Chauffeur Trainers Share Experience, Insights Gained at LCT Show
April 2007

Vegas 2007. Wow — what a whirlwind! The fastest three days of my life and the best show to date! For those of you who didn’t attend… it was a special time. The International LCT Show is a one-of-a-kind experience that provides an incredible forum for education, networking, and just plain having fun with your peers in the business. Who else can relate to the challenges we face and be able to laugh about it?

We had an excellent group of people attend the Advanced Train-the-Trainer seminar, which was composed of 25% owners and 75% chauffeur trainers.

Our mission was to discover a way to uncover and develop trainers who will cultivate your team of chauffeurs to deliver your unique product the same way, everyday, each and every time. We listed some specific obstacles, challenges, and areas we were certain to meet. These included: hiring techniques, compensation, instilling loyalty, timeliness, renegade chauffeurs, lack of pride, background checks, motivation, complacency, keeping people interested, lack of (or too many) chauffeurs, poor communication, and vague expectations. You know — the usual. While I believe some were hoping to receive a magic formula and simply go home and apply it, we discovered something pretty cool as we crossed those obstacles off the list — this is not rocket science; it is simply finding, training, and keeping people with a heart for service!

Finding, training, and developing quality chauffeur trainers begins with implementing a strong, systematic hiring and training process. It proceeds with discovering who will take a lead role and ends with providing them the adequate tools and authority to do a great job. Determining men and women of good character during the hiring process is your first step to having a good team of chauffeurs. From that group, those with the strongest ability or tendency for leadership will soon emerge and make themselves evident as your potential trainers. If you have trained and specifically indoctrinated them into your corporate culture and your specific expectations, they should soon be able to model your unique processes to your team of chauffeurs.

We had a lot of fun. Thanks to all of you who shared your words of praise and encouragement. You have everything you need to succeed. Just go and make it happen. The awards gala was fantastic and very inspiring. Congratulations to the winners and those nominated. You were all worthy of taking home the prize. And, as one of the keynote speakers stated, “Your success is your own fault.”

And thanks to all those who hosted the party suites. Very nice. I still smile and laugh just thinking about the crazy people I spent that evening with — you know who you are. It’s probably good that only happens once a year! Way to go LCT! My staff and I left Vegas moved in so many ways… Isn’t it always, always all about the people?

Bruce Heinrich