'll do this.
I see it with training.
Oh, we're gonna, we, we, we'regonna make our own training
program.
We're gonna do all this.
I've talked to operators beforethat are.
well, you know, I, I had thisissue and, you know, instead of,
when we were growing, instead ofgoing and getting a software
platform, we just used Excel andI made the world's most
complicated Excel spreadsheet.
(02:03):
And we've been using that to,and.
You start seeing these types ofareas, right?
You know, oh, well, instead ofa, instead of having a good
maintenance partner, we got, youknow, one guy and he services
everything and he's our in-housemechanic and he's doing all of
it.
Okay.
There's a time and a place whereit makes sense to in-house,
having your own mechanic, havingyour own staff.
(02:25):
There's a time and a place whereit makes sense to say, Hey.
You know, I, I have thistraining.
I've got one car, I'm gonnateach'em what I do.
There's a time and a place whereit makes sense to do these kinds
of things on a shoestring or onyour own.
But what we see happen time andtime again in the industry is
you have larger companies thatare trying to save money and
ultimately cost themselves moremoney, or keep themselves from
(02:47):
growing and doing that, youknow, it becomes one of those
things where you find yourself.
Reinventing the wheel when youcould have gone to a shelf, got
a part off the shelf, put it inplace in your business, and
moved on to the next problem,and you're almost punishing
yourself as a result.
Ken Lucci (03:03):
Well, there's two things that come to mind.
One is the phrase chief cook andbottle washer, right?
And the other, the other to meis, is the Peter principle.
The Peter principle is whereyou've reached your own level of
incompetence.
Where, and I don't mean to usethe term incompetence, but
you've reached your own level,your, uh, a level where you're
(03:25):
unable to break through to thenext step.
You're unable to scale, you'reunable to buy the next vehicle.
You're, I talked to an operatorthe other day.
Uh, first thing in the morning.
I spoke to him and I said, how'sit going?
And he said, you know, it'sbusiness is good, but I'm just
burning out.
And I Well, tell me what youmean by that.
(03:45):
Well, I'm just doing everything.
I just, I'm a perfectionist andthis is his, his exact words,
I'm a perfectionist You know,I'm doing everything.
I'm doing the reservations, I'mclosing the jobs, I'm doing the
finance.
They said, okay, back up.
I thought when we last talked,you had so and so and she was
helping you.
Yes, but she left and I, okay,well wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
So let's talk about that acouple of, and I do believe
(04:08):
this, the biggest issue that Isee in this industry with
operators that are under 5million.
know, the smaller, the worse itis is the working in the
business and not on thebusiness.
James Blain (04:21):
percent.
110%.
Ken Lucci (04:23):
So, my comment to him was step back, write down
everything that she did, anddesign a job description and
daily activities of the nextperson you're gonna put in her
place.
Then I think you should writedown everything that you do,
every process.
Oh, Ken, it's so much.
(04:43):
Great.
James Blain (04:44):
It doesn't matter.
Ken Lucci (04:45):
Take a yellow pad or a computer screen.
Open up five computer screensand create an Excel sheet for
reservations, one for dispatch,one for billing and accounting.
And literally write down on agranular level, step by step
what it means to do thatprocess.
scaling any business is allabout people.
(05:07):
Processes, procedures andprofit.
James Blain (05:11):
Yep.
Have to have a system.
Ken Lucci (05:12):
right?
You have to have a system and,the excuse of that, I don't have
the money to do that.
Well, that usually means to me,okay?
'cause it's where I gravitate.
You are not pricing yourservices properly because if you
don't have the money.
To evolve the business into thenext level, you're doing
something wrong.
(05:33):
you are the proverbial squirrelon a wheel.
Listen, and there's nothingwrong with that, but don't
delude yourself into thinkingthat you have anything more than
a, you've created a job foryourself that will suffer and
die when you suffer and die.
If you wanna create a businessand you want to employ even the
(05:53):
first person.
Frankly, you owe it to thatperson to have systematized your
business.
I, you know, it's curious to methat people with a service like
Pax, that anybody would say toyou, now I'm just gonna write
down my own training.
Oh, we are different.
James Blain (06:10):
Well, so here's the thing, and you, you've hit on
something really important.
So one of my personal mentors isAthena from BAC up in Alaska,
and we were chatting the othernight.
Ken Lucci (06:20):
way, a state that does not have Uber or Lyft.
James Blain (06:24):
Yeah.
or a ton of, ev, right.
Ken Lucci (06:26):
Lots of moose up there.
Is it moose or me?
But I digest.
James Blain (06:29):
mees.
The mooses, I, don't think theygive rides to the airport either
way.
Um, no, so, so Athena and I weretalking the other night, and I
think one of the things thatcomes up that is massive here
is.
It's limiting beliefs andthere's a lot of people that
have, and you've already hit onthis, which is why I wanted to
bring it up.
A lot of people have theselimiting beliefs of, well, I
(06:50):
can't train someone to do it'cause I'm the only one who can
do it.
Right.
Ken Lucci (06:53):
Oh, I can't find anybody to do
James Blain (06:55):
Well, another good friend of mine, Becky in Boston,
big shout out, Becky, because Iremember sitting down at a show
talking to Becky aboutfrustration with, I was having
man frustration with employeesdo that.
