The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Making Millions in the Luxury Sprinter Van Business. #048

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

I sat down with Raymond, the owner of a luxury Sprinter van rental service in Vegas. He's grown his business rapidly, renting out high-end Sprinter vans for $170/hour to celebrities, hotels, bachelor parties, and more. Despite the crowded Vegas market, Raymond believes it's under-saturated and shares insights on launching similar businesses in other cities. We also discuss tangential business ideas like CRM, lead gen services, and travel planning. Timestamps below.  Enjoy! ---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: tkopod.co/p-all Scrape small business data: tkopod.co/p-os ---00:27 Meet Raymond: The Sprinter Van Entrepreneur02:07 The Concept of Livery Service03:23 Starting the Business: From Idea to Execution05:22 Building Relationships and Marketing Strategies10:10 Expanding the Business Beyond Vegas14:07 Customizing the Sprinter Vans21:13 Driver Compensation and Commission Structure22:09 Navigating Regulations and Building Relationships22:42 Growth and Financing Strategies24:32 Revenue and Insurance Challenges28:04 Licensing and Market Opportunities33:02 Innovative Business Ideas and Future Plans38:51 Conclusion and Contact Information

Let's say you were to take all of your knowledge and gunned to your head, someone says, Raymond, you've got to move to Dallas, Texas. Because Vegas is like such a unique market. And let's say you've got to move to Dallas. You're starting from scratch. You don't have any relationships. All you have is your knowledge. And you've got to start this business in Dallas or Baltimore or Minneapolis.

What would you do differently or the same to do that? All right. Welcome to the Kerner office. Today I interviewed Raymond. He is the owner of a sprinter van. luxury limo rental service out of Vegas. And he's grown like crazy. I met him through a mutual friend.

And it's a really cool business. They spend 176 grand to outfit a brand new Mercedes Sprinter van. And then they rent it out for 170 bucks an hour to celebrities, hotels, individuals, bachelor parties, you name it. He's grown really fast. And what's interesting is despite the crowded market of Vegas, he's pretty convinced that it's undersaturated that business in Vegas. And so I really wanted to ask him like, okay, Vegas is cool.

but 99% of us don't live there. How would you launch this in Minneapolis or Dallas? Or what tangential business ideas are you seeing in the space that others could launch if they don't want to launch a Sprinter van rental service? Like is there a CRM or a lead gen service or a travel planning service? I'm kind of obsessed lately with asking business owners that question. What other ideas are you seeing that you're too focused to execute on? I think that's going to kind of be a core pillar of this podcast is that one question

because that's all what we're here for. Right? We want to hear ideas. And we want to specifically hear ideas from credible people that know those ideas better than anyone. So anyway, I've talked enough. Enjoy this episode. We talked real hard numbers. And I hope you learn something tangible that you can apply to your everyday lives. And please, please, please share this with everyone you know, even if it's just your grandma. Okay. Well, why don't we just get started? Raymond, why don't you tell us all who you are and what you do? All right. So my name is Raymond and I am the owner or co-owner, I should say. My partner is my significant other of exclusive livery. We are a transportation company, if you want to call it limousine provider in Las Vegas, Nevada. How would you describe a livery? Because that's a new word to me. I'm not going to lie. So livery, it's a really cool word, actually.

What livery is, it's a service with a driver. It's the olden days term that they use with the horse and carriage. So when you back in the. the day for anybody watching all the shows on Netflix right now. Back in the day, if a carriage came to your house and you had a driver, that was a livery service. So when you travel to the East Coast still or you travel to Chicago, a lot of the cities, they do a lot of, they call it a livery service. It's very big there. It's a black car service, whether it may be a sedan or an SUV, and it has a driver. Okay. So you own a business in Las Vegas with very fancy.

nice decked out sprinter vans and you charge by the hour, I assume, to take exclusive people to exclusive places to and from, right? Yes, that's correct. We came up with the exclusive want exclusives. Okay, I love that. Yeah, you got to put that front and center on your website. Absolutely. Okay, so how long have you been in business and what was the idea that first told you,

huh, this is something that I should try? So we've been in business now. this is going into our second year. So I was a GM prior. My background, just a little quick background. I was in hospitality for so many years in hotel management and hospitality here in Las Vegas. So, you know, really good training background, all about customer service and building relationships. And so over the years, I was a GM for two companies prior to having our own. And we did really well. We were successful with those companies. I helped build the companies to a good platform. And then when it was time for us to kind of branch out and start our own. It just seemed like perfect timing.

