Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / Leadership Lessons from an Elevator Company President | Chris Gutkes

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Leadership Lessons from an Elevator Company President | Chris Gutkes · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to learn how to ride a bike, you got to keep forward momentum, right?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: You could cross over that line a hundred times.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: As long as you keep moving forward, you're going to be able to get somewhere.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: And by the time you get there, you're a little bit better than when you started.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Are you an expert?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Are you going to join the Tour de France?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're not, right?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're still wildly incompetent as w compared to the world's best.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: But you're not looking to be the world's best.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: You're looking to be your best version of yourself.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Matt Allred.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, we talk to the people whose lives and careers are dedicated to the vertical transportation industry to inform and share lessons learned, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before to inspire the next generation of elevator careers.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Today our guest is Chris Gutgus, president of Island Elevator.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: In this interview, Chris shares his path of developing as a business owner in the elevator industry.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Having been on this journey for a while, Chris has learned many lessons along the way, some of them the hard way.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Though it's not always easy to develop self-awareness and empathy, these are two of the critical skills for growing as a leader.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks a lot, Matt, for having me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a while.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's been like a year and a half, but uh I'm glad to be back.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's been almost two.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you were you were one of my first uh uh interviews back in uh 2022.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: So and you were the first podcast I was ever on.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of um, lots of ums and ahs back then.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: When I watched that, I'm like, uh and and now you're a pro.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is a piece of cake, right?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I learned a lot from it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like um when we we did like a pre-interview and there was like some questions and I was thinking about it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: So then when we did the actual interview, what I found was all of those ums and ahs in those placeholders was me trying to remember the answer that I had for the question that I wrote like four days ago.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I learned from that no more pre-interviews, no more questions, let's just let it fly.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's where I'm at my best.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love it.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's more natural, and just just go with it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm the same way.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I I wanted to bounce back because obviously you've been at this a while, you know the industry, you know a lot.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so many of the people I talk to, uh, a lot of you know, even some of my clients are either business, you know, obviously they're business owners if they're clients, but a lot of the people I talk to who are not yet business owners aspire to business ownership as part of their career path, which obviously you've done.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to dig in that into that a little bit today and you know, talk to uh an entrepreneur, yourself, of course, and just talk about what is it, what does it take to run a business in the elevator industry and and what's that like a little bit?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: So um there's like a couple of questions in there.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, number one, I never really considered myself an entrepreneur.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I always think of myself as an operator, right?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: So entrepreneurs got like these pie in the sky ideas and all of these problems that they're gonna solve, and they're all a little bit space cadetti, a little bit.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: So um, but I'm the operator, I'm the one where the entrepreneur turns to and he's like, here you go, go make this happen because I gotta go fly off somewhere and deal with something else.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I I get like enrichment out of that.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as far as my path to entrepreneurship, I fell into entrepreneurship like somebody falls into a ditch and it hurt when I hit the bottom.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was just uh, you know, uh I was out and I was putting my hands on the equipment one day, my old man passed away.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm sitting in the big chair trying to figure out what I'm doing because I literally have no idea what I'm doing.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that entire uh that entire experience made me a better operator.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it was only when I started to practice number one, self-awareness and number two, empathy.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, what I preach to everybody is that you have to you have to start to take the the the few moments a day to kind of look yourself in the mirror and say, what are my strengths?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: What are my weaknesses?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do more of what works, do less of what doesn't work.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And how do people react to me when I enter in a room?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: How do people respond to me when I open my mouth?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and is that something that's going to be conducive for me to be able to achieve the kind of goals that I'm trying to uh uh shoot for here through this?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for just a second.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so you're digging into self-awareness, and yet when you say look in the mirror, say what am I good at, what am I not?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's just so much there because myself and and I think a lot of us I I'm sometimes I'm just blind to what I'm not good at.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I but what I heard you say was uh listen to how people react because I think that's especially that that feedback that's like super painful.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: To me, that's that's the most beneficial, but man, it hurts to hear.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you how do you really dig into self-awareness?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna lead a team and and lead a business, what's what's been most helpful to really see what you don't even want to see?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you got to start with like a point in the sky, like a uh something that you're actually aiming towards.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So uh and when it comes to criticism, criticism doesn't really bother me, like it doesn't hurt my feelings, it just energizes me and helps me to focus more on what it is that I want to be able to accomplish.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Without choking the person to death in the first place?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is that or I I my father was not Mr.