She said, look, it doesn'tmatter how hard it is.
You might have to have someonecome in and do that.
thing.
5, 10, 20 times and you're feellike you're just Groundhogs Day
(07:15):
doing it over and over.
But if you don't invest the timeto develop and teach them and
get where they need to go andhave that process and expand,
you are never going to be ableto hand that process off and be
able to develop processes andsystems.
Right.
So you've got two reallyincredible women in the
industry.
That know about growing andscaling businesses in our
(07:37):
powerhouses, our own right, thatkind of give that same type of
advice of you've got to knowwhen you can expand out by
getting rid of the limitingbeliefs that are telling you,
I'm the only one that can do it.
Right?
Or, you know, I'm the only onethat can do this, or This isn't
something that can be handedoff, or this is something
exclusively for that.
Look If you find ways to go outand again, take advantage of
(08:01):
what's in the industry.
Look, every business might bedifferent, but every business
owner faces similar challenges.
Ken Lucci (08:09):
and every business has the same processes.
I don't give a what industryyou're in.
you have.
the marketing processes, thesales processes, the operations
process, the administrativeprocesses, the finance and
accounting piece, okay.
E every single business does,and, and let's face it, people
get into the limousine space inmany cases because either they
(08:30):
were a driver and listen, someof the biggest Dawson rudder,
right?
I mean, Robert Alexander, someof the biggest players in the
industry got in as drivers andhave grown to be global
companies.
James Blain (08:43):
I mean, look, my business partner got in the same
way, right?
a I mean, literally a borrowedcar and a cell phone,
Ken Lucci (08:48):
so at the end of the day, I get it.
but they have to evolve theircompany, and they have to evolve
their business beyondthemselves.
my dad taught me in many things,and one of the things he taught
me, he was, owns a supersupermarket, and we used to go,
I think I've just told thisstory before.
We used to go on a Sunday.
(09:09):
Back then you'd, you used tobreak down the side of a cow,
right?
They would come in on rails andI, I used to jump on top of the
cow and ride the rail
James Blain (09:20):
I, I can just see you with a butcher's knife
riding a, a cow on a rail,
Ken Lucci (09:23):
no, no.
The the rail, would go from theback loading dock in the ceiling
into, the meat walk-in, and Iwould ride the rail whether
there was a cow on it or not.
There was the big hooks, and Iwould, alright, so on Sunday, I
would say to him, dad.
You know, why are we at thestore and you, you know, you're,
you're cutting meat.
He said, you see this cow?
(09:44):
And I said, yep.
He said, I know how to break itdown and if I break it down on a
Sunday, I don't have to paysomebody$27 an hour.
I mean, this was back in theday.
And, meat cutter was makingserious money.
James Blain (09:58):
Right.
Ken Lucci (09:59):
And his whole point to me was, you need to learn and
you need to know the best way todo everything in your store.
In your business to train peoplehow you want to do it.
But if you get stuck doing ityourself, your business won't
grow.
He used to do that.
He used to cut down the cowbecause he wanted to show the
meat cutter that he was notnecessarily holding him captive,
(10:24):
so to speak.
I know Athena.
I know Athena has a process foreverything.
I mean, there's no question sheis the most organized person in
the world, but what do you doand what do you say to somebody
who's not organized, who justcan't get outta their own way?
James Blain (10:41):
So I tell'em I don't mow grass, right?
what I mean by that is I used toalways mow my own grass, but I
have allergies and it's kind ofmiserable and I hate it.
One day I was at work at one ofmy early jobs and I was still in
corporate life in, in my earlytwenties, and I was talking to a
boss of mine and I said, man, Igotta go home and cut the grass.
He goes, I don't cut grass.
(11:02):
Said, what are you talkingabout?
He goes, well, I sat down oneday and I looked at how much
money I make every hour and whatmy rate is.
And then I realized I could havemy grass cut for$20.
And I said, you know, I make 60bucks an hour.
Why in the hell am I workingdown at 20 bucks an hour?
And not only that, the time withmy kids and family Is way more
(11:24):
valuable.
So why am I going to go andspend that time that investment
on doing it?
Can I mow the grass?
Sure.
Do I know what it needs to looklike?
Sure.
if the guy can't do it thatweek, can I do it so that it,
gets done?
Sure.
Why would I take my valuabletime and do that?
And I tell owners this all time,you know, I get people like, oh,
we're, you know, we we're, we'vebuilt our own training program.
(11:47):
We have our own trainingprogram.
Great.
So you're putting time in tokeeping it up to date.
You've laid out all yourprocesses, you're keeping up
with things we'll, we'll know.
Okay?
So what, what you're telling meis we put a lot of money into
something a long time ago and wedon't wanna put money into it
now, but then we still want tohave the highest levels of
service and no accidents andkind of get it.
And I go, okay, well great.
(12:07):
So if you spend a ton of moneyand you buy the best grass you
possibly can and you mow it, butyou never water it, you never
put any seed and feed, you neverdo anything to it.
Are you gonna be pissed whenit's dead and brown?
I give that analogy only'causewe're talking about the mowing
grass one, but that's what I seepeople do in business and I see
(12:27):
it, happen time and time again.
