Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / Access and Quality: Solutions Providers, with Rick Milefchik

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Access and Quality: Solutions Providers, with Rick Milefchik · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you can make that experience a little bit better, you know, for somebody, th they'll enjoy that and they'll remember that.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I when I was at Coney, I had a situation, it was really the kind of a telling point that kind of got me thinking in these terms many, many years ago was um it was late at night and and we were really pushing to get an item out the door, trying to identify it for a particular customer.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was probably a 15-minute call.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Finally figured it out.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to determine yes, we can get it out.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the customer on the other end, she said, They're your lifesavers, but more than anything, she goes, I've never had so much fun placing a purchase order.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in a weird way, that was more valuable than the transaction of the sale.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because it was like, okay, here's somebody that at the end of her day was stressing, trying to get things done because she had to go answer to somebody.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, to be able to accomplish that and to also give a positive experience.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the beginning of this thing for me.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, and welcome to Elevator Tools and Tech, a special series from the Elevator Careers podcast, where we spotlight the latest innovations, tools, suppliers, and technology driving the vertical transportation industry.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: In each episode, we sit down with the creators, engineers, and solution providers who are helping elevator companies work smarter, safer, and more efficiently.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: This episode is sponsored by Access Elevator and Escalator Supply, and the elevator industry supplier of a wide range of components for elevator and escalator maintenance, repair, and modernization, and by her sister company, Quality Elevator Products, which specializes in the manufacturing and distribution of elevator and escalator parts and accessories.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Together, they are more than just part suppliers, they are solutions providers.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Now, let's dive in.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the show.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Our guest today is Rick Molefchik, leader of both companies, a seasoned industry leader who's helping his teams navigate supply chain issues, building meaningful partnerships, and delivering real results.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Rick, it's great to have you on today.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Man, it's awesome to be here.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Great to see you again and talk with you again.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: Likewise.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: I enjoy every conversation.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh it's been a few years since we first met, and I'm I'm loving just watching your journey, watching you build these companies and and uh you know, obviously navigating a lot, you know, some some challenges along the way.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to talk a little bit more about the growth, about the challenges and and the ways that you're taking those on.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: So one of the one of the things we talked about in the past, you know, you had mentioned the buying experience as a competitive differentiator.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Can you walk us through how your team creates those wow moments for your customers?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then not just our group, but so many companies have a process.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, an order comes in, you process the order, and you you you go through that, you pull it, pack it, ship it, it's done.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then you go to the next order.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and it is very transactional.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that is what we do, and there's the nature of you know necessity out of that.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I want our the people in our organizations to look at what a customer does with us and what we do in turn with a customer in a way that they would with their personal lives.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that they're each one of us has a buying practice, whether that be for groceries, whether that be for gas, services, whatever it may be, that drives us to the our particular choice of where we go and and what is it that does that?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't think many people think about that, but it is something that, you know, you know, we uh are we price-driven?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do we go because it's the cheapest?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or do we go there because our time is valuable, we can get in and get out?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do we is it that you walk in and they treat you like a king?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, different people have different uh drivers uh uh that that draw them to a particular place uh uh in their personal life.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think uh uh people in the business world are a whole lot different.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly there's restraints based on corporate policy as to what somebody has to do or where they have to go.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: They may have to get multiple quotes.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's different dynamics, but for the most part, people still want you when anytime you have that interaction, they have to go do something that's part of their job.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They want that experience to be number one, they want it to be easy.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I don't care who you are.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, nobody's gonna say, well, I know I I prefer the difficult way.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, they want the easy way.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they want it to be easy and they want to be treated well, and um they want to have an experience that is relatively positive.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to have to spend money on a need.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's one thing to go spend money on something you want, uh, but in our industry, people are buying these things because they need them.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it they're they're they're they themselves as a buyer is a cost to their company.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And now they have to go spend money, you know.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So everything, you know, theoretically is quickly, well, man, this is all negative right off the bat.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so if you can make that experience a little bit better, you know, for somebody, they'll enjoy that and they'll remember that.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I when I was at Coney, I had a situation that was really one of the kind of really telling point that kind of got me thinking in these terms many, many years ago was um it was late at night, and and we were really pushing to get an item out the door, trying to identify it for a particular customer.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was probably a 15-minute call, maybe.