Building Trust in Business Partnerships | Travis Hall
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Intro:
In this episode, I interviewed Travis Hall, CEO of Alliance Elevator Solutions. Travis discusses the concept of being first in class in business, emphasizing authenticity and aligning with the right partners. He shares insights on navigating industry challenges, the value of educating customers, and the significance of understanding customer needs for long-term relationships. Travis encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to pursue their passions and highlights the supportive nature of the elevator industry.
Summary:
Travis Hall, CEO of Alliance Elevator Solutions, discusses the importance of authenticity and trust in business partnerships. He emphasizes the value of being “first in class” by focusing on efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and honesty. He highlights the significance of aligning with the right partners, whether suppliers or customers, to achieve long-term success. He shares insights on navigating industry challenges, educating customers, and the benefits of non-proprietary materials. Hall also touches on the role of AI in enhancing business processes and the importance of balancing visionary thinking with practical execution.
Transcript:
Travis Hall (00:00)
We’re a privately owned company. And I think people have a connection to that. There’s been a movement for the price since COVID, coming out of COVID, like you buy local, right? And I think that they like the idea they gravitate to the privately owned company. Oh here’s the owner. They like knowing that they have access, the customer, as well as my team members have access to me because I mean, you know, that’s without those guys calling me, I don’t have a job, right?
Matthew Allred (00:29)
Yeah,
Well, what you’ve just spoken to is exactly what we said before about working in your house is because it’s privately owned and it’s your skin in the game, you care every bit as deeply as each of these other people care to make sure it’s right. Yeah. Because, you know, it’s very personal to you too.
Matt Allred (00:48)
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group. I am your host, Matt Allred. 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. When talent is mission critical, call the Allred Group with industry expertise.
top talent and exceptional customer service, you need the Allred Group on your side. Your priority is their priority. Call now, 404-890-0445. In this episode, I interviewed Travis Hall, CEO of Alliance Elevator Solutions. Travis discusses the concept of being first in class in business, emphasizing authenticity and aligning with the right partners.
He shares insights on navigating industry challenges, the value of educating customers, and the significance of understanding customer needs for long-term relationships. Travis encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to pursue their passions and highlights the supportive nature of the elevator industry.
Matthew Allred (01:58)
Travis, welcome to the show.
Travis Hall (02:00)
Well, thank you for having me, Matt.
Matthew Allred (02:02)
Thank you. I’m excited. You talked about becoming first in class and the need to build on honesty and trust. And I want you to define that a little bit better for me and our listeners. What does first in class mean to you and how does that affect the way and shape your business? In other words.
Travis Hall (02:19)
Yeah, I think first in class for me, it’s not just for me and Alliance Elevator or for me personally, I think it kind of goes hand in hand. I think if you’re going to, you know, put a goal in front of you and you recognize what that goal is and in the back of your mind, you kind of got, you know, a process to reach that goal. You look at that process and you’re like, how can I do this? Not just
to one up my competitors or get the job done. You try to do it in a way that makes the most sense. You do it from, is it the most efficient way? Is it the most cost effective way? For example, that customer appreciation party we had, do we have enough bang for buck? And so I think you just kind of look at those processes and you align your actions with what it takes, what it really means to do it the best you possibly can.
based on the resources or the tools that you have available. And I think tying that trust and honesty into that, because we’ve talked earlier about how important that is. And I think in order to be first in class in anything that you do, you have to be trustworthy. And I think that in your business model, you have to make sure that you align yourself
with the right partners. It can be a supplier, it can be a customer, it can be your leadership team or the team members that make up your company. I think there’s a lot that goes into trying to be first in class. And I think the first and foremost is being trustworthy in what you do and how you do it. And you’re basically back up what you say, you do what you say, you know, that kind of thing. Just very basics.
Matthew Allred (04:04)
Yeah, no, I like what you said. You started off with saying, not just focusing on what your customer is doing, kind of in my mind, I see the image of kind of not just following behind, but maybe there’s, I think what I’m hearing is, is with that model, there’s a level of inauthenticity, whereas being first in class kind of means being true to yourself and saying, Hey, here’s what I have to give. I’m going to do my very best at giving it. And it may or may not look like what my customer has because you know what they have, they may have different gifts.
skills, resources, and I’m not going to try to compare.
Travis Hall (04:38)
I’ll give you an example of what happened recently. I’m fortunate enough to work with the folks from SEACORP had an opportunity to see their facility outside Milan, Italy, had an opportunity to meet their engineering team. And I was blown away. I asked them, you know, first I came to their facility, talk to their folks about a machine. I was looking for a traction machine and they took that concept, that idea of being first in class themselves and just took it to another level.
Is if we do this, we can use this machine and we use that machine, we can use this governor and safety. And all of sudden from starting in a machine, all of a sudden I had what we call in the industry a group one arrangement. And I was completely blown away. And then seeing their facility, not only are they saying these things, I’m seeing these things in my eyes. I’m seeing robots feeding machines, machines feeding robots, robots to other machines. And it’s like, oh my goodness. So at the end of the day, going back to what I said just now a few minutes ago, is that
It’s important to align yourself with the right people. If you want to be first in class, you got to have in our industry, you know, on the manufacturing side, a supply chain that can be first in class.
