The Robots are Coming with Faheem Khan

The Robots are Coming with Faheem Khan

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 26 of the Business Development Podcast. We have a very exciting episode for you guys today. We are interviewing local CEO of Aro Robotic Systems, Faheem Khan, and we are chatting robotics, ai, and what that means for your future. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca, let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, episode 26, and today we have an amazing guest interview, a super cool one. I think you guys are all gonna really like this one. Faheem Kahn of Aro Robotic Systems. Faheem holds an MBA as well as a PhD in electrical engineering. He has utilized those skills leading a technical team behind the complex technology of multitasking robots that is now developed developing Aro Robotic Systems.

For the last 15 years, Faheem has been involved in industrial automation in various capacities. He is also a founder of a biotech company, which is providing technology to global clients in the space of analytical instrumentation. Currently, Faheem is busy leading a team, developing robotic systems to meet both future and current industry demand.

Faheem, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today. How are you?

Faheem Khan: Wonderful. Thank you, Kelly, it's great to be on your show and I am that lucky number 26, which is, which is gonna make a difference, so yeah. Very, very good to be here in your show.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, it's so, oh, it's so good to have you man.

It's so good to have you. So just for the rest of the people who, who, who aren't sure why I have this particular one. So I was actually at a really cool event recently called the 500 Global Alberta Accelerator. And it was really highlighting new companies mostly for investment, but one of the companies that came up was Aro Robotic Systems and Faheem you had a presentation there that was amazing, by the way.

I absolutely loved it. I loved a few things about your presentation. You first off had the coolest presentation there. No question. Robotics is so cool and maybe that's just because I'm a gigantic nerd and I grew up in the two thousands and just love robot robots in general and AI and stuff. I just think, I think it's such a neat.

I think what's neat about robotics and AI is that it almost feels like magic to most people who don't understand it, it looks like magic. It's, it's crazy how it, how it works.

Faheem Khan: Yeah. Yeah. No, at the end of my presentation, I did say robots are coming, as you know, that I did say through my deep death of my heart, actually.

And it is, it is an exciting time. You know when I give this analogy to people, then I generally talk about sixties, seventies, when people were thinking about should we buy a computer or not? This computer's gonna throw away some of the manual work, you know, typing on the on a typewriter or, you know, doing some calculations.

And that was a time when people were thinking, oh, I think computer is gonna make a difference. And then after five years, 10 years, huge companies like Microsoft, Dell, HP, they were born then they produced even more companies and a huge trillion dollar industry was born. So that's, this is exciting time with robotics and AI now.

Kelly Kennedy: It, it, it totally is. And I completely agree with you, and I think it's the same now as it was then. We can't even see the future of what Robotics and AI looks like yet. It's like if you were to look at the first computers that took up an entire room and thought, oh yeah, no one day those things will fit in our pocket and do a hundred times more things.

We couldn't have remotely imagined it. Exactly. And I think AI and robotics is kind of the same. It's like right now we're looking at these superficial things that they can do, but we haven't even remotely seen the full scope of what they are going to do.

Faheem Khan: Yeah. Yep. That's true. Carrie you gave the example of those huge mainframes where even just the bigger organization that could only afford those with a lot of maintenance and overheads for, for those and then the new industry came through.

And similarly, we are just, that's where we are feeling now that currently. Industry, the small business, small medium business, they need to buy multiple robots for various tasks, just to automate those, just to overcome labor shortages for, you know, repetitive manual tasks where we are coming in. That just like a small computer now they just need to buy just one robot, which is multitasking.

So they imagine you need to buy one laptop one far. Browsing another far videos, another fun for gaming. Another one far this kind of studio talks. It's not gonna make sense, right? So it's the same as the case with the robotics. So when, when a business needs to buy multiple robots or various different tasks, they literally just move away from this, this imagination, this whole concept.

And this is where we are coming in just to make it even more exciting for the industry.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, we'll get into this, but your, your robots are really cool too. I, I spent some time today even just on your website watching the, watching the demonstration videos. And I definitely want to talk to you about the capabilities and stuff later on.

But I think I wanna start this podcast off today just by going a little bit into your background. You have a pretty impressive background. You hold a PhD, you hold an MBA, which is actually kind of a weird mix of, of education. And you've had a really, really interesting, you actually, you're a serial entrepreneur.

This isn't your first business, right? And you've had a biotech company. Can you tell us a little bit about about yourself?

Faheem Khan: Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Would, I would love to let me, let me take you to thirty years back because just you touched on the background thirty years back, if you just think about a little bit of my history.

I was a goat herder. I was, I was born in a, in a very poor village of Pakistan. I have been my, my cousins are unfortunately still goat herder. So, so there was no concept of education over there. And, you know, But no, no permanent source of water or even to not enough wood to put fire. Wow. No way to think of electricity.

So from there fast forward I managed to move from one country to another country, to another country. And then I went to Sweden, for example, public, got masters in in in semiconductors and microtechnology because I was super ambitious since my childhood, I just wanted to get over with things.

Wow. So I got bachelors in electrical engineering. I got master's in then electrical engineering as well. More specialization in making microchips. And then I got a PhD also making microchips. And then I moved to Canada in 2013 so that I could basically do some cutting edge research at the University of Alberta, which I did for like five, six years.

And then still I stayed really ambitious that I wanted to start. I wanted to convert that research. Into something where people could get some, some useful technology useful solutions. So I started a company in 2016 called Fourian we started making microchips for various industries, various clients.

We, we, we are currently selling them globally. And this was the time in, in 2018 when I thought, I think I have some limited knowledge on how to run a business, how to, you know, think more in a way that how to make statements, how to, how to basically manage a team, how to become a great leader. So then I thought, okay, let's put some, some some time into getting an mba.

Wow. Luckily, I, I managed to enter the University of Illinois Champagne, a really a wonderful university I got a great amount of knowledge over there and I finished my MBA within two years, which is a standard time, however, sometimes people do get late when they're running a company as well.

And then I have to travel a lot. Sure. And so

Kelly Kennedy: You might have been a little busy.

Faheem Khan: That was keeping me super busy and stuck with, you know, going back to the university after many years and then also keeping taking care of the, the company and developing new products and talking to the clients. So, but you know, I think it was just my nature of being ambitious and being, you know, just achieving something so that, because as I told you that I was goat herder, no, no concept of education.

And now I was collecting a lot of degrees in my. Pocket actually. Absolutely. So, so, and then from there when Covid hit in 2020 when we were running very successfully, and Covid came and we started feeling that humans started getting afraid of each other. Mm-hmm. Businesses were being impacted just because someone shows up with infection and then it just spread it throughout the plant.

And then I think there was an incident in Alberta when a, a meat plant got a huge yes. Infection, and then just because someone just came with the, with that, and then they got similarly, this, this whole phenomena spread it. And this is where we thought, oh man, this is this, this is not gonna help people.

