The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Harout Markarian, Founder of MARKBOTIX, Engineering Expert, Innovator, Founder, Speaker

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Harout Markarian, Founder of MARKBOTIX, Engineering Expert, Innovator, Founder, Speaker Markbotix.com Show Notes About The Guest(s): Harout Markarian is the founder and CEO of MARKBOTIX, an assistive robotics company. With 15 years of experience in the aerospace and defense industry, he has dedicated himself to developing robotics that revolutionize assistive technology for the elderly and those living with disabilities. Harout holds a master's degree in robotics and an executive MBA. He is also the host of the podcast "Mobility and Inclusion" and the author of the book of the same name. Summary: Harout Markarian, founder and CEO of MARKBOTIX, joins Chris Voss to discuss his company's mission to revolutionize assistive technology for the elderly and those living with disabilities. Harout shares his personal experience caring for his grandparents and witnessing the challenges faced by caregivers. He explains how MARKBOTIX is developing a ground robotic assistant called GRACE (Ground Robotic Assistant for Care Enablement) to address these challenges and improve the quality of life for individuals requiring assistance. The robot can perform tasks such as retrieval, communication, inspection, and infection control. Harout emphasizes the importance of maintaining human interaction and reducing caregiver burnout. He also highlights the potential for remote operation and third-party app integration with the robot. Key Takeaways: MARKBOTIX is developing a ground robotic assistant called GRACE (Ground Robotic Assistant for Care Enablement) to redefine how we care for the elderly and people with disabilities. The robot can perform tasks such as retrieval, communication, inspection, and infection control. MARKBOTIX aims to reduce caregiver burnout and improve the quality of life for individuals requiring assistance. The robot can be remotely operated, allowing caregivers to provide support even when they are not physically present. The platform is designed to support third-party app integration, expanding its capabilities and customization options. Quotes: "We're developing assistive robotics to redefine how we care for older adults and people with disabilities." - Harout Markarian "We want to allow for positive aging and for people to age and live their life with dignity." - Harout Markarian "We're trying to do preventative care so people won't have to live that kind of life." - Harout Markarian "We're augmenting caregivers' capabilities so they can focus on the human side of care." - Harout Markarian "Loneliness is a big factor, and when someone comes to take care of my grandmother, I don't want them to come with a frown on their face." - Harout Markarian About Harout Markarian is a dynamic individual with an extraordinary journey that spans engineering, innovation, sports, and leadership. As an immigrant who has risen above challenges, Harout has carved a unique path, leaving an indelible mark in multiple domains. With an impressive background as a former professional athlete in basketball, Harout brings a winning mentality and unwavering determination to everything he pursues. Alongside his athletic achievements, he has also earned two master's degrees, reflecting his dedication to academic excellence. Harout's expertise lies in engineering, where he has established himself as a true innovator. His groundbreaking work in autonomous uncrewed vehicle systems led him and his team to win the prestigious Autonomous Uncrewed Vehicle System International competition. This accomplishment attests to his technical brilliance and highlights his ability to push boundaries and deliver outstanding results. Recognized for his outstanding contributions to the field, Harout received the distinguished Engineering Project Award from CA's Engineer's Council, a testament to his innovative mindset and the impact of his work. Furthermore,

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Voss Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

It's an acapella, but it's awful. At least the operator seems... I think I'm going to see a defense. She's going to be saying, you can't sing with me. That just doesn't work. It sounds awful. You're offending my trade and business. So I'm sure that will be coming from Fiverr, whoever the hell put it up to us.

So thanks for joining us again, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate it. We're going to have some fun today. We're going to be talking about stuff that, you know, we've been talking a lot about health and exercise and all this crazy stuff lately. But we're going to depart from some of that. We're going to be talking about AI and robotics and all the cool technology stuff. It's going to be like the old days before 2020 when we used to just do Silicon Valley stuff.

And so we're going to get into the future. The future. We don't have soundbites, people. We can't afford that. We can barely afford the opera singers to do the intro. Or me, for that matter. I mean, I'm a whole $5 a day, man. So I break the bank just for my talent fee.

