Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / So Many Opportunities to Explore in Elevators | Alan Greenwell

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So Many Opportunities to Explore in Elevators | Alan Greenwell · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Matt Allred.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, we talk to the people whose lives and careers are dedicated to the vertical transportation industry to inform and share lessons learned, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before to inspire the next generation of elevator careers.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are talking with Alan Greenwell.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Alan has worked both in the office and in the field, in the U.S.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: and internationally.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Alan started his career in the field and then spent 18 years with Tiffany Krupp in several management roles and locations.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Alan is currently working in the field performing modernizations for Urban Elevator Texas.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Alan, welcome to the show.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to be here, Matt.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Good to talk to you and see you again.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: You too.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've been looking forward to this conversation.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we've talked numerous times over the years.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: You've you've given me a lot to think about.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And just wanted to explore your career.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: To me, you've had an extraordinary career.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've done a lot of things.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And first question I want to ask is, how did you even get into the trade?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it's kind of a weird story or different than most, in that um, I'd gotten out of the army and done that for a long time, and didn't really have a plan other than I'm just gonna go to college and hang out and see where that leads me.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'd been doing that a while, and a buddy of mine calls me up one day and he's like, Hey, we're gonna go on a ski trip to Colorado.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are you interested in going?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we go up there, and there's probably a dozen of us piled up in a couple condos.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, one night, one of the guys that was there that actually owned the condo had made mention that they were getting ready to go build elevators in the embassy in an embassy overseas, and uh they were having a hard time finding anybody to go do the work because the nature of the elevator work, as well as having to have a top secret clearance to get into the building.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, ironically enough, mine's still it's still current, it hadn't expired yet.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, uh, well, what do you know about elevators?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Well, I think I know everything.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you hit a button, you get in the box, you hit another button, and you get off the box and you go on about your way.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so that's kind of how, even though I knew absolutely nothing about elevators, I had a clearance and they were willing to take me over there.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I signed up to uh go do a job in Hong Kong for about that was about nine months over there, and worked uh a little bit here in the States form before that, and then um did that job form in in Hong Kong and came back, was here for a while, and actually got to go to Havana, Cuba and work down there for a while as well, which is kind of a you know, between going to Hong Kong and building elevators and going to Cuba is kind of that's very unique, yeah.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody gets to go there.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's kind of how I got in the business.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I hadn't, you know, like you know, everybody else that gets into the business, you have no idea what you're getting into until you're in the middle of it.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, hmm, I kind of like this, you know.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It uh checked a lot of boxes as far as the type of the work and uh the technical aspect as well as the physical aspect.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, you can look back and say, okay, I get at least I got this done, right?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of how I got started in the elevator business.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So once you came back from um Cuba then, where what what was the next step?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I worked for uh once we got back from Cuba, I worked for those guys for a little bit longer and we kind of decided to go different ways.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it was a great filler job, you know, working at college or you know, going to college and working part-time and stuff like that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up going to uh go to work for FujiTech here in Dallas.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, on the construction side of the business.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh worked for those guys for a couple, three years, um, you know, just you know, low and mid-rise tracks and stuff around North Texas, and then um went down the path with uh Tyson Krupp for I don't know, 15, 20 years, something like that.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when you say down the path, you're talking about a leadership.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you you left as I at least I think, right?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: You you left the field at that point and got into supervision and management?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um one of the guys, one of the cornerstone guys at FujiTech here in Dallas was a guy by the name of Russell Gardner.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um he left FujiTech and became construction manager, construction manager for at that time, which was Dover.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um he'd been over a few weeks and he called me and he's like, hey, you know, you may want to get in on this.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I uh moved over to Dover in the office as uh construction superintendent trainee for lack of a better term, and then superintendent in Denver and um Oklahoma City, Kansas City, you know, just kind of bounced all over the country because I was the the single guy that could go anywhere, you know.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So and I spent uh I think it was about 18 years with uh with Tyson before I finally decided to do something different.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and as I understand it, at some point you you left management and actually went back in the field, is that correct?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: After 18 years at uh TK, I thought, well, you know, I'm gonna uh some differences and decided to try something new and went to uh went to Koney for a brief stunt.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then, you know, just kind of settled with uh the fact that I wanted to be back in the field.