STEVE

 I’m sure you saw some amazing stuff at ces.

MARLO

Yeah. 

STEVE

We’re talking about that a little bit. But one of the things that you were also famous for, and I just mentioned it, NationalDayCalendar.com. Check it out. You were on CBS Sunday morning and that finally aired, I gotta cut ’em a little slack. You were bumped for the Pope and Barbara Walters.  But you aired and a little bit of buzz is going on with the calendar now. 

MARLO

Yeah, it’s been crazy since Sunday morning. I don’t want to say that we weren’t prepared, but I guess we weren’t prepared. I thought we’d see a little bump in traffic and, I get a couple media mentions or whatever, which is typical for the National Day Calendar. 

STEVE

It’s been a nice platform and a little bit of national media attention and, holy crap. 

MARLO

On a national level, telling the story of how we came to be and all of that, was really cool. And, I think, the cool thing around that story too is coming from a small town, in Mandan and Mandan was highlighted nicely in the piece. And I just think that there’s just something about that. I’ve always said that National Day Calendar is a grassroots thing. And I think, having CBS’s Sunday Morning come here and actually show that grassroots is Americana. I think just really, that National Day calendar and this whole movement of Celebrate Every Day comes to the heartland of America. And I don’t know, I just think that there’s something all about that, and I think that’s why. It’s just, I can’t even tell you the craziness that it – I can tell you some things, but the craziness that’s happened in the last 48 hours because of that piece, it’s just unbelievable.

I already have a little bit of a following in Switzerland. I have no idea how this happens. I feel I’m the Jerry Lewis of Switzerland because I walk in there and everybody’s, Hey Marlo’s here. Hey, will you interview me? And I – it’s the Tech Ranch. And they’re like, what? What is this?  I only got a couple of interviews done on Saturday in there and I told them I’d be back tomorrow morning to finish up with everybody I walk in there of course, and they’re just like, “Hey, we see you this morning on the show.” And it just was a whole nother level of buzz around that. And I was walking down the street and people would come up to me cuz they watched it that morning and, so it was a little different.

STEVE

Yeah. I’m trying to figure out why Switzerland?

MARLO

I don’t know. I did some interviews with them last year and they got some play nationally. 

STEVE

So I think that’s probably why. And then people from Switzerland will listen to the you and me, it’s not because you’re your own autonomous neutral country, 

MARLO

Maybe, I don’t know.

STEVE

So the question I’ve got is, explain the booth part because a lot of people may not know. So you say you walked into the Swiss booth. What’s a Swiss booth entail? What’s that look like? 

MARLO

So, they’re called pavilions actually. So the French have one. The Ukraine has one. No Russia this year, by the way that I’ve seen anyway. They have a lot of the countries, 

STEVE

If it would’ve been there, you couldn’t have ’em next to each other. 

MARLO

So yeah it was interesting to see Ukraine there, actually. Yeah, they had 11 booths in their pavilion. So they weren’t crazy well-represented but not bad. But sad. I interviewed a few of them. There’s one called E-Pharm. Great product by the way. They have a product that basically. you mount a sensor on your old tractor and then you put it like a tablet in your cab or next to the steering wheel, depending on how old your tractor is. And now you can drive straight lines down your field when you’re planting, or it’ll tell you to put a little more fertilizer here or a little less there. So it basically brings these old vehicles to the 21st century.  So I’m interviewing this wonderful lady, and then she brings up the fact that they’re developing part of their platform is for mine removal. 

STEVE

Yeah. That puts things in a little bit different perspective, doesn’t it? 

MARLO

It’s a whole different perspective. And the emphasis of their company now is moving to this platform and they’re using all the money they’re making to offset the mining situation. Or, the fuels being mined in Ukraine. Because removing mines isn’t the easiest thing in the world I just was really taken aback

STEVE

Interesting dichotomy. Just unbelievable.

