A Qualified Chauffeur

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Liverpool for an assessment with the Guild of Professional Chauffeurs in the hope of becoming a qualified Chauffeur. Gladly I passed and am now a member of the Guild. Initially I was unsure of joining but that changed a few weeks ago. The Guild of Professional Chauffeurs is a fairly new movement in the chauffeur industry - it only carried out its first assessment in 2018. Initially the uptake was slow. Although I was aware of the efforts to grow the membership, I was probably similar to many people who were waiting to see if it gained momentum.

As an effort to dispel the myths of it being a cloak and dagger type organisation the Guild held an open meeting in Walsall. They wanted to reassure potential members there was a recognised procedure for assessment and everything was above board. As an opportunity to meet other operators in the Chauffeur Industry and network, I went along. It was good to talk to so many like-minded people and share experiences. It gave me the confidence needed to believe the Guild would be more than just a member’s directory. A lot of time and effort had been invested in establishing the organisation as a professional body.

The Guild of Professional Chauffeurs (or GoPC for short) needed members to join if it was really going to get the ball rolling. It was time for people to sign-up and become a qualified Chauffeur. All the hard work had been done by the committee. What it required now was for those wait-and-see type people to undergo assessment. It would then become their Guild and grow with their requirements. Anyone with vision will see the potential for the Guild to become an industry body and represent the niche market of the chauffeur world. The capability exists in its members to help each other with licensing issues, vehicle purchasing questions, discounted insurance schemes and a whole lot more.

As someone who has always believed ‘one man can make a difference’, it was time to stand up and be counted. Luckily in 2019, I had already completed a one day first-aid course with the Guild. This meant all I had to do was complete a practical assessment and a written Highway Code test. Obviously you have to send over some documents, just to ensure your vehicle is licensed and legal but this can be done in advance. On the day, it is truly nerve-racking! Being assessed by your peers is quite something. However, I simply took the approach that, if I was lacking in any department, there would be constructive feedback and a second opportunity to attempt the assessment at a later date.

True to their word in Walsall, if you carry out a chauffeuring role on a daily basis (and you are working to a good standard), there is every likelihood you will achieve success. Gladly, my advanced driver training with RoSPA was noted and it made a difference. This was praised by my assessor. The feedback was all positive (apart from a minor setback on the practical test). To end the day, a lapel badge was pinned to my suit and a certificate was dispatched in the post. Now I proudly have something to differentiate my skills from anyone branding themselves a Chauffeur. I have been assessed by my peers and approved as a Qualified Chauffeur.

The Specific Chauffeur

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!

Time To Split

For some time now, I have been increasingly concerned that this Chauffeur Blog is conflicting. For anyone who has been reading will know, I am growing an established business while also growing a new one.

There is some crossover but the two companies serve different markets and different sectors, they are at different stages of development too and even have different marketing plans. It might be better to keep the themes running side by side?

From this point of view I have decided it would be better to write two separate Blogs. One for each company. I also think it would be better if the Blogs were actually on the websites of the companies they represent.

What I haven’t decided is if I should still keep this Blog as an overview of the other two? Either way, you can now find the two Blogs on their relevant websites by following the links below:

Manchester Airport Chauffeur Blog

DrivenByQ Chauffeur Blog

Turbo Lag

Standing outside a hotel, I’m waiting for a group to finish their meal when the first passenger comes out and strikes up a conversation. We talk about the economy, Brexit and how his business is doing. I drop in to the conversation that DrivenByQ have just had twenty-four months of continuous growth. He says that is impressive in the current climate.

Our figures for 2018 reflect a 30% growth in turnover. We brought in new drivers, bought new vehicles and improved our processes. It all sounds good - and it is! There is just one small thing to note though. Our profitability remained the same. The reason? We had to change our accounting method (a conundrum I previously wrote about).

As the turnover grew we were forced to abandon one VAT scheme and adopt another. At the threshold of £230,000 we could no longer use the flat rate scheme. Instead we had to use a traditional scheme. The difference meant claiming back VAT on purchases rather than retaining a generous portion of VAT on invoices as we previously did.

Purchasing vehicles and taking on an employee was the first step toward making the new scheme work for us. The reality however is that we are still in a transitional phase. I’m sure most companies go through stages where their business model changes and sometimes, you don’t really know the effect of that change until after the event.

So in order to generate more profit we have two options: The first (and easiest) is to reduce our turnover and go back to the previous scheme. The second is to grow our turnover, purchase more vehicles as a company and take on more employees. I will let you decide which one you think we are actively working toward.

The Rise of The Corporate Citizen

When I sit down and look at figures, the one thing which always amazes me is the way in which card payments have grown. A few years ago we introduced the option to pay in-car by card in all vehicles. Previous to this we had just one card machine which was a large (shoe size) device complete with a till roll for printing long receipts.

While the card machine was useful and offered flexibility it had some issues. Firstly, the battery did not last very long and always required charging for considerable time. Secondly it was expensive! Not only was a deposit required before receiving the machine but there was a monthly rental fee of over £30 and the fee on every transaction was an additional six percent.

The machine did help bring in new customers, especially if they wished to pay by Amex but it was clunky and slow. Added to this was the logistics of swapping the machine between cars and drivers which was challenging to say the least. With the advances in mobile phones and Bluetooth technology, time came to ditch the machine and instead use an app with a card reader.

The advantage of using a mobile phone meant a better data connection using the digital 3G network. Added to this was the removal of a monthly rental fee, no setup cost and finally the drastic reduction of transaction charges. They tumbled from six percent to 2.75% and now it is less than that. Tracking the sales figures is very revealing as the uptake is huge.

In the five years that I used the big old clunky machine, sales were at best £5k a year. As soon as apps were introduced the sales increased to ten times this amount in the next five years. The reason is what is known as ‘The Rise of the Corporate Citizen’ - which basically means travellers taking control of their own travel budgets.

Imagine having a large global company where hundreds (or even thousands) of people travel on business. In the old days a department (with staffing costs) would control the budget. They would be responsible for purchasing airline tickets, train tickets, hotel accommodation and ground transportation. These were all swallowed up in one big account which was then difficult to decipher.

Now compare this to all the people who travel having their own credit card. It becomes a lot easier to get a breakdown of costs and quickly identify an individual who is spending more than anyone else. It also provides a history specific to the individual so that trends can be tracked and interrogated for their data.

An additional bonus in all of this is the simplification of administration within an organization and the reduction of work for their accounts departments. Before the corporate citizen, we would have sent an invoice to a local site who had booked the travel for another site (usually overseas). The overseas site would then have been invoiced by the local site to recover the costs.

Although we charge the same amount for a journey on account as we do for card, the layers of administration which are removed by using card payments often means a company could pay more but still make a saving. There is also the transferring of payments across borders and exchange rates to consider and the time required to process all this.

For me, one of this biggest advantages to using card payments is the speed in which drivers receive payments. Today some payments are almost instant and at most a couple of days. In comparison to that big old clunky machine I had years ago, that is fast! I still remember having to wait up to three weeks and then work out what the lump sum related to.

For passengers, the biggest advantage is speed and convenience. Just yesterday afternoon I did a local transfer for less than £30. That meant the passenger could pay using contactless technology just like he did with a colleague in the morning. The only difference was when he asked for a receipt, I smiled and simply said ‘already sent’ - the app recorded his email address from the earlier trip. Simples.