And so we're like, let's do it. What did that conversation or that sentence look or sound like when you first had the very serious idea of, I need to do this. Like, I need to invest 150 grand into a van and start this business. I've seen what the business is, what it was and what it can be. And the first sentence, I said, man, I want to be different. And I told, my partner, my fiance, Sandra, I said, you know, what do you think about us opening our own and creating this brand, this image, something that's so tomorrow, so different, that we take this business and we take this transportation industry to the next level in Las Vegas. Was there someone that you saw doing this and they were just doing really well that made you think,

man, if they can do this, I can do this? Absolutely. The people that I worked for as a GM, they're a friends of mine. started their company, I want to say about 15 years ago. And we worked together in hotels. And they asked me to build with them. And like I said, we were so successful with the building of theirs that I thought to myself, man, if we did so good with theirs and I have more ideas that, you know, that I want to do it to my own, this is the perfect opportunity for us. So you help them build their limo service. Yes, yes. What role specifically did you play with that? Did you have to go find customers. Did you have to deal with the manufacturer? What role did you have specifically?

I did a lot of the marketing. I did the customers, getting the accounts, the day-to-day operations, just with dealing with the drivers, making sure the drivers were on point with their service, that, you know, we were on top of everything. Our big thing was, let's go after these accounts that can make us busy throughout the days, you know, accounts that are corporate accounts, but there are also accounts that could turn into other events or other rides for us. So our big thing was let's go after convention people coming into Las Vegas. They're here for meetings. They need transportation to and from the convention, their hotel, the airport.

And so that's exactly what we did. So what does that look like? You want to attack the convention business. Did you start cold calling? How did you find them? So, I mean, little by little, there was, we got in, good with the hotels. We have probably about four hotels we have really good relationships with. So their sales and their marketing team brought us on board as a vendor. And we would go to their

group meetings, go and join, give our idea what they should do for their transportation. So let's say, for example, they had 500 people coming in. We'd say, perfect. We're going to have greeters at the airport. We're going to run shuttles round Robin from the airport to the hotel. and we're going to have greeters there. So it's all a big service. You know, you want people to feel welcome. You want people to not be lost, right? And you want to get them from point A to point B in a safe manner,

but in a really nice manner. You want them to feel comfortable. You want them to feel like they were looked after totally. We started building little by little with the groups. And just from there, it kind of spiraled into something bigger. And then we were doing a lot of big groups, a lot of big corporations. So instead of calling like the Sands Convention,

Center, you're calling like the plaza or just the hotels or the casinos that are doing, quote, smaller for Vegas, bigger for the rest of the world, doing these conventions. And they don't want to be in the van business or the logistics business. They want to be in the hotel slash convention business. So you basically call them and raise your hand and say, hey, can I be an approved vendor? Like, can I sit in your meetings? Like, I know the business. I've been in the business.

I know who's screwing up and how they're screwing up. And I know how to do it better. Is that kind of the pitch? That is. That is exactly the pitch. So let's say you were an outsider. You have the same business idea, but you don't have the experience that you did have. How would you have attacked launching this business differently as an outsider?

Like how do most people launch this business? You would have to do your groundwork. You have to put in the groundwork. You have to go. Las Vegas is small. It's all about relationships. Everybody knows each other here. If you're an outsider and you were never in this business and you were say like, hey, that seems like pretty lucrative.

