Senior Care Academy

Compassion and Innovation: Ezra Torres on Transforming Senior Care

• Caleb Richardson, Alex Aldridge • Season 2 • Episode 6

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How does our past shape the way we work and lead? On today's episode we talk with Ezra Torres our first return guest to Senior Care Academy. Ezra talks about how his international travel and family examples have built him into the leader he is today.  Our conversation dives into how selecting team members driven by compassion can create a culture of genuine care. 

We also discuss the importance of cultivating communities where older adults can connect over their unique challenges and joys. Plus, we explore the delicate balance of integrating technology in senior care, ensuring safety without infringing on privacy.

Discover the behind-the-scenes journey of developing a privacy-respecting fall detection system, and meet the passionate team at Care Life. This episode concludes with a lively discussion on the power of friendship and collaboration, as Caleb and Ezra reflect on their shared commitment to harnessing the wisdom of older generations to revolutionize the industry. Join us for an episode filled with insights, compassion, and a vision for a brighter future in senior care.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Senior Care Academy. This is we're back with Ezra Torres. He came on pretty early in season one and we talked a lot about care life and now we're just back. We're both younger in the space and want to learn more from his experience in working in the senior care space. As a young person owning the tech outright, it's pretty sweet. So thanks for coming back on, ezra.

Speaker 2:

So glad to be here, Caleb, and you know likewise from our side, whenever we heard about Helperly, Connect Helperly and Senior Care Academy more specifically too, we automatically knew that if there's somebody shaking up the industry this much, especially this close to us, that we wanted to know who they were, and we are so blown away by all the cool stuff that you're doing and always glad to kind of continue growing our relationship with you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's fun being 15 minutes away not one of us in like San Francisco or something but yeah, this one I want to dive a little bit more just into you, because you talked about on our last episode, like the upbringing that you had, that you traveled a lot with your parents and your grandparents. So what lessons did you learn about seniors, I guess, or how did that shape who you are, all of that travel in your early days?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one thing that's for sure is that our grandparents and people that are older than us have experienced way more life than we have, and so one of my favorite things when working with seniors is just hearing the wealth of knowledge they have from all their experiences, and traveling is, I think, a similar way to maybe even gain experiences a little bit faster.

Speaker 2:

Faster when we travel, and when I have had the privilege to travel, it's been interesting to see you know how different people live and how the way that they you know. If we look at, for example, a country like the Philippines, where you know we consider it a developing nation, the people there have much less resources than we have over here, but at the same time, they are so giving, so loving to one another that they'd give you the shirt off their back, much more so than you'd find somewhere like here. So I think, in the way that I lead, that would probably be something that I've brought into. The way that I like to do business is making sure that I am giving the most I can possibly give myself, and I feel like when you do that and when you're just out to help people and I imagine at Helperly, it's a similar focus of helping people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

When you're out to help people, it makes it a lot easier to do business, because we're not there to make the money, or we're not there to get extremely rich, but we're here to help people, and so that, I think, is what I gained from my international travel, and maybe more specifically, the Philippines.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And meeting older adults here, I see that they have learned that over their life that you know it's better to be generous and just give, and so maybe that's some of the overlap or similarity I've seen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's something that eventually everybody learns, that it's better to just give like. Um, we're doing an episode uh, we used to have a show called the wisdom. Well, and we still kind of do with helperly. We're trying to create life stories and and help seniors realize that they've lived exceptional lives.

Speaker 1:

Um, but we were doing an episode with a 70 year old couple and she talked about how their whole life she was living keeping up with the joneses, and it was one of the things I asked was what is something that you put a lot of value on and wait on as a younger person, but not so anymore, and she was like material stuff, she's like it doesn't matter, like it's just like be good and help other people.

Speaker 1:

So it is cool that you got to witness that so early by going to, like I said, humbler countries, because even just travel within the us you see like different flavors of the same ice cream, you know, versus going international and seeing people in different cultures and how they interact. So that's pretty sweet. You mentioned with your grandparents and I agree that people that are older are just wiser. Naturally, 9.9 times out of 10, you always have those that never learned, but, um, but they have a lot of wisdom. What's something or a specific lesson from whether it's your grandparents or, um one of your clients that are using your tech that you've learned from them? That you're grateful that you learned at such a young age rather than having to learn it by yourself?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a good point. Um, you know, I think it takes a special person to go into an industry no matter what industry and start something Not everybody has the dream of. Let's start a company, or let's figure out how we can fulfill a need for for a certain demographic of people, and that's something that we share. So I think that's really interesting and unique that we have that kind of similarity, and I think that in the relationship we probably have with our grandparents I know we spoke about that a little bit together- in the past.