And then we a hospital in, in one of the hospitals on, in Ontario, they bought a, a robot for $124,000, just one robot to disinfect the, the surfaces. And we, yeah. Then we contacted them and we thought, okay, this is this is great. You You did you're gonna take care of your patients by, you know, report sizing your facility.

But how about because there's so much else in your hospital which you want to automate, like you're not cleaning a floor and other things. And they said, no, they don't have enough budget now. So this is where, you know, it struck us that this is a real pain of smaller, medium size businesses.

Yes. And we, we went to so many other companies and then we got their feedback. So, you know, this is a, a long story short, so sorry. There are a lot of exciting updates, but what I'm telling you is that I think it was just my nature of being ambitiousness not ambitious, basically. That was what it was driving throughout the creation of companies and me, me moving forward from there.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, first off, let me just congratulate you on your success because Thank you. You are an incredibly impressive person and I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. You really are. That is. It is unbelievable. There are people, you know, that come from completely different backgrounds that you than you that basically, you know, say, well, you know, I don't have the ability, or I, or I wasn't, there was no opportunity for me.

And then someone like you shows up and is like, no, watch me. This true. And it's it's so inspiring. It's so inspiring. Faheem, I find you incredibly inspiring and not to mention like, you know, you talk about your ambition, but your enthusiasm is what hooked me. Yeah. When, you know, obviously you guys weren't in the room, I was in the room when Faheem was giving his presentation at the Global 500 event, and it was amazing your ambition and the way that you really just got the room just going.

It was unbelievable. And yeah, just let me see. I, I am very impressed by you Faheem, and congratulations on your success. I know that that didn't just hand itself to you. It took a lot of hard work and determination to get to where you're at. And congratulations.

Faheem Khan: Definitely. Thank you, Kelly, and yeah, so, you know, well, I'm so thankful to Albertans to Canadians who built this, this, this great and successful nation before me.

And then I came on and then, you know, I contributed to the, to the society. However, I'm always thankful to the people who are around me who are providing huge amount of support without any incentives. They, they're just basically passionate to push me, to push my goal, my objective objectives forward.

And so I'm always thankful to the people around me.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. You know what I, you know, when I think about that a lot as well, the reality is some of the best help that I've ever gotten Faheem in my, in my own business ventures. Has literally been for free, has literally just been for people that that wanted to help me.

And I find that it typically comes from other business owners, right? Like I find a lot of my support as a business owner comes from other business owners. You're like, oh, yes. You know what, Kelly? Yeah. Do you wanna go have lunch and just kind of pick my brain and I'll, I'll help you the way that I can.

And I think, I don't know whether that's a Canadian thing or just, you know, I just find that like a lot of business owners and a lot of people are willing to help you if you're just willing to ask.

Faheem Khan: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Ask you know asking has got a huge power in it. And all of those as business owners, we have very similar pains and gains.

So, so this, this this this scenario of working together and especially post covid, many things have changed actually. So we, we got we got closer to each other. We, we work closely. So yeah, so businesses are helping businesses.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanna, I wanna touch a little bit into was Fourien your, your first business, or did you have a business before then, Fahim?

Faheem Khan: No, unfortunately not, not the first one. I did fail with another one where I wanted to create a, a social network for students to, to share their data because students produce huge amount of data every day. So I just wanted to cover that. I, I named that every role so that people can basically showcase that every role.

For example if you are a driver, then after some time you are a parent, then after some time you're a cook. Mm-hmm. And then you are a, you are, you know, a podcast You know?

Kelly Kennedy: So just, we're wearing a few hats.

Faheem Khan: Exactly. And so I just wanted to provide some sort of a platform to people so that they can, you know, go online and then they can, they can feel, they can find themselves to be part of their roles.

However that, that whole venture did not go very well. I learned a lot. I failed. But failure is never a failure. It is, it brings a lot of huge benefits of being successful in the future. True. It was a financial failure. It was a little bit stressful. However, I did learn huge amount of knowledge and I made a lot of connections.

I worked with so many people here in Edmonton, and then I, when I started my next company, I already knew what not to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. I so my background, Faheem, I I, I actually started in the oil and gas industry here in 2013, so kind of when you came, I, I was just getting my feet wet in, in the sales and business development role, which is really where this podcast is kind of accumulated.

But back then that was kind of right, right at the peak of the oil boom in Alberta, right. Things were really kind of hitting their height at 2013, 2014, right before a gigantic crash, but Exactly. But yeah, I, I cut my teeth at that time too. And yeah, I, I, I guess what I'm getting at here is at that time there was just so much going on, so much opportunity, and, and Alberta really hasn't changed in that front.

It's, yeah, we, we, we definitely got, got hit. Like we, we got hurt in that 2015 downturn, but I would say, You know? Right. I don't know. I don't even know if I would say if it was like covid or right after, but I would say that like probably around 2022, it was like a light switch flipped, and I would say that we're right at the beginning.

I know there's a lot of people talking like that aren't being very optimistic right now, but I, I don't think so. I think Alberta, I think we're right kind of in the beginning of a new boom.

Faheem Khan: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Well, as you said, Alberta used to be an economic engine and then downfall came and then people switched to their careers and they found some new ideas.

And even they were in the conventional oil and gas industry. Our natural resources industry. But you know, those people, they just came back with a lot more power, with a lot more skills and creativity. And then they started new businesses. They started new idea, they took risks on something.

I mean, that was a time when in in 2015, 2014, that was a time when I was thinking, I think I should leave Alberta. I think it's so much focused on oil and and so there's not much for me overhead again. And, but then I, I stayed here. I, I I learned so much from the surroundings, from the society, and Alberta is coming back with a, with a big strike now.

Because we are learning so much from other successful places. For example, California is a huge place a great example for technology success. And because I'm in the tech space and I'm I have a I have a great circle who, who are investing, who are creating new companies. So with that perspective, I can easily say that Alberta is making a big way back and we are going to supply our solutions, our technologies, not just to Albertans, but throughout the world actually.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Yeah. Like, you know, the technology that you guys are working on, and we'll definitely get into this later on in the show, but the technology that you guys are working on isn't limited to anything really, like some of the platforms that you're working on can be utilized in so many different industries.

Not, you know, that not only as well as oil and gas, I should say, as well as oil and gas, but literally everything from food processing to warehousing to, you name it, any, it's, it's very impressive technology.

Faheem Khan: Yeah, well, robots are definitely there. I mean, it's an initial need for us. There are certain tasks and companies, businesses where people do not find themselves to be proud of.

Like if, if you ask them, Hey, can you map this floor every day? Sure. Or can you take hazard or chemicals to spray on uncertain objects? So there are so many tasks where people need to automate them so that they are, they're less prone to the to the labor shortages to employee shortages especially.

