In this episode of Servant Leader’s Library, we explore the fascinating journey of Larry Cohen, the long-time leader of the Lancaster Parking Authority.
With over 14 years at the helm, Larry has transformed the organization into a best-in-class, accredited authority. He has also pursued his passion for storytelling and even ventured into the world of TV comedy. His story is one of resilience, innovation, and unwavering attention to detail.
Join us as we explore Larry’s unique path from scrappy entrepreneur to respected leader in the parking industry. His insights into leadership, community impact, and the often-overlooked world of parking are sure to inspire and entertain.
Watch the episode above or listen over at Spotify. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next great servant leader’s story!
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Episode Transcript
Nicholas Paulukow
Ladies and gentlemen, buckle up for today’s episode of Servant Leader’s Library. Joining us is the parking world’s very own maestro, Larry Cohen, who’s been steering the Lancaster Parking Authority for a solid 14 years. Under his guidance, this organization has become a best-in-class, accredited parking organization and has reached new heights, including the groundbreaking development of the Christian Street garage and retail project. But Larry isn’t just into parking spaces and garages; he’s also an accomplished author with two titles under his belt, starting with The Quirky World of Parking. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s got a TV comedy in the works.
Yes, you heard it right—a comedy about parking. Who knew the world of parking could be so entertaining? We’re thrilled to have such a multi-faceted leader in the house today. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the conversation with Larry, guided by our host, Nicholas Paulukow, CEO of ONE 2 ONE, your go-to experts in managed IT and cybersecurity consulting. So, welcome, Larry. I appreciate you being with us today.
Larry Cohen
That was a heck of an introduction, man.
Nicholas Paulukow
You definitely will! Well, we appreciate it, Larry. Why don’t you tell our audience—so our audience comes from a multi-faceted group of people trying to develop their leadership skills, others who have been in it—why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself personally, you know, where you came from, kind of your education, and what you feel will help in our conversation today?
Larry Cohen
Yeah, I mean, I think folks might be surprised that I was kind of a lost soul growing up. I was a scrapper. Nothing was handed to me. I worked my way through high school and college. I went to Kutztown University while working for a parking company. And when I graduated college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I had friends who were high achievers—”I’m gonna be a lawyer; I’m gonna be a doctor”—and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Obviously, it was a tough position to be in when you graduate from college and don’t know where your life’s going to take you or what your life’s meaning is. I tried a couple of different things, and somehow I said I miss my part-time job of being around cars and parking. So, I started my own parking company. I grew up outside Philadelphia and really started in the basement of my parents’ house. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was 23 years old, but I knew I wanted to focus on customer service, which I believed could be the road to success—doing things better, nicer, with more attention to the details. That’s kind of one of my mantras: attention to the little details is the difference between average and exceptional. I was never book smart; I was an average student, but I had a really strong work ethic, and I was street smart—a scrappy kid—and I thought that could take me a long way. But who knows when you’re young?
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah.
Larry Cohen
So I set out, started my own business, got lucky—very lucky—and got contracted at the old Veterans Stadium, where the Phillies and Eagles played, to provide valet parking for what they called the luxury boxes at Veterans Stadium. This was many years ago, and the former owner of the Eagles, a guy named Norman Braman, tried to sell the team to Arizona or move it to Arizona, and the city’s concession was to build these luxury boxes in probably the worst seats in the whole stadium. That was a really big get for us as a small entrepreneur starting out. I had that business for many years but really put my whole life into it—no wife, no dating, just work. And at about 30 years old, I said maybe it’s time for something new. I sold my business, took a year off, did some consulting work, got some national press as a young entrepreneur like Nick, and did some other things. Then I kind of missed the business, and there was an opportunity to start up a new program at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. They liked my entrepreneurial background, so I came in and built a program up for them with valet parking, acquiring parking garages, and just building a program for the hospital side that the university wasn’t fulfilling. I did that for a while, got recruited to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, moved out of Philadelphia to Baltimore. I was there for many years, had a little stint as a VP of consulting for an architecture and engineering firm—didn’t like that world—got back into the operations side at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and then came here 15 years ago.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow. That is an amazing story. I can relate because I was not Mr. Book Smart all the time, right? When I hit college, that was a different story, but I always wanted to create and develop when I was in high school, which meant like, you know, all of those classes weren’t as important. But that’s pretty impressive. I mean, Philly is a large area, and you grew that business. How old were you when you started that business?
