Reston Limousine CEO Kristina Bouweiri had the honor recently of appearing on a Washington Business Journal poll of the Most Motivational CEO, and so we asked her to share her business advice on motivating those around her.

“I motivate, I think, women in business because I’m the largest limousine service in Washington and the 17th largest in the country so as a woman in a male-dominated industry I believe I  motivate and inspire women in business, and I do everything possible to help them including hosting a monthly networking lunch for women in business in the greater Washington area.

“I motivate my employees by being kind, approachable and having an open door policy. And even though I have 300 employees I believe we treat everyone as family and they feel as if they are part of the bigger picture of a company that has a mission to be the best company in the city. We don’t want to be the most expensive, we don’t want to be the least expensive, we want to be the company that is known for providing excellent service at reasonable prices and that we have a very big heart and we provide transportation for those in need and we give back as much as we can.”

Hundreds of businesswomen are starting out their day inspired by innovative ideas from executives such Reston Limousine CEO Kristina Bouweiri on strategy, teambuilding, marketing, finance and more in the 2012 The Woman’s Advantage Shared Wisdom Calendar.

Luck places opportunities in front of you; skill maximizes those opportunities.

Kristina’s quote “is powerful, yet easy to understand…and is relevant to every woman in business today,” said Mary Cantando, founder of The Woman’s Advantage, a successful line of information products designed for women entrepreneurs.

Her 2012 desktop calendar for example, already has sold out, but we have 2 available to give to two lucky raffle winners on our Facebook page! Visit our Facebook page and click on the Calendar Giveaway tab or click here for more information on how to enter to win: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Reston-Limousine/44383779966?sk=app_129982580378550

Please cast your vote for Kristina now at http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/best-in-business/2012/01/best-in-business-most-motivational.html

Leadership Loudoun, a non-profit organization that develops current and emerging leaders to serve Loudoun County, recently honored Reston Limousine CEO Kristina Bouweiri and JP Consulting & Events CEO Tina Johnson as “Audacious Leaders” for making a positive impact on the community through their Northern Virginia Business Conference.

Kristina and Tina were presented the award at Leadership Loudoun’s annual meeting on Dec. 1 at Caliente in Broadlands.

“This is the inaugural presentation of the ‘Audacious Leader’ award and I can’t think of better recipients,” said Kristi Stilen-Lare, President and CEO of Blue Ridge Speech & Hearing Center. “Kristina and Tina have certainly set the bar high for future recipients and we are so proud to include them in the Leadership Loudoun legacy.”

“The “Audacious Leader” award is given in the same spirit as our Barbara Dutton award for nonprofit leaders, but we wanted to expand and include businesses that are making a positive impact in the county and that have a philanthropic component,” Stilen-Lare said.

Didn’t make it to the Northern Virginia Women’s Business Conference? Here are some images from the Nov. 18 event:

In today’s installment, Kristina and her co-panelists, TW Perry CEO Michael Cassidy and Horizon Consulting CEO Wanda Alexander, answer an audience question on why other companies don’t commit to the same investments in core values:

Finally, we’re including ICS NextGen President’ Ingrid Mendoza’s surprise testimonial about Kristina and how she conducts “business with heart” in giving back to the community:

In today’s installment, Kristina answers how she has created new opportunities to apply the company’s brand experience to new audiences, in particular helping Loudoun County and Northern Virginia develop a wine tourism program:

I am definitely a wine snob, or I used to be. About 10 years ago, after 9/11, someone said well why don’t you do wine tours of Virginia and I said there’s no way I’m drinking Virginia wine. And then my mom actually had a birthday at a winery, I tried the wine and it was fantastic. So I thought maybe we could make a business out of this. I went with two friends to wine country and we had a list of nine wineries we were going to go to and we made a pact, we’re not going to drink any of the wine, this is going to be all business. We’re going to go out there and we’re going to make sure all the buses will fit in the parking lot because we have over 100 buses, we only have seven limos. I’m not worried about making the limousines busy on the weekends, they’re doing weddings and all sorts of things, but I wanted my buses to be busy on the weekends.

So I had to personally inspect each winery to make sure the bus could fit into the parking lot—and I see a lot of my customers out there by the way. So we went out on this journey to visit the nine wineries, we had appointments with the owners, we were going to be asking them for discounts, trying to make this wine tour thing work. Unfortunately, we got horribly lost. This was 10 years ago, cell phones were not working out there very well, most of the wineries were not in my GPS and we tried all the wine and we had a fantastic day.

From that experience we created the Virginia wine tours, so today in 2011 we have about 20 buses in wine country every Saturday and every Sunday. You can either go with your own group and hire a vehicle or you can jump on what we call our public wine tour. And that is, we are trying to tap into all those people in DC who don’t have cars – we’ll pick you up at the subway and take you out to wine country. You’ll go to two wineries, there’s an optional picnic lunch, and then we bring you home.