And that's what I have to split with my agent, too. So anyway, guys, we're going to be talking about it today. But as always, we have to do the guilt and shaming of the plugs. Now, we have pretty easy guilt and shaming plugs. We don't run these stupid commercials. I can't stand listening to podcasts that have like these five-minute commercials at the beginning. You're just like, get me to the meat. I want to know what's inside this thing before I sign up to your five minutes of ads.

And we don't do that. That's one of the great things. So remind that, people, when you refer to're further show your family friends and relatives tell them to go to chris foss um at youtube.com for chest chris fuss linkedin.com for chest chris fuss subscribe the big linkedin newsletter the uh chris foss one on the tickety-tockety and goodreads.com for chest chris foss and that's it see wasn't that painless and i do it really fast i do it someone said to me one time they're in why do you always do the plugs fast? I'm like, because everyone kind of knows them.

And I just have to remind them what they do. And, you know, it's like kind of like that shot. When you go in for the flu shot, the nurse just runs up to you and jabs you and runs off. You know, that's the way it goes. Or, you know, a lot of married guys do that too. Anyways, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. And he's going to be talking to us about a really cool product that he has. And we're going to get into it, down with it, and all that stuff, whatever the cool kids say these days.

Harut Markarian is on the show with us today. He's the founder and CEO of Markbotics, an assistive robotics company that's reimagining independent living, accessibility for the elderly, and those living with disabilities. Within 15 years, or with 15 years in the aerospace and defense industry under his belt, he has found a new purpose in developing robotics to revolutionize assistive technology in support of all mobility-challeng challenge individuals and their caregivers. After earning a master's in robotics and an executive MBA, he founded Mark Botics, where he is setting a new standard for how to provide support, assist, and increase independence for those requiring

assistance. Mark Botics works in close partnership with the community to center their needs and experiences, and he hosts the podcast Mobility and and the inclusion and authored a book of the same name welcome give us your dot coms where do you want people to find you on the interwebs well uh harut mark harut markarian dot com markbotics.com uh linkedin uh instagram uh that those are the places that I'm mostly active in. There you go. And so you've launched this company. Give us a 30,000 overview in your words of what it is and what you guys do there. So we're developing assistive robotics, as you mentioned,

to kind of redefine how we care for older adults and people with disabilities. Because there's, came to my attention that we have, you know, caregiver burnout, shortages, and more and more people are getting older, right? The elderly population is actually tremendously increasing. You know, today, I think we spent nearly 50 billion dollars on medical costs related to fall injuries so uh we wanted to kind of address that we want to address the caregiver burnout and we ultimately want to give these people a better quality of life right because we want to we want to allow for positive aging and to for people to age and live their life with dignity. And that's our goal.

There you go. And this hits home for me because my mom, my sister has MS, and she's had it since 19. But over the last 10, 15 years, she's been in care center. She's in one now. And it's a nightmare to try and get not only the care center people do their jobs, they staff them so one now. Um, and, uh, it's a nightmare to try and get not only, you know, the care center, people do their jobs. Uh, they staff them so thin now they, they just don't do their jobs. Um, and she's, you know, my mother's constantly having to advocate for, uh, the, the, you know, my sister's care and make sure she gets the maintenance. And then she has a lot of burnout.

Yeah. And, uh, it's hard. And then she has a lot of burnout. And it's hard. It grinds on her. It wears on her. She sometimes, you know, doesn't know what's going on with the care center, gets calls from my sister, has to go up there, see what the hell is going on, you know, and all this sort of good stuff. So evidently you guys are developing some robotic devices to help with this.

Correct. So, I mean, the way we started this thing is when I experienced the challenges of caring for someone, you know, in my situation was my grandparents. Both of them, due to old age, become completely dependent on caregivers and you know to to hire a professional caregiver if you can find them available yeah super expensive they're not affordable uh so uh so we kind of opted up that out of that and opted into hiring just anybody who's willing to take the job for a reasonable uh conversation right uh and of course you know i saw my my mother my aunt and everybody around them you know suffer and you know give away some of their lives to uh care for their parents grandparents and because we love them right and we want them to provide the care of us too when we exactly poop in our diapers so uh i realized that there's a huge uh gap here and

you know that transition that when that transition happens from being fully able to take care of yourself now you're full dependent on other people to take care of you so you know i can't imagine how that must feel for the individual let alone be the person who's caring for them. And, you know, there's AARP actually, this is a side note, AARP estimated that the unpaid caregiver market is at $600 billion. Wow. Think about that. So, you know, such as my mom, like me, you know, we're consideredpaid care. We're considered unpaid caregivers that we sacrifice the things that we have to do. And when I say sacrifice, I mean it in a nice way because we all have to work to pay for our, you know, our bills.