I think I'm going to try that. and I'm good at logistics or I'm good at managing people. Maybe I can try to do this. So you would have to start with building a relationship with someone first at a hotel or some kind of account that you can have, even if it's a small account where you're doing a shuttle service for, let's say, a restaurant or a gun range or one of these. There's so many vendors in Vegas, right? You start a foundation and you start to build off that foundation and you build

relationships. So that's the only, you know, that's the way to get in. Once you get in and you have that groundwork set, it took me some years. I could probably safely say that I have about eight years of groundwork in to where we are now, to be comfortable that now my book of clients and the relationships are pretty solid. Yeah. I feel like you're unintentionally underselling the strategy of what you've done. I feel like most people would go into it and they'd see the flashing lights and the lore of the business and like, man, I could take Taylor Swift from a point A to point B. And I feel like most people would buy a van and launch direct to consumer and say, all right, how am I going to find people? And I feel like that's the wrong way. Like, you could probably have success doing that,

but you attack this with, I want to talk to one that can get me 100 rides. And most people, they want to go one to one to one to one. Is that right? That is correct. You know, we looked at the big picture. We weren't looking at the one to one to one like how you said. We were looking at the one to 1,000 or 10,000. You know, now we have phone calls that even amaze me sometimes, but it's like, I can't believe you have my number. Yeah, and they're like, oh, yeah, this person passed it from this person, and we heard you guys did great, so we'd love to use your service.

That's super satisfying. That's amazing. So let's say you were to take all of your knowledge and gunned to your head, someone says, Raymond, you've got to move to Dallas, Texas. Because Vegas is like such a unique market. You've got like Vegas, Macau, like maybe one or two other markets that are even similar to Vegas. And let's say you've got to move to Dallas. You're starting from scratch.

You don't have any relationships. All you have is your knowledge. And you've got to start this business in Dallas or Baltimore or Minneapolis. What would you do differently or the same to do that? We talk about this a lot, actually. It's a big picture for us down the line. I think that's going to be something. But what I would do is, I mean, the first thing is I would go to the whole.

hotels, being my hotel background, you know, that would be my attack. I'd go to the big hotels in Dallas. I'd go to the Ritz. I'd go to the four seasons. I'd go to the top. Would you walk in or would you call them? You know, I would probably call at first to see who the contacts are. I'd find the director of friend services or the vice president of operations. And I'd get their contact info. I'd shoot them an email. But I would show up. I would show up really sharp. You know, I'd, I'd, I'd show up. I'd introduce myself, hey, I'm Raymond. I have a hotel background. I've been in this industry and we're moving our transportation service here. And in cities like that, where the airports are kind of far away from the hotels, you know, cities like that, a service, a black car service

or a sprinter service, it's ideal. I don't even think some of these cities have enough services. You know, that's hence Uber and all this other stuff that people are utilizing because they don't, there's not enough. Because I mean, the Vegas airport, it's basically right at the south end of the strip, right? Right, right. We're the one city, I think, in the U.S. that we're literally 15 minutes from the airport, not even. Some rides are five minutes.

And how much of your business is airport dependent, right? Either two or from? 50% at least, because everybody has to come in and everybody has to go out. We've come up with ideas. How could we have business that's not, dependent on travelers or tourists or people coming on, you know, how can we service the locals? How can we build relationships in the clubhouses? And how could I build relationships in Henderson and in Summerlin? The people that need the service for birthday parties, weddings, all this stuff,

how could I build these relationships? Yeah, I mean, that way it can be more recurring, more predictable, not dependent on the next big conference, right? Right, right. So it's hard. You know, with, with any business, you figure out your patterns, right? You figure out how your income is going to come in, all that stuff. We try to look at how can I have it so that on a monthly basis, I know that, hey, for example, we have some friends over at Dragon Ridge Country Club. And I want to service all the Country Club members.

So I want to set up a service for them, exclusive for them, that they can use to and from concerts. Now, these people are probably Raiders, ticket holders. They're going to all kind of events. They might be flying in and out for business. I want to service them, and I want to do it throughout the week 24-7. Maybe a Cirque du Soleil every Friday night or something. Something, yes.

Or even set up a shuttle from the outlying places in the city, like a Lake Las Vegas. Let's set up a shuttle for the members every Friday, Saturday, where they go into the city and then they're going to go have dinner. Maybe a lot of them don't want to drive. You know, it's a 35-minute drive. So we could set up that shuttle. We could put them in our sprinter.

It's really nice. It's comfortable. They'll ride. They'll have a good time. They'll have a drink on the way there. It's fantastic. Okay. So you brought up the sprinter.

