Transcript

Art Post (00:00)
we had little Rolodex machines to, that was our CRM.

There's a lot of service robots around right now that do mop floors. They clean bathrooms.

now companies aren't making as many prints as they used to.

Dan Pace (00:13)
Hmm.

Art Post (00:14)
almost all of the Japanese companies jumped into the marketplace.

500 million robots in the workforce,

there's going to be a tremendous amount of jobs that are going be created that are going to have to support that workforce.

Dan Pace (00:30)
robots. Yeah.

Art Post (00:30)
we came up with this thing.

It's called 10 minutes, 10 minutes per employee a day.

our idea is to bring robots to the copier channel

Dan Pace (00:41)
Hi Art Post, thanks for joining me on the Getting Started podcast. Really happy to have you here to talk about office technology and print and copying. I would admit it's not the industry you actually know too much about. And I feel like there's a couple of people out there that could probably say the same. So I really look forward to learning a lot about that industry today from you today. you're actually one of the newer people I've ever met. So don't have too much I can actually share.

about what you do. just know you've been doing it for quite some time and you've had a lot to share with me the few times we have met and talked. But as far as an introduction, I kind of want to let you introduce yourself and tell us what you've been, the companies I believe you're with, Stratix Systems as well as Print for Pay Hotel. It's kind of like you own And what are you doing there and how did you get all started with what you're up to?

Art Post (01:27)
Sure,

Dan, I appreciate the invite and welcome to your show. I appreciate it. Let's see, where do I start? 45 years ago, I answered an advertisement to become a copy machine technician. All right, so we're going back to the beginning. A copy machine technician?

Dan Pace (01:46)
Hold on, what is that? Advertisement for a job?

No, I'm saying advertisement for a job opening. I haven't seen one those in a long time.

Art Post (01:53)
Well,

the year was 1980. There weren't many jobs around. I was 23 years old. Was not working at the time and I needed to get a job. So I answered this ad to be a copy machine repair training for, we went to a school and they taught you how to repair copy machines.

Dan Pace (01:59)
Yeah.

Art Post (02:17)
So that course was about, I think, 16 weeks or maybe a little bit longer. And they had about 10 or 12 people there. They all got us into all the electronics on how to fix a copy machine, what the process of making a copy or making a print is. And that was before the age of laser printers.

inkjet printers. So basically it was a machine that just made copies. You put an original on the glass, you tell it I want X amount of copies and the machine would make it. At the time in 1980 we were just transferring from what they call electrostatic, not even electrostatic, they called it eStat technology. So what they mean was eStat technology.

is basically you needed charged paper and charged iron toner, iron filings, which is toner, to make it adhere to the paper. When I got into the industry, they were just transferring over to bond paper. So bond paper means plain paper. And that was pretty exciting in our industry

that you could actually put plain paper in a copy machine and you could make prints. So what's cool?

learned everything I had to learn. They actually got everybody a job coming out of that school because it was a very, very hot industry. Because the copier business, if you're not aware of it, the patent was developed by the Xerox or Halloyd back in 1937 by Chester Carlson. So by the early 70s,

the patent had expired on xerography. At that point in time, almost all of the Japanese companies jumped into the marketplace.

Companies like, you've probably heard of before, Ricoh, do cameras, Canon, do cameras, Konica, Monolta, or Konica did cameras, Monolta did cameras, and there was a bunch of other players that actually joined the industry.

So the need for technicians was out there. so schools popped up here and there to train people how to repair copy machines. So I got a job, and I was at the job for about three months. They brought me in for a review And they told me I'm doing a great job of taking machines apart. However, not so good at putting them back together. We're going to have to lay you off.

All right, so it was interesting. I had my run three months. What do I do now? In 1980, there wasn't a lot of business, right? There wasn't a lot of companies hiring. That's when the interest rates were 18 to 20 % interest.

Dan Pace (05:10)
Actually, what did it take to buy one those machines? Was it like bigger large corporations only people that had it or were they able to get into the small business too?

Art Post (05:16)
⁓ So at that time,

was almost every company needed a copy machine. That was part of their workflow or their process. They had to make copies of invoices, bill of ladings, purchase orders, because back in 1980 and for quite a few years thereafter, everything was a paper-based process. So in order to the workflows, the workflows were all about making copies to distribute them to other people.

in your organization.