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Finally figured it out.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to determine, yes, we can get it out, so on and so forth.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh the customer on the other end, she says, she goes, You're you're a lifesaver.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes, but more than anything, she goes, I've never had so much fun placing a purchase order.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now in a weird way, that was more valuable than the transaction of the sale.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it was like, okay, we you know, here's somebody that at the end of her day was stressing, trying to get things done because she had to go answer to somebody.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, to to be able to accomplish that and to also give a positive experience.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the beginning of this thing for me.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that's what we want our people.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we I don't think we succeed at it every day, every transaction of every day.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think we still have work to do.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that that is one of the goals that you know, to be responsive, to be quick on the draw, to be up front, be honest, be transparent.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: And if you can have fun and and help your customer have fun at the same time, I mean you've you've definitely provided a wow for them.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like wow, I didn't expect that.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and you know, to we do things in a simple way where we still send handwritten thank you notes.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that that's very old school, of course.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: We still send mailings out, we do some of these things.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 90 plus percent of it may end up in a garbage can.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you know, but the handful of them, somebody for somebody to open up something and just say, hey, thanks for the opportunity to work with you.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, handwritten, not a stamp, not a canned pre-printed thing, but they get that.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they even if they say, huh, you know, huh means they're thinking about something.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It really threw them.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it threw them in a good way.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: And that leading us to a next question, which is, you know, you talked about growing and getting bigger, but also getting better.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm I'm curious.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I think you're kind of talking about some of that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: What does it look like in practical business terms and how do you measure getting better?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't want to do everything.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: We there's a lot more we could do.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We we could we could sell for a lot less, we could bring in a whole lot more, we could be, we could arguably be sloppier uh and do more at a faster pace.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I've used the term shortly after I took over here was no, we're we're gonna slow down to speed up.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll take a little bit of a hit.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were already in the middle of a mess anyway.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Clarify that just a little bit for me.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: When you say slow down, what I'm what I'm hearing is we want to make sure every order is correct.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: We want to make sure that we're we're not you know sending you the wrong part to to get it out the door fast.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were willy-nilly.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everything got to do this, gotta do this.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this came in, let's stop this, let's work on that.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Phone rang, let's oh, better stop that, and let's work on this.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were moving sideways, but we weren't moving very forward.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and that was just the culture that that existed there.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, some of the practices and the processes that if they were in place, they weren't being followed, and many weren't in place.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and so we've got to have structure, and we've got to, you know, we've got to adhere to that structure and and follow a process.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean we don't move within the process, but we still have to follow the process.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And just to say that, oh, we're we're bigger or we're getting bigger, look at what we're doing.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if we're not doing it right, then it's gonna catch us.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, again, going back to those that the previous part of the discussion, the buying experience, if we're doing it, if we're doing things right and giving people those positive experiences, that will continue to that traffic back and forth will continue to to increase.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the the bigger becomes rather organic and it just takes place naturally.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: True.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and it's and it's healthy, healthier growth, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're building on a strong foundation versus just you know building on a balloon or a cloud that's gonna pop and you know you're yeah, yeah, it's it's healthy growth, and it's it's something that you know that one you could be proud of and and that people really buy uh employees buy into that, you know, because we don't have a we don't have a slew of returns.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have a slew of complaints.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And good, you know, they these are the things that it's like, no, we're we're not having to stop to correct something.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that goes back to, you know, again, it's a play on words, it sounds fluffy, but uh it's sincere.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's not fix something, let's correct it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, big difference.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean you you and you mentioned that uh in previous conversations that that COVID really exposed some some flaws in the kind of the just-in-time inventory model, and and you had to kind of work around that and and shift your own model to you know what what were some of the things you did to to overcome that, if you will.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we you know the culture that existed was um we had a supplier for this, whatever this was.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a supplier for that, whatever that was.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, suddenly they fell down, you know, and the the mindset was, well, they they said we'll get them here.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: They said we'll get them here.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when here never came, well, what do you do?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you got people our customers who have customers, they really don't give a crap if my supplier can't deliver.