Elevator Expertise & AI: Preserving the Past While Building the Future | Carlos Escobar
Today’s guest is Carlos Escobar, Traction Elevator Aficionado with Hyperion Solutions. Carlos grew up in a machine shop surrounded by craftsmen who could turn raw metal into solutions and that mindset still drives everything he does today. Carlos has spent his career tackling the toughest elevator modernization challenges and preserving century-old machines. More recently, he has been thinking deeply about where AI, training, and the future of the trades are headed next.
Chapters:
- 00:00 From Machine Shop to Mastery
- 04:58 The Allure of Legacy Equipment
- 07:32 Lessons from the Old Machines
- 09:56 Complex Challenges in Modernization
- 12:45 The Importance of Technical Expertise
- 15:42 AI: The Future of Training
- 18:24 Training the Next Generation
- 20:50 Mentorship and Industry Connections
Transcript:
Carlos Escobar (00:00)
Now, what we’re saying is let’s put in this little machine, right? for a whole host of reasons, we want to use a smaller machine. So you do. You bring this thing in, it’s a little smaller and you’re only making contact with this arc on the cable. So now you’ve reduced the amount of traction
you can impose on that cable right? Well, how do we compensate for that? Let’s change a groove profile. let’s come in with a real aggressive V-groove that will really bite on the cable and still deliver the same traction we need in this original hoist way in a mod, right? Well, now you’re wearing the cable much faster. You’re wearing the drive sheave much faster. Probably your new requirement is to harden that traction
you might even then go to a two-to-one arrangement, and then you’re essentially doubling all those bends and an outsider might just say great new machine smaller footprint easy to install But there’s there’s downstream consequences of doing so it doesn’t mean it’s bad But when a lot of conversations now hover around you know rope life How come I’m only getting two years or five years out of this cable when? last time we changed them they went for 20 years,
Matt Allred (00:57)
Yeah, yeah.
Carlos Escobar (01:00)
I think that’s the, that should be part of the conversation or at least the context in which people talk about rope life and sheave life for that matter. it’s an incredibly consequential topic.
And if that’s not part of the conversation with the building owner, then you get that mismatch in expectations. If that expectation were set at the outset, maybe that wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Matt Allred (01:22)
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast brought to you by the Allred Group. I’m your host, Matt Allred. 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 our priority. Call now 404-890-0445.
guest is Carlos Escobar, Traction Elevator Aficionado with Hyperion Solutions.
Carlos grew up in a machine shop surrounded by craftsmen who could turn raw metal into solutions and that mindset still drives everything he does today. Carlos has spent his career tackling the toughest elevator modernization challenges and preserving century-old machines. More recently, he has been thinking deeply about where AI, training, and the future of the trades are headed next.
Matt Allred (02:10)
Carlos, welcome to the show.
Carlos Escobar (02:12)
Thanks for having me, Matt. Pleasure to be here.
Matt Allred (02:14)
Yeah, I know I’m excited. I’ve enjoyed previous conversations. I’m excited to dig a little deeper today and wanted to start kind of at the beginning. I mean, you essentially grew up in a machine shop, right? And built your career around traction equipment. Tell me a little bit about those kind of early days, you know, kind of being hands-on in that environment and how that shaped who you are.
Carlos Escobar (02:37)
Well, I mean I genuinely grew up in a machine shop from, you know, childhood. and I was surrounded by some great craftsmen, some folks that could turn a block of metal into just about anything you could imagine. And I think just being surrounded by that can do attitude and folks with that deep skillset, but they could use the equipment around them and, you know, think through complex repairs
or even just creative projects. I think that stayed with me. I think my entire career is built around not the cookie cutter problems, but looking for what’s difficult to solve and then figuring out how to stack the pieces together to get to a positive outcome. yeah, and then the obvious too, right? Just being in a machine shop and being surrounded by the milling machines and the lathes and the gear hobbers
Matt Allred (03:20)
That’s cool.
Carlos Escobar (03:28)
It’s just fun to be exposed to all the possible ways that you can produce
Matt Allred (03:34)
Absolutely, well, and I think that’s part of what’s going through my mind is you see so many possibilities, right? It’s like, what, the lathe can do that? Well then, I have 16 other ideas now that I can create, and who knows, maybe you were building some of your own tools at some point or just experimenting with, you know, who knows what.