Matthew Allred (05:43)
Yeah. Well, and you brought that up a couple of times, right? The idea of aligning yourself with the right kind of partners. And there were a lot of different ways that we could build upon this because you talked about the, you know, fake it till you make it is kind of a lie, right? You really need to find partners that you can work with. Walk me through that a little bit. Yeah.
Travis Hall (06:04)
And we’ve heard it so many times in the industry. I got in this industry when I was 32 years old, right? So, and now I’m a whopping 47 and I don’t feel as old as I look sometimes, but as old as I feel sometimes kind of thing. But it’s been doing it for a while now. And what I’ve realized is that if you’re new into this company and you’re trying to impress and you’re trying to really expand your boundaries and potentially go over that line and kind of
go back that fake to make it line is that you’re probably just setting yourself up to fail because this industry is so forgiving in a way. And what I mean by that is, is that that many of your customers, if you’re a manufacturer going into this industry, have been where you’ve been. mean, a lot of these you talk to this and this industry, this industry, it’s a bunch of entrepreneurs, they’ve come from maybe a multinational, maybe they kind of
in the industry because her father was there as a mechanic and now they want to do their own thing. And they’ve been the small guy. They’ve been the guy that where you are right now saying, hey, please buy this for me, because I don’t know if I got enough money in my account to cover payroll. So this industry, unlike any other industries, that idea to fake it, to make it is just I don’t recommend it at all. Because if you just allow yourself to open up a little bit and speak truthfully.
you’re going to find out that this industry will welcome you. If going back to what I said earlier, if you are trustworthy and that you are honest about your capabilities. Now I’m not saying to pigeonhole yourself, right? I mean, sometimes we got to push ourselves and our customers will pull us there sometimes and that’s okay. But at the end of the day is when you’re working with a new prospect or a new customer, I think it’s very important. You’re right up front what you can and can’t do.
and then be honest with them and say, okay, this is what we’ve done in the past, but I really think my team can do this, which potentially is what this customer needs from you. But at that point, you’re bringing the customer to your level and saying, hey, can we do this together? Can we partner in this? And I know it’s kind of a winded answer there, but I think it’s very important to understand that this industry is very technical. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs and the last thing you want to do is go in the room
is say something that you shouldn’t.
Matthew Allred (08:26)
Yeah, yeah. And you’ve talked about, you know, with me and, you know, other conversations about your own growth, right? That when you first started, you know, you were doing two, three, four stop hydros and then somebody says, Hey, I want to do, I want to do some traction stuff. And, and so the idea of being, well, let’s partner because I don’t know everything to do this and you’re, you obviously don’t know my end of it. So can we do it together? I think it’s the way you kind of portrayed that. And I think that’s what you’re talking about with. Yeah.
partnering and finding the right partners and having people you can really trust and walk together with them.
Travis Hall (09:01)
Yeah, I think that’s very important. I think you hit the nail on the head there with regards to understanding your customer base, understanding your supply chain and understanding that if you are trying something new, you’re upfront. But it could be a new for us. I can only speak in my lane here from a manufacturer, either there’s a new product line in the existing space, like maybe we have a redesign of a two, three stop hydro, or we jump into, as you’re saying, into a different market, which is traction.
where you’re now playing in two, three, four stops, you’re playing five, six, seven, maybe up to 15 or 20. So as long as you’re up front with the customers like, hey, there’s a price point on this thing for a reason, because quite honestly, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. And if you’re OK with that, and I got enough cost savings in my material for you to take that leap of faith in me, we’ll do this thing together. This one might be a little ugly, but the next one and the one after that and the one after that, I promise it will get better and better.
Matthew Allred (09:55)
Sure, sure. Well, and it really helps both of you be better in the future because you’ve learned something. You’ve had somebody walk with you through uncertainty and it’s not, okay, next time we’ve got that, right? We’ve learned something very valuable.
Travis Hall (10:09)
And I going back to, mean, maybe I’ll go back to three or four more times, depending on how this question, the question in Q &A goes, but going back to being trustworthy, you cannot ask a customer or a supplier to take a leap of faith with you and be a partner in quotations if they don’t trust you. Right. So it’s tied to this question here, this growth of this company, which has been radical over the last five or six years.
how did we do this? think first and foremost, to be trustworthy. And then you have these partnerships along the way to kind of keep helping you grow your company.
Matthew Allred (10:47)
Right. No, that’s great. And I mean, you talked about how, you know, you’ve seen projects fall apart. Sometimes, you know, somebody will underbid and then try to, I think you use the word bully, right? Bully somebody into kind of taking responsibility for it. And I think this in part connects with what we’re talking about, about being able to trust people. but tell me a little bit more about what you’ve seen and maybe some of the, some of the things you can, I don’t know, advice for people who maybe, maybe they’ve been sucked into that hole before.
I hear the red flags.
Travis Hall (11:19)
A couple of different things, right? It’s kind of in our side of the industry, that’s a big deal. Like one, if the bids due tomorrow and the guy says, I got to have a number walk away because he’s being pulled into a job last minute. That means you’re pulled into the job and nobody wants that when a division 14 or the specifications is 75 pages long. Right. If somebody says I need a number tomorrow for that kind of that kind of job, you just walk away as much as it hurts. You got to walk away.