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying, why is my elevator not running?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so they're going to the service company saying, well, then find it somewhere else.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and so, you know, that's that's what we ultimately did is like, well, then resource it.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, it's gonna be a little, it's gonna be more money.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you're not making as much margin.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: But are you still providing the product and are you making something?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a little of something's better than a lot of nothing.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, especially if you're pleasing your customers, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: To your point.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: They don't care where you got it, they just need it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and again, one of the advantages I think I've had over the years is working, you know, coming from an OEM where I spent the bulk of my career, the processes there are pretty intense and the expectations are are very high.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when you rely on on those customers for a good portion of your revenue, it doesn't take many instances to fail and they just go somewhere else.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so again, for you've got to survive somehow, and you know, you've got to figure out ways to get around where you're at.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so yeah, resourcing was one thing, and then figuring out, okay, let's not get ourselves in this situation again.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you put your hand on the stove, it's pretty hot.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't do that.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's if we need it and we know we're gonna use it, then buy it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have it here.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so from an accounting perspective, I'm probably not gonna win most favored employee award in any accounting groups right now because I love inventory.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and I want to have it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's it's a it's a positive risk to have the inventory versus the negative risk to just live hand to mouth.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um because with the with the mindset, and not the mindset, just the general dynamics in the industry now, people don't have time to wait.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't carry inventory.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Their resources are less and they're fewer, so they're flying by the seat of their pants.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you've got it, you're halfway home.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it was okay, we got hit way too many times on poor lead times, uh, not having the material, the finished product, let alone the subcomponents of the finished product.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not gonna do that again.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll beef up and buy what we got to buy to improve delivery time.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: What I what I hear is you are taking ownership, you know, rather than than pointing out to the ocean and saying, oh, you know what, it's six weeks out on a on a boat in the Pacific, you're saying, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna take ownership of this.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something you talked about in in our last conversation.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, extreme ownership is is the term you use as a core as a core part of your company culture.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm curious how that mindset has changed the way not only you, but your team handles mistakes or customer issues or or just any problem that comes along.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we uh we've invested heavily in our people.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we we send them to a uh the company called Echelon Front, uh, which is headed up by a couple former Navy SEALs.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um very kind of a military mindset, but not entirely because it flows all the way down from whether it be military to business, down to your home life.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It it all of it can be affected by that and and and and utilized.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh essentially what it is is no, you this is all on me.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's no finger pointing.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: If a customer, maybe a customer did uh order something incorrectly, but you don't say, well, you ordered it incorrectly.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things with other suppliers over the years, it's customers got to jump through hoops to provide uh a ton of information just to hope that they get a credit on something.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, that's not really the right way.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: That leaves a sour taste.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so we expect our people, it's not just from us to our customers, my people in our customer service groups, they are my customers.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our warehouse and shipping people and production people, they are the customers of the customer service group.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Purchasing is a customer of mine.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're all customers internally of each other.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can't take care of each other, we're not gonna take care of the external customers.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to really do that the right way, you know, you and I may have a strong disagreement on something.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the the it's really hard.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to say, well, I'm gonna take ownership of it.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've got to really think about what you're saying because that's not that easy to do.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when it comes down to it, right, it's so much easier to to point your finger and say, Well, you you did this, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than to look inside and say, okay, what part of this do I own?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's the part that takes you really looking at your ego and your pride, and you're you know, going, Oh my gosh.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, Matt, I don't think I explained myself properly.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, or I could have done a better job of explaining, you know, these are the kind of things, you know, because what that does is that also removes the victim mentality.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it lowers the playing field.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, one of the big things that they talk about in in the echelon front and the extreme ownership is detaching.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, man, you're right in the middle of something, you get off with an angry phone call, you know, somebody's mad at you, you have an employee conflict, whatever it could be.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just take a step back and just say, wait a minute, let me think about this.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, take a breath.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's today's reaction, that's today's, you know, thing everybody wants to do.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, rapid fire response.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and, you know, in in these type of situations, that that's maybe not the best.