Right. We have to go to work so we can't be there all the time. So we're having to kind of split our time to care for someone so you know that's how it started the spark kind of it sparked me into looking into this further but then i was like okay how can i help how can i really add value here and not at a shallow level like really you know i don't i didn't want to be one of those people that sits behind a computer and you know designs something and puts it out there and shoves the technology down people's throat, right? I wanted this to be really valuable and impactful in people's lives.

Wow. So that's why I did the book and the podcast. I no longer do the podcast because I never in a million years I thought I would ever start a podcast, let alone, you know, deal with the post-production, pre-production i'm like that's not a lot of work you know yeah so uh but the reason i did it is because during the pandemic that was the only way i could interact with my target customers right the people who i was trying to serve and before doing any product i interviewed over 1 000 people between in-person interviews and podcast interviews.

And from there, wrote a book, you know, how robotics could be helpful in the lives of the elderly people with disabilities, how it can contribute in increasing the quality of their lives. And from all these efforts, you know, we stumbled upon the robotic technology that today we call GRACE, the Ground Robotic Assistant for Care Enablement. And we currently focus on four main tasks, retrieval communication, inspection, and infection control. And this is based on the feedback that we got primarily from assisted living facilities. So does it help like say I need to get a drink across the room or, um, I dropped something,

I need to pick it up. You know, I, uh, I know this works. I, I don't, I don't know how your product works,

but I know how this works for people disabled that you're trying to get things, get things picked up when you're locked into, you know, these giant wheelchairs, sometimes they're locked into, you know, these people don't have a lot of mobile,

uh, range. Um, you drop some on the floor, you know, something falls off the bed. Um, my mom,

my sister's like always looking for a remote. Sometimes she's looking for the call, the nurse called thing. Uh, and, uh, you know, and then food maybe brought to them or, you know, go pick me up a gang of Harley Davidson people to come hang out with me and have some beers. That sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, that's the retrieval part of things, right? So, of course, we're building in other features as well. But, you know, you mentioned wheelchair so i have i had a friend who i interviewed and his his story is on the in the book too but the book is called mobility and inclusion uh which i hate the name uh at this point because inclusion took all sorts of like wrong turns oh they do so so uh but uh you know this guy's name is eric and he became a friend and he came to me one day he said look man i was trying to pick up my uh my phone that i dropped because his dexterity he had low dexterity right so uh he dropped the phone and he tried to grab it and he fell off the wheelchair now he can't get back on his wheelchair he tried to grab it and he fell off the wheelchair. Now he can't get back on his wheelchair.

He had to wait for three hours for his caregiver to come and pick him up, you know, give him his phone. So all that can be, you know, it's preventative, right? So we're trying to do that preventative care so people won't have to live that kind of life. There you go you quote ralph alder emerson what lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside you yeah which for me is about eight different personalities that all fight each other constantly yeah so there you go i love ralph alder emerson great great stoic uh and so you you you've got the book there. And so with the robot that you're building, this Grace is a ground robot assistance for care. Enable it.

Tell us. I can see some different pictures that you have on Instagram. And tell us kind of what it looks like. How tall is it? How big is it? Is it designed to kind of like be the size of a nurse or maybe smaller? No, it's smaller. I mean, it has an expandable or extendable, I should say, body.

So to reach higher heights. So the tallest it can be is about five feet and when the arm is extended it's over six feet oh wow so it's considerable considerable height uh and of course we're like at the beginning stages you we might change it based on needs but that's how we're going to market that's our initial design we actually followed universal design principles. And for those who don't know universal design principles in simple ways, is to come up with product or service that can be used by anyone regardless of their abilities. Right?

That's the idea behind universal design. So in terms of the bulkiness, we made sure that it can be used in homes. Although our first target customers are going to be the assisted living facilities. We already have letters of intents from them. And that's because it was, it was easier to get into to do a launch for that market versus, you know, do in-home care stuff.