Carlos Escobar (03:39)
Yeah. Sure.
Yeah.
Absolutely. there’s a, there’s a fun story. A guy that, you know, if we talk about folks that shaped my career, there’s a guy, Paul Moore, we were building this complicated setup to be able to speed test governors, right? To figure out when they were going to trip and not, were preparing jaws. And anyway, none of that’s important, but it was me and a group of machinists huddled around this thing and trying to figure out, how do we get this thing up to
How do we get the RPMs up high enough to be able to test some of these trip speeds on these different, and we were coming up with different belt diameters to move belts on. And Paul Moore comes in and he just says, you know, you can just hook an angle grinder to that thing.
Matt Allred (04:21)
Hmm.
Carlos Escobar (04:30)
And you know, those things run up at, you know, 1800 plus RPMs. just, you know, it was like this simple solution to this problem that was taking four of us, you know, half days worth of work. So yeah, being exposed to what’s possible.
Matt Allred (04:32)
wind it up.
Carlos Escobar (04:43)
it always makes you, it kind of drives you to find solutions.
Matt Allred (04:46)
absolutely. Yeah. And inspires you that, there always is a solution, right? I mean, I’m sure that every problem that came before you, it’s like, okay, there is a solution. It might take us a week or two, but let’s figure out what it is.
Carlos Escobar (04:58)
Yeah,
yep, absolutely.
Matt Allred (05:02)
Awesome, awesome. You told me that you’ve worked on some of the oldest elevator machines that are still operating. What fascinates you most about legacy equipment from the 40s, 50s, 60s?
Carlos Escobar (05:13)
You know, that they’ve been doing their job sometimes for a century. You know, reliably doing what they were intended to do. Not a whole lot more, no less, but they do their job for many, many, many decades. I love the fact that they’re repairable. They were built before we could really dial in all the constraints and, you know, before CAD and everything
Matt Allred (05:18)
That’s amazing.
Carlos Escobar (05:38)
where you could engineer something to the tiniest, slimmest margin of acceptable performance. You know, it’s a time when a couple of guys would say, yeah, that meets all the requirements. Well, let’s just add another half inch of material just to be sure. And you know what? That half inch of material is what allows people like me to go back and, you know, repair and rehabilitate some of that old equipment. So, and just the craftsmanship, the uniqueness of it, you know, modern stuff.
Matt Allred (05:49)
Just to make sure.
Carlos Escobar (06:04)
It’s got its place and I’m not like a anti-new equipment, but every machine looks the same. I mean there’s no style to them, right? I mean, you can identify, you can look at a Watson or an ABC or a Haughton and the brand is expressed in the product. there’s kind of a, an artistic beauty to them.
that I think is kind of lacking. Now we’re pretty purpose-built.
Matt Allred (06:29)
Yeah, no, it’s a good point. mean, it’s in a way, maybe that same kind of appreciation when you see a 57 Chevrolet drive by, it’s like, hey, there’s something special about that. And not everybody gets to see a 1957, elevator machine. It’s like, okay.
Carlos Escobar (06:36)
Yes! Yes!
Yeah, it’s not gatekeeping per se, right? But there is a small club of people, I guess you would say, and we find each other at trade shows and everything. And it’s like a game to pull up the most obscure machine ever and make sure that no one else but the tiniest handful of people can identify it. And that’s fun. That’s a fun little game to play with it too.
Matt Allred (07:09)
That’s funny.
I mean, it’s a little bit like, yeah, fine wines, right? You kind of got to know what you’re looking at. And a lot of people don’t, right? I’ve got a friend that he loves obscure opera music and I don’t know how to appreciate that. Yeah. Very cool. So you mentioned the newer stuff, right? And newer is cool and often seen as better. But what would you say the new stuff can learn?
Carlos Escobar (07:13)
Yeah. Yes.
Right, right, you need to taste for it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes.
Matt Allred (07:36)
from the older machines. I mean you talked a little bit about the tolerances and some of that
Carlos Escobar (07:39)
You know, they probably learned all the technical lessons, I think that you can from the older generally. You know, I think we moved away from and the market requires something different of modern machines, right? I mean, the efficiency and the footprint and the ease of installation, you know, and probably reducing some of the assemblies or at least the most, the more complex parts of those machines to components that are
Matt Allred (07:44)
Mm-hmm.