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Cuddly, hugly, you know, come over here, son, let me sit down and explain the world to you.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: He was like, Don't be sorry, you know, uh, don't be sorry, be better, right?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's the the world is not around here to feel bad for you.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and if you're gonna spend time feeling bad for yourself, you're gonna be the only one.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: So uh that's something that I learned from my father.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, an open, honest conversation, uh, being able to speak to each other's faults, criticisms, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't really hurt my feelings because what it does is that I've learned, I've framed my mindset around it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: Some people are just uh, or a lot of people uh have a tough time not internalizing it, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because you you have to you have to start with who you are and what you know because the default, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: My default is to to lash out and say, oh, you don't know who I am.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's the false construct I've got in my head about who I think I am.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: But but you're saying that.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: No, but on the same note, no, let's be honest, Matt.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, aside from your wife, nobody really knows who you are, right?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: So uh for everybody to make false presumptions around you, that's that's basically the status quo.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: So if you accept the fact it's almost like when I'm driving, I don't get road rage because I assume that there are those on the road who are trying to run me into the in off the highway.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I it doesn't bother me.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm now, you know, I understand the situation that I'm living in, and then I just kind of I mean I get from my point A to my point B.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: But if we wanted to talk about like self-awareness and empathy, you've got to start with that goal, that goal that's off in the uh in the horizon.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like what exactly do you want to be?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then once you can figure out what it is that you want to be, then you can ask yourself that being that, whatever that is, maybe it's the president of the company, maybe it's a supervisor inside of inside of your company, uh, what does that look like?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: How do I define that?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then once you're able to define that point on the horizon, you can now use self-awareness to say, okay, do I have the skills and traits?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, do I have the um do I have what it takes in order to be able to get from here to there?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, but I can't be, I can't be floating around in the uh in the ether pretending like I'm Einstein when I'm not, or when I I need to have certain um uh certain skill sets that I don't have, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So don't it's not it's not an opportunity to try to like uh give yourself a bunch of false toxic positivity and positive affirmations.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: This is like real deep down dirty stuff, not the stuff that's on your social media account.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: So you want to really think about it, and then now if you know where you are and you know where you want to be, all you got to do is just go ahead and get it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you build it?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm just curious what you what you have found to be most helpful in navigating that journey because it's from from the work I've done, it's it's not an easy journey to uh to really change some of those things that it's a habit, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and maybe maybe you'll look at at a a meeting that you were in and wow, that was certainly not a CEO thing to say, and now people are upset with me.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'm not making the progress that that I'm hoping for.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you find most useful, most helpful?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so you you definitely have to be a little bit of a realist.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, is it hard work?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if it was easy, then everybody would be doing it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're planning on doing something that's challenging, you have to accept the fact that you are going to fail.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to fail yourself and you're going to fail your own mission.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, does failure mean stop?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean stop.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: It just means we got to move around this a little bit.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: We took a little step back.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to take a step forward, which that happens to me all the time.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: So the next thing that you probably need to exercise yourself on this journey is a little self-forgiveness, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Just understand that uh, Chris, you are going to, you are trying to get there.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: You're better today than you were yesterday.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: You're not as good as you're going to be tomorrow, not where you need to be if you want to be respected as a CEO or whatever the hell it is that you're shooting for.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: So uh practice self-forgiveness.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I've, yeah, for myself, it's self-compassion.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And but I kind of look at myself like a five-year-old on a bike or a four-year-old or however.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, well, how many times do you cross the line?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as long as you keep crossing that line, you know, you can learn to balance.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But but I'm not gonna be perfectly on that line.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna sway this way and that way and this way and that way, and you know, learning a new skill.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Is that if you want to learn how to ride a bike, you got to keep forward momentum, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: You could cross over that line a hundred times.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: As long as you keep moving forward, you're gonna be able to get somewhere.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And by the time you get there, you're a little bit better than when you started.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Are you an expert?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna join the Tour de France?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're not, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're still wildly incompetent as compared to the world's best, but you're not looking to be the world's best.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: You're looking to be your best version of yourself.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked about some self-awareness.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: What about the empathy piece?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you find that within yourself?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: You want to talk about tough self-awareness is tough.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Empathy is just as tough, if not tougher.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you're somebody like me, I grew up, I was the firstborn child in my family, not just my mother's family.