Dan Pace (05:47)
Kinda funny, so the industry is able to put them together so fast, faster than they would've been with the people to take them apart and put them back together to service them. It's at least not how sounds like, it moved really fast and developed fast.

Art Post (05:54)
Right?

Right? So funny

story, as I was getting laid off, the owner, I was in his office, the owner reached into his pocket, pulled out a lot of bills, $100 bills.

So it was kind of like, it was interesting. It was more about, it almost like he was tempting me, but he asked me, he goes, listen, what would you rather do? Would you rather finish out the week?

to earn this money or would you rather try and talk me out of it?

Dan Pace (06:27)
Like out of laying you off or out of that money.

Art Post (06:30)
Well, if I was able to talk him out of the money, he would give me the money and probably still lay me off. So for what seemed like 30 minutes, I wasn't able to talk him out of his money, but he did offer me a job selling copiers.

Dan Pace (06:37)
But you'd have a future as a sales job.

Art Post (06:49)
⁓ I went from service to sales, so I know the entire process.

Dan Pace (06:50)
So I went from service to sales.

Art Post (06:56)
and I've been in that sales industry for 45 years now. In 1986, I broke away.

I started out my own company with a couple of friends. We ran that company in Monmouth County until 1998. At that time, we all got married. We all brought our wives into work with us, and things just didn't work out.

So in 1998, I sold my shares and then just went to work for another dealer, selling copying machines, and I have pretty much been with that same organization since 1998. So that's my history, how I got started in the copier business and what transferred over those years.

Dan Pace (07:47)
Sounds like you actually got a little lucky too by that boss repurposing you into sales rather than just saying, buy and go somewhere else. That could have been a huge changing point, it sounds like in that story.

Art Post (07:55)
I got very lucky.

Yeah, it would have been that. And if I didn't get me a job, it probably would have been having to enlist in the Army because there weren't too many other options at that point in time.

Dan Pace (08:08)
Yeah, actually is a story that I came across just yesterday. Google had laid off a lot of their AI training people for making AI more human and more quality assurance and such. And they laid them off and a lot of the stories I'm hearing are a lot of the people that are criticizing it or saying they need to repurpose these people because they're so well trained now in this high demand area where there's not as many people, personnel that are trained on it.

And they shouldn't just let them go out the door. They should be repurposing them into something else, maybe a sales opportunity or maybe some other consulting gig, especially given how much demand right now there can be in the large enterprise for AI consultants. Apparently some are getting paid $900 an hour, which I almost can't even comprehend that you can bring that sort of value in. Especially when MIT is saying that 95 % of AI pilots have not generated any revenue. So what are they getting paid for? But we'll see what happens later in that.

But yeah, awesome. That's really cool that you were able to, or that boss that was able to transition you into the sales role. And then that led to Stratix Systems and Print for Pay Hotel. And what's the difference between the two? Is Print for Pay just kind of...

Art Post (09:11)
So Print4PayHotel is a

website that I developed in 19... 19... 20... I think it was 2002 I developed it. And the reason I developed it is because the web was just... I think the web started what? In 98 or something like that and the web is getting big and I developed a forums based community. It's somewhat like, you know, Reddit or...

Discord, what people use today. Well, back then, a lot of people were just using forums to share information. So our industry back then was a very closed industry. A lot of dealers didn't communicate with other dealers. A lot of manufacturers didn't communicate with other manufacturers. And a lot of salespeople weren't able to communicate with other salespeople. So as a salesperson or maybe a technician,

⁓ as a sales manager, were in your own little microcosm, your own little world, right?

And you didn't know a lot what was going around beside you. There were some industry rags that went out to people, but a lot of times those rags just went to dealer owners. Once a year there was a national show, but again, dealer owners were the ones who basically were going through those types of shows where you would see the new technology.

And I saw a need for, you know, many of the clients in Siena are having questions and I don't know the answers. And I know there's other people out there that would know those answers. So I started a forums based community and I started pulling from people I met. at the time Rico had a site in intranet site where

They started this internet where all people selling RICO could talk to RICO. And in that timeframe, they would always list their email address. So as time went on, I was copying those email addresses. And sometimes we would talk outside of the forums and we would email each other, right? So at some point in time, we would comment about certain how machines would work, if they worked, if they didn't work.

