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Today’s show featured an interview with Kristina Bouweiri, President & CEO at Reston Limousine Service. She’s the Institute for Excellence in Sales Entrepreneurial Sales Leader of the Year. Find out more about the 15th Annual Sales Excellence Awards here.
Find Kristina on LinkedIn.
KRISTINA’S TIP: “Our motto has always been never say no. Say yes to whatever the customers want. Everyone’s a customer. That has been our motto for 35 years and it has served us very well.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We have Kristina Bouweiri. She is the 2025 Institute for Excellence in Sales Entrepreneurial Sales Leader of the Year. It’s great to see you. First of all, congratulations on being the 2025 IES Entrepreneurial Sales Leader of the Year. You’ve done so much. You’re a classic story. It’s so much what you’ve done in an industry. By the way, for people listening today, go back to episode 101. Kristina will talk in more detail about how she took over the company, how she’s led it, and her role in the transportation industry. We talked about your role in association, and to be honest, your role as a woman in sales, a woman business leader, and a lot of the things that you accomplished in that.
I want to talk to you about some of the entrepreneurial things and some of the sales. We created the Entrepreneurial Sales Leader Award to recognize a founder, a business owner who has created something impressive and incredible with a sales mindset. With an approach to sales, with sales process, with thought of sales excellence. In 2024, we recognized Reggie Aggarwal and Chuck Ghoorah from Cvent. That was a great story as well.
You’ve been selected as the Entrepreneurial Sales Leader of the Year. First off, give us a brief introduction and then talk about how critical having a sales mindset has been to your success.
Kristina Bouweiri: I own Reston Limousine. It is the largest limousine bus company in Washington, DC, and we are the tenth largest in the country. We have 250 vehicles, we have about 400 employees, and we should do about 40 million in sales this year.
Fred Diamond: I’m based in Northern Virginia as well. For people who aren’t in this area, the Reston Limos are ubiquitous. They’re not just limousines, they’re full-sized buses. What types of vehicles do you typically have?
Kristina Bouweiri: We have everything from Sedans, to SUVs, to small vans. We have about 5 different types of buses, so you can get a 15-passenger bus all the way up to a 55-passenger motor coach with restroom. So, if it’s a bus, van, Sedan, or SUV, we have it in our fleet.
Fred Diamond: For people who don’t know you and aren’t going to go back and listen to episode 101, give us an overview on your industry and where you play in the industry.
Kristina Bouweiri: The industry is pretty large. It used to be mostly Sedans, limousines, maybe SUVs. About 20 years ago, buses became very popular. We’ve been in business 35 years, and we started with buses. We fell into government contracts. We were very lucky. We started in Reston, Virginia, and we won a contract with US Geological Survey in Reston. That was our first government contract. From there, we won another government contract every year. So, the first ten years we were in business, we won lots of government contracts. We were also there during the dot-com craziness. So, we had all the dot-coms using us. It was really a great time to start a business because the economy was thriving and transportation was hot.
We did that for about ten years, and then we lost our small business status. We had to diversify into other market segments. We could no longer do most of the government work, so we diversified into universities, hospitals, and corporate businesses that need shuttles. We do commuter shuttles, we do metro shuttles, you name it. We have about eight universities that use us today, and it’s just been a joy growing this company in such a dynamic market like Washington, DC.
Fred Diamond: It’s a great success story in the region as well. Seeing the Reston limos of all sizes across town is always exciting to me. That being said, talk about the sales culture you’ve established at Reston Limousine. How have you instilled that?
Kristina Bouweiri: It all boils down to my mindset, which is very aggressive and sales minded. I think I was born to be in sales. My entire career, I’ve had this motto, “Never say no.” Nobody at the company is allowed to say no. If a customer asks for something, we have to do it. Back in the day when we didn’t have those full-sized motor coaches and a customer wanted a motor coach, we said yes. We would farm it out to another company. Eventually, we bought our own fleet. We have everything on our fleet today, but the idea is that we wanted to provide one-stop shopping for our customers. If they call me and I don’t have a bus and they find it somewhere else, well, guess what? I lose their Sedan and SUV business too, most likely. So, our motto has always been never say no. Say yes to whatever the customers want. Everyone’s a customer. That has been our motto for 35 years and it has served us very well.
Fred Diamond: It’s a great entrepreneurial success story. Like I mentioned before, we had you on the Sales Game Changers podcast twice talking about that. What is it about you? Obviously, a woman in a man’s world, transportation, buses. Why have you been so successful as an entrepreneur?
