Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / Elevator Industry Success through Education and Hard Work: A Leadership Career | Bobby Schaeffer

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Elevator Industry Success through Education and Hard Work: A Leadership Career | Bobby Schaeffer · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just because it doesn't drop in your lap, and just because it's not a program that is maybe the soup of the day or that your company is sponsoring, it doesn't mean you can't go out and find the answers.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean you can't go out and find the education.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh take again, just just work a little harder than that next guy.
• 0:19
  unknown: Sure.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: You'll always you'll always have a job in the elevator industry.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: You you train and educate yourself, you work safely, and and you come to work every day and and and put in those eight hours a day, you will never be out of work.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Matt Allred.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, we talk to the people whose lives and careers are dedicated to the vertical transportation industry to inform and share lessons learned, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before to inspire the next generation of elevator careers.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Today our guest is Bobby Schaefer, president of DD Elevator and Senior Vice President of American Elevator Group.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bobby started in the elevator industry as a helper with Flynn Hill Elevator in 1981.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: In 1982, Bobby started with DD Elevator, eventually becoming its president for 28 years.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bobby served as the president of the NAEC from 1999 to 2000 and was instrumental in creating the CAT certification program.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: He also started the Elevator Learning Center.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Bobby is a member of the Elevator World magazine executive board and works with both the Elevator Learning Center and Elevator World to create and deliver the latest in educational content for the industry.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Bobby is passionate about providing training and education to all who want to succeed.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bobby, welcome to the show.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Matt, how are you?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing well.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you taking some time to talk today.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better and um just hear some uh some of your experiences, your stories, and and I'm sure there's something we can all learn from from your career in the industry.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I was just gonna start with my favorite question, which is how did you get started in the elevator industry?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, kind of a sideways entry.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like everyone else, uh my age in the late 70s, early 80s, it was time to go to college.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I decided I did a year of college and decided that wasn't for me.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I decided to go to the Coast Guard engineer, uh Coast Guard Reserve.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, they gave me an opportunity to go to uh engineering school.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh coming out of there, didn't really have a career path yet, knew what I wanted to do, uh, very uh very happy with the engineering um education I got.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh my brother was in the elevator industry, and uh he let me know that they were looking for helpers, and I applied, and that's kind of how I entered the business.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So working for the union as a helper and just kind of started on that uh Yeah, I started with uh a company called Flynn Elevator.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was a union shop, a local three shop in New York City.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh my education in engineering really helped me kind of accelerate with a lot of things that I learned.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's a very important thing to understand in our business.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh any training, anything you can you can take advantage of uh will accelerate your career, not just uh accentuate it, but accelerate it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so uh I learned a lot.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh actually in the beginning, I really, really wasn't in love with the elevator industry.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of uh grunt work, as we call it, um, a lot of painting and a lot of cleaning up and a lot of oil spills.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh any elevator person will tell you about their most horrific pit story uh with everything that uh can crawl around in the world.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh uh so uh after about three months uh in the maintenance department, I got an opportunity to work with uh a company that was purchased by Flynn Hill called Globe Elevator.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: They were purchased, they were north of New York City in Westchester County, and that's where I was living at the time.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I had gotten the opportunity to work in that area, and that's really kind of where I connected with some just really good elevator people.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they were they they just were some best of the best.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they all had their stories, but they were really good, well, well-trained elevator personnel.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Very good.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that I think that was the first um lucky piece of my career.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and I was gonna ask you, when, when did you realize you you had a passion?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it sounds like you you really didn't have a passion until you met the people who could kind of give you so uh some of what they had learned.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I I agree.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I first started, you know, anybody will tell you first starting in the industry, um, the first three to six months, you kind of you you you're you're the grunt, you're you're doing the dirty work.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the key to that is to keep your head down, do the work, and just wait for your opportunity.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And when your opportunity comes, take full advantage of it and try and get yourself into a position where you're working with some really good, qualified, seasoned people.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of when your career really starts and you start really learning the trade.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me about some of those individuals you you met that that really started to invest in you.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: What what was it that clicked for you that said, wow, okay, I've got it.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I think for me, I I did have the engineering background.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say engineering, you know, in the Coast Guard engineering school, you're kind of um a jack of all trades, master of none.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're you you have to fix it because there's no one else around to fix it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're the only one on the boat, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So so uh they teach you how to fix things, they teach you how to be, you know, kind of um nimble and and find ways and creative ways to fix things.