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So went back in the field, uh, I guess it's been about five years ago.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and have been in the field, worked at FujiTech for about a year, and then uh at Urban Elevator for the past probably three and a half, four years.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: What what was it that that brought you back to the field?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's there's something to be said for the simplicity of just building stuff.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's no there's no BS about it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, tab A in slot B, if you will.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, no corporate politics.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what Yeah, the you know, roller guides don't really participate in politics.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so and you know, after 18 years of the grind and you know the politics and the corporate culture, which is you know, some people are good with that.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I and I was for a long time.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just kind of got tired of it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And just you know, the simplicity of showing up at six o'clock, um, building stuff and going home and not having to be badgered by 8,000 emails, phone calls, webinars, meetings about meetings to plan the next meeting.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just you know reached the point where I was done with all that for a while.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um, like I said, I've been at uh been at Urban Elevator for yeah, I think it's about three and a half years now.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So cool.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: So all told you've been in the elevator industry for oh 20, 26 years, I think.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I got in in late, yeah, late 95, I believe it was.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: What what would you say is one of the things you love the most about the industry?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, there's there's days where it's just a job and it's like, you know, you want to bang your head on the floor.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but overall, you know, it's it's a really small, tight-knit community.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it seems as if either everybody was is related or they will be related at some point in the near future.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's kind of a a weird, dysfunctional family, if you will, where everybody does literally almost knows everybody.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I enjoy that about the industry because, you know, I can go, um, you know, I was in uh Minnesota last summer for a race, and there's some random guy with an Otis hat.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he knows a guy that I know, and you know, so we spend two hours talking about elevators in the middle of a field in the summertime of Minnesota.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's a big family, you know.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I the the other thing that appeals to me is it's kind of a niche work, you know.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh everybody rides elevators, they get it, but until you work in the business, you don't realize that hey, there's just a little bit more going on than hitting a button, getting on the box, and hitting another button.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that that's appealing as well.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then just you know, the mechanical and the logical nature of it, you know.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me, so you know, as you talk about the community, one of the things that I hear a lot is is just about some of the mentors that have made an impact.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious who who are some of the people that made the biggest positive impact in your life and career.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, there's a there's a handful of guys out there.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um the you know, the first probably couple three that really made an impact was uh Russell Gardner, who was a guy I worked with in the field at FujiTech.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Russell Gardner's been a an elevator guy here in North Texas forever, you know.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's just one of those, you know, old school guys that everything is done a certain way.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, very much a type A personality.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So everything goes a certain way, and that's the only way it goes, you know.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so he was he was pivotal in my career.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: He helped me out a lot, taught me a lot of things.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another guy at FujiTech was um Sam Patel.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Sam Patel's been a cornerstone at you know, Fujitech Elevator for who knows how long, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then um another guy here in town was uh Mike McIntyre, who I think at the end of his career he was COO of Tiss and Krupp before he finally retired a few years back.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so those are the three guys, you know, kind of in that early part of my career.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um later on, you know, uh as I kind of matured my career, there were some people that had a positive influence.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they were necessarily mentors, but they were good people um to watch and and learn from.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, like uh Tim Cook with Urban Elevator, good dude, really good dude, um, super smart guy.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, he you know, he and I have worked together off and on for 10 or 15 years.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of valuable insight, you know, good guy to bounce things off of, if you will.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool, very cool.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: If if there's one um, you know, one or one or two things that you you feel like you've learned that's maybe life advice and maybe you'd want to pass it on to the future generation, what what would that be?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you learned it from these people or just maybe on your own?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh probably a little bit of both.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, the and I I watch it go on today just like it did, you know, 15, 20 years ago, but so many people they get in one silo of the business, you know, their um their service sales or their construction operations or their um a construction foreman in it, they get in one piece and they get in these silos that really don't change over the years.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many different places to look at and go in the business that even though it's the elevator business and it may be in the same office, just one door down in the same building, it they're radically different, you know.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people need to, you know, really branch out and look at different pieces because it's you know, if you talk to a uh a service guy that has a resident route downtown, that is a completely different world and a completely different animal than um a guy building you know two-stop hydros for Tyson in Midland Odessa.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's the the spectrum is so broad.