Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / Starting a Career in the Elevator Industry: Training & Commiting to Your Education | Evan Petrower

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Starting a Career in the Elevator Industry: Training & Commiting to Your Education | Evan Petrower · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You need to come into it with the same commitment that you would if you were going to college.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: That you are going to be educated, you are going to need to learn and do homework and study.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, you need to work for a company that will promote those things to you because that costs money, right?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's an expensive day today elevator, even though these are licenses for our guys.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: We we spend a lot of time doing it in-house training.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I run classes for it for education.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so though those are all time and money commitments that you're making, but you want to be in a company that's going to promote those things to you, not just how fast can you install an elevator.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_04: Hello, and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_04: I am your host, Matt Allred.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: 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.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: Today our guest is Evan Petrover, president of Day Elevator and Lift, a Clemen company.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: Evan started Day Elevator as an accessibility and mobility company in 1992, and he holds a New York City Director License.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: Evan is a past president and board member of AEMA and is a safety and education committee member of the NAEC.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_04: Evan is passionate about customer service and education in the industry.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: Evan, welcome to the show.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Matt.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: I'm excited to talk to you again.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_04: I always enjoy our conversations.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: And um I'm just excited to get to know you even more.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: And um I I always like to start at the beginning, Evan.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: What what got you into the elevator industry?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I wish I w I wish it was this uh it was this great story.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know, I don't know how good a story it is, but you know, very simply, I was a you know, a kid who grew up with a father that was an electrician.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we had a house where there wasn't a project that took place that I didn't have to be a part of, right?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned to be mechanical, use my hands.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was my father's helper till he passed away at 82.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I had these mechanical skills and abilities, you know, just from not all these years, but I was not allowed to be an electrician until after I went to college.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I wanted to go to college and then become an electrician, it was okay, but I had to go to college.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I went to college.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And coming out of college, I actually started a career in financial sales, not in uh not using uh any mechan anything mechanical in my background.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I worked in financial sales for about eight years.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um told that I probably wasn't supposed to succeed at what I was doing, but I was pretty successful at it.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then we had uh in 1989, Black Monday came along, market kind of fell out.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of changes in the industry, and that was the time for me to uh to move on.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I had a good friend of mine who was always dabbling with you know what kind of business he wanted to uh be in, and we were always saying maybe we could do something together.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: His dad owned a very simple surgical supply store, and uh, you know, used to be about, hey, you rented somebody a uh a hospital bed or a wheelchair.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how do they get in their house?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right, how do they get up the stairs?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so out of that was born, you know, what we called at that time day accessibility and mobility solutions.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I actually, the first thing I ever did in this business was I used to have electric scooters in the back of a Dodge minivan going from home to home, demonstrating electric scooters, and we grew the business to stair lifts and wheelchair lifts.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And every so often, and I mean every so often because disabled people are not wealthy.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: In most cases, but every so often we had a disabled family or person that was wealthy enough to afford a home elevator, and we install a home elevator.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, wow.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, starting really, yeah, very, very basic, right?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: Just about getting people and equipment where it needs to get, and started right there.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly, ADA pushed us along in the commercial side of uh of uh uh our business and and installing lifts for uh places of public assembly, and then you know, in the late 90s, we got to see the home elevator uh boom, and uh that's where you know everybody started to see home elevators as not just a wow luxury home item for the rich and famous, but builders started to recognize that if they built up instead of building out, sure, it was more profitable.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it started to become treated more the paradigm, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll call it a paradigm.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: The paradigm shifted, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the home elevator was no longer a luxury home elevator, it was another appliance in the home.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and especially so you're in the New York market, right?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: So you you serve all five boroughs and you serve a few a few different markets.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So naturally, if uh one of the biggest areas that we saw, you know, in in New York City, whether it was Manhattan or Brooklyn or Queens, was we have all of these brownstones, five, six-story, you know, homes that used to be five-family homes, you know, or multifamily homes that are now being sold and gutted, and people are investing millions of dollars in these homes to raise a family.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not gonna raise a family in a five-story home without a home elevator, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're spending millions.