So let's talk about it. What does it cost to outfit one of these to your desire? Like, what does it cost to just buy one as is plus all the outfitting? Okay, so typically you buy these sprinters from a certified builder. It's a certified builder through Mercedes-Benz. And there's a number of them throughout the states. And we deal a lot with one next door to us in California. It's formerly known as LA Customs and it was bought by ADF.

And so they outfit for us. Now, they do something special for us because they outfit for a lot of other providers here in Las Vegas being so close. We wanted ours to be different. So my fiance and I, we designed a little different interior, and we asked for straighter lines, and so that it was custom to ours and that nobody else would have that. So he did that for us, and I believe they were approximately $174,000. Wow.

Okay. Now, how much would that Sprinter cost if you just bought it and didn't touch it? So if I were just to buy it from the factory, incomplete vehicle, it would be about $79,000, roughly. Okay. So 100 grand to make this according to your standard. Right. And that seems to be the market. The 150 brand new out the door is kind of the market. Any little extras you add are the additional. Do you think your competitors are paying as much or there's not as nice? So I think that they're paying close to what we're paying. I like to believe that ours are a little bit nicer just because we designed a little bit of a higher end.

image inside of them. I like to believe that we wanted ours to be more of a sprinter limo that can be corporate, but can be turned into party mode. You know, most people's sprinter is known as a party bus. And so we wanted to be, you know, the exclusive way to travel. This is the new limousine. This is the new trend going into the future. You know, stretch limos aren't really a thing anymore. So how do we make this interior look like a stretch limo, but it's super comfortable? You don't have to crawl in. You know, you walk onto it. The lighting is nice and bright. It's clean. The lines are straight. You know, you have TVs. You have music. And you have all this at the control that we give you an iPad. Everybody gets an iPad. Yeah, it's really neat. And so it's a really unique experience.

And so we like to believe that we're setting a standard much higher. Do you get any business directly from customers or is it all coming through your hotel partners? Oh, I mean, we get customers all the time. From customers, I get business from affiliates. I mean, everybody, you know, they always know, like anyone that sends this business knows that we're going to provide a great service. People are always going to be happy. And it's going to turn into many more rides as it grows from how it's branching out. What are your unit economics look like? What do you charge the hotel versus just an end customer that comes to you. Is there a difference? Is it the same? Is it hourly? Is it per trip? How does that look? For the ones at our hotel customers, we try to give them a 10% discount. That's a contracted thing through the hotels.

Our retail rates per hour, just standard. We have two different rates. A weekday rate and a weekend rate or holiday rates are special typically. but typically those range from anywhere from 150 to 175 per hour. And then the hotel rate would just be the 10% discount. That would be the difference if you came through a hotel. Now, a lot of the times a hotel will cover the costs for some of their guests, but if they have it go through their concierge or something like that, then we'll do a, we'll do kind of like a referral service to their concierge where we'll take care of them, we'll give them a commission for booking the cars.

And do you have a minimum? So if someone only rides 10 minutes across town, is it $150 bucks? Yeah. So any ride is typically the hour rate. I want to build business. I don't want to, I don't want people to feel that they're taking advantage of. I don't want people to be like, oh, we didn't get our money's worth. So, you know, I always tell them, if there's ever time, you book again, and there can be a little bit of extra time, we're not clock watchers. We'll take care of people like that. And we'll make extra couple stops and maybe we'll give them a little bit of a break or even like if it's distance. You know, everything here in Las Vegas is based on hours and distance. So if you're off the strip, which is called out of the box and kind of our terms, if you're off the

strip, a lot of people charge like a two hour rate to go out. We could do without charging the two hour rate because our office and our base of operation isn't on the strip. We're based kind of in the local side. So we can just leave it as that it's an hourly charge. If you take a group of people and they're bar hopping, whether they're in the car or not, like they're paying 150 to 175 an hour for as long as they get access to the car, right? You're coming to Vegas and you're going to go bar hopping like you said, right? You and you're like, oh, we're going to do six o'clock. We're going to go to this bar. Eight o'clock. We're going to go to this bar, 10 o'clock. Now, I tell people, you can book each individual ride and the drivers will show up at those times for those rides. However, it's best if you