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's really helped us develop a customer-first mentality.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um that there is a truth, there is also truth.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's you know, the old cliche of customers always right.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, they're not.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're not always right, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but it doesn't mean that you condemn them for any kind of a mistake.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's no, it's like, okay, let here here's what happened.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I see what happened.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we it you know, can can we agree on X, whatever X is, you know, and and what it does, it just fosters a much more smooth and uh level of communications back and forth and allows you to land at a at a good positive result a whole lot faster.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and we don't spend time within our companies debating frankly stupid stuff sometimes, you know.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you you you deal with issues and you figure out, oh, hey, okay, let's collect collectively, we're gonna do this.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things, you know, we we change so many things and to a point where you know people's heads are spinning.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even imagine.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I continually had to tell people, I said, you know, I if you don't agree with what we're doing, that's okay.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I understand that.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you have the right to come and and tell me why and what would be better, and and we'll put all that on the table.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm uh only thing I'm gonna ask is that you know, give the process a chance to fail.
• 18:13
  unknown: Right.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you know, let let's follow the process.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if it fails, it fails.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Then that's on me.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: If it if it took off like the rocket, we hope it would, we all did really good then.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if something goes south, then that's on my head.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but we'll never do something we can't reverse.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, well, and even if it goes, even if it goes south, you know, maybe there's this part or that part or the you know, it's something that needs to be tweaked.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, great, let's let's collaborate, let's let's tweak what needs to be fixed and let's improve it together.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and that's really what I'm seeing, you know, you know, describing with with extreme ownership.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, what I'm hearing is, hey, we dumped a lot of things on this on the businesses, and yet our team was able to grow and and work through it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, you even told me a story about one of your teammates who who said, you know, this this used to be nothing more than a paycheck, and now now it's become a career.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm curious how how how did you foster that across the movie?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I arguably one of the things I'm most proud of, actually, uh uh, and this is uh one of our members at uh AES, um, when I got there, we were that again, you alluded to the COVID thing.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Access was a company at that time that was so reliant on soft starters, one pretty much a very narrow scope, a one-legged table of a product line that we lived and breed by.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in early 22, all the way into close to mid-23, uh, there was a massive shortage in components for these soft starters, and they were like gold.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so the revenue stream was pathetic and to a point where we we were like, God, do we even continue to do this?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And had just a couple young ladies at our office there that were working for us and relying very heavily on them, and both of them pretty inexperienced.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we we reinvented ourselves basically with the help of you know the quality products, the opening of another office in Las Vegas.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this young lady just grabbed a hold of everything.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we brought her to one of these Echelon Front uh seminars with us.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: She she took absolute 100% ownership of what went on in that office and had a strong interest and desire to learn.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And part of it was is she was new, but okay, you know, you you're clearly valuable.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a thought process, you've got, you know, you've got talents here.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's capitalize on these talents.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: What you don't know, let's let's kind of work on that to where you can get to a point where that also becomes a valuable asset.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we we capitalize on the strengths, we disguise the weaknesses, uh collectively get better, and basically, you're here.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the steering wheel, here's the keys, you drive this bus for me.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and she's soared.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she's absolutely sword.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I get chills when I think about the that conversation of hearing, I love my job.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, when I got here, this was just I needed a paycheck.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: But she goes, this is just what I want to do, this is my career.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that is like, oh, that's the handoff.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: That means, you know, and that's one of the things that I really do want everybody in our organization to be able to draw a line that when they come into the office, that's what they do.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: When they leave the office and they go home into the to what I view the more important part of their life, whether that's a mom, a dad, a brother, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend, doesn't matter.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the more important part of their life.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if they dive in to the business part of their life and what they They do and they take ownership of it and they soar like what I just described.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: That improves the more important part of their life.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily hand in glove, but it definitely has an impact.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want people on a Sunday night dreading coming to work Monday morning.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I want them, you know, uh, let's face it, none of us come to work because we got nothing else to do.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody does.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: But most people don't do that.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they come there because they have to.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if you if you've got to spend over a you know half of your waking hours at a place, we should make it as positive as we can.