What Makes A Business Successful

What Makes A Business Successful 

After being in business for almost ten years. I can honestly say that success in business is achieved with hard work, dedication and consistent quality. Whether it be a product or a service provided people recognize quality and will come back every time. 

It has been almost ten years since we opened the doors at Elegant Limousines. We started this blog back in 2010 and have not been back to update since 2013. So I feel that we owe it to our audience to fill you in on what we have been doing and where we are today. 

There is so much I have to share I just don't know where to start. So reaching back in my fogged memory I remember a time when we decided to start growing again after the terrible times that Florida saw do to the housing crash. We had scaled back big time. Our office was at our home and we were the only drivers. All of our limos were kept in a local storage facility. It was time to move to a location that we could have an office and a better place to keep our limos. At this time we only had 3 vehicles in the fleet. Bertha our 20 passenger Excursion, Betsy 2 the 8 passenger Lincoln limo and our black Town Car that was kept in the garage at our home.  

Finding a new location 

I looked on craigslist , realtor sites and came up empty. It is not easy to find a location that would accommodate us. By chance I was driving home from work one day. Yes I still had my day job at this point, but that is another story. I saw ( For Rent ) on what looked like a possible good location. I checked out the area and called the number on the sign. The owner told me this unit was too small for what we needed but he did have another location that might work. I called my wife to fill her in and let her know I was looking at a possible location. Per usual I got the ( Stop blowing smoke) response from my loving and supportive wife. Well the joke was on her... This place was perfect for what we needed at the time. We now have a place we could park 2 limos inside and have an office. It had zero street exposure, but it beat working out of a storage unit. The local business real estate was still in recovery mode. This gave us the upper hand in securing a lease price that was comfortable for us and the landlord was happy to have good tenants. 

Moving In and Making It Work 

Read About It Next Time ...

The Tough Road ....

I tell you this has been a tough couple of years. Some days we wonder ( Is it all worth it ? )  Yes it is !!!  Our Limo business is our life. This is what we do morning noon and night. So the show must go on. I haven't written in a long time. There are so many stories I want to share and don't know where to start. I sit here and look back on everything we have done, all the places we have been and all the people we have met and all that comes to mind is Dam.... I wouldn't miss it for the world. My wife and I are the best team there is. We work together and are in such sync that we get the job done fast and better than most.

Back to our history. Before the economy tanked we were on our way to growing our Limousine business. We now had 2 10 passenger Lincoln Limo a 20 passenger Excursion Limo and a black Lincoln sedan. Oh I think I forgot to tell the story of how we got the Excursion. We had only been up and running for a little over a year. We were about to loose our house thanks to a mortgage problem and rising insurance rates. So I mentioned to my wife that if we are ever going to get an SUV Limo we need to do it before we loose the house. While we still had perfect credit we started shopping. We didn't even have a market for an SUV limo. But we figured it's all or nothing. Hey no guts no glory right. We figured if we book it great if not we give it back to the bank. Our credit would be shot from the house any way. So First I found an Escalade in N.Y. thank god that didn't happen. Then I found the Excursion. It was in Ca. A 1 owner 2005 20 passenger with only 32,000 miles. Only $53,000. But we had no cash to put down and the fact that we were a new company didn't help. Did we get the loan ?? Oh we got it and it came with a tube of lube !! The day I got the green light on the SUV I called my wife and said ( there will be a 36foot limo in the driveway next week)

I won't tell you the response I got...
The delivery of our Excursion was far from smooth. We had already started taking bookings for it and we didn't even have it yet. Our first client would be for the Daytona 500. Well about 2 days after the deal was done I called the dealer to see how they were making out with shipping the Limo to us from Ca. When the man on the phone said ( when are you coming to get it ? ) I wanted to reach through the phone and beat him. The deal was it would be shipped at the dealers expense. After 2 more days of  BS they finally stuck a driver in it and sent him on the 3,500 mile trip to FL. The Excursion arrived on a Thursday. With NO PLATES !!!  This was a lease to own and they were supposed to get our plates. Keep in mind this Limo was booked for the race coming up on Sunday. I called the dealer and they assured me that there office in Miami was taking care of it and we would have our plates by Friday. Friday came and went and no plates !!! I called the dealer and demanded the phone # to the Miami office. The lady said the lease company will have the plates out today. I told her I'm not playing games give me the # to the lease company now !!! Good thing I did they were still waiting for a check to pay for the plates. WTF !!! I gave then a check by phone and paid extra to have the plates FEDX next day. Aah we got the plates just in time.