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was like on both sides, my mother's side of the family and my father's side of the family.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was the first uh nephew, grandson, all this stuff.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: So as I'm growing up, everything that comes out of my mouth, people are like, oh my God, this is the most brilliant, you know, this kid is so cute and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it like it ingrains in your head that everything that I'm doing is special.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, the whole world.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: I can't believe it.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: I finally made it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: The whole world revolves around me.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it is a rough, it is a rough transition when you start to realize that um all of that, that, uh, that goodness that kind of informed this uh sense of self-confidence that you have, um, is uh it's not exactly how the world works because everybody else thinks that the world revolves around them, also.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: So what I'm trying, so when we're talking about empathy, it's really about it's not about sympathizing with somebody.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's not about uh it's really about putting yourself in their shoes.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what does it feel if I was sitting there performing that task and then somebody comes over and interrupts me?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it probably feels like uh a little frustrating.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so by practicing empathy, what I do is I try to find a way to engage or have people engage with each other so that they are not uh upsetting the balance that gives them confidence, that makes them feel good about what they do, and uh allows them to consider reciprocal uh generosity, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if I am give me a little like like a specific example, you're you it sounds like you're saying, okay, if you two are rubbing each other raw and you want to punch each other in the face, go spend some time together, is what is what I heard.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And spending time together could be that time that you spend punching each other in the face, though.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you really have to be able to spend time getting to know the other person.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: What is their story?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: What is their what stresses them out?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: What is uh what are they worried about when they're not worried about stuff at work?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: So uh, and then once you're able to tap into that, you're able to say, okay, uh this person doesn't like to be talked to like this, they like to be talked to like this in these terms, more logistical terms.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: So by meeting them where they are, you have to understand where they are first, and then you can meet them where they are, and then you can have some sort of effective communication and relationship building.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: What are the what are some of the tools you use to to help people get to that level?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because my experience is it's it's super challenging.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe in a workplace where you're the you're the boss and you're like, hey, you two, you know, sit and time out and you're gonna write a little story or or whatever, and then you're gonna read each other's stories, or I'm just curious how that plays out in your business.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you got two parts.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Number one is how do I practice empathy for myself?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: What I had to find out uh after a while is that people were um being nice to me and placating me and saying yes to me, giving me counterfeit yeses because of the seat that I sit in.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that didn't help anybody.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, what I need to do when I'm practicing empathy is to try to break down those barriers so that we can create a high level of relatability so that we can actually have an honest conversation.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because let's be honest, when you when you run an organization, it doesn't matter if it's uh two people, four people, ten people or more, the people that are closest to the customer are the people that actually know what's going on in the company.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody else is just lying to themselves, right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And looking at the numbers.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: So that's something that's an example of uh empathy in my um experience.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: And an example of empathy or trying to train through empathy in uh um through the company at Island Elevator, we do a couple of different empathy building exercises.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: So for one, uh we do an operations meeting three times a week.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: On the Monday operations meetings, we talk about what we did over the weekends.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: So by understanding what somebody is doing when they're not at work, you're actually building a little bit more of a relationship with them.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh usually either Mondays, Tuesday, uh, Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays, we'll also do uh stress level tests.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll go around the room and I'll say, okay, what is your stress level between one and five, five being the highest?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: And people will tell us.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: So if anybody gives us a number that's three or higher, the the follow-up question is why?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you stressed out?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the time is uh, you know, I'm spending a lot of time on this and I really need to spend time on that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, everybody understands what uh Bill over here is struggling with.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Can somebody volunteer to take this responsibility for a couple of hours so that he can catch up over here?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: And now all of a sudden it doesn't create uh empathy, but it also creates um team building.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then the third exercise, we just did this recently, where we basically took everybody.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: We had a big problem in the office where everybody, we call them drive-bys.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: So anybody that kind of comes through, right, has something in their head, stops at the office, interrupts what you're doing, and it gives you a task.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, and and it pulls people completely out of what they're doing and makes everybody really kind of like a little bit scattered, super inefficient.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And for the most part, you're a little unhappy too.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a whole exercise where we were like, okay, this is how we define a drive-by.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: This is what it looks like when you perform a drive-by.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then every and we're going around the room.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not, I'm not writing the stuff on the board.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm getting input from everybody in the room.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: They put it up on the board so that they have ownership of it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then the last column is how do you feel when somebody does a drive-by on you?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Frustrated, man, angry, upset, this, that, and the third.