What the Health Just Happened?
Matthew Chang, Principal and Founder & Kate McAfoose, President | Chang Robotics
So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of what the health just happened. We talk about all things health care, community, business and life. The goods, the beds, the ups, the downs, the left, the rights and everything in between. We bring on a variety of guests to talk about all things healthy versus not healthy in all the topics I just said. What were the topics, do you guys remember? Business. Hospitals, I think. I love it. It's a great blast. Health care, community, business life. I think my two guests today that I'm really excited for to have Chang Robotics is the name of the company, correct? Doing incredible stuff. I love reading intros and sometimes I butcher them. So I pull this from the website. Let me know how I do. Matt Chang, husband, father, and man of faith who also happens to be a visionary leader and the principal and founder of Chang Robotics, Georgia Tech graduate, JU graduate, love surfing, did some TED talks, a lot of cool stuff. Matt Mcafus? Kate. Kate. Jesus. Oh, wow. I just said the J word. I just said the J word. That's my guy too. Yeah. We're not going to edit that out. Should we edit it out? No. We're going to talk about faith. I'm going to talk about faith. You're both. You're both. You're both full of faith, right? Again, I love it. Kate, not Kat. Jeez. Mcafus? You got it. Did I say that right? Yeah. It took me forever to figure out how to say that. Jesus also happens to be the president of Chang Robotics and Kate's lead is on a focus on the company's core values of mentorship, accountability, and faith and recently honored representative of Jacksonville Business Journal's 40 under 40. Thank you. I got that out, man. It's good intro. That's tough. Intros are hard when you're like spitting them out. Who wants to go first? Go first. Okay. Okay. President. Yes. Do they call you madam president? No. I wouldn't. I don't allow that. Okay. What's your job? What's your role? How do you end up in Chang Robotics? Well, I'll start with the last one first. So Matt and I worked together a previous job here in town, and then he left and started his own company. And while he was doing that, I was continuing to work in having kids starting our family. And so he caught me in a moment of weakness, but probably in a moment of maternity. Yes. In a moment of maternity. I'm going to use that term. That's good. And he said, "Do you want to do something different? You don't have to go hang out in Pennsylvania and weird places a lot away from kids?" And I said, "Yeah." So I joined him and at the beginning of 2018, I resigned without telling him. And so then I called him and was like, "Hey, I'm ready to start." He was like, "Oh, well, okay," so we figured that out quick. What's your version of that same story? No, it was just like that. I said, "Tell me when you're ready to resign, and I'll make sure we have a spot." And then she missed the ready too, and she just did it. But that's our ethos. Send it. Send it. I love that. I've been saying break stuff lately, like go break stuff in a good way. Okay. Your turn. Yeah. How'd you found it? Where you disgruntled with previous company, you get into what you guys do, which is incredible. Yeah. So my favorite thing to do is to get fired. Hey. You're my guy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happened was I got fired, and I had been starting a engineering company for a national firm that didn't have engineering. They said, "Hey, we want you to come over and do this." What did the firm do? They were a national construction company. Okay. They thought, "Well, it would be cool if we could do our own engineering, and we could get more clients, we could do more services." So they hired me to start that. I thought it was going really good. We picked up some Fortune 500 clients and kind of the Who's Who list of prospective clients, and then we did not make, we were not important enough on the spreadsheet, and they had a company-wide layoff, so they fired everyone in Jacksonville and our newly formed office on one day. How many people? It was about 12 of us. Were you part of that? No. Okay. Same company. We don't have to name names here, but... No, that was... He went to do that while I stayed at the previous company, and then that encouraged him to start Chang Robotics. And by encouraged, I was sitting on the couch with no job. Well, okay. Yeah. No kids. No kids yet. No kids yet. Yeah. Okay. How long did you sit on the couch for before it was like Go Mode? I did... I went home for one day, and I was sad, and my wife thought I was joking, so she razzed me and said, "Stop being a wimp," and I was like, "Well, I just lost my job," and they took my company truck. Today is a very sad moment. And then the next day, she woke up and made me pancakes to express that wifly sympathy, and I was over it. I was like, "No, it's go time." So I said, "But I do need your laptop, sweetie, because I don't have one anymore." What did you drive after losing the company truck? A Bonneville? Okay. Yeah. I mean, it was nice. It was like Jaguar's color, and it had Jaguar's color vinyl on the inside. You're a jag fan. Yeah. We're going to hit that for sure. I had to really be a jag fan after that, because I was reppin' it hard. You just had the colors in the car. So from couch to company, what was the time span? Two months. Holy cow. Yeah. And then none of my clients knew that my whole staff got fired. So they were very disappointed that, "Hey, we just put our trust in this engineering team, and you guys don't exist anymore." So one of those clients called and said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm sittin' on the couch." Her name was Sarah. She was an Iowa State Engineer. She didn't wear sleeves to work, and she had arm veins. Like power move. It was pretty awesome. Like muscular arm veins? Yeah, like your arm. She had your arm. You got arms, too. Also, hold on. And she had arm veins, and she wore that to work. It was like such a power move. I was like, "God, it's not acceptable for men, but it looks great when Sarah does it." So she said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm sittin' on the couch." And she goes, "Why?" I said, "Well, you know I got fired. I don't have a