We would share information and I kind of pissed off Rico about a machine that wasn't working properly. And they pretty much kicked me off of their site because they weren't happy with what I was saying. And at that point in time, I said, okay, I can do this better than they can. 20 years later, Rico doesn't have an internet site where...

where technicians can talk to each other or share information. And I've got a site that's got more than 3,000 members. The site's still running after 20 years, and we still share information about how we can help our clients, what type of solutions are out there, what works, what doesn't work. Then about 10 years ago, I was able to actually...

add to my site. I was actually able to add banner banner ads for other companies that play in our industry. So it's still a work in progress. I write blogs every day about the ⁓ about the industry. So after 45 years of doing this, I still enjoy what I do. And I hope to do it for many more years.

Dan Pace (12:38)
Nice. You know, it's kind of makes me think of the first internet that was ever created. If you're aware of CERN, they made an intranet and there's how their own employees were able to talk to each other and share information quicker about their own industry. So it's really kind of cool that you took that early on and actually just scaled it out for an industry amongst the other people you were talking about. actually was like, it's your core internet actually in a way that what you were doing. That's pretty neat.

Art Post (12:50)
Please?

Yeah, yeah. So.

Dan Pace (13:06)
And that's

essentially what you would call it, the print for pay hotel, that sort of form.

Art Post (13:10)
Yeah, a forums. It's a forums based community and it's also got How can I say a blog format as well so average I'm probably white writing and four to five four to five blogs every week that I post on the site that go out to ⁓ my members and again, it's all about sharing information and driving traffic to my site because

Now I have to make sure that my advertisers are getting traffic. So it's almost like a catch 22 with that.

Dan Pace (13:39)
yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I actually thinking that sounds like right for a, you know, AI chatbot to help get that information quicker too, although it might hurt your page views. That also may not hurt the advertisers in a way, since it's too easy to get the information. But interesting, interesting spot. That's pretty good. I actually wanted to ask about, you know, one of the transitions you to do with your company, everything on pivoting and such, but you kind of did touch on that with the...

⁓ With that, you new copying because when you entered you said you were bonded paper Is that the paper that had to be separated? You had to fan it out every time because it like gets that electrostatic charge

Art Post (14:17)
Yeah, that's

still bond paper and that's still what's used today. It was about 1997, 1998, the industry was just making a transition. We call those ⁓ copiers prior to 1998 analog copiers. So there was nothing digital about them. They could not print. It was all an analog process to make a copy.

HP developed, I think in 97, 96 ⁓ launched their first laser printer. And the only difference between a laser printer and an analog copier is instead of using a mirror and a lens to project the image onto what they call a photoconductor, it was using a laser beam to project the image onto the photoconductor. So you were then able to take

documents from the PC, Word document, Excel, I believe back then it was Word Perfect, and you were out actually able to send them to a laser printer. And the copy machine industry saw this change. And in 1997, 1998, they started making hybrid machines that were somewhat analog but somewhat digital.

Dan Pace (15:20)
Word pad.

Art Post (15:39)
that they could print and copy. Shortly thereafter, the machines, they started making machines that they were able to scan devices. And by a few years, probably by 2001, 2002, all of the machines had made that transition from analog machines to digital machines. Now mind you, keep in mind that

All the salespeople at that time, we only knew the analog process. We didn't even have laser printers in our office. We didn't have scanners in our office. We had typewriters and we had little Rolodex machines to, that was our CRM.

So we all had to make that transition on learning, okay, what the hell is the internet? What's a network? What's a print driver?

what do mean they can scan to a location? What location? So there was a great learning process. Another reason why my forums were so successful back in the early 2000s because we were all as salespeople, we were all clamoring for information.

Dan Pace (16:44)
Mm-hmm.

That seems like it's going on more or less today too with all the AI, know, people looking for good AI information and it's hard to find right now. A lot of people are just putting out the first thing that they can think that's valuable and then it's just, you know, pay me for it. Oh, sorry, I just had a question in my head. What was it here? Yeah, so you had to make some pivots. I mean, you just mentioned like three different, you know, major changes in the technology that what did the business have to go through to...

Art Post (16:57)
Great.

Dan Pace (17:08)
I capitalize on that was that a whole new sales strategy, whole new campaign, the learning curve that you had mentioned.

Art Post (17:14)
Not really because every business still needed a copy machine, whether it was analog or whether it was digital. The paper, it was digital, yeah, because there was a ton of advantages you could sell to the client. They weren't able to print before.