I mean, because, you know, humans have been made out of. Millions of years of evolution, and we are really, really creative and we should be more into creative work rather than, you know, keep doing one repetitive task every day again and again and again. So we can use our brain in a much better way than, you know, just asking someone, Hey, your job is just to push this card a hundred times a day.

Mm-hmm. And your job is to, to, to, to, to clamp, to tighten this nut this small, this bolt multiple times a day. So that's not what we are made for. And humans start getting bored and they start getting they start bringing in more hazardous situation when they are more into a task which they're not enjoying and which they're not being productive of.

So they can stick around for some time because, People need a check at the end of the day. But, you know these new technologies, not just us, but a lot of different software being they're being developed, various sensors are being developed in Alberta, generally especially, but generally throughout Canada.

And so I would, I'm really very much optimistic of of, of our future.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, for sure. Well, one of the things that I kinda wanna talk to you about is when people think of Canada, they're not thinking of tech. You know, like, and I know that that's, that's kind of silly. Like we're, we're Canadian, right?

Like, we're, we're always trying to be optimistic, but like, I feel like when the world is thinking about technology, they always, they're thinking of Silicon Valley, right? They're, they're not looking at Alberta, but Alberta is really a, we're, we're a leader in some tech, aren't we?

Faheem Khan: Exactly. Yeah, there are actually, there are, I mean, Canada does have huge leadership in certain areas.

Overall however, sometimes I do put some certain level of blame to the to the politicians. Sometimes they have been really too conventional. They did not think out of the box at a certain time. Imagine the level of investments and, and trust and, and traction. We are getting in technology development here in Alberta.

Now, had this been 10 years, 15 years back, we would've made a, a big difference. We would be exporting a lot of technologies out of Alberta. Now we are still doing, but it is not much. And so Canada overall I mean some of the economies are based on natural resources. However for example, if I give you this, this one example that.

Canada is a leadership, has a leadership in robotics technologies for space, for example. Canada Arm, that's, that's helping the whole world, you know, by maintaining the, the international space station. And similarly there are various other technologies where Canada does have a leadership. Maple Syrup, you know?

Yeah. Another, another, another great product. So Edmonton Oilers another great product and, you know.

Kelly Kennedy: They're doing pretty okay this year.

Faheem Khan: Yeah. So they should keep, but they should, they should introduce new technologies to the, to the players so that those players can literally build. A good level of intelligence, but how, how their bodies look like, what, how they work on.

So there are a lot of, you know, advanced technologies which can analyze various different gestures of players and how they work and how they, how they can perform better. So, but you know, I am, I am literally highly optimistic on how we gonna perform in very near future.

Kelly Kennedy: So one of the questions that I have for you is, I, I think we kind of touched on this at the beginning of the show, is that we know that Robotics and AI and stuff is gonna change everything, but I feel like there's still a bit of a, Hmm, a reluctance, I want to call it a reluctance to make that change.

What have, what has been your experience? You know, obviously you've kind of been hitting the road, you're looking for investment. You actually already have robots. Have you had any sales yet?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, we are selling these. And I would agree with you. There was, well there is not much reluctance now. There used to be at some level people were reluctant, you know, five, 10 years back.

Okay. However post covid people have realized that they have embraced the new technologies, the new tools, the new solutions, and they cannot stay conventional throughout the time actually. Yeah. And what we are learning from small to medium sized enterprises that they do want to move on, they want to keep running their app operations.

They do want to keep their doors open. And if someone does not, if, for example, if there is certain employee and if they're responsible to run a certain task and if they don't show up this, the business student needs to keep running. So they cannot ask another five employees who are dependent on that specific task that all.

This card didn't show up, so you also take it easy today. So, you know AI robotics, those are the, the, the fields which are being talked about large now, however, five years from now, we we'll find out that, oh, this was basically a great addition to this, to the society. And it's not just robots for industrial use.

You know, there are separate companies separate industry booming up just to develop humanoid robots so that they can come to your home, they can work as your assistance, put dishes in the machine. They can you know, do dishes properly. They can load some of your laundry. Wow. So, you know, the, these things are on the way and like in, in our case robots are I mean we are getting quite a bit of traction from the industry.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man, I want to touch on that for a second again, cuz that's something I haven't even thought about that when I think of robots. Fahim, I'm thinking of, yeah, I'm thinking of industrial application. I'm thinking of like car manufacturing. I never even once took a minute to think about one in my house. You know, I get we all, like, we have a Google and we have an Alexa.

Like, we use Alexa in our house and the Kennedy household is full of Alexa. We love them, but like, you know, it doesn't do any work. It just provides entertainment, right? Are like, do you really think we're that close? How far are we away from having robots in our house?

Faheem Khan: Well, you know, not very far. I mean, industry is moving to that horizon very quickly.

And there are certain limitations. For example, those robots are very slow. The robotic arms, if we talk about a little bit about technology over here, their, their arms, their hands, they're a little bit slow. They're fragile, but they're picking up. And many people approached us actually, because they don't wanna develop legs for the robot.

They just don't wanna lengthen the time to market. So they wanna put their upper parts of the robot on our platforms, on our autonomous platforms. So, you know I would say probably five to eight years. So those robots will start showing up. Wow. Companies are, companies are already on the way. The industry is basically doing quite good.

And I mean, Roombas are already there. You know, Roombas are true tiny. They're, they're cleaning your floor. However,

Kelly Kennedy: I forgot I have a Roomba and I totally missed that.

Faheem Khan: Exactly, you missed that because Roombas are working in the background and they're, they're, they're doing one task. So imagine, imagine a robot can can, can, once you come to your, to your, to your house, then you find out everything is in place, everything is ordered.

The robot took care of that. There's no chance for a robot to get sick in the winter, you know, when everyone is sick all around. True. So, so those things are coming. And AI is just like anything AI does have relatively less pleasant usages. But I, I think that if you use it the right way we are gonna get a good extract out of AI robotics.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I think, okay. So I think I, I want to get, you know, you're an expert in this. We, AI is being thrown around like crazy, right? We're utilizing it, you know what I mean? I, we're utilizing it at Capital in my business to, to help us create content for social media, that sort of thing. I'm seeing the uses, right?

Like I've played, I've played with what is it called? Oh goodness. Chat. Chat, G P T, right? I've played with chat G P T and just kind of asked it to help me out with a few things. It's pretty neat. But like, tell me what is AI really what you know, you are the expert in this. What really is it? I think as a consumer, as an individual who's not tech savvy in that way, that understands how it's created, what is it really?

Is it something that we should be afraid of, or is it something that we should embrace?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, well, well, you know historically, if we, if you look in the back, we have been afraid of so many different technologies, and finally we found out that no, this was really something good. Sure. We we, we really needed it.

And AI is a huge field. It is not just one single piece of technology. It is a combination of so many different fields, which came together after a long time when they were working separately, when people were developing CPUs. And then it became GPUs. They were, gps were mainly being used for gaming.