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, does it make sense to have a$40,000,$50,000,$60,000 elevator, you know, in that home?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was again thinking of it as an appliance, just like they're gonna have a dishwasher, they have to have an elevator in the well, sure.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_04: And if you're gonna spend that kind of money, and yeah, the the maybe the washer washing machine is on the first floor and the bedroom's on the fifth floor, and so you get a lot of exercise or you can invest.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and look, of course, the elevator is not to say that that somebody shouldn't be able to walk upstairs from the second floor to the third floor.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But when a mother comes home with her child, you know, in a stroller and maybe the kid, you know, the child's the baby's sleeping, maybe you know, mother's hands are full, you have groceries, you have luggage, you have the idea of just you know living in a six-story walkup is is pretty is is pretty undaunting.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and the fact is that the more the more you see this in New York City, the more you recognize that there are multiple units on every block.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so if you want to look at this from forget about from a convenience standpoint, but if you want to simply look at it as investment value or return on investment, right, the future buyers of homes, you know, in New York City are going to expect that there's going to be an elevator in that home if they're not going to be gutting that space.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it will pay for itself.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Many, many uh uh studies and uh you know projects have been done looking at the home elevator and what it does.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so there are there are many different kinds of home elevator projects you can do.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have, you know, what we call our our uh single unit sales, right, which are the brownstones, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or uh you know, a uh a home in uh the Hamptons, which is a different kind of project, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe in the Hamptons we're looking out over the ocean and we don't want to obstruct the view with a hoist place.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe there we're gonna be talking about panoramic elevators or or or or you know with glass or acrylic or you know, different things like that.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's a whole nother market called the multi-unit development, where you have developers all over the country, not just in in my area, but this is happening throughout the country.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have developers that are building uh senior communities, over 55 communities, and some of their uh villas or units that they build have multiple stories.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea of having a 55-year-old person move into a three or a four-story villa is not going to sell units.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, you know, installing an elevator into those uh kinds of places made those builders more profitable, gave them more sales uh appeal to their customer base.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And those projects are completely different than a single unit project, but yet it's a a very, a very real market out there uh as well.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have all of that coming together.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if I put that all together back to New York and you know, the metropolitan area where we work, and I'll include New Jersey in that and uh you know, if you want to throw Connecticut into it, this whole little 200-mile radius that we're in is really forced to work uh you know in a very code compliant, uh supervised and uh licensed professional way.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_04: So let's talk through that because you know I'm I'm familiar with with uh residential elevator providers, you know, different parts of the country, but it sounds like because of the the some of the regulations that you've been able to to build a service base that maybe you wouldn't have if you were in West Virginia.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that yeah, it's it's it's it's very different here.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um first of all, in those higher end units that you're talking about, whether it be the Hamptons or those Brownstones, you are talking about a different uh a different um customer profile, if you will, sure, than you know, in that multi-unit development.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, sure.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that in itself got us off to a decent start in in this whole uh campaign because we were already used to giving that kind of customer service to the disabled community that we had been working with for years.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when uh in working in in New York, um where there are more elevators than than most other places, um we saw early things happening.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, back in the day, wheelchair lifts didn't need ongoing inspections.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the evolution of inspections are a good thing, permits are a good thing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it makes things safer for our customers, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're carrying people, we're carrying families.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um those have always been positives for us as jurisdictions in our area have gotten more involved.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what we have clearly seen being you know part of New York City is those codes tend to spread uh from New York City because that's where where you know a lot of experience comes from.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, some codes, some some jurisdictions will require a permit um with an inspection.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now that inspection can be done in different ways depending upon what that jurisdiction is is asking for.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can have an inspection that is done with the jurisdiction having their own inspector on staff, like you would have in Manhattan, right in New York City.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can also have another jurisdiction that says we don't have our own elevator inspectors, but we want you to hire an independent third-party elevator inspector for that.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that will still be an inspection process.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final would be a jurisdiction that might say we want the elevator company to certify that they installed the elevator per code and per manufacturer's specifications, so that's a self-certification.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh least in favor of that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care for it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want somebody to checkmate us, checkmate our mechanics on what we've done.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like another set of eyes.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I tend to believe that if I was gonna have my family, you know, getting into an elevator, I wouldn't want this want necessarily the guy who installed it to say yes, it's correct.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would want somebody else to tell me to tell me that uh as well.