Yeah. So I, I know it's important. I know it's important. I know it's important to, like, people like my mom. I believe you should be able to pass away in your home. In my sister's case, I mean, it takes three people to bathe her, change her, and, you know, lift her. She's pretty much become a dead weight with her MS.

And at that point, you have to be in a facility, but I know there's a lot of old people that really would like to, you know, spend their, the final years in their, in their home. No one wants to be in a hospital. I mean, I can't think of anybody who's like, gee whiz, I get to be in a hospital when I die. Woo. Let's do that.

Um, uh, you know, it, it in your home, it just gives you a much more place of comfort. I remember when my father, uh, had his last strokes, he did not want to be put into a, uh, into a hospice care or any sort. He wanted to be home and it was a really big deal for him. And they didn't have any choice on his last one he had to go to hospice care because they needed you know his 24-7 care for him and it was only going to be for a short time but he was gone within a day or two because he i think he was just so brokenhearted um and not being able to be near the love of his life his wife it just it just crushed him um and you know so having a bot like this around the home, uh, my mom took care of my sister for as long as she could in the home. Uh, she built the whole,

her whole basement, uh, sort of to help my sister out and took care of her until she just couldn't lift her anymore. Uh, and so this is really important to people and so if you could have a device like this that um a robot that could help with you know someone being at home yeah even even an older parent really when it comes down to it huh they don't really have to be disabled it could be just someone who's older and wants some help absolutely you know my neighbor uh she was in her maybe early 70s or mid-70s and she was you know she looked good but she had a hip replacement surgery right and she was a little bit on the heavier side and one day she was trying to pick up some Amazon box that was delivered to her door all right and she fell and hit her head

and when you're at that age and you experience a fall you kind of take things to the worst right health-wise and it can kill you too i mean let's just see how a lot of old people you know they have a bad fall break a hip and you're like oh there we go yeah so you know all that can be prevented uh preventable with this with this robot and that's what we're trying to do and the cool thing about the robot is that it can be remotely uh operated so let's say i have some i have one at my grandma's house right now and uh you know i can remotely log into it see my grandmother talk oh wow yeah she can talk back to me and you know let's say she can't operate the robot i will be able to operate the robot from here right oh wow yeah so we have that technology we have that you know let's say she can't operate the robot i will be able to operate the robot from here right

oh wow yeah so we have that technology we have that you know we today actually we filed the uh you know the non-provisional patent so far it was provisional uh you know as you as you can imagine all those uh you know cost money right to do so we were, as a new startup, we're kind of doing things methodically, so we're cautious with the way we spend our dollars. So today, actually, we filed the non-provisional patent for all these technologies. Congratulations, man. Thank you.

No, this is highly needed. According to your website, 10, 000 people turn 65 every day uh you know we have the big baby boomer generation going into retirement they're going to want to need to care they've got the money for it some people do but uh the older population is the largest consumer of health care and the fastest growing segment of the broader consumer market i'm hoping a lot of them are going to be the people who uh you know create a lot of innovation because their demand and the money and investments we can put into this. Now, you're seeking investors for this. One of the things you're trying to do here today is help raise awareness and find investors to invest in it. Tell us about

what you're offering there. That's correct. So, you know, we try to, as much as possible, de-risk the investment. And the way we did that, we did, as I said, we did the customer discovery. We developed a prototype and tested it with over 300 people. Now we have 200 letters of intents from, you know, the people seeking in-home care, 36, 37, I think, from assisted living facilities. This is not counting the memory care facilities that we're talking to, the veterans administrations. So all that is in the pipeline as well. And we're seeking right now $2 million. So we're probably doing on a safe note.

But we're flexible. At the end of the day, we want to provide value, and we want to be in a situation where both the investor and us are winning by serving the target market. There you go. Kelly has a good question from LinkedIn. Curious to know how the elderly adopt this type of technology. She has older family members that she believes would reject this concept

because technology bad, maybe. Thanks Kelly. You know, that's, that's, that's a good point. And I had, you know, I should say I had 70, 30, 74, 30. And based on my, my research and feedback, me talking to people, most of them initially, especially in assisted living facilities, they're, you know, most of them at first, they're kind of reserved about it. And then they get acquainted with it. And kind of the, they see that they're just there to augment their capabilities. That's all they're there to do. Nothing more.

