A DREAM ISN’T ALWAYS A PLAN – part Three

Third lesson learned: Stay true to your plan. Don’t get caught up in the process. True growth takes time, and just because something increases revenue doesn’t mean profit will follow.

For that amount of advertising, I should've had a solid client base, between ten to fifteen limousines, four to five dispatchers (not just myself and one other), and around a couple dozen chauffeurs. Had I sat down and carefully planned out the process of where I wanted to take the company...had I done the math and seen what it would've taken to support my goal, I would have seen trouble. But, like many young entrepreneurs, I ran full-steam toward my goal, trying to figure out each next move as I went along.

Because that current infrastructure couldn’t handle the increase in my business, I had to “farm out” (give away) runs to other companies. As it turned out, other limousine companies had the same dilemma, so we decided to form a limousine association. We met once a month to discuss ways to improve each other’s businesses and the industry as a whole.

We decide that instead of farming out a run, we would book the run and then have another company execute it as if they were part of our company. We would retain the client and they would pay us a 20% referral fee for giving them the work. Life was good, there was plenty of work to go around.

After seeing a need for trained chauffeurs, a couple of experienced chauffeurs from one of the limousine companies decided to open a chauffeur’s school and acquired a really good training program. There then was an influx of trained chauffeurs in the market place. I decide to, once again, increase the fleet, and I added another limousine and a town car to the mix. This time, I redesigned the company’s infrastructure to allow for the changes and just kept plugging away.

1997 was coming to an end, and Jennifer and I were gifted with beautiful twins. I was taking care of Sabrina, then two-and-a-half, and three-month-old twins. Jennifer had been promoted at her computer company job downtown, and the limousine company was rapidly growing. By the end of 1998, after setting a goal to make $100,000 in revenue that year, I finished with $200,000. Things appeared to be moving along just as planned.

In the beginning of 1999, the owners of the chauffeur’s school decided to sell the school, so I agreed to buy it. I was given the opportunity to lease an office space in downtown Bellevue near Jennifer’s work. I figured I would move the school to my office and continue to train people there. I would get paid to train my own chauffeurs and could hire the best students in of the classes. It seemed like a plan laced in gold.