job." And she goes, "Be here on Tuesday. Have a haircut. Have a suit and have a company." So I like to joke. I didn't everything but the haircut. And... You got a particular haircut. Did you roll in there wearing that haircut? No, I had... That was back when it was long. So if you look on my LinkedIn profile, I was rocking the man bun for a while. This is the new summer. It's pretty healthy. It was healthy, but I shed like a Labrador Retriever. Hair was all over the place. And then I had to compete with my wife for hair ties. Let's go back to this, which we could talk about this the whole time. I want to go to Kate, not Kat. I am so sorry I said that. That's on me. What does Chang Robotics do? We are an engineering team that can custom design pretty much anything that you need. Anything. So on automation robotics, our focus is helping our clients solve their workforce problems. Okay. So... Keep going. Whether it's in a manufacturing facility and not having the ability to find enough people to staff all the physicians you have, or if it's in a healthcare facility and you have nurses or health and safety staff that are running on fumes, we're trying to find ways to bolster their efficiency by taking away all the jobs that... Could be eliminated. Yes. Could you give an example? Hold on. Hold on. I got these. I promise. You ask them if you want, but I want to hear your definition. Like, what do you guys do? Yeah. We design and install robotics systems. Design and install robotics. Get it in the sentence. Yeah. No, that's good. Is there artificial intelligence tied into that? Like are you... Robotics is something I've seen you talk about. What is robotics? They're robots that work with people. Cobotics. I like that term. Yes, that's for collaborative robot. Collaborative robots. Collaborative robots. Collaborative robots. Collaborative robots. Yeah, it's co-worker robots. So there's tubes and they are co-workers because lately all of Kate's system she's designing and deploying, people put name tags on them. And they give them like silly and cute names. And then it's really weird when they give them a name that like another co-worker has. It's like, "Oh, what are you trying to say?" Oh, man. You're losing your job. Some government tech too, from the website, there was manufacturing, healthcare, GovTech is what I read and then anything you can think of. Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we like new stuff. If there's no solution in the marketplace, that's where we want to come in. If you can get in the phone book or your local engineering list and find somebody that does it, call them. If you can't find someone, call us. Okay. Tray, now ask the question. Examples. Well, yeah, could you give me some examples of solutions you guys have come up with that maybe like somebody like myself or Justin would not be aware of like that exists in a hospital. There's a flaw and you guys have fixed it. You want to do that? Let me comment. One thing before they answer it, you both had moms that were nurses. Is that accurate? Yes. Shout out, moms. Hi, mom. I love you. I always give a shout out to mom, by the way. Yeah. It's a little too late though. The moms are, the moms all just retired and now we're coming up with solutions. So both moms worked in nursing. Yeah. Again, what's going on there? I think this is really cool. Yeah. So my mom was an OR nurse. So she was usually just in a room and hated when she had to leave it to do something else. And so one of those problems is you just never have all the stuff you need in the room. And you've got a patient on the table and you need to do the procedure. She was not an operator. She was a nurse, but she's there supporting and you need to find whatever thing you need. A scalpel a four by four or more linens or a supply kit for clean arm wraps or whatever it is. And she said one of the frustrations is always that someone always had to go get those things. And then the team's down a person for whether it's 30 seconds or five minutes. So she's like, it'd be great if stuff was just there. And so we have a system running. It's a pilot in Jacksonville at a health care facility in which a nurse can go into a room, check the room, assess what's going on, immediately get on her iPad or her phone and just say, I need this, this and this, click a button and then go to taking vitals or doing whatever she has to do. In roughly 60 seconds, a cobot is delivering those materials to the room. Now, when you say deliver, does it just go in there and stop and then nurse comes in, gets the items? Is that how it works? Yeah, right now she takes them off, we're not piloting into the room yet. We're still working that out with the health care facility, but that's the future state. And that's what the expansion plan would include is a robot parking spot in the room. How much time are you guys saving these nurses on a regular? I'm sure they've crunched the numbers of how much time is safe. Yeah, with the limited pilot, 10% of their work month. Wow. Yeah. So 10% of their work much and it's 100% fetching. So if Kate is a good term, she's a caging mom like to fix people. So 10% of the time that she was fetching or 10% of her time that was spent fetching, she could now be fixing people. That's super cool. Yeah. And my mom had a similar story. So she was a pack you nurse. She worked all the floors. But this pack you stand for, I love to ask these guys. What does pack you stand for? Packaging. Post acute care unit. There you go. So you knew it better than I did. I like asking the macronoms that are both like, I don't know what you're talking about. When you're the kid of a nurse, it's like being the kid of a teacher. It's like the nurse versus the system because every year they take stuff away and make them do more reports. And the nurse is like, come on, I just want to care for people. That's what I went to college for. So yeah. So she had three workers comp injuries during her time. Why? Because they got to move 300 pound patients plus I don't know how much that bad way. I can relate to that. Yeah. If you're the good thing about the bed is you can set it up to where you push it. But with the 300 pound patient, the bed, the bed gets heavy, right? Yeah. And then you need four people to move it, but continue with the story. Well, the beds at her hospital were