Dan Pace (17:23)
Was there a big rush upgrade though when these came out or they could?

Art Post (17:35)
Now they could print. They weren't able to scan before. Now they could scan. So a lot of people who had those manual workflows, the salespeople, we would identify that you've got a paper-based process right now. And this digital process of printing right to the machine or taking documents that you have and scanning and distributing them is going to save you quite a bit of money. So the sales were always there. And the sales were always popular because

there was always a return on investment for the client because of the workflows from the 80s and 90s were all paper-based. We didn't realize at some point that digital process would get us to the point where, all of sudden now companies aren't making as many prints as they used to.

Dan Pace (18:20)
Hmm.

Art Post (18:21)
And we actually had that experience during COVID.

Dan Pace (18:22)
That's interesting,

Art Post (18:26)
during the shutdowns, print volumes probably dropped off 70%.

Dan Pace (18:32)
I've noticed a big push

for e-stabins from financial institutions. They're really trying to get people into that a lot more. That's a lot of paper. Fun.

Art Post (18:36)
Yep. Yeah. And the question is,

how about they ask you, we're going to give you, you know, and do you want to get your E statements, right? And I'm like, okay, yeah, I take an E statement, but since you don't have to print anymore, are you going to give me a discount on my bill?

Dan Pace (18:54)
Yeah, print, mail, should get a couple bucks. In fact, now they're doing the opposite, actually. They'll charge you for the print and the piece and the print statement and the mail.

Art Post (18:56)
Right. Sure get a couple bucks here or there.

Absolutely, absolutely. So COVID was tough. We probably only got back 80 % of the volume that we lost. So the emails, the digital process, all these new software that came out.

Dan Pace (19:06)
Now the banks, huh?

Art Post (19:20)
gave us an industry that was not growing anymore, but is actually ⁓ contracting.

Dan Pace (19:26)
Interesting. Although we have some, know, no, good. Yeah. But yeah, it sounds like there's, you know, a couple of upgrades, guess, or new, new transitions down the pipeline. We'll talk about in just a second. They want to mention one thing you did just say that these companies back then were able to upgrade to the new tech, new hardware, right? And then they could have a whole new list of capabilities that saves them time, money, and, you know, various other benefits. And.

Art Post (19:26)
but good for.

No, go ahead.

Dan Pace (19:54)
Definitely doesn't sound like that's something that's out of the ordinary. sounds like that's happened dozens of times in our lifetime and just happened in your industry is happening in all industries right now with AI and the software and most, my opinion, the no coding workflows. Everyone now if they have a, yeah, exactly. If everyone has like a decent understanding of that, they essentially can now code and make software and then do all these things that computers can do and actually use them to their fullest ability, which is just huge. mean, don't think there's very few people that are walking around that even.

Art Post (20:08)
No code, code.

Dan Pace (20:23)
can really use a computer for a computer's purpose. They're just using it for, you know, Word or surf Facebook and you know, go to the forum. And as a whole.

Art Post (20:29)
Right? I was in a conversation

this morning and the gist of part of that conversation, it was a meeting on Zoom and one person had a comment that everything is going up, which changed the business. Everything is going up. There's more fees. There's the cost of doing business is going up. Insurance. It's just a never ending increase.

And ⁓ what can business, you know, didn't ask what can businesses do. He just said, you know, how do how do businesses, how can I say, work through all those landmines, right? Of prices increasing and we're not able to increase our prices that much because it's then going to put us at a disadvantage. And finally, at the end, I had to speak up and I had to say, business who are experiencing all of that need to

need to look to technology to reduce their costs because there's a lot of amazing technology out there that it can actually reduce a company's costs, whether it's an AP, AR workflows, AI. But the problem is, and I don't know if you see it, but a lot of times you'll call somebody, you'll kind of try to get through to somebody and they won't even speak to you.

Dan Pace (21:42)
Yeah, it's that,

that reptilian brain comes up, right? Cause there's something they don't understand, they don't know about, and they don't want to get scared by it sometimes. A

Art Post (21:46)
they're just trying to sell me, they're just trying to sell me something. No, no, we're trying to help you. You

Dan Pace (21:53)
lot of times, I mean, I might add regulation to that as well, especially with the new administration, there's a lot of new changes going on, which means you have to change and then changes means typically the cost is associated with it. So that's another big challenge. And I'm right there with you. ⁓ Nonprofits.