Larry Cohen
23.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow, that’s amazing. I mean, not many people have the ability to do that. That’s very impressive. And then to sell it too, right? You didn’t just stop and let it fizzle out; you had the opportunity to sell it. Tell us a little bit more about that. I can remember my first experience in selling a landscape business that I started, and I learned a lot about people through that. So I’m kind of curious—what did you learn through that process?
Larry Cohen
Yeah, well, a little bit deeper dive into that. As I said, there’s a great list of qualities that don’t take talent—qualities you need that you have control over, like attendance and effort. So I kind of live by that mantra. I think when I started the business, especially for the valet side, I was working with unbelievable clients. I worked at Dr. J’s house, Patti LaBelle’s house, Teddy Pendergrass’s house, Ed Snider’s house—the rich and famous of Philadelphia. I was literally at their doorstep every day when I worked for the other company, and when I started my own, I saw that we could do it a better way. We literally gave away long-stemmed silk roses to all of our guests as a thank-you for parking with us for the night, which I also put our business card on with the slogan “Valet parking with style” or something like that. The company was called Premier Parking. So, we got a lot of press. Just finding a little niche like that, you know, I bought a lot of silk roses over the years—boxes and boxes of silk roses that were relatively inexpensive but went a long way in building my business. But I got burned out, though. And maybe I was too young to know better. When you start a business when you’re young, as you know, sometimes that’s the best time to do it. You don’t have family obligations; you think you can do anything. You know, I literally got kind of burned out. Someone offered me more money than I had ever had. I started with $3,000, and two-thirds of that went to pay for insurance. Talk to companies about insuring a 23-year-old who’s never been in business before, starting a valet company where he’s going to be driving Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis, and try to get them to insure you. No one in the United States would insure me back then. I ended up being insured through Lloyd’s of London.
Nicholas Paulukow
Really?
Larry Cohen
Yeah, and Lloyd’s of London is known for taking all the high-risk, high-profile insurance, like Madonna’s legs and Taylor Swift’s voice. They insure all these obscure things. So, it was almost a badge of honor that I was insured with all these famous and rich people and had this little parking company back then.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s amazing. Many people talk about not being able to start a business because they don’t have a lot of money, and I think our stories align, right? I came from a family where we were working—my dad was working two or three jobs, so there was no money to be given. It’s amazing, right? When you put that time, energy, and emotion into it, as you said, being scrappy gives you that drive compared to someone giving you the money and you trying to figure it out. I think it makes a big difference. For me, it was the same thing, but I call it ignorance was bliss. I was so young that I really didn’t know what the problems could be. So, I wasn’t thinking about that—I was just really trying to get it off the ground. But if I did it today, I’d probably come up with all these reasons why not to do it.
Larry Cohen
Yeah, you know, I get asked many times through the years, “Do you ever regret selling your business? Do you wish you had started your business today?” You know, you make a great point, and I know you don’t regret things in life, whether they’re successes or failures. But I think what has helped me in the role that I have many years later is that I run the Parking Authority like a small business within the city. So, even throughout my career, I’ve always maintained that entrepreneurial background, spirit, and way of conducting business, even though I worked for a university or a hospital. The success has come from caring about the business, treating the money like it’s yours, running it like a business. So those early lessons of owning my own business—although I don’t have that business today, I do consulting on the side—those same characteristics have followed me through the years. So, it’s worked out.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s wonderful. Congratulations on that. It’s always wonderful to meet someone who’s gone through the same process of going from ground zero up. I always say I’m part of some of these groups, and there are second-generation and other business owners, but there’s a difference between a business owner and someone who’s an entrepreneur that created it from ground zero. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but it definitely comes from a different perspective of conversation.
Larry Cohen
I’d be okay if my dad was a multi-billionaire and I was the second or third generation running the business.
Nicholas Paulukow
I know it.
