A DREAM ISN’T ALWAYS A PLAN – part Two

To begin with, I’m going to take you back to 1997. It had been two years since my first daughter was born and I had decided to quit my job as the general manager of a local real estate office. I'd then purchased a used six-passenger limousine and opened my limousine company so that Jennifer, my wife, could continue working at a job she'd fought really hard to get. And I could even stay at home and take care of my daughter while growing the limousine company.

I was learning a ton and beginning to make a little bit of money. However, I was getting a lot of flak from family members; they thought I should get a “real job” so Jennifer could stay home and take care of our daughter Sabrina. In reality, Jennifer loved her job, and she was making more money than I was. So, instead of staying true to my business plan, I decided I would quickly grow the company and look like a success—and family would get off my back. I then went out and bought two brand new ten-passenger limousines.

First lesson learned: Never make emotional business decisions. I had one other chauffeur and was just getting by with one car. Now I had to go out and drum up enough business for three cars and hire more chauffeurs.

Second lesson learned: When your business grows by 40%, you need to redesign the current infrastructure or foundation of your business. In two months, I tripled my fleet without improving the infrastructure or changing the way I was doing business. I just worked harder to find more clients. Jennifer would tell me that we had the most expensive landscape in the neighborhood...one tree, a couple of rosebushes, some other flowers, and three beautiful metal statues worth $200,000.

It was a rare day when all three limousines were out at the same time. I knew I had to make the phone ring. So, like most entrepreneurs, I thought more advertising was the magic answer. How do other limousine companies advertise? The Yellow Pages! I started with a small, modest ad...and quickly expanded to full- color, quarter-and-a-half-page ads in three of the largest phonebooks. I was spending $5,000 a month on Yellow Page advertising.

I figured, hey, the bigger the better, right? Wrong! Wrong, regardless of the fact that I then started averaging well over 100 incoming calls a day and usually booked about 10% of them.

I then hired a full time dispatcher and added three more cars to the fleet—blowing up my current foundation once again...and it drove profit even farther into the ground.