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And for you know, a few hundred dollars, we we generally suggest to to customers, even though we can do it with a simple letter and a stamp, that we we should we should do that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's well received, it makes sense.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: So those things that used to be considered a pain in the neck or a challenge, or people imagine, they can be made into you know profit centers.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: We you and I have talked about that uh before, and you know, we've learned to to to uh build that into our uh our business.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: That's cool.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: So so you've obviously got the the installation side, you've got the the service side, and and um in in many ways it seems like your your business kind of patterns, you know, some of the some of the more the the the bigger companies that are focused on purely commercial, you it seems like yours You know, I I wish I could tell you that was by design, Matt.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it was not at all.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was not at all.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was it literally was uh you know one step at a time.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to say it was uh if it if you want to say it was um what's the word?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, almost like uh water, you know, uh hitting the rocks and and rounding it out over time.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It just really did evolve into that.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I can tell you all the stories about how, you know, you know, in the early years there was no such thing as a permit.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_06: Sure.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my God, I can't believe now we have to get the inspection.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I used to have customers for like a wheelchair lift.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, back in the early days, right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine this in the mid-90s, okay.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: ADA first comes about.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we're getting calls from some of the most uh brilliant architects in the world saying, you know, we think we have to, we're not sure if we have to.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're gonna put in a wheelchair if we're gonna talk to the mayor's office because we really think that we're gonna get an exemption from the wheelchair lift.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, what do you think?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Will it fit in this three by three space?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was a terrible way to start a conversation with people because you know, you can say, well, yeah, if you move your staircase, take this down.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: But these people were they were in the, you know, they were on punch list items of their projects, all of a sudden being told that they had to be ADA compliant.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so once we were able to get beyond the chaos of it all and now start to deal with you know the reality of it all, you got to see a different uh growth in in the business, right?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because where we could get out front of it and promote the kind of service, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: What does an architect want?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: An architect wants that the the lobby looks like there's something they're proud of, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not that they shoehorned in this ugly wheelchair lift.
• 15:28
  unknown: Sure.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had customers that used to want before codes, they would they would ask me in that time where they couldn't fit it in.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: The first bright idea we would get, Matt, would be what if we put in a portable lift?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then the guy would come, yeah, we'll put the portable lift in, we'll install it, we'll we'll install it, we'll get our CO.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: And then we'll pull it out.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll move it to the next building.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not only are we going to take it out, but we'll use it again.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna use it again.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then they came up with uh that in New York, every device would it would get a device number.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then that went along, except every so often I would get a phone call from this customer calling me up and saying, What kind of crap did you sell me?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: You installed this elevator a year and a half ago or two years ago, we never use it, it's brand new, never use it, and we go to use it for the first time and it never runs, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean many customers used to say, I'm putting this in because I'm being forced.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're never gonna use it.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you'd put it in and then the guy goes to use it, it doesn't work, and he's all you know, peed off.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd uh, you know, I'd call up and I'd say, Look, you know, if you parked your car for two years and didn't start it, what do you think could happen?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in New York, in particular, the building department started to feel like they were, you know, had egg on their face.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: They had all these wheelchair lifts put in, but nobody was taking care of them, nobody was maintaining them.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: You'd go to that wheelchair that sat around for two years, you'd see garbage and potato chip bags and soda cans, and you'd see somebody that said, All right, I'm gonna put this in, but I'm never spending another nickel on it after that.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: The building department forced me to do it, but that's it.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's when New York started to say, no, the L we we have to maintain.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of ADA advocates were very against the wheelchair lift world because of these kinds of problems.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were getting a negative reputation.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of my colleagues, even though they might be competitors with me, their work is important to was important to me because our industry, our our niche in the world was so small that if they did something wrong, it still affected the perception of our world.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we wanted to change that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And by having customers performing maintenance, that started to alleviate the problem.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when New York City came along and required maintenance.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So some companies embraced that.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some companies said we installed, we're done, we're good.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Get your service, you know, wherever you want.