Art Post (21:53)
we've got...

Dan Pace (22:09)
I do a lot of nonprofit work and I talk to a lot of organizations and all of them just got about a third of their budgets cut from the NJ state budget as well as the big, beautiful bill and then all the new federal grants that are going to be chopped down. And the amount of people that would talk about like, do get this money back? How do we get these grants to come back? How do we make a new program from the federal government? All of that was to talk and no one mentioned, how do we cut costs?

How do we apply AI and make workflows and make new software, new processes to reduce our spend or reduce the time cost? And there's a PhD doctor really high up with AI technologies and such. I don't know him too much. I can't really say how factual what he said was, but it made sense that about 60 % of processes could probably be automated today and that they're not being automated more because they don't, people that are in charge don't want to necessarily, don't want to go to work to make it.

Art Post (22:35)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pace (22:59)
But it's not that they can't be. So I really, I kind of join you in that sort of argument that we probably could surf these types of costs and such a lot better with technology, but it would also make a major change in the way we manage our businesses and what we're looking on to how we're going to innovate. yeah, mean, changes are necessary always. There's never been a time it's not around. ⁓

Art Post (23:17)
which they have.

Sometimes change is good. Change, yeah.

Dan Pace (23:27)
Why is it's weird how much and how often businesses want to just hold onto the status quo because it just seems futile.

Art Post (23:33)
status quo.

just keep doing what we're doing. So our industry is kind of like that because we know prints are going down every year. People aren't printing as much as they used to. And that's our planned obsolescence. That's the tale of our business, meaning that if you get a copy machine, you're going to make prints and you're going to spend additional money with us because you're going to need either maintenance agreement or you're going to need parts or you're going to need

Dan Pace (23:39)
Which is changing,

Art Post (24:05)
toner for the machine, et cetera, cetera. But that tail is now winding down for our industry.

Dan Pace (24:11)
Interesting. Yeah, I definitely wanted to touch on what are the challenges going on in Office technology. So sounds like the volume of prints is going down, but of course the maintenance and service still remains the same, or the cost of it's going up, as you just mentioned. So that's not a good balancing act right there. Is there anything else going on that's a challenge right now in the Office technology print?

Art Post (24:25)
Well, yep.

yeah, just the printer, printer, printer going down, but it is a huge market. I mean, I think the worldwide, ⁓ amount of pages printed here is true to trillion pages. but so if I don't need Liz, if it loses three to 5 % a year, it's really, you know, not going to affect that two trillion, ⁓ a lot. Yeah. But however,

Dan Pace (24:52)
Still plenty to go around, huh?

Art Post (24:55)
the next COVID, again, when we dropped out of COVID, ⁓ we lost 20%. So if we have another COVID, who knows? I mean, we're gonna lose 20 % of what we have. That's never gonna come back because a lot of those technologies were developed during COVID to make businesses more...

reduce our costs, put new technologies in, et cetera, et cetera.

Dan Pace (25:22)
And Lumbar

hands free, right? Because less people were in their office. Now, you did mention staffing. you got into it, staffing was kind of an issue. Is that still an issue? Is a lot of people going into office technologies nowadays? Has it got some intrigue?

Art Post (25:27)
Right, right, less people.

So

we lost a lot of people during COVID because we couldn't sell a lot of machines because there was nobody in the office. So salespeople and technician-wise, companies were laying off people. Our company didn't lay off anybody. But what was that word? They were laying them off, but there was another terminology.

Dan Pace (25:59)
Other with furlough.

Art Post (26:00)
they were giving them furloughs, right? And at that point in time, some of the techs and salespeople said, well, you're gonna furlough me? I'll just jump into a different industry, right? So a lot of the people who had been in the industry as salespeople or technicians jumped out of that industry, got more into IT, maybe more into cybersecurity.

⁓ networks and that's true of the salespeople and the technicians.

Dan Pace (26:27)
Did telecom ever take some people, wireless, stuff like that? Or has that not been having much overlap?

Art Post (26:31)
No,

Telecom was bigger like 15 years ago. I see a lot of people going into IT, cybersecurity, ⁓ IT technicians, right?

Dan Pace (26:36)
Mm-hmm. Yes, Fios came out.