Carlos Escobar (08:06)
right? ⁓
Matt Allred (08:06)
Sure, sure,
a little more modular-ish it sounds like.
Carlos Escobar (08:09)
Yeah, and that all makes sense. And I think it’s, you know, we’re marching in the right direction.
I think in doing so, you eliminate the need for folks to have just the underlying understanding of how some of these systems interact or why. When you repair or repour a pedestal bearing, you would never have to think about why, you know, the
Matt Allred (08:27)
Mm-hmm.
Carlos Escobar (08:36)
the load on the sheave side of a gearbox might be causing asymmetric wear. You don’t have to reason through all the steps that you might otherwise have to do like you once did. Now it’s just, hey, there’s a bearing noise here. The entire gearbox gets swapped in most cases now. So I think that…
Matt Allred (08:49)
Sure.
Carlos Escobar (08:56)
economically, the economics of buying parts and elevators and machinery and everything maybe makes sense, but I think
It’s eliminated the need for lot of the more underlying technical expertise.
Matt Allred (09:08)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can see that, yeah, if it’s just to swap it out, well, then you don’t get your hands in. And it’s a little bit like more classic automobiles. used to see a more people climbing under the hood and working on stuff. And now it’s kind of an engineered away. It’s like now you can’t touch that anymore.
Carlos Escobar (09:21)
Yeah. You can’t.
Right, right. It’s all housed in this little box somewhere and swap it out and rewire it in and you’re done.
Matt Allred (09:34)
Yep. Yep. That’s interesting.
And, you know, obviously talking about, you know, highly customized mod challenges, it feels like maybe that’s part of what you, you know, just the complex elevator modernization project probably intrigues in the same way as kind of what I was getting at is that you have a chance to almost like a puzzle, right? not handed to you.
Carlos Escobar (09:56)
That’s a great way to put it. I mean,
it’s exactly
that. my time at Titan, right? I mean, we were, we were this bespoke small shop that tried to take on kind of the tougher challenges. We were never built to compete with folks that were sourcing overseas or whatnot. I mean it was just the scale of that wasn’t what we, what we went for. but it was always the difficult mods where you had to preserve these
really specific rope drops or a basement machine with some overhead sheaves that just had to be a particular diameter or width or rope spacing or cantilevered, underslunged car frame or something. Just the most difficult projects were the ones that you could work on for a couple days, reason through and come up with a plan or a way to either adapt what was there or reproduce.
what existed 70 years ago. And that pulls in from so many parts of the shop, right? I mean, you’re talking to the engineering crew and then, you know, the welding team and, you know, everyone’s huddled frequently to figure out how to get through one of those mods. And at the end of the day, I don’t know if the customer knows that, you know, they might not. I don’t know if they know how much we enjoy working on that. And maybe that’s something we should, we should work towards, but.
Yeah, those are the best projects. The other stuff, you know.
Matt Allred (11:16)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I just want to ask, how does it feel as a team to kind of bang your heads against this project for a few days and come up with a plan? I it almost sounds military-esque to say, hey, we’ve got to get in, save the princess, get her out of the castle, over the wall, and not hurt anybody.
Carlos Escobar (11:31)
Yeah.
God, you know, this is a fun, you know, it’s a lot less, it’s anticlimactic, right? Cause that’s just like Tuesday, you know? I mean it’s the rush of accomplishing it, you know, get it out the door on time or delivering it at 5 a.m. or whatever it is, right? I mean, you cross that threshold, you cross the finish line and then it’s Wednesday and do it all over again. There’s no like real.
Matt Allred (11:55)
Do it again.
Carlos Escobar (11:59)
And there probably should be, right? More of a debrief on how to, it’s the challenge of the day, right? How do you document the workflow to ensure that you’re consistently delivering the same result, right? But in reality, it’s not that climactic, right? Tuesday happens, then Wednesday, and you just do it all over again.
Matt Allred (12:16)
Well, yes, I
mean, if you’re doing it every day, maybe it’s like, you know, when do you take time to celebrate and do high fives and go, dude, you really came through for me on that, you know?
Carlos Escobar (12:24)
Yeah.
I don’t know. That’s a really interesting insight and something that I’ll bounce around with the crew and say, hey, you know we should celebrate some of these wins a little more often because we just, you know, it’s the normal course of business.