Speaker 2:

that really influenced, I think, a piece of why we do what we do For me, my grandparents just being some of the pillars of my life, when life was a little bit more shaky, at periods, me being able to depend on people that were not only so knowledgeable and had lived so much but also were just there and loving me. And it just happened to be my grandparents. You know, I think that influenced my perception of appreciating older adults.

Speaker 2:

Maybe they not all older adults are amazing grandparents and not all of them are in our lives in the same way they were in mine and, I think, yours as well, but it is probably the thing that influenced my passion for for specifically helping seniors is my grandparents left such an impact on on the way that I felt they helped me, and so how can I give back? Well, of course, I can help them, but I'd love to help everybody else, and so I'd love to hear also just a little bit about your grandparents and how that may be similar.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, it's definitely very similar. I was super blessed my entire life up until last year. I lost my mom's mom, so my grandma on my mom's side. But growing up I lived down the street from my dad's parents so went up there. My grandma loved well, well, family history and science, so every I think I can't remember if it was tuesdays or fridays.

Speaker 1:

Growing up we did like science days and we lived near the jordan river parkway so we'd go down to the jordan river and she'd tell us about some plant or like some bird. It was a lot of fun. Um, growing up in that area with a bunch of cousins I'm one of like 70 grandkids wow, um, so that was very impactful on that side. And then also going to like the same church as them and all of that just seeing how they held themselves. And then a special relationship with my grandparents on the other side. They are ranchers still up in Idaho where my grandpa is now.

Speaker 1:

So growing up taught me definitely hard work. Taught me like my grandpa. He's slowing down now that he's like 85. But probably five years ago when I was like 20, and he was 80, he would still outwork me like he'd out throw, throw more hay than me. He could last longer without needing food. He's just a machine. So I learned hard work there. And then my kind of experience, the same idea like very just stalwart and staples in my life that I knew I could count on my grandma both grandmas, like I knew that anytime I'd walk in their front door they'd open their arms and they'd give me a hug and act. Even though I'm one of 70 plus grandkids, I was the only person that mattered to them when, I opened the door.

Speaker 1:

That's something I really admired. But yeah, my kind of realization of the wisdom that seniors have it was I was 15 or 16 with my grandpa Steven, so my mom's dad and we were driving back from fishing some summer day and it like dawned on me a little bit. I was like Holy crap. At the time he was like 74 or something.

Speaker 1:

I was like you before, before I was even born, had lived 60 years of life, and I was like, what were you like when you were my age, grandpa? And he started telling stories and he's like, well, you're talking, like like it's really hard to understand him. Um, he's just a rancher. But I learned that donkey basketball back in that would have been like the 1950s was a big sport in rural areas and he was just exceptional at donkey basketball. So you're just up, saddled up on a donkey plastic on the basketball court and you're playing. Anyways, it's a little bit of a tangent, but realizing that they lived through just incredible times in history, like the end of segregation and wars and different social and economic improvements and pitfalls, and like just living through that, is crazy. Like even young people of today I think don't think about it, but we all live through COVID and we learned different things about ourselves, about society.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

So imagine that, but times for, you know, 40 to 60 more years no-transcript.

Speaker 2:

Go through a situation that's traumatic or difficult and when we do, we come out so much stronger. On the other side, I think not everybody does. Of course there's people who have traumatic situations that they end up maybe falling more into not being able to help even themselves, let alone anyone else, but others, I think, when they go through something difficult, we're almost required to take care of the people around us in that difficult situation and through that gain kind of an ability almost. And our grandparents, they've had series, you know, series and series and series of traumatic events in their life because of the life they've lived and the duration of it and hearing stories, like your grandparents you know, obviously, going through economic downturns and everything else. That's the same story for mine too, right, and um, going to war.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I remember hearing stories of my, my grandpa, getting drawn for the draft right, so he's going to Vietnam and my grandma just is pregnant right and so he's going to be gone for the first pregnancy, comes back for a quick visit. Oh no, now there's a second pregnancy and he's gone during this period of time. So I can't imagine how hard that must've been for my grandmother and my grandpa, but also helps me understand that because of all those difficult things they had to go through that just being one of them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's why they're such amazing people today. Yeah, and so do you find that? Maybe that similar thing that I notice of when we have to go through something tough in our own life, it all of a sudden makes us that much stronger. Do you feel like that had to happen to you for you to be in the position that you're in today?