But I think it’s important to understand too with these jobs is that there’s only certain people that can, and I’m talking complex jobs. I’m not talking the two stop, three stop Hydro that somebody can get on my website, quote, in seconds. I’m talking about a job that there is truly a division 14 that you have to go through. You’ve got to have RFQ forms or engineering forms out to suppliers. You got to look at the prints five different ways because the specs and the prints don’t align. You got to, got to, you know,
you know, dive deep to get an accurate quote. I think it’s very important to make sure you establish the rules upfront with a customer. and I sell this to my, I tell this to my sales team all the time. You want to be a partner, you want to be an asset, you want to be somebody that educates. Don’t be just a PO taker. Don’t be just their estimator. Like understand that this, you’re in this thing together. They need you, you need them. And I think if you
I guess level up the playing field between your customer and you as a RSM, in my case, they’re sales guys, regional sales managers. They look at you different, right? Because I’ll give you an example. We had a job with Liberty Elevator years ago, right after Sandy, and we had to elevators, four elevators in Ellis Island. Very complex job, right? But the folks at Liberty got us in very early. They were true professionals. They were, I mean,
moral consultants to the National Park Service, more so than elevator contractors. And I learned at that point is that it’s not when you’re on these complex jobs, it’s not about the money. It’s about the knowledge and the experience and the education you can share with your customer because that’s worth something. Right. And goes back to what I said earlier about honesty and trust. They got to trust you that what you’re saying, even though you’re the person providing the elevator package, is the right
answer. Like they’re providing the right solution. And I was blown away way back then. this is like I said, this is probably 2016 ish, something like that. And relatively new to the industry and way, Jaren and those guys approached that back then. True first in class, you remember things like that. You know, you remember
first time being educated about how you should present yourself and present your company and present your solution.
Matthew Allred (14:10)
Right. You mentioned that a lot of times smaller contractors don’t recognize the value they bring. They sometimes undervalue their knowledge. I think that’s what you’re getting at is you have an opportunity to educate because not only is the customer kind of ignorant about what you do, a lot of times they’re kind of scared, right? They’re scared to do the wrong thing. They’re spending a lot of money, lot riding on it. It’s got to be right. So tell me more about the value that…
of educating customers and especially these maybe smaller contractors.
Travis Hall (14:43)
I can’t stress it enough, and I’m gonna say one thing and I’ll step into that. I can’t stress it enough for my customers to understand how valuable they are to their customer. And really the mods are very, very attractive because you get to talk typically one-on-one with a building owner or the consultant that’s working directly for the building.
So there’s a lot of value there. We’ll probably talk about that a little bit later on. But with new construction, there’s a couple of roadblocks, You’ve got typically got an architect, you GC, maybe a consultant, then the building owner. So the person, the decision maker is really, really far away. And the GC wants to make it about price, right? Well, guys, we’re not in a commodity market. An elevator package is not a commodity. A commodity is tied to price. We’re tied to a solution. We’re tied to the value proposition. We’re tied to
true cost of ownership, right? And I think that a independent contractor, a contractor that owns his own business that can work a Saturday without necessarily bill it, billing the GC or potentially they don’t charge for mobilization when their competitor on bid day does, but that’s in the fine print. Or maybe they don’t talk about how proprietary the software packages potentially can be in the aftermarket.
components of that product from the multinationals can be. I’m not here to throw those guys on the bus. all I’m saying is there is a lot of value that you can bring to that general contractor. And the seasoned contractors know this, right? But they don’t want to tell you that they know it because they look at that price because they get paid on buying back a job. And I’m a big believer folks that know me. If you want to understand how somebody thinks, understand how they’re getting compensated.
So a GC they win the job and how they get profit out of that job is they try to squeeze the subcontractors out of their profits so they in turn get profit and therefore their bonus gets bigger on that particular job. Right. It makes sense. Right. Sure. But understand that they’re trying to put you in a commodity market when you’re not a commodity. So you’re adding all this value to your as a nonproprietary independent contractor to your proposal.
Meanwhile, the guy you’re up against, but I’m going to say maybe a multinational, right? Because a lot of our businesses is the independents is that maybe it’s not adding the same value or maybe there’s hidden costs that you need to potentially point out to your customer. So it’s truly apples to apples, right? So I think that educating is important. I think, you know, I tell my RSMs all the time, it like,
You don’t just meet somebody for 10 minutes and talk about the weather. You go in and you sit them down, you buy them lunch, you buy them a dinner, maybe even a breakfast, but you get four or five people at a table and you educate them about what Alliance Elevator Solutions are, as well as what a non-proprietary material package is. I mean, we have an AIA class that’s credit to class. That’s how strongly I feel about it. Like we have…
We as a manufacturer on this side, as you as an independent contractor, we have value that just needs to be presented to the decision maker.