Larry Cohen
No, I like to do things—I don’t like to get handed anything. My path has been interesting. I look back on my life, and whoever is listening to this—maybe the younger generation—when you look back on your life, there are key points when you turned left versus right, and that changes and impacts your life. The direction you go, you know? I was just having a conversation over the weekend with a friend in Pittsburgh on a three-hour drive, and I was saying, “I wonder how my life would have been different if I grew up in a different city.” Obviously, your life would be different, but I wonder how it would have been different if I grew up in a different city versus suburban Philadelphia. How would that have changed things? But it would have changed dramatically, I think. Inherently, you still have your same characteristics. If you’re successful and some of those things change, you’re still going to be successful. Maybe I would have been—we’ll get to it later on—but if I grew up in Hollywood, would I have been the parking guy at the studio, or who knows?
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s right. That’s what happens when you get old—you look back and wonder, “What if I had turned left or right?” I love it. I love it. That’s amazing. And I think one thing you said that was paramount—and that’s what I learned at a young age too—is the attention to detail, right? And I think, you know, the founder of Apple said the same thing, right? If you make the small things unforgettable, then that’s really what’s important. I think it’s really profound too because you see in the garages that you all manage and the things you do in the city, I mean the attention to detail, the cleanliness, and even from communication, right? You have your face out there that says, “Call me,” right? Like, “We’re here for you.” I think that’s quite different from other places you go. I think you’ve said it before—most people think of garages and other things that we’ll get into as just kind of these dark, dingy places, and you guys bring them to life. Even to the point where I see we have signage now—digital signage on the garages—so that’s kind of neat. It’s really neat.
Larry Cohen
You hit a sore point with me. I’m a terrible investor. When Steve Jobs left Apple, I said I’d never invest in that company, and then, of course, you know, he came back. No, I think…my staff…it is the attention to detail. It is getting out of the office, which is sometimes harder—walking around, seeing what’s going on. My staff’s used to me. You know, if there’s a peeling sticker, I’ll send a picture. They’re just used to it. It’s not quite micromanaging, but they might think it is at times. But no, my staff understands me and how we want to be the best at what we do, and that is through attention to detail. So they’re used to really anything I see that needs to be better—they’re going to get a little picture of that to take care of it. And they believe in the same level of service, care, and appearance of the service we provide.
Nicholas Paulukow
Well, I think that attention to detail is what people remember, probably, right? That experience in the facilities, right? I really enjoy and respect that because that’s what makes people or situations different. I always say, “Hey, when I go to…” I should have gone to Universal Studios’ parking garage first and then Disney because it was a way different experience, right? I’m greeted in the parking lot at Disney, and then at Universal, it was a different experience. But you remember—that’s the first thing you enter.
Larry Cohen
Thank you for your attention to the parking there. But we all hyper-focus on what we know best, so of course, whenever I go to anything—and I’ve done consulting with Disney—I’m hypersensitive to the transportation and the parking, the cleanliness, and the signage. All those things are very critical for my eye and what our industry provides to our customers, whether it’s Lancaster or anywhere else in the country—an airport parking facility, entertainment venue, university, or other.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, I have a lot of great skills, but being directionally challenged in a parking garage is not one of them, so signage means a lot, right? I frequently fly out of Philly, and that’s my most stressful part. It’s like, “Wait, they’re all labeled the same on every floor of every garage. I don’t even know where I’m at,” right? It can be a very stressful thing from a larger perspective, or at least maybe I’m the only one who gets stressed out when I can’t find the car. But I’m like, “I swear I was on this level. Oh wait, but it was two garages down, and it’s labeled the same on the same floor.” So maybe that’s just me.
Larry Cohen
No, it’s very simple what we prefer. We want to make sure we provide ease of access in a clean facility, a well-lit facility, a safe facility, and ease of payment. Even though no one wants to pay for parking, we should at least make it easy, and we should provide ease of access and ease of exit. One of my favorite sayings is, “Parking should be a non-event.” Parking should be something that’s seamless—you don’t think about it, you just do it. So we’re doing our job if you don’t think about it and it’s a non-event.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, I love it. I experienced one the other day, and there was an issue, and the team was right on it from a customer service and stress point. They were like, “Just leave the garage, even though you haven’t paid. We’ll handle that, but at least feel the comfort of exiting and not being trapped in there,” and they did a really nice job. I think that makes a big difference in places where you feel alone. From your perspective, with your amazing story—you’re from a big city—what drew you to Lancaster County to work with the Lancaster Parking Authority?