And we're trying to make the interaction between the human and the robot kind of seamless, easy. So we're to diminish or reduce that adaptability or, I guess, high resistance of adaptability. As it is for homes, you know, we can put the controls in your hand. Like Kelly, I believe the person was who asked the question. So we can give you the controls, right? Let's say they don't want to deal with the robot, but Kelly can't be there all the time, right? So she'd be able to, you know, remotely log into the robot, see them, watch them, as I said, talk to them, maybe do something for them, you know, remotely in the house.

And, you know, eventually they're going to get used to once they see that, you know, this is benefiting them and it's allowing them to live more independently. Now, they don't have to call Kelly every time, you know, they need something or Kelly doesn't need to be worried about their parents when she's not around, right? Calling them, they're not answering the phone or whatever whatever the situation may be she has that peace of mind uh on one side and the other side is like you know their quality of life is being better uh their independence is improving and i don't i i didn't find a lot of people say no when you tell them you're you're going to be independent with this robot, right? Really? Wow. Yeah.

That has been my experience at least. Again, I talked to over 1,000 people between elderly and people with disabilities, assisted living facilities, and that's how kind of the feedback that I've received. Yeah. You know, I know it's really important to, uh, my mom, she's like, she wants to be able to do whatever she can and whatever she wants. She, it's really important for her to, um, do that as long as she can. She, she really feels it's a loss of freedom if she has to ask other people for help and do stuff. Um, know the the one thing i can see coming from this though it does it talk i mean is it like google uh or alexis or anything where you can have a

conversation with it and ask it for stuff it can that's not what we're focusing on okay we're focusing on you know me as as a caregiver let's say for my grandparent, or you for your mom, let's say, right, or your sister, we can do FaceTime when we're not there, right? When we're in different locations, we can do FaceTime, like, similar to iPhone, right? So I can see her, she can see me we can talk um it has that the robot has alerts at this point right but uh it's not it's not to a point where it's fully conversational with the individual because such robot already exists and we didn't want to mimic them but we made the robot in a way that third-party apps could be downloaded on it oh really yeah okay so that's part of the patent actually that you know this is a tech this is a platform that other third-party apps would be could be downloaded on it. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. So that's part of the patent, actually,

that this is a platform that other third-party apps would be, much like your iPhone, that you can download apps on it and use third-party apps. You can do the same with this robot. Yeah. One thing I can see is a lot of people that are elderly, they suffer from loneliness and depression. And sometimes people have pets uh some people

don't like pets um and this might be a way you know that there can be that interaction and if you can call into it and talk through it you know check in throughout the day on your loved one um and they can hear your voice uh you know and you can see them you can see what's going on they don't the the it takes away the edge of loneliness because loneliness i think in depression they can hear your voice, you know, and you can see them, you can see what's going on. It takes away the edge of loneliness because loneliness, I think, and depression is a killer too. Absolutely. That's a big epidemic, by the way, that we have in the United States.

Wow. And so, you know, that makes it so every, you know, much more simpatico. You know, I hate to kind of grandstand this as, oh, it's all about me and my sister, but I'm just kind of using this example of the problems that you're solving. My sister will call my mom, I haven't been fed today.

I haven't gotten my shower today. My sister is in dementia from the MS, so we don't know which is what's true to reality. And so sometimes my mom just has to drive up there to the facility just to see what's going on, check on her, uh, see if she's really been fed, you know, sometimes she doesn't remember. I mean, she has, she has dementia. Um, and, uh, and, uh, you know, make sure she's in her bed. Sometimes, you know, they have all these temp workers now that come in and out.

It's a real nightmare. It used to be a lot of the care centers were privately owned by family and, you know, guys like me who were like, hey, we'll start a care center and stuff. And then these corporations came in and just bought them all. Yeah. And, you know, paid a pretty good price for them. And, you know, the first thing you do is scale back the employees, the services. You're like, oh, where did all the people go? I used to work here.