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: We we embraced maintenance, and I think that also naturally pushed us in a direction that to bring it back to your original question, that made us into more of an elevator company model than a residential accessibility company model.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and you talked about, you know, it's it sounds like every opportunity you've seen.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I well, I say opportunity, you you said you you could treat it like, hey, this is a pain in the neck, and we want to fight the city on these permits and the and the inspections, or um, but we're we're gonna take it as an opportunity, we're gonna run with it.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna, like you say, make a profit center out of it rather than hey, this is a a headache for us.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_04: And and in doing so, you've you've built your business.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_04: And like you say, it wasn't necessarily on purpose, but boom, we've got us a a business now that because we've taken those opportunities and and let it grow.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really become uh an interesting uh shift, if you will, because you know, for years and years we were you know really priding ourselves on you know uh the installation business and growing the installation business and the service business, as everybody has seen in the elevator world, is more profitable than the installation business.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And while I think that's happening very slowly, I think you will continue to see that trend in our area, you know, uh as we as we move forward.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, certainly in New York, I think it's more uh it's more prevalent than than other parts of the uh than other parts of the country.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I certainly uh I certainly see it as an opportunity for for me.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have the manufacturer writes in the beginning of their owner's manual, the need to do maintenance.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Whether there's a code for it or not, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's no code on your car that says you have to change your oil in your car.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an owner's warranty that says you have to change the oil of your car at regular intervals, uh, but either based on miles or based on a time period to put clean oil in because that will make your engine run better.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't do that, we reserve the right to not honor the warranty.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and and you're gonna you're gonna burn up your car if you if you don't change uh that oil out too.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: So an elevator is a car.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you're spending about it.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_04: It sounds like some of your products, you know, you're gonna spend about the same as you do on your car to get you are or more, but but the same concept, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: The same mindset is why would you buy why would you buy your car and not take care of it?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not take care of it, you wouldn't.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that one.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So why would you buy your lift or your elevator, you know, and not take care of it?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the you know, just like commercial elevators, if you take care of it, we could have these things lasting years and years and years.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it they're not the most complicated devices in the world, but they are different than commercial elevators, they do require different skill sets, that they're not interchangeable.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: Now you and you talked about the uh the boom of the 90s.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_04: So it sounds like that's that's when a lot of your construction was going on, and and I'm sure at some point that I don't know if it tapered off or not.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just assuming that you know, with a boom, there's that it'll slow maybe, but have you seen that or does it just keep going?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, New York City is a hard place to say that anything uh anything slows down.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because every time a CO changes, right, a retail space goes from, let's say, being a fitness place to now a restaurant or a doctor's office, there's gonna be a new CO there and there's gonna be an accessibility need.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: There.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe it's going to be serviced with a ramp, maybe it's going to be an elevator, maybe it's going to be a lift, but there's going to be something.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's kind of happening all over uh New York City.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if we if we go back to say 2008 when we were uh dealing with the previous recession, I would I would say that the one constant in our business was the commercial ADA wheelchair lift component of our business because that continued to turn on our lights.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't necessarily grow exponentially, but it was very, it's very, very consistent.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: The new home building, for instance, the developer wasn't starting his project during a recession.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you see uh a step back.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: The flip side of it might be the high-end home market.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those are also generally people that, and I want to say this the right way for the audience because I don't want anybody to take this through, but they're not nearly as affected by a recession.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: These are wealthy people.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: They started building a home, they're continuing with their home, um, they're buying that home, whatever.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: These are, I don't want to say that they're recession proof people, but that higher end home elevator market is uh, you know, somewhat a little different, yeah.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Different, yeah.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: Very cool, very cool.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: So you were you were telling me about um, you know, as as you've continued to grow, as you've continued to see opportunities, you were telling me about how you're getting it sounds like more requests for commercial elevators.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_04: So you've like said, started doing lifts, and you know, let's jump into that.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let's uh so let's go back to that uh a little bit.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So as our company is growing, um one of the one of the marketing tools that we use again in promoting our concierge service, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our high end of project management and what we are doing, the uh the bullseye for us has always been the architect, right?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: The architect that can appreciate the uh project management, the design team that we have in helping them meet the mark on their project.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we would I would uh go out and do learning seminars where through our manufacturers and uh our organizations that we're part of, we are given different presentations that we can make.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I got certified um by certain by manufacturers to and authorized to give their presentation.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I also have certain licenses that I think make my presentation a little bit more uh a little bit more meaningful when you know I could say it's coming from a New York City direct elevator director, not just you know, a guy who owns a business.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um very involved in a lot of uh organizations.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we our prime target was to do learning seminars for architects.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of our biggest marketing tools that we used probably for the last uh 12 years or so.