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, I wish that sometimes that life was like super sunshine and rainbows and stuff. But, yes, definitely like to be able to go through something and especially especially starting a company and trying to build something meaningful that is mission driven. You have to be able to stick through something, like it took before I was able to consistently pay myself. It took 18 months of me working two, sometimes three other jobs and trying to get help really off the ground for a ridiculously long amount of time and during that time I got married, I had a kid and my dad died.

Speaker 1:

Like stuff happens and it takes time to go through, or you have to be able to go through difficult times if you want to do anything meaningful.

Speaker 1:

Cause if you've never tried, done, if you've never been forced to survive something hard, then when you approach something hard in your life, you're going to have, you're not going to have the faith in yourself because, like when you have to choose the hard, you're not going to do it if you haven't had to be forced to live through the hard and going back again kind of to seniors, I think, having other people in your life, even if it's not like your direct blood, um, that has lived through garbage, even not for just advice, but somebody that you're like.

Speaker 1:

I know that you're in the Vietnam War, you saw people die or you have been living with this traumatic memory or physical impairment for 40 years. Yes, it's not the same as my, like crippling depression, but if having somebody in your life that's gone through stuff, that is there to just listen, is something that's really valuable and I think that that can be found a lot of times in older adults and seniors, so that's one of the many, many reasons why I consider them the golden generation, but a lot of times they're kind of forgotten Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Something that came to mind while you were talking about that for me was that you know we we have these situations that create us to be resilient.

Speaker 2:

Something really difficult happens in our life and we become resilient, and the more difficult situations, probably the more resilient we become even if the situation is like a muscle, and even if we encounter something that we haven't seen before, we have a lot of resilience, and so we can probably encounter that situation better than somebody who hasn't had to experience something tough before. But you know, part of the reason why my grandparents are so instrumental in my life is I think they were there during those difficult moments of my life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so another interesting thing is that I love how part of your operation Help Really Connect is about helping connect people and in the same sense that it was helpful for me that my grandparents were around when I was going through something tough or traumatic, I think something really powerful about Help Really Connect just the idea of it is that you are now supporting people, connecting people who are going through something traumatic as well. It's traumatic to get old. It is.

Speaker 2:

Because there's a lot of changes you have to go through, maybe losing your spouse, maybe having to move into a different living situation. These are difficult things.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we had a cool on that note experience where we have it's called Daily Connect. It's literally just like a cool on that note uh, experience where we have it's called daily connect. It's literally just like a jump on and meet other people, just connect and shoot the shiz. Um, shoot the breeze. And we had one lady that she was a younger senior, I think she was 67 or 68, so she was still working. And then there was an older lady, uh like later 70s, early, early 80s, and the younger lady had gotten injured and wasn't able to work anymore. So now she's at home.

Speaker 1:

This was almost like nine, almost a year ago probably, so she's working from home or not being able to work. She was feeling like what's my purpose? And it was really hard and she was kind of getting the first glimpse of what it can be like as you get older, losing things to do and people you love. And she was able to connect with the older lady and the lady was like, oh, I had that exact same injury. You need to do this and that and, and I was there as like the moderator to make sure, whatever that's kind of how it works. We just have somebody that's mindful of it.

Speaker 1:

But I was just sitting there quietly for like 45 minutes and they were just really connected and the lady at the end said that she just felt so much better. She felt like heard like somebody else has gone through this. She's 20 years older than me Well, like 15 years older than me and doing great, so it was really cool. Like you said, it's just like that ability to connect and share what you're going through. It's an interesting statistic. It's like 70% or greater, I can't remember of older people want to make more friends with their peers, like people that have gone through it, that aren't using like Gen Z slang, like people that they can connect with. So it's a cool platform for sure.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And you know, in that same vein, kind of what we were almost comparing ourselves to is as we come across experiences in our life that make us resilient. We become capable of handling difficult situations, maybe like starting a company, or maybe for a senior that's like moving through a tough place in life.