And then with COVID and the fight over employees where, you know, everyone's fighting over employees right now. Yeah. They have trouble keeping the staff up. And so there's constantly these temp workers in and there's kind of a question of how much they care. There's the Gen Z workers question of how much they care. And it's hard work, you know, changing adult people's diapers and they're,

they're demented. And, and, you know, they say all sorts of stuff to you because dementia people don't have a filter. You know, is know is you have to take it with a grain of salt my sister said some things to me that i'm just like okay well that

that happened and you can't react you can't get angry with them because they understand it's like a child you know and uh but i can see having that video camera being able to interact and then you know a lot lot of times what my mother's trying to do is she's trying to call the desk at the nurse's desk that, hey, did she eat today? What's going on? And if that robot could be in her room is what I'm saying and interact with Delaina, we could have a record of people coming and going. We could talk to a nurse. Maybe this is in the hallway, you know, where the bot could go out and the nurse, you know, I can see a lot of applications for this basically. Yeah, absolutely.

And again, we try to take our bias out of the equation when we were developing this robot, right? So we try to see if there's really a need for such a thing, right? We don't want to be you know just someone oh hey we have a cool new shiny toy come look at it right so it's like part of it is because we went through that like me i personally went through that i i know the challenges i know the difficulties the whether they're their monetary difficulties or whether they're

physical difficulties or whether their difficulties related to someone's dignity right all that plays a role into how this uh robot is coming together to add value to people's lives i think you're hitting the nail right on the head i think it's definitely needed i mean just just for my use case, I've been describing, and I know that the conditions are similar. My sister's been in like seven care centers, and there's so much of a need for what you're doing. It's insane.

And then the money that Medicare pays for this stuff is insane. My sister was lucky. She had a whole lot of money from disability, her disability insurance for MS. And so she had pretty much a house, a house, a value of a house saved up. And, but I mean, the money that they spend every month on these before she had to go to Medicare, Medicaid, whichever, I never can tell the difference. It was extraordinary. And so there's a lot of money in this business to take care of people.

And in a government, we spend the money to take care of people that, you know, we need to take care of everybody. And so I think there's a lot of money into it. So you guys are looking to raise $2 million. Is that correct again? Correct, yep. Just want to make sure. And then it could come in, you could do, are you guys doing a seed round or an A round or any of that? Are you guys looking for private investors?

Right now, I think we're more looking for private investors, not VCs a lot i should say that so far the the project was bootstrapped right yeah these numbers were bootstrapped so um right now we're at a point where okay we have some market validation we have product market fit so okay we can we can ask for that first round of capital um so and that's that's where we are there a lot of a lot of vcs have shown interest um but uh they always come back and ask me okay those do you have a lead investor and i'm like no i thought you said you want you to leave yeah so so but once that conversation happened they kind of backed out that that has been the that has been the experience so far, but we're,

we're talking to a few people right now. So, you know, hoping for the best and we'll see what happens. There you go. Well, I, I think it's an excellent thing that needs to be done. There's so many different, I mean, there's so many different ways that this can be applied, you know, people in homes that want to, don't want to go to a hospice care home, being able to check in on grandma or mom, dad, whatever, being able to have that interaction.

It's hard taking care of people. I've seen the grind that it wears on my mom for hospice care. There's a whole bag of depression and, uh, losing sleep, you know, she's constantly losing sleep because she's worried about what's going on at the care center. And my sister, uh, I went through hospice care with my dog for a year and a half being a caretaker grind you down. It is really hard. And you, you almost need to have a caretaker for yourself or a psychologist or somebody that you can kind of go to and talk to issues about because you know you see stuff too that's

depressing it's dark it's not fun watching someone wind down their life um you know it's it's it's hard but anything that can help out in all these different modalities would be incredibly beneficial. Yeah. You know, for us, if we can do one thing that has tremendous value to the caregiver and to the individual, we've already won. If just one thing, we do it perfectly, that reduces either a pain, a cost, or improves any type of independence in that individual. I mean, we're on the right track already. The other thing that I failed to mention, this is also done to reduce caregiver burnout. Because caregiver burnout is a real thing.