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they taught you everything from hand tools and power tools to small engine repair to large diesel engines to boilers to uh welding, arc welding, gas welding, uh making parts using a lathe.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So while you while you got a little bit of everything, you weren't a master at anything, but it really kind of helped you understand that, you know, at the end of the day, you got to fix it.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, you got to figure it out, get it fixed.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the so the people I worked with, I think it was certainly a breath of fresh air to me because they once they saw that I was not afraid to do the work, it didn't matter what the work was, dirty, didn't matter, greased from head to toe.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was always willing to volunteer, I was always willing to step up and do the work that nobody else wanted to do.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it was just another way to learn for me.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I immersed myself in the industry.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I wanted to know more all the time.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the people I started working with after three or four months in, again, they were all characters.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: We could talk good good about all of them, but they were they were they knew their trade.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: They knew their trade.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if you were helpful and you, you know, went the extra mile, and you know, you when they needed something, you were standing there with the right tool or the right um the right component, you know, they understood that you understood what they needed, or that that that you were getting it, you were picking up, you were learning it, you were learning process, you were learning and understanding how the elevator works or how it's maintained.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's kind of how you gain trust working with your peers or with your mechanics that are eventually going to teach you a lot.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounds like that's that's uh obviously starts to tell them that you know, if he can anticipate the tool, the part, the the thing I'm doing, he's getting it.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's understanding and he's and he's really helpful.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't sit there and have to beg him or ask him to, hey, can you please and describe what it is and and you know sometimes it's just easier to and and the good part about those seasoned veterans, and still to this day, um when you do it wrong, they'll let you know.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: In more ways than one.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it and it's probably yeah, so I'm sure you learn, you learn pretty quickly.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna say it's probably frustrating for them if you if you don't know, you know, and they ask you for a certain tool and you don't know what it is, and they don't you don't know what it looks like, and you don't know, then they're probably thinking uh it's a lot easier to just go get it myself than to try to have to explain everything.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So just being observant, you were able to learn a lot and contribute and and then and then not be afraid to do it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I was very, very fortunate that the people I work with, after a very short period of time, they were allowing me to do the work, not on my own per se, but allowing me to do the work that they would normally do and then just check it and make they were they were actually letting me do some of the work, which from a mechanic standpoint is a godsend because it allows you to really move through the process quicker.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you can trust your your helper or candidate or whatever we call them today, you can trust your apprentice to do certain things while you're not standing over them, you know, preparing for the next step, uh making sure things are safe, making sure, you know, then you can focus on your job and it makes everything just go much smoother.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: The key is to have someone actually there, you know, someone that's actually there, not just standing there waiting to be told what to do, but watching and learning and being prepared for the next step.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you you told me that you um you know you started as a helper, but that you've kind of worn every hat along the way.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my my question is, what has most helped you helped you succeed in all along the way?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or excuse me.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um the uh I think I think really it goes back to just work ethic.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It goes back to um really not being scared to try anything, to do anything.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's okay to make a mistake, you know, learning from mistakes.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I always tell people I can write a book on how to do it wrong.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's learning from your mistakes, making sure you never do that again.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also uh just being willing to try, being willing to go that extra mile.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: I always volunteered for overtime.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I used to go out, and today you probably couldn't do it with you know the latigious society that we have today.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I used to go out with friends of mine in the elevator business that worked for other companies, but I would ride with them on trouble calls and I would, I would go, I wasn't getting paid.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was just working with them because I really was a single guy who you know didn't have a lot to do.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I would jump in a car with them and spend three or four hours watching them fix elevators and uh learning there without really you know not not worrying about compensation, just knowing that it was going to make me better.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's that's a great idea.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right, it might be kind of a touchy subject today, but that was that's neat.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, if somebody offers somebody offers to train you or teach you a method or or a process, you should take every advantage of it today because uh I think probably the biggest the two key, it's not just one, the two keys are working harder than the guy standing next to you and taking advantage of every possibility of education and training.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you do those two things, you're gonna accelerate your career and you're gonna you're gonna make your six figures very, very quickly.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you've talked about some of the mechanics, but I'm sure you've had a lot of mentors along the way.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who are some of the the biggest mentors you've had?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mentors.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's probably a pretty long list.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the first mentor that I remember uh when I was working for the first company uh in Flynn Hill Elevator, uh, and I was in the repair department.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I was working for a gentleman, his name was Ken Ken C or Kenny C, that was what they called him.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Kenny C.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um the first day I worked with him, he was he was an older gentleman at the time.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was very, very good at what he did.