Larry Cohen
I probably attribute it to college. I could have gone to Penn State or Kutztown, and I chose Kutztown. I think it’s a little bit of being a big fish in a smaller sea. I think somewhere, my comfort zone is being somewhere where you can really make an impact, and it’s felt and known in the community. So I was able to do that in college. In high school, I couldn’t wait to graduate—like, get me the heck out of here. But in college, I never wanted to leave because I matured, got involved, became active in things, and I said, “Oh wow, I can make a difference.” I’ve worked in Philly, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York City, but my comfort zone was someplace like Lancaster. When I came up here for my interview, they had just opened the Convention Center. When I talked to business leaders as part of my interview, it was such a positive environment—entrepreneurial, everyone heading in the same direction, though with different opinions on how to get there. And then, obviously, seeing the city and its potential for growth, I fell in love with it right away. I said, “This is where I have to be.” And I have to tell you, it’s almost embarrassing—I actually, for my second book, went back and had a file of every job I’d ever applied for or had interviews for. The numbers are ridiculously outrageous. I used to say my career had a seven-year itch—every seven years, I was ready for something new. Either I got bored and wanted a new challenge or whatever the case may be. So, I feel very blessed. I’ll be entering my 15th year in January, and I feel very blessed and lucky that the stars have aligned. It’s been a lot of highs and lows, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s amazing. I think that’s a testament to the entrepreneurial journey of yourself, right? You kind of get that itch to create and do something new. From starting your own business to moving further up in your career, let’s talk about leadership. We all talk about leadership—good, bad, or indifferent—but from the start of owning your own company to where you’re at now, what did that journey look like from a leadership perspective? What did you learn? What could you tell us?
Larry Cohen
Yeah, so first of all, I’ll say it’s funny that I’ve written two books, but I don’t really read a lot of books because I don’t have the attention span to read books. I have a very short attention span. Somehow, I was able to write a book, though—COVID helped with that. But I have very basic principles that I think a lot of leaders use: treat your employees how you want to be treated. Sometimes that backfires; sometimes folks take advantage of that, but if you hire the right people, they don’t. Hire folks with the same high qualities you look for in your wife or partner—because it is a marriage. It’s your daytime marriage. As a young entrepreneur, I don’t want to sit here and say everything was great because I hired a lot of friends. I started out just hiring friends. Friends were the ones I thought I could trust, but some of them were not the ones I could trust. I hired them because they were friends, but I didn’t hire them because they were going to be the best to promote and support my business. Some of them were very self-fulfilling, very narcissistic deep down, and they did things that benefited themselves, which was detrimental to my business. So, I did lose some friendships promoting my own business, which was very sad. Some friendships maintained, but others were lost in the business environment. Sometimes friends are great to work with, sometimes family is great to work with, and sometimes it’s not. There are family fights, families that don’t talk to one another. So, early lessons learned: the most important thing is learning about people. I have older boys now, and I don’t want to say my generation was better than this generation, but I think we’ve lost—through technology, everyone’s on the computer, of course. My son—everyone says he’s on the computer too much, and he made a career, a very good career, out of being on computers, so I never kicked him off the computer. But the basis of personal relationships and actually being able to converse with one another—even being involved in Rotary or the American Business Club—these organizations are not doing great because the younger generation doesn’t value that time spent creating relationships and partnerships. I’ve never been really book smart, but I value personal relationships with clients and employees. That evolved over the years—you have to hire the best person with the qualities you need. At the end of the day, you’re the boss. You’re your children’s parents. It’s not the goal—my goal is not to be my children’s best friend. My goal is to be the best parent I can be. If we’re friends from that, so be it. I say the same thing to my employees: I’m here to be your boss. Respect one another, do the best job you can, and if we’re friends from that, fine. But I’m not here to be friends. You have to differentiate that.
Nicholas Paulukow
I don’t even know if I answered your question.
Larry Cohen
But that answers it. Well, I can relate there too because when I started, I had some friendships that I brought into the business, and you grow potentially faster than they grow sometimes, and it has created some definite stories, right? We’re not friends any longer, or there’s a separation, or there’s some level of disdain. That’s a rough one because it clouds your judgment, or it clouded my judgment.