• 25:10
  unknown: Right.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what that was really just as simple as us calling architectural firms and offering them, you know, the opportunity for continuing education credits to hear a presentation for one hour, and we would bring in lunch.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, lunch and learns what I hear them called, right?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, lunch and learns.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we even went through a period trying to call them learning seminars instead of calling it a lunch and learn.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it was it's a very effective tool for us, and I would I would form all of these great relationships.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: These would these are to date the best relationships that you can have in this business is the architect, because there is no elevator project that takes place in my world without an architect being involved.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I lost my train of thought.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the architect has every uh has every project you know in front of them, that's who you want to be networking with.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so what would happen is we'd do these projects, and you know, we were making gains, you could see our Google review, our scores, everything is is pointing in the right direction.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And on occasion, every so often, I'd have this architect that would come and say, Hey, Evan, you know, we love the Lula elevator you did in that medical office building.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: We want we we don't want to do a Lula elevator, we need something a little bit bigger, and we would, you know, say, you know, we're sorry, this is not what we do.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our model, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Lula elevator, but I have friends and I will refer you to something and I will, you know, see that you get the proper care.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, besides the fact that's never a good idea in business to give somebody an opportunity to go somewhere else.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we really did have to draw a line because the models are different, right?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of installing a Lula elevator in nine or ten days is very different than installing, you know, a six-story commercial passenger elevator in you know six weeks.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_04: Let's say business just isn't really set up, well, wasn't really set up to do that.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're not built for that.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't built for taking my team and and putting them on a site for for six weeks and taking them off of our available list for for the you know for that period of time.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it would it would just be detrimental to us, and we weren't you know really prepared to do that.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had all kinds of different you know uh approaches with uh colleagues in the area.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: We had referral pro it never really uh turned out.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I really found that you know our idea of considering ourselves number one a sales organization.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Before we're an elevator company, we are a sales organization.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the value and effort that we would put into getting that person to call us and leave their information on the internet and fill out that that request, that takes a lot of money, that takes a lot of effort to make that all happen and to give that to somebody right that doesn't care about it the same as as I care about it, that that hurts.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so we really started to feel that you know, if we're going to continue to grow and expand our business, we're doing so many things already like that.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: How can we you know compete in that in you know, in that market and and add to our uh add to our sales revenue?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we have you know, we morphed beyond what we were doing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ever really looked at material lifts and material handling uh equipment, it's more like wheelchair lifts and home elevators.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is like a commercial passenger elevator.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we've done all of that equipment.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, in our world, I think we know more pieces of equipment than the commercial passenger elevator companies know.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'm sure, yeah, that there's a wide variety, right?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_04: You've got multiple manufacturers with very different home factors and everything.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been our world.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it really became how do we, you know, how do we expand what we're doing?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm you know, I'm not necessarily going in and looking to do parking garage lifts in uh in New York City, but I do think that you know the low rise market is no different than the home elevator market.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: The low rise market is in New York City is defined by 60 feet of travel.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: We do home elevators up to 60 feet.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Any dealing with that?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're having those inspections, we're having those those maintenance go on.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So what why can't we do that other than you know, the proper manpower, the proper support set up um from the manufacturing side and from you know the fulfillment, the installation side.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I like to say that, you know, I think the sales part is is the easy part in all of this.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um the fulfillment and keeping that customer is is the challenging part.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the one of the KPIs that I follow religiously is our contract renewals.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Know about contract renewals, the insurance industry, which is all based on renewal, right?