like the shopping carts at Target, like one of the wheels was wobbly. So if it takes a hard turn into a wall. It wasn't local hospital, right? No, no. Yeah. This was North Carolina. So everyone here is safe. So she had all these injuries that were related to the physical demands of nursing. And that was the other thing we looked at is if we can take the ergonomic demand off nurses, will they be fresher, have less injuries and maybe want to stay in their jobs longer. Because when her nursing unit retired in the midst of COVID, they did two waves of COVID, 40% of the PACU nurses walked out in one month and they call it the great resignation. So could, if their job wasn't so tough, could they have prolonged that and kept some of that nursing knowledge in the hospital? How does that work out for? Like for me too, it's always the end patient that the hospitals, like they're, they're bleeding money because there's not people in the beds. Like what about the patients that don't have access to nurses? Because they resigned. That, that's just, again, it frustrates me. I'm going to get off that soapbox for a second. What about the manufacturing side? Any other healthcare stuff that you're working on that you're excited about? Oh yeah, we, we are taking the most advanced hospital x-rays and we're taking those and we're mounting them to robots to run robots now. So in Cobots or robots? I just like to say. In this case, it's robots. So I'll distinguish, cobots are safe around people. That's your coworker robot. We're going to change it from collaborative robot to coworker robot. That's way better. Thank you. And then, and then robots, robots are super unsafe. That robot doesn't know where you are. Don't get near it. You should be outside the room. That's where you should be. If you go to Amazon, they got a big cage around the robots. Hey, it's beautiful orchestra. Do not go inside or you're next. So, so that's, we're putting those hospital x-ray sensors on robots and we can do things like run meat processing facilities. We can robotically carve beef carcasses, pig carcasses, turkey chicken using a robot that now has x-ray vision. So it knows exactly what the skeletal structure of every animal looks like. So perfect cut every time. This sounds like science fiction to me, by the way. Yeah. That's our job. You were getting into this. This is the future. That's why I was excited to have you on. You're doing too. Here's the thing to like, awards for days, right? Every time I was reading and looking at something, it's like awards. Something cool. Something awesome. 40 under 40. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. Right. Man, I hate to. Why do they limit it at 40? I'm 41. Yeah. They don't do 50 under 50s or 60s. It's worse than you think. It's 40 by the awards ceremony, not 40 by the application date. Yeah. That's a brutal cut. Don't be 39 and apply. Not going to work. No, no, no. Yeah. So that's through Jack's Mobile Business Journal, right? Correct. Are you excited for that? Is it an honor? Was it kind of like, I don't like this stuff? Well, I can say this candidly because other people have said it. It was not my first time applying. Okay. I just kept trying and I made it. So 38 got in. Congratulations. Yeah. But it was awesome. And Matt mentioned he won it during COVID and that wasn't that exciting because then you don't really get to celebrate or do anything cool. No, they sold us tickets for a Zoom meeting. Oh, geez. Yeah. Are you still active with the chamber? Yeah. Okay. You involved? Yeah. Kate and I are both trustees at the chamber. Okay. Love the trusty. We love to give plugs, by the way. Big fans of the Jack's chamber. The people who won SBOI, Small Business Leader of the Year during COVID, the same thing. Like you don't get to do the stuff. You don't get to go to the events. They gave us a token that we could put on our LinkedIn. So it's like LinkedIn, you got a token. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. What are you most excited for in the next 12 months? Oh, wow. We've got a couple different things coming up work-wise, but I'm probably most excited about Yoga Happy Hour after this. Yeah. I'm trying to get through this week, vacation, summer, I don't know. I mean, you have your kids in camp every week, right? I know. That's awesome. Can I ask all your kids are? Because I have young kids. We love to relate to kids. Eight, four, and two and a half. Okay. I have six, eight, and ten. Okay. Say it again. Eight, four, and two and a half. You're in the trenches. Yeah. We have five, three, one, and on the way. Oh, we're like clapping. We love kids. What are you at now? Are you less than one? I have. I'm less than two. I have one year old tomorrow. Ooh. We'll be right back. Have you heard that? Yeah. My kids here. So summertime's coming up. Okay. Work-wise, can you answer that? What are you most excited for in the next 12 months? We're going through crazy changes right now, and we're leveling up. So we're super excited for a couple of things. Number one is we're expanding our footprint, and we've already opened some regional offices. We just put one at Northwestern up in Evanston, Illinois. John and Matt here. Sorry. Yeah, I don't know what's going on Northwestern, really, but so we're putting what we've got. We just put one there. We're doing scientific research there, which is a whole new world. Kate and I decided we want to be just like the dumbest people at the company, so we just started hiring geniuses and PhDs. What do you say she manages what earlier before we started? Yeah. Yeah. Highly functioning autistic adults. That's what your job is. I mean, they're like human calculators. So you're hiring people smarter than you are. Yeah. Yes. Which is a good way to do it. Northwest. Yeah. So with Northwestern, Denver, and then we're opening, right now we have a very small office in Jacksonville. We're going to be opening a more substantial office where we can actually build robotic systems. A lot of times we have to lay stuff down on the floor, program it, hands on, technicians type stuff. So we'll be doing that here in Jacksonville. More square footage, an actual facility that can put it together. Ideally air conditioning. AC. Yeah. Yeah. What do you least excited for in the next 12 months? I like that question. Least excited for the next 12 