Larry Cohen
And jealousy. I think we should all learn to never let money influence how we are or how we act. Be thrilled at other folks’ success, even though it’s not your success. Be happy for their success. Don’t be jealous. Don’t be angry if it’s your friend or whatever. There’s a lot of that. I’m just thrilled to death for folks who do better than me. Do the best you can for yourself, but never let the evil of money influence how you build your career or how you deal with your friends and counterparts.
Nicholas Paulukow
Comparison, right? There’s always going to be someone doing better than you. At the end of the day, control what you can control. Be the best that you can be for yourself and your family. If you’re not happy in your situation, do something else.
Larry Cohen
I’ve had plenty of employees. I actually had a senior-level person, and I had to be blunt with them. I said, “Are you happy here? Are you happy here?” because it was not showing in how he was conducting himself with fellow employees. Very smart guy. And he said, “No, I’m not really happy.” I said, “Then you need to leave. I’d love to keep you; I’d love for you to stay here, but you need to leave. Life is short. Find happiness in what you do. Find happiness in your work and your life, and you’ll do a lot better.”
Nicholas Paulukow
I hear you. Well, to kind of switch subjects a little bit, we mentioned that the Lancaster Parking Authority is best in class. So, what makes Lancaster’s Parking Authority best in class compared to the others? Could you enlighten us?
Larry Cohen
Yes. I once had a neighbor—I thought of my neighbor. I was writing a book during COVID, and my neighbor laughed, like a lot of people laugh, and they say, “What can’t you tell me in five minutes about parking that I don’t already know?” I said, “Well, somehow I thought of a whole book’s worth of it.” But I’ve always strived for excellence in everything I do, and I thought it was important that this program that my international organization has—an accredited parking organization that any organization in the country can apply for—not everyone gets accredited, but it levels the playing field. So, you could take an organization as big as Philly Parking Authority and the Lancaster Parking Authority, and they have a hundred times more revenue than we have. But I thought it was important to say, “You know what? I’m in Lancaster, running Lancaster Parking Authority, and I think we do things just as well as any big city in the country.” And this program played true to that. There’s a bet people place, you know—it’s parking, it’s not professional, it’s just people taking money. But it’s obviously diverse—we deal with construction, design, economic development, personnel, cash handling, and technology. I like to say, like Tesla said, “We’re a tech company parking cars.” I coined the phrase, “We’re now a tech company parking cars.” I have like two full-time tech people on my team. So, I thought it was important that for the community as well as for my organization to say, “Cohen’s not just going rogue here, making crazy decisions in how we do things, but we’re following best practices on a national level of how we conduct business.” So, being an accredited parking organization tells the public, tells my stakeholders, that we’re functioning at a best-practice level.
Nicholas Paulukow
I love that. Delve a little bit more into that because I think we say all the time, or you probably hear all the time, “What’s involved in parking?” I can only take my experience of living in the community—just from a project of integrating a library and bringing people together so that they’re able to park and participate in city activities. What are things that people don’t know about the parking service that would astound us?
Larry Cohen
I’ve canned a presentation that I’ve been sharing with my peers around the country called “We Do More Than Park Cars and Write Tickets.” It outlines 15 different things that we’re involved in other than parking cars and writing tickets. As I gave you kind of a laundry list of some of the things we do internally, we’re involved in the arts, we’re involved in keeping the streets clean, we’re involved in promoting the city, we’re involved in economic development, and we’re involved in special events downtown. Believe it or not, some of the major companies that have moved downtown in the last several years wouldn’t sign on the dotted line to move downtown until parking was arranged. So, I sat with the CEOs of more than one company, making sure that we could accommodate the needs downtown. We’re ambassadors for the city; we have folks on the streets. We did a little video that’s on YouTube under the Lancaster Parking Authority channel, where we took our parking enforcement officers, and I said, “I don’t want to show them writing citations; I want to show them doing things other than that,” and that’s providing directions to people, providing information. It runs the gamut, and I could go on and on. There are about 15 things that I’ve highlighted in this presentation that we’re involved in that people are like, “Oh yeah, okay, I get that.” That’s outside of our core responsibility, but I think it’s integral to what we provide to the community.