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So people didn't even know that they were creating that uh that energy just by zipping through and then you know dropping a bomb on them.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: And this was going all the way through the organization, from admins all the way up to president of the company.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing drive by stuff.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And people were we we were able to create an environment where people are able to really share how frustrated they were going to get when that happens.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm curious to know is what you know, what did you implement so that I can I can get this urgent point?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe I'm driving by, why?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm on my way to do X, Y, and Z.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get that and get the attention that it needs without kind of throwing everybody off?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, what we had to do is we had to start with how do you define urgent, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we're saying, okay, what is an acceptable drive-by?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody calls in with a service call, somebody calls in, they're stuck inside the elevator, somebody calls in, it's a brand new customer lead.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Boom.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: It turned out that there were only four things.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we were like, all right, anything that is not these four things, you are not allowed to do it.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Then we gave everybody a different method of uh communication based with timelines.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: So if you send an internal DM direct message through our uh our Gmail email stuff, uh, then that is something that you're looking for a response within two hours.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then the person on the other side can finish their task and then go over there and give you the answers that you're looking for.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: If it doesn't happen there, then send an email.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And don't forget that you have meetings.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody has a minimum of three meetings with their direct super.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: So can it wait 24 hours?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: So what we're doing is we're kind of pushing things down.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: People just get very excited and they want to be able to help out the customer.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: So by kind of putting things in perspective and reframing it, they understand that the things that they thought was an emergency actually can wait.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And the customer will still be happy.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: But I as a team, right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: If Matt worked here, me and Tet me and Matt have to come to an agreeable definition of what an emergency is, so that I'm not dropping my emergencies on you and you're not dropping your emergencies on me.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: We understand that at Island Elevator, this is considered emergency and everything else can wait.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I love I love that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me when my when my oldest son was at was at I don't know, two.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: He started talking and he loved trucks.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they would drive by and mom, mom, mom.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, What?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Big truck, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he would do that over and over.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Mom, mom, mom, mom, what big truck, you know, big truck go by.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: He loved his truck.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So um obviously he wouldn't have known that that process, but I love that you're able to to put that process in place.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that your story also helps to illustrate that we are all two-year-olds in our brains, right?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Our primitive brain sees things, we get excited about it.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: We want to be able to kind of like bring that to the attention of other people that we love.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we're trying to quiet down our two-year-old brain and let our 45-year-old brain do the thinking for us.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, to me, it sounds like some of these things you've learned, uh, as far as you know, the empathy, the team building.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um these are, I don't know, are they advanced skills as far as leadership goes?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, I don't know.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: What about somebody who's I mean, when you were just starting out as a brand new CEO, and I don't know how long it's been exactly, how long has it been since you uh started sitting in the show?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's been in March, on March 6th, it will have been eight years.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:39
  unknown: Yeah.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: So how did I learn these techniques?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that it all starts from where what it is that you want to be, what it is that you want to accomplish.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I wanted to be better.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to be a really good CEO and leader inside the organization.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So what you find is that when you want to be good at something, you wanted to be good at uh baseball statistics, you consume a lot of baseball statistics.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: So when I want to be good at uh leadership and and leading and empathy building, I can I'm consuming books and podcasts and uh having conversations with people as it pertains to that.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that another thing that kind of helped me out big time is uh the peer groups that I was associated to, the CEO groups.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got Vistage, which was from 2019 up until uh 2023.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: They were really good, except they were just a little bit too high level for me.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: So if it was a bigger organization, maybe there were uh some of the lessons would have resonated a little bit better.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of stepped it down just a little bit.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm part of another group called Data Key Advisors.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he was nice because he specifically chairs his group.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit small, a little bit more regional.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: He chairs the group specifically around strategic thinking and process development.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: So what I exercised over there as far as being able to define a problem and uh a process and a level and a bunch of solutions for people to be able to understand what the problem is and then how to work inside the confines of solving this for other people.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that uh a lot of that knowledge was gained just through the exposure uh of understanding process development and um and how to be able to bring that to your people in order to improve communication.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's that's great.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I think it's awesome that you found resources that are helpful and and that you're able to to digest them at a at high speed because it sounds like uh the analogy I use is you know you're changing out the tires at 65 miles an hour because the the business is running, right?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, all right, dude, you're now driving.