In today’s installment, Kristina answers how she shows her staff her commitment to the brand promise:

My situation is a little harder because I have 300 employees and 240 of them are chauffeurs and they are out on the road. So it’s hard for me to touch my employees every single day but some of the things that we do are on Mondays I am in the office all day long and I conduct all of my meetings on Mondays so all of the managers and department heads do see me on Mondays. During the rest of the week I’m in and out, doing a lot of networking, doing things like this. I’ve been in business 20 years so that now, I kind of do what I enjoy doing, which is mostly the PR and marketing for the company. But my policy with all of those employees is I have an open door policy. On payday I like to be the one handing out paychecks and that’s a great chance to see people because they definitely come in to get their paycheck.

I will do it in Virginia and also in Maryland, I have a 2-hour session in the afternoon where I have an open-door policy if anyone wants to come in and talk to me about anything. If one of my employees in Maryland wants to talk to me, I’ll get in the car and driver over to Maryland, as long as they make an appointment, and talk to them if they’re not happy with something. So even though it is a large company and we have a lot of employees, we still treat our employees as if it’s a family-owned small business. We’ve got the best benefits in the industry; even the chauffeurs get paid sick leave and I think that you’ll find that most transportation companies don’t offer that. We do offer health insurance, matching 401K, paid sick leave, vacation, and we treat everyone as family.

In today’s installment, Kristina answers how she as a CEO commits to investing in the brand:

I’m lucky in a way because in my industry we only pay the drivers when they’re working so we haven’t had to cut back and lay people off because they either have work or they don’t. And we’ve been able to maintain a steady stream of drivers. With the government contracts they are paid 40 hours, they do get full fringe benefits. So my industry being a limo/bus mixture has really helped us a lot because they can drive for a government contract in the week, and then on the weekends they can drive a limousine for a wine tour or a wedding. And it has allowed us by diversifying and helping 12 different markets to keep our employees busy. We’ve been able to weather the storm through the recessions and not really lay any of the chauffeurs off. We find you always have to invest in technology if that is your brand and you are trying to stay ahead of your competition.

More than 500 chief executives attended the 2nd annual SmartCEO G3 conference, where President and CEO Kristina Bouweiri shared her thoughts on Brand-Driven Leadership as part of a panel on the topic. Kristina was joined by TW Perry CEO Michael Cassidy and Horizon Consulting CEO Wanda Alexander at the conference panel, which took place Nov. 10 at the Washington Hilton.

This entire week, we’ll be sharing her answers in a series of video clips and transcriptions on the blog! In today’s installment of the series, presented in chronological order, Kristina answers what she has learned over time what brand means to the business:

For you to really understand how our company grew so big, you’ll have to understand that when we started we just just five cars and we only had one bus. We saw that there was a trend out there in moving people in groups and we fell into government contracts kind of by accident. We were just in our office one day minding our own business and a guy knocked on the door and literally said, “Here’s an RFP for a government contract, would you like to bid on this? And if you win the bid, can I work for you as a driver?” And that’s how we got into the government contracting business.

So we got our first contract and it was out in Reston at the U.S. Geological Survey and our brand was to buy a brand new bus every time we got a new contract and then hire a fantastic driver because for us, our drivers are our ambassadors. We’re not going to be the ones greeting the customers every day, it’s the great drivers. So the brand was to get a brand new bus, hire a great new driver, close our eyes and then move on to the next contract.

And after we got the first government contract we though, “well there has to be more of these.” So we subscribed to the Commerce Business Daily and we started bidding on government contracts and because we did a a great job, we won every government contract in the shuttle market for the next five years in Washington D.C.

And doing a great job just meant that we answered our phones 24/7, we used brand new equipment, we embraced technology, and today we still do all of those things. We have more technology than anyone in our industry, we have cameras on the buses, we have double GPS, we have a software called TrafficLand – we can monitor traffic patterns – so when we came onto the market, our competitors were using used equipment, they weren’t answering their phones after hours, and it was kind of easy to do a better job. And then we just tried to get better and better, and reinvent ourselves along the way.

President and CEO Kristina Bouweiri recently were interviewed with The Dandelion Patch Heidi Kallett in Fortune about how their Client Appreciation Lunches have reaped more benefits than they imagined when they first started them.

When Kristina Bouweiri started hosting customer appreciation lunches in 2009, she thought she was just helping a friend boost her lagging business.
Little did she know that the lunches, which have been held in posh restaurants around Washington, D.C. like The Palm and Capital Grille, would introduce her to almost 900 of her clients, giving her own business a jolt.
Bouweiri’s unexpected success is testament to the power of appreciation and gratitude in business.

To read the entire story, visit Fortune at http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/23/why-gratitude-is-good-for-business-year-round/.

Following is a photo gallery of images from the most recent Client Appreciation Lunch, which took place at Wildfire restaurant at Tysons.