And then they came to a level when they became more affordable and companies installed, deployed millions of those GPUs in their facilities to, to process complex algorithms. And then we got a lot of storage. We got a lot of processing power. We got very sharp software, especially software technologies.

The, the, the backend technologies. And so when all of these came together, humans found out that now they can analyze huge amount of existing data. Whether the data was in the form of text or images or sound or some other ways. So when they analyzed that data, then basically there was a natural outcome of that process that now you learned quite a lot from that data.

Now you can basically do prediction for the future. Mm-hmm. For example if, if, if you bring a new employee to your to your new facility, you need to have them a tour on the first day so that they can collect data in their brain. They can see, they can smell, they can hear, they can, they can build a, basically a certain vision of the facility.

And now they have collected their data. Now you can basically give them a certain task based on the, the, the input you have already provided them, and you expect that there would be a certain outcome of that process. Same as the case with with automation, with automating a software so that they can learn from the data and now they can, they can give us an output.

And as you mentioned content writing, for example, that content writing is not just happening, just, you know out of the blue Chat GPT learned and has been and is learning on the, the, the previous knowledge which humans created actually. And that knowledge is spread all across the internet and in the form of the books, in the form of the blogs.

Those, those software, those algorithms, they, they basically scan that huge amount of knowledge, which we have already created. And now mm-hmm. They are basically utilizing that to produce new knowledge. Within that there are always certain hiccups. There are always certain ways where where technology does not perform very well and we start thinking that, no, this is taking over our own power.

This is basically gonna hurt us at some point. But I would say, no, that's not the case. Of course, there, there has to be. Certain care. It is just like, you know, if a knife is sitting in your kitchen, you can either use them for a useful purpose to chop your vegetables or you can basically use it for, for some, some bad purposes.

Yes. So, so it's, it's very similar way. It's a, it's an analogy which I give to my, my kids, my wife, that there is new technology, but, you know, so, so we gotta be careful how we gonna use it.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man. Yeah. Like, you know, I'm a, I'm a kid. I was born in the eighties, grew up in the nineties. Right. I watched Terminator.

Faheem Khan: Exactly. So, yeah. Terminated. So already witnessed this. So you already terminated whether this was in the form of the books or movies, but then there was a time when, when, you know, the, the creative mind supervision that these things do come, they need to be coming.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. I, yeah. You know, I mean, I feel like for you, because you've worked in the industry, you've seen it evolve, you know, I mean, you understand it.

Essentially at the microchip level, which, you know, like I said, to most of us, just, it seems like magic, right? We don't understand how it works. So like you can look at it and be like, no, you know, I mean, I actually know how this is going together and I know that it's not gonna wake up one day and, and hunt me down.

But I feel like to a lot of people, they're like, well, yeah, but what's stopping it from doing that?

Faheem Khan: That's right. But, but you know, now when, when we are thinking to colonize other planets we know that humans are gonna travel there at some point, but that would be one way ticket. Sure. So they're not gonna come back and most probably they're not gonna survive over there.

Mm-hmm. So that means that we do need to be dependent on other tools and technologies ai, robotics, and all those which can go there and mine certain minerals for us. And mine collect other data. So, of course, at the moment there are some great robots from nasa. They're working over there. However they're not just enough.

You may be aware that NASA also deployed a small helicopter kind of machine over there. I, I don't know what they call it. Precisely. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Exactly. So, you know, so those machines are working as robots for us on the other planets and the other world. However, there is a big need.

This whatever we have achieved so far in robotics, that's not just enough. AI is just to start. Robotics is just to start. A big impact is coming up. It, it, it totally depends how quick we basically adopt those. If we stay afraid of those I would say it would be a mistake. It would just push individuals as well as businesses maybe 10, 15, 20 years back from the competition.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Do you think that there's, it's an interesting question. Do you think, are there any limitations to what we can do with robotics? Is there stuff that robotics will just never be able to do in your mind, or do you think at some point we'll essentially be able to use robots for absolutely everything?

Faheem Khan: Well, you know, limitation is just the imagination. So, so, for example, a computer, even a highly advanced computer, cannot solve every problem that we have around us. Sure. So you still need to, you still need to overlook certain tasks which you perform with a computer. So similarly, robots will not be able to solve just every problem that we have.

However they can, they can automate, they can. Take care of certain tasks, which are basically, which, which take too much of our energy and effort and investments and time. So, so I would, I would not think, I would not say that the robots are gonna solve just every problem. So, so, you know, if someone is sick, you still want to give them a human touch to basically take care of them.

You don't wanna ask a robot to, you know, go and take care of them. However, there are robots being developed for for old homes and for hospitals where they can, especially in a country like Japan where young people are already not that many and then they are too busy in, in their career. And then they're elderly family members.

They're waiting for someone to, you know, have a song with them, have a, have a story with them. So,

We, we, we are still, we need to be around. We, we, we still we, we still need to be taking care of a lot of those tasks, which we need a lot of those jobs, which we need to get done every day. Robots are just gonna augment us. They're just gonna help us. And as your original question, whether they're gonna have a lot of applications, yes, for sure they would be.

However we can't think that they would be just solving every problem. Mm-hmm. They would be just basically streamlining some of our work so that we just be more creative on the other side.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, that makes sense. And I, you know what I think about it from this standpoint too, right? Like, you know, whether you wanna call it a robot or you want to call it a tool, technology has always made things easier for people.

And Yeah, in some cases it's replaced jobs, but. In a lot of cases, you know those people, they, they did something else or there was another job opportunity. I don't necessarily think that robots are gonna show up and take all these jobs. I think it's going to allow people time to do things that are more productive.

Like you said, you don't need people to mop the floor. That person could be the next computer scientist doing something great.

Faheem Khan: Exactly. So once, once you treat and teach those those people, even your existing employees who are basically busy in their manual work and repetitive work, those guys are, they're wonders.

They can do a lot actually. And yeah, no, they're not gonna take jobs away. It is luckily we are at a time where we have two great examples. One is the analogy of computers when we were afraid of as I already talked about when we were afraid of computers many years back. And now we can see that we can't live without a, a computer on our arm.

You know, we have those small watches right on our arm. Yeah, that's right. The other example is Amazon. Amazon is probably the biggest marketer for robotics. Amazon has already deployed hundreds of thousands of robots in their workplaces, and they made their workplaces safer. They, they made them more enjoyable for the employees.

And so, so similarly it's not that jobs are gonna be taken away, it is just that it's just gonna reshape the workplaces. Robots are gonna make workplaces safer. Employees are gonna enjoy them more. They start of, you know, they're getting they're getting really bored and, and displeased with the, with, with their boss.

Boss asking, Hey, can you move these boxes to the other side of the building? Sure. Just because we, we don't have a forklift today working, or we don't have a, a, a certain person who didn't show up. So, so I would say this is what our philosophy at Aro is, that we should make a machine, which should really make, we should solve a real problem and make people happier than what they are now.