just booked from six to 10, you know, it might be a little bit more in the hours or something like that, but that driver now stays with you. Nobody else gets in in between your rides. You could leave your personal things on there. If your times change, whether they're earlier or later, there's no problem because it's yours. Yeah. What is your average ticket size? Anywhere from two, three hours to 12 hour days. A lot of our clients for these big events, Super Bowl, F1, you know, all these events, they're 12 hour bookings, typically. And they lock up a sprinter for 12 hours regardless, if they're going to use it for the 12 hours or not, but they want that to be there. And is that driver just kind of sitting there hanging out, waiting for the event to be over? He can't go out

and double rent it because it's reserved for them. The drivers always stand by close. You have to be mindful of all the hotels in the space because all the hotels don't have all the space, right? So you want the drivers to hang out close. We always tell the clients, hey, text us five, ten minutes before. You're ready to come out. The driver will pull in the driveway and be ready for you to hop right in. Now, do you have like a texting service or are they just texting the driver directly. So we have both. You know, Verizon's awesome. They have this new one talk. It's your office phone. These can be also on your personal phones and they could be, you know, so we're going to transition to that. My fiance is really big on let's get the drivers all their business phone, work phones, you know,

and let's have them text through the work line. That way it looks super professional. Okay. And what do you have to pay your drivers? Like what's market rate in that area? Our drivers are, commercial drivers license, they're CDL drivers. They get paid anywhere from $20 to $30 an hour, depending on the jobs. And then there are some drivers that we have like an hourly versus commission type basis as well. Okay. So they can actually go out and like solicit business basically? They're like, hey, you know, we can find our own business and we'd like to be, you know, on a commission base and we can show you. And so those drivers, we give them an opportunity to see, you know, what they can bring to the table as well. And I kind of do something where

each month I look at what did they bring and should they go up in the commission scale or should they go down? And how are they doing that? Are they just pulling up to groups of people and saying, hey, come on. Some ride. So, you know, everybody has relationships. It's and it's not. Okay. Relationships. It's not free game. Every, the city is major politics. You know, every hotel has a lot of regulation. Yeah, there's a lot of regulation. There's, providers at every hotel. So, you know, there's rules and stipulations that everybody goes by out there to have respect for one another. And so we work with a couple hotels exclusively. So we have rights to those doors, which is nice. And so we've built the relationships. And even our drivers are now so

good with them that they end up going there and getting rides from those places. Okay. So how is your growth looking right now? Are you growing pretty fast? I probably want us to grow. faster than we are growing. And I'm fast forwarding probably a year and a half, two years in my mind just because I'm happy with the growth and I'm eager about the growth. But then I need to like kind of contain myself. And that's perfect. Yeah, just a tad because and that's why my fiance is perfect because she's like, Raymond, calm down. You know, like everything will come in time, you know, and it's nice for that. And so our growth is going really nicely. Okay. Yeah. I'll just so the listeners know, that's how you and I met is we have

a mutual friend and he's helping you grow your business. Can you talk about that, like how the, how the structure works to finance a new van? I think that's really interesting the way you've structured that. You know, these vans are expensive. And so, you know, some businesses like, oh, man, you have so much overhead. And some businesses, you might get lucky. You have not very money over it, you know, not much. So here, your overhead is quite expensive. We have these vehicles that we finance. So, you know, every, I think there's people out there that I've heard, you know, some people buy them outright, use them. I like to go by like, let's finance them.

Let's put a good amount of money down. Let's finance them. And these vehicles have been holding their equity pretty well. So if we could use them for the next three years where they're still a solid new vehicle, they've been maintained, they look great. And in the three years, they probably have around 60,000,000 miles. I could probably still turn around and sell it to where I'm pulling. positive in it and have the equity where I could sell it, take the positive equity, put that down

on the next new one, and then that way every two, three years, we have new vehicles and we're trying to keep our image, our brand, that we are always up to quality. If you add a new van to the fleet, let's say your current hotel partners are growing really fast and you need a new van. What can you expect to be earning from that van, assuming growth stays constant three, six months down the line on a monthly basis? Gotcha. So each van, you aim for the vans to do around 200,000 in gross sales per year, per van. Okay. That's kind of the number you gauge it at. Okay. If you can keep your costs, your insurance payment and your payments, and then you pay for your drivers and your maintenance, probably like in the 60% range of that, you could take home probably anywhere from 30 to 40% net profit on per van. And like a good average.