Matt Allred (12:37)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and again, it sounds like you got complex projects all the time. when do you celebrate? Right. It’s like, well, I’m just going to do it again tomorrow.
Carlos Escobar (12:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, that’s the routine, right? But it’s nice that they come in fresh every day and there’s something new to look at and another problem to work through. And at the moment, it’s a little heated and it’s a little fast and I need this answer and I got to get this response out and I got to figure out this dimension and I’m missing this piece of data. But somehow it all comes together at the end.
Matt Allred (13:04)
For
sure. Yeah. I mean, it seems like it would be really gratifying to take on big challenges, to win, to move to the next one. And that’s why I kind of got the idea of, know, when do you celebrate, right? But yeah, I’m sure you’ll come up with something if you haven’t already. There you go. There you go. So I’m just, you know, for people outside the trade who honestly, little bit like myself, I’ve not been on a cartop, right? I learn about these things and learn how to even
Carlos Escobar (13:18)
Yeah, I’ll work on that. That’ll be Thursday. Right.
Matt Allred (13:34)
pronounce them from people that I talk to, right? But from somebody outside the trade, you know, to hear about ropes and sheaves and grooves and traction, they may not have a concept for that, but why would you say that’s, well, those are all a bigger deal than most people realize. I mean, obviously that’s the kind of the heart and soul of what makes it go, right?
Carlos Escobar (13:53)
Yeah, you know, this is it ties into the modern equipment and what we’re requiring of it, what the building expectation is when we when you remove these massive legacy machines that had these, you know, 36, 40 inch drivesheaves And, you know, if you could imagine they were able to keep contact with ⁓ a rope, a cable, you know, for
this percentage of the drive sheave and produce traction over that entire radius, right? That entire arc. Now, what we’re saying is let’s put in this little machine, right? We want to save footprint, floor space, we want to make it easy to install, we don’t want to have to, you know, for a whole host of reasons, we want to use a smaller machine. So you do. You bring this thing in, it’s a little smaller or a little shorter, and you’re only making contact with this arc on the cable. So now you’ve reduced the amount of traction you can…
you can impose on that cable the amount that you can actually lift, right? Well, how do we compensate for that? Then we say, well, let’s change the groove geometry. Let’s change a groove profile. And so someone says, all right, let’s come in with a real aggressive V-groove that will really bite on the cable and still deliver the same traction we need in this original hoist way in a mod, right? Well, now you’re wearing the cable much faster. You’re wearing the drive sheave much faster. Probably your new requirement is to harden that
sheave.
Matt Allred (15:15)
Well,
if it’s smaller, you’re bending it at a tighter angle, which has to affect the longevity.
Carlos Escobar (15:20)
And then you you might even then go to a two-to-one arrangement, and then you’re essentially doubling all those bends and so I Think an outsider might just say you know great new machine smaller footprint easy to install But there’s there’s downstream consequences of doing so it doesn’t mean it’s bad But when a lot of conversations now hover around you know rope life How come I’m only getting two years or five years out of this cable when? You know last time we changed them they went for 20 years, and there’s
Matt Allred (15:42)
Yeah, yeah.
Carlos Escobar (15:47)
You know, there’s a lot of hearsay and I don’t know that all of it is true, you know, I think that’s the, that should be part of the conversation or at least the context in which people talk about rope life and sheave life for that matter. There’s real consequences to what size we produce these drivesheaves at, how we engineer the rope groove, how we deliver traction. So it’s an incredibly consequential topic.
Matt Allred (16:11)
Yeah
Sure, and it has to all be weighed at the beginning. I mean, I did talk to a rope expert once and he was just telling me that, when you get to the V-groove that you’ve dramatically decreased the life of your rope. So you just need to know that you’re gonna have to replace it in three to five years instead of 20 to 30
Carlos Escobar (16:29)
Yeah.
And if that’s not part of the conversation with the building owner, typically through the consultant or even directly from the contractor, then you get that mismatch in expectations. And someone says, hey, I just installed this brand new elevator and how come I’m changing ropes every three years and whose responsibility is it? If that expectation were set at the outset, maybe wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Matt Allred (16:52)
Yeah, I mean, if they know that they’re trading rope replacements for a greener machine and it’s smaller, easier to install, then okay, no big deal.
Carlos Escobar (17:00)
Yeah, that’s right.