Ken Lucci (12:29):
I think it also is someone taught me once that this
was primarily in sales, butnumber one, know your worth.
Okay.
And number two, is that the bestuse of your time?
Which, what you just saidanswers that question.
The answer is no.
A better use of my time isrelaxing with my family.
(12:52):
Or a better use of my timeinstead of writing a training
manual is working on my businessinstead of in it.
True story.
I, a client of mine a while ago.
Came to us and thought he wantedto sell his business.
So we put a value on it and wehad a tough time getting the
financials out of him.
And I said to him, you know,what's the story?
(13:14):
Well, Ken, I just don't have thetime.
Excuse me.
Wait a minute.
Back up a step.
You are three and a half milliondollar company.
Who does your books?
Well, I do.
What?
Yeah.
I spent, you know, threequarters of a day to a day, you
know, and that's why, I'm sorry,you're losing patience with me.
And I said to them, listen.
I'm not losing patience withyou, but you are telling me, I'm
(13:34):
looking at your business andyour business is flat as a
pancake.
Oh, it's consistent.
Yeah.
It's consistently
James Blain (13:41):
Consistently not growing Yeah.
Consistently flat.
Ken Lucci (13:44):
right?
So your revenue is flat, butyour costs are going up and your
spending your prime time sellingtime, which by the way is like
from 10 to three every day.
you're stuck in your officedoing administrative work.
The first thing that I recommendto you and do it.
If don't do it, I get paideither way.
right.
That's the famous line thatTommy Mazi used to say to me.
(14:06):
God love him.
God rest his soul.
James Blain (14:08):
Oh, I am disappointed that, that we had
lost him by the time I got intothe industry because there's so
many gems of wisdom there.
Ken Lucci (14:14):
Tommy was, was fa Tommy was the first guy that I
hired as a consultant, ArthurMessina from Create A Card.
Recommended that I hire Tommybecause I was so green.
And Tommy, I flew Tommy from,from, uh, Philadelphia, down to
Tampa once a month and put himup in a hotel.
Had a cha for come and pick himup.
And I used to have these wackyideas and Tommy would say, you
(14:36):
know, Ken, you can either listento me or not listen to me.
You're still paying me 1500 aday.
And, and we used to have a rule.
I mean, he used to let me dosomething twice and then the
third time he would say, I toldyou Right.
But my getting back to myclient, I said, you are doing
something that is so.
Beneath your time as thepresident of this company and
(14:58):
you are telling me you don'thave time to network in a pretty
damn good region.
James Blain (15:04):
The stuff that's gonna make you money,
Ken Lucci (15:06):
you know, no one presents your business the way
you do.
Okay?
And I've had, uh, recently wehelped somebody do a sales
compensation plan.
And this is a great operator.
I love this kid.
And, I love all my clients, theones that we keep anyway.
And I said, listen, you are so,you're doing so great.
You know, you're up over 10million.
(15:27):
It is time you need an outsidesalesperson.
So we helped them design.
the comp plan.
You know, if he was a$3 millionoperator, I would say to him,
whatcha talking about you'rehiring an outside salesperson?
The best person to representyour business is you.
there is a time when you willoutgrow even that function.
Okay?
when you have to start worryingabout banking, relationships,
(15:50):
finance, relationships.
Your advisors, et cetera.
So I think the message is, ifyou are a DIY guy or gal, you
are never gonna get to the pointif you do not shave off some of
these responsibilities andmemorialize them in written
process and procedures andchecklists
James Blain (16:13):
and figure out how to offload'em.
Ken Lucci (16:15):
and the secret is to write them in sixth grade or or
third grade levels so thatanybody could do them.
you are gonna hit a ceiling.
And I mean, I have people thathit a ceiling.
That are a million dollars andthey can't crack it.
They can't get above that,right?
They're always knocking on themillion.
They're doing a million, buttheir business isn't growing.
(16:37):
And then I have other peoplethat are at 5 million, and as
soon as their largest clientsstops traveling, they start, the
sky is falling, the sky isfalling.
I'm like, because you are notout there, pres presenting and
telling your story five times aday to new people.
you're being reactive.
Well, I have to close the jobsand I have to do the, you like
(16:59):
doing it, but no offense.
At 5 million.
You should be checking on it.
James Blain (17:05):
You've brought us to something that's Really,
crucial.
So I was, I was, you know,thumbing through Instagram,
LinkedIn, Facebook, I've, I'vebeen trying to reprogram my
social media to gimme what Iwanna see and I swipe up and I
get this video and it's KevinO'Leary, for those of you that
don't know Mr.
Wonderful.
From Shark Tank.
And he is talking about when hewas working with Steve Jobs and
he had, his learning company isworking with Steve Jobs and
(17:28):
Steve Jobs is being an asshole.
And he was just ripping.
Oh yeah, yeah.
surprise.
So Steve Jobs is being anasshole.
He's, he's telling him, oh, wellthis is what it's gonna be.
This is what you're gonna do.
I'm in power, blah, blah, blah.
And he said, as much as I hatedSteve for the way he was, and as
much as I hated him for being anass, Steve's signal to noise
ratio.
(17:48):
Was one of the highest I've everseen.