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: There are the the the the greatest industry in the world of making money is the insurance industry, and it's all about renewal.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they they like to work with an 85% uh renewal.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we we are renewing, uh we renewed uh last year was higher than 2022.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: In 2021, we renewed uh at 96 percent.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's incredible.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that speaks pretty highly to what we do, absolutely or how we try to do it, how we try to keep our customer happy.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the one one thing that's resonated with me.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if this is relevant, Matt, but one thing that resonated with me for many, many years.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had a very good friend of mine who uh was um part of the Ritz-Carlton team in uh Colorado.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was working in Aspen when we were younger, and he would have us out there skiing.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: We did not belong in the Ritz-Carlton, but we were there.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'll never I'll never forget you know, uh the back of his business card and showed me.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you can look this up online actually, if you go to Ritz Carlton and you look up their Ten Commandments, you will see one of them, and I think it's still number one is if you see a problem, you own the problem.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_04: Cool.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it really resonated with me.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the idea behind that was if a customer came to you and asked you a question, you couldn't point to them and say, Yeah, follow that whole way down there, make a left, go right.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: You had to see the problem through, or give it to somebody who's going, you could not just walk away from the problem.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_04: And you adopted that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that kind of led to my my belief in this concierge service.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I put together who our customer is, you know, that our customer, especially in the home elevator market, they're generally a fairly successful person.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: They are uh of strong opinions, sure, and they're not used to hearing no.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that starts out, you know, with a certain amount of soft skill to navigate that.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's not as simple as, hey, we're gonna be putting up some rails on a concrete hoist way, you know, I'll deal with your architect on it.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're dealing with the interior designers.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and you're in their home, right?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_04: So it gets a little personal.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes the home's not built, but it's still gonna be built.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's tastes.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, this the sale is the beginning of the is the very beginning of the relationship in our world.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the it's not the end of the of the relationship.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that mindset on this kind of service, and I, you know, I don't want to say that it's the customer is always right.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can't say that, but I can I can I can say that we're always we're gonna we're gonna do everything we can to make the customer happy.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: That that's where we're gonna go.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and not everything's gonna always go smoothly.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you it doesn't.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um I think that that kind of keeps a little bit of a focus for us on on how we're different.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're not the cheapest company out there either.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't be.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't be.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that those models are are wrong for being less expensive than us, they just have a different approach than than uh what we're using.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: We we recognize that some of the services we offer unlimited site visits.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that some of those services cost more money.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I also we also have to recognize that different the the accessibility and residential market that we play in is very different than that commercial market.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the commercial market, that elevator in new construction is going up at the beginning of the project so they can get at least a running elevator, help service the trades, help get things going.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: In my world, I'm looking for that elevator or piece of equipment to be installed in finished environments or near finished environments.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we're doing a lot of hand holding throughout the project to get to that point.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And our challenge is generally, we are a very, very tiny, tiny piece of a larger project, even that brownstone, right?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: That brownstone is gonna be a$10 million project.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only, you know,$40,000 or$50,000 of it.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's minuscule in that huge hotel that's getting a wheelchair.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you're talking about multi, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on, you know,$25,000.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to, so we we came up with you know, work by others and staying in front of people in a way to hit the mark, more again, more out of necessity than my great vision.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not that smart.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: What really happened, Matt, was tell the story all the time.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: I used to go on sites for you know a half hour or an hour to have what we call the kickoff meeting, right?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is where, all right, project's moving forward.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's show up with our drawings, let's meet with the architect, let's make sure this product that we have here matches the vision that we have, and then we'll put it in production.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I would talk sometimes for a half hour, 40 minutes with my tape measure, showing them here's the pit, here's what we're doing.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I I would walk away dumbfounded that I could talk for a half hour, and the contractor, the the framer, they wouldn't write a thing down.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd walk away, like, how is this going?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're just putting a couple of closets on top of each other, right?