Kristina Bouweiri: That’s a great question. I always tell people I’m the accidental entrepreneur. I have a degree in political science. So, I fell into this business by accident. I realized I absolutely loved it. I was good at it. Marketing and sales is my raw talent so I’ve done well. Along the way, you have to surround yourself with smart people. There are a lot of things. I can’t do it all, so I hire people who can do all those things that I can’t do. I’m terrible at HR. I’m horrible at accounting, to name many things. What I’m good at is sales and marketing. I focus on what I do best, and I hire other people to do what I’m not good at.
Obviously, you can’t grow a company just running it by yourself, you need a good team. Hiring good people, mentoring them, and coaching them to be their best is really what I did. It doesn’t make any difference that you are a woman. Being a leader and running a company is all about empowering your employees, treating them with respect, making them love their job, and a man or a woman can do that. That’s what I’ve done.
Fred Diamond: That’s fascinating. I’ve got to imagine as I’m thinking about your business, obviously, there’s all the back-office. The invoicing, finance, et cetera, but you’re dealing with mechanical devices. Things that break. Things that have to be upgraded, repaired, and purchased. Is that a major complication in your business?
Kristina Bouweiri: Sure. We have to buy vehicles and trade them in every five years or so. So, we go to the limousine conventions, and that’s where they have all the vehicles out in a convention center. You meet the people who can help you make those decisions. Today, I’m lucky that I have a fleet manager who manages all that for me. We have about 11 mechanics, and the business is open 24/7. If a vehicle breaks down today, we can fix it in the middle of the night and get it back on the road tomorrow. The only way to make money in transportation is to keep your vehicles moving as much as possible. We want those down times to be very short and few between.
Fred Diamond: You’ve created many helpful communities for women and other entrepreneurs as well. Why has that been a passion of yours? What are your goals for bringing communities together?
Kristina Bouweiri: It was because I was in a male-dominated industry. For many years, all of my employees were male. All of my vendors were male. A lot of my customers were male. I just found myself surrounded by men, which was fine. I wasn’t complaining. It’s just that as a woman, I needed some time with women. So, I started going to women’s networking events. I soon learned, actually, that 80% of our clients are women. When I say that, I mean that the person ordering a car, whether it’s a Sedan or a bus, is either an executive assistant, or an office manager at the office, or at home, women are the event planners in the family. That was interesting to me.
I had never really paid attention to that, but once I figured that out, I thought, “I’m going to network with a lot of women’s groups.” Of course, I networked with many groups, not just women’s groups, but I focused on women’s groups and went to a lot of networking groups. I decided that there were things I liked about some of them and not others. I decided to start my own networking group for women. That was going to actually save me time, because I was going to probably six events a month. If I could put on a great event that everyone wanted to come to, I would only have to go to one women’s networking event a month. It was actually a little self-serving. That was when I founded Sterling Women. The first month I thought maybe 40 women would show up, and I think I got 80. In the second month, I got 100. By Christmas, I had 200 women coming to my networking lunch every month, and I did that for 14 years.
The other things I wanted to share about that were that I had a woman in business as the speaker, and I wanted these successful women to motivate other women. I felt that a lot of women lacked confidence. They lack risk-taking. I thought if they could hear from a really successful woman every month, every woman has a similar story. How did they start their business? What were the challenges? How have they succeeded? Those inspirational stories to me were how I was going to be able to get more women to feel confident about getting into business.
Fred Diamond: As a lot of listeners know, at the Institute for Excellence in Sales we have our Women in Leadership programs which are run by Gina Stracuzzi. A lot of the things that you just said, Kristina, are very similar to what Gina hears. The audience who we serve are typically women in sales at companies like Amazon, Salesforce, Hilton, Microsoft… Typically larger companies with large B2B or B2G sales organizations. Almost word for word is something that our attendees and participants are looking for support on. Good for you on creating that. I didn’t realize that it was for 14 years. I do know that everybody knew and knows about it. Your name has become synonymous in many ways with service, giving back, and the entrepreneurial leadership that we’re focusing on here with this award event.
I’m curious. What is your advice for other entrepreneurs as it relates to creating the sales culture and making sales a major part of your process?
Kristina Bouweiri: I do want to mention that in my industry, most of the salespeople don’t make commissions. They’re hourly paid workers who answer the phones and take reservations. I have always paid commissions. I believe in commissions. We have stretch goals. We have contests. We have additional incentives. My sales team at Reston Limousine is unique in that way, and they’re really good. They love their jobs. They make good money, and they’re excited. That’s really what I was trying to create there.