Steve's ability to get the noiseout and focus on what's
important and not get caught upon the dumb stuff and hand the
things off that weren'timportant.
Almost everything that hefocused on.
Was where he needed to befocusing on, and he was able to
either hand off or filter out orfind ways to not let the things
(18:13):
steal his time.
And that's what we're talkingabout here.
Is
Ken Lucci (18:17):
by the way, you don't have to be an, you don't have to
be an asshole, okay?
James Blain (18:22):
Well, but, well, but, but In case you go watch
this interview, Kevin O'Learydid say that the only person
with a better signal ratio thanSteve Jobs was Elon Musk, who he
thought was an even biggerasshole than Steve Jobs,
Ken Lucci (18:36):
that.
James Blain (18:36):
But
Ken Lucci (18:37):
Leadership and culture will be another article
for another, for, for anotherepisode, rather.
It'll be another subject.
But I firmly believe yourmessage there is focus on what's
important.
During prime time, and, and Iremember, I like this guy.
He's not a client anymore.
You know, we, we said, you know,here's your value.
This is the best we can do foryou.
(18:58):
Because he was doing it for 30years and his business, has been
plateaued for the past 10 years.
And there are other people inthe same market that are just
hitting it outta the park.
And how do you say to someone,no offense.
That's the stupidest thing inthe world.
You should be hiring andtraining a bookkeeping service.
(19:18):
you have our program, you haveour Cost of goods financial
program.
You've invested in it.
I will even help you hire abookkeeping service.
And now I want you to inspectwhat you expect from your
financials, and I want you to dothe same thing from a dispatch.
and, and
James Blain (19:36):
From every standpoint.
Ken Lucci (19:37):
it's no secret.
People who can't let go and whocannot articulate in writing and
cannot create processes andprocedures.
Okay.
And I understand you created thecompany.
I understand that you startedfrom scratch, at some point DIY
The people who are stuck in DIYto me are the people who are
(19:59):
stuck and have control issues.
James Blain (20:01):
Well, so a couple things.
One that goes back to limitingbelief.
One of the things that Athenaand I talked about a lot, I
mentioned that conversation wehad recently, we're both in
lockstep on that if you can'tgrow as a leader, if you're not
growing personally, if you don'tovercome your own limiting
beliefs.
They limit the things aroundyou, right?
They limit what you can achievein your personal life.
(20:23):
They limit where your companycan go.
And I wanna be really clear, my,I'm not, coming this from the
standpoint of, oh, you shouldjust hand training off to pacs
and we'll do everything.
No, what you should do is youshould be smart about it.
So in our world, when we workwith a customer, it's, Hey, we
have all The fundamentals.
We have the defensive driving,we have The customer service, we
have all that.
We now wanna focus your time onmaking sure that what you are
(20:46):
imparting, what you are workingwith them on is what makes your
company unique.
What is your secret herbs andspices?
What is your culture.
What are you doing?
How do you do it?
What are your client procedures?
Right?
Because look, I, I gave thisexample, you know, before.
You have to be able to investthe time in the signal.
(21:09):
And I can tell you right now,trying to get someone to
understand, Hey, you're a motorcoach driver.
Let me show you all the featuresof a motor coach.
Lemme show you all the featuresof this Escalade.
That's not what your passengersand your customers want from
you.
So you wanna be able to take thefundamentals and deliver it in a
way that makes sense.
And then do it.
To your point, and Ken, you tellme if I'm wrong here, right?
(21:30):
and this is what I do at mycompany.
I'm not dealing with the booksday-to-day, but you better
believe that once a month I'mdoing a review of my balance
sheet of my p and l, of what ournumbers look like, of what's
going on, and I sit down with mybookkeeper and we go through
every single number and makesure it's right.
But I'm not the one wasting mytime putting every receipt,
(21:50):
every transaction in.
I'm just inspecting what Iinspect.
'cause I've created a processand handed it off.
Ken Lucci (21:56):
Yeah, I mean we dealt with an operator today that's a
million dollar operator, andevery single day he's the one
that's putting in all of thereceipts.
He's closing out the jobs
James Blain (22:06):
a million dollars
Ken Lucci (22:07):
Yeah.
and I said the same thing tohim.
know, is that the best use ofyour time during the day?
and he, he hired us because heis having profitability
problems.
And when we looked at thebusiness, you know, he's doing a
million dollars, he has 16pieces of equipment, you know,
that production should be atalmost$3 million.
Right?
(22:27):
So.
the DIY is self-limiting.
Okay.
It's almost like a selfperpetuating problem.
I don't have the money to hiresomeone else, et cetera, and so
therefore I need to do itmyself.
You know, it's, it's let, let'sjust break it down.
To me, it's focusing on what arethe most important priorities
(22:49):
and when.
When, I mean, I have a clientthat probably gets up at five
o'clock every single morning andthe first thing he does is close
out the jobs from the nightbefore until 10 o'clock or 11
o'clock because the phone ringsand so and so didn't show up.
and I've said to him, I'm notgonna tell you that you doing
(23:09):
something wrong'cause that'swhat you want to do, but you're
about a$5 million business.
I don't think that's the gooduse of the owner's time every
single day.