Nicholas Paulukow
From what I’m hearing from you, we wouldn’t be as thriving in the city if we weren’t able to get people to actually come into the city, be able to park, and participate in all the new growth that’s here. I mean, there are two major complaints that people usually have—access to parking and cost, right?
Larry Cohen
One of my favorite sayings is, “Parking should be friendly, not free.” Obviously, we have to pay for our staff and what we do every day. We have to charge. I’m very proud of the rates we charge in our garages—they’re pretty darn low. Anyone coming to any big city will chuckle. It’s $2 for the first hour, $2 for the second, and a dollar thereafter. Pretty reasonable to park all day for probably under 10 bucks. Remember, we have an infrastructure of seven garages, over 5,000 parking spaces in garages that are mostly 30, 40, 50 years old. We have to put millions of dollars every year to keep them in a state of good repair, making sure that our Third Street garage, which is almost 50 years old but looks like a newer garage, or Penn Square garage—our mayor said to me, “I went to a town—I won’t name it—I parked in the garage, and I was scared. It was dim, dark, poorly lit, and dirty. I come back to our garages, and I’m amazed at how beautiful they are, and they’re really old.” So, the money that we make goes right back into supporting these facilities, keeping them in a state of good repair, and putting technology in place so that you can pay by your phone on the street. You can drive into the garage with your license plate without even touching anything, like Easy Pass. And then also maintaining—we have a macro program. It’s a macro of on-street and off-street, making sure that there’s on-street parking available for the business community. When there wasn’t enforcement on Saturdays, it was the business community that said, “We want enforcement,” because employees were parking on the streets all day. We want to make sure those spaces are free so that the individual will park close to the building. I tell a story about Park City Mall—there, you could park a mile away from where your destination is, but you don’t feel like you’re that far away because it’s in line of sight. You come downtown, and you park around the block from where you’re going, and you feel like you’re far away. So, there’s that perception and personal dynamic. It’s really important for us to make sure, as best practice, that there’s always one or two spaces out of every ten spaces available to park in that block so that you can get to the business you need to get to.
Nicholas Paulukow
I like that. You talk about technology—how do you lead through that? How do you determine how to keep up with those trends and stay in front of them? How do you continually develop the Lancaster Parking Authority through that?
Larry Cohen
Well, with the help of ONE 2 ONE. Well, actually, you have to remember I’ve worked in big and small organizations. You have to assess where we’re at—we’re a third-tier city, so larger cities like D.C., New York, or even Pittsburgh could be more trailblazers. They can take more risks in certain things because they’re such large cities. They can do more pilot programs and different things. So, I don’t necessarily say that we blaze the trail, because the impact to us, to some, for the back support of technology, is significant versus a large organization. But I will say, when something’s brought to my attention and it’s a no-brainer—this is my leadership management style—if I get approached for something, and it’s a no-brainer, and it’s a win-win, I will do it right away. For example, mobile app payment, which was a game-changer in the parking industry less than 15 years ago—we were an early adopter of mobile app payment in the country because they said, “We’re gonna put it in. You don’t have to pay for it. It’s going to make your customer experience better. It’s going to allow your customers to comply.” Compliance is important to me—yes, I want you to pay to park on the street versus enforcement. Case in point is that the enforcement money that we collect—90% of it goes to the city. We get our expenses covered plus a 10% management fee, but the majority of the money goes to the city. So, I’d rather folks comply and park at the meter where I get 100% of the revenue versus collecting on citations. Compliance over enforcement. If people have the mobile app, their satisfaction with parking goes through the roof, even though they have to pay a small fee for that. We’re over 10 years into the mobile app world—94% of all of our on-street transactions are either through mobile app or credit card. We are actually at the high end of best practice levels in the country for on-street mobile application. What does that do as a business leader? It also secures my revenue, lessens my back office accounting functions, lessens my on-street collection of coin function, and lessens us counting clicks.