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: You could just tell he was so confident at the work that he was performing.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he took the time to to teach you.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he said to me one day, the the first day we were on the job, he said, here's how this works.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: You come to work every day, you work hard, you take advantage of any training that you can do.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, At the end of the day, you may never be rich, but you'll never be broke.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that rung in my head for my entire career.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was uh it was pretty motivating.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, absolutely, and certainly investing in skills in yourself, you become more valuable the more you learn.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you just knew that if you just put the effort in, you're always gonna have money in your pocket.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and uh, you know, it's it's uh actually pretty attributable to what's going on today.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I came up late 70s, early 80s, it was 21% interest rates.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there were gas lines, you know, the same kind of thing we're all dealing with now, and it's come back around, and you really had no other way forward than to go out, work, and put some money in your pocket and try and survive.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of where we're at all over again.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's good if anybody's hearing this, it's good to understand.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just put your nose to the grindstone, get your get your education and and and work hard, work harder than the next guy standing next to you, and you'll get ahead.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, this uh this next question might be I don't want to be repetitive, but uh what what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they were hard lessons to learn.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you talked about what made you successful, but uh curious about some lessons along the way.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you can you can take it any direction you like.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think I it took me a little while to understand the importance of the education and training.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning, you know, I was I had gotten some basic education again through the engineering school.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I really was kind of done with school, and I just wanted to learn and do and turn a wrench.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and then as a year, you know, two years in the business, I started to realize, well, you know, that education is gonna, you know, would really come in handy right now.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: There were there were theories to learn and and you know, um uh basic electricity and things that really help you down the road that become just as valuable.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one lesson I learned.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I learned to work much safer as the years went by.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh back in the old days, we had some safety training, but nowhere near what we have today.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the and the equipment as well.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's that's really important.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um rework sucks, if I can say that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh spending six, eight hours doing something and realize you got to do it all over again.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big lesson to learn.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Painful one, sure.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, painful one.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think um I think the one thing I probably never really fully learned, probably should have a long time ago, but I I think it's just more of a uh of a um I put a lot of trust in people and I'll trust them until I can't trust them anymore.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there are some times where that comes back to burn you.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and even though you should learn from it, you still initially got to trust people.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean it's just human nature, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you go into it assuming the person's gonna fail, you're probably gonna help them fail.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, it's it's just important to to even though it's a lesson we all should have learned, you know, burn me once, burn me twice, whatever, but it's it's important to give everybody the benefit of that once.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I I would imagine that you get further with them by giving them that little bit of trust to start with.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, if they prove you wrong, then hey, now I know.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: But sure, sure.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's the same thing with customers.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I can remember walking in and a customer, I I I won a bid up in Westchester.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I sat down with the customer and they were so frustrated with their other elevator company.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat down, and the first 10 minutes, all they did was berate me, you know, and you're not gonna do this, and you're not gonna do that, and don't think we're gonna stand for that.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the first time I'm meeting these people, sure, right?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they were just so angry with the last elevator company.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, um, I'm not them.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we've either got to start from a clean slate or this might not be a good bid for me to win.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I told them.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I I'm not sure this is something I really want.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: If if you know, I'm gonna suffer the sins of the last company.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And what did they say to that?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: They were they they kind of chuckled at the end of the day because they just didn't realize that that's what was going on, you know.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: They they wanted to get their points across, you know.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I think I I think another lesson learned with all the different hats I've worn is some of the best deals you make are the ones you don't.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: You walk away from the ones that you know you start to get the features.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: The ones, the ones that start to give you sleepless nights before you sign the contract, that's that's the one you may not sign the contract for.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds very wise, honestly.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's uh it takes a little time to figure that out because when you're in business, when you're working in your business, you're not working on your business.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's another big takeaway.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So many entrepreneurs today are working hard in their business, trying to grow it, trying to make it better, trying to give customer service.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and if you're not spending some time working on your business, planning for what the next six months, a year, two years, three years looks like, um, you're gonna you're gonna find some real obstacles to grow that business.