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to for a lot of people to get out there and explore those differences and you know, may not be the the best fit for them, but at least check it out, at least you know that way you know.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that that would be the piece I would pass on.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like you've learned a lot from doing a variety of things.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: You've been in and out of the office, you've probably built to stop hydro hydrows out in the middle of nowhere and then you know worked on the other routes as well.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say is one of the biggest piece?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: What what would you say is one of the um one of the things you're most proud of as you as you look back?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's not me.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I oh, that's a hard question.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that I haven't killed myself yet.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's an accomplishment.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, for me that that is, you know.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, Matt, I don't I don't know that I have an answer for that.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there, I mean, there were certain projects I look back on, I'm like, okay, that was really cool.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it it it sucked at the time, you know, it was a lot of work and it was hard, you know.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh the job in Hong Kong.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh, you know, some of the stuff is really cool, but I don't I don't know that I'm proud of it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It just it was cool, you know, that makes sense.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's cool.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, some I hear from some people that you know they they love driving by a building and hey, you see that building, you know, I sold that or I I installed that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and I think it it comes up every every once in a while, and I didn't realize it until probably about the second or third guy, but there were these this whole group of I call them kids, right?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're not middle-aged or whatever, but they're they were younger than me that you know they were they were handed to me as kind of part of this construction training program, construction management training program.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so you you know, you spend some time with them, sometimes that's three or four months or whatever, and you kind of nurture them along in the beginning of their career, and then they kind of go a different path, and you may not hear from them for a while.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, every once in a while I get I get a call from one of those guys and they're like, Hey, uh, you know, I appreciate the time you spent, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, the effort you put in, or um, hey, you said this and it it made zero sense then, but you know, 10 years later, ah, I get it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's probably what I'm most proud of.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's awesome.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I think that's even though you can't see it, and especially immediately, how much you've been a mentor to somebody else, how much you've impacted their career.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: How much they they look up to you.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: What are what are some ways you think the industry's changed since you first came on board?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, it's I have this conversation probably about once a week, it seems like.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: One to one degree or another.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh the technology has definitely you know evolved.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and certainly the elevator industry evolves slower than many other industries, but it still evolved, you know.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the MRLs, the controllers, things of that nature.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think the probably the biggest change is the shift from kind of a regional um I don't want to say mom and pop shop, but just kind of a regional privately owned company um to more of the corporate multinational um path.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I think that's slowly but surely swinging back the other way because you know uh the OEMs went on a rampage and they um bought up you know all the local players, and now um it seems like in the past, you know, 12, 18, 24 months, all of a sudden there is this every independent and now has instead of one office with four route guys, they've got 10 offices with 10 route guys in every office.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards the independence.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of an interesting migration over the past couple of years, you know?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you I mean, yeah, I'm sure you've seen a lot of change.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you could um leave the industry a little bit better than you found it, what what's one thing you would love to see uh happen?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and we'll uh kind of make this the maybe the last question.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I would really love to see because of the nature of the work, you know, it's it's in a box in the middle of a box, and nobody really knows what we do.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the black arts of the building trades.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would love to see where we as an industry uh promoted what we do and provided more visibility into that.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um so many people have no idea um, you know, how how complex some of this stuff can be.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the people that are involved, you know.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, some people think it's just some random guy with a dirty pair of pants that has a crescent wrench.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not necessarily the case, you know.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these guys are, you know, I mean, we all know that one guy who was, you know, has an electrical engineering degree, master's degree, and just liked working on elevators.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and but nobody really knows that.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's this whole other world that if we promoted ourselves more and provided more visibility, um, you know, I think it would kind of change the industry because uh, you know, we're kind of overlooked in a lot of respects.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a a great thought, interesting thought to to kind of chew on.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I appreciate you being on here with me today.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you, man.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thoughts and insights, and uh you stay safe out there, and we'll talk again later.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate your time, Matt.
• 17:19
  unknown: Bye.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers podcast.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can check us out online at elevatorcareers.net.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Please subscribe, and until next time, stay safe.