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and and by the way, you need to learn and and adopt and implement these skills and these processes while you're flying down the freeway.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's that's gotta be a tough spot to be in.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's always a tough spot to be in, but uh this it makes so much sense uh that it's almost um it it uh it you're Silly if you don't take a pause, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: So most people don't feel comfortable taking a pause because they think that everything is just going to cave in on itself and disappear the next day.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, once I was able to get over that fear, so a lot of this is fear-based stuff.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: I get over the fear and I understand that if we stop, we reorganize, come up with a better plan and process, and then we relaunch again.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: And these are these are micro stops.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe it's a stop over the course of uh one day a month or one week a quarter or 60-day stretch or something like that in order to get something done.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: The I I can't explain to you how relieved number one, people get just by starting the conversation about listen, this is not the best we can do.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: We can do better.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have a plan for us, right?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: They feel so much better because they don't feel like they have to run through a wall and run around in circles all the time.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then number two, once you get their buy-in, once they're part of the the the process development and and the participate participation in launching it, right?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Especially to be able to describe where certain problems happen in the process and then editing the process so that they don't have to deal with those problems anymore.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then they take that and then they push that forward.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: It they it's like they fell in love with their job a second time.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's so much uh it's if you're even thinking about taking if you're having if you're having problems in your company, don't blame the person, blame the process.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Sit down and really analyze what it is that you're not just what it is that you're doing, but how you're doing it, right?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and the communication levels that are in there.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you can start with that, then you're basically rebuilding your foundation and it doesn't take a big time commitment.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you said I have a plan, uh it kind of what threw my head went through my head was okay, I may not have the answer, but what I have is a plan to at least sit down and let's let's look at what's going on.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the beauty.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's the beauty about process development, is that we all understand that the first process is not the final process.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I always tell them, listen, we're gonna put this together, we're gonna try it for a week, we're gonna try it for two weeks, we're gonna come back, we're gonna edit it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Two more weeks, come back and we'll edit it until we finally until we sharpen the stone, right?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Until we get that knife, the that blade perfect.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you do you ever find yourself in a situation where maybe you're overanalyzing things and maybe maybe throwing too many new?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, hey, we're gonna do this on top of this, on top of this.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever like overwhelmed people with, oh my gosh, Chris, stop, okay.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: This, you know, we let's get one down before we pile six more on.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: And most of it is tied and and anchored to my ego, right?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's usually stuck on high-level thinking.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's where process development is nice because it really is about the person that we're developing the process for.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually to make your job and your life easier.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I've definitely come at my team with a bunch of just highfalutin' bull that they were like, What the f are you talking about?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't even finished the last three things that you asked us to do.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now you want us to do something else.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: And God knows you're we're we can't have you going to any more of these meetings, right?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Every time you come back from a meeting, you got another idea.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I totally and I didn't have empathy, right?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: So uh again, my empathy muscles are stronger now than they were, but they still weren't that good at the time when they finally uh when the team finally just broke down and said, listen, you gotta stop the nonsense, right?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: So um I appreciate them for being honest with me.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and it's something that you kind of learn over time.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: What you know, what what when is the right time to actually do this?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and kudos to you for for having the humility to just say, Oh, okay.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I guess I need to listen to my team instead of being so bullheaded and prideful that I'm just gonna keep running over them until they figure it out.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's really you got to remind yourself who you work for, right?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a lot of these uh CEO types and these execs and and all of their uh they think that the whole world world works for them.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's my people, that's my this, that's the, you know, they work for me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Wah, wah, wah, right.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: The true, the right answer is that you work for them, right?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: I work for the people that that decide to dedicate one third of their lives, come here and uh uh and and and put in the time and effort and energy into Island Elevator.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: I work for the customers, right?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's who I work for.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: We all work for somebody, but if you've deluded yourself into thinking that everybody works for you or no, you don't work for anybody, then uh then it's going to be nearly impossible for you to exercise the type of humility that it would take to listen to somebody that you believe is a perceived lesser down the hierarchy, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what what would you say to somebody who wants to to take this leap into entrepreneurship?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe they want to be a contractor like you, maybe they want to, you know, start a consulting firm.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm seeing, like I say, a a lot of these, a lot of folks wanting to do that.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some have the courage, some maybe not yet.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: But where would you start?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is what I can tell you.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, you're gonna start at the same place that I told you that we're gonna start before.