What about we discuss this topic: Why Your Small Business Should Start Using Robots Today? with Jesica Chavez

Automation and robotics are critical to an modern business, but why should small businesses make the investment? Robotics have come a long way in the past decade. Affordability is making it easier for companies to compete. Today, Jessica Chavez will share why you need to be making the investment.

About Jesica: As a leader, my responsibility is to oversee the overall customer satisfaction of the company. This role involves strategizing and implementing processes that improve customer interactions and experiences across all touchpoints. My goal is to create a department and various strategies to help us understand customer needs and expectations, analyze feedback, and coordinate with different departments to ensure a cohesive and positive customer journey. I am working on monitoring and improving the performance metrics, leading customer experience teams, and staying abreast of market trends to drive improvements in service quality, customer retention, and brand loyalty for our different products.

[00:00:10.08] - Jesica

Hello. Welcome to Books in the Biz, a podcast that looks at both the financial and operational sides of success. Please welcome our hosts, Dan Paulson and Richard Veltre. Dan is the CEO of Envision Development International, and he works with leaders to increase sales and profits through great cultures with solid operations. Rich is CEO of the Veltre Group and a financial strategist working with companies to manage their money more effectively. Now on to the podcast.

[00:00:44.29] - Dan

Hello, and welcome to Books and the Biz. We are here for another exciting episode after a minor hiatus. Rich, how are you doing? It's been a while since I've seen you.

[00:00:54.02] - Rich

I'm doing well.

[00:00:56.05] - Dan

Excellent. Excellent. Glad to hear. We have a guest for our first episode back. Jessica Chávez. How are you?

[00:01:02.22] - Jesica

Hello, Dan and Richard. Thank you so much. I'm doing great in an amazing sunny day here. So thank you.

[00:01:09.24] - Dan

Wonderful. Wonderful. Yes, summer weather is always good. Well, Jessica, why don't you share a little bit about yourself? We're going to be talking a little bit about robotics today. And we've talked about automation in the past and a little bit about AI. I'd be interested to learn more about what you're doing with robotics. So if you could get us a little bit of your background. I appreciate it.

[00:01:31.12] - Jesica

Absolutely. Well, I'm originally from Mexico, and I'm an industrial engineer who has been working for more than 15 years in the robotics industry. Mostly, I have been doing implementations in the field and building teams to do the implementations. And also as well, I have been working with the strategy things to do marketing and go-to-market strategy for a lot of robotics company. Right now, also one of my gigs, I would say, or things that I enjoy is doing the Humanoï Summit. We just launched the second edition in Europe, in London. So I just came back from London, so it's still jet lag. But I'm here happy to share about my experience in robotics and how it can help small businesses.

[00:02:19.07] - Dan

Well, we'll do our best to keep you awake. So the title of this episode is really centered around small business, because I think a lot of larger companies have integrated robotics, probably for a number of years, decades, mainly due to size and cost. But now, as things have changed, we're seeing robotics get to be a lot more affordable for smaller businesses and Utilized in different ways. And maybe you could share, as we're talking about a small business, maybe looking at an investment like this, why would they make an investment? Because I still see it to some degree as some change happening, which thing comes with risk and then uncertainty about how to use the technology. And of course, most small businesses don't want to make what might be tens of thousands or maybe even still hundreds of thousands of investment in in robotic technology. What would you tell people around that?

[00:03:18.29] - Jesica

Absolutely. Taking a big risk of investment always people will be afraid to say, Hey, my budget, it's always you're taking care of your budget, especially as a small business. A lot of times you depend on that business. You're paying your school for your kids, you're paying your mortgage from that little business. You really need to be very careful how to invest. One of the things that I love of the companies that I have been working with is the offering of the robotics as a service, which I think is a term that it has been coming in the past years, where also the robotics are willing to lease the robots and work along with this business to understand the need, and they don't have to invest. This is usually a win-to-win for both. While the robotics company is trying to understand the use case, how to adapt the technology to serve better, they also have the customer using the robot to try to understand if it's something that works for them or not. Sometimes they can be least for a special period, sometimes for a special just a few days. As a few examples, I can say is for this infection or for cleaning.

[00:04:33.10] - Jesica

Sometimes it's like, there are areas, the area where I live, it's very hard to find people to come to clean your business or to clean your snow, for instance. But what about if you don't have to rely on people and try a technology and see if that works for your business. Then you don't have the money to put down, I don't know, 2000K in buying a robot, but you can rent it and say, Okay, I need to do two this infections per week, and I can have leasing the robot. And that probably is going to make me feel if I wanted to use it or not. So small businesses don't necessarily need to put a lot of money down in buying a robot that probably they are just going to be using for a small amount of time, versus a big company that needed to run 24 hours.

