Bill Atkins knew at a very young age he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He owned a limo business for 30 years, weathering two major events that put many of his competitors out of business. He retired a few years ago and wrote that book that was simmering inside him called, "Dare to be Different." Bill continues in his retirement to help others through his participation in SCORE, a small business mentoring program. He is one of The Luckiest People in the World and is committed to helping others become "lucky" as well. Learn more by listening to the podcast. Find out how we can help you become one of The Luckiest People in the World at www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com
Transcript:
Diane Dayton 0:04
This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the Luckiest Guy in the World.
KC Dempster 0:14
Good morning, everybody. This is KC Dempster. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe, the self proclaimed luckiest guy in the world. And he's shaking his head. But that's who he is. And we like to bring you this podcast to introduce you to some very interesting people who have found that they needed to change the rules in order to make their lives the way they want them to be. We have rules that are imposed on us from the time we're born. And most of the time they are meant to keep us safe to teach us how to live successfully in society. But as we become adults, they're not necessarily always the best for us. And sometimes we need to tweak them. Sometimes we need to change them completely. And Sometimes we have to accept them. So today we're going to talk all about changing rules,
Ray Loewe 1:05
And a few other things, too. So this whole concept of changing the rules is really important. Because if you're following somebody else's rules, you can't be free to be you. And we found that the people who are the luckiest people in the world actually have figured out how to set up their own ruleset. What they've done is they've filtered through the past rules, and they've said, these are good. These are mine, you know, kind of like this social distancing rule we have right now. I think that's a good rule for most people to accept. And then they've they've looked at tradition, and they looked at other things, and they've said, You know, I need to change this because it's going to get in my way. And I've been following this group of the, what I call the luckiest people in the world now for quite a while and they're just a fascinating, fascinating group of people. They're basically people who have personally designed their own lives. they've stepped in, And they've said, This is what I want to do. And I'm not going to let too many people get in my way. And this is what I'm going to do. And once they've designed their life, they go live it to the fullest. And they tend to be happy people, they tend to be interesting people. They're the people I want to hang around with. They're the people I want to be if I can. And I think one of the things that we have been building is this community of the luckiest people in the world community. And we have several events. And usually we have an annual event that is called our Friends Connection. And I just look forward to it. Because what it gets chance to do is hang out with a whole bunch of people that are really interesting, because they truly are some of the luckiest people in the world. And we have one with us today. And we're going to introduce Bill Atkins. Actually, we're gonna let Bill Atkins talk in a little while but for the moment we're not. Bill has a lot of the mindset of the luckiest people in the world. He certainly has dealt with change. He sold a business that he had built from scratch and suffered through and made grow Then he stepped in this thing called retirement and he didn't stop. He had a mission to do certain kinds of things. And he realized that he had given a whole bunch of talents in his life, and he wanted to still use them. He just wanted to use them the way he wanted to use them for change. So we're gonna take a short break, and we're going to come back with Bill Atkins.
Diane Dayton 3:34
You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
Ray Loewe 3:44
Good. So KC and I are sitting here fighting about who gets to start. That's always an interesting thing to do. And and she wins most of the time, but this time, she's not gonna win. So so we have Bill Atkins with us today and and Bill, sold a limo business.
Bill Atkins 4:02
Yes,
Ray Loewe 4:03
how long ago,
Bill Atkins 4:04
four and a half years, four and a half years ago.
Ray Loewe 4:06
And he moved into this thing called retirement. Really bad word. Isn't it
Bill Atkins 4:12
moved forward into retirement?
Ray Loewe 4:14
Well, I think you move forward into another because because after he after he, quote, unquote, retired, he wrote a book. And it's called Dare to be Different. And take a couple minutes and tell us a little bit about this book and what you're doing. But
Bill Atkins 4:29
sure, so I get opportunities to do a lot of speaking. And one of the things that I think, for people to be successful, they truly have to do something different. And one of the when I'm speaking, I often use the example of Steve Jobs selling a 1200 dollar laptop from Apple. And everybody buys it at full price and we today before to get your hands on it, where you could go to Best Buy and buy 299 laptop, they're both laptops, but what did he do different? And once you find out what the person at the other end really wants, you could do that and it becomes quite easy. And that's helped me to be successful enough to retire early. retiring early wasn't something that was the end. For me. It was just, I loved what I did for my 30 years in business. But I wasn't ready to just do nothing. I'm lucky enough to travel out with my wife, which is what we love to do. Our goal is to visit all 50 states but stay two nights in each state for to count. So we're up to 27. But we're getting there. This COVID has put a little bit of a hiccup there. But we still get to travel, maybe some driving times.