So it's focus, on what will movethe business forward.
James Blain (23:25):
Yep.
Ken Lucci (23:26):
You closing the reservations and billing the
jobs and hitting the creditcards.
Maybe something you enjoy, butthat's not gonna move the
business forward.
Now you checking to make surethat somebody has done it, 100%
will.
But it's, 10 minutes of your dayinstead of three hours from your
(23:47):
day.
So what's the most importantthing that you deal with?
Because you know, you, you, youare kinda like a one man army.
You do have your buddy therewho's in sales, and I know that
you meet with Bruce because youguys are partners and you
oversee the business.
But what do you focus on duringprime time?
What's the most important
James Blain (24:06):
so look, I mean, I'll be blunt, you know, and
most people, you know, they seethe faces of the company, right?
You know, they see me, they seeAaron, you know Bruce, I run
pacs day to day.
And I will tell you that my bigthing is that we are not in the
same boat as most companies whenit comes to having a bunch of
employees that are drivers.
(24:26):
But you know the people thatyou're never gonna get to see.
Look, I love development.
I came from tech from thatbackground.
At a point I figured out, hey,I'm not the right guy to be
doing the development.
So what do I do?
I come in, I lay down what Iwanna see, I lay down what we're
working on, and then I hand itoff to the people that manage
that.
(24:46):
I work on, in my world, as we'vetalked about, I really try to
keep my focus on, projectmanaging and I'm our number one
salesperson, right?
I'm going out to shows, I'mgoing out, I'm trying to be the
face, I'm going,
Ken Lucci (25:00):
yeah.
It's business.
development, constant businessdevelopment, and it is customer
relations, project management.
James Blain (25:07):
Yep.
And now, does that mean that,you know, if there's a sale, I'm
not gonna hand it off and say,Hey, you know, you're gonna work
with Casey or you're gonna workwith Aaron and they're No, I
mean, at a certain point when,when the time is right, I try to
get in that habit of handingthings off.
And I will tell you something Iheard in my first business from
my father, and I found it to bevery true.
This is one of my favoritequotes of my dad.
(25:29):
And that's, it's usually thethings that you don't wanna do
or that you're dread doing, thatyou need to do most in the
business.
Because a lot of times you getin that comfort level of, well,
I'm doing the stuff I wanna doand I'm doing these things, and
you're not doing the things thatyou don't wanna do, or that you
dread doing, or that you don'tlike doing.
And those often give you themost needle movement.
Ken Lucci (25:50):
Well, and to your point, I mean our entire
existence.
Is dealing with owners who don'twant to deal with their finances
and you know, the hubris line Ihear is, ha ha, ha ha, I have an
accountant who does that.
Good for you.
You talk to the son of a bitchonce a year and the thing he
tells you is how much you owe intaxes.
You have no clue of how much youmake on every job, how much
(26:12):
you've made every day, what youhave for free cash flow, how
much.
Business you're doing this monthversus same month last year, et
cetera.
And you're, you're, to say itnicely, you're financially
agnostic.
Meaning, you have no idea aboutyour profitability.
You know, once a week.
(26:33):
Cole and I go through thefinancial condition of the
business and I spend most of mytime.
Identifying and working with himon the priorities of the week.
Handling customer, existingcustomer calls, and then
business development.
and he calls it making it rain.
that's what I spend most of mytime on.
(26:54):
Okay.
and.
On Saturdays and Sundays whenit's not prime time, I'm usually
writing something.
I'm usually working on aprogram.
I'm working on a course.
not in the summertime, by theway, but to, to your point.
So the smaller operator that youand I come across, the one that
has perpetually been five to 10cars or that.
James Blain (27:14):
They're usually shoestring guys.
They, they started it on ashoestring and they're, they're
squeezing the budget just ashard now as they did when they
start.
Yeah.
Ken Lucci (27:22):
And it stays there.
James Blain (27:23):
And, and look, I've been guilty of that before
myself, right?
There's been times where I'vehad, you know, and, and I try
to, I heard this great quoteonce that anything that you have
to do more than two or threetimes, if it can be automated
and you don't, you're dumb.
Um, I think it's brutal, right?
It's, It's, a very blunt quote,but I look at it in that same
(27:43):
way.
If I do something three times.
I don't create a process for itand I don't see if I can
automate it and I don't see if Ican hand it off to someone.
I tell myself, I say, Hey, It'sa dumb use of my time.
You could be better using yourtime and look.
sometimes you might not be at apoint where you can hire a
(28:05):
bookkeeper, but you might lookat, Hey, you know what, what can
we do in terms of, you know,getting a bookkeeper that's
shared and then reviewing itless often, or,
Ken Lucci (28:14):
You do a bookkeeping service.
there's bookkeeping services onevery single street corner.
The key is, and we help people,interview them.
To me, they have to beQuickBooks certified or at least
five years of QuickBooks,experience and use.
So the bookkeeping service isthe easiest thing in the world,
(28:34):
the most difficult.
Is to teach a bookkeeper and toeven teach a CPA about our
industry.
That's where we come in whenpeople buy our program, our
driving financial success, itgives them the chart of accounts
that they should be setting uptheir QuickBooks in.