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and let people then take that positivity, positivity home with them and come back in the next morning with that same level of positivity, because that's going to transcend back to the customer, back to that experience we talked about.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: The domino effect is huge here.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: So absolutely.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: That is what I'm seeing.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you change the internal culture, which obviously changed people's personal lives and their families, and then obviously that's going to reflect back back on how they're treating customers.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously, with this idea of extreme ownership, you talked about you know listening to the customer, hearing what happens, even when it hurts, right?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: Even when when maybe they're unhappy and they're pointing the finger and they're, you know, something didn't work out.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm curious how has that feedback and that willingness to just listen helped you refine not only your products, your service model, and and maybe some of your internal processes?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we do um on the AES side, and they touch both they both companies.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we we just we do periodic simple little surveys.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are you know five, four or five question surveys, and and the intent is that somebody can complete it in 30 seconds.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't we don't want to okay, you know, take 15 minutes for the survey.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: People don't, they're not gonna do it.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and we actually take that that information and we we we really look at it and we do listen to it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, one of the things we did, uh we put in an auto attendant um several months ago.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure it was the right thing to do.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not comfortable with it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the subject of our last survey is hey, how do you want to when you call in?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: What's your preference?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: A live person, auto attendant, a direct line.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are you open to chat?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are you open to this?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: What don't you like?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we've gotten some good feedback already.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing to see that some of what we thought several months ago that we were doing has turned out to maybe not be what people want.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's something we've already, in a limited number of responses, we've already started the process of figuring out, okay, what other options do we have?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: We we do want the feedback.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I do, and it goes back again to the loyal buyer, loyal customer, not even a buyer.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, tell me where tell me where we are wrong.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't worry about, I shouldn't say I don't worry about it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I I worry less about the guy that's going to complain to me.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um because that's that that's something that, okay, I'm hearing what I probably need to hear.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not what I want to hear, but what I need to hear.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I worry more about how many other people think exactly the same way and just quietly tiptoe away and didn't say a word but went somewhere else.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's the great unknown.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not too many things that scare me.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: That scares me.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because if that happens, that's awfully hard to recoup.
• 25:31
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because you don't know, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're the ones that aren't saying anything.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: They maybe just vanish and it's like, okay.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, but they're gonna go, they're sure gonna go complain to somebody else.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the the you know, the word of mouth, you know, it can work great for you, but it can really just destroy you.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and especially in this industry, you know, it's it's uh a tight knit, as we all know.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody knows everybody, everybody talks to everybody.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I I am curious, you know, you you had mentioned, you know, Cs as a as a customer, a supplier, a competitor, obviously said very, very positive things about them, but I'm just curious how do you navigate those relationships while staying true to your values and growth strategy?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's just the transparency uh of things, and it's just being very open.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's things that I believe, you know, uh I think Rich down there at Seas does a he he runs a wonderful company.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: They are probably the most like us, if you will.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: They do some things that we don't do, and that's a business decision that frankly that the investment we would have to make to go and do some of what we utilize them for, it would take way too long to recoup the investment.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I do feel like if there's somebody that does it better than us, why I don't need to reinvent the wheel.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather just work with somebody and and if they and if I can help them and and they benefit, and then we in turn can benefit.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are we making money hand over foot with some of that?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, but there we're because of our geographical situation with the multiple offices, we've got things in locations that people are they're gonna come in and get because they can.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's beneficial to us.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: It helps them.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's things that we both do that we probably get some orders that they didn't.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: They get some orders that we didn't.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: There could be different reasons.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: It could be that experience that they give is maybe pod more positive to a customer than what maybe we did.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Could be that they're right down the street, kind of hard to ignore.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Could be that they priced it a lot better or we priced it a lot better.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh various dynamics, but you look at that and you say, okay.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but I look at that and say, all right, we we quoted this.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why did we get it?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they went somewhere.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, so you, you know, somebody either found it faster.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: They found it, did we not have it?