Those are definitely growing fields. But something we

were talking about a little bit before and I think this is something you're going into now. We were talking about adding robotics now to Office technology, which does sound really almost like an obvious idea the way you kind of posted it, the way you kind of portray it. And I've also watched your podcast. Let me mention that and I'll definitely link it in the video.

to what you guys talk about, because you have a little group that talks about office technologies, and you had a video that was talking about the robotics that might be adding into the office. Yeah, do you want to touch on that? Because you mentioned what? The humanoid, as well as like a of a desk robot, a moving desk robot.

Art Post (27:20)
Right.

Yeah, so everything I've read by 2035, we're going to be mass market for humanoids. Humanoids for B2B or B2C type companies, Humanoids right now range from anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000. They're still very, very expensive. By 2035, and with the advancement of

chat GPT and LLMs, other artificial intelligence, that price is probably gonna be in that eight grand to 20 grand range for a humanoid. we started, ⁓ me and a couple other guys have been in the industry for quite a while, we started a consortium. we want to, because we understand what's going on with our print industry.

We understand that it's slowly dying. So if you own a business, what's your, and you have your kids involved, your grandkids involved as a dealer owner, what's your legacy going to be in 20 years? What legacy are you leaving? What kind of company are you gonna leave them, right? Are you gonna leave them to your, you're still involved in print and you're involved in managed IT?

Dan Pace (28:36)
Hopefully a self-running company, yeah.

Art Post (28:41)
But managed IT isn't all it's cracked up to be as well, right? It doesn't have a long tail like the copier industry did with all the extra stuff that businesses have to buy to keep that copy machine ⁓ running. Although ⁓ Windows is doing a good job at saying, Windows 10 is, we're getting rid of Windows 10 in October, right?

Dan Pace (29:04)
Yeah, yeah, think it's again phased out. Well, the support for it stops. Yeah. I gotta go to Windows 11, which means they have to hire an IT guy to change all those computers over, because they have to do that stuff.

Art Post (29:06)
Yeah, that's getting phased out. So a lot of companies, they've to phase out their, they've got to get new slurring rooms, got to get new computers. Right. Right. Right.

And with probably in five more years, it'll be Windows, ⁓ it'll be Windows 11. 

Dan Pace (29:21)
About as all the patents start to run out. That's when the new Windows comes out.

Art Post (29:23)
Yeah.

Yeah. So our industry is facing crossroads because our technicians are getting older. That affects copiers. Nobody wants to be a copier technician because there is no career path in being a copier technician. It's not a job that's going to pay you $100,000 a year. Then what do you need to make nowadays? Right. In order to survive, especially in our marketplace, right. In our megalopolis.

It's crazy.

Dan Pace (29:52)
Yeah, it's

about 72,000 is kind what I figure. mean, there's a metric I came across for I think rentals actually. It's for a lot of like large rental companies need to prove that the, 

can't really even afford to get a single bedroom apartment. Like that's, that's, it's a lot higher than people would expect. That's your, you know, your level of, you know, you want to take care of yourself.

Art Post (30:24)
Right? Right?

So our idea is to bring robots to the copier channel

so that they can sell and support robots and bring the copier channel to the robot OEMs. Because right now the robot OEMs, they don't have a channel. They figure if we build it, people will come.

And if you go on a lot of robot websites and you see some of the robots on there, they don't have many options. They don't state, ⁓ it's hard to find warranty information. It's hard to find support information. What happens when you buy a robot and it breaks? Maybe it loses a foot, it loses a finger, something. Who's going to service these things? No company is going to make a robot that will last forever.

They'll make robots that'll last for five years, seven years. They may change. In order to get the price down, maybe robots are only going to last three years. Maybe there's going to be more wearable parts in a robot. So we see an opportunity for our industry to start making a transition that we're still going to sell copy machines. But as a dealer, because we know with we

We deal with onsite service. We deal with SLAs. We know what it's like to update firmware. We know what it's like to make a copy machine communicate with the network. We're doing this already, and this is what the robot manufacturers need. Because if they want to put out masses of robots, there's going to need to be a service and support industry behind it. And a lot of these robot companies now, they're getting tons of venture capitalist money.

What they want to do is they just want to get market share. That's all they're concerned about is getting market share. But that market share could go poof when people find out that they can't get the type of support they need or type of service that they need. So we're getting together. ⁓ We've already got a couple of robot OEMs involved in our consortium. We've got one copier OEM involved in our consortium.

