The BlaBla Car | DFS 343

Jennifer, welcome to the destined for

success podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Takagi, and this

podcast used to be called new manager, media manage. Ride from

the start. Many of the concepts are the same, but there's a

little shift. There's a shift, because I know we are all

destined for success, and I want to help you find the fastest,

smoothest way to reach your highest best as quickly as

possible. Join me in today's episode where you're going to

come up with new ways to build your skills and influence others

to make the impact you desire to make. I look forward to

connecting with you soon. Welcome to destined for success.

I'm your host, Jennifer Takagi, and last week, we heard from an

amazing woman, Amanda Johnson, and she was sharing about her

journey and helping other, mostly women entrepreneurs, with

their journey of sharing their story, and the importance of

that, the importance of getting your story out there. We all

have a story, and I'm a big proponent of get your message,

get your story out there. I have one book on Amazon that is

solely dedicated to things my mom used to say that I loved and

thought were fun, and I didn't really care if anybody else in

the world read it. It was for me and my sisters and their kids.

But there were stories about my mom, their mom, their grandma,

that I liked putting together and putting out there. So there

are many different ways to do it, and many different reasons

for sharing your story. Today's episode, I'm sharing a story

that is hilarious to me, and I hope you find a little bit of

joy, a little bit of light heartedness in my story today.

When I went to Spain in October of 2024 I traveled with my

Bessie Kimberly, and she did a little more research than I did.

I had gone to school in Seville, Spain when I was in college,

which was a very long time ago, and I had heard of a town called

Marbella. I probably went there when I was in college. I don't

know. We did some traveling around, stayed at super cheap

hotels and that kind of thing, but I remembered Marbella, and

when we started looking into it, looked spectacular. And let me

just tell you it was so we get there and Kimberly says, maybe

it was not Kimberly. Maybe it was my friend Amy, who's a

travel agent, but I was informed, at any rate, about a

thing called a blah blah car, a blah blah car. I'm not kidding.

Look it up, b l, a, b l, a, blah blah car. And the point is, you

can ride in a car, and it's way cheaper than Uber. And from what

I gather from having experienced it, the whole goal is that

person is going to that next city anyway, and if they can put

a couple of people in their car for a very reasonable amount,

then it cuts their price for their trip substantially. So we

had tried a time or two to get a blah blah car, and like, we were

in the middle of Malaga, and we couldn't figure it out, and we

ended up just getting an Uber like we could not figure it out.