That’s right, as long as it’s documented and someone knows what they’re agreeing to, then it’s fine.
Matt Allred (17:06)
Hahaha
Yeah, agreed. Well, let’s talk a little bit about AI right now. Obviously, that was part of our previous conversations and obviously it’s everywhere. You can’t not talk about it, it seems like. But why do you think AI will become such a powerful tool for training and supporting elevator mechanics, especially as we’re talking about older machines and just kind of that knowledge that once it retires, it’s gone?
Carlos Escobar (17:19)
Yeah.
Geez, you know, and I’m probably one of those people that’s going down this rabbit hole right now and really trying to wrap my head around, what is possible. Obviously, you know, I’m far from bleeding edge with it, but you know, it is remarkable to me how easily it can break down those moats that gate-kept expertise that used to exist in people that were around, I want to call them the old timers, right? I mean, you know, the folks that shaped me in the machine shop.
my old man, course, then Paul Moore and all these pillars, least in the New York market, these folks had tremendous expertise. Most of them are gone or retired. Well, how do we not only just database that, document it, but then make it reasonably available at people’s fingertips? And nothing could possibly compare to AI
its ability to process such vast amounts of data contextualize and then present it to people in any individualized format that makes the most sense for them. I mean, that connection is incredibly powerful. That’s like the challenge, right? How do we turn what we remember, check a gearbox to make sure it doesn’t exceed 200 degrees. Well, where did that come from? Where’s the technical standard that
Matt Allred (18:38)
Yeah, yeah.
Carlos Escobar (18:49)
you relate to to know that or to be able to defend that position. it’s like an impossible question to answer, right? How do I think it’ll change you? I mean just democratizes that expertise in a way that
somebody’s gonna figure out how to put it in people’s hands.
Matt Allred (19:04)
Yeah, Well,
it’s almost like they have to, right? Because you can’t, You know once again, once it retires, it’s gone. And so it’s almost like you need to get every old retiring machinist and have them sit with an AI agent for however many hours and try to glean everything they ever knew and go through every install. And then maybe there’s a way to try to force feed that into the next generation and say, hey, learn all this.
Carlos Escobar (19:19)
Yeah!
That’s right.
Well, imagine that for your veteran of the industry, right in your pocket on a phone, right next to you when you’re turning wrenches or you have a question or, I don’t think that’s that far away.
Matt Allred (19:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
Yeah, well, I mean, they’ve already got the smart glasses or something where you can like look at something. And so if they’re talking to you the whole time, right, and you’re standing in a machine room, maybe that’s the ideal AI assistant can start relaying or you can ask it questions or,
Carlos Escobar (19:46)
Yes.
all of it.
I mean, this is like trying to figure out what’s on the other side of the edge of the universe, right? I mean, we don’t know what we don’t know. it’s unbelievably powerful, you know, and if folks start infusing their normal workflows with it, I it’s gonna accelerate, right? It’s exponential even. You’re gonna quickly find out that the edges of this system are way further than
Somebody that thought that, you know, whatever, CoPilot or ChatGPT was just a glorified Google search, I think you’re quickly going to find that it’s far more powerful than that
Matt Allred (20:32)
it feels like it’s coming at a time when we really need it, right? A lot of baby boomers, a lot of knowledge going out the door. How do we get the next group ready to go? I mean, this might be a silly question, but where are machinists trained these days? Like lot of them were trained in the field, hands on, right?
Carlos Escobar (20:51)
any kind of vocational training, which is a shame, right? That it doesn’t really exactly exist in a lot of high school environments anymore. But vocational schools, tech schools, that kind of thing, sometimes you think it’s either the guy or woman turning the wrench, doing the work on the tools.
That’s incredibly difficult to replace or change. You know everything in the middle between them and strategy feels like it’s at risk. But yeah, where do those machines come from? I mean they are homegrown. You know, lot of guys at Titan, for example, I mean, you have folks that are 15, 20 year tenure people on those machines. It’d be real challenging to replace them or for anyone with a manufacturing
facility, certainly domestically, to replace that skill set, I would probably turn to a guy like you, Matt, and say, we need 20 more machinists. I mean, it’s difficult. It’s a tall order.
Matt Allred (21:43)
Yeah. Right, right. Well, and it’s almost, I mean, the question that comes to mind is, you know, are they training somebody? All right. Is there somebody standing right next to them? But then it could be a headcount issue and, maybe this person doesn’t want to learn this skill.