[00:05:22.00] - Dan

Got it. Now, Rich, you can jump in any time, but as you were talking about this, that's something that wasn't going through my head when we were going to start talking about robotics, is having a robot cleaner come in and clean your bathrooms, or clean your office, or whatever it might be. What are all the different uses that we are seeing for robotics now, versus what it might have been even 10 years ago when we would typically picture it in more of a manufacturing setting, where they would be either welding something together or building parts that again, needed a high precision and inconsistency. You're talking about cleaning toilets.

[00:06:05.10] - Jesica

Yes. I mean, you can now think about almost any use case, right? There are robots almost for everything right now, or a company is trying to solve different problems. And it's not just about like, Oh, I have a tiger shop I can think about here, my neighbor, right? Probably why I will need a robot. But guess what? They are even robots to help. We change tires or we do something specific. Even also now for marketing, a lot of, for instance, of the humanoids are being used for attracting people. They do special things to attract people and make marketing. When they have special events, they have the human receiving guests or giving even the flyer or bringing the drinks to the guests so they have a better experience around and you have something that stand out. There are many other opportunities out there, even for customer service. Sometimes you cannot have somebody always at the entrance having a reception. Again, I'm coming back to the entire shop. Well, you go and talk with a robot and say, I have an appointment, right? At what time it's going to be, you have to go back, and you don't have to have a person all the time.

[00:07:24.16] - Jesica

I know for many years, a lot of people was like, Oh, people doesn't like to talk with robots. People doesn't like to talk with machines. But I think now we are seeing that they are getting smarter and very easy to really have an interaction with people, where instead of feeling that people doesn't want to talk with the robot, they feel that the service can go quicker, right? Versus waiting in the line for somebody that is taking hours to get back to you, or they are busy answering the phone or getting invoices, right?

[00:07:59.14] - Dan

Rich, you got a question? I see you ploddering. I'm just shy.

[00:08:08.05] - Jesica

So I think I'm in the right spot to ask this question, but I'll try.

[00:08:14.19] - Rich

And if I look like an idiot, I'm the guy. Everybody will point. Did you see what he did?

[00:08:20.01] - Dan

It's your AI stuff anyway, so don't worry about it.

[00:08:23.20] - Rich

Exactly. It wasn't me. So I think that the one thing I would really love to get out of this conversation conversation today is the vast majority of the AI/robotic news is all generally bad. It's AI is coming for your job, AI is taking being over. Ai is going to put us all out of work, and here comes the Terminator, right? So the problem that I have with that is that is so massive that that's what people are hearing all the time. And what I'm trying to get out of this is, okay, let's talk about the positive stuff, right? When you hear that, hey, guess what? Ai was looking at X-rays of somebody or MRIs of someone, and they come up with nine different scenarios that the doctor only came up with one. And because AI can move faster, that's positive news. But you have to search for that. You don't get the headline that says AI advances in medical, right? So I think one of the things that I've been thinking about, I'm trying to formulate a question out of it, is if I think about it, you mentioned tire changing, right? So AI and robotics was here, but the problem was it had to be in a certain parameter, right?

[00:09:41.03] - Rich

If you had a set up where a car was brought in and the robot changed the tires, and then the car moved on, and then the next set of tires comes in. So the the robotics was here. It just wasn't mobile, right? So AI isn't necessarily new. It just took the robotic stuff that it was doing before, and now it's mobile. Now it can move. Now somebody else can come in. And if the tire was off a little bit, it doesn't cost you a whole day, right? So robotics was here. And now AI says, by the way, it can adapt for you, so you don't have to keep readjusting. So to me, that's positive. That means that something was already here can now be more efficient. So I don't really have a question out of that. It's a little bit more... I mean, I guess the question is, am I leading down the right path here, when I talk about it? Because that's some of what I'm seeing. This really small business is all they do, is they hire the monthly $20 version of ChatGPT, so they can make cute memes, and build up their marketing, right?

[00:10:46.24] - Rich

And now I think it's time that people have to start looking past that, and get into, where does this actually benefit you, where your whole business becomes more beneficial? Your whole business becomes more efficient, rather than And you have great memes.