Kelly Kennedy: So with Aro are you, are you building these robots in Edmonton? I know you guys are based in Edmonton. Are these robots actually manufactured right here?

Faheem Khan: Yes, definitely. So we bring all bits and pieces, screws, tiny screws, pieces of aluminum. Wow. We, we, we designed the robots. We, we manufacture them, we test them, assemble them, market them, sell sell them right from Edmonton.

So the, the philosophy was basically so that we are not so much dependent on someone else constraints and vision. So, for example, if we need to introduce a certain feature in a robot, we are not dependent on a supplier in another country. If, if they have enough capabilities and, and knowledge and skillset and whether they can do it for us or not.

So me as a leader of the team, I developed a, a certain culture over here that yes, we, we don't need to reinvent everything. It's, it's great if we can find certain parts, however, no one should limit us from, from putting our own vision and creativity into these robots. And this is where we found it. Really amazing that it's working very well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And, and I just love that you're building them in Edmonton, right? Like Yeah. I love, you know, I'm a huge supporter of things made in Canada and, and especially when people think of robots Faheem, they are not thinking of robots built in Canada. Not only robots, not built in Canada, but they're literally building them in my backyard.

They're building them in Edmonton. Yeah. It's impressive. And I wanted to talk a little bit, because you talked about this in the beginning when you were talking about that robot that the hospital had bought for what is 150 grand or something for one robot. Yes. You are doing it for considerably less, aren't you?

Faheem Khan: Yes. Yes. So can I, if I just give you an example. So currently when people, when, when businesses need to buy, like if you just think of five different tasks, they need to buy literally five different robots for five different companies. And then they need to go through a huge level of budget plus their maintenance, plus their regular updates, and then they need to have experts on those robots who can maintain those.

So, you know, the level of complication goes to a level where you talked about the people are reluctant to adopt these. Sure. However, what we can do is that we can just at a 10th of the cost, we could really. Provide much more effective and better technology to SMEs, to some other and medium enterprises.

And so, so now what they need to do is they just buy one platform, which is AI based, which is autonomous, which thinks, which sees which, which makes its own decision when, when it is supposed to perform its task, it's mobile, and then people need to just put attachments. We call those attachments or modules, so they just come.

For example, if our robot is delivering your boxes throughout your facility during the daytime, the same robot can be transformed. Into a way that it will start cleaning a floor for the night hours. Now, that transformation, you don't need a PhD for that. Literally, you just need to bring another attachment and clamp on the robot, and then it would you just tell our software.

We, we put a lot of effort on our interface that the human robot interface, we call it the commander app. So someone will just have to go and then click a button. Hey, now you are not a a a parts runner. A box runner. Now you are a scrubber actually, yeah. Now you just adopt that functionality. Now you think yourself as a cleaner.

So the robot will literally load that specific routine or program, and then it will start cleaning your floor. And once it is done, then you can change the same, same robot to start disinfecting your surfaces through spraying chemicals or through turning on juvi lights or through other means.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It, it's, and, and, and we're not talking about, so, you know, I mean I got people listening right now. They're not really sure quite what we're talking about. We are actually talking about a fairly good sized robot. This thing is not small. I think in your demonstration videos, it's carrying three 50 gallon drums, isn't it?

Faheem Khan: Exactly. So our existing model called a os it is dated to about 120 kilograms. It says its own weight is about 80 kilograms. So it's fairly a good size robot. It's, we call it a small size because we do have a plan to bring a medium as well as a, a module. Interesting. Okay. And so this model can easily fit in a small SUV v literally we have been just driving around in Alberta.

So with this, with this specific model, and whenever we need to demo to a, a certain client to, to give them a, to get them started at trial, they can literally, we just, just put an SUV and then drive to them. So it's is it's so compact.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It so. It is compact. A hundred percent. I, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to give a description of it in a way that someone listening can understand the size.

Right. It, it's big enough people that you could sit on this thing comfortably Yeah. And still not take up the whole thing and it'll rip you around. No problem. It's, it's an impressive robot. And you were, you said one 10th the cost of that other one you're talking about. So are we talking like around $15,000 for an outfitted robot?

Faheem Khan: Well, generally when people need to buy multiple robots, the cost, their budget can easily go over 450, half a million, $450 to half a million easily. So when you have to add a lot of advance from various companies and when you're, when you're talking about various modules or or, or plugins. So in our case, it's literally around $50,000 and you can have a, a versatile solution in your facility.

Okay. Augmenting your workforce and you're dealing with one company, you're dealing with one team. You're literally dealing with one technician who, who needs to come to your place in case if there's a need. Otherwise our platforms are so well designed that we can just provide software updates over the air and then they can just keep running throughout the facility.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. That's amazing. Right? Like $50,000. That's, that's the cost of your janitor, right? Like it's not, yeah, exactly. It's not a crazy cost.

Faheem Khan: And then the, the, the cost, not just a janitor, but the cost of uncertainty over there. So whether the task will be done or not. So how many times you can ask a janitor to, to get a floor done?

Sure. Carefully. For example, if I give you an example of food distributors, they need to clean their floor two to three times every day as part of Yes. The whole process. General warehouses, they need to clean their floors probably every two or three day second or third day because there's so much coming in, there's so much moving out.

Manufacturers a lot of activities are happening. They have not just cleaning, but they need to move past, they need to basically scan their equipment with, with, for various different signatures coming from for various different indications. So all of those tasks can be automated through our robots.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I, I love your robots by the way. I just think, I think they're so well designed. They look so cool. We'll definitely give people the link to your website after this. Cause I think everyone on the show is gonna wanna see what they look like cause they are impressive. Absolutely. But I do wanna chat a little bit about, about the AI specifically in the robot.

So like who, what are the applications? Who is buying these robots from you? What are the different industries? I know you just touched on food food sanitation. Or food manufacturing center, sanitation. What would be some of the other industries and companies? What are some other applications that would be really great for Aro Robotics?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, I'll start with warehouses, manufacture. They are right on the top list because they have so much to automate. The hospitals hospitals acquired this hospitals acquired infections. They are, that's a serious thing when, when your your walls, your floors are not clean and someone goes with, goes there with a sickness, they do acquire even, they get more sicker actually.

So then government buildings any kind of large building, imagine airport airports are really an ideal place for us. So there are, the way I generalize it, that any big building which exists, there has to be certain tasks which are happening manually and they're happening.

Continuously every day. So and then they need basic robots. They need AI based robots mainly so that they do not need to supervise them. They can just really, really rely totally on the, on the intelligence, which you have already put into, into the machine. And so but I can, I can give you literally a lot of examples of, of various facilities which exist at larger scale.