Matthew Allred (18:04)
Yeah. So talk to me just a little bit about that. This is something I’ve heard, you know, and obviously I’m not out there building elevators, but just want to see if you could comment on this. I’m told that the developers in particular kind of always pushing for the lowest dollar, right? Because they don’t, they don’t care so much what happens after they walk away. Whereas, you know, a university, hospital, you know, government, they’re going to live with it. And so there’s kind of a different approach. Is that correct?
Travis Hall (18:33)
Huge, different, completely different customer base. Quite honestly, we don’t even go after the developer, even though they have, if you look at per capita, they probably have a need for more elevator packages than anybody because of the nature of their business, the building and selling, building and selling. But that’s not really, you don’t get the value of a non-proprietary elevator. Let me give you an example, example, just kind of give you a ballpark idea more so than an example, is that,
If you buy a brand new vehicle, right? How many times does that go back to the shop in the first year or two? Right. It really doesn’t. Elevator packages are very similar. Once you get the quirks, if you will figure it out and you get them on running, you run on full speed after the first couple of weeks. I mean, the thing is going to run smooth with very little maintenance, right? And even we’re all about maintenance.
the side of the industry. I don’t want to say don’t do maintenance, but you got to do maintenance, but you really don’t do have to do a lot of maintenance, just like you don’t have to do a lot of maintenance with a new car. You know, so at the end of the day, if you’re if you’re swapping your car out, say you’re leasing, this may be a better example, you’re leasing a car over two years. Do you really care if you change the oil? Like you’re going to get rid of that car in two years. So who cares who has to deal with the the problems that you’re causing in
10, 20, 50,000 miles from now. You don’t care. But if you’re buying that vehicle and the vehicle is, I’m going to have this vehicle for 10 years, you’re going to want to maintain that vehicle a little bit different than a person flipping a car every two. And that’s the kind of difference in my mind between a developer and somebody that owns their own building. The developer is flipping the properties. And typically the developer is trying to sell as a building is coming out of the ground, as a pylons are being poured, he’s trying really, really hard to sell that property off. Right. That’s his job.
He’s trying to get full capacity or I can see maybe it’s 80 % 90%. There’s a big, there’s a number there that he has to hit before he gets out of that building. That really investment. That’s what it is, building investment for him. So he’s trying to flip that investment. So he’s just looking for the elevator to go up and down and work for a year or two. And after that, he may tell the person that’s buying the property, I really care about my elevator, but on the other side of his mouth, he’s like, I don’t really care about that elevator. Right.
And I’m not speaking for all developers. just saying by my experience. a hospital or Institute or even a person that owns their portfolio of properties, they want an elevator that goes in at a competitive price, but is competitively priced when it comes more importantly on a service and maintenance. They want the parts to be lower. They want the service to be lower. They want the monthly fee for the maintenance to be lower.
And that’s where this independent contractor non-proprietary component comes into play. And they’re very, very valuable.
Matthew Allred (21:26)
The total cost of ownership is what I’m hearing, right? It cost you a little bit more upfront, but if it costs you a lot less over 20, 30 years, then you’re far ahead unless you’re the one kind of checking out after year two. you know, so it’s a short term versus long term.
Travis Hall (21:42)
A good point, Matt. And this is one thing I tell you my RSMs to talk to and to ask from their customers is that, yeah, because the feedback sometimes, guys, you’re just not competitive. The multinationals, they’re going 30%, 40 % less. I can’t touch it. Well, who is asking you for the quote? And what does that project look like? What’s that building? Who owns that building? Let’s dig deep into why we are not competitive, right? Well, he has this developers new in town. He’s just looking for the best.
Stop fishing there. Yeah. Cup bait and let’s go to the next fishing hole because that is not where you’re spending your time. You got to spend your time on that university or you got to spend that time on that. As I said before, that maybe that hospital or and there’s, if you know your industry, your region well enough, you know that there’s certain architects that do certain things, right? Some architects are really good at K through 12. Some do office space, class A office space. Some do, you know, the multi built, the multi-purpose, multi-use buildings.
So you want to align yourself with people that have a need for your value proposition, not just a need for an elevator.
Matthew Allred (22:48)
Right. No that’s good point. Obviously you’re speaking to long-term relationships along with, you know, the long-term investment, right? Get to know your customer, get to know what it is they’re doing, whether it’s an architect or a hospital or a university or all of that. And I think this is tying into one of the next questions I had was just, what would you say is your process for helping contractors as they’re looking at maybe some of these complex jobs? You know, maybe it’s VA, maybe it’s a hospital, university, whatever.
evaluating risk versus reward and making the right call. I know we talked about that before, but just curious what your thoughts are.
Travis Hall (23:27)
Yeah, that’s a big question, right? Because there’s a lot of different parts that are connected to servicing that kind of customer. And it’s got to be all in, right? So we play around with the VA, right? And the VA has a unique specification. Everything about the VA is a little bit different than your traditional, say VA hospital can really speak into just the neighboring hospital, the commercial hospital.
