Limousine and Avaition Business Enterprises Collide.

Their is a saying in the aviation industry that applies to the limousine business which is " If you want to end up with a small fortune start with a massive fortune". My long time friend Paul owned a aviation business in the 90's and we both found it amusing the the new players always thought they could reinvent the wheel so to speak. Rather than learning the ropes of the business their ego would force them to come into the industry with both guns blazing, spending huge sums of money in the learning process. None of these cowboys ever realized until the receivers came in that turnover is not profit . I feel a lot of this has to do with the fact that the money that has come to these people easily from such sources as inheritance, redundancy payouts, injury compensation , rapid escalation in the equity in their assets ie. home or shares, even lotto wins does not have the same value to them as hard earned savings.
I know turnover is not profit from personal experience as a very profitable business i owned in 1985 was chewing through that profit (equity) i had built up previously for "the recession we had to have'' during the next two years .Even with large turnovers if your out goings exceed you incoming funds and reserves , it's not if but when the banks will want their money back in a fire sale.
So these ambitious aliens in a foreign place consider this is their one chance to prove they can make it really big. Gamblers use the now or never approach going for that one big win rather than the boring grind.
Most new to aviation or the limousine business have never before been self employed before so don't have any of the hard earned education of working for yourself. The ones that have worked for themselves are generally trying to escape from some tedious unrelated , unglamorous menial source of income. Not realizing that their new chosen business is only glamorous and interesting to their clients. Their new work is just as an over glorified bus driver and janitor but mainly just waiting around for more important people, like you.

In the main they are well intentioned but they never take into account the cost of doing business especially depreciation, maintenance or advertising, some of which hardly generates its own cost. So after they have been to the accountant for the second year running with another paper loss which may be eating into their home equity, they decide to get serious by cutting prices or buying further equipment. Thus spiraling them back to whence they came while making life harder for those whom have seen it all before.
Recently the economy has slowed somewhat and having been a business broker in the late 80's an old client rang us for advice as the business they had bought recently was not generating as much income as the previous industrious owner. After taking one quick look at the business website it was apparent that the goods available had not been made up to date and as the new owner was from an IT background had no excuses. He was simply told you have to put the same effort in to get the same results. Just buying a plane, limousine or a running business does not mean it is like putting money in the bank and collecting the interest cheques.

I am an owner chauffeur of a custom built tailormade limited edition limousine which was built to my specifications to be comfortable classy and well air conditioned which was mainly for my middle aged clients. The new bogan cowboys in the industry seem to have the taste of a twelve year old gothic attention seeker. I mean ever body to his own but my clients and i have a quiet chuckle at the crass limo's with garish paint and over priced chrome wheels not to mention the circus like interiors that my wife describes as a cartoon that threw up. Now children ,teenagers and adults that refuse to grow up just love these show pony rides but sorry these are the high maintenance passengers which we are ever so politely trying to avoid. Then with a tightening of mums purse strings with food and fuel higher ,this group should be the first to have their allowances curtailed but maybe not . We all need our little luxuries especially when we can spend our ungrateful children' s inheritance, although the grateful ones will have already encourage you to do so.
The novelty of owning a limousine and being praised for it does take a few bad experiences to wear the fun thin (ie. people throwing up, braking glass's, hanging out the window , damaging your winder mechanisms , having rocks and eggs thrown at you and your vehicle)
I have no problems with a driver that after seeing if they like the work buy a new limo or even others that come into the industry with an entry level second hand unit .To pay their dues to the people that have built this industry, as well as the client base and learn the ropes as it were. I do however take exception to naive new comers that are lured by the bling to endow there facile gain to oblivion and mortgage their future because the have not taken the time to do their due diligence.(I would liken it to taking the fish out of a pond after a village had breed the stock) They on the other hand just see it as the competitive nature of business which is true but they should not then expect to parasitically feed off the altruistic for offload work when things go quiet or to be treated with adoration because they have a new toy that those that came before must show polite but unrequited interested in.
Buying the equipment does not mean you have a business, it took us more than three years of loss's to develop a loyal sustainable client list. Now i know everyone can achieve this faster and better than me without any experience because i have seen new groups of them every year for more than eleven years coming to show me. Then i see them go, sadly over the years i have wasted my time helping them get started at their request. Only to find they can't hack it twelve months latter. The new ones say to me "you don't know me or my business partners or our business plan" actually they never mention business plan because if they had one they would see they are the same as last seasons group and that is how i know and recognize them . We all wear a uniform of some sort but you can always recognize the sartorial suit of success or the casually ill-dressed also ran (metaphorically speaking).
I on the matter of presentation find mullets, ponytails, jeans and open neck shirts not appropriate attire and disrespectful to chauffeurs world wide. Statistically speaking ground transport is more dangerous than flight, so you can image the parents anguish with their precious offspring traveling off to their school formal with this hoon lookalike at the wheel. If you saw a pilot dressed like this you would have second thoughts about your safety and probably not fly with or use that company again . I doubt if you would tell them either , less than 10% ever do.