Nicholas Paulukow
It goes on and on. As a consumer, I’ve been in meetings in the city, right? I don’t want to be rude and leave a meeting that I’m at to put money in the meter, but from an operational standpoint, it allows me to add dollars to it and removes the stress as the consumer, which makes it great. I don’t know how you guys do all the wonderful things for how low-cost the parking is. With family being in New York and Philly, it is a drastic difference. I don’t know how you make all the improvements you do with such a low rate. Thank you for allowing us as the consumer to participate in that.
Larry Cohen
Yeah, well, we’re a non-profit, and whatever we make just goes right back into the program. We’re a very flat organization, so there’s not a lot of levels—everyone here is working pretty hard.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah. We talked about your leadership of the Parking Authority and a little bit about the one book that you wrote, which is amazing. I’ve seen you out on the book circuit and speaking about it—it’s been really amazing. Congratulations on that. So, what’s this little TV thing? What do I hear about that?
Larry Cohen
As I said, during COVID, my first book—and I have two out now—the first book was a COVID project. I didn’t even know that I could write a book, but lots of YouTube helped, and it kind of took the mystery of writing a book away. My book The Quirky World of Parking is on Amazon. The first book is Parking 101, and then it tells all the crazy stories of running a parking authority. Every day, there’s something crazy, funny, nasty, or sad that happens. A lot of those stories are in the first book, and the second book is just more stories that I couldn’t fit into the first. I had folks talking to me like, “Oh, this would make a great TV show or comedy or whatever.” One part of me thought, “You’ll never do that,” but I thrive on someone telling me that I can’t do it, so I wanted to try to do it. I figured, well, if I could figure out how to write a book, maybe I could figure out how to break into Hollywood, right? Ignorance is bliss. I spent a lot of time researching, trying to figure out if anyone would be interested in doing a story about a parking authority. Now, there’s already a show called Parking Wars, which is on A&E. It’s a documentary-style show following parking enforcement, booting, and towing at the Philly Parking Authority and the Detroit Parking Authority. But this is more of a show about what happens behind the scenes—that’s what my book is about. What happens from the seat that I sit in? What are the crazy situations we deal with internally that people never get to see? That was the basis for the book, which I thought would be a good basis for a TV show in the model of Parks and Recreation meets Parking Wars.
Nicholas Paulukow
I love it.
Larry Cohen
So, I spent a long time. I found an agent whose mission is to allow folks who don’t have access to the entertainment industry to gain access to the entertainment industry. I entered an agreement with them. They hooked me up with a producer, and we spent well over a year developing what the format of a show at a parking authority would be and who the characters would be. At the beginning of this year, we hired someone to write the pilot episode for the script. About a month ago, it has been packaged and is now out in the Hollywood market to the streaming services and networks to see if anyone’s interested in buying the concept. My agent has about a year to try to sell it.
Nicholas Paulukow
That is very impressive. Congratulations.
Larry Cohen
Thank you.
Nicholas Paulukow
I’m excited about that. It sounds like there could be a lot of content for a show like that.
Larry Cohen
It’s inspired by the book—some of the stories in the book. We went from a million-to-one shot, then it became maybe a hundred-thousand-to-one shot, and now that we’re actually out in the market, maybe it’s a ten-thousand-to-one shot that this happens. Based in Lancaster at the—well, not the Lancaster Parking Authority, but another renamed, more generic parking authority.
Nicholas Paulukow
Well, congratulations on that, Larry. Very nice. As we work to wrap up our time today, what advice would you give aspiring leaders who want to get started in their careers or think they have the skills to lead? What advice would you give them?