Actually even shopping mall. Yeah. And shopping mall. Things need to move around from one end of a big building to another and, and actually, so I would say that the, the, the the applications are just limited by our imagination. So, for example, when I talk to my team, I ask them that how our number of attachments we're gonna develop, how number of tasks we're gonna cover that is totally dependent on how well we think that what can be automated.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's, it's interesting cause I think a lot of people struggle. To think of how they would even utilize a robot because Right. I think it's like, it's like if, if it was just your imagination, you say, Hey, robot, yeah, you over there. We need you over there to pick up that item and go put it over there.

It's a whole nother thing to program that. How do you guys handle that situation?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, so at the moment we are helping our clients to program certain routines. For example, when we put an attachment with a manipulator then it has got a robotic arm on it so that arm can load our thermal camera and our AI based camera, which can identify objects.

So for example, if we need to program that arm, then we can provide a piece of software to our clients. Those, they can basically use those to, to program the arm. However, if we just, if we just need to run the, the, the, the base platform, which we call basically flatbed, which is an autonomous AI based platform, then literally we have already taken care of the programming.

So the clients do not need to do any kind of technical learning. Even my kid who is 10 years, she can come to our facility and she can program a robot because if, if you can operate a touch screen based device like a tablet, you can literally operate our robot. It's so easy. So it does not, it, it does not need any kind of technical knowledge.

You literally need to know what you need to get done. Yeah. And then you can program it with that. So we have put huge amount of effort in, in in smoothing the process of adopting certain technology, for example. And as an upfront thing, you can see that when people carry our, they, they just hold our tablet and they can see that how well they can program the robot, how easily they can do it.

So, so it's so easy. Yeah. Okay. And of course, there, there are certain attachments. There would be, there would be in need of certain level of

Kelly Kennedy: programming. Sure. Yeah. It's like the more complex, the task, there's definitely gonna be a little bit of expert programming involved, however, definitely doable. And I think, like you said, if it's just an application of moving things around a warehouse, you've set it up so easy that it can just be done with programming on a tablet.

Faheem Khan: Exactly. And because we are, we are a novel company in a way that we are we have a team of creative scientists, researchers, engineers over here, we are gonna improve these things continuously. If, if there is if there's a certain challenge for someone to operate, for example, of our robotic arm today, that would not be the case tomorrow actually.

Things are improving very quickly. Even as a CEO of the company, I cannot keep up how quickly we can, we are progressing and set f task actually cause we're continuously updating our user manuals, documentation, our our parcel list, which we need to buy, where to buy, because those updates are continuously improving actually.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. You know, it's so funny theme, I think about being a kid. I think about being a kid and when I was in high school, Our teachers consistently. Kelly, you gotta learn how to do math this way because you're never gonna have a calculator in your pocket. It's like, holy crap. Now we got a super computer in my pocket.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's gonna be the same thing with robotics and ai, right? Like, exactly. You know, I, you could sit here today and be like, yeah, right now that robotic arm's kind of hard. And then, you know, 10 years down the line, some be like, be like, what? That was hard. No, right. No. Yeah.

Faheem Khan: I mean, that's, that's where the whole effort comes, where whole, the marriage of multiple technologies when it comes through and when we make not just a part for someone to buy, but basically we provide a solution for someone to just out the box solution actually.

So they just press a button and it starts working. And that is where it is our real duty as a technology company to make the solution much easier for someone to adopt. Sure. If, if, if there is someone, if, if there is enough, if there's a lot of learning for them, then that means they're gonna move away from that anyway.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I talk about that a lot cuz you know, I, I'm an, I'm a business development firm, so, right. We talk a lot about, about making it easy for your customers, right? Because at the end of the day, if your customer has to jump through too many hoops to find you or to interact with you or to do something, they're just not gonna do it.

Right? Like, that's just the reality. You have to make it as easy as humanly possible, especially as a BD rep when you're marketing for a business. And it's the same thing, like you said, when you're creating a technology, you need to make it easy so that everyone can use it. Cuz if not everyone can use it.

They're just not going to.

Faheem Khan: They, they can't get enough value out of that. And they would get basically they would start collecting what they got into that specific piece of technology. It's not just robots, but even if they buy a pen and if the pen is not performing well, you can start thinking that, should I really go for this brand again or not?

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Sure. So can you, what, what have been some of the challenges that you faced in getting this company off the ground? You wanna tell me a little bit about some of the stuff you've run into?

Faheem Khan: Yeah. Well, we started thes back as, as a, as a very ambitious goal to basically to get it done. And there have been a lot of challenges technologically because we just didn't want to go to someone and say that, Hey, invest in our company, but we just have the whole vision in our head actually, there's nothing in front of us I can't prove to you. So, so the initially the challenge of us to talk to small businesses, medium size businesses without having a robot in our hand. Sure. Then yeah, we developed first prototype and then we had something and then we were just going to people and there we were looking, you know, a little bit more critical with something that we, what we are talking about there is Yes.

Really exist actually. So development of the technology, because it is highly capital intensive. It is it takes a lot of time. It is not something we, where you develop an app and then the next day you have 10,000 followers are subscribers. Sure it takes really long time, but it has a very long lasting impact as well.

And so I would say tech development has been a challenge, but now we are over with that. After three years we are at the generation three of our robots and now we are already basically deploying them in the field. So we are already over with that whole challenging time period.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well the like, so the, the problem you face really, like from where I sit, the problem you face is that just not enough people know about what you're doing because what you're doing is impressive.

It's needed, especially in Edmonton, we live in like a manufacturing hub. There's warehouses, distribution centers all over the place that are gonna need your robots. Right. Your, your challenge right now is you're just a little bit unknown. The first that I heard of you was at that Global 500 event.

What have been some of the other tactics you've been utilizing to Market Aro?

Faheem Khan: Yeah. Well lemme just cover this, why we have an unknown, because that was a stretch for us to live under the rock. Okay. For two years, we just stayed under the rock. We didn't dve what was there, what was happening, because we just wanted to prove to the, to the surroundings, to the society that yes, we can do it at very minimal resources.

And and yes, we would prove it. However, what are the other ways we are gonna reach we are literally reaching through face-to-face conversations. You bet. Businesses are always welcoming us. They are they, they're talking to us. They're bringing their unique problems to us. And then finally we just provide them a solution.

And it is that it is many businesses, as soon as they discover us, our LinkedIn, our Google search, our you know mouth to mouth messages and literally. They just contact us. They, and then they, they, they can literally contact me sometimes through LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sometimes through sending a message through our website because there's an email provided over there.

So they, they just come over to us and then they just, they just provide a certain level of intelligence, which we did not know before, and then we learn more, and then we provide them a, a more curated solution. But yeah, for marketing, you know, as I told you that the biggest marketer for us is Amazon.

So after looking at data documentaries, people don't need to think twice that, whether the want robotics are not so Sure. Sure. And then, then they literally search us.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. That, well, that's it, right? Like, it's just, it's a matter of you have an amazing product and you know, I mean, I've, I, I don't work for you.

