From Zero to $350,000/yr

Starting from scratch, I would sign up for Uber Black, Lyft Lux, and Blacklane, talk to hotels and night clubs, learn event schedules, and do anything I could to get people into my back seat and money flowing through my business. 

This will give me experience driving people, learning the city, and making small mistakes without serious consequences

Despite the fact that lead generators like Uber don't have a pathway for repeat business, I would still practice delivering top tier service with nice clothes, opening doors, and showing off my ability to navigate the city. It's good practice, and I want to leave myself open to someone being interested in hiring me directly as a private driver. Maybe they have a friend who needs a good car service, too. 

SAVE & ORGANIZE
Every single person who calls me directly for service outside of a platform is going to get saved as a new contact in a contact management system like SimpleTech. While saving them to my phone is convenient, I actually want them in a place where they can be organized by who lives locally vs. who was just visiting my city from out of town, which services or vehicle they hired me for, and what price they paid. This makes future business development much faster and simpler.

FOLLOW UP
After I drop them off at the end of their first direct ride, I am going to send them a text message thanking them for their business, and asking them to save my contact in their phone. I am going to include my contact card to make it easy for them to save me in one tap.

Many people don't call a second time not because you aren't good, but because they never saved your number in their phone, or they can't find it. This simple habit makes it easier for them to come back again. 

Concurrently with lead generators, I would also start building my public presence by creating a Yelp page, a Google business listing, and by building build a basic website.

While my public presence is gaining attention, I would brush up on my inbound phone sales and practice answering the phone with my business name first so anyone who calls knows they're calling a transportation service. 

After I'm confident in my local knowledge and airport pickup / drop off process, I would build my peer-to-peer contacts within the industry and learn farm-in etiquette regarding how to treat other people's clients when I help with their bookings. If I can successfully convince other drivers that I understand the rules, I am safe, and I won't put their client relationships at risk by doing a bad job or by trying to steal them, I can start creating allies within the industry, which will help me in later stages of growth.

Now that I have a few loyal clients, my next step is to maximize what I can do for them.
Even if I take cash payments, Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or even swipe a credit card after a ride, I am also going to tell them that I'm capable of storing credit cards on file, and delivering receipts that can be used in expense reports. This opens me up to business travel. 

The same people I pick up at 2 am from a bar, and the same people who just need a quick ride across town for dinner, are the same people who travel for business. If they think I'm only the informal driver who is there for them personally, they may not think of me when they need something professionally. 

The key to keeping my clients happy is to make sure they never have to look elsewhere for service. If they depend on me, I need to be dependable. And due to the risk that two of them might need me at the same time, I will need backup. 

This is where my peer-to-peer contacts come in. If I've done a good job for other drivers when they needed help, I can expect them to be there for me when I need help. And when I get double booked, I don't have to say "sorry I'm booked," I can say "I'm busy personally, but I have friends. Let me coordinate your trip with one of them."

I take the reservation, facilitate the service with a friend, collect payment from the client, and pay my friend. My client always stays under my care. 

Now that I know I can coordinate a client with another driver, a new opportunity opens up to me. If I am driving an SUV, this is where I would expand my peer-to-peer contacts from just other SUVs, to other vehicle types entirely. I want to build my book of driver contacts to include Executive Sprinters, Limo Sprinters, Stretch Limos, Shuttle buses, Party buses, and Charter buses, then tell my clients to call me for other vehicles, too. I don't want them to go looking for a Sprinter elsewhere and accidentally find a company who also has SUVs like me. They might never come back! Plus, it's just good service. They shouldn't have to go looking for a Sprinter on Google when I already have a friend who has one. 

When a client needs a vehicle I don't own, the same procedure applies. I take the booking, facilitate the service with my friend, collect payment from the client, and pay my friend. My client always stays under my care. 

Most drivers who reach this point say they have 6-10 loyal clients. But what's surprising is that they've actually driven several hundred passengers 1-2 times each. 

If I was organized through stage 1, these people aren't buried in my phone contacts and mixed in with my personal life. They are in my client database, organized by local vs. non-local, and they have all received my contact card through text. That's hundreds of people that are easy to reach out to again, share my progress with, and tell them what I can do for them now that I couldn't do for them before.

Re-Marketing is one of the fastest ways to generate business, but it only works if I've been saving, organizing, and following up with every direct caller since day 1. 

Being able to keep credit cards on file, coordinate other vehicles, and send expensible receipts opens me up to business accounts. The reason this is important is that it increases my use cases. Before, I was only capable of personal rides. So if I was going to get referrals from my clients, it was likely to be a referral to someone who also just needed a personal ride. Many black car clients need much more than just personal rides, though. So by positioning myself as someone capable of more, I become eligible not just for the business travel of my existing clients, but to more of their colleagues who need to expense their business travel, and even to the companies themselves. 

At this point I'm probably doing quite a bit of farming out. I'm noticing that administrative speed is becoming important, organizing information is becoming important, the time I spend looking up information is getting out of hand, and I could make more money if I had a second vehicle and someone to drive it. This is where I want to build a foundation for growth. This is also where most owners start to hit a ceiling.  

If I'm not already using a basic booking CRM like SimpleTech, this is where I would be looking for something to build my business on. I'm still just a single car, so I am probably still engaging in last minute rides, rides without a defined scope of work, and offering flexible changes midway through a reservation. So using a rigid Pre-arranged only software solution like LimoAnywhere, Moovs, FastTrak or LimoGrid is probably not going to work for me just yet. 

In real life, this is where I built SimpleTech, which, back then, was called Fast & Simple. It focused on organizing clients and drivers into dedicated contacts lists, making quick bookings that go straight onto a calendar with easily farmable details, documenting spontaneous trips, keeping trip records for each client, and making follow ups routine. 

If you are interested, contact me and I will revive SimpleTech Booking for you. I can relaunch it for the cost of server fees, which are $30/month. And I'd love to see it be useful to more drivers at this stage than just my past self. 

This is where I would get outside advice on what kind of company I want to be. Do I want a second SUV to keep more private bookings in-house? Or do I want to branch out to a Sprinter so I can go after higher-dollar group rides? Or should I stay where I am and just embrace the coordination side of my business? 

Congratulations! If you've reached this point, you've done something most operators never accomplish: You've built a legitimate business instead of simply creating a job for yourself. From here on, there isn't one obvious next step anymore. Every decision becomes a tradeoff. 

If you're at this stage or later, I can help you build your dream business years faster, without trial and error, and with fewer costly mistakes.