Oh, yeah. real thing oh yeah like as of 2022 last year almost two years now uh we had 77 turnover rate on caregivers yeah so right so uh you know people always ask me so is this replacing the caregivers i'm like no it's not a we're not touching patients so you still need caregivers to touch the patients. B, why would we want to displace caregivers when there's already a shortage of caregivers? Yeah, we need actually more. So we're actually augmenting caregiver capability so that caregiver can forget about the mundane tasks and kind of focus on the human side of care because like you mentioned earlier that human interaction is still needed loneliness is a big factor yeah and when someone comes to take care of my grandmother and you know me at one point i don't want them to come with a frown on their

face you know come happy to my you know my weight so that's really important so the other part of it that is like we're trying to work with caregivers to reduce their burnout, their emotional stress, to allow them to render a better service. And if you can have the bot do, you know, minor tasks that can help out, I mean, that can make all the difference, especially if you're a caregiver center that's, you know, trying to, you know, service so many people once. You know, my mother does a Zoom call, does Zoom calls with my sister so that they can have a face-to-face interaction. I think that's really important for humans. And it actually activates the brain cells, which is important. And so being able to do that with the bot, see what's going on, you know, would really help everybody in the stress of the situation. And, you know, I'm sure

it would make people like Delaina and others that we see in the home just feel more, I don't know, more like they have a friend, a buddy, you know, I mean, they can't have dogs or cats at the care centers you know it's like including them in society you know because a lot of the times they feel isolated yeah so it's kind of like bringing them back in definitely definitely well what made you interested in this field what got you into it what what got you down this road you know uh so i i'm an immigrant right i was i was when I came here, I was 24, I turned 24 years old here. And at that point, I had already finished three years of college from, you know, in Lebanon. Came here, they said, oh, the institution you went to in Lebanon is not accredited, right?

They got accreditation a year after I left. Oh, so so so I had to restart everything. And at that time I was studying mechanical engineering and I was just doing it just to show the diploma to my parents and like here, you know, you wanted me to get educated, just go there you go but something really life-changing happened uh the final year we did a senior senior design project we built a six foot tall fully autonomous robot from scratch and we went ahead and won uh first place at the the autonomous on-cruised Vehicle System International Competition. And, you know, I received the Distinguished Engineering Project Award from California's Engineers Council.

So I'm like, I really love working with robots, you know. So I immediately went into pursuing my master's in robotics. At the time, my thesis dissertation was to build a stair climbing wheelchair that mimics mimicked the uh spider's legs all right yeah so i i did a scaled prototype added to it you know did the design the programming you know everything by myself basically yeah and i had the opportunity to work with a severely paralyzed person on brain computer interface technology. So the way that works is like you put a helmet on and anything and you start thinking of thoughts. And as you think of thoughts, you're kind of sending signals to the motors. In this case, it was a motorized wheelchair. So the wheelchair would be able to,

you'd be able to maneuver the wheelchair with your thoughts oh wow initially i was working on it because i'm like hey what's it sounds so cool to be able to move things with your mind right yeah so that that's why i was working on it but then i when i worked with this individual um and i was i was sitting on the chair put a helmet on trying to think thoughts and it wasn't as intuitive for me as it was for him because for me i mean i'm not on a wheelchair right but so it was like i'm trying to think of thoughts okay for go forward go forward like how do you say the chair was barely moving but then he sat on it and we put a helmet on there and uh he started he started like driving like i'm driving a car right i'm like and i'm

seeing the expression on his face and it's like he's living in a brand new world you know wow and that was the first time a light bulb went uh lit up in my head i said you know i really want to do this i want to build robotics to allow people to live better and that was the first time i kind of thought about it of course i was already working in full time in the aerospace and defense industry uh you know i i loved my job uh but you know this was this was a meaningful moment in my life that kind of triggered me into thinking about starting my own robotics company to assist people live better. And a few years later, as I said, my grandparents due to old age kind of became in that, you know, went through all that challenges with them. And I was studying my MBA at the time. And there was a lot of entrepreneurship talks and I said okay

this is the time where I kind of you know I see the gap I see the challenges you know I think I'd be able to to address it this is the time I you know basically incorporated a company and went ahead with it and that's how it started after that it's I it's funny i incorporated the company and uh you know i received the paper from from the you know from the government saying oh you have a company now and i sat down i'm like huh what do i do now what do i do now yeah so i'm like okay i need to find me uh find find find me someone to mentor me through all of this. Someone who kind of walked in my shoes 30 years ago, right?