So a couple weeks later, we're planning in advance, which is a

little shocking for the two of us, but we're planning in

advance, and we are going two and a half hours away by car to

a city called Granada, and we start looking into a blah blah

car. And it was roughly $5 a piece to ride in a blah blah

car. Well, we had to walk 20 minutes, I kid you not, uphill

to get to the bus station to catch the blah blah car. It's

not like an Uber or a taxi that will come to you, you have to go

to a specific location. And at the time, I didn't understand

that. I just thought that's where the person was going to

be. I didn't know that was the only place to get a blah, blah

car in Marbella. So we walked there. It's hot, I'm sweating,

I'm dying. It's uphill. Literally, the whole way is

uphill. It's not as steep as some hills, but for me, it was

pretty steep. So we get there, and we get to a little cafe, and

we're sitting outside to wait for the gal in the blah blah

car, and her name is Maria. I. Interestingly enough, I download

the app for the blah blah car, and it's all in Spanish. I never

found a place to change it to English. I even gave it to my

friend Sophie, who's a travel agent, and Spanish is her first

language. And she said, Oh, give me your phone. I'll figure that

out. She can figure it out. So it's all in Spanish. So I'm

trying to navigate with my minimal Spanish. Yes, I studied

for years, but you don't use it, you lose it. So I'm trying to

figure out this blah, blah car thing. So I was like, Hey, we're

here. And she said, so am I? Where are you? And I'm like,

we're outside this coffee shop. So this woman comes running down

the sidewalk, and I said, Maria, and she said, Yes. So we walk up

the hill, because, of course, it was uphill. We walk up the hill

to her car, we put our stuff in, and we think it's going to be

the three of us. And she said, Are you Consuela? And I said,

No, I'm Jennifer. This is Kimberly. And she said, Oh,

we're waiting on Consuela. So she runs around, she finds

Consuela. Consuela sits in the front seat, Kimberly on the back

seat. All our stuff fits, and off we go to Granada. And it's a

pleasant drive. It's beautiful countryside, lots of beautiful

olive orchards, olive groves. What's the proper term? I don't

know. I don't eat olive so I didn't look that up. And we're

going along. It's beautiful, scenic. And she pulls into a gas

station. It says, Okay. And I said, Okay, what? And she said,

we're here. And I said, Where? She said, Granada. And I was

like, well, like, where's the town we're like, on the

outskirts of town at a gas station. And I said, well,

where's Alhambra? Because that is the palace that we're we want

to see. And she points up the street, and she said, Go that

way. And it's like she's shooing us away. Go that way, all right.

So we get out, and I was like, Kimberly, this is weird. Like,

we just, like, got dropped off in a gas station. So we start

dragging our bags going up the hill. We just have, like,

overnight bags, but thinking as they were on wheels, and we go

up the hill and find a hotel. We get checked in. We find out

Alabama is really high up the hill. So we decided to take an

Uber because blah blah cars apparently have specific pickup

and drop off points. They're not going to come to you. They're

not going to come to you. So we take the Uber up, and it's very

uphill. And I said, I'm happy to walk downhill. I just wasn't

gonna walk uphill and sweat to death before we have dinner. So

that's what we did. And we walked down the hill and saw all

the cute shops, and it was amazing. This all was built like

in the six hundreds, seven hundreds. It could even be older

than that. But anyway, it's super cool. And the next day

we're going to leave. So we order a blah blah car, and it's

the drivers, Maria, and I think it's the same Maria. And I said,

Are you picking this up? Where you dropped us off yesterday?

And she said, I don't know. I didn't drop you off yesterday.

Again, this is all in Spanish, so it's taken a minute, right?

So I figure out it's the same place, like we need to go back

to the same gas station. She text back and said, Can you come

early? I'm ready to go. And I said, Yes, it'll take us a

little while to get there, but we'll head that way right now.

And she texts back a little bit later. Oh, the other person's

running late, so we won't leave just yet. We'll leave at the

regular time that was scheduled. Okay, great. We get there, we

find her at the same gas station. We're putting our bags

in the trunk, and she already has a bunch of stuff back there.

It's a little bitty, four door sedan. We get our stuff in, and

there are three of us there. And I'm like, Okay, are you ready to

go? And she said, Oh, no, we're waiting on Lola. And I was like,

who's Lola? There are gonna be five of us crammed in his little

bitty car. Yes, yes. Three of us are in the back seat. I'm almost

five seven. I was stuck in the middle, crammed in this car for

a two and a half hour drive, I had many very ugly things to say

in English. The passenger in the front seat turns around and

says, are you okay back there? And I said, not really, but I

will suffer until we get to the bus station in Marbella,

come to find out our sassy little driver picked up an extra

person. The car was only for four. She decided she was gonna

have four passengers. I know this to be true because she. She

and the gal in the passenger seat visited the hallway. At one

point the driver said, Oh, that's my dad calling. Would you

talk to him? So the passenger answers the phone, talks to the

driver's car, so they're obviously friends. Then we exit

the highway and drive into a neighborhood and drop the

passenger in the neighborhood at somebody's house. This woman was

not supposed to be in the car. She was not part of the blah

blah crowd. She was a friend. It had a ride. So we are crammed in

the back, see like sardines. And the lesson learned was you need

to just book the whole car. It was roughly $5 a piece to take

this blah blah car. So for $10 a piece, we could have just booked

the whole car. We could have just made up a third person and

booked the whole car, and then we would have had the whole back

seat to ourselves. That is a story that is fun, exciting. We

had a lot of fun on the trip. That blah blah car experience

was something else. I have a whole nother blah blah car

experience about how we needed to go to aldicitis to get a

ferry over to Africa. That was another one that was crazy, but

this one, this one took the cake. She added an extra person

without bothering to tell us, I'm Jennifer Takagi, and I look

forward to connecting with you soon. Click the link in in the

show notes and book a call with me your success call.com. Do it.

I'd love to chat with you and find out what you're getting out

of these podcasts and how I can make them more fun and better

for you. Thank you for taking your time to spend with me on

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Jennifer Takagi, and I look forward to connecting with you

soon. You.