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what would you say is one of the most memorable experiences you've had?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's a little generic because that one too could go a lot of different directions, but I know there's some great elevator stories out there.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there's tons of them.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think uh for me as a mechanic or as as later on a business owner, um seeing the light bulb go on for someone who's in the business who's struggling to kind of get it and kind of understand it and what they do for a living, and then finally see it all just come together and they start becoming successful and doing great, that's a lot of fun.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's so rewarding.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as an elevator mechanic, you know, going into that building that three or four people spent four or five days trying to fix, and then you go in and you get it fixed.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's pretty rewarding.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's it's a pretty nice reward.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it just um it just it's just knowing that you can do that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's knowing that you have that skill, you know, that you can figure it's like you know, it's like hitting that home run and walking around running around the plate, right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that day you hit the home run.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Take, you know, take run around the plate a couple of times.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy it.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Around the field, yeah, enjoy it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so that's memorable.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of my time in the uh NAC, uh working on the board of directors and then becoming vice president and president, uh, met a lot of very, very wonderful people, uh, a lot of very smart people uh that helped me in my business training over the years.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so those are all really memorable moments.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of fun too, don't get me wrong.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh bad.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Those conventions and those conferences can uh can really be a lot of fun.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: What what would you say you love the most about the elevator industry?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've you've stuck around for a little while.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 42 years.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um what I love.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think I love the fact that you can be successful.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, you don't have to be a PhD, you don't have to have a Harvard degree.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can be successful if you work hard and and you train yourself and you have the work ethic.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can be as successful as any of those people.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and the elevator business can do that for you.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a lot of opportunity all the time.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just, you know, one day I'm going to become a mechanic, and then one day I'm going to be a foreman.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I my rise through the business really is not normal.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Most people become salesmen, they become maintenance mechanics, they become repair mechanics, and and they're there for years and years and years.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Installation mechanics, and you can do 40 years and you could be an installation mechanic, and it's great.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll have a nice healthy uh pension, and you'll, you know, you'll have your benefits.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: But if you want the opportunity to really exceed, to succeed, uh, that's there too.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can be that uh that manager, that owner, that chief operating officer.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can be that.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you just you don't necessarily need a PhD.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: You just need to work hard, learn your trade, and and and and again, work harder than the guy standing next to you.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounds like there's a a bit of a place where you you have to take a bit of a leap of faith, if you will, to to really go to that next level.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, you know, jump, jump where um maybe you haven't gone before.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Try something new, I guess is what I'm kind of getting after.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you have to go into it, you have to go into it very honestly.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have to say you have to go into knowing that you don't know.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know that doesn't mean it's above my pay grade, it just means I haven't learned it yet.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I know what I don't know.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I know what I need to learn to be successful there, so let me work on that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of the attitude you have to have.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to fail.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody fails.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, multimillionaire billionaires all failed several times before they got there.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's okay to fail.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um don't don't stay down when you get kicked down.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Don't stay down, get up, dust yourself off, and try again.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and so maybe what what I'm hearing is it's about believing in yourself and and not not quitting, not giving up, but just keep at it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it's you know, I don't think anything's above people's pay grade.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to learn it.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I certainly had no training in finance.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I ran a company with a hundred employees, and finance was on my list of things to do.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to learn it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I went to the people that I thought were really good at under, you know, being able to teach me.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not so much even it's not so much easy learning it to be an expert at, it's learning it to understand it, learning to how it affects your business, and then also reaching out to the right people that can help you learn it the way you need to learn it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some people, uh I have a uh a gentleman who I got involved with a few years back, and he was a um a uh CPA, he's been an auditor, he worked for all the large, large companies, uh Deloitte and all these big companies.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and he was very good at getting me to understand you didn't have to, you didn't have to understand it from the PhD level.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to understand how it affects your business.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he was very good at kind of talking the way a layman would understand it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he I learned a lot from him because he was able to, I guess, tell me at my level, you know.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: In practical terms, like you say, how how does this affect me?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do I need to worry about it?