Speaker 2:

But, no matter who you are, it's important to connect with people and have good people around you, and I've noticed you know, coming on your first podcast walking into your guys' office. I mean, you guys have a lot of good people in your office and that seems like something that you've intentionally done. Have you been able to hand select the guys that you're working with and what has been maybe some of the things that you focused on when selecting good people?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great question. That's one of the benefits of being mission driven um is that we lead with that more often than not, like when we kind of a litmus test. A fun litmus test that I try to go through um in a lot of scenarios is one is have them recognize somebody, an older adult, an elderly person in their life that they care about, and really get like a good, vivid picture of that person. And then I ask them do you feel like you're able to visit them as much as you'd like or as much as you feel that they deserve? And like 99% of the time it's a no cause.

Speaker 1:

We're all busy people living our own lives. And then it's like does that make you feel guilty? And 90, like almost a hundred percent of the time, but say yes, so helping them realize that it's a real problem, even anecdotally for them it's a problem, but on a larger scale it's a problem for everybody. So that's a great thing. And then one of our core attributes is compassion, so assuming the best in other people, not having drama Just when you show up, have a genuine like how can I help? Mentality is what we try to screen for. And anybody that works with us like experiences is wonderful, but it's definitely secondhand to being able to do what it takes to help seniors and then be compassionate while doing it.

Speaker 2:

I love how you focus on that, you know, on the final piece, just throwing in there that you know, while experience is valuable, it's not the only thing we're looking for, and not even the most important thing. We're looking for that. You it sounds like at Help. Really you're looking for more servant-styled people who will come into any situation and they'll be there to help.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, with CareLife. Sorry, this is a random question that came up to my mind, but with Care, care, life, something that I'm curious about because you guys have the technology that helps monitor falls and it's not it's not like privacy invading, but I know, thinking about my grandpa, yeah, he's like worried about privacy and like the government's out to get him. He's like definitely one, maybe an extreme case, but how have you overcome that with trying to get this the fall detection and the technology in the space, with them being worried about like privacy?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

How do you? How do you respect privacy? I guess at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So from day one it was our focus, my focus, to make sure that that question was answered. Like I don't want to go into my grandma's house. That's who I started with too. You know I started by putting Care Life in my grandparents house before I did anybody else, and when I got there, you know I had to think about those questions. How do I keep my grandma feeling like she's okay? Big brother's not watching? You know totally that, because you know the news makes us feel sometimes like there's nowhere we can go without being seen.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that's true.

Speaker 2:

And so we started with radar for fall detection and quickly we found out that, for radar, while it was really awesome and we were getting fall alerts, we were getting a hundred alerts for every real fall, so a lot of fake alerts. And so, while our goal was to be private, it wasn't accomplishing the goal of actually preventing a fall or detecting a fall and not being unsure whether it happened or not.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So what we had to do is figure out first if our goal is to help people not be on the floor that's my goal is to make sure in any case, in any type of senior living environment, that we don't have people left on the floor overnight.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there was an incident in my family where that happened. It was one of my great aunts who was on the floor overnight and ended up passing away in the bathroom, and so my great grandmother found her, or my grandmother found her in the bathroom, and that was pretty traumatic for her.

Speaker 2:

And so that started me thinking about this idea of how could we use technology, and I started, like I said, with radar. It wasn't working because of the false alerts, so we just looked at every technology with the goal of being as private as possible.

Speaker 2:

So we just looked at every technology with the goal of being as private as possible. Where we landed was, it is a camera. However, none of the video is accessible live. None of the audio from that device is accessible live by us, by any of our partners, by anyone. Nice, Instead, we have a little robot running on that camera and it is basically an AI fall detection sensor, and so it's looking with a stick figure the version of the person in the room at them and identifying if they're on the floor for longer than you know a few seconds to go ahead and then start recording a video. So that way, we're not just always recording. It's not like we have video of everything that's going on.

Speaker 1:

We don't really want to know by any means what's going? On in someone's home.

Speaker 2:

But if there's a fall, we know not only that there is one, but we have a video of that Right, and so that made it so that we were able to go to a hundred percent accuracy, right, or very close. You know, sometimes people do lay on the floor and do pushups or other activities, and so most of the time, and if they are on the floor, we will be detecting a fall with perfect accuracy and no false alerts. Now, wow, and so, although we had to step into the realm of using a camera, even though we wanted to shy on the side of let's use as limited functionality of this camera as we can, yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's how we really ended up ultimately protecting the privacy.