KC Dempster 5:28
I think that that's a key point. Because Ray has said that he wants to visit all 50 states and he counted a bust rest a bus rest stop as a visit to a state and I told him it didn't count.
Ray Loewe 5:42
Yeah, so we were we were touring the national parks A while ago and we had taken a bus trip just to be with a group of people. And everybody on the bus conned the bus driver into taking a a probably about a 42 second detour into Montana so we could all count Montana as a state that we visited but I've been back and I've stayed overnight in Montana. So now counts.
KC Dempster 6:04
Okay,
Bill Atkins 6:05
what sounds like a beautiful place, you can always go back and enjoy it again.
Ray Loewe 6:07
Oh, you know if there's time, you know, and and the problem is it's a big, big world out there. So one of the things that you're doing right now is you're giving back to the community too, because you're involved in something called SCORE.
Bill Atkins 6:21
Yes. And score is mostly people who are business leaders, or former business owners, and they have the time and talent to give back. So what I love about SCORE is our mission is to help people start businesses or grow businesses. And 30 years ago, when I was first starting, a lot of things I did, I just winged it, I made it up as I went along and see saw what worked and what didn't work. But with SCORE my chapter, we have about 35 experienced people we go out, we help people. And the cool thing is, we never ever charge anything for it. It's always free. Everything that we do is free. There's no hidden agenda that we're going to introduce is something And then sell you something our core values are we never sell anything. And it's really amazing that the people really get something. I'm a big believer in reciprocation. And if you give first you're going to get an example, I was used as if you were to go to a department store like Macy's right now, and they have a double set of doors, and you are walking up there and you hold that door open, and the person behind you comes in, you hold the door open, as grumpy a person that is as miserable as they might think they're day is, they're gonna open the door for you. It's just the way we're wired, right? So if you always give first, maybe you don't always get something in return, but more often you will. And that's we really everybody should be living living their lives, I think, right?
KC Dempster 7:35
What goes around comes around.
Ray Loewe 7:37
So tell us a little bit about how you got involved in score and then what you actually do what, you know, what are the steps involved?
Bill Atkins 7:45
Sure. So for score, we're all volunteers. I happen to be the chapter chair and what my role is pretty much keeping in touch with the 30 mentors that we have, and I love marketing. I love ways to figure out how to make things better. So we're doing a lot of things now. You know, we have to pivot in life. So a year ago, if I would have went to our chapter and said, hey, let's start doing webinars, I would have had a lot of pushback. Some of these are older guys, and they don't like change. But then COVID comes, we used to do seminars, no more seminars, and I was amazed how quickly people pivoted to be accepting of webinars. And last year, one of our months in let's see, in May of last year, we had two seminars, we checked in total 29 people this year in May, with webinars, we attracted 540 people. Yeah, yeah. So the thing is, you no longer have geographic limitations. People don't have to drive to a place take a couple hours out of the day. So it's really aligned itself well with people and they can pick and choose whatever seminars or whatever webinars relate best to them.
Ray Loewe 8:46
You know, there's no substitute in my opinion for face to face meetings and stuff like that. But you know, when you think about all the driving time now, maybe I shouldn't say this to a former limo owner, But But you know, you think of all the time I spent and I used to spend in a car ad you can be just as effective, much more efficient, you know, sitting at your desk and talking to people over video screen. So you know what's going to happen as we move forward to these small businesses? How many of them are going to change because of technology? Are we really going to go back to where we were, or
Bill Atkins 9:24
I think it's going to be a combination of both, like, for instance, this company that that nobody really heard of Zoom. One for being a little company to everybody's using Zoom overnight. And the cool thing is, as you see businesses being able to figure out how to make things work, you know, luckily, we're in the summer now in LA, the restaurants can have indoor seating, and they're able to have outdoor seating, a lot of restaurants are offering outdoor seating that I would have never thought of it. And once a summer it's outside, it's actually a better thing, better experience as a customer. And I think that's a holding. If you're in business or just in life, you have to always be thinking okay, what's next? So if something happens, I can either complain about it and whine about inquire about it and find all the faults. I could say, okay, that happened, what's next? And you keep that attitude of what can I do to make the best of this? you'll generally have good results.
Ray Loewe 10:09
Cool. You know, so many people that I know have a book in mind and they never write it. You actually wrote yours, right? And we can buy it on Amazon.
