I talk a lot about our need to do the work ourselves sometimes, so we understand the pain points our people and our customers face, and so we have a real clue—not some naïve sense—about how our business actually works.

Sometimes we must literally drive the bus, fix the tech, do the work.

Look no further than an interesting startup named Fetii. Think of them as Uber or Lyft for high-capacity vehicles…party vans, group transport…that kind of thing. With backing from Mark Cuban and other high-profile investors, they’re now in seven states and growing, transporting more than a million people a year.

In a time of loneliness, it’s become a weekend get-together kind of thing…more than just a once-a-year birthday party phenomenon.

Impressive: CEO Matthew Iommi and his fellow co-founder Justin Rath do the actual work. In Matthew’s case, he has literally driven the vans to learn how that end of the business works. He’s managed the van drivers. He’s managed the managers of the van drivers. Justin has done similar things on the tech side.

This makes them aware of the pain points they need to solve. It makes the lines of communications much more open. (Instead of a deep-voiced announcer asking: “Can you tell me your pain points?” it’s “Hey, I was driving recently and I had this problem…do you ever face that? What else?”)

And now their people feel heard. And—as we’ve seen in other stories—when people feel heard, they’ll do remarkable things.

So…have you driven the bus lately?

Let me know what you think. I look forward to being in touch.

Al Comeaux