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah, but you know, there's a little more, and you'd come back, and inevitably you'd send your team there to install, and you're you're anchoring into the wall and the blocking's not in the right place, so there is no blocking.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we we really we recognized early on that if we didn't have site presence, that we're gonna shoot ourselves in the foot, right?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: That that commercial elevator company that's going onto a site for six weeks, if they lose a few hours because the electrical disconnects weren't in place, they can absorb that in their six weeks.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm on a three-day wheelchair lift project and I lose half a day for a disconnect, that's it, it's over.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we start we recognize those things um that require, look, that's I'll I'll I'll go the other way and say that's why there's certain work out there that we no longer go after.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do New York City schoolwork.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible to keep up with the layers of people that they have on the site.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible for us to really charge for the things that we know that are gonna be required, and it's gonna be won by a low bidder.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not gonna be us.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's so you know, when you're young and stupid, and we've all been young and stupid, you think that you want to win every job.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: As you as you get older, I'm not gonna say more mature because I don't think I'm mature, but as you get older, you start to realize that some of the best projects are the ones you didn't win, or the ones you're willing to walk away.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where you, you know, you can see you can read people, we can trust our experience.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you go to those projects and you can hear that person from the beginning and what they're how they're trying to do things or cut corners, you know whether that's going to be a project.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know you're gonna see those issues, you know, later on.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to trust your judgment.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to know when to say no.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_04: And and and it sounds like as you as you give up some of those that, hey, I don't want, you've also got people, architects in particular, asking for, hey, can you do this?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_04: And that and that's where I see you going is knowing what you need to do to build for the future.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and also you have to let go of things too.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, if I go back to you know the early uh 2000s, we were installing over 400 chairlifts a year, you know, chairs that ride up fairway chairlifts.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were installing over 400 a year.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: We don't install chairlifts anymore, right?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was hard for me to let go of.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: That we can't do that anymore.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: We just weren't competitive, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot more direct sales.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's manufacturers selling on the internet, wasn't there?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: The electric scooters, I told you that we started out.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_04: You don't do those anymore?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't done those in a lot of years, you know, it really became insurance driven.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't set up to compete in that.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't want to deal with you know the in the insurance side of uh of the industry, none of it.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to allow the business to to evolve and and see where you know there is some opportunity for for growth and what you've become good at.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah you know, our guys are licensed.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I definitely wanted to spend one minute on this, Matt.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: I spend a lot of time on education with our guys.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: The most probably the most the nearest and dearest topic to me that that we could talk about is education within this industry.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because number one, I grew up in this industry, my side of the industry, there's no training for it.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's no training for it.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And AEC has a CAT, which is came along after we were in business for some time.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But CAT right now is the only training, certified accessibility technician training.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we can't hire anybody off the street that does what we do.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you gave me a guy that's been installing commercial elevators for 10 years, he's gonna come here and he's gonna stare at our equipment and not know what to do.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we spend a lot of time uh educating at Day Elevator.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have more, we have more uh participants in CAT CE training, uh AET training than anybody else uh in our side of the industry.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we promote that.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: We promote that as advancement.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm promoting that to guidance counselors.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have a few situations now where, and I I I truly believe this that if you gave me the 20-year-old kid that just doesn't feel like he wants to go to college or lay out$200,000, if you gave me a 20-year-old kid that stayed with our program for the next, let's say seven to ten years, he's gonna be making in excess of uh probably with inflation at least 125 to 150,000 a year.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, yeah.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I'm not gonna say that you know more isn't on the horizon because it is, because you know, good good uh installers, mechanics are uh at a premium right now, right?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're all shorthanded throughout the industry.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not enough guidance counselors and parents recognize our industry as an opportunity to grow, and it's completely changed.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is it is geared towards young kids now, right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about software skills and programming and documenting notes.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: My old guys that you know wanted to turn wrenches, weren't necessarily signing up for exams and testing, right?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they didn't go to college.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to really rethink a little bit how we approach this, you know, in the years ahead in this country, because it's it's a new concept for for guidance counselors to recommend not going to college, right?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Their success is measured by how many children go to college.