Now that we had our fleet we needed a place to keep them. Our current place was outside storage. The problem with that is you are constantly washing the cars. So I started looking for a building that was in our budget. I found a nice 5,000 sq ft building on US1 in Bunnell only 10 minutes from home. We made a deal and took a short term lease to give it a shot. I will fill you in on some more later. Thank you for reading my blog about owning a limo business.

http://www.palmcoastlimos.info/
Elegant Limousines of Palm Coast Inc.
If you need limo service in any city in Florida click on the links below.

Orlando Limo Service
Daytona Beach Limo Service
Daytona Beach Limousines
Jacksonville Limo Service
Daytona Beach Weddings by Elegant Weddings and Mrs. Marlo.

Expanding We Will Go

Take a walk with me, won't you. To a time when life was good. When we all had a little $$ in our pockets and the shit hadn't hit the fan yet. That's right I'm talking about early 2008. Our airport service side of the biz was turning out to be the foundation to our biz. So we needed a car that looked like it belonged at the airport . As much as we liked our white and tan sedan it had to go. We still didn't have any extra cash because we were still rolling it all back into the biz. It just so happens that at the same time we were trying to find a way to buy a sedan, my father in law, Marlo's Father sent us our wedding gift in the form of a check ! I Love that man !! So you could say my wife's father bought us the newer black sedan we so desperately needed and we still have that car today. The only thing worse than having a black car with lots of chrome is having this car and a wife with O.C.D. Black cars are a pain in the ass to keep clean. Marlo's favorite saying ( No DNA on the car !! ) This means finger prints ect...

We also decided it was time to get another limo but we wanted a car that looked newer. We were still considered a start up company and the banks wouldn't even give us 9 cents with 10 cents down. The guy we bought Betsy from was selling his 1999 Lincoln 120" This was just the Limo we needed ! We really do owe the fact that our biz even exists to Joshua. He said he would personally finance the limo to us as long as we could come up with a $5,000 Deposit and do $500 a month. Well when I heard this I called my wife right away and told her to put my motorcycle on EBay

. I did mention that you will have to sacrifice everything right... Still want to have a Limousine Biz ??  Ok fine keep reading then.

So turns out bikes sell fast. It was gone in 2 hours. SOLD !!
That weekend we headed back to Ga were we bought our first limo and we drove home our new to us updated Limo. I don't think I stopped smiling the whole way home. We now officialy had a FLEET. 2 120's and a black sedan.

Here are some pictures of our newer 120"

Time to Get Down To Business !!

It's been a long time since I posted. So forgive me for leaving everyone hanging. By this point we were in with both feet. I remember being so busy that we were running non stop. I would be out with the Limo till 3 am on Sat night and my wife would meet me at the end of the driveway with the vacuum and clean glasses so she could go to Port Canaveral for an 8am pickup. We were doing well but still had not hired any help. I'm not sure it was because we thought we couldn't afford it or we just didn't want anyone else running our biz. My wife hated doing early morning airport runs. She has a tough time staying awake at 4am. So I did most of the Early runs. I would have a bag in the trunk with my work boots and mechanics clothes so I could go straight to my real job after the run.

I also spent many nights home alone while my wife did the night runs. Keep in mind if you are thinking of starting a Limousine biz it takes total dedication. Oh and you can kiss your personal life goodbye !! If you want to have a life you have to plan it around the biz. We are so dedicated to our business that we have learned to live with these facts. It was funny at first . We would do most nights out in the limo together. This way we could work and still spend time together. If we were gonna be gone long we would also bring our little doggy with us ( Captain ) Our regular clients would refer to us as ( The Fam Damly Limo Company ) LOL !!