MARLO

So a lot of people, I explained to them what CES is, and you and I talked about this a little bit last week. There’s buyers and sellers or there’s the other side there were people are trying to find out what the next biggest project I can invest in.

STEVE

So it’s like a big shark tank. 

MARLO

It is. 

STEVE

So from a pavilion perspective, I’m guessing there’s multiple layers on the pavilions where you’ve got all the countries represented, but you’ve got also industries represented as well.

MARLO

Yeah, so they’ll segment it out. So you’ll have all the 3D printing stuff in one area. Wouldn’t really call it a pavilion. They just  put these different things, because all the car automotive things are in one, one hall. All the televisions, all the screens are basically like in the main hall.

STEVE

So that’s another question – is how often are they asking your opinion? Because of course the Tech Ranch is the platform by which all this gets rolled out. How often are they asking your opinion? It’s “Hey, are we onto something right now?”

MARLO

The conversations afterwards are that way, during the interview not so much, but afterwards and then I get asked a lot to do, like on boxing and stuff, and I used to do a lot of that type of thing. I don’t anymore because of my dual role with National Day Calendar but I want to get back to that again. So I guess I really give advice to some of these things. 

STEVE

So, back to CES. 

MARLO

Yeah.

STEVE

So from a technology perspective what was CES this year as far as what your expectations were?

MARLO

I expected to see artificial intelligence at a level never seen before, and I was correct in that. It’s being incorporated in so many things. And for example have we talked about the refrigerator and cooking type of scenario? 

STEVE

Yeah, we did a little bit last last week. That’s right. 

MARLO

That’s what I thought. 

STEVE

Got a chance to take a little at someday it could be one unit. 

MARLO

Yeah, there was some prototypes of that. And the idea is that because of autonomous vehicles the thinking is that you don’t have to have as much food in your house. We’re off at that point now, you and I grew up in a generation, especially my wife, where you need to have four freezers and everything else cuz you need to store all this food if you come from rural country. That’s how it is, right? 

STEVE

Yeah. I’ve got my wild game freezer. I’ve got my cow freezer, 

MARLO

There’s enough food in our house to last a year if we needed to, I’m sure. But The idea here is that you have one unit that, that your refrigerator is going to basically talk to your favorite grocery store. The autonomous vehicle is gonna deliver your food in a timely manner. It’s gonna know that you’re leaving work and gonna be home at 5:45 or whatever. And that Autonom vehicle will show up at about the same time, and you can take your bag of groceries in stock, your refrigerator, and then it’ll start pulling things out of that refrigerator , to make things, there’ll be a robot involved in this as well. There’s actually robots that are being developed right now that will help you with cooking, doing your clothes, laundry, clean your house above and beyond. 

STEVE

With AI and the robotics and stuff going, wait a minute, it’s not about the safety aspect, it’s about workforce and getting workers. Has there been a paradigm shift from a mindset 

MARLO

It’s the quickest form to monetization. So if a company says, you know what, the United States has a workforce shortage right now of 18 million jobs or whatever it is. Right?  So there’s the economies as well, right? So then your fast food hamburger can’t be 99 cents anymore. No. All of it has to go up. So in order for you, if price point is an important thing for your restaurant, for example, which I would imagine most are. They look for two things that has to happen. They either have to lay off staff because that’s the most expensive part of a restaurant is the actual staffing that goes on. Or you figure out other ways to make or serve, make food or serve your customers. And probably robotics will come into play more and more all the time. 

You’re seeing kiosks and McDonald’s just pop up like crazy. I occasionally run into a McDonald’s. They seem to, they’re just more of them. And a lot of times when I’m in a smaller town, that’s the only fast food restaurant in town, so I’ll go in there, but even in a small town of three or 4,000 people, you’re met with four kiosks, and then they just have one person at the counter that would take the occasional order and or hand off the food instead of having four or five staff there. And I guarantee you, if you were to talk to the manager of that facility, they’re gonna state wages and they’re gonna state lack of workforce. Those are the two reasons why they put those kiosks in.