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and it almost it seems like it's it's kind of come full circle because I I think 30, 40, 50 years ago, you did see more, oh, you know, go to technical school, learn a trade.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_04: And that kind of seemed to go away for the last, you know, 20 something years.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like, no, everybody has to go to college.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: And it's I see I see the curve bending back towards the trades and say, no, this, you know, not everybody is is cut out for the classroom, or or at least, you know, not everybody wants to go to to college, I guess.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we we have to continue to uh to to to push that um because it it's it it it it the the the the gap is still far apart.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh it is sure sure gap is is it is really far apart.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean one of my colleagues has told me how he's been actually going down to the elementary school level.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how there's a uh career day kind of thing.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: He went to a career day and decided that he was gonna start giving away hats and little and little trinkets to the kids, right?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that kid you know starts to think differently about the industry and and playing it that way, yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but we we've got to start thinking out of the box.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_04: And we're we're running uh short on time now, but I guess I I just want to end with the the final question is what kind of advice would you give to fellow business owners and maybe also to this the person who's just starting a new career in the elevator industry?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's start with the new person because that that's easy.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yep the the new person, uh, if you are looking to come into this industry, um, you need to come into it with the same commitment that you would if you were going to college.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: That you are going to be educated, you are going to need to learn and do homework and study, but most importantly, you need to work for a company that will promote those things to you because that costs money, right?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's an expensive day today elevator, even though these are licenses uh you know for our guys.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: We we spend a lot of time doing it in-house training.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: I run classes for it for education.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so though those are all time and money commitments that you're making, but you want to be the company that's going to promote those things to you, not just how fast can you install an elevator, right?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: How safely can you install an elevator?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: How safely can you install it correctly so that we can walk away and don't get called back for a warranty callback.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things, those have great value and those aren't things that happen in you know two weeks.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those you know evolve over years and years of somebody learning and getting better and better at that.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: The the initial part of your question is what would I recommend to to businesses is to really be introspective and and hold the mirror up to yourself.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid of of the mirror um because you've got to look at what what can you do better?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have uh you know some people in the business who you know they handle our customer service and it's oh I'm hearing the story I'm like you know if if if we didn't have customer service we wouldn't need us I wouldn't have a job if there wasn't customer service.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So a customer complaining is not a bad thing.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's him you know calling attention to something for us.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes we we get to make the decision you know by looking at their records are they really honest or have we seen this you know story from them before and so forth you get to make that judgment but you have to look at your business honestly.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact if my business grows the way I expect it to grow next year I expect to have more complaints next year.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the math even if my complaint ratio is two percent if I add a hundred more customers I'm gonna get two more complaints so you have to you have to use that mirror to to really look at yourself and what you're doing.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: And also I would say and this is one of the things that I think our industry is doing better at but we need to do more and more of it is we have to learn from each other.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be a thief you know find your colleagues find your friends that you could share ideas with and learn.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know one of the challenges especially in the uh in the accessibility side of the world it was manufacturers are very separated.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know uh they have you know exclusive agreements with their dealers other manufacturers have other exclusive agreements and they keep them all apart.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: They never really bring us to a think tank together because if we think about things together we might have some things about them too you know so when I get together and I go to NAEC and you put me in a room with the AR committee I'm with 30 like people.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Put me in a room with AMA which I I should plug AMA Accessibility Equipment Manufacturers Association which I was a past president of is only accessibility and residential companies that is really the one organization that cares the most about the accessibility and residential community.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you put me with those people I learn more and more hey this worked in Baltimore let me try this here and I and and your friends are more willing to to give you information when they're not in your backyard.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm okay with my next door neighbors also I speak to them all the time too so you know it's a great opportunity this industry and uh but you've got to be willing to to get in and do it the right way there's not it's not a shortcut industry at all.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah no and it sounds like I mean you've you've done that you've you've dove in started the the very bottom you've you've built it you take care of your customers and and they keep taking care of you and and Evan it's been a privilege thank you so much for your time it's it's always a a privilege to talk to you.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much Matt appreciate it thanks for having me.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yes sir thank you bye bye thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast sponsored by the All Red Group a leader in elevator industry recruiting you can check us out online at elevatorcareers.net please subscribe and until next time stay safe