[00:11:03.20] - Jesica

Absolutely. And I think some interesting topic you are mentioned there is when the headlines say, They are taking your jobs, right? And That makes me laugh a lot of the time is because right now, actually, we are trying to supply those positions that people doesn't want to do anymore. And again, for instance, I can tell you again, in the humanoids I see in one event before you were hiding a student or somebody to be always standing with some announcements or ads or sign saying here and so on. Who wants to be standing eight hours around too many people? The kids doesn't want to do it anymore. You need something that helps you to direct that people and say, Hey, this is the direction where you are going. The same in the industry, even in hospitality or restaurants. Again, I was just coming back from London, and one of the things I was discussing with friends is the number of waitress, it was so much less than here in US. Majority of them, it was like, You have to order a decauchier, and then you pick up your food and bring it to your table. It was because they don't even have an office staff to help.

[00:12:22.26] - Jesica

Here in US, we start seeing that trending as well. These industries that are coming out, helping the restaurants or hospitality, they are not trying to take anybody's job. They are trying to help with that lack of people that is doing these jobs. Now, is the doctor going to be afraid that the AI is going to take their job? I would say no, but you gave a good point. They are having now access to more information than they have before. They can now have a diagnosis that instead of just feeling like, Oh, this is my diagnosis. Now they can compare it in a database and say, Oh, this might be the three different cases that we might be addressed. Now they have more information that they can use. When people feel afraid, Oh, they are taking my job? No, I think we need to see it as a way, who can I use this technology in my favor to be doing it? Like you say, it's not doing just about a meme. Okay, now it took me two minutes to do a meme. But who can I use that time to keep leveraging the technology. What else I can do with this technology?

[00:13:35.26] - Jesica

What else I need to think out of the box to use it?

[00:13:41.08] - Dan

Yeah, that's a good point. I guess to add to that, maybe you can give some insight. So yes, you're right. We're seeing a lot of entry level positions. Either there's not enough people or there's people who don't want to work in those positions. I've seen the robots running around the restaurant, delivering orders, things like that. I've heard of robots that can flip burgers and do some basic cooking that now you don't need a short order cook sitting there. But what positions is this going to create? Because in my mind, there's still somebody that needs to program the robots. There's still somebody that's probably going to need to maintain the robots. Now, maybe we've gotten so advanced that the robots can maintain themselves, but I highly doubt it. What are the other opportunities that this is really develop for people that are probably going to lead to higher paying jobs, better jobs than they would if they were just standing at a cashier counter taking orders for people?

[00:14:41.27] - Jesica

Absolutely. It is the opportunity, like you say, now the balance is transferred, right? The skills that are needed for all these robots. We need a lot of people in engineering, we need a lot of people to do the support, to do the technical, also support. And it's the way now they are switching the workforce needs are totally different. So you don't have, again, you're losing your job. They are opportunities for the new generation, so doing something else. And I think you just say something very interesting. I just went to a conference about agriculture, robotics in agriculture tech. And majority of that was second generations of immigrants who were working on the farmer saying, I don't want to be a farmer like my family. I don't want to be using the things that they were using. I want to be working with the technology that helps the farmers to do better. I want to develop technology so I don't see doing people where my parents were doing. So it was super interesting to hear those new generations saying, I don't want to follow the same path. I'm here to do a change, and I want to be part of that change.

[00:15:57.13] - Jesica

And one of the biggest problems, California is having right now is that second generations also want to be staying in the farmer. Before they were having second, even third generations still staying at the farms. Now, they want to go to school and they want to do something better. That's Good. I mean, of course, we are having problems in the farms, but at the same time it's good that they are trying to find a solution that they see why people has to go through this, right? They have seen people getting ill or getting working over hours or low pay, and now they say there should be a way to get a better lifestyle.

[00:16:36.00] - Dan

Yeah, I think that's been the biggest challenge for most employers who have human employees is employees get sick. Employees aren't always motivated to do their job. Employees always aren't excited to come to work. They don't always want to deal with people. So you have a lot of inconsistency that happens there. One thing that, to me, robotics takes some of that away is that they do provide more consistency. Now, the question, I think to your point really comes in, are people more accepting of it now? I would say, yeah, for the most part, because the alternative is you don't get any service at all. I still think there's a bit of that human connection that's needed. And also, Rich was talking some about the AI side of it. And I think we've all use those AI chat bots online. Instead of talking to a live person, you ask the message system a question, and it's supposed to try and help you. And I haven't found them to be overly effective yet, even for some large corporations. So to me, it still seems like we've got a ways to go. What are you seeing on your end for how we're progressing on that?