Inside of networking and stuff and came across this individual. His name is Jeff Hoffman. And he was a keynote speaker at this one event I was at. And he was talking about everything i was going through basically from from the stage and as i'm sitting and listening to him there's maybe five six hundred people in that room um and i'm like i need to talk to him i gotta talk to him you know like uh but i didn't know how i was like you you know, I'm just one person out of that 500 in that hall. How do I get his attention?

Right? So at the end of his talks, there was a bunch of charities there. And they said, you know, we're going to auction Jeff Hoffman. And, you know, the money that raised is going to go to one of the charities. I'm like, oh, there you go, perfect opportunity. I didn't care how much it was going to cost me. I'm like, I want to talk to this guy. So long story short, I kind of won the bid,

had a one-hour lunch turned into a four-hour getting to know each other session. We kind of hit it off, did a mastermind together, and he's my co-founder right now and he's the former founder of priceline.com ubit.com booking.com he was one of the people he's actually the the person who put the self-checking kiosks at the airport oh wow so you know i needed that person to kind of accelerate my path to becoming a better entrepreneur versus kind of vacillating and misusing other people's money, like investors' money, trying to learn, right? So I'm really glad that he's my partner in this right now because he's guiding me through a lot of pivotal decision-making stuff that I wouldn't have known had I gone at it by myself. There you go.

And it's important to have a strong business partner like that because you don't want to make all those mistakes that new entrepreneurs make, especially when you're trying to get something that needs investments and something that needs development, money off the ground. You're a long ways from profitability, and you're really focused on building the product out, proving its viability and marketability. But I think you're on the right track. Like I've been talking about, my experiences, and my experiences I've been talking about are something I see with all of the people in the care centers you know delane has been about five or seven care centers over the

years and you know some she's had to kind of amp through certain care and some some facilities are better than others by by long uh shots and um uh but i see with all the different people when i go there um there's so many people there that look just depressed, that just look alone. You know, sadly, these centers end up being a dumping ground for old people, you know, and I'm always overjoyed when I see families there come and visit. But, you know, we all have busy you know busy times to you know chase our lives and try and make a buck or two um and being able to you know do the calling thing or check on people or help out i i think just can can add the value of life length of life a whole lot more can i get one that uh just uh about every day or so just reminds them, hey, don't forget to put me in your will.

Just kidding. There you go. As a joke, people, don't get upset. Don't worry. Don't send an email. So give us your final thoughts as we go on, Mark. Pitch to people and you.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah.

So hurtmarkarian.com, markbotics.com. That's really markbotics.com is all you need to know. From there, you can go to all my social links. We also won the Global Innovation Challenge, by the way. I forgot to mention that. Oh, wow. A couple of months ago, out of 300 companies that applied, we were in the last 12,

and we ended up in one of the six positions, I think, that was awarded the Global Innovation Challenge. And we were the only one in the space of robotics, for assistive robotics, I should say. So that was another achievement. In terms of final thoughts, we're genuinely trying to add value here. There's a massive gap. And if people resonate with this,

we welcome their support, whether that's monetary or just introductions. And yeah, other than that, I leave you with a quote that I love, which says, God's gift to us is more talent and ability than we can use in our lifetime. And our gift to God would be to develop as much of that talent and ability as we can in this lifetime. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful and inspiring to have you on. Thank you very much.

And yeah, anything you can do to make this world better, especially for people that are relying on us to take care of them. They took care of us in our early years. They put up with all of our stupidness and our poopy diapers and our crying and they rocked us to sleep. And, you know, we, we, I, in my, in my mind, we kind of owe, uh, these folks, not only a debt of humanity, but, you know, they took care of our stupid dummies when we were being, you know, I hate this sort of culture that we have that kind of throws away old people and doesn't seem to give them the respect that they deserve and the wisdom. And so many of them, you know, maybe their bodies are kind of old, but their minds are still fairly sharp and stuff. And, you know, it's so hard. You know, I look at my grandparents when they got isolated in their in their older years it

was so hard on them um and they missed you know human interaction and and and being around people so much so this is so important thank you very much for coming on the show we really appreciate it man thank you for having me thank you and thanks to our audience for tuning in go to goodreads.com for just christmas linkedin.com for just christmas to Goodreads.com for just Christmas. LinkedIn.com for just Christmas. Goodreads.com for just Christmas. I think I said that. And Christmas, I just wanted to talk. You guys know the drill. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.