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do I not?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was always very good in finance to the extent that I called it back of the napkin math.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: I still use that today, you know.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can get within a few thousand dollars of of a couple of million dollar bid on the back of a napkin.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there you go.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's just you know, that's just something that's time and grade.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I can I can also read a spreadsheet, but back in a napkin math is a good way to check your spreadsheet.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's certainly gone you gotten you a long way.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: You probably learned the spreadsheet after you learn the napkin, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is correct.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: If if you were to give, and maybe you've done it, but if you were to give one piece of advice to our listeners, maybe they're new to the industry, what would you what would it be?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um take advantage of the opportunity in front of you.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if uh we we had an instance where there's a gentleman who's been in in the business three years, um, and he's been struggling to get education.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's been begging for it, he's been asking his company to help him with it, um, to no avail.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he happened to call us.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, as you know, we we were working on another project for elevator learning.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he was just so happy to have the opportunity to be part of something that's going to educate him, to move him forward in his career.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just because it doesn't drop in your lap, and just because it's not a program that is maybe the soup of the day or that your company is sponsoring, it doesn't mean you can't go out and find the answers.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you can't go out and find the education.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh take again, just just work a little harder than that next guy.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: You'll always you'll always have a job in the elevator industry.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: You you train and educate yourself, you work safely, and and you come to work every day and and and put in those eight hours a day, you will never be out of work.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: What Bobby, what are you most passionate about?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now I've kind of transitioned into the education side of it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh I've been involved in uh a um a company called the Elevated Learning Center.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that uh when I owned my company a few years back, we had created the Elevated Learning Center in Yonkers, New York, the birthplace of elevators, as they said.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Elijah Otis.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um and uh we built out this uh training center and we started it strictly just for our people, for our technicians and our candidates.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we had an approved apprenticeship training program, so we were doing apprenticeship training as well.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um, and then from there uh we opened it up to some other companies trying to pilot some, you know, some uh remote, remote education.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, once COVID came, uh we had no choice.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that was a nice learning curve for us to understand how to deliver education remotely.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we've continued to do that through the COVID uh crisis.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and now what we've done is we've moved it from Yonkers uh to a more accessible place in Long Island City.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's only about a seven-minute train ride from Grand Central in Long Island City.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's only one or two stops outside of Grand Central.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and yeah, that's where kind of my passion is now.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm focused on education.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're building education.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're building uh uh basic courses, more advanced courses.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've partnered with all of our um suppliers and and vendors, and they're uh building simulators for us, and we're doing monthly uh controller education, different controller every month, uh drive technology, uh safety.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're an approved provider for the SST cards in the city of New York.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a 40-hour program that allows us to certify you uh to work in the city of New York on construction sites for safety.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've got the backing, our eight-hour fall protection is uh certified by 3M.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've got an OSHA 30, we've got toolbox meetings, we've got up actually up to 62 hours of training, which includes supervisor training as well.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of been my passion.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um constantly uh adding new titles, uh, constantly trying to find new ways of training.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking into some new LMS systems, learning management systems to be able to deliver a little better.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're covering the entire East Coast.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have students that uh in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, uh, North Carolina, Florida.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: We have students all over the East Coast uh and going into central uh Central America there uh to to um to train.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, no, that's great.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I I wanna I want to get into that in uh in another episode and really dig into what the ELC is, how how is it gonna affect the industry is kind of where I like to go with that.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: But um we're we're kind of out of time for now.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: My question, I guess, to to finish is is there anything else you'd you'd like to say or um any parting words?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um anybody who hears this, unfortunately, the elevator business is the best kept secret.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you find out, get involved, get a job, and train yourself.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the elevator industry has been great to me, been great to my family, uh, been great to the hundred plus employees that I work with.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh I I can't say enough about the industry.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's uh the best uh I used to call it blue collar, I call it professional, the the best blue-collar profession uh out there.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Bobby.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you being here today and wish you the very best.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thank you.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You bet.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the All Red Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can check us out online at elevatorcareers.net.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe, and until next time, stay safe.