Editor's note: I am on vacation this week, so I'm leaving you with posts from guest bloggers all this week. First up is Barry LaBov, President and CEO of LaBov and Beyond Marketing Communications. LaBov owns a Cessna CJ1 and has been a strong advocate of making the case for companies with their own aircraft. He appeared on Fox Business News with NBAA President Ed Bolen July 7 to discuss business aviation.
Barry LaBov
“I’ve worked with agencies here in New York, and I can get LaBov here quicker than I can them, and they’re just across town.” This quote comes from a client of ours based in New York City. And it’s hard for us to believe that any client would make such a statement if it weren’t for our business jet.
We don’t own a private jet. We own a business jet. We’re LaBov and Beyond Marketing Communications in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and we do have an excellent airport here. But, as the old saying goes, “You can’t get there from here,” and that’s unfortunately true of the cities from where many of our clients do business as well.
Of course, we can get there from here; it’s just that getting there from here is often time-consuming, inefficient and expensive. Rarely can we get to the places that are important to our clients and to our agency without layovers, connecting flights and overnight stays. Instead, our business jet – a Cessna CJ1 – saves our agency and our employees an incredible amount of time, resources and money. We get to serve clients all over the country as if they were right across town.
Barry LaBov's Cessna CJ1
In this challenging economy, our business jet lets us leverage our people in the best possible way while still helping them maintain a normal home life. With our business jet, we have greatly reduced the number of overnight stays needed for business travel. We can go to a meeting as far as 1,000 miles away and still be home for dinner.
Our business jet also serves as an office in the air. We hold meetings on the plane; we can discuss our plans freely without fear of someone overhearing or being annoyed by our conversations. If we’re with a client and meetings run long, we can stay until the job is done without worrying about catching a commercial flight or finding a hotel at the last minute. Our jet takes teams of people wherever they need to go, and whenever a job needs to be done.
As business people, it’s important we note that common sense rules above all else. That’s why if it’s more affordable and more effective to fly someone commercial, then we do it. But we adhere to clear and well-defined guidelines when we fly to ensure we’re optimizing capacity and efficiency on every flight. We serve our distant clients better by not having to give them short-shrift on attendance. We can bring each key person to a meeting and not have additional travel costs associated like we would with commercial travel.
Fort Wayne has been our home since our founding nearly 30 years ago, and we’re proud of that. We’re equally proud of the iconic, exciting and global brands we work with. Our business jet gives us the best of both worlds – the ability to work with such amazing national clients from our happy, humble home here in northeast Indiana. It really is the best of both worlds.