Speaker 1:

Cool, sorry, that was a little random side question. Yeah, I want to ask you the same question because you guys so with helperly, the helperly care, the service side specifically, um, even helperly connect a lot of the moderators or the hosts we really have to screen for their passion, about their compassion and passion towards helping seniors. So, like we try to find people that have some sort of connection to an elderly person, whether it's their grandparents, parents or aunt, but with Care Life, where a lot of what you do is more it's on the technology side, right, like the people on your staff are more not necessarily face-to-face with seniors all the time. So do you have to screen for that as rigorously? Or what do you? How do you? How have you found the talent? Cause you have very talented team as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one interesting thing that I find when I'm talking to people in a hiring situation is that I'm always interested in what is that person's goal in life? What is that person's mission in life? Where do they want to be in five years? And primarily because we're kind of a high growth startup, we have to have people who are wanting to put in a lot of effort now and sometimes not reap the rewards today and have to wait to reap some of those rewards in the future.

Speaker 2:

And so when I say that, you know, carelife started inside of a large incubator called Hall Labs, well-funded, and we were able to cover all normal salary costs. We had built something over the course of a few years that really helped seniors and, partially because I was so passionate about that, I brought people with me that were also passionate about seniors, similar to what you did.

Speaker 2:

But at the beginning of 2024, really halfway through 2023, Hall Labs essentially needed to sell off the CareLife operation, and our team was so passionate about what we were doing to help seniors that we felt there was no better way to make sure we actually helped seniors than to forego pay, stop getting salaries and go all in with just making sure we were helping people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so when we did that, surprisingly, every single one of the Care Life members stayed on Wow, despite not having salary in the beginning, despite needing to step up and do more than they were doing before, a lot of them even going into debt. The goal was that we wanted to make sure that we accomplished our goal, which we had set out to do, despite whether or not we'd have funding to do it, because we knew that if we made sure we helped people, that the money would come. And so that's, I think, a little bit about how we got our founding team is we were all paid very well under a large incubator building technology, but then there came a point in time where it's either shut down the technology or keep going and shut down salaries.

Speaker 1:

Shut down money. That's incredible. So you mentioned, like you said, kind of foregoing pay. Now for the long horizon, what's the end? Not the end, obviously, but what is the? What's the golden elephant that you're chasing? And then also, um, oh, what was my also, um, my brain, oh, and then what? Like with chasing that golden elephant, a lot of the times, I think, especially in senior care or elder tech, there's not as many companies that want some sort of massive outcome like there are in like sas or other tech sectors. So, yeah, do you have kind of a end long-term goal and what? What makes you want to do that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I you know, I've always been business oriented from like a very young age. I think my first job was a paper out when I was seven. Um, I just saw the paper truck or paper van driving by where they were throwing papers out the window. I ran up and I said, hey, I want a job. And uh and like a year later I had five people delivering papers for me and I was just collecting the tips.

Speaker 2:

Um, so you know I always had a passion for just doing business and and through my master's in London and others jobs that I had, I realized that what business really is is solving a need in the world.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's just helping people. That's really what a business is and that's what I latch onto, because I'm passionate about helping people and my name. For some reason, I found out, I think maybe a year ago, that in Hebrew it means to help people. So I was like wow, love it, Perfect. And so when I step into where I'm in now, I will be happy closing Care Life tomorrow if we already had helped the people that we have.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so I'm already happy with, with care life today.

Speaker 2:

But you know, that doesn't mean that I'm going to just stop today and I'm not going to keep growing and where I'd like to go with care life is, you know, I preferably like to be in every state in the United States. Um, we would. We would have a goal of of of working with all of the operators in the United States that are interested in transforming safety for residents, and so we see that there are sometimes operators who are money-driven and so, earlier I mentioned, whenever I'm looking at a hiring situation, I want to know what their motives are, and a lot of times when we're in the interview stage with a community or a group of communities, we find that some of them are interested in money and others started at the bottom and they were there because they're grandparents and they helped so many people and they're only moving up because they want to help more people, and those are the ones that we want to work with. And so as long as I've gotten in front of every single one of those people in the United States, I'll be happy with you know, having done everything I feel like I need to do Because, like I said before, I don't really feel like at CareLife, we're building a product more than we're building something that's there to help people and making sure that there's no one ever left on the floor.