Yeah. And that's probably where you, you know, average it out. Unfortunately, right now, the big struggle for us here in Las Vegas is the insurance. We don't have many providers. We have one provider that services Las Vegas for all the carriers for commercial insurance. That's not good. You charge whatever they want. Absolutely.

And they do. What do they charge? It's about $40,000 per year per vehicle. Holy cow. So yeah. And it's it. So all the sprinter owners and bus companies, they have regulations to carry a $5 million policy. And so yeah, it's it's it's approximately 40,000.

There was an increase. Last year we were just under 30 per vehicle. And now we were raised to just right under 40. That's crazy. Like are there just not other insurance companies that will touch these types of vehicles? It's just you know what it is. it's the market. At one point, there was three providers for the commercial side here in Las Vegas, and I believe it was just probably the claims. Unfortunately, there's a lot of accidents in Las Vegas,

and a lot of the vehicles that are out there are the commercial vehicles, the taxi cabs, the limousines. They're the ones that are in the busy areas. So, you know, there's fender benders and there's all this accidents. And every claim that goes in from what I'm being told from our insurance broker, everybody's insurance goes up because they kind of gauge how many claims were filed in that area or in that city or in that county. How many claims were filed? And then they're like, oh, man, this lot of claims filed. So insurance has to go up. Do you think there's like this post-COVID phenomenon of extra claims? Because everyone was pent up for a couple years. They all went to Vegas. So volume goes up of travelers, therefore volume of claims is going up. Is that happening? It's very possible. I mean, we haven't had any

claims ourselves, which is good. I think that it's, you know, there was a frenzy, like how you said. When Vegas opened back up after COVID, it was almost like if it was busier than before, you know, or we went right back into being the norm. But I think that a couple of things changed, you know, there was less providers. There was a lot of people that fell off during COVID. If you kind of hope to make on average 200 grand top line for a new van, immediately 20% of that is going to go straight to insurance. Yeah, 40 grand. That is crazy. Yeah. I'm never complaining about insurance again.

Yeah, it's expensive. That's probably the downfall in our business right now. You know, it hurts. It's a topic that all of us providers in Las Vegas we talk about all the time. It's a big topic with everybody. Even if you're not financing your vehicle, Las Vegas dictates that you have to have a $5 million policy. Correct, correct. The Nevada Transportation Authority, the NTA for bus regulations, which is a sprinter and anything over 16 passenger vehicles. They require you to have a $5 million policy. What do the other licensing costs or requirements look like to operate one of these?

So they're not too much through the city. So you apply through the Nevada Transportation Authority and you receive your, say, for example, there's different licenses for livery. There's the limousine license, which can be SUV, sedan, stretch limos, anything under 15 passengers and less. That's your limousine license typically. Then you have your bus license. And your bus license, typically when you get a bus license, it's unlimited vehicles on there. So if, you know, we have our bus license, where you get granted a CPCN. And then you have unlimited vehicle space to put on there. If we wanted, we could put 100 sprinters out on the road.

Okay. And then your limos licenses, the limousine licenses are, those are numbered typically. So according to what you request. So if you go to the city and you say, hey, I'd love to open up a company and I have this demand and I'm in need of five cars to be under this limousin license. They'll typically, okay, it's a process. It's probably a couple of year wait. Wow. Application fees and things like that aren't too expensive. It's just, you know, you pay an attorney to file this for you and make sure that the whole process goes correctly. So if you were to go through the and get granted a license like that, you're probably maybe looking at anywhere from five to eight grand. It's not too expensive. Okay. So I always find business interesting because

sometimes you see an industry where something appears oversaturated, right? Like in Vegas, it appears that casinos are oversaturated. But at the same time, people go to Vegas to play in a casino, right? In Utah, for instance, Utah is the king of desserts, right? We don't drink alcohol in Utah. We eat dessert. And so you'll go to a strip mall, and I'm not exaggerating. There'll be three or four like niche dessert shops right there. And it's like, man, it's oversaturated. Well, no, people come here to eat dessert. And so based on everything you've learned about Vegas, would you say that the opportunity of what you're doing is a bigger, like opportunity with a higher ceiling in Vegas or like maybe a bigger opportunity in somewhere like Dallas where there's less competition, but it's less of a market for,

you know, luxury sprinter vans? Every city has its own unique situation. I think that Vegas right now is growing. It's growing. You know, we just added a new hotel recently. The Fountain Blue just opened, right? Mm-hmm. We just found out that the Oakland A's are moving to Las Vegas in the next couple of years.