Right now we've got a handful of dealers. We're looking to get to 50 dealers by the end of the year, office equipment dealers that want to start saying, we need an internal robotics plan.

We don't have to be selling robotics right away, but we need to maybe get one for our office and start training the brain of that robot. When they start training the brain of that robot, they're going to own the IP.

And at some time in the future, that IP may translate into future dollars. So that's one plan option that dealers are going to have. But the other option is that they can hook up with some of these robotic manufacturers right now that are looking to sell more robots. Robots like Unitree, Tesla.

There's a lot of service robots around right now that do mop floors. They clean bathrooms.

They I saw that one. Very, very gingerly folding it, right? Yeah, but but But that's what the S market's gonna be a be by 2035 You know for $20,000 you can have a humanoid in your home. That's take out the garbage it might

Dan Pace (33:34)
I've seen one doing laundry the other day, which people wanted that from the, know, get go of AI. Yeah. I want that one. They can do it as slow as it wants as long as I'm not doing it.

Actually, probably

less, right? Because I mean, printing right now, it's usually a monthly type of rental, right? Isn't it? So it's one of the same type of model, I would think.

Art Post (34:02)
Correct.

So one of the other models that we want to be these OEMs, the robots to lease their robot, like you lease a car, right? After five years, lease is over, trade it in, get something new. So if you look at a $20,000 robot, that's $400 a month. It's not a lot of money for everything that a robot could do. They do the laundry, clean the house.

Dan Pace (34:21)
What are the printers right now?

Including several things that you might, depending on your staff, might not be able to do. I think in that podcast I was referencing the most profound thing that I noticed is also one of the most simplest things and just picking something up that's heavy. mean, there's a lot of staffs out there that are aging workforce and can't do a 50 pound, 100 pound box, which not a problem for the robot, not at all.

Art Post (34:46)
Right? Yeah.

And the the anybody picking up that weight in the office is their company is more susceptible to injuries, right? Liability, somebody getting hurt workman's comp, the workman comp plan goes up. So we want to bring

Our other idea, and probably our biggest idea is we want to bring an office supply robot to the office. Humanoid, we think it could be done within the next three to five years. And that humanoid will be able to go to the supply cabinet, go get paper for the copier, go get toner for the copier, go get...

Hey, I need a cup of coffee. Can you go get me a cup of coffee? So I don't not away from my desk. Every minute at my desk, I'm making money. Uber, not Uber, DoorDash came here, go down the front door, go get my food, go bring my food to me. Take care of the recyclables, right? Take out the garbage.

Dan Pace (35:45)
Yeah, I mean, you just mentioned about an hour worth of just

random things you have to do on a regular basis and robots. Yeah.

Art Post (35:50)
Right. So we came up with this thing.

It's called 10 minutes, 10 minutes per employee a day.

If a humanoid can save you 10 minutes of being away from your desk or being away from your work, you try times that price by 50 or so people. Businesses based on a robot now that costs $65,000 each company that invests will get it.

$8 return for every dollar spent.

Dan Pace (36:18)
And I'm like still shocked that the MIT reports that 95 % of companies can't find an AI pilot that will make money. I think they're looking for two high up level type things when they need to be looking at a simple process that can just get automated and save those five minutes a day. That's all it needs.

Art Post (36:25)
Really.

Yeah, well, I mean, we've got a proof of concept now that was shown in November in Tampa. And basically, it's just a small $3,000 robot. But it's got an Nvidia chip in it, right? And we put an LLM in it. And we're training that brain to go do simple stuff. Go to the supply cabinet, go get me a toner cartridge, go get me a waste toner cartridge, go get me a staple cartridge.

And for right now, just bring it to the copy machine. That's all we want you to do, right? To show that the proof of concept can be done now with a simple, inexpensive robot. However, this is just a starting point. We're hoping that people will take that idea and evolve on that. Like we're training the brain. We've put a couple of service manuals into the brain. And then we're going to have a conversation with the robot saying,

my copy machine came up with a service code 222. What's wrong? The robot will answer rather than getting a tech on the phone. Robot, is that something we can fix or do we need to call service? The robot will respond depending upon the code, right? Then at that point in time, the robot will then ask the client if the robot, if, gee.

So the robot saying, would you want me to engage a support ticket to your service company?

Dan Pace (37:56)
Yeah, that alone is another 10 minutes safe too, right?