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that has a lot to do with it.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Were we priced too high?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if we had it and we were lower priced, okay, there's something else that tells me what what was it about that experience that they missed.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to understand that.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a level of, you know, I don't want to, and this is again, I have to be respectful too, because I don't want to talk negatively about the career of sales, salespeople, because obviously that's what I grew up with here in the industry.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think the industry wants a stereotypical or traditional salesperson.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think the industry wants somebody that says, hey, here's the value I can bring you.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: But but the the the deliverable has to be that value.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: It can't be because somebody says I deliver value.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: The customer determines that, not us.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I think, you know, back to C's, I think that, you know, again, two like companies, very similar.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think we do a lot of similar things.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: They do more than we do in some things, we do more than they do in others.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we use them for those things, they use us for some things, and we play in the same sandbox and compete for the same customer base in others.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as long as we have that respect for the people in those companies and the company itself, all of that stays above the table.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and it's like, you know, you can you can almost have a light-hearted, you know, dang it, you got that one.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I can I'm gonna get the next one.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that's okay.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that, you know, that's you know, if you don't if you don't win, you lose.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, you gotta get better.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's opportunity to get better is the way I look at it.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: We the more we know, the better we get.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why'd we lose that?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, well, right now, then there's a gap in our process.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need to find what we can do to get better.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: And and that's really the the message I'm seeing overall from from this conversation is that hey, you know, we're we're trying to get better and and trying to provide a better uh a better product, a better availability, a better, better customer service.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, it's it's a journey.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: We're learning as we go, and you know, that's uh I I think that's uh you know it's not like it's a destination, right?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a it is a journey.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is keep keep going on the journey.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm on my 43rd year in this thing, and I learn things every day.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and you know, yes, I oversee both of these organizations.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot going on, but I still place purchase orders and I still process sales orders.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: I still talk to customers.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I I like to do that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: I like to take orders and process orders.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um that keeps me one engaged at a customer and supplier level.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: It also gives me a sense of empathy as to what our people are dealing with and what they go through.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to know how everything that we do, what what is the process?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is our system is it really a smooth, fluid system, or did is this really a crappy system?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and you know, everybody's got an opinion, and they'll tell you if you ask them, you know, but you also have to go be willing to go and find out.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I I like that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and by doing that and taking that approach, I'm constantly learning a ton of things, and not just about what we do and about products and people in the industry, but uh the way the industry's changing and shifting and what people want and what we thought they liked, maybe they didn't.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: What we thought they needed, man, maybe that's not necessarily as important.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we're dealing with it on our website right now.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to push as much out there.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I've got a fantastic web developer that's talking about all this web language, SEO and all this other stuff.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: It means crap to me.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but but he keeps telling me, hey, this is important.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm trusting that it's important, you know, and and he's showing me data that says, okay, yeah, I get it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so must be right.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: These are things, again, 30 years ago didn't matter, you know, 20 years ago.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and that leads me leads me to kind of our last couple of questions here.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you you hinted at this already, you know, the elevator industry is evolving.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's shorter product life cycles, obsolete parts, fewer field resources.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what what would you say is the biggest challenge your customers face today, and how do you feel like you're stepping up to meet it?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about the life cycle side of things.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, years ago, a product, and I'll go back, you know, when I started at Montgomery Elevator, you know, uh an escalator was set to last 30, 40 years.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the products inside those escalators, man, I mean, they're it would be years upon years before they'd be replaced.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so you had time because of repetition and continuity to learn things.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody could describe it.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know what that is.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen that 20, 30, 40, 50 times already.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now with the life cycle of these things being so short, and you know, look at your phones, how you know the obsolescence of phones, computers.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, you know, uh we're dealing with a couple things on, you know, making sure we get computers upgraded because the the one some aren't compatible with Windows 11 now, you know.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's these changes in and out of our industry that happen so fast that people don't have the chance to really learn and and have a continuity of uh of familiarity with this stuff.