If those that prefer this dress standard which i during my life have ascribed to a times insist on wearing them, then i would recommend they join an Australian Draft Camp or rodeo and stop embarrassing themselves . If as a driver you consider it to be uncomfortable to be in a penguin suit or even call it that, then you are probably well out of your element with a need to reassess your environment ,then migrate back .

Com pu pu puter Nerds otherwise known as the battle of Webmasters and Web builders for your Internet ad dollars

I get telemarketing phone calls and emails for web designers telling me they can build a better looking website.They all also tell me they can get me on the first page of the search engines ,well if they could all do that the first page would have to have one thousand entries. The thing i have notice when we have had advertising in the front positions is that consumers don’t tend to stop there until they have viewed a few others ,so being first does not naturally lead to a booking.
These designers are generally in their twenties to early thirties so think in those terms . So i generally survey them on how old they are ,what search engines they use and what search terms or key words. I like to turn a nuisance into a positive benefit as they are more than willing to give you information thinking they may get a sale. Now you may think that is wasting their time but consider why they made contact, to engage you ,use your time and sell you something.
We have three main demographics for our service firstly 15 to 18 year olds (school balls) and because the schools try to have all the school balls on Fridays and Saturdays in February to April which is also our peak wedding season which generally run into the pick up times for school balls. Now don't get me wrong i quite like doing a number of school balls a year although there is only so much duv duv music and midnight returns a veteran chauffeur can take in preference to a sedate little wedding job of better value. We get inundated with calls which actually can become a real chore if we are booked or have our phones diverted. So we don’t optimize our websites for this group as they come flooding in anyway. As they are so young they don't consider that we have done this before many times, wanting to know everything about the limo even though it is booked already.
The second group are those getting married which are generally in their late twenties to early thirties. Now this group are the SEO (search engine optimizers) age so i generally listen to what they say and in particular my clients . That is the bride, as i want to know what attracted her to book and not just view my website. We love weddings as we get to join in to help on their joyous occasion.
The third group which use our services are those between forty five to sixty that use us for transport to restaurants and concerts. This group is our favoured as they are generally well off and book the limo by themselves without considering how much the cost is per head. They don’t try to squeeze in as many as possible so they can have a very comfortable ride. They don’t tend to over indulge in the libations and are relaxed mature individuals that want a class not crass service.These clients generally become regulars and consistently book our services year in year out.
So we have several different looking websites as personal preference is often different from one person to the next so as to appeal to the broadest range of people in our target demographics. As we have been in the industry over 11 years now we have a great deal of the third group of clients that don’t even ask the price until it’s time to pay. So we have become more discerning as to whom uses our services, which keeps our limousines fresh ,clean and has us looking forward to doing the work . It gives us an opportunity to find out how their year has been as well .

Wedding Proposals

On Friday night i picked up a couple from The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle to take the on a tour to the Witch's Cauldron for dinner so Michael could propose. The Witch's is famous in Perth for their garlic pawns and traditional location in Subiaco. He had booked the return for 9.30pm so i was surprised to get a call at 8.30pm to come and get them to take them back to the hotel.Luckily being the quiet time of year(July-august) i could accommodate them .Saturday nights job was a proposal too but this time to the C Restaurant in the city from Applecross.We get a great deal of marriage proposals which i enjoy a lot as the bride to be is normally ecstatic and then on her phone to the parents and friends. It is a huge privilege to share in their special occasion . That is another thing i have noticed in business is that things come in run's or groups of the same. In my mid 30's i sold books door to door that i had written about simple steps for saving the planet (ie recycling and other things that are now common place). Which i did for five years and something i notice in that time is that the sales were grouped together, so i might get 5 sales in a row then 5 no sales in a row , even some areas had higher sales.Then some times i would not come across the same pattern for ages but once i found a patch it was like gold veins with similar results. So sometimes i would sample a suburb and if it did not do well i would move on and come back another time .Some areas did so well i used to do them every year with the same book and the same results. This may have been due to high rental turnover or the type of person attracted to a certain area.

Treat your staff well

On wednesday the 6 th of august i transported a couple that own a small business in Hillary's Marina and their staff from Hillary's. The shop is under renovation at the moment so they decide to treat their staff to a lunch at the Oyster Bars South Perth . After lunch the staff informed me that the generous bosses had paid to take them on a buying trip to Indonesia. I am sure this type of treatment will lead to staff loyalty in times of low unemployment. Being a midweek tour i could offer them a reduced rate.Which is real win ,win situation in the quiet time of the year (august and july) for us both. We have found many small companies are taking advantage of this quiet time to hold there Annual General Meetings in the swan valley etc as they can claim the meal and transport as a tax deductable in many cases. There is also the duty of care employers are now highly aware of, to get the employees home safely without the fuss of waiting on a taxi or imposing on friends and relatives.