months. Hopefully, it's not adding more autistic men to the team. Okay. Anything else? No. Okay. What do you least excited for in the next 12 months? Yeah. I mean, my team's calendar, honestly. So I now measure, I don't measure in currency and I don't measure in like anything else. How many meetings will this take me? So everything we say yes to, we get pulled into a lot of crazy stuff and everything we get pulled into, I do a quick cow, kind of like, oh, that's like 100 meetings. You know, and so my team's calendar looks like a quilt. I mean, it's just fully blocked, you know, 10 to four every day, topic to topic. And then I leave time on the outside for kids and workout and then people are always like, Hey, I see you're nine o'clock's open. So yeah, we got to work on that. We got to figure that one out. I like that. That's good. We got five minutes left here. And so I pulled a couple, the mission statement or core values, I had two written down on here somewhere. So I had two different ones, mentorship, accountability and faith. And then the other one said prioritizing people, transparency and disruptive innovation. Those came from two different sites. Are those all six core values or they're three that like, Hey, this is who we are. This is what we do. There was a great quote about how you hire people, how they fit in. Like what's what's the core values of the business? Well, I do think mentorship, faith and accountability are huge. Like we make every decision we have on those principles. And then you might have pulled like our niche or something around transformational. I did a lot. We went to six. I went to six. Okay. Again, I read, I read different articles. I just, I went down a rabbit hole because I think what you're doing is really cool too. But yeah, I'm not even sure where I pulled him from. Yeah. So we, so here's, here's how sophisticated we got the, my dean of business at Jacksonville University, Dr. Don Capener joined us as our chief operating officer now. So the guy that taught me now is running the shop, you know, on behalf of Kate at the company. Okay. So, you know, three, no one has three values. You got to have six values, right? So we're, we've stepped up in complexity primarily because we brought on the doctor of business. Complexity in robotics or complexity in core values. Core values. Yeah. But robotics, you got nailed. That's the easy part. You saw it. I couldn't even remember that we had six. Okay. So. She got it. What's the core values at Cox media? Oh, um, community. There's like five of them. How can you run a business with five? Yeah. We have an intern sitting in the corner court, according, what are two 12 score values? You could say you have no idea. It's okay. I'm kidding. She's not doing me to put you on the spot. Wait, if you guys don't have 12 values, I feel like that with two hundred and twelve values. Yeah, that's absurd. Um, okay. A couple minutes left. Let's actually hit this now too. Cause the second half of things and stuff, you'd mention you're going through your first, uh, fun, raising round currently, right? Or you're about to announce that right before we start. Oh, you just announced it. That's it. That's the announcement. We're winding up someone. Yeah. Guess what, everyone? Chang Robotics. Their first round of fundraising is available to the right people. There it is. Yeah. We can edit that out if you want, by the way. No, no, no. Let's, let's roll with it. We wanted it to be on your podcast. Oh, my God. It's a radio show. Okay. I'm sorry. It's on a radio show. It's also a podcast. I'll just ask you. Tell us. Yeah. We are launching in the process of Chang Robotics Fund. What that means, it is you do not get to invest in the company because then you work for Kate. All right. So no one gets to invest in our company. And you have to be a semi-autistic male. That's right. Okay. No, we're changing that. We're focusing on mentoring women in STEM. Yes. It sells everything. Oh, I do want to hit that on the second half. So, so the purpose of the fund is we get involved in so many crazy projects. People are always asking me, how do we invest? And we are a closed private company right now for investment. We've never allowed people to invest in Chang Robotics. But now that we've created a bunch of projects in new technologies that people want to invest in, plug X-ray, robotic vision for, you know, robots, then we're letting people invest with us in the stuff that we're investing in and that gives them access to everything we're doing. So, who's a good investor? We like, right now our best are friends and family. So people that want to write checks to get in to start up technology stuff. What we find is most of our investors, they have real estate. They might already own a business. They have a pretty decent retirement strategy set up already. And they're going, how do I get in the startup game? And I don't even know what to pick. You know, so what? So we've brought a diversified portfolio in, it has electric vehicles. And I like to joke, if you wanted to invest in electric vehicles, you have Tesla, Rivian, and I just ran out of-- End of list. Yeah, end of list. So you want to get into one that's a true startup? You can jump in with us. We've got green technologies. We're converting city waste grease, which shows up at wastewater treatment plants and restaurants into biodiesel. So every city in America can become an energy producer. So those are the type of technologies that we're already invested in as a company. We do that right off our balance sheet. But now we're saying, hey, friends of ours, you can come with us. Ken, are you involved in that process? I am. So one that Matt didn't hit is actually the one in Northwestern that we're most focused on, and it's around the replacement of food packaging and getting plastics and PFAS out of that with a carbon-based replacement. And we're actually dovetailing that in with a couple of manufacturing clients and projects that we're doing. So I have to draw the lines between R&D and commercial when it comes to that. Again, to me, this is-- I'm not saying it's science fiction, but things that we read snippets about or articles, these short things, like your organization is doing them, is building them, creating them, implementing them, and a variety of industries. 