So now Las Vegas is a growing city that's got, you know, now we're going to have sports. We're going to have three of the major sports, right? We have hockey football and baseball. And then soon after. I'm sure basketball, right? So we're growing. The market, as it stands right now, I don't believe there's enough providers in the market. And so even this last Super Bowl, and you would think, like, we're the city of entertainment. We're the leading of hospitality. And you would think like, wow, Las Vegas has it. No, it's, I think, like I said, one, a lot of the providers kind of scaled

back a little bit, the bigger guys. They scaled back because the insurance was expensive. That allowed us smaller guys to kind of grow. And if we could be like this middle level company, that's ideal. You know, that's where we want to get to where you could sustain everything. Now, a city like Dallas or even L.A., you know, car services are needed every day. You know, we also have the studios moving here from Hollywood. Summerlin is building the Hollywood Studios and that's going to bring us business.

That's probably going to bring us business through the Sunday through Thursday that wasn't really busy. Same with baseball. Baseball is going to bring us, you know, people coming to Las Vegas. Who wouldn't want to go see their team in Las Vegas at a new ballpark and then you come to Vegas on top? It's like such a perfect situation. Yeah.

You know, even any of the football games, the Raider games, they're packed. and 70% of the fans are from the visiting team. Oh, wow. I mean, yeah, I guess that's probably an anomaly, right? If you look at other NFL games, but Vegas is an anomaly. Our kids are going to grow up. Raiders will stay here. They'll be Raiders fans.

But, you know, we grew up here in Las Vegas. I grew up. I've been here since I was nine. You know, I like the Detroit Lions because we didn't have a home team, you know, so I grew up liking another team. And I'm sure so many people did. Now, of course, I support the Raiders because we're Las Vegas. home. So now we're supporting and all that. But this is a popular place for people to come.

Okay. I want to ask you a question that I'm obsessed with lately. I think I'm going to ask every business owner this question for the rest of my life. So as a business owner, you see all kinds of opportunities, both within and outside of your business. And a lot of those are like tangential, right? Like maybe you find out like, man, there's no good texting software exclusively for Sprintervan services. Like, man, someone could really make you killing if they they had a texting software just for us. And it was specific to our needs. What opportunities are you seeing that you're too focused on growing your business to

ever want to pursue that you think other people might be able to pursue? One, it's a phenomenal question. Two, there's so many cool things that you could branch off with that are such a private service that nobody's thought about. Like nobody, I'm sure that it happens in the, in some of the cities where like a New York or something like that where let's say like, okay, imagine if you are, if you come here and you book this service and you want to go shopping with your friends, right? And you almost want your personal shopper to go with you. It's almost like a host or like a personal concierge where this person, they go with you to Neiman's to Sacks, to all these places. they're holding your bags for you.

They're assisting you with all your shopping. It's something that's never been done. I'm sure can it be done? Oh, of course. And could this service make a ton of money? Oh, yes. So you're talking about combining your service with like a personal shopper, where the driver is the personal shopper in one.

Exactly. Something like that. You know, we've, I would say a couple of the providers here in Vegas where we think, what could we do? I try to think, hey, can I help you with show tickets? Can I help you with dinner reservations? Can I help you get into a nightclub because I'm friends with these hosts? So if you do these businesses from this business where it is tangible and it's a relationship because a bachelor party comes here and I can't tell you how many times I've helped bachelor

parties where they're like Raymond, we're coming in Friday to Sunday. We want to play golf one morning. We want to go shooting. during the day we want to do this and at night we want to go to this club. And I literally help them schedule it all. You're like, okay, don't go to this shooting place because the owner's a crook. You want to go over here and you want and it's like,

man, I should be charging extra for this. Yeah, and that's the thing. And if now imagine like if you did, if you came up with a service where it was like, you know, and there's hosts and stuff that do this, but they could really intertwine with this. You know, and so that's the big thing.