It gives them sample monthlyfinancial reports, and then we
(28:55):
teach'em how to read theirfinancial metrics.
If you do that once.
I mean, I, and we have a sayinginternally, we love to work our
way out of a job.
We have, we have some, we havesome great retained clients,
some of the best and biggest inthe industry, but we love to
work our way out of the job.
Okay.
And by going to whoever'skeeping the books and saying,
(29:18):
listen, here is standardQuickBooks gap accounting.
This is the chart of accountsI'd like you to use, because it
puts all of the costs to turnthe key and do the work up here.
We want to break your revenuedown by silo, so I can train
anybody with QuickBooksexperience, but you know, who's
the toughest to train the owner?
(29:40):
The owner?
It's, it's, it's maddeningbecause first and foremost to
get you out of a DIY, beingA-D-D-I-Y guy or girl, write
down a business plan, and youknow what, it doesn't have to be
an.
Opus.
Okay.
I used to think Opus was like alittle penguin, but opus is
actually a long dissertation,right?
(30:00):
So it doesn't, you write abusiness plan.
Okay?
That answers two questions.
If you've been in the businesslonger than a year, your
business plan comes down to onecoin, two sides?
How can, and what if.
Okay, so the how can is all ofthe positive stuff that you want
to achieve over the next month,over the next quarter, over the
(30:22):
next year.
The what if is what if it's abad thing that happens?
Okay, so to my$5 millionoperator, and I've had this
discussion with him, a nauseum,okay.
How can you duplicate yourbiggest client?
Biggest client does a milliondollars with you.
How can you duplicate them?
Because that's the Achilles heelto your operation.
(30:44):
When they stop traveling, youstart freaking out like chicken
little.
So the how can is, what is myplan?
Two three to five x.
That client.
So he's not the only, let's justsay he's a lawyer.
He's not the only law firm,right?
So, and then the what if.
(31:05):
The what if is what if you getsick?
James Blain (31:09):
Well, what if some, what if you get hit by a bus
tomorrow?
Ken Lucci (31:12):
What if that big client leaves you?
Right?
So you have to have a plan.
So Guy says to me, this$5million operator.
I've had three or four peoplethat I've tried to hire that I
have hired that haven't workedout, and I said, okay, well
let's look at that.
is it the people?
And you look at their resumes,their resumes are great, or is
(31:34):
it you?
Okay.
And the reality is.
It's not him as an individual,it's him as a leader.
He's, he, tells them somethingas if they've done it wrong.
rather than saying, here is theoutline on how I want you to
handle this, right?
So you come up with yourbusiness plan, the how can is
(31:56):
the good stuff, what you wannaachieve, the what if is what
you're gonna plan against, andthen you create.
In bullet form, how you gonnaachieve these?
How cans and how you're gonnadeal with the what ifs.
The policies and procedures tome people get really talked up
about it, right?
There's software out there.
One of them is called tra ual,and by the way, the guy that
(32:21):
wrote this book is the pitchmanfor them, right?
Michael Gerber, if I can everget him on the podcast, if
anybody
James Blain (32:27):
Oh, yeah.
No.
Yeah.
We
Ken Lucci (32:28):
Emin.
Okay, so policies and proceduresstart with writing down when you
start like, what John, ourproducer does with us.
Every single podcast.
When he starts the podcast, inthe beginning, before it became
muscle memory, he had to give usan outline.
Step one, step two, step three.
Okay, so.
That is to me is the birth ofevery single procedure or policy
(32:53):
comes with the owner Who's doingit now, writing down the steps.
Well, it's just me.
Okay.
Do you have drivers?
Yes.
How about if you train one ofyour drivers to be able to give
you a morning off so that youcan go out and do business
development?
Right.
You now, you've just taken agiant step forward, but My$5
(33:15):
million operator fight with himconstantly.
Oh, you should see what thisdriver did.
You know, he had a low airpressure at the airport.
And, you know, he drove it allthe way home and, and wrecked
the rim because it was flat.
By the time he came back, Isaid, okay, teachable moment,
teachable moment.
Write down.
what should have happened.
(33:37):
Okay, so he has a reservationsdepartment that's on duty 24
hours a day, re reservations anddispatch.
What should they have told thechauffeur?
Assume the chauffeur maybedoesn't have the greatest common
sense or
James Blain (33:55):
Well, but, but where you're going with this,
right?
This is all about playing chessand not checkers, right?
Ken Lucci (34:01):
Absolutely
James Blain (34:02):
I do this with operators all the time, right?
If you're a PACS member, youdon't need this train, you don't
need all that jazz.
You just have to let us knowbecause what we, we have built
out.
We've got set up a, literally,we've got a list that is, here's
the five days of training.
Here's what you're doing whenyou're onboarding, here's what
you're doing when you bring themin.
Ken Lucci (34:22):
for every department.
James Blain (34:23):
Yeah.
And we, we help people do thisin every single department.
Right.
And one of the things I tellpeople all the time, if you go
look at my.
Dispatcher training, or you golook at my CSR training.
I'm not worried about trainingthem how to use your software.
If your main concern withtraining a dispatcher or a CSR
is, how do I train them to usewhatever software we use?
(34:44):
You blew it because.
That's one.