Larry Cohen
I think—hopefully, everyone has a mentor they can learn from. I actually—well, I’ll give a tidbit story and then go back to that. I’ve left many organizations, and it’s amazing when you have your going-away party, how many individuals who work for you come up to you and say, “You know that time you patted me on the back, or that time you gave me that note, or that time you gave me some ideas,” and you don’t even remember it because it was just one thing of a hundred things you’re doing every day. Remember that everything you do with folks, they remember. So, I wanted to make sure I got that out. But hopefully, you have a mentor. If you don’t have a mentor—and I talked about it earlier—there are lots of mentors out there that I never took advantage of in my youth, and that’s getting involved in an organization like Rotary or the American Business Club or reaching out to an organization like SCORE. There are tons of retired, successful business people, entrepreneurs, and leaders who are now at the stage of their lives where they want to give back. They can give you time and suggestions. There’s especially something in our community—get involved in Leadership Lancaster or things of that nature. You’re not alone on your leadership path. I have an employee who tells me now, “How do you always make the right decisions? You always make the right decisions.” I said, “Well, that’s a benefit of being older, but it’s also from being younger and making wrong decisions.” You’re not always going to make the right decisions, but learn from them, get better from them, mature, build yourself into a better leader, but take advantage of all the folks around you that I really never did. A lot of times, I really thought I was in a silo—I’m not a doctor, I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a teacher where there are a lot of those folks in the city, right? I run a parking organization. There’s one of me in the city. There’s one in Pittsburgh, one in Philly. I get together with these guys maybe once or twice a year, and we share similar stories—we’re all dealing with the same things. But to me, up-and-coming leaders, take advantage of all the free resources there are. You just have to have the willpower, the desire. You can’t be shy. You have to have—what I say in my home language of Yiddish—chutzpah. You have to have some chutzpah, some guts to get out there and find your path forward.
Nicholas Paulukow
I appreciate that. Would there be any resources—any books, any online things—that you find helpful, or have found helpful, that you could share?
Larry Cohen
So, as I said, I got nervous when you started asking me the last book I read. I read a lot of articles. It would be totally improper for me to segue to my book here as a resource for everybody else, but I just try to take advantage of all the podcasts, online seminars, and webinars and trainings that my organizations provide—ones that are in my comfort zone, but also ones that are outside my comfort zone. For example, Nick put on an amazing AI presentation, and I know nothing about AI, but I said, “You know what? If I’m still working, I’ve got to learn about this.” Nothing in particular other than take advantage of all the free stuff that’s out there. It’s so easy today versus when I was young. We didn’t have YouTube; we didn’t have all this stuff. Learning how to write a book, learning how to publish a book—if I was doing this 30-40 years ago, I wouldn’t have done it because I would have had to go to a publisher. But you can teach yourself to do anything. I taught myself how to contact Hollywood—I mean, that’s crazy!
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, it is.
Larry Cohen
Just by my wife asking, “What are you doing at midnight?” Well, I’m watching another YouTube video on how to get an idea to Hollywood. There’s no magic to my answer—it’s kind of like we do it in small stints.
Nicholas Paulukow
I think that’s great. What’s different is generationally—we were taught how to do the research because we had to, right? I find it really interesting that other generations are struggling to understand how to research because everything was at their fingertips. I never really recognized it that way because it just became natural—we had to know where to look for it. So those are great sentiments. I appreciate you for sharing that.
Larry Cohen
I said it at your seminar—AI today is the new Cliff Notes. My generation—we were big Cliff Notes fans. Believe me.
Nicholas Paulukow
I agree with you there! Well, Larry, any parting comments before we wrap up for today?
Larry Cohen
If you don’t mind, I will do a selfless promotion. For anyone who wants to learn about parking, leadership, or hear crazy stories, here are the two books: The Quirky World of Parking and More Stories from the Quirky World of Parking, available on Amazon. Or, if you’re in the neighborhood, let me know, and I’ll get you a signed copy for $10. You can come by the parking office anytime.
Nicholas Paulukow
I love it, and he means it, folks. I have a signed copy, but mine is a first edition, so I’m saving mine for when it’s big bucks. When the TV show comes out, you’ll say, “I knew him when.” Larry, amazing conversation today. We really appreciate you. Folks, that’s a wrap on another enlightening episode of Servant Leader’s Library. A big thank you to Larry Cohen for parking himself in our studio today and giving us a VIP tour of his leadership journey—from managing the Lancaster Parking Authority to developing urban landmarks and even venturing into the world of comedy. Larry’s insights have truly shown us that there is no such thing as a boring day in the world of parking. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deep into the quirky world of parking and leadership, don’t forget to check out Larry’s books on Amazon and keep an eye out for that upcoming TV comedy. Remember, whether you’re running a parking empire or leading an IT and cybersecurity firm, leadership can drive you to new heights. Until next time, keep leading with service and stay tuned to Servant Leader’s Library. I’m your host, Nicholas Paulukow, reminding you to stay secure, stay savvy, and always leave space for excellence.
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