24 minutes went by. That's my least fair part of the show is a commercial break, and then we run out of time again. Matt Chang, founder of Chang Robotics, and Kate Macafus, that's going to drive me nuts that I called you, Kat, in the intro. But now we just got to lean into it and accept that. President of Chang Robotics, thank you for joining. That's what the health just happened. We'll come back to the second half of what the health just happened. If you missed the first half, good news, you can catch it on your favorite podcast platform under what the health just happened. First half, we had two really bad-ass people from Chang Robotics. Can I say ask Justin? I love asking that every time I say it. Matthew Chang-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] Matthew Chang, the founder, and Kate Macafus. Man, that's an interesting last name. That's fun. What is it? And your husband-- My husband tells me it's Scottish. Scottish. And I believe him. You just believe me. That's good. Can I get a cobot that sits in here and holds up a green flag and a red flag when he says stuff he's allowed to stay? Oh, that's good. Yes. Yes, you can. Cobots that lift up. Coworker robot. Yes. I told you about health. They're not healthy. You ready? Yes. Speed round. Okay, health they're not healthy. Rugby. Super healthy. Slightly unhealthy. Health they're unhealthy, co-working robots. Also healthy. Very healthy. Yeah. Okay. Health they're not healthy, wearing suits to work. No. Not healthy. Not healthy. I agree. Let's see. Health they're not healthy, arm veins. Very healthy. Yeah. He's made a face. Big fan. He mentioned that earlier. Depends. Someone. Health they're not healthy, working with Matt. Healthy. Health they're not healthy, working with Kate. Oh, very healthy. For me. Not for her. Yeah, I love you. The answer. Okay. I have to ask this one. Health they're not healthy. Jacksonville venture competition. Oh, really healthy. Yeah. If we want kids to want to work at startups in Jacksonville and we want startups in Jacksonville, we got to do it. Yeah. I love the city of Jacksonville. That's kind of a transition into a topic of conversation, something that's worth talking about. Like, I love it here. I love representing the city. I went to UNF. Not JU. We say swoop here often. Mm-hmm. I still love JU. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jacksonville venture competition, how do you create opportunities, funding, access to smarter people of the future? Right? So, Jacksonville venture competition, were you part of that? I was on the peripheral. She writes the checks. Yeah. I was going to say unhealthy because... Unhealthy for you. I lose a portion of my team for a long period of time. How long of a period? About four months. Whoa. That's an event. It's like planning a wedding. Yeah. It's not a... It's not a light thing. Thanksgiving ends. And then, all of a sudden, it's like, how do you get a hold of Matt or Cheyenne or anybody else? People ask me that. And I'm like, I don't. If you figured out, let me know. But the JBJ has graciously stepped up to help us with that going forward, so I would say no. It's healthy for me. JBJ sounds like they do a lot of support for your organization. Yeah. People laughed. And the Jacksonville Venture Competition for two years and immediately following this one, we partnered with the Jacksonville Business Journal. They've taken it over now because they do produce events, so it's one of their events now. And so, people said, did you pull off a two-year exit on a startup? They're like, yeah, like, yeah, perhaps it'll list. So, talk about why do you start it? What's the purpose of it? What was accomplished from the two years that you were running it? Yeah. So, we'll be staying involved. I'm now the chairman of... I think that just means I have to keep writing checks or something. You've got to smile and shake hands and show up. Yeah. So, basically, the idea is Jacksonville has an awesome economy, awesome place to live. We are missing one critical element of the ecosystem, which is access to capital for startups. Eric, I think we have great startups. I think people here are very creative and they make good companies, but if you want to get paid and funded, you're not getting the money here. And when we started researching, we found people going to Charleston in Tallahassee to get funded. And it was like... What about Gainesville, too? Yeah. Gainesville, there's a lot of startups there also. Yeah. And I was like, how does that make any sense? What about Duval? So, the purpose of JVC was we have already been successful in recruiting a very large venture capital company to open up a regional location here. We are bringing awareness to our startups in the caliber. And just from year one, which was a success, I thought, to year two, the caliber of companies was through the roof. There's amazing companies that are founded here. And so far as I know, every single company that's been through JVC has picked up investment. We do have a prize. The prize is like over a million dollars if you win the pitch competition. The winner of the JVC competition gets a million dollars to work here. More than that. Yeah. Yeah. And then... You guys, we've got to come up with something, man. Right? Hey. There's got to be like a co-working robotic that can lift flags. You have eight months. You have eight months and yours truly screens. But then... We have six years. Oh my God. That does it all over the world. You never know. But it's the community. So people in the audience are also investors. And each of the companies that pitches, even if you come in second or third, are getting pulled off to the side because there's an investor that has an affinity for what they're doing. And they get checks. So it has a big trickle-down effect. And so far as I know, every company that's been up there has received an offer for funding from investors in Jacksonville. That's pretty amazing, by the way. So thank you for doing that. I have not been to one. But I see it all. I'm like, man, I've got to go to that next. I just think that's really incredible that you're putting that together. Can you give any examples of some of the companies that have come through that have been awarded? These kind of... Yeah. Last year it was a healthcare company called Operaid. And they had this ketone drink. Eric will understand this. I don't. Pre-surgery, your body needs things, but you can't eat your fasting before surgery, which leads to a lot of failed surgeries and canceled surgeries. And so they came up with this Gatorade for surgery- Gatorade for surgery. That was a pretty sweet idea. This year's company basically does... It's like Google Maps for inspections. So the street view on Google Maps, they deploy those type of cameras anywhere you need them on Uber-like vehicles, people that sign up to drive. And what we didn't realize was there's millions of hours of inspections from HOA's and security services and all this stuff, insurance adjusters and those people now just pay a little monthly fee and optic systems out of Parnavidra drives around their cars no matter where you are. And they take care of the virtual inspection. Does this seem to have a roof replacement? They can get you through that? Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. So they could go through on behalf of an insurance company and assess all the quality of the structure. Instead of sending that one guy out there with the digital camera who's changing his SD card. And now it's all cloud-based, you could pick your spot on a map and just... You're going to need to hear this, but I honestly love the guy that comes out with his camera because that bought me like two years of getting a new roof. Yeah. Because you gave him a coffee or a little bit of ice. But would that potentially help in a situation like, if it would hope it doesn't happen, but a hurricane comes through and there's a bunch of damage they can kind of in bulk get all of Volano if they had to use things. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The guy's the limit. And that's what happened was this little startup from Panavidra, guys like you started offering ideas and the founder is like, "Next product, next product, next product." Oh, that's cool. Oh, the crazy one, his biggest money maker was landscaping. Wow. Yeah. So landscapers get these big contracts and do like 100 commercial properties. And nobody knows the condition. There's always a dispute. Oh, wow. And the landscaping company puts his cameras on their trucks. And they can say, "Here's exactly what it looked like when we left." Dang. So this is good. This is great, by the way. Love. All I wanted to do is tell about that. You have to come back to our Jack Vomitra competition or past winners. I'm going to pivot here to you. Okay. An industry surrounded by men, right? You're female in a, I would guess, male, primarily industry. Stem for women. Yep. How many women are you seeing coming to this stuff, contributing, coming up with ideas. I mean, it's definitely growing. But I'm still one of, I mean, I'm one of six in this room. Actually, sorry. Two of six. I'm sorry. You're so quiet back there. I was like, just coming up. This is the most people that's ever been in the studio one time, by the way. This is the fullest the room's ever been, but. But yeah, I mean, we also do a great job of pitching it to ladies when they're young, of it being interesting, right? I studied civil engineering. So one, I didn't really plan on being in robotics, but I am now. And that's awesome. And my daughter listens to phone calls when I'm in the car. And like the other night, we were looking at old videos on my iPhone and she was scrolling to look at pictures and videos of her as a baby and her sister and then she stops at one. That's a video of one of the manufacturing sites we did. She's like, "Are these the robots you do for work?" And I was like, "They sure are." She's like, "These are cool." And then she just sat and watched. There was like a minute long video. That's pretty sweet. So there's definitely ways to connect and get girls specifically interested in it because I just don't think they're really told what the opportunities are. And intrinsically raising three girls, they don't see it the way young boys do. Young boys want to go, like you said, break stuff and get in there and get their hands dirty immediately. And it's not necessarily in young girls' natures. You can teach them to, which I think Matt and I both try to instill in our daughters. To be fair, so I have two boys, my daughters and youngest, she's the toughest of all three. It's not even debatable. Toughness isn't the same, though. Correct. I mean, I play rugby and I can be people up if you want me to. Not now. But like- I want you to be up-tray right now, yes. But, I mean, at the same time, just because you tough doesn't necessarily mean like your mind goes to- I agree. Let's do engineering. And I mean, I grew up playing legos and connects and stuff like that. So that was probably in my mind, but it's not intrinsic in most young ladies. So how do you make it cool? And it's doing things like outreach and talking about what we do or there's a little company in Jack's Beach called Bolts and Bites, and my daughter goes there now. Bolts and Bites. We love shoutouts. Bolts and Bites have been there. Yeah, it's like Bolts and Bites, but don't go too much because I still want to be able to sign my kit up. But they build robots and do like battle bots and all kinds of stuff. What age is? Start at six. They do woodworking, so my daughters sign up for a woodworking class now. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Okay. That's good. A little bit of a change here. So, but there's always like thinkers and doers. And I'm not saying that they're one of themselves who can't be both, but like some people you mentioned, this guy, someone has ideas and you're writing them down ideas, ideas, ideas. And then someone takes that idea and goes and puts it into practice and does it. Think or doer between you two or both. He's the strategist visionary ideas all day. Man, I've got this idea. Yeah. My team had a revolt last year and was like, no more ideas, calling a pause. Well, I heard you, but wouldn't it be cool if there were no more ideas? But what if we put the ideas into another idea? Yeah. Yeah. Can't get it done. I can't turn around time on the hardest thing is like 48 hours. So you're the closer. Yeah. Doer. Yeah. She throws fast balls. Yep. Let's go. I just feel like every like again, I love two 12, two 12 benefits are business. His wife is our CEO. She has two people that just think of stuff all day long