If you ever change software,you're screwed.
But two, that's not how you doit.
That's like if I said, Hey, I'msending you to a surgeon.
We didn't teach him how to thinkabout the surgery.
We taught him how to use theknife and the stitches to open
you up and cut you open.
And he knows how to use all thetools.
Well, great.
Does he know that if he nicks myheart, he is gonna kill me while
(35:05):
he is in there?
Well, no, we didn't think heneeded to know that.
Well, does he know that he needsto look around and see if
there's anything else inside ofthe wrong with me?
Well, no, no, no.
He just knows how to go in anduse the tools, Right.
that's what happens in so manybusinesses.
We get so caught up with how dowe use the software?
How do we use this?
How do we use that?
That we forget that you've gottateach people how to think.
(35:28):
So to the point where you justbrought up about the teachable
moment.
In my world, if that happens,two things.
One, you've gotta decide howyou're going to work with and
reeducate that individualperson.
But if that's truly a teachablemoment, hey, we're gonna have
our vehicle defect policy.
If you get a flat tire, if yousee a bus overheat, if you have
(35:49):
any of these types of issues,This is what you do.
And then if you're, again, ifyou're a Pax member, dude, I
just made your life easy.
Because you throw it in theplatform, you click three
buttons and everyone in thecompany has it.
Now, back to managing time, youstill gotta make sure they go in
and they do.
it, and you're inspecting andfiguring out, well, okay, I've
got these six people that neverwent in and did that.
(36:12):
I need to grab them and talk tothem.
But you are switching it to agame of chess instead of
checkers.
Ken Lucci (36:18):
and this same individual comes to me and,
laments.
It's almost like what Tommy Ozzyused to do, which is a degree of
psychological consulting.
Right.
Which we hate.
We, that's why we just get backto the finance and profit piece.
Every month it's complaintsabout so and so and such and
such, and I go back and say,okay, what does the
(36:41):
documentation say?
What does the policy say?
What does the outline say?
I mean, my dad ran a businessthat was 8 million, which was a
supermarket, and he passed it onto my brother.
My brother was big on outlinesand checklists.
Okay.
My brother could tell you.
What the gross profit margin wasof an Italian sub.
(37:02):
Do you know how he did it?
No.
Do you know how he did it?
He literally counted the slices,weighed it up, Okay.
And figured it out.
But I hear people say to me,well, they don't have any
critical thinking ability.
Uh, you are the one that'ssupposed to have that, and you
are supposed to make it.
idiot proof.
So your policies and procedureshave to be.
(37:22):
To your weakest link, which iswhat I was trying to say.
Don't leave it to yourchauffeur.
Well, you know, the chauffeurshould have common sense.
No, you should, you know when,when you really think about what
we do, what we do as an industryis 85% rinse and.
James Blain (37:41):
yes.
Ken Lucci (37:42):
85% vanilla ice cream trips.
Okay?
And then the ones that are themost valuable are the ones that
can do the high touch, the realtough stuff, right?
But the most operators outthere, if you just master a B
plus, okay, or an A, you'll bebetter than most anybody in your
(38:03):
marketplace.
And to me, it comes down to.
Starting from, if you are theDIY guy, I'm not saying for you
the whole business, but if like,my client who spends two days
doing his QuickBooks because hedoesn't trust the ass that he
sits on.
Okay.
James Blain (38:19):
a good use of your time.
Ken Lucci (38:20):
It's not a good use of your time.
And how do I know that?
Because you're stuck at$3million.
That's why it's not a good useof your time.
at the same time, he'scomplaining that he needs a
chauffeur trainer, or he'sclaim, he says he needs a
dispatch supervisor.
You know, you would be free tosolve those other problems.
(38:40):
And, and I remember saying tohim, you've been doing this for
30 years, are you gonna wait fora year 31 to solve that problem
or what?
James Blain (38:48):
so a lot of times when I talk to people, they
don't identify it as a problem.
And I think one of the bigthings, and this is something
that, you and I recently did anevent where we basically did an
all day, you did the morningand, and I did the afternoon.
and one of the things that Ispent a lot of time talking
about there with policies.
Is a lot of people go one of twoways with policies.
(39:10):
They copy and paste someoneelse's and they just drop'em in
and they have no idea what's in'em.
They think it's a legal stop gapto cover them in a lawsuit and
the other half try to putpolicies in place for
everything.
Look, I'm gonna tell, I'll saythis on the podcast, I say in
that course, every job I've everworked at handed me a manual
this thick, and then had me signand lie that I read the manual.
(39:33):
Nobody freaking reads it.
And the other thing is, and Itell people this all the time,
you want your policies to be ageneral guideline in most cases.
And then you want your policiesto then define, Hey, if you have
PTO, this is the rules for that.
If you have this, this is therules for that.
The training then becomes howyou bridge that gap.
(39:54):
So in training, I'm gonna take.
The key things in the policythat you need to know and apply,
and I'm gonna tell you about'em.
And speaking of common sense,right?
What's common sense to you?
Sitting in your office is notcommon sense to someone on the
road.
I could tell you right now,there was a situation where I
saw an owner, he was.