[00:17:49.12] - Jesica

I feel that there is a little of everything, right? Skepticism, still people saying, Oh, no, I don't want to do it, or I don't want to sound like others. I want to I'm still doing the thing on my own. But at the same time, the market is keep pushing for something different, right? And at the same time, the market needs or the market trends, right? What the customers are asking is for going into this way. So I see while people is still trying to understand or learning how to do it, at the same time, they are being pushed to do it or use it because they see the competitors are doing it and I'm getting ahead of them. And if they don't play in that game, they are going to still be behind. I see, again, especially for a small business where they still have the younger generations involved in their business, it's easier for the second generation to say, Hey, we have to do this. Let's try it. And they are more open to try. The elders probably always have this problem with technology, with adapting like, Oh, I don't know if I want to do it.

[00:18:59.06] - Jesica

I don't know if I want learn something new. And something very interesting now with AI is learning is even easier than before. The way now you can be doing things or getting into, configuring something in your computer where sometimes now it make it a little much easier than it was before. And I'm still amazed that people is afraid of using even digital CRM, right? They still want to have everything in paper or have in Excel shit, and it's like, Oh, man, you can do so much better. Again, I have been working customer success, so for me, without CRM, I wouldn't be alive. When I see even people don't use in CRMs in their business, it's like, wow, they are no... Imagine how much money they are missing because they don't have even that technology applied.

[00:19:58.16] - Dan

You mentioned something about education, education being easier. That is one thing that I think is missing, and maybe you can elaborate on how this is changing. I don't see a lot of robotics or even for that matter, AI getting to what I would say would be not necessarily the grade school level, but at least middle school or high school here in the US. Now, maybe you can speak to other countries where that might be different, but I guess what are you seeing? You're also out on the East Coast right now. Are we seeing more adaptations? So we're getting these kids to learn this technology? Because to me, it's one thing to say, well, they don't want to work in restaurants, and they don't want to wait tables and all this other stuff. But at some point, you have to start somewhere. So if we're not teaching them this technology and getting them out of the gate learning it, how are they going to be able to fill those other needs that are going to open up with AI and with robotics?

[00:21:01.02] - Jesica

Oh, wow, Dan, you just touched. A point that I can talk for hours.

[00:21:05.29] - Dan

Well, you got about 10 minutes.

[00:21:07.19] - Jesica

How's that? Oh, my God. This is what I'm thinking, wow. For many years, One of my passions and something that I always have been working on is bringing a steam to a school. Do whatever I can do to help. Why? Because like you said, the system is not enough. And one of the biggest challenges right now is we don't have enough educators that know how to train students on this. We don't have the capabilities as a country to... We can say tomorrow, mandatory learning AI and robotics. Fine. Guess what? We don't have the educators. We don't even have them at college level. They are not enough. They are so college that are trying to figure it out. One of the companies I work for in Duketown is a platform for... We have the platform and we have the hardware for teaching AI and robotics, majority for college. And a lot of high schools reach out to us and say, Hey, I want to use your platform to teach my kids. But guess what? They don't know how to use it. And it has been very hard for us to fill that gap because we don't have also enough people to help them to train them.

[00:22:21.00] - Jesica

We do as much as we can to train those professors who are willing to go through the pain of learning set up things. But it's where we this gap because the gap is coming also from college. And of course, the lower you go, the bigger the gap. So we are not ready as a country to say, Hey, we are educating kids, and they are going to get after high school with some degree in robotics or technical degree. We don't have enough capabilities yet. I work with different organizations to try to help with that. How can we accelerate? We do a lot of online trainings. We try to do a lot of camps, and we try to bring as much people we can into this project because it is not a one person thing. It's not just a one organization thing. You really need an ecosystem to help for this. California, I know that is one of the ones who have been advancing more in this curriculum for elementary and middle school. And still, they are not there yet because we don't have enough educators that are willing to do. So sometimes I invite a lot of my friends in this industry and say, Hey, come over, help us with this.

[00:23:33.15] - Jesica

At least talk with the kids about what you're doing, how you are doing. So you inspire them, at least to get this into their brains and say, I can do research on my own. Right now, there are also a lot of things online that you can find to learn on your own, but you really need to be curious about it and really be serious about it. There is a lot of information more than ever before, and you need to find how you are going to manage all that information that you have now. I wish I had it when I was a kid. Right now, sometimes it's like, Oh, man, I wish I can have 10 hours to learn to do this. Then the next week, I see that there's something else coming and it's like, wow. So that's what I see now. New generations, probably they won't have it at school level because there is no enough resources. But there are a lot online that they can go and try to find. Again, with DokiTau, You can buy the robot, and then we have an open course that they can go and take. Majority of the professors are from MIT, ETH from Zurich.

