KYLEE ERVIN President of Diamond Coach Leasing LLC
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e’ve all seen them. Whether on the highway or near a large music venue when an artist is in town – big, sleek tour busses that speak of success, of glamour, of making it. While to most of us, they’re simply what take an artist from one city to the next, for Kylee Ervin, they’re the realization of dreams.
Ervin is the president of Nashville-based Diamond Coach, a company that provides touring artists and entertainers with high-quality, luxurious tour busses. Although she is now the woman behind a stunningly impressive line of coaches – having worked with the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Rascal Flatts, Miranda Lambert and Hunter Hayes – Ervin fell into this business by complete chance. She grew up in Toledo, a small farming community on the eastern side of Illinois. After graduating from high school, she moved to New Albany, Indiana so that she could attend mortuary school in nearby Jeffersonville. “I was 18, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” she recalls. “Really, I wanted to be a jockey, but I outgrew that option when I was about 5,” she adds with a laugh. Nonetheless, she did indeed successfully graduate from mortuary school and then began planning her future in Louisville. But then came the errand that changed the course of her life forever. Ervin’s father, who she refers to as her hero, had been an investor in a Nashville entertainment coach company. Displeased with how things were going in Tennessee, he asked his smart, trustworthy and business-minded daughter to go down to Nashville and investigate for herself. The plan was for Ervin to gather more information, collect the equipment and weigh the option of leaving the industry. But while she was there, she met the business manager of one of the artists who was using her father’s busses. Though Ervin was planning on packing up and leaving Nashville, her new acquaintance encouraged her to stay and give the industry a shot for herself. Intrigued by the business, Ervin called her father and told him she wanted to stay and go forward in the entertainment coach industry. FALL 2015
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“My expectations are probably entirely too high because I saw the way my father and family worked, and they didn’t quit.”
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| THE VOICE OF LOUISVILLE
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