Carlos Escobar (21:55)
Well, I mean, to your point, I mean, about AI and the glasses. I mean there are folks working on AI-enabled glasses that will literally depict workflows for you or go-no-go gauges or, you know, tee up the next.
jig or fixture that you need to move the particular job that you’re working on to. I mean, there are ways of helping to accelerate training. And I think that’s kind of the next thing that we, It’s not the next thing. We should be exploring that now immediately.
Matt Allred (22:22)
Yeah.
Absolutely, yeah. I mean tell me, what do you think great training should look like, you know, now and into the next 10 years,
Carlos Escobar (22:35)
you know, I, I definitely don’t have the right answer for this, but, you know, I think the reliance on that experiential training, right? the helper, that kind of like prescribed system where you would put in, you know, two or five years or something working under somebody. I’ve heard that my entire career and I don’t, it’s, it’s gotten us to this point and we’re still asking for more.
Matt Allred (22:57)
Right,
Carlos Escobar (22:59)
So
that’s obviously not enough, right? I think because we’re living through this period of, you know sure social media has a place in this, but you know, who hasn’t tried to fix something just looking for it on YouTube? I mean content is pervasive, it’s everywhere. So why aren’t we using that platform more frequently? And there’s obviously folks that, you know, you and I probably, we We see
Matt Allred (23:16)
It is huge, yeah.
Carlos Escobar (23:27)
you know, through LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever, and you see the content, I would love for that to become, you know, more long form. You know, I think it would be really interesting to support some folks in the industry to start developing more long form training that’s that accessible, right? And exciting too, right? I mean, there’s some folks just posting pictures of old machine rooms.
Matt Allred (23:34)
Yeah.
Carlos Escobar (23:51)
and they’ve got tens if not hundreds of thousands of people watching and following. There’s interest in this stuff. Well, let’s pivot from that. Let’s turn it into an educational opportunity.
Matt Allred (24:00)
Yeah, yeah, take it up a notch, right? mean, who hasn’t looked up a YouTube video to fix their lawnmower or replace a headlight? I mean, it’s, and yet to your point, right? This is a bigger, certainly a bigger process. It’s bigger. Obviously you got to have a license to even be in there. So there’s, a lot more to it, but, why not use media? Use what we have at our, at our disposal. That’s what I’m hearing.
Carlos Escobar (24:05)
Yeah, right.
Or champion it internally, I mean ourselves, whether it’s Hyperion or Titan directly or whomever. I mean have a corporate sponsor to champion the idea of developing internal content for training and push that and really put it in the hands of everyone in your organizations. All the way from the inside sales team, all the way to the technician, right?
Matt Allred (24:24)
Mm.
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point.
Mm-hmm. It’s brilliant. Yeah. I mean, there’s a, it does feel like the days of one-on-one mentorship is a little bit limited when people, you know, are retiring faster than they’re coming in. And so it almost becomes a bigger need for mentorship and maybe they, can use, like you say, videos or long form to really reach more people. I mean,
And one thing that I hear a lot that is spoken of really positively is the impact of mentors, right? Having somebody that you can go to that can inspire confidence, that can kind of give you that feedback. you had mentioned one of yours earlier. Who are some of the other people you felt like really took an interest in you and helped shape your career?
Carlos Escobar (25:31)
God, I mean, there’s so many and most of them are retired or kind of gone at this point. You know, it would be a shame if I didn’t mention my old man, also named Carlos Escobar. I mean that guy, you know, he wasn’t the easiest teacher. You know, he allowed you to fail and then made you kind of live with the consequence of your failures. But it was hard lessons learned. But God, I mean, I don’t know if there’s a better…
Matt Allred (25:37)
Yeah.
Carlos Escobar (25:57)
machinist out there and I think that’s he did what he loved right. We wanted to be first one in last one out and perform the duty right he wanted to be on the lathe and nobody could could accuse him of lacking confidence in himself I mean that’s a man that when he put his mind to something he got it done.
Matt Allred (26:12)
Yeah, well,
I mean, from what you’re saying, it sounds like he was wired to just move fast, experiment, solve problems, be very, very hands on. And how would you say that mindset served him throughout his career?
Carlos Escobar (26:21)
Yes.
