Dan McCarthy is the owner of Village Airport Van and, by his own admission, did not exactly start out as a focused, goal-driven sort. Setting goals did not come easily to him. “I’m more of a ‘Hey look, a squirrel!’ kind of guy. I was always being pulled every which way. I needed someone by my side to keep me on track. Thank goodness my wife and now Rachel at Go Figure are great at that,” Dan says.
One thing Dan has always been good at is perseverance—a word he learned the true meaning of during four years of service in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. “Way back in basic training, I was on a run and we came to a spot where we had always taken a break before. Out of habit, my brain and body told me it was time to stop. Big mistake. The run kept going, and all of us who stopped were treated to an hour and a half of monkey drills:
jump up/jump down/roll left/roll right/now do pushups and more pushups. After that, I determined that I would never fall out of a run again. I would never let my mind psyche me out, ever. I would hold on and never quit on anything, no matter what.”
That never-say-die attitude came to Dan’s rescue when, in 2008 while working for Comcast, he took a bad fall on a blacktop road. He punctured a lung and broke his collarbone, among other injuries. At about the same time, Dan’s father, who had always wanted to start a taxi cab business, came down to Lake County to give that a go. They both helped one another out. They bought a taxi together and soon found themselves in The Villages, waiting for fares with other taxis. They got zero takers. “We heard people saying ‘Don’t take any taxis but Village Taxis.’ We weren’t going anywhere.”
“After that, I determined that I would never fall out of a run again.
I would never let my mind psyche me out, ever. I would hold on and never quit on anything, no matter what.”
They regrouped back at home at the dining room table. “We needed a different idea. Not taxis, exactly. How about shuttles? What about starting a shuttle business for The Villages and going after the airport business?”
With just four used Crown Victorias, the two began getting the word out about their new Village Airport Van shuttle service. “My Dad placed one ad. The next morning the phone rang at 6:00 a.m. It rang again at 6:15. Then 6:30. It continued like that all the next week. We had one cell phone. We passed it back and forth between meals and bathroom breaks. That’s how it started. We started making money that very first month. We would often run up to 33 passengers a day. That was a lot of airport trips back and forth in our old Crown Vics. So, Dad traded in his almost-paid-off personal car and bought a Ford Econoline van in December 2009. We put almost a million miles on that vehicle.”
Village Airport Van has been through a lot since then. By now, they’ve transported more than 1.4 million passengers. In 2014 they converted all their vans to propane gas. It was a good move. “In 2013, we spent about $750,000 in fuel. So, we switched it up. Propane works well for us, and it’s more sustainable, with 50% less emissions than gasoline. Plus, all our vans and propane conversions are made here in the United States.”
By 2019, they had 35 vans on the road. Then COVID hit. “Those times were tough for us, like for most people. Our business plummeted. There were some airlines still flying, but at severely limited schedules. We booked trips to the airport at 8% below our first-year numbers.”
But Dan, as always, chose to persevere, just as he promised during his basic training days. Village Airport Van never stopped running. “All through COVID we were here. We would not leave our customers stranded. You just don’t leave your people. The military taught me that. And these were our people. They kept us alive during very difficult times, and we will never forget that.”
The year 2020 still had more challenges in store. The most significant of these was the loss of his father. “He and I had been partners all that time, and when I lost him, I was left to manage our business on my own.”
One of the first things he did was fire his old accountant. “Dad would never have done that. She had been with us from the beginning. But I knew we could do better,” he says. “All she did really was fill out tax forms, and those were always late. She didn’t know how to look ahead, how to plan, how to recommend where we spend our money.”
In her place, Dan hired Go Figure Accounting. “I have known Rachel for over 40 years now. Her brother and I were good childhood friends. I knew she was an accountant and had moved away from Florida and become partners in a big-time accounting firm. Lucky for me, Rachel came back to start her own firm.”
An entire accounting firm was what Dan knew he would need to make sense of his father’s outdated accounting methods. “Dad ran our business from his dining room table and basically put all our money in one big pile. I had several other businesses by then. One of them, a non-emergency medical transport business, we grew from $600,000 in sales per year to $1.6 million. But we never knew which business contributed what. We never had any idea where the money came from or where it was going. I needed someone, an accountant I could count on, and I knew Rachel was the one to do it.”
But where Dan saw an obstacle, Rachel saw an opportunity to grow. “She gave my wife a book to read, Profit First, and my wife liked it. A lot,” he said. “She had us at the word ‘profit.’”
Talking about growth, however, turned out to be a lot easier than growing. “I thought 2020 would be an exciting year with all the talk about profit and profit sharing. It was exciting, but not in the way I thought it would be. Finally doing things right, for the first time, was painful. I won’t lie. Like ripping a bandage off. I opened a bunch of new bank accounts. Thank goodness my wife is so meticulous and organized.”
All that hard work paved the way for Dan’s next big move.Specifically, a move outward, to a second location. “The Villages is expanding to the south and so is my business. My solution was to add to my geographical coverage. So, I bought a piece of land by the Turnpike and US 27, the furthest spot south before we got on the road to the airport. My plan is to pick people up in smaller areas, bring them to our hub, then the airport. As much as The Villages expands, we’ll be able to cover the market. No more driving people around on long trips with many stops.”
“We never knew which business contributed what.
We never had any idea where the money came from or where it was going. I needed someone, an accountant I could count on, and I knew Rachel was the one to do it.”
Construction on that new facility begins next month—once he’s taken care of the tortoises, of course. “Yes, tortoises. My new plot of land had five tortoises on it. When I bought it, there were five tortoise mounds. Three years later, by the time permitting was finished, there were 18.”
As a threatened species, the gopher tortoise and its mound are protected by Florida law. Before construction could begin, Dan needed permits from the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission to have the tortoises relocated. “It’s costing me $6,000 per tortoise to have them relocated to a safe tortoise habitat! I paid $78,000, and they are just now going in to collect the tortoises.”
With all that going on—new leadership at VAV, new expansion, new facility in the works, a ton of tortoises—it was clear that Dan McCarthy and Village Airport Van needed exactly the kind guidance Go Figure was providing. “Rachel is amazing and sharp as a tack. I swear, she rattles stuff off and makes my head spin,” he says. “Yeah, at first it was like swallowing a bunch of horrible pills. But now I’m growing steadily, earning good profit. Go Figure is keeping me 100% legit and putting as much money in my pockets as possible.”
More importantly, Go Figure has drive and perseverance to match his own. “Rachel taught me that I am in this for the long game. What I’m building now will last. It’s future-proof and I’ll be able to grow my business exponentially. Rachel has me spending money in the right places, where I get the best deductions and save the most money—and that is huge. You can’t ask for a better business partner than that.”