ideas idea like this radio show we do. She wasn't like, all right, let me let's do it. Yeah. Like she's the one who just gets it done. But our clients see us as the doers. Oh, yeah. Of course. So when they're thinking, oh, I got this thing, I got a I don't know how to solve and I want it done. That's when we get the call to go get it done. What's the average project length? I don't know if you can answer that like you get a project that's like, hey, we want this. Do you say it's going to take 12 months, six months? Yeah. Well, usually we'll do design first and that could take up to six months. And then execution could be six to 18. So max projects two years. Yeah. What you've done so far. Yeah. Okay. Okay. In regards to design, because you said you're getting calls for people that want things that your average Joe just could not do engineer. What are some of these prototypes? Are you 3D printing them first before you then go and make the actual model? Or are you guys in the stage where like you already have the pieces, you're just kind of assembling them together? Do you do any 3D printing for what you guys are doing or no? 3D printing is actually something we don't do much of. We do have small components that are 3D printed. Cool. But if I'm being honest, that is a website job shop service. Oh. So if we need something 3D printed, we can upload it to a website and a 3D print shop. Just like a poster print shop. We'll make it for us. Like customer T-shirts. Yes. It is very much like that. Now, it was 10 years ago was you had to have your own and know how to do it. Now it's a service, but what we do is a lot of prototyping. The prototyping can be super tough. So if you're doing for example battery electric vehicles or new robotic types, the prototyping can be very intricate. Your computer programming, designing wiring harnesses and power supplies and safety systems. So those can be very extended engagements and we're very humble about what we know. We will go find experts. So the reason our team is so diverse and crazy is because we're always looking for an expert that can do this crazy thing. Last year, we hired the head robotics guy from Tesla's Gigafactory and Reno. And so he came in for a certain project or just in general. He's with us now. He wants to be part of this journey. Oh, that was my question. I said, dude, how can you resign Tesla? Done enough. Is that a fair question? And he goes, it's a corporation now. I'm like, what was it when you started because it was a startup. So he wanted. Hey, that matters. Yeah, he didn't talk to management. Nobody listened to him anymore. At our company, he's got a voice at the table. Have you all had to fire anyone? Yes. How was that? I like the business advice. Like we've had to fire a few people at hand. I'm fine saying I don't know. Kate. How was it? I mean, it was it was just necessary, like it's just what it is. You know. Yeah. But the culture, you're not vibing with anybody on the team. You may or may not have broke some rules, so that doesn't help your case. Like, you just can't. Yeah, our core value, my favorite, or the one I've been on lately, is exceptional accountability. Yeah. So if more than once, I hear somebody, oh, there's accountability is on here. Oh, okay. Exceptional accountability. Yeah. Okay. Because we couldn't go to seven, so we just made it longer. If I hear more than once, you make an excuse that's not self-reflective. Yeah. It's like, okay. You're right here. Oh, okay. You write that down, Joey? I'm not thinking. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, my gosh. I'm not directing that at Joe. I'm saying that's really good to take into account in-house. That's great. I was not pointing the finger, by the way. In that same breath. But just so we're clear, that was one strike. While we've had to let a couple people go, nobody on our team has left on their own accord. Nobody's quick. I'll give an asterisk to one young lady, Jess left, but that's because she wanted to end the ministry. It's seven years last month, we had our first resignation in seven years since we started the company. And the person that did it said, I would like to pursue a career in ministry working with youth. I was like, I can't compete with that. Yeah. How can we support you? And then she graciously asked for a six month notice period to resign. And I was like, yeah, granted, as she asked for permission, she was very sweet. And I said, yeah, totally, and we'd love to send you off with a gift to launch your ministry. Are you comfortable talking about the faith-based component of your business? Of course. We like talking about this. It is technically airs on a conservative radio station. How important is the faith-based component of Chang Robotics? Well, I think it's huge. I mean, we're not shy about it. Matt speaks a lot more than I do, but we're very open about the fact that we tithe on our company profit. That's awesome. And we like to bring first fruits to the table. So we try to do it quarterly. And there's a few people in our group that aren't as focused on faith as we are. And we say that's fine, but we're doing this. Yeah. We just surveyed our team for the first time last year on time-tiving, because for Jacksonville people, that's harder than the money sometimes. Of course. And we were super pumped. 15% of our working hours are spent in community service, so it was more than 10%. And then you can imagine the distribution I know on radio, I can't see my hand. I'm doing a graph. But there's a camera somewhere here. I don't know where they are. So the distribution was we had super servers that were doing like 40% of their time spent working. They were also out in the community, you know, working in hospitals or teaching kids or something. And then we had a couple zeros. And that was a great opportunity for conversation was like, you can't serve soup once a year? You can't pick up a hammer and build a house once a year. So that was a good engagement exercise. So what's your favorite organization to give back to? If you have one. Well, we give back to a few. One that's close to my heart is actually one I brought to Matt as a suggestion was called Hello Haiti. Okay. That's, it's an orphanage down in, it's in Kai, which is outside of Port of Prince. And I spent three or four mission trips there in high school and