Last weekend I attended a
meeting for the Guild of Professional Chauffeurs in Walsall. It was a great
event with a variety of people. Some were looking to set up a new chauffeur business and others were well established in the chauffeur world.
Over a few beers at the bar I spoke to a mixture of people
in the trade. One was an experienced and professional chauffeur who was
employed to drive for an organization. He was looking to start up on his own but
was unsure where to divert his efforts. One of the experienced guys was
explaining to him that you cannot be all things to all people. It was better to
focus on a specific area. My contribution was the Richard Branson philosophy of ‘finding the niche in the overcrowded market’.
I spoke to another individual who setup two years ago and
was growing in the corporate sector. The way he did this was to use LinkedIn.
He had spent considerable time and money on employing a specialist who showed
him a way to structure his connections and content. This enabled him to
constantly be in the forefront of people’s minds. Rather than adopting the
hard-sell he simply wanted to be considered until the time was right for
someone to reach out to him.
I know from experience that someone can take a business card
and keep hold of it until they require a chauffeur driven car service. It might
be the next week or it might be ten years later. Either way, if they call you,
the way you represented your company must have made the right impression. The
only thing is, if you need to pay the bills, the model you adopt and the market
you chase must be capable of sustaining you. In North Wales where DrivenByQ is
based you can guarantee someone new will enter the trade every few years with a
specific (but somewhat doomed) objective.
For some reason, new entrants to the North Wales chauffeur
market have a belief that there is an overwhelming demand for golfing trips
with groups of wealthy individuals. Having been in the trade for almost twenty
years now, it is a specific customer that I am yet to see materialise. Despite
this, you can guarantee there will be another new start-up who will chase this
market. My advice to them is stop! Don’t do it. Unless you know specifically
that there is a demand for a service, simply don’t go anywhere near it.
Only last week I spoke to someone in his fifties who had
retired and was looking to set up tours or something enjoyable. We spoke for a little
while and I could hear the enthusiasm in his voice and romance which accompanied
it. We then went through what is required to get up and running. Firstly the licensing
aspect would cost around £1,000. Next the insurance would be around £3,000.
Then there was the vehicle which would need to be at least £15,000. This was
before road tax, fuel, repairs, servicing and the unquantified and ongoing marketing
costs.
In that situation I felt ambivalent. On one hand you are crushing
someone’s dreams. On the other hand you are giving them a reality check. In the
long run, it would be much better to spend £20,000 on something which will give
you a return. Better still, why not spend it on yourself, doing something you
enjoy? Take a holiday or a cruise or buy a caravan or even a boat. I can also
guarantee that if you have a partner who is also retired, they would appreciate
your nest egg giving you both some joy and quality time together.
So what is my advice to someone thinking of starting a
chauffeur company in this day and age? Well, firstly, ask yourself how you are
going to make profit – not just turnover. Ask yourself what sort of a margin
you can produce and then ask yourself, is it sustainable and can you grow it?
Can you do it twelve months of the year and how much of your time will it demand?
On top of this, ask yourself what you would do if you had two bookings at the
same time or what you would do if your vehicle was off the road at short
notice. Can you provide a back-up?
When you speak to some people who have been in the chauffeur
trade for a while they can be a bit downbeat or even a bit grumpy. That is
because they have adapted their life around their business and it has cost them valuable time and money. In reality what they really wanted was a lifestyle they could adapt
their business around. It takes time to build a chauffeur business and it takes
time to build something capable of producing a regular wage. For many people,
the time it takes to figure it all out is costly and the return on their
investment is lengthy.
My advice therefore is simple. Do your research. Compile a
list of your costs and be generous on what you expect to pay out (in fact, double it). Then do some
projections and be conservative on what you expect to earn. The next bit is
what it will cost in time (not just money) to work ON your business as well as IN your business. Then decide whether it is profitable in the short, medium and long
term. If, after all this you can still make money, have fun and take time off to
enjoy life, go for it. I can guarantee, it will definitely be an
adventure. Just don’t expect it to work overnight. After all, if it was that easy, we
would all be doing it!