In terms of a sales mindset, everyone at my company is supposed to be bringing in sales. Whether it’s the CFO who refers friends who are getting married, or whether it’s my drivers, they know it’s their job to do a great job and tell their customers about all the different things that we do. We might be picking someone up from the airport, and on the way to the hotel, the driver says, “By the way, we do Virginia Wine Tours, and we do Tours of Washington, DC.” My drivers are an extension of my sales team as well bringing in more business and getting referrals. Every single employee at Reston Limousine is responsible for bringing in sales.
Fred Diamond: One of the key entrepreneurial lessons is everybody is in sales. I used to tell people all the time. I used to do a lot of consulting to smaller tech and service companies, and I would always say the most important person in your company is the receptionist. Someone who can speak to the value. I like the way you said that, too. You’re driving somebody from the airport to their hotel and your people know to say, “By the way, we also do Virginia wine tours.” That’s great because a lot of times people think that, “It’s just about me. I’m the CEO. I’ve got to be doing all the selling.” In a lot of cases, that’s it. The CEO does a lot of the selling until he or she is able to build the team, but the successful ones understand that it’s the entire company, and it’s not just the entire company, it’s also a support network and partnerships.
I’m curious. From a sales perspective, who else has helped you grow outside of the company? What are some of the key partnerships or support that have been critical to your success?
Kristina Bouweiri: I mentioned I’m a political science major. I had zero experience in business when I came to Reston Limousine. What’s really helped me has been networking and learning from other CEOs. I’m in a CEO peer group called Vistage. It’s a membership organization. You take a day off from work every month and you go to an off-site retreat. For eight hours, you not only have a speaker that is probably Harvard MBA material, but you also solve each other’s business problems. I did that for 14 or 15 years. Now, I meet with that group informally and we keep the conversations going. What’s really made a difference for me has been the CEO peer groups that I’m in and the networking that I’ve done where I’ve surrounded myself with really interesting and smart people that I could pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I have this problem. How do I deal with it?”
A lot of this has led to board seats. I’ve been on the board of four different chambers. I’ve been on the board of Leadership Greater Washington. I’m very engaged with several of the universities on their boards. That has been a huge part of my success in terms of meeting the people who could turn me onto the big opportunities. It’s really been that board level networking that I’ve done.
Fred Diamond: I’m going to ask you one question that I didn’t ask you during the preparation for this. What is it about you? You’re going to be winning the IES Entrepreneurial Sales Leadership Award. We’re very excited to present that to you on May 1st at the McLean Hilton in Northern Virginia. It’s going to be a great event. I encourage everybody listening or reading the transcript to join us that day. We have a bunch of awards that we’re giving out, Lifetime Achievement awards, it’s going to be a great day. I’ve interviewed you a couple of times. I’ve met you a couple of times. I’ve seen you at concert venues numerous times. What is it about you? Don’t be humble here. Be humble, but why are you receiving this award? Why did our committee when we were choosing this say, “Kristina Bouweiri is the slam-dunk for this,” which you were? I have some ideas, but I’m curious how you would answer that question.
Kristina Bouweiri: I think I’ve been successful because I’m a lifelong learner. I’m always trying to improve myself. I think anyone who wants to grow a business has to have that approach. Always trying to improve myself is a huge mission of mine. I don’t know if you’re aware, but 97% of women-owned businesses are under a million in revenue. The fact that my business is pretty large, I stick out. I feel very blessed. Another big plus for me is that I’m an extrovert. I love people. I love networking. I love meeting people. I love learning. So, I’m very busy. I’m always doing something to improve myself or my business. I think that’s key to growing a business and staying at the top.
Fred Diamond: Before I ask you for your final action step, what are some other recommendations? Maybe one or two that you would want to share for other entrepreneurs to develop this sales mindset.
Kristina Bouweiri: I think the saying is true that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That has been something that has really helped me through the networking I’ve done. My advice to other people would be you need to network. There are so many places you can go to network, whether it’s a chamber, an industry association, or maybe it’s your university alumni relations department. There’s got to be somewhere where you can network with like-minded people, learn from them, and grow from them. Put yourself out there. That’s important. Stay active.
You asked me for a piece of advice as well that I wanted to give. That would be that everyone needs to take care of themselves. Everyone needs to have some down time. Have some self-care routines. Especially if you’re in sales, you’re always pushing and you’re always charging hard. It’s important to take time off and have things that you do, whether it’s exercise, meditation, yoga, or eating healthy. You’ve got to take care of your body because if you don’t, you’re going to burn out. My advice would be to have a self-care routine.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Always love to hear Kristina’s insights into her business. Congrats Kristina for a well deserved award!