Speaker 2:

But even more than that, what CareLife has become today is we're a call system, so residents push a button when they need help. Oh, cool, and all of the caregivers have phones they carry around. They respond to those help requests. 95% of our alerts are help requests, 5% of them are falls or incidents. Right, so a lot of what we do is just help people get help, yeah, and so whenever they need a diet, pepsi, or maybe they, you know, need a transfer to the, to the, the toilet, or maybe they need an escort to the dining room, you know, those are the things we help people with on the day to day. And so that's where we get a lot of um, kind of pleasure internally, if you will, is when we go into communities and see how much people are just helped day to day and how easy this is for the caregivers and how easy it is for residents. And, of course, the falls is something that we appreciate secondary as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, when you say operators that actually care, I think of. Dave Egbert was a guest on the on senior care Academy. It was like episode 11 or 13. I can't remember, but yeah, he was one of those people that moved his way all the way up.

Speaker 1:

He started out as like an activities director or marketing director and now he's the VP of operations operations at um, western states management or legacy yeah and yeah, he's like totally a care first, like just stayed in it for as long as he did because he actually cared, like as through covid, as the executive director of a building of like 200 and something residents. Um, he said that he was as the executive director, he was coming in and filling in like caregiver and cna, like just filling in because, yeah, the thought of, yeah, thought of them not getting help was hard for him and there's a lot of operators out there, unfortunately, that, because it is a great invest, real estate investment, um, and there's a lot of people that see it that way. But the people that see it as a great vehicle to helping people, I feel like always have better outcomes on the longer time horizon, for sure.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting as business owners. People always just wonder are you guys just there for the money? That's an easy question to ask somebody. So what's interesting to me is that both of us and then, like we've just discussed, in operators as well we find that there's the two types. There's somebody who is there for money, and then maybe there's somebody there to help people. I wonder how that plays out in the long run.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I really hope it's on the side of the companies that are there to really help. People are the ones that ultimately get the biggest benefit, and I'm so glad that you're in this boat with us where we're going after this, of just the approach of, of doing the best we can for anybody we interact with.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Um, what? What advice would you have for cause? You talked to a lot of operators. What advice would you have for operators that maybe they are more money focused or they unintentionally they're more money focused, Like they're making decisions that are effect, making decisions based off of the bottom line and not making decisions based off of their residents? What advice would you have for them, or how would you help them change their perspective, if you will, to make decisions that actually help their residents?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's an interesting question. So the way that I like to think about this is in terms of the operators we work with that are more focused on money. I wouldn't say that all of them are necessarily like just out for the money and they're not there to care for people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sometimes it's unintentional, they're just like it's the easier metric to measure is dollars on the bottom.

Speaker 2:

So before I just say that they're all greedy, they're just there for the money. I don't feel like there's a lot of operators out there that really like that, but I think more so.

Speaker 2:

We find that there's operators that are more risk adverse.

Speaker 2:

They're more interested in making sure that nothing that they do is risky, but on the flip side of that, that's also what kills innovation and kills continuing helping more and more people. That's also what kills innovation and kills continuing helping more and more people, because if you're only focusing on just doing the minimum that you need to be the business that helps seniors, then you're also missing out on all of the shortcomings that exist around us today already, and I think that's what you lose out as an operator who is risk adverse and focusing only on what 100% has already been penciled and what 100% makes sense. Instead, if you're an operator that says let's look at how either companies are changing the landscape of senior living or how we internally could change the landscape of senior living, I think if you focus on that, what you end up with is a company who creates more solutions to problems, and the more solutions to problems you have, the more likely you are to have residents, the more likely you are to have better revenue the more likely your bottom line looks better.

Speaker 2:

So, I think that I would encourage operators who are risk adverse to flip the coin a little bit and think about maybe what problems they have internally that they can start solving that may not force them into this kind of position.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. When you said that, I thought of Adam Benton from Stellar Senior Living. He was like episode 20, but he talked about how they wanted to. Or they're putting in an ice cream in one of their buildings in like Colorado an ice cream parlor ran by people with different disabilities, not disabilities and his little like he was just like we're going to make this happen, like everybody's like, talking about all the red tape and he's like they try to stop us. They're going to go to hell.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Like I think that that's a good mentality sometimes of like we're trying to do these new things because you want to help seniors, and that's kind of the advice that I have a lot of the times for different operators and whichever industry whether it's assisted living or home health or any senior focused service company a lot of the times they really are slow to adopt technology that like, even though things are working the way that they always have, they can be working better, and it's an industry that's definitely slower to try something new. And it's not necessarily, like said, for greed, it's just fear or risk and because of it they are missing out on better outcomes for their patients and clients.