Bill Atkins 10:18
Correct. This book has been a long time in the coming. I always meant to write a book because the other thing when you're a speaker, I speak I'm lucky enough I speak a lot of places once you have a published book, especially published book that people have paid for. They look at you entirely differently. So I was thinking, and it's almost like when I'm speaking, the title of what you're talking about is probably the most difficult thing to come up with. But once you find out the title, then then it's easy. So I thought dare to be different, was a good way that would be a little bit intriguing for people. And I've used a lot of specific examples in there because I didn't want it to just be some higher level kind of theory kind of thing. I'd rather have it where it was applicable to people that they can use that example in their own lives, and maybe had better results.
Ray Loewe 11:04
Yeah, and your subheading under it is grow your business in any economy. Boy, is that timely or is that timely?
Bill Atkins 11:10
Well, I in the little business, I went to two major things I went through 9/11 Oh, and most of our travelers were Wall Street guys. And that devastated our business. We lost 65% of our business in one month. Wow. And then we went through 2007 and 2008. Again, what happened? This, the economy tanked. We have our Wall Street guys. And unfortunately, a lot of my friends walls and limousine business. They went under, they just, they didn't know what to do. They didn't try anything different. And they went under, when maybe have to think of things like okay, now what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? Because my, my responsibility was I had drivers. And if they're not, if they're not getting paid, that's awful. So I have to make sure that to keep the business not only for myself, but for my drivers because they're counting on me. They're depending on me to give them an income. So it was really important for me not just for my own business, but for the people that counted on it.
Ray Loewe 11:59
So what are some The things that a limo guy implement when 9/11 occurs.
Bill Atkins 12:03
Well, for one of the things that we one of the things that we did well 9/11 was kind of a difficult thing because of just the tragedy of it. Yeah, let's skip ahead to the 2000-2008 when that happened in the economy tanked a lot of our travelers lost their jobs right? They've been working for many the Wall Street firms and they cut back the back 25-30% and jobs being shut all over. For us. What happened is two things. One is the executive assistants were told by their finance people find cheaper airfare find cheaper limo find cheaper hotels find cheap because we want to cut cost. And for us, what happened is people started calling in the assistants and saying, What's your way to go to New York City? What's your rate? And what we would do is we'd have a conversation rather than just barking out a rate. And we'd explain we said, Listen, you have a big responsibility here, your executive he or she needs to get where they want to go without any hiccups. So I want you to come with us but even if you don't be careful of that cheap ones out there. Because if that executive doesn't get picked up, he or she is going to remember you, but not in a good way, where we know that if everything works, our cars are on time, we're friendly, we know what we're doing, we're safe, your executives going to have a good experience. And then he's also going to remember you. So it's your choice, the executive probably won't notice a difference of $10 from going from really good to being cheap. But he will notice in the quality of the service, so we both have it on the same line. And by going with us, it'll just work. And that seems to resonate rather well.
Ray Loewe 13:30
So you found the solution. And then you implemented it add to what did that teach you when you went on? I guess you've gone out of the limo business before the next crisis occurred. Okay. But But where did this kind of thought come from? Because obviously, your competitors didn't do it, and they're not here.
Bill Atkins 13:50
Well, earlier on in life. I was once had my own business since I was a little guy. So what do I do? I go to school for computer science. It was something that was intriguing to me come out of college. And I really didn't want to sit in the back of a desk and just do computer science all the time. And I've always worked in retail and I really loved it. I love the thing of talking to people. And as I advance going to managers, I love the thing of talking to my employees and getting just encouraging them to do the best that they can. The way I came into the limo business is, I had a friend whose dad owned a funeral home, and whenever he needed a funeral to be covered with hearses and limousines, he would call upon a competing funeral home. Now, that was his competition, right? So they wouldn't send out the nice car, they'd send out the junky one, they wouldn't send out the nice driver, they'd send out the junk one after all it's his competition, right. So what he did is he started calling limo companies and since that was their only business, everything worked. So I thought, I know what I need to do I need to start a limousine business. And the next day I saw a used stretch limousine for sale, and I bought it and there wasn't a family member or friend who thought it was a good idea. Whatever you do, businesses fail. It's nothing but headaches. But I tried it. And before that happened when I was in retail, if I didn't like what I was doing, I'd quit. And I go try something else. Because nobody wants to spend your life doing something that you hate. So if I didn't like it, I'd quit. And people say, Well, why do you keep switching jobs and say, Well, I didn't like it. And then when I finally hit upon my business, which is what I wanted to do, since I was a little guy that lasted for 30 years, and I loved it, too, I was fortunate, I still talk to my customers now. And I still talk to my drivers now, four and a half years later, because it was all relationship based.