But at the end of the day, you got to understand their specifications. You got to understand what the VA pays the contractor, you got to understand what they’re looking for through the walkthrough. You got to understand that they go back to that specifications. They want a 12, 12 gauge. And I’m making this up, but a 12 gauge panel on their wall instead of a 14. And they want 12 on their ceiling instead of 14. And if you provide, if you don’t, if you don’t go all in and understand that specification, you don’t understand how they get paid. You understand what they’re walking, what they want and walkthrough and how they.
actually inspect the elevator. I’ll come back to that in a second because they inspect different than your typical inspector is that you’re going to invest a lot of time, a lot of money, pull your partner suppliers in, and it might be for a complete bust. Like if you’re doing a 14 car mod and you’ve never done a mod before with a VA, but you win the job and you provide 14 cars with the wrong gauge steel on their cab, that could be a big deal. Right. So
I think for me is that you have to really understand one, do you deserve to be at the table? Do you deserve to quote this thing? And that’s gotta be ahead. You gotta, your head’s gotta be right for it. Do you have the funding for it? Can you, cause you do have the tooling, do you have the people that are you built for this? And then what is my goal? Is it just this 14 car mod or is it, do I want that VA hospital in the outreach centers and that is connected to this particular owner? Do I want them under service and maintenance? And how do I do that? Because
Once you’re in with these type of accounts, a complex job or a complex account, you’re in. Going back to what I said earlier before, you are the solution provider. You’re the trust advisor on their team saying, hey, what do you think we should do here? And when you’re in like that, like it’s not a price game. It’s a, you provide the solution they’re looking for? Because they’re going to have challenges. There’s nothing easy about a complex job. just, we’re kind of picking on the VA right now.
But I don’t care if it’s NAFAC or it’s a large university or it’s XYZ. You got to get in early. You got to understand what you’re doing. You got to understand it’s got to be a strategic initiative to go after that particular account.
Matthew Allred (26:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate the way you just kind of talk through that, right? Understanding what you’re after. And then, you yeah, there’s here’s the reward, but here are the risks. And like I say, complexity is part of that. And part of it is just looking at the future. What do you want? And do you have the means to provide it, right? If you’re after the service, but you don’t have a big enough team, well, you’re going to have to address that, for example.
Travis Hall (26:31)
I can’t tell you how critical that first job is. I mean, no pressure, right? But how critical doing it right the first time is because you’re under so many spotlights because you’re the new guy and you gotta, it’s like a make or break it time in your company. Like say you’re trying to level up you’re maybe going from a four or $5 million company, you’re trying to get to the $10 million company and you think this particular account’s gonna change that for you or gonna get you to that level.
all hands on deck, man. Like you even talk to your spouse, your loved one, your partner, like, listen, this is what I’m doing. Are you good with it? Because I’m tied up for six months. But I promise you after this, we’re going to the Bahamas for vacation, right? There’s got to be that little cherry at the end of this thing for most people.
Matthew Allred (27:20)
Yeah, so and that brings up another interesting question, which is you you’ve talked about how you know, not not every customer of yours Do you like really invest in building and developing that relationship? Some don’t need it Maybe some do but talk to me a little bit about how you know, like I say a lot riding on it you know, maybe I’m a smaller contractor and I Call you up. Hey, I really need to get this right from your configurator
to your engineering expertise. You talked a little bit about helping customers avoid some of those pitfalls. Talk to me a little bit about what does that look like?
Travis Hall (27:57)
Yeah,
no, great question. think that it always starts with the leadership team, right? When you talk about strategic accounts and strategic partnerships and having that trust, like there’s folks, you know, we have hundreds of customers now and many of them just get on our configuring, quote the project, 2,3,4 stop hydro attraction, or even mod now. We don’t know anything about them, right?
We provided a solution to a need at that, at that very level. And it works for us and works for them. Great. But, and love those guys, by the way, but then there is the other accounts, I won’t name them, but there’s some accounts that really focus on, modernization. There’s accounts that focus on, transit work and there’s accounts that focus on, you know, large university projects. You know, I got, we got guys down at Texas Tech and
the guys in universities all over the country that focus on that university. So when a job comes up and they’re the guy that’s in a university, it’s going back to us early. It’s a hands on deck for Alliance Elevators. OK, man, this is his baby. This is their account. And we got to take care of this with them. And then it’s going back to early. Like I said, you get in early, you talk to the specifications. You know, it used to be me flying down.
and talking to the consultant or architect and a lot of these bigger accounts have on staff folks that are advising them. Yeah, they say they want, I’ll give you an example though, we don’t have a lot of elevators down there, is Virginia Tech. know, Virginia Tech, you’ve ever been to their campus, have, the exterior of the campus is gorgeous by the my son goes there, I was just blown away with their campus when I first time seen it, is that they have so, all the buildings kind of look the same, they feel the same.
You know, don’t know if that building was built back in the 50s or 60s or if it was built yesterday because they keep, feel in the exterior of the buildings, very, very similar. They have a specification for their buildings that the contractor has been tied to for the last probably 50, 60 years. And it’s the same, you so these guys are entrenched into keeping their baby, their university. you know, elevator use,
is a big deal, right? And we’ve been, I’ve been speaking down there for years. And what I noticed about these guys are just like, I’m very proud of my son going to Virginia Tech. I’m very proud of being a graduate from Penn State. These guys are very, proud of the schools that they work for. They come like, it’s almost like their uniform is a polo that has the Penn State line on it or the Alabama A, you know, it’s like, like these guys are really proud of that. And so
When you go into that environment, you got to understand that these guys are very, they, they’re very proud of what they do and they cross every T dot every I, because it feels like it’s their house. It feels like you’re coming in and doing some, some work in their house, not where they work, right? Like most of us, They’re, they, they feel this connection to it and you’ve got to respect that. So I guess what I’m saying is that with these, these high end accounts, these strategic accounts, and there might be any given company might only have
Matthew Allred (30:53)
It’s right there.
