So as time went on I was out working on the cab’s doing the mornings the evenings and late at night and because I was an accountant I would also work between time doing some books and converting self-employed to limited companies. I had a little radio mounted on my desk where most cab drivers would have this radio in their car only and have to wait for work on the side of the road. I had a couple of wingnuts and attached the radio back in the car when I got a job. It’s quite a palaver but worth doing. The home accountant work I was doing and jobs on the cab 3 or 4 times during the morning and three or 4 times during the afternoon and early evenings. Friday and Saturday nights were good earners. I used to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning and of course that really made a difference.

Now the main thing here I’m trying to explain is that the talk and grow rich scenario does really work in a cabs. With the cabs and accountancy firm operating from home, the more I spoke to people about the interest I have an enthusiasm, the more people just wanted to have my number and call me as a cab driver. I dressed smart, white shirt and black trousers, spoke to my client’s with courtesy, always speak nicely and talk very fluent about things that advance their business and  I’ve always spoke openly about being an accountant, about the job I held in government, about what I intend to do in my business asking what others like or dislike about the taxi business and their business. I have often pondered to do airport transfers and it seems a bit of a heavy job to go out for 3 to 4 hours when I have accountants  to do, however I realised that after I got a lot of work for local driving put out a little advert for a driver, because I was getting enough accountancy work that needed me to stay indoors to complete the work and it was a shame to throw such a decent little taxi business away and it was a support in case my accountancy work went slow.

So there I was within three to 4 months having a driver doing local work and I was just picking up the phone and forwarding work. Then I got the driver an extra phone and the driver would pick up his own work and just report back to me weekly of how much was done. I’d have a count up on his mileage and the work would be listed. I knew the calls were coming through as I had a diverting platform for the phones, operating all my calls. Diverted through to many  mobiles when busy and of course the platform  would be the trigger of how many calls I had, the reports downloaded. Keeping the numbers for further advertising, sending texts etc.

So as time went on I was gaining cars and after about 5 cars I think within 2 years and drivers to suit, getting quite a bit of local work and the odd airport would come through.I had bought myself a quite nice Mercedes C-Class at the time, now I have owned up to 8 E Class Mercedes, this one was for private use at first.   Airports, initially was not my scene, but, a good idea was amidst and I had to make sure that I got more than one or two airports a day to make it worth its while and the Old adage of charging a little less to get the customers in to the nice car, my Mercedes and then of course lumping the up the fair a little bit to prove your worth, worked well. My Mercedes was licenced by then  and I got loads of work because business airport transfers  liked nice cars and well dressed drivers. It gave them a sense of trust I am sure, as a similar dress code deemed acceptable.  The old story of taking bookings for an airport is obviously very true: you have to take more details for an airport for it to be successful, it takes more time, you need to know the the number of people the amount of luggage, their flight number where they’re being picked up and where they’re being taken and if there are multiple drop offs and then of course there are the people that really are not bothered about the type of car they are hiring are others that don’t even worry about what car its is as long as it gets here and gets us home. Then there is the people that dont worry about how much luggage they have “we will fit in” the truth is,  if they don’t all fit in and the luggage is too much and it doesn’t get them there or the car is a banger,  that’s when you have the problems and if you can’t find them in the airport because they didn’t land that day because they didn’t realise they took off in one country in one side of the 24-hours and land on the other side of the 24-hours meaning the wrong time of the day ie. morning rather than night so all these things that take time and as we all know there is not a lot of money in taxi work let alone airports. Out of action all the way down to the airport sitting on motorway traffic jams and then you’re out of action in the airport when the flight is late and the people are not in the place you expected. Then there are the parking costs.

So I decided that it was time to produce a system that would take down the details correctly and In full without failure and causing problems.

I had already plenty of Airport work and so my Idea of just doing airports was thrown into action. It meant better cars, smarter drivers (meaning good thinking drivers and good dress code) and booking automation.

All businesses do far better when they specialise – so that is what I decided to do..

Obviously the first thing to do was to produce a website with a taxi booking form with the right questions .This form had to be linked to a taxi booking system. This was developed and it took 3 years. In a nutshell without explaining all the little problems that a coder and developer has to do to accomplish, this system still sits today on my website taking bookings and managing allocation to drivers.

I even split this software to operate three websites all at the same time.