Yeah, the use cases are definitely kind of endless. Even without getting into like really complex tasks, it's still pretty significant. So I we've, we hire people right now for interns. We hire people now for just mail clerks and run errands and that can be done with robots now. Even if it's, and I don't want to start talking about the job loss scare, but even if that one person that would have been running around and do those errands is now just controlling the six to 10 robots that doing it, there's still a job there just now that one person can do more.

Art Post (38:26)
Yeah.

Dan Pace (38:26)
which businesses all over the place are saying they need to do more, right?

Art Post (38:27)
And a lot of they need to do more with less and a lot of businesses can't find people for some of those. So what we call those jobs, those are those mundane jobs that nobody wants.

Why can't a robot do

Dan Pace (38:41)
Or the one you take

when you're getting the skills to move up to something higher.

Art Post (38:47)
Correct.

But you're right, all of the additional work that comes from now having a fleet of, let's say, 500 million robots in the workforce,

Dan Pace (39:00)
Yep. mean,

this is all, everything that's happening right now has happened some time before. know, we see it in lots of podcasts too. was just listening to Ray Dalio podcast and he literally talked about, you know, the print printing press and such, and how information has changed. And it again has often caused a loss of jobs, then a huge gain of jobs in whole different, you know, So that seems to be what's happening, you know, right now.

Pretty excited to hear what you had to share about Office technology. Like I said, it's not something that a lot of people get to come across. At least not in my case, haven't, and I get to talk to lot of hundreds of business owners and such, but haven't gotten to talk to a print guy, know, this Office technology guy. And yeah, it's very exciting where it's heading. And actually, Lee, from some of us, I'll admit, little critical about AI and such, technology myself, to try to make sure it helps and benefits people and doesn't cause all this crazy doomsday stuff.

It sounds like it's heading in the right direction too, where it's meant to help, not hurt. So that's really awesome, you know, talk. ⁓

Art Post (39:58)
Yeah, no,

absolutely agree. We do have one of our technicians who always fights me tooth and nail because you're gonna make people lose their jobs. They're no, no, we're gonna create more jobs.

Dan Pace (40:14)
I mean, right now the print industry is kind of destined for that as it is, since it's, now, dwindling. So you need to find that next, next stage, that next phase. it sounds very promising of that, of that, even if it's not so much the sales of it, but just the service of it. Cause you make a huge, great point where these robotic manufacturers need someone to service it afterwards. Can't just get delivered one day and then it's going to be good for the rest of the next five, 10 years or however long you have it. And that's, not going to happen.

Art Post (40:42)
Right, well you've got stuff delivered to your house and you open up the box and turn it on and you're like, okay, what's next?

Dan Pace (40:45)
Yeah

Yeah.

Oh, and also you did mention that I didn't want to touch on when you train this bot with your information, your IP, it kind of becomes yours. And that's been a major thing that I kind of push with with genuine technologies. Because everyone will have that AI model that's the same right out of the box. But once you add your information, your instructions, if you already know what doing, you're fine tuning, it's then your AI model that no one else is going to have. So it's going to be the same way with the robots too. Yeah.

Art Post (41:09)
correct.

Dan Pace (41:13)
Well, it's definitely a really interesting talk. I'm looking forward to seeing more as this all develops, And following you on LinkedIn. Do you have Instagram or YouTube, any other social medias you want people to follow?

Art Post (41:23)
No, I'm not big in the Instagram.

I'm using X and I use LinkedIn. probably use LinkedIn the most. Yeah, yeah, printforpahotel.com or the letters p4photel.com. Right.

Dan Pace (41:31)
And you have your website, right? Printforpayhotel.com.

So there

you have the ways to stay in touch with what's going on with Office Technology. But yeah, it's very interesting stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing this all develop. And thanks for doing what you do, getting started with what you do. So I can have someone that will help me keep up to date with it.

Art Post (41:44)
Yeah.

So hey, I'd like to thank you very much for the invitation. I had a lot of fun with this. And maybe we can do another one sometime down the road.

Dan Pace (42:07)
Yeah, you and me both definitely always enjoy talking technology and definitely robotics. It's not something I get to spend too much time in just yet because I'm focused on the software, but it's definitely something that's coming down the line. And it's not going to be something we can ignore as business owners for sure. Yeah. Thanks again for the time Art.