We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amy Russell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amy below.

Alright, Amy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

Yes, ALR Chauffeured Transportation serves two underserved communities. One of the fastest-growing age groups in Georgia is the 65 and older population and in Georgia, 7.60% of the adult population are veterans, which is higher than the national average of 6.80%, as reflected in recent census data.

After Covid and upon reopening my company, I began to receive calls from senior citizens and veterans for transportation service but the inquiries were uniquely different. I was really struck by a call I received from a woman named Ms. Verna, a senior and veteran. She shared with me that when she had outpatient surgery previously, she did not have family to assist her. She had to call a friend, another senior in North Carolina, to come to Atlanta, take her to her surgery and bring her home. That call gave me a reality check. I knew there were probably many Ms. Verna’s who did not have family and needed extra care. It was a light bulb moment because I had been helping seniors all my life, just not with my business.

Since we already provided what we call in the limousine business “hourly charter service,” we could accommodate these types of requests, but seniors need a little more service than the usual charter. They not only need to be picked up, they need us to stay with them and provide some extra needed assistance. We certainly accommodated the past requests but I knew we could do more and provide a service that would give them extra care than the standard limousine hourly charter service and less cost. In order to address this need, I decided to add a new niche service, called Concierge Companion, to the ALR brand, which caters specifically to seniors and veterans.

I did my due diligence to get an understanding of what types of transportation services were available to these vulnerable communities. I realized that most companies picked up seniors in vans with others and did not stay with them. Most had to wait to be picked up on the return. I knew we could assist them with more of a personalized service where drivers would not only provide door to door pickup and drop off, but would stay with them and assist as needed. Our seniors, veterans and their families can also feel comfortable knowing our transportation companions undergo extensive background checks with the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia, and are certified as chauffeurs and attend companion training.

I am grateful to have gotten the request for service. It was an answered prayer and changed the mission of my business. Not only are we assisting an underserved market, we are helping people most vulnerable and doing so with care and companionship.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have been an entrepreneur for most of my adult life. Even when I worked full-time jobs, I had a business on the side. It is in my blood. It started early on because I took care of all the seniors in my neighborhood when I was a teenager. We lived in a neighborhood that had seniors who did not have people around to assist them. One knock at the door I was running errands and shoveling snow. I was doing such a good job the neighbors would wait for me. The boys in the neighborhood did not have a chance, because I was proven. At the time, I did not look at what I was providing as a business, I was just earning money to get the extra things I wanted. The feeling of helping others and earning money never left me. I have been an entrepreneur most of my adult life. They have put a name on it now, serial entrepreneur.

In 1992, I started a food delivery service business, Menus on the Move. I had 27 restaurants and we delivered using pagers with restaurant codes. I was early to that business model, decades before the other guys and we did it without an app. Most of my businesses were in the service industry but I also enjoyed the restaurant business, and launched one later on, called Eat n Run. Our menu was Atlanta hot wings and Chicago-style hot dogs.

That business eventually transitioned into Eat n Run Food Concessions, where I traveled the state of Georgia cooking food for various festivals. It also gave me the opportunity to hire the teenagers in my neighborhood with summer jobs, which was very rewarding. Concessions eventually led to me to start Eat n Run Mobile restaurant. At the time I started that business, food trucks were not as popular and commonplace as they are now.

For 16 years, I had a business named Consulting Books, where I provided bookkeeping and accounting services for small businesses. I specialized in cleaning up their books and restructuring their accounting systems. I enjoyed helping small businesses use their accounting systems to make informed decisions based on financial statements. But I found the work boring and realized that I am more of a people person.

I eventually moved to the transportation business after talking to a friend of mine, Rodney, who shared with me that he was an independent chauffeur. At the time I was seeking change and he was so encouraging. He shared there were not a lot of women in the limousine business and hardly any black women owners. He said with my experience in business he thought it would be a good fit. Fast forward, I have been operating ALR Chauffeured Transportation for 12 years. I have had so many different experiences over the past 30 years with the different ebbs and flow of business. It is not for the faint of heart, you must love it and be a risk taker.

Twelve businesses later, I finally found what my varying businesses and experiences have been preparing me for all these years. My experience of making sure people are taken care of properly and going the extra mile has always been a part of my brand. I was born to help people who need it the most and it is my goal to continue to grow Concierge Companion in the Atlanta market and with grace, scale to other cities as our most underserved and vulnerable need transportation companion service provided by people who care.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

My strategy with ALR is a combination of providing a caring quality service that helps with business referrals and a marketing mix of social media, SEO, mailouts, networking events, door to door sales and press releases for our new service launch. As we added a new niche service to our limousine services with Concierge Companion, I knew we had to utilize multiple marketing campaign approaches to reach the varying target audience. It is imperative for our social media and SEO to work in tandem to grow social platforms and give us the ability to increase our Google page presence to compete with competitors for group events, wine tours, concerts/sporting events, proms and weddings on the first page.

Specifically for Concierge Companion, we knew our marketing needed to cater to our target niche audience. As a result, our marketing consists of press releases, targeted SEO, networking events for seniors & veterans, mailouts, brochures in medical offices, senior day cares and door to door sales in 55 + communities and assisted living homes. We are also targeting specific social media sites where baby boomers frequent, as a lot of them make the decisions involving senior care with or for their parents. With this combination of marketing tools, we are growing a new organic client base.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The pandemic was daunting for everyone. Most people lost something, a job, a business and saddest of all, loved ones. The limousine and ground transportation industry was no different and one of those hardest hits. I felt suspended in time. It took a while for ALR to resume business. In April 2022, I was back operating my business, but things were different. My corporate client base had not returned to their offices, group events were also slow, and those two services were my highest income earners prior to Covid.

Some of my affiliate partners and corporate clients had returned but they were without drivers. I had chauffeurs and vehicles so that partnership was a win, win. It is funny that prior to Covid my affiliate work was 15% of my business income but returning to business it quickly became 75% of my earned income. I was grateful to be open again, but I knew that I could not sustain or grow ALR with affiliate work being the dominant income earner. I had to pivot. Corporate America was slowly going back to their offices, but I needed to make changes because I was not happy or satisfied with my business. I honestly had to stop, take time to reflect to figure out what I wanted from ALR and how I was going to make the changes to obtain them.

I needed to restore my passion. I realized I did not want to go back to corporate services as they were, although it was my largest income earner previously. I enjoyed group events and wine tours, so I decided to focus on that base of clients, but I was still not satisfied. Then another door opened, when I began to get referral calls from senior citizens and veterans who needed to go to doctor appointments and medical procedures. It was at that point that I found my passion again and decided to create and incorporate Concierge Companion into ALR.

Concierge Companion has renewed my passion for business and ALR is providing a service I have loved all my life, taking care of people who need a little extra care! This pivot is positioning ALR to grow in an underserved market by assisting people who need it the most.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alrnow.com
• Instagram: @alrchauffeured_
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ALRChauffeuredTransportation
• Linkedin: www.LinkedIn.com/company/alr-chauffeured-transportation
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ALRNow.com
• Yelp: ALR Chauffeured Transportation

Image Credits
All customers were asked and approved of ALR Chauffeured Transportation using there images. These are our actual customers.