Travis Hall (31:07)
Maybe it’s 15%, maybe it’s 10, maybe it’s 20 % of your clientele where you have this deep connection to, you have this trust with them that they understand their client, you understand their client, and you’re truly there to create a solution for both of
Matthew Allred (31:23)
Right. Right. So, I mean, obviously you’re, you know, like I say, it’s a deeply personal connection. There’s, there’s skin in the game. It’s when you’re in their house, it’s kind of like, Hey, you know, this is my chair or my carpet, or, know, you don’t want to mess that up. But it obviously you, you as a company, Alliance Elevator are also taking, taking the ownership that, I recognize the, pressure you’re under. We’re here for you. We want to make sure we get this right. So you get this right. So they get this right.
Travis Hall (31:48)
Yeah.
I think there’s something to be said because I think because the industry is moving the way it is, I’ll just kind of throw it in. Why I think where some of the success has been is that we’re a privately owned company. We don’t have private equity. We’re not we’re not traded. And I think people have a connection to that. I think people there is, you know, there’s been a movement for the price since Covid or coming out of Covid It’s like you buy local. Right. And I think that
these large complex type projects or these universities, hospitals, they like the idea they gravitate to the, you know, the privately owned company. Oh, here’s the owner. Even if I have a solution, half time I don’t have a solution, but they like to see that either the RSM, which is, can get me on their phone in a matter of seconds, or I fly down and take a look at the situation they have. And they like knowing that
they have access, the customer as well as my team members have access to me because I mean, you know, that’s without those guys calling me, I don’t have a job, right?
Matthew Allred (32:55)
Well, what you’ve just spoken to is exactly what we said before about working in your house is because it’s privately owned and it’s your skin in the game, you care every bit as deeply as each of these other people care to make sure it’s right. Yeah. Because, you know, it’s very personal to you too.
Travis Hall (33:13)
And I tell you, I learned it from the best. I mean, you know, Pete Meeks is a partner of mine and that guy takes everything he does to heart, like every connection, every relationship, every job, every team member. And I don’t know how many hundreds that he has now, but I learned from him how to do that, how to make that connection and how to value people on both sides, supplier and customer. So.
Very fortunate to have a partner like them that taught me that years ago.
Matthew Allred (33:44)
That’s awesome. We’ll probably, make this toward the end of the, of the conversation, but let’s talk a little bit about, know, we mentioned the online configurator, which I think is awesome, but you’ve also told me you’re doing like, I forget exactly what you said, but some kind of AI rollout, right? Your, your AI implementation, integration, something. Yeah. Tell me more about that. Yeah.
Travis Hall (34:05)
So, you know, I think over the last year, I think AI has developed and bloomed and blossomed to the everyday folk like myself, right? The guys that watch tech and understand it’s probably been like, Travis, it’s been around for five years, man. I did not know that until I got introduced to this thing called chat GBT. And once I did, was like, it was like a video game. like, I just, I got
I went bonkers, right? Everybody I was talking to, I read as much as I could. I think I shared with you the AI Driven Leader by Jeff Woods. Amazing book, right? Amazing. Buy it, read it, buy it. Do it twice, three times. That’s how good that book is. What I realized is that AI has changed just like the internet back in the 1990s and early 2000s. And I guess I’m going to go on record saying that I think it’s bigger than that.
Matthew Allred (34:46)
know what does.
Travis Hall (35:00)
I think AI in my generation, in my career, I think AI is the biggest thing that hit me and my people like me. And I think what I realized very early on with AI is like this thing is mind shifting in a way that I need to understand it to the depth that it is, right? As much as I can process in my little mind, I need to understand this. And I think that more I read, I realized that AI is not necessarily gonna replace people. It’s gonna replace people that don’t understand AI.
If you don’t know AI, it will replace you, I promise you. So I guess that’s my little quote of today. But I think that what we’re doing in our company is, know, the elevator industry, my configurators and all that seem like state of the art for our industry, but probably been around for a long time in other industries. I think it’s important as leaders, and I don’t care if you’re independent contractor or multinational or a manufacturer on our side, is that you got to look outside of our industry from time to time and pull in
processes, pull in tech, pull in people that make sense for the elevators right? So I think when it comes to AI is what we’re doing is, yeah, we have AI script that checks our quotes now. We’ve had that for some time now. And then once we realized that how AI could work, was like, why don’t we just, like, let’s just bring it through our company. So we vetted out an AI consultant and
We’re using it just bits and pieces throughout the organization, nothing crazy. It’s not like we’re going AI is going to answer every email out of Alliance Elevator. That’s not the case. Maybe at some point, but that’s not the case right now. Right now, it’s making sure that my engineers understand what’s required from them. Like, kind of the matching game. Here’s the specification, here’s our print. Do they match? Well, we have reviews, engineering reviews that take hours to make sure that’s right now.