• 33:22
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if we're struggling with that on the supplier side, what is it like for uh uh a new generation of industry personnel coming in who, okay, you've got now there's kind of a the the shift is kind of taking place in the industry where you've got people that have been around for many, many years.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: They've seen uh all the old stuff, they've seen the new stuff come in, they don't like it, but they know how it works.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: But now you've got even a whole new collection, both at the field level, and I think a lot of the companies do a great job of training, but all right, are they gonna go back and train on an old Mac operator that is being obsolete, that's been obsolete for years and parts of it hardly available?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they gonna tell the sales guy, go modernize, get it modernized?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the quick answer for everybody.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you modernize it, okay, fine, great.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, oh, but that one isn't available, we've got to go to this model.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the the life cycle, we use what we used to call the bathtub effect, you know, and that's kind of you know where it comes down and you've got this whole long space of continuity, and then it kind of swings up at the other end of the bathtub when things start to change, and then that cycle repeats itself.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that bathtub's getting a lot shorter now.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's people don't have the time and the opportunity to learn because of repetition.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as I mentioned, the new generation coming into the industry, they don't know what a lot of these okay, you hear terms of Dover, Westinghouse, Matt, Montgomery, all of these companies that have been swallowed up by somebody else, but there's still a lot of product out there.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, okay, who had Dover?
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who had Montgomery?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, so right off the bat, you've got those questions.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you've got a buyer, okay.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I go for this?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I go for that?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we try to do is we're trying to make sure we put as many things out there in as many ways as we can.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yes, we're investing very heavily in our website, knowing that that is the way of the future.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And many people, they don't want to talk to anybody, they just want to point and click their way.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, okay, tell a guy, tell a mechanic that who just got off of a job and he's got greasy hands, but he's got a catalog sitting in his truck.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't really give a crap about your website.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: He just wants to pick up that catalog.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've invested heavily in reprinting catalogs, and we still send out catalog mailings and flyers and leaflets.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: We want to put as put whatever information we have in our hands or at our disposal in in as many differing hands and mindsets as we can.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the more we can put, you know, if we could put the same thing that's in a paper version that's in an online version in at the hands of a company that may have somebody that's been there a month or been there 30 years, we we've we've met them at at at both ends of the spectrum.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and we try to, you know, uh okay, I I've I've seen people where, well, what's part number?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you I don't if I can't help if I don't have a partner.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, wait a minute.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if they don't have a partner, let's let's help them find a part number, you know, and you know, it seems silly, and but that exists.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I I think that you know, by doing what we can do to provide uh a level of help and assistance is is is only one, it's the right thing to do.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a decent thing to do, but it's also good for business.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: So for sure, for sure.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's I mean it sounds like you're you're obviously meeting customers where they're at, you're trying to help them get to that next step and and improving as you go and and learning from your lessons.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, nobody's doing it perfect, but it's again it's back to the journey, taking taking that extreme ownership and just moving to the next level.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: So, Rick, thank you for joining us today and sharing your insights.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: For our listeners, if you're looking for a reliable partner in the elevator industry, check out accesselevatorsupply at aesupply.com and qualityelevator products at qualityel.com.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: Two companies that are leading by example.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: And until next time, keep raising the bar.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Matt.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Rick.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks again for listening to Elevator Tools and Tech from the Elevator Careers Podcast.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: And please remember to visit Access Elevator and Escalator Supply and Quality Elevator Products.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: You can find them at aesupply.com and qualityel e v dot com.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: Until next time, stay safe.