All of the money we made was being put back into the biz. For things like vehicle maintenance, advertising, insurance ect. Ya lets talk about advertising costs. We wasted a lot of money on useless advertising. Radio, News print, Coupons Ect... Don't waste your $$$  The Internet is where it's at. Some one isn't gonna see your ad or hear is on the radio and say ( Hey I want a Limo ) It just doesn't happen it's not like advertising a cheese burger. If someone wants a Limo they will look online. So you better be there and as close to #1 as possible.

We finally decided to hire someone. Thank god !! This wasn't planned and probably not the best way to find good help. My wife was at the local gas station and the guy behind the counter asked if we were hiring. We decided to meet with him and give him a shot. I know what your thinking, some kid or a looser working at 7-11 right. No he was an older man working part time for some extra cash. He turned out to be a big help in the beginning. I think he stayed with us for just about 1 yr. Then he decided to go back into retirement. This gave us time to focus more on the biz itself and less on driving. Don't get me wrong we still drive just not like we use to. Remember I told you about our nice little website that our friend did for us. Well he moved to CA. You know what that meant for us? Time to learn how to do our own. If you have just a little computer experience you can make yourself a nice website at an affordable price. I think we pay like $150 a year and now I do all of our Internet stuff. The nice thing about doing your own site is you can add or edit specials or change of season ads. Trust me this saves us a ton of $$ Ok time for a shameless plug. Check out our site and see for yourself. I did everything you see with Intuit site Builder and Photo shop. http://www.palmcoastlimos.info/

This is a picture of our first sedan, Betsy and the black sedan was bought to replace the white one.

Money Starts Rolling In !!

We needed to find a way to get the phones ringing. We had a nice Limo and a nice website but the phone was a little dusty. Then we discovered Limos.com. We read all the information on the home page about how their system works and all the testimonials from other owners sounded promising. This seemed like a low cost way to get some leads. After our first week with LDC we were slammed with runs. Every weekend our 1 limo was booking out Fri, Sat and trips to Port Canaveral on  Sundays. We even booked it for AP runs during the week.

With such a low overhead and both of us still working our full time jobs life was great. We had extra money to play with. But we didn't know we were really setting ourselves up for a disaster. Since we were new business owners with no experience in the Limo industry, we were not prepared for the change of season ( slow season ) or the fact we were pissing off the competition with our way too low rates. Oops...
Yes we were the new guy in town running at $50 an hour. And not putting any money away for slow times, business expenses ect.. When the summer of 2007 hit. So did reality. The phone stopped ringing and someone cut down the money tree.

We started doing more research about our business and what we were doing wrong. I know a smart person would have done this first, not 1 yr in to it. We reached out to other local companies and started to make friends and asked as many questions as we could. At this point we were willing in listen to anyone that was willing to help a start up.

Now it was time to make some changes. Starting first with adding a sedan to our fleet. Ok we didn't really have a fleet yet but it sounded good. Now we needed to find a nice TC Sedan for AP runs. We have been sending the 120 for all AP runs for the first yr. I started looking online for a nice TC. We did find one in S Florida for a good price. It wasn't exactly an L series but it was nice. A white 97 that would do the job. We also raised our rates to a price that was right for our market.


2007 would prove to be 100% better than our first yr. With our heads on straight now we knew this way going to be different that the previous year. The problem now was we weren't making enough money to hire a driver yet. So we continued to do all the runs ourselves and with my wife answering the phones 24-7 this was starting to become a problem. The reason she had the phone all day and not me is she worked in a nursing home with a relaxed atmosphere. Compared to my work at the garage where it is loud and a little crazy at times. There is no way I could handle the phones. Now was the time for us as a couple to decide if we were gonna go forward and do what it would take to make this dream of ours a success.