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: You got to pick a spot on the horizon.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: You have to define that spot on the horizon.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: You have to say, I want to be blank, just like blank, but definitely not like blank.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you want to be able to pick where you want to be, who is a close approximation to what it is that you want to be, and who is the exact opposite, the antithesis of what it is that you want to be.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, it was I want to be president of Island Elevator, just like Bobby Schaefer, president of DD Elevator, but nothing like those donkeys that run that elevator company down the block for me, right?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: So uh where I know where I want to be, I know what it looks like when I get there, I know what it looks like if I'm going in the wrong direction.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to be able to define that first.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Once you're there, then you need to be able to do what I call sharpening the axe, right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Abe Lincoln said that if you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four hours sharpening my axe.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got to be able to practice a little self-awareness, a little empathy, and then start to bring in all of these resources that are going to be necessary for you to be able to make that leap.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: So if I was talking to any prospective entrepreneurs out there, I would definitely give them a couple of books.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: One would be uh Rich Dad, Poor Dad, uh, The E-Myth, um, especially if you're coming out uh from a technician standpoint.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh This is Marketing by Seth Godin.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: And um uh Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: So those four books, they're written really simply, they're written to teach.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: So uh and you could take them down in lessons and really um what it'll do is adjust your mindset and then continue to set you down the path for success.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because too many of these businesses fail.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not because the people are idiots, it's because they just don't have the exposure necessary to be able to or the cash flow to make enough mistakes and learn on learn on the fly, which is basically where I was at.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: So uh does that help?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's I think so, right?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not starting my own business right now uh in the industry, but I I think it's great advice.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in fact, I wanna I'm gonna get some of those books myself, some of those that I haven't read.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you also gotta so you get through those books and you don't have to read them.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh like uh Rich Dad, Poor Dad, they've got the entire audio book on YouTube.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Seth Godin, this is marketing, they got the entire audio book on YouTube.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: You don't even have to buy it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: So um you just gotta take the time and hit it 30 minutes at a time when you're in the car.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: But the other things you want to do is you want to be able to stand for something.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: So you can't just go out there and say, Oh, well, I'm gonna fix elevators.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't care about that because lots of people know how to fix elevators.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you different?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you special?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: What is gonna make you different?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: What is gonna make you special?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you can't message what it is that you do, how you do it differently, why it is that you're special, then you're not gonna be able to tell prospective customers, you're not gonna be able to tell prospective teammates.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then at a certain point, you're gonna kind of lose yourself.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what am I actually doing this for?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: What is my grand scheme of things?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for me, uh for the most part, and it takes years to kind of figure it out because they're always like, oh, what's your seven-second pitch?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Can you do it in like 10 words or less and all this other shit?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I've learned, you know, I heard that type of stuff back in 2018, 19, and I've still been thinking about it.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that probably the closest approximation of what I do is that I am sick of owners and executives shitting on their customers, shitting on their people, and calling it business.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's not business.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Business is about solving problems.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I stand for.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: So when I say that, people understand it, and then they either create an association to it or they tell me to go kick rocks, which I'm fine with because I don't need everybody.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: I just need the people that believe what I believe.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So is it would you say that that's kind of the motto of Island Elevator?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you have that defined for Island?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to say about the motto.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think that I'm constantly refining uh my communication in order to make it tighter, more clear, more emotional, continue to elevate it.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as you turn it into a motto and then you start throwing it on um uh documents and on the back of t-shirts.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: If I change my mind at six months, it kind of makes it a little bit more difficult.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, no, I wouldn't I wouldn't attach it to the company.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: I really attach it to my why.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: So so that is your why then, more than more than the company per se.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they say that every great organization was built in the shadow of one man or woman.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it has to start with you.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you're thinking about going out on your own and entrepreneurship, you have to be able to define yourself and own your space because nobody is going to want to go with you, and you need people to go with you.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: You can't do shit unless you have people, right?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: So uh if you want people to go with you, they have to understand where you're going and what you believe in.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: You need to be able to communicate that.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: So uh my why is uh very strongly relevant to what it uh what it is that we do here at Island Elevator.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hear you.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you being on with me today, Chris.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's always a pleasure.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much for having me.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the All Red Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can check us out online at elevatorcareers.net.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe, and until next time, stay safe.