college. And now with my own kids, I obviously don't have the time. But it's so dangerous down there. Yeah. I don't really want to travel there. So the best resource I can, we can send is monetary support. And so we know the founder of that organization and we send her a piece of whatever profit we send each quarter. Love it. Yeah. I have two favorites. First favorite is here in Jacksonville, a life work leadership, we're an annual corporate sponsor of life work. And they teach the Jesus journey to aspiring leaders, you know, in Jacksonville, emerging leaders in civic nonprofit and business. And the second one is probably Okoa refuge and Uganda and accountability. We talked about that. So I got the chance last year to go follow up on some of our investments in Okoa and talk about life change. You know, we show up and infirmaries have been built that women are being pulled out of sex trafficking and it's a very feel good story. So I got to experience it personally, but my team got a photo journal for me the whole time. You can see it actually the accomplishments. That's incredible. I haven't asked these questions in a while. We used to end every episode with the same two questions. And I'm just curious now, too, especially the mission part. So you look one, three, five, 10, 20 years in the past. What is it? Some healthy advice you would give yourself. Eat first. And I would have probably spent a little bit more time focused on reading. Drink less. Read more. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Well, you got it. Let's see. The younger me, the younger me probably should have been a little bit more focused and showed up on time more often. So I think just having some adult responsibility characteristics at a younger age would have been healthy. And let's see. If I got a second one, the younger me would have gotten better at cardio. Cardio. You got clearly lifts weights by the way. Trays over there looking at them like arm veins. It's going to be a weird term. Okay. Different question. One, three, five, 10, 20 years from now. What is the healthy change you'd like to see in your industry? Industry. I'd like you to go first. Yeah. I'm going to play the diversity card here. We work really hard to hire diversely and we measure it across every spectrum. So we do, of course, racial and gender diversity, but also age. So we co-mingle boomers with Gen Z's in our company. And inside the company, there's no titles. So we use external titles because other people need that. But inside the company, you all have an equal voice and nobody talks over the next person. So that's kind of cool. We take people over 65 and they work with people that are 23. And I think diversity is huge for our industry, especially technical because there is a certain to be a certain category of people coming out with scientific and engineering degrees. The other thing I'd like to see is just the whole hybrid work culture. Let's get away from this office mentality that is limiting for people in maternity. You're on board with hybrid or from home, like whatever works for you. Well, we're saying that's healthy, because it's beneficial to our team. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where the accountability comes in. So if you're hiding room for excuses, that's why we have very low strike. Who's holding them accountable between you two? Usually me. Yeah, I would find out. She's getting a call from me. That's a rhetorical question, by the way. Yeah. So I think that whole shift that we made during COVID was healthy. It's getting pulled back now. But I just look at the years people spend in commuting and kind of sitting at a desk when they're just occupying time and filling out reports, let's just be efficient in life. Go after what you want to get after, be good at everything you do. And if that means you can do multiple things at one time, I'd love to see it. Including, we allow everyone at our company to have side hustles. We promote moonlighting. That's healthy. Yeah. Because we want them, and I also want you, if you work at our company, I want you to go dabble somewhere else, so you know how good you have it. Test the free agency. That's right. We talk about that. Like, hey, the grass, if you think the grass is greener? Yeah. He, Joey's in the corner, none of a mic, but he, did you say that? He did that. No, he left our company to go somewhere else. This is before my time, by the way. I thought the grass is greener and came back was like, it's, it's not always greener. Yeah. I was proud of this. It was a good problem. What do you say? You said, get after it? What did you say early on to start the show? I said, go break stuff. He said a line to the. Send it. Send it. Send it. Send it on healthy changes, one, three, five, ten years from now. Maybe it's chain robotics specifically, but you look at it like this would be a healthy change for us. I would hope five years from now Matt and I aren't as hands on as we are right now. Okay. The whole idea is our church has the saying retrace up and release and I'd like to see us successfully doing that within the company. There are a number of young folks working with us that I'd like to see stepping up in that account accountability step and taking on more of a leadership role. More yoga, happy hours. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Any shout outs before we wrap it up. Like I say, hi mom. You can say hi to your kids. Anyone you want companies you appreciate. Oh, yeah. Kids. Tegan Riley Jordan. Tegan Riley Jordan. Shout out. Yup. Yeah. I'm going to shout out to my wife because she enables most of this lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah. And when she was doing, I couldn't do what I do. So my wife, Jamie, shout out. She doesn't get enough credit for the success that we're having. Even though her name is on the hat. I love it. Thank you for joining. Did you enjoy yourself? I always have to ask for a wrap it up. Yeah. Would you consider coming back? Say no. They're thinking about it. Neither one. Yeah. I'm kidding. Yeah. We'll have to negotiate that. No, it's great. It's a robotics purpose. Yes. Of course it was. It's Kate. It's Kate. I'm kidding. I love it. Kate, you want to say, you want to wrap us up? Say that's what the health just happened. That's what the health just happened. [MUSIC PLAYING]