More Up Dates Coming Soon ... 

Getting Our Business Ready to Roll

Picking up were I left off. We headed to Georgia to pick up our first limo. Now keep in mind we knew nothing about limos and didn't know what to expect. So we pulled up to the gun shop that was selling the limo to us. Ya a guy that runs a gun shop and limo service. Only in the south... Josh actually turned out to be a great guy and soon to be a big help in the growth of our new biz. The limo was a 91 Lincoln 10 passenger that had been parked in a barn for months. It needed to be cleaned and would need some work but the price was right. We paid $5,500. For Betsy as she would become known as.

The ride home was cool. We got a lot of looks and thumbs up. We knew this was gonna be fun. My wife hit the ground running with all the necessary paperwork to get our biz legal and rolling. My first order was to take this 28 foot car to my work and see what it needed. After doing all necessary repairs and many long nights we got Betsy looking awesome. Here is what she looked like when we were done.

Not bad for an old girl !!!

As of August 1st 2006 we had a cool Limo, Elegant Limousines of Palm Coast was now Incorporated and we had all permits and insurance to operate. But we had no customers !! First thing we needed was a website. We didn't know anything about websites or the Internet for that. Luckily my wife had a friend who's husband did websites and needed some car repairs done. Sooo we made a trade. I fixed his Toyota and we got a nice new website. But still no customers. ......

Read about our first year in operation and how we made it threw this tough economy. New posts will be up often. Thank you for your interest in Our story.

How it all Started

Ive decided to take some time and get all my thoughts and experiences down on paper. So this blog will be the beginning of many more to come. Back in 2005 I was living in New Bed ford Mass with my now wife of 4 yrs. We were living a great new life together. She was working full time as a nurse's aid and I was working in Abington as a mechanic for Abington Mobil, soon to be ACS. We lived a nice simple life. Had fiends and family to spend time with and life was simple. But we felt like we needed more. Since we both hated the cold winter weather and wanted to do something different with our new life together we started planning a move to Florida. Palm Coast, just north of Daytona Beach. We knew we would be sacrificing a lot to make this move, but figured it was worth it. This was a chance to start a new life together and plan for the future.
So we loaded up the truck and headed south. We did have some plans set in motion so we weren't coming down on a whim. I had found a job at the local Dodge Dealership and Marlo had many promising jobs to start as soon as we were settled. On our lst trip to Palm Coast before the big move we purchased our first home together and I proposed to Marlo in the front lawn of our new home.
We were so excited. All our friends had parties for us when we left and begged us to stay. But we knew this would be for the best. Hey you cant stay in the same place forever.


Once we got settled and started our new life it was time to start planning our wedding. Marlo jumped into this headfirst. She really wanted a simple wedding and now looking back I wish I had listened to her. I wanted to have a nice beautiful wedding in our backyard at our new home with friends and family. Sounds nice ha.. Not the dream I had pictured. We had a large guest list that only about half of them could make the trip for our big day. But the people who really care about us came.


Our wedding was only a few short weeks away and now we got to thinking about the bachelor and bachlorette parties. We were going to need a limo for a killer night out in Daytona. So like anyone would do we started price shopping for a limousine for our night out. Now keep in mind this was back in 2006 before the market fell. I was interested in the response we got from most limo companies in Daytona Beach. It seemed the going rates were anywhere from $80 to $100 an hr with like a 6 hour minimum.

Well this got the wheels in my head turning...  I wanted to know what a limo cost to buy and run. So I started looking on ebay and online. I was pleasantly surpriced that they werent 100% out of our reach for a cheap starter limo. We found a nice Lincoln 10 passenger for sale in Georgea. It was the right price and not too far way. So we hit the local Citibank to inquire about a small loan to get started. We decided to go for it. Now neither of us had no experiance will running a business or even think about how to drive a 28 foot car. But we figured what the hell, lets try and see what happens. The loan we got was so small that even if the biz didnt work out no big loss in our minds.