I have no affiliation with you. I just see what you're doing, and I'm incredibly impressed and I'm very, very proud that something like this is going on right in my backyard in Edmonton. I'm, I'm very proud of what you guys are doing. I'm proud of you guys for building such an amazing product.

Faheem Khan: We are going to make Edmontonians really proud.

Damn right. You're company. And when I, when I talk to my team, I say that we are putting a base of foundation of something big. It is. So, so then it is coming along. However, as I mentioned, sometimes things do get slow because, you know, development of this kind of complex technology takes time. Sure. But now we are at a point where we are we have started delivering the value to the market.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. If you could go back to the beginning essentially when you were kind of just kicking off with this and you could give yourself a little bit of advice, what might that be?

Faheem Khan: Well, I think I mean, there are, there is a lot which we could have done better with the, with the, with the technology yourself.

But unless you take the, take those, all those those complex routes, you cannot take shortcuts. So however I could have said that probably we could have talked to the investors little bit earlier. Okay. And then probably we could have brought some, some some capital into the company and then we could have sped up the whole development, however, Again, I would say that I never wanted to talk to someone without having something in hand and without proving it, that yes, me and my team can really do that.

And so initially we were having a lot of hard time. Our employees were not willing to join us just because a lot of security around that. So we, we were having a lot of challenges. However even if we, if I do it the second time, probably they would not be much different than, you know optimizing the whole process finding suppliers talking to to the pro to prospective clients a little bit earlier, getting that feedback.

But, but I mean in last two years we have been very busy with them, with the industry. We have been visiting them. We have been giving them updates. We have been working with with companies very closely here in Edmonton, Nisku, Red Deer. So that kept us super busy throughout the time.

Kelly Kennedy: The reason I like to ask that question, Faheem, is I have a lot of entrepreneurs on the fence listening to this podcast.

This podcast really goes out to a lot of people that are in the BD profession and a lot of people that are essentially in the newer entrepreneurial stages. So they either haven't taken the jump yet and they haven't started their business, but it's on their mind or they are very new and they've just kind of gotten into it.

Or heck, maybe they are a little bit established, but I think that there's a lot of great information that someone like you, a serial entrepreneur, can provide to them to give them that little motivation. Cuz you know, you remember, you remember starting your first business, it was a hell of a leap. It was scary, right?

Like we, yeah, we, we all get scared. We just do it anyway. Do you have a little bit of advice for somebody who's maybe on the fence about starting their business and they, they're not really sure how to make that jump?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, well of course you can make a, a, a direct jump from your daytime job to start something which which is uncertain, which does not have any tomorrow, which, which, which, which probably have 99.9% chance to fail.

And you are just after 0.1% of success. However, I would say persistence is, is, is something which is the key. You have to be passionate. I mean, you can, you can arrange some level of investment as well. However, if someone is not persistent or someone is just doing it just as a fund, then very soon that hobby, it basically fades out.

And then you, you start getting interested into something else. Your family takes over with your time. Your, you start getting busier with something covid hits, you know? Yeah. Something else come up. Persistence, I would say if you are, if you don't have that kind of habit I would say that there is a hard chance to fail.

And that, that level of passion, that level of staying up late at night and you know, getting things done, that is super important. Absolutely. And you do lose a certain benefits, certain shortcoming, short, short term benefits basically. Yes. In the life. For example, not seeing someone on their birthday or not attending someone's wedding ceremony just because you were too busy seeing a client actually.

Yeah. But I would say that ultimately it does pay off actually. So when, when your brainchild is in your hand, you can really feel to be proud of that. And that's a winning moment.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. You hit the nail on the head Faheem you know, it takes dedication and consistancy, but I'll tell you what, if you believe in what you're doing, it doesn't feel hard does it?

Right, right. You know, you're giving a lot. Like the reality is between capital business developing me, founding and, and operating that, and me starting this podcast and kind of doing this. My God. Yeah. I'm busier than I've ever been. I, I, I probably work in 15 hour days most days. It just is what it is. But it doesn't feel that hard.

It doesn't feel that way because I'm, I love what I'm doing and I think I see it in you too. You love what you're doing as well, and it doesn't feel like work when you love what you're doing. Does it?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't feel you to be having a job actually. It is your life. That's right. So you have to do it, you have to live with this.

You can't really get over with this quicker. There, there is, there is always a time, you know, you have to go through that level of hurdles, that level of challenges. You can't have shortcuts, you know? So otherwise if, if there's a shortcut, that means you're doing something wrong. You're missing some of the steps to make your, your dream perfect.

So of course there are challenges. There are issues. However, another advice which you can put to people is that just team up with like-minded people. They bring a lot of moral, moral sport. They bring sometimes they join geo venture and sometimes they partner up and then they bring a huge amount of sport.

Like the co-founder of Aro Clayton Coutu, he's a great guy. He he brought huge level of creativity and contribution to the company to uplift. So, so this kind of partnerships and teaming up. That makes a big difference of breaking it or making it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell me a little bit about the team at Arrow and, and, and kind of how you guys got together and came up with this idea to begin with?

Faheem Khan: Yeah, so well we we started very slow, very, very simple, and just two people. And then I filled with certain people. Some, some people joined and then they got disappointed or there's not much happening, so let's move on. So, so there were challenges in the start. However as soon as we started, we developed our first platform and then we started showing up.

Then we, we, we got really More, more ambitious and, and skillful team members who, who, who, who joined the team and then they started making a big difference. So currently we have a team of experts on AI and robotics, on electrical side, on, on software. So, so, you know people want to look at your passion, at your persistence, and they want to see if, if, if the main guy is not there, then why should we come in?

Mm-hmm. So why should we take a risk with startups? There are big rewards in the long term, in the long run. There are some sacrifices, some hurdles, some challenges in the short term. But if there is enough for people to see for themselves where they're gonna be in their career they join very quickly to a startup.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, like. So when, obviously when, when I saw you I got invited to the, to the Global 500 Event by Colin Christensen, who's also been on the show, by the way. It was an amazing person to have an entrepreneurial expert. It was a, it was a great show. I worked with Colin. He's a great guy. Yeah. Did he help you guys out at all?

Faheem Khan: Oh, yes. Yes. Colin has been super critical how to make my pitch if I, if I, if you think that I profound very well in the presentation on the page. Yeah. Colin has a big role into that. Okay. And he, he's, he's good. He, he's very good with design. He he contributed a lot. He was, I worked with him for three months and then you know, every day continuously for three months, and he, he did a great job.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Yeah. Like he, yeah, he was an amazing guest. His story is unbelievable too. It was such a great show. If you guys haven't heard that show yet, you guys gotta go find the, I did actually a two-part interview with Colin Christensen. You guys gotta go back and check that out cuz it's probably, it's great.