Well, I think it’s instilled in me and it’s this, you you want to get to the solution quickly. I mean, of course you kind of break and stumble and, you you make mistakes along the way. I guess you could say that if you’re failing with frequency, you’re also learning at an accelerated rate too, right? So.
Matt Allred (26:47)
Yep. Yep.
Carlos Escobar (26:49)
if you’re always afraid to make that choice, you’re relying on committee decision making, or a half dozen people have to…
support your direction, then that slows you down. You only ever see the successes because it’s been so curated and perfected before you actually execute. I don’t know that I’m the, it’s not the proudest thing to make a ton of mistakes, but you sure learn a lot
them.
Matt Allred (27:13)
I mean, I think there’s value. And I can’t remember off the top of my head, the name, I think it was a business book I was reading, but it talked about investing in failure, right? And just going after it and learning as much as you can. And it talked about a gentleman who I think it was Kung Fu or something, some martial art where he purposely went to get destroyed by the strongest person. And eventually, after getting thrown to the ground many, many times, he actually…
Carlos Escobar (27:33)
We are.
Matt Allred (27:40)
figured it out. So there is value in just, again, they call it investing in failure, right? Going after whatever is gonna kick your butt and…
Carlos Escobar (27:41)
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe I should read that book. I don’t know, maybe that’ll…
Matt Allred (27:50)
I’ll need to dig it up and email you. Yeah, I can’t
remember what it’s called. I have said to my kids, and they always want to win, right? Whether they’re playing soccer or pickleball or tennis and, you know oh I didn’t win. I’m like, you learn so much more from losing than you ever do by winning. you know pick a strong opponent, go up against them. And if you lose a few times, well, you know, eventually you’re going to beat them.
Carlos Escobar (28:04)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s certainly, it’s definitely my, I’m programmed for it, my old man was. Yeah, that’s something to think about. I’m gonna pick up that book.
Matt Allred (28:25)
Sounds good. Well, when you look ahead 15 to 20 years, what excites you most about the future of the industry?
Carlos Escobar (28:33)
you know, think that it’s certainly the infusion of AI into everything. mean, that’s kind of where my head is at, you know, candidly, probably only for the last two or three months. I think that’s just when that kind of like, that fever pitch of ability or capability for it kind of reached me. But to see how we can…
diffuse or propagate that expertise or make it more accessible to everyone from top of organizations all the way on down and you know, there’s these these silos of expertise right and every OEM has one and every you know, moderately sized organization has you know that team that just they just know right you know who to call, you know, if you call them they just they know the code by heart
And it’s going to be really interesting to see how that evolves when these natural silos that we’ve been working it with or outside of sometimes, when that all breaks down, what’s it going to look like when any one of us are experts, subject matter experts in anything we’re looking at? I think that’s going to be remarkable.
Matt Allred (29:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let’s end with this one, and that is, what advice would you give to somebody who’s just starting out or maybe brand new to the industry? Obviously, there’s a lot of moving parts and pieces, but what would you say to them?
Carlos Escobar (29:53)
I would say participate, you know, get out there. Be part of the trade organizations, the regional ones, the, you know, not just the NAEC of course, is a wonderful organization, but even the regional stuff, the folks out in Chicago or Boston that I’m a part of or ECNY in New York, Florida. Get out there, shake hands, say hello to folks. I think that from my perspective, the kind of old timers, you know, they want…
to share their expertise and none of them wanna retire and then look back at a career that they took with them. They wanna leave legacies. So get yourself out there, shake some hands, say hello to people, put a smile on and you’re likely to be surprised at how welcoming the industry can be to you.
Matt Allred (30:21)
So true. Yep.
Yeah, I think that’s perfect advice. I, know, back to mentorship, right? I think that’s a lot of people want to mentor and they don’t have to be, you know, you don’t have to be standing at the lathe in order to be taught and to learn lessons. so yeah, getting out, shaking hands, getting to know people makes a huge difference. Awesome. Well, Carlos, thank you so much for being with me today. I really enjoyed it.
Carlos Escobar (30:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure, Matt. Thanks for having me.
Matt Allred (31:03)
Thank you.
Matt Allred (31:05)
Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast sponsored by the Allred Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting. Please visit our YouTube channel @ElevatorCareers or check us out online at elevatorcareers.net. Please like and subscribe and until next time, stay safe.