What if AI could assist us there, right? Not do it for us, but assist us. What if AI could fill out an RFQ form for a supplier in one of those complex jobs, right? So like AI is not a strategy, it’s a tool. Like if you have a strategy as a company, you build your strategy, have offsite session, you get your leadership all involved, you start marching, and then you pull in AI to help you on that march, right? So I think some people kind of get that confused, they like, ⁓ they want to go gung ho all AI.
AI should never be the strategy. It should be the tool in my opinion.
Matthew Allred (37:28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. How would you say it’s maybe changing the way that you’re operating as a business?
Travis Hall (37:34)
Yeah, and I wouldn’t say it’s there yet. I want to make sure we’re on you know, we’ve had a number of meetings I have a leadership execution team because elevate AI is the team and what we’re trying to do is figure out where it makes sense now without Just because you got to trust it right and AI it has to learn and you can’t just throw it into a big world problem Without you know, it’s you can’t let it run without it crawling
Matthew Allred (38:00)
It can hallucinate, right? I mean, you don’t, don’t want to hallucinating anything to be running your business.
Travis Hall (38:07)
Yeah, you can’t. And you got to understand, too, like, let’s go back and understand different subscriptions and different software and what does it mean? Are you just feeding the open AI? Is that what you’re doing? No, you better not. You better have the Teams membership or the Enterprise membership. Like, you got to be, just don’t start throwing stuff on chat GPT especially like the personal or free. All you’re doing is feeding your competition. You’re feeding your competitors potentially very valuable information, indirectly.
Matthew Allred (38:35)
Sure, sure. Yeah, because it just becomes part of the algorithm and, I guess it’s out there for anybody to pick up. So.
Travis Hall (38:41)
Yeah, we have some things cooking, but I can’t share that with
Matthew Allred (38:44)
quite yet. No, it’s all good. So you have, you know, in regards to AI and technology and you know, it’s all, I mean, just personal confession, right? It’s like I want it all right now. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So hard to wait to develop to grow to learn. And yet you had said something I think it was interesting. Focus on flying the airplane, airplane first, communicate second. And in other words, run your business first. Technology second is the way you you kind of applied that.
How do you balance that in your own company?
Travis Hall (39:18)
I think that’s important. Where that came from, that comment is that, you know, I was a private, I was an Air Force pilot, not in the Air Force, but they taught me how to fly. And I got very, as a young, was 19 years old flying an airplane in my, and we were going into our first large airport and I’m getting all bothered. I’m getting, everybody’s trying to communicate to me. I don’t know what to say. How does, I don’t even know where I’m at at this point, right? And if anybody’s been a pilot in a small airplane,
Yeah. And behind the airplane, that’s what I was. I was behind the airplane and like some people understand that that’s listening today. And my like, started like coming off my approach plan. I was flustered and my, instructor says something very common. It’s like Travis fly the airplane, communicate second. And that was when I was 19 years old and I’m 47 now, and I use that to my team probably weekly, like focus on our goals. All right. Focus on what’s important. We.
spend a lot of time and effort building a strategic plan every year. And we develop things like EOS and discipline ourselves on that strategic journey. So you have to make sure going back, you say like all this shiny stuff that comes into play. If it doesn’t fit the plan, if it doesn’t fit the discipline, the EOS, then you just got to let it kind of sit there. Now, if it keeps sitting there, you kind of like, you got to
at some point, like communicating with an airplane with eight ground or air traffic control, you got to talk to it eventually. Right. So when the time is right, you look at it, you’re like, you know what? It’s time. It’s time to look at this time to figure out, does this make sense to incorporate in the plan this year or should I table that for next year? Do we fight? Do we have the resource for it? And then it’s just like anything, you know, like the smart goal you got, you guys, you know, it’s you got measure it, you got all that, you you read the book
But at end of the day is that I don’t, that’s what I guess to answer your question, that’s what I do. I made sure that.
Matthew Allred (41:19)
I was going to ask you if you have a formal process to kind of revisit, relook, because it’s so easy in my world. Like I want it all. And then sometimes I can’t have it. It’s like, I’m just going to forget about it because I don’t maybe don’t have the discipline to nibble away at it.
Travis Hall (41:35)
Oh, and I did a lot wrong before I got it right. I want to tell you that man. First year is my, Andrew Eaglov is my operations manager and he started as a draft and then he worked his way up. Probably one of the smartest guys I know. The smartest guy I in this industry. Love the guy to death. He’s like, Travis, we can’t keep doing this. Like my engineering team’s flipping out here because this week you want this and next month you want that. And I’m like, that’s just my personality. I’m a high energy guy.
And then he’s the guy that kind of set me up. All right, let’s do this step by step. And he’s a no, no frills kind of guy. I, you know, him and I are like oil and water, but we balance like a yin and yang. I don’t have
Matthew Allred (42:15)
to
say. Yeah, it sounds like you’re the visionary and he’s the integrator. You want it all right now. And he’s like, stop process. Yeah.