[00:24:38.20] - Jesica

Imagine having those professor access. So you can just log in. We don't charge anything for that, except the robot, of course, because you have to connect it. But that opens a lot of possibilities for them, for sure.

[00:24:54.24] - Dan

Wow, that's a good point. With what you're saying about not having enough people, how are we going to be able to fill that gap? Because to me, it's the same thing that we're running into on the the entry level job side. There's not enough employees to fill those positions. Now you're talking about there's not even enough people to train to fill the positions that are going to be core in the coming decades for this. What are we going to do about that?

[00:25:24.14] - Jesica

So I see that the few companies are being smart about how they're doing when it's Amazon. The other, I think one figure is also doing something similar where they are having their academias in their places and try to say, Hey, you want to work with me? You want to do this? I'm going to be training you, right? This is what I'm going to help you to do. And giving you better opportunities. So a lot of, for instance, I have heard some stories from Amazon. They start working in the warehouse, moving boxes here and there, and then they offer this opportunity. Do you want to take these classes? Do you want to go into this program? After this program, we can offer you be a technician of the robot or this and that. And they change their lives. So I think it's a very interesting way they are doing it. I see that is the trending for too many companies where they are going to say, I'm going to train you in code to use my robots. You can have here better opportunities. It's a good way to keep an employee for life, basically, right? Because you are training them in doing something very specific, but also giving them better opportunities that a lot of them probably they were working in warehousing because they didn't have money to go to college, right?

[00:26:36.12] - Jesica

And now I see there is a way to turn that around. That is the best way I can think also companies that they already have the talent, they already have the knowledge, and they can share it internally. Now it's going to be interesting if there is a way that we can replicate that in a bigger level where we give this opportunity to more people. I know you say only if you work, and Amazon, you can have it, right?

[00:27:01.22] - Dan

Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Rich, do you have anything to add to that?

[00:27:07.07] - Rich

Yeah, I think that's one of my concerns, right? It's just the education level is definitely a piece of it. The other piece that I have is, I grew up coming out of college, and Microsoft was getting bigger, and Microsoft always got blamed for putting technology out too fast. They would just say, we got to get it out, so we'll get it out, and then we'll fix it later. It might My big concern with coming out with AI is it's coming out so fast and started to look like Microsoft in the 1990s. How many times did you get a Windows program or a Windows update, and you needed 97 additional patches before it actually would work right? So my concern is that the big AI push, pushes everybody to use AI. They don't necessarily know what they're doing, and then everything has to be patched back together. I'm hoping that the industry doesn't follow that pattern. Learn. And I think what you're saying about the education is really important, because if you really had people who were educating how to do this, maybe we can avoid all those patches. And maybe the efficiency actually becomes real.

[00:28:14.28] - Rich

I think it's real. I think there's a very big opportunity here. I think there's a big opportunity for anybody who wants to create a new education side, a new teaching side, a new path for education, because the education we had came out came out of people trying to reform farmers into industrialists, right? And we're still stuck in that education system. So I see this as a really big paradigm shift. So instead of me looking at it like this is bad, and everybody's going to lose their jobs, I'd like to look at it as this is a paradigm shift, and everybody grab your piece and move forward.

[00:28:54.01] - Jesica

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:28:56.20] - Dan

Yeah. I see plenty of job opportunities here, not fewer, and higher paying jobs, which is really what everyone wants anyway, why nobody wants to work in a restaurant. So that, I think, is key. Jessica, how do people get a hold of you if they want to learn more about robotics?

[00:29:15.03] - Jesica

So I think the easiest way to find me is in LinkedIn. I'm very active in LinkedIn. I like to connect with people, create a community, right? So it's Jessica with one S, Chabis, and I'm always happy to connect with people, talk about it. And if you need help, I have been working in this industry for a while, so I know almost everybody. So if you want to say, I'm ready to have robotics in my company or implement it, I know who can connect you with.

[00:29:42.22] - Dan

Excellent. I think that'll be helpful because both Rich and I work in a number of industries that I think robotics is going to be a bigger thing in the relatively near future. They're in early stages and trying to understand this all, too. But that will definitely be helpful. Rich, how do people get a hold of you?

[00:30:00.17] - Rich

Best way, send me an email at rich@xcxoo.net.

[00:30:04.14] - Dan

And hey, you can do the same to me. Send me an email at dan@xcxo.net. We will be happy to connect you with Jessica. We will also be happy to help you find other ways to optimize and improve your business. But We don't need to tell you that. We'll let AI Bob come here and give us a little bit more background about XCXO. Hang on.

[00:30:21.09] - BOB

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