Ray Loewe 15:21
And you made it work.
Bill Atkins 15:22
Yeah, we were very powerful. We. So when I called my customers, and I wanted to know, why do they travel with me? Why did they do business with me? Because that's a question that most business owners have. And they do a bad job of it, they send you a survey for 20 minutes, we had to fill out these bullet points. And they don't really get any information. And the person says, I'm not going to give you 20 minutes of my time because I bought something on Amazon. But what if you did it differently? What if you said, Ray you've been one of my best customers for the last 1012 years? Can you help me What's one or two reasons that you do business with us and I wrote it down and then went on to the next one because in 2007-2008, we didn't have a whole lot of business. going on. So I spent all my time talking to my customers. And an interesting thing happened. I found out what why they do business with us. And the three reasons were they like that they be picked up on time. They liked that they were friendly, local driver, and they like to to get there safe. So that became our mantra when we're marketing we do that. But the interesting thing that happened is, two weeks later, after putting the call into Ray, I get a call from Ray to say, you know what, Bill, actually, I'm going to the airport next week, or, you know, my neighbor travels a lot. Because again, reciprocation is an amazing thing. And if we give first without expecting anything in return, you always get more back. So really, it was a unintended consequence, but it really helped us a lot.
KC Dempster 16:38
You know, a lot of the things that you're saying are, you know, somebody listening will go well, Well, yeah, but the fact of the matter is, we all know this, but we don't all do it.
Bill Atkins 16:47
Yeah, well, people are afraid to change, right as a speaker. I'm also involved in Toastmasters. Toastmasters helps people to become a confident speaker and leader. And I love the first time that somebody is up in front of the room and people are told at a young age. You have to give a speech in front of the room, and people are gonna be looking at you they aren't you afraid, and you put this bad bad in a child's head that they're going to fail. And guess what they do what they think they're going to do, right? So Toastmasters helps people to go from being that shy person actually shivering while they're giving their speech. And we tell the people in the first time there, they said, this is a place that you could fail. Because even if you do miserable, we're going to clap. We're going to like it. And we're going to ask you to come back again. And the transformation from somebody being fearful of public speaking to being better at public speaking isn't your speaking it's confidence. And confidence is really important. Not arrogance, but confidence. Now, my people are confident things just work better. Right?
Ray Loewe 17:40
So where are you going from here? So we know you're going to live to be hundred years old, right? Hopefully? Well, you know, that's a fastest growing segment of the population right now. And you know, what, if you live to be 100 you know, I, you're this you're not retired. You're so far from being retired. It's ridiculous, right?
Bill Atkins 17:57
Well, I tend to be very obsessive, so even Score sometimes my wife will go, Hey, man, didn't you retire. But the thing is, I'm doing this because I like to. And that's always a good thing to do. So when I worked, I like doing it. And now that I'm not working, I like doing it. And when you like doing it, it's really not work. It's something you enjoy. I mean, people have different hobbies, why not do something that you enjoy, right? And if you do get to retire, don't give up. Don't be Don't retreat. Don't just do nothing. That's a shame. Try different things. And if you don't like it, try something different. You don't know what it is until you hit that. Whatever that is. That is your unique.
Ray Loewe 18:30
Okay, so now everybody can see why Bill Atkins is one of the luckiest people in the world. There's no question about this. He has designed his own life around what he loves to do. He's He's taken all of these skills that he built during his life. He's still using them. And I don't see any end. I you know, I think this is just going to go on except that you're going to see more states as soon as the economy as soon as this COVID stuff opens up, right?
Bill Atkins 18:58
I hope so. And I don't want to see the end either
Ray Loewe 19:02
none of us do and, and join us one of the things we do, by the way is we have a Friends Connection trip as part of our group. And we'll see you on that as soon as the world opens up, and we'll get you out of this local stuff and into the rest of the world too. So, let's do a quick break and then KC's gonna come back and sum up for us because unfortunately, we're out of time again.
Diane Dayton 19:27
You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
KC Dempster 19:36
Welcome back, everybody. And boy, that time did fly. I want to remind everybody that you can learn more information about the luckiest people in the world about our podcast, and a lot of the other things that we do to help people to become the Luckiest People in the World at our web on our website. theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com you can add the www if You think you need to, and we do these podcasts every week. So come back next week and listen for another exciting show.
Ray Loewe 20:08
And when you're on the website it check our virtual conferences coming up. There's a magic button right on the front page. And if you click it, it will take you to a wondrous world of lucky people.
Diane Dayton 20:21
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the Luckiest Guy in the World.