Pissed because he had a, he hada chauffeur that had a sprinter,
(40:18):
and the door wouldn't shut onthe sprinter, and he had to get
to his next trip, and he wasgonna be late, and he didn't
know what to do.
So he muscled the door, shut onthe sprinter, and just shut the
door and got in the car and ranand made the next trip.
And he came back all proud ofhimself saying, Hey, you know,
the, the door was messed up, butI was able to muscle it?
shut.
I wasn't late for any of mytrips.
He came back thinking he did theowner a favor, and the owner
(40:39):
went, what the f.
you know, there's a release onthe door for the latch.
All you had to do was hit therelease for,'cause the electric
door had messed up.
If you'd have hit the releaseand slid the door shut and
stopped and think for twoseconds, we'd have been fine.
And so there's this mismatch of,what's common sense to that
person in that moment.
(41:01):
And that owner, looking backnow, was the chauffeur trying to
break the vehicle and, and dodamage?
No, he was trying to get the jobdone.
And keep the wheels rolling,But, in the owner's mind, well,
this guy, you know, I, I got anidiot on my hands.
He's, so, I think
Ken Lucci (41:17):
but that's the teachable moment
James Blain (41:19):
that's the teachable moment.
Ken Lucci (41:21):
It's your job as the leader.
If it happens once, if somethingwrong happens, once, your job is
not to bitch the person out.
It's to follow the rules of thefive minute manager.
Listen, you're a great guy,James.
You're a great guy.
That was you.
Thank you for trying to solvethe problem.
I apologize.
We should have shown you that,and now you make that part of
(41:43):
your training program.
James Blain (41:45):
Yes.
Ken Lucci (41:46):
So it never happens again,
James Blain (41:48):
That's your chestnut checkers moment, right.
If, if it happens more thanthree times, it's you not that.
Ken Lucci (41:54):
Correct.
James Blain (41:54):
Because you didn't figure out it's the same thing
with the automation.
And I tell people this all thetime.
If you've got three problemsthat have third time, it
happens, man, we just, I hearall time, I have this problem.
It happens over and over.
Well, what do you do?
Well, every time they screw itup, I bring'em in and I said,
okay, great.
So what does that do to keep theproblem from happening, right?
If the same person does it 10times in a row.
(42:17):
Clearly they're not gonna getit.
Maybe it's just that person.
But if every time you have tobring in someone different for a
problem, you're not proactivelygetting ahead of it.
So I, I think, I think this, youknow, I'm sure you see this in
finances, we see it in training,you know, as we kinda wrap this
one up.
Ken, I'm curious to know likeyou know, I've got, and I've
shared a couple of my hard andfast rules, and you have too.
(42:38):
Is there one rule or one thingthat you think about when it
comes to DIYing that you use asyour temperature gauge to say,
okay, this isn't an effectiveuse of my time.
I need to either outsource it,hire someone for it, or somehow
get it off my plate and ontosomeone else's?
How do you do that?
I think that's a good place toleave it.
Ken Lucci (42:57):
we have a a 12 month business plan and we have
milestones, whether it's amilestone for the week or
whatever it is, if I keeprunning into a roadblock that's
keeping me from getting to thenext step, I know it's not a
good use of my time.
I examine my time.
you know, Cole will tell youthat everything we do is
billable.
So.
(43:17):
I would tell the average ownerthat if you are stuck at whether
it's stuck at revenue, stuck ata number of trips, the vehicles
are not moving.
You are the only one that canunstick your business.
And to me it starts with a verysimple plan and starts with
using your week and determiningwhat is the best time of day or
(43:38):
day of the week to do a specificfunction.
And if that function is notworthy of the owner of the
business, figure out.
Someone else to do it, or atleast cross train someone to do
it because DIY can become, arolling ball where you, you
(43:58):
don't do it.
You get behind, continuouslybehind, and you never out bury
yourself.
And that's the key with burnout.
You're definitely gonna burnout.
So if you don't figure out a wayto schedule yourself and every
hour of your day as to what'sthe best use of my time and
(44:19):
offload the other things so thatyou can work on your business,
not immersed in your business,you're never gonna, you're never
gonna leave the DIY stage.
James Blain (44:30):
No, I,
Ken Lucci (44:31):
I think, a good place to end.
James Blain (44:33):
yeah, I, I can't think of a better thing to hit.
I mean, you.
summed it up.
Ken Lucci (44:36):
This book is the best investment any entrepreneur
could make, could make, and I'mdying to see if anybody knows
Michael Gerber.
We'd love to have him on on thepodcast.
We would love to have him at theNLA Chauffer Driven show as a
speaker, but this is one of thebest books you can, the E-Myth.
The E is for entrepreneur.
(44:56):
The E-Myth, um, and why mostsmall businesses don't work and
what to do about'em.
So thanks James.
It's been a great, podcast todayand we'll catch you all next
week.
James Blain (45:08):
Thank you everybody for listening.
Please leave us your comments,subscribe, let us know how you
think we're doing, and we'll seeyou on the X Expo of the Ground
Transportation Podcast.
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.
(45:28):
For more information about PAXtraining and to contact James,
go to PAX training.com.
And for more information aboutdriving transactions and to
contact Ken, Go to drivingtransactions.com.
We'll see you next time on theground transportation podcast.
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