043 Kristina Bouweiri | Growing Your Business In Any Economy

Have you heard other business owners say they can't grow because of the economy? Often people will blame the current state of the economy for their lack of ability to expand, or even for their loss of business revenue. On today’s episode we'll hear from one woman who never had any economic downturn impact her revenue growth: Kristina Bouweiri of Reston Limousine is here to talk about how her company has become a juggernaut in her industry, how she's expanded their business even during several economic downturns and the importance of treating everyone like family, from employees to clients. Kristina has some undeniably valuable lessons to share, including how they became the #1 wine tour operator in Virginia in 2015. You're going to want to hear that and more on this episode of Grow My Revenue. Listen to this episode and discover: How do they market to their limousine clients and why is it applicable to you? Why have they offered Wi-Fi in their cars for 8 years? What is the one idea that grew her business by 27%? Why she has gotten rid of her daily tasks. Why has focusing on the community been so beneficial for her business? And so much more! Episode Overview Krisina Bouweiri's original plan after college didn't include anything remotely resembling the limo business! After earning a degree in international affairs from George Washington University, she planned to go into the foreign service. During her senior year she interned with a non-profit focused on helping to raise the status of women in Africa. When they offered her a job she accepted and spent a few years in that role. Eventually she decided to come back to the US where the only job she could find was a straight sales commission role. On one particular sales call she met her future husband, William Bouweiri. William is the founder of Reston Limousine. When Kristina first started with Reston they had 5 cars and 100% of their business was corporate. They didn't do weddings, wine tours, proms, etc. So the first market she expanded the into was weddings: She felt she could handle it and was happy to work with brides, unlike her husband who hadn't wanted to deal with them previously! Her second expansion was into government contracts. One day a man knocked on their door and asked if they would make a bid for a government contract. His offer was that if they won they'd hire him as a driver. They went for it and won that contract, naturally hiring him also. The light bulb went off for Kristina: she thought there must be more contracts like this one. She soon found out every government agency in the city had its own private shuttle service to shuttle employees between buildings and to work from the Metro. For the next 10 years she went after that market, and won 90% of bids that went out from their company. Doing so is how they went from 5 cars to 100 cars. But in the process they no longer qualified as a small business; in the shuttle bus industry you have to be a small business to win government contracts. So she diversified the company again and moved into hospitals, universities, tourism, corporate shuttles, and residential shuttles, She went looking for business wherever could it could be found. On today's episode Kristina explains more about her diversification efforts, including why she initially resisted getting into the wine tour business! She also gives a detailed account of how one particular strategy of inviting current clients to lunch grew Reston Limousine by 27% during a time when other companies were losing business. That is a story you don't want to miss out on! Tune in for that plus other applicable insights you can use in your business on this episode of Grow My Revenue. Discover more at http://www.growmyrevenue.com/business-cast/