I'm sure that there's technology out there that we need. I know that there's a service where it's kind of like an Uber app, where you could kind of get on an app and find open black car services in your area. Vegas hasn't really done anything like that with the providers, but that could be something big. You know, somebody that designs an app that's only for that. An Uber for Sprinter vans? Yeah, almost, you know, or for the companies.

And so the future is tech. Everything is the feedback on your phone. Everybody's looking up reviews and this and that. And so I think you have to think forward. We have to all think forward. What's going to be the best way to get this business? To get business where you could probably have a car staged in the center of the strip. And there might be calls from, you know, a couple hotels over or something like that and through these apps.

And it's like, hey, these available drivers, are available, would you like to book it? And then you just book it on your app and go from there. So that could be something cool. That is interesting. I wonder if back to like the the trip planning portion, I wonder if anytime you get a booking for like a bachelor party, you could just have your normal intro call with them and just get like a very cursory overview of what their plans are and then be like, you know what? I actually know a lady that might be really good at this. And you could basically turn it into a referral business where if a trip planner charges like $1,500 for her services or their services, they can give you like 20, 30% of that. And you don't have to do any of

the work. You could just offload it to them. Right. Right. And it could be amazing, you know, half more than half the people that come here, they don't know what they should do, right? People that I've learned in my, in my experience in hotels, you don't want to confuse people. Oh, like, where should I go to dinner? Well, there's this place and there's that place. Well, you just confuse them more. Yeah. A lot of times you want to kind of figure them out and you don't want to give them these up. You kind of want to just guide them to like what you think is going to be the best for them. And then, you know, obviously so, hey, you know, what are you guys feeling tonight? Chinese food, perfect.

I have the best spot. Don't give them three options. Give them the one option. That way they're already confused. They don't need to be more confused, right? Yeah. So here's a good idea for you. You could make a landing page for your website.

You could push paid ads to it or just push organic traffic to it. And you basically are just using chat GPT on the back end to be like a 100% free personal trip planner. And it's a lead magnet. So it's like, hey, you want us to plan your trip for free with AI? Just give us your email. And then they're asking all these questions. And then it emails them a personalized plan. And now you follow up.

Like, hey, who do you need to drive you around for this nice little trip you just planned? So awesome. There you go. I mean. You could totally do it. Absolutely. When you put a couple great minds together, I mean, it's infinite. And it's the future.

This is how you have to think. Yeah. So where do you see your business in two years? Where would you like to be? Two years, I'd like to be probably like 12 to 15 cars in our fleet, a combination of SUVs and sprinters. Full force with the hotels that we have, the services. and then just growing the image and the brand. Our brand and our image is something we're so proud of.

Yeah, I agree. I think it's an awesome brand and image that you've built up. And I think it's extra hard to do that in an industry that's luxury, right? Like you're just, it's harder to compete. But I think you're doing a great job at that. Raven, this is super interesting. I learned a ton. I know that people listening are going to learn a ton.

Where can people find you if they want to get in touch? We're on social media, Instagram, Facebook. We have a website exclusive livery. You can reach us on there. Our phone number is phenomenally great and easy. It's 702-449-12. And you could reach us by any one of those platforms for any type of booking or even if you have questions, whatever you need, we can definitely help.

Okay. Well, thank you, Raymond. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having us. It's been great. It's such an honor. It's our first podcast, so it's really cool. Awesome.

And so we're a big fan of yours as well. Thank you. So thank you for having us. It's really cool. you're doing. All right. What did you think? Did you think in the interview? I liked it. It was good. What did you think of that question? What other business ideas are you seeing that are tangential to your current business that you're too focused to execute on? That's a mouthful, but you know what I mean. Let me know in the comments, in my email, wherever, if I should keep asking that question or

focusing whole episodes around that question because I think it's a good one. Thanks for listening. Share with your friends and we'll see you next time.