PMA Collective

On this episode of The Collective, we are traveling to the 77th largest city in the United States, Orlando, Florida. Also known as theme park capital of the world, its attractions draw more than 51 million tourists a year. By day, Orlando is a growing metropolitan city, but by night, it is a party hub for the restless. On our search for small businesses, we came across a group of people who call themselves petty cavers. At night, when the streets are closed to motorized vehicles downtown, these guys take over. I'm Luke McHenry, I'm from Orlando, Florida. After high school, I went and joined the Marine Corps. Out of the Marine Corps, I moved to Tampa, moved back to Orlando in 2004. I studied graphic design and then I acted media out in Tampa, who became a graphic designer for about 10 years, working in various ad agencies, sign shops, creative departments and companies, big corporations. I found myself laid off with a newborn baby in a mortgage and answered an Ad-Art Craigslist to Pity Cab, downtown Orlando. The rest is history still being written. I'm Josh Mohawk and I live in Delan. I've been married for almost 11 years now, I've got three kids, seven, five and two. I moved to Florida in 2005 and started in the real estate industry and then that tank bounced around from job to job after that. I got into petty cabing because I knew Luke through a mutual friend of ours. We hit it off pretty good, were pretty good friends, so I started coming down here. This is kind of My name is Gary Nicholson, I'm from the Finger Lakes up in New York, a little town just south of Rochester. One night I was just riding my bike through downtown and the garage door was opened up and they had petty cabs in the garage and a week later I was riding a petty cab in downtown Orlando. Kids and adults are completely different in the reasons they want to ride on a petty cab. Adults are, a lot of them just don't want to walk or they can't walk at certain times of the night. Kids see the cab and they see it as a ride so they're usually pestering their parents to be able to j It's kind of cool, you make the kids night and you get to see families out having fun doing things together which is cool. Luke and Kerry, along with five other petty cab owners, parked their unique vehicles in a special space downtown to await the next passengers as they strive to make petty cabbing a popular part of the downtown experience. Where I see the potential for me for personal growth and business growth would be with marketing and advertising. We're out there mingling with the city, we're at big events, our signs act very much Most people don't need a petty cab ride. Some do but most don't need, they want one. They're capable of walking three or four blocks, they rather not walk three or four blocks. So, it tells me that they're emotionally connecting to us and that's the whole thing with branding and marketing. You want people to form an emotional connection with your brand. So, where I see it going is working out, I would But, definitely spearheading into that report of the fabric and people listen to us and we can communicate too. But because we're not really that much a part of the fabric of the community, petty cabbers don't speak with one voice. There's 10, 12 different owners but none of them will get together and agree on anything except here in this shop. It's one of the things that's happened, it's not just one owner in here, it's five. We've come to be able to agree on a few things so that we can share a place together, right? I've always wanted to have to raise the bar of petty cabbing and bring it to the awareness of the people that no, we're not. We have something to offer, we earn our money here locally, we spend our money here locally. We are part of this community. These are individual guys riding out here, they're big personalities, I work 40 hours a week on top of this, a daytime job, doing financial planning now. Very much a people person so I And you meet some like really, really funny people out and especially at two o'clock in the morning when they're st The only drawback to this job is that it does take away time in the evenings and everything, but it still opens up a lot of opportunities for me with my family. I get to be downtown, I get to be part of the scene downtown and I get to bring them down on the nights when I'm not working or during the day and stuff. We'll bring them down on a Sunday whenever there's no cabs out and we'll hook up a petty cab and we'll ride them from here to the park and we'll spend the day at the park or something So, Well the future's always uncertain, but Orlando's growing. You've got the soccer stadi They're trying to bring commuters in here to work and so the future is totally uncertain, but what I like to see of it is, Begun as a small business venture, these petty cabbers have made a large and lasting contribution to nightlife in downtown Orlando. If you too have begun a small business, tell us about it by visiting our website, thecollective. com and join us again for The Collective. .