Greetings everyone! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Many of you know how I love to cook and so I did. Roasted turkey AND slow roasted prime rib this year for 16 people! Talk about WORK! But it was fun and everything came out perfectly. The real secret to getting the meat right is a thermometer! Mine is remote controlled with with a pager so I can be outside when that VERY expensive prime rib hits a perfect 120 degrees for medium rare!So today I spent a total of about 6hrs creating my latest email newsletter. The database has grown to over 2700 email addresses since I started the business! I'm really NOT a graphic designer so thanks to ConstantContact.com with and thier easy to use templates. They've also loaded up a ton of very nice stock images which adds even more pizzaz to the newsletter. I will be adding this latest newsletter to the newletter archive link on http://www.bayarearacinglimos.com/ as soon as I can remember how do it!
I have to say...with the news today that the U.S. is definitely in an "official" recession, I just wanted to throw something at the TV! I have worked SO hard and have sacrificed SO much these past 3yrs to start and grow Racing Limos and then to have to deal with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression! I have investors in the business who are family and VERY dear friends and have become just like family so its not just myself I worry about on a daily basis. There will be many who just throw up their hands and say "to hell with it"! But I won't! I sharpened my pencil...reduced my pricing on just about every type of charter and spent the entire day working on marketing special deals and pricing for the month of December. We will make it through these tough times and we will come out the other end healthy and whole!
Another thing on my mind today is...people who just don't appreciate the value of the services we provide. Most of the people who charter our limos are folks we don't know. Because of the nature of our equipment (10+ passenger limos)...most clients are chartering a limo for a special occasion. A birthday or an anniversary or something that only occurs rarely. Since most don't ride in limos regularly, they often tend to over-do the partying. They drink WAY more than thier normal capacity and lose all respect not only for themselves but for everybody and everything around them.
This past week, a guy charters our flagship limo...the black Dodge Charger w/Lambo Doors. The event is his wife's birthday and they go to a club in the city. Within an hour or so of arriving at the club, the driver is called to come around and pick them up. When he arrives, the husband is pummeling one of the other passengers on the sidewalk. After calming down for a few minutes, they get in the limo and on the way home, he starts to hit his wife. Yes...he's hitting his wife while the others are trying to hold him back. My driver Paulie has had enough and pulls over, ordering the group out near a train station so they can at least make thier way home. They refuse, he calls the police and now we've to a massive scene on the side of the road. The cops order Paulie to drive the drunk group the rest of the way home after they've broken over 6 glasses and someone throws up in both the champagne buckets and all over the carpeting. Did I charge more per our contract you ask? Of course I did but it just doesn't make up for the fact that these people have NO class whatsoever. I just have no way to weed out people like this. No, this doesn't happen often but when it does it sure is disappointing.
So...despite the "recession" and occasional drunks who manage to charter our limos, we roll on down the highway!