You could do a 3 part with him. Yeah, he's So, you can probably do a fifth part with him, man, with his experience. It's unreal. Yeah. But he's such an, you know what it is though, and I see this in a lot of entrepreneurs and Colin is no exception optimism like no tomorrow. Yes. I feel like every entrepreneur I've ever met has been some of like the happiest go lucky.

They're always optimistic and I just love that about them. But I truly think that that's a critical piece in any entrepreneur.

Faheem Khan: Yes. Well, you know, That gives you energy that, that, that keeps you awake at night and still you don't feel sleepy because you are, you know that tomorrow is gonna be better than today.

You know that tomorrow you're gonna have one more step done. You're gonna have one more brick put on your building. And so, so optimism is super important. However, if you are in a bad company, then even if you're optimist, then people really degrade you. People think that what you're doing, what, why are you wasting time in this thing?

And you do need to be around great people. You do need to find them. And and they really empower your optimism to a big level.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. And you need to, I think too, you need to surround yourself with positive people, right? Yes. Negativity breeds negativity. So if you're around people that are pessimistic, they're negative, unfortunately it's gonna rub off on you.

And the opposite is also true. If you're around people who are happy, optimistic, always looking at the bright side of things, you are also going to feel that way and, and have that outlook on life. And I feel like when you're doing anything that's, you know, that's as risky cuz there's risk, right? And anything, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're starting a business, there's always a risk.

And you can't be sitting and dwelling on that risk. You need to be sitting and dwelling on the positives, the upcoming opportunities, because you almost have to, you have to have that mindset in order to, in order to move forward.

Faheem Khan: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So if, if, if, if you're not around great people, then as you've mentioned, then they're gonna basically discourage you.

They're gonna give you different directions, which where they have already failed, but they need to keep their honor, they need to keep their position. So they want, they're gonna push you more into the position, into the, into the direction where basically they know that you're not gonna make it, but they, they want to promote that.

So yeah. And it's not hard to find great people actually. It's just not hard to find for, for for entrepreneurs. It's not hard to find great co-founders. You just need to basically you need, you need to be great yourself so that you can find you can work with the really impressive people.

Yeah. And I'm really surrounded by by, by really good people actually around me.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, you know, I, I look at, I look at your story, you know, like, you came on this show and you said, look, you know, I, I was a goat herder right? Like, and now, you know, you're, you're a computer scientist, you're building robots like you are.

How, like, I, I guess my question is, You've, you've probably faced some challenge, you've probably faced some adversity, Fahim. How, what do you do to stay optimistic, to stay excited about the future? How were you able to overcome an adversity like that and become the man you are today? What, what was the, what was the catalyst that, that, that got you there?

Faheem Khan: Well, you know, when I think, like for example, when I started my PhD, it was not a. Like a short time degree. It need, it needed a lot of effort. And then I knew that I need to think long term when I started my first company, which failed my, my thought was basically long term, but I, I started feeling that it was not making up.

So you need to keep a long-term goal. You need to think five years to 10 years where you can make a difference. You need to think how well you can make a difference to the humanity. Because if you're building something, if you're bringing some value to the society, if someone is gonna pay you, you need to think how well you can make that, that difference.

And you cannot do that really for a short term. You have to, you, you, you can't, you can't do it really in, in, in a month or two months, or an even and a year. So, so I would say, I would summarize it in a way that if, if you don't, don't have a short term if you don't have a long term vision, it's really hard to basically stay optimistic.

You can lose your energy very soon because you could not achieve your goals quickly.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. So there you go. There you have it. Guys have long-term goals. You know, think of the future. Don't think about necessarily what's coming up in a year. Try to think about what's coming up in five years, where are you gonna be in 10 years?

Cuz it'll definitely help you. And I think too, by doing that too, i, I, if you're planning it that way, you're essentially setting up what steps you need to do every year to get there. So you're actually making it more effective for yourself anyway. Definitely. No, that's awesome. Faheem. Do you have any questions for me before we close the show?

It's been amazing, but I always like to let my guests pick my brain if they have any questions regarding business.

Faheem Khan: No. It has been an hour and an hour and 10 minutes I've been looking at Timer and then, you know, I did not even feel how. Quickly, the time pass, we can keep talking. It flies robots, AI for hours and hours.

I, I really hope that your business, your, your whole audience your public, they're gonna enjoy this whole podcast. And I don't have any particular question, but I would love to be part of the show another time whenever there's a need, whenever, you know, AI has taken over and when robots more into the field, I can come back and tell you, like, yeah, look at that.

That's what I was telling you.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, totally, totally. Like you said, we could have, we could have done a show like this for another hour. No question. There's no question. And I, I think I would love to have you back in the future and chat about this again. This has been amazing. Faheem, thank you so much for joining us today.

Once again, we've been chatting with Faheem Khan. He's the CEO of Aro Robotic Systems in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. They are building cutting edge robots for industry and Faheem, if they wanna get ahold of you or they wanna see what you guys are up to, where can they find you?

Faheem Khan: Well, LinkedIn is one platform.

Unfortunately I've been so busy with, with things that I could not keep up more on social media. However I plan to be more active on Twitter and LinkedIn. But LinkedIn is definitely a grateful platform at the moment. My email, fk@arosystems.ai, that is another way for, for people to reach out our website, arosystems.ai. That's another one. If someone really needs to book a meeting without going through all the initial introduction and conversations, literally go to meet. arosystems.ai And then they would take you to my calendar and book up slot over there. And we, we, we just try to make things simpler and easier for people.

And however, at the moment we are so busy just seeing the clients and prospects that sometime I, I can't keep up with all the updates on social media, but I love to hear back from people.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I just wanna say that what you're doing is impressive. I think your robots are going to change the world and they're definitely gonna change the world locally, I'll tell you that much.

They are impressive guys. If you if you're listening to the show and you love robots and you got a bit of nerd in you and you wanna check it out you definitely gotta check out his website. And that was That was Arosystems.ai, correct?

Faheem Khan: Yes. And Kelly, maybe that's probably, I'm not sure what would be the number of your episode, but I'm gonna bring a robot to you and you're gonna interview them.

So you're gonna, you're gonna,

Kelly Kennedy: I'm holding you to an episode, episode hundred. I'm gonna bring you back and my episode hundred, I want a robot I can talk to.

Faheem Khan: You're gonna ask them who created you, who is your creator, how you're feeling to be in the world. So you're gonna ask all discussions.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man, that would be, that would be something else. If you get to that level, you better call me back, cuz I, I wanna chat with you again about that.

Faheem Khan: It is not gonna make up the answers. So they're gonna be very genuine. They're gonna be very brutal. If they're not feeling well, they're in front of you. They're gonna tell you.

Kelly Kennedy: We're not gonna have those soft skills.

Hey? Yeah. All right guys. Thank you so much for tuning in today. This has been episode 26. If you're enjoying the Business Development podcast, please do head over to our website or on Spotify or Apple Podcast. Please get follow us and leave us a review. We appreciate it. We read all of them, and until next time, we'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.