Travis Hall (42:23)
And
We created this, we are developing this EOS process. And for those that don’t know what EOS is, read What the Heck is EOS and then Traction are two great books about EOS. And if you got a company more than five or eight employees, I highly encourage using different disciplines in EOS because it can really make you accountable and keep you on your vision, but on your goals. I think that that’s what he does for me, right? He keeps me tied. He’s just like,
before we actually had the measurable of EOS and the discipline EOS, he was that guy that did that for me. And I think it’s important that everybody has that, right? you are a visionary, everybody works in different ways. You have mechanics that are phenomenal mechanics and kind of poor businessmen. If you’re a great mechanic and you don’t like looking at a computer screen, find somebody that loves looking at a computer screen and hates being a mechanic because you need that balance in your business. And the sooner that you can get out of stuff that you don’t like to do or potentially your weakness is
the quicker you can excel at your strengths, right?
Matthew Allred (43:22)
Yeah, well the so the third book that came to mind is Rocket Fuel right? It’s kind of the same same authors, right? But it’s like you need you need that combination and to kind of ignite each other’s gifts and if you don’t have it you’re off maybe in La La Land dreaming too much versus the other person’s that’s a little too structured to actually move move upwards so yeah
Travis Hall (43:46)
I think there’s, you know, there’s, there’s so many people out there. There’s thousands of great ideas every day. What I mean, as Americans, we’re very creative folk, you know, we have the ability to act upon an idea and start a business, right? There’s more entrepreneurs in the United States than anywhere else. But at the end of the day is that not every idea is a great idea today, right?
So you really gotta understand and discipline yourself if you’re somebody like visionary or big picture guy, kind of like myself.
Matthew Allred (44:18)
Yeah, that’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. So as we wrap up today, What else is near and dear to your heart that maybe you want to get out to the, to our audience of listeners?
Travis Hall (44:29)
I would close by saying like being an entrepreneur, starting your own business, doing your own thing, there’s nothing like it, right? There’s absolutely nothing like it. And I think I have this saying that the family members know me, I’ve heard it a few times, you only live once. And I think if you got some passion inside you,
and try it. Even if you fail, at you did it, right? At least you can say, tried, didn’t work out, now I’m back. Because the way the market is right now, even if you try for six months, a year, a year and a half, you’re going to get a job. It just, if you have any kind of skill, the skill that you think you have to start your own business is still marketable six months, eight months, nine months, a year from now. You know, there’s definitely ways that
You want to side hustle it first. but you have to think through it and there’s, ways to do it. But I’m a big believer if you’ve got a passion for something and if you work hard, you don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to stress that. And it’s never going to be perfect. You know, you’re going to, you’re going to make mistakes along the way and you’re going to figure it out along the way. And I think that if you want it bad enough, I think it’s possible.
And I guess with that being said is make sure if you’re in a relationship, make sure they know about it. Make sure they know how important it is. Because when you start your business, man, there’s everybody yelling at you. I don’t care if it’s a customer, a employee, the bank, whatever it is, they’re going to be yelling at you all day. Right. And when you come home, you can’t get more of that because you just there’s only so much that can fill in the bottle. Right. Yeah. So I.
Matthew Allred (46:06)
I think it’s brilliant.
Travis Hall (46:08)
I’m not sure that’s how you want it to close it, but I love those that start their own business and fuel their passion for something. I support it 110%. And I feel that on the flip side of that, you got to have it. all in. When you start a business, man, it’s your family’s involved. You just got to know that going into it. But I can tell you, in my personal opinion, it’s 100 % worth it.
Matthew Allred (46:37)
Absolutely. No, I love that. And honestly, that’s one of the biggest things I love about these interviews, about doing the podcast is, is not only do I believe the elevator industry is, kind of the, the perfect microcosm to go start your own business. Right. I mean, there’s just so many different avenues of, know, you think of a new idea and boom, boom, boom, you know, you’ve, you’ve learned the basics, but I also really feel like it’s at the heart, soul core of, of the American dream. Right. I don’t believe for a second that the
Pilgrims sailed over here to work at some big fat company and be or be a bureaucrat. And was like, no, they wanted their own thing. That it’s not about owning a home. It’s about being your own boss. That is the American dream, in my opinion.
Travis Hall (47:18)
And this industry welcomes it. Before the elevators, like I was, you military, and then I was heavy equipment, like, hey, starting your own business, heavy equipment, good luck, you know, but this, this industry welcomes the NAEC is a big, like they promote it. They welcome you, they bring you together. It’s like, I can’t speak enough about the NAEC and what they do for somebody just starting out. And I’m not trying to do a plug here. I’m saying if you’re young in this industry, when I say young, I mean, just starting out and I don’t care if you’re
60 years old or 18, get into the NAEC because they will help you get you in front of people that like guys like me, guys like Matt, guys that had done it before that and all we want to do is help, man. We just, we do.
Matthew Allred (48:02)
Yeah, that’s perfect. Thank you, Travis, for being with me today. It’s been a lot of fun and I wish you the very best as you continue to build the business.
Travis Hall (48:10)
No you too Matt, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Matthew Allred (48:13)
Thank you.