Speaker 1:

So, that's my advice is always like just give it a shot. Like most especially today, like I feel like most offer tech offers, whether it's like a SAS or a crm, or like care life or like helperly connect, whatever it is it's there's always like a very low risk option to giving you a shot, like, yeah, there's something that makes it like worst case scenario. You're six or twelve months in and you can. You can flip it.

Speaker 2:

Nothing, nothing's irreversible, so try something new you know, and to put a little bit of data behind this, you know, there's a famous um you know, if you will, leader in business.

Speaker 1:

His name's Clayton Christensen, even lived here in Utah for a while.

Speaker 2:

And Clayton Christensen has an idea called disruptive innovation, and the idea behind disruptive innovation is that you have these incumbents in the market. Today they're Amazon and Google the biggest players in the market, and over time, if you look at these incumbents, they actually change. It's not that Google and Amazon are actually going to be the biggest forever. It's likely Tesla or the next player ends up taking over the gauntlet right.

Speaker 2:

And if we think about this in a smaller case, let's talk about just how that change happens. In the past, we used to go up to the lakes, cut out bricks of ice and break them apart, and that's how we cooled our food Right. But today we have refrigerators and all of a sudden refrigerators took over that whole market.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The thing is that if you're not consistently staying on the edge of innovation and change and if you are more risk adverse, you tend to not be. Ultimately, what happens is the ones that are acquiring new skills and innovating and taking on new things. Those are the companies who become the new incumbents because they're solving problems that haven't been solved yet, and so I think we have a unique position being in startup, where we have to figure it out already. We're forced to figure it out, where we're in a mode of throwing stuff at the wall. Let's throw this at the wall, see if it works. Let's throw this at the wall, see if it works.

Speaker 2:

And ultimately, we are forced to try a lot more things than a stable, large business who has been operating for 50 years. They're like, if we change anything, we might risk the money that's paying everybody, so let's not even try, and so ultimately, we have a lot of unique new solutions, being a new company, that the both of us that allow us to already try new things all the time. So I think that's one thing that large operators which Google, you know Amazon, today incumbents are trying to mitigate their risk at losing out on the gauntlet share, and so the way they do, that is, they buy up small companies or they continue trying to engage in a startup style approach of throwing everything at the wall.

Speaker 2:

Let's see what sticks. If it doesn't, fine, let's quickly say no and close it down. But just being open to trying new things, being open-minded.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I definitely think the senior care space a lot of times is slower. So it is a great thing to just try being open-minded, especially over the next 20 years, with everything happening in the technology space and how much over the next 20 years, how much more older adults are going to be accepting and using the technology like, implement it now, so that way the seniors of five, seven years from now that are already using the tech are going to come to you rather than being behind and all of a sudden trying to switch randomly. So to end on this, you have multiple pictures of yourself doing backflips off of like bridges and benches.

Speaker 1:

You're dressed up nice but, I would love to see it if you're down.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if you're still, can you still have it? I love the request for me to go ahead and do a backflip now.

Speaker 1:

I would love to give it a try, but I also have a lot of things planned in the future that I don't want to hurt myself for, and it's been a little while since I've attempted.

Speaker 1:

Well, darn it, I'm so sorry. No, you're good. Yeah, we'll just scrap it. No, just kidding. Just let me stand in the middle, cut me and move me in a circle. Yeah, true, yes, we'll just like if we had, like, green seats. No, um, it's been a lot of fun, ezra, this 40-ish minutes or whatever, just flown by. Um, I appreciate that you're 15 minutes away and that we're both trying to impact the and, like I said, my opinion, the most valuable generation, people that have lived through the most and that can impart the most wisdom on the younger generation, just in different ways, so excited to continue this friendship and working together and disrupting industries.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I look forward to doing life and business with you as well.